Photo by Bill Stokes
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper is performing a public service this morning by informing the residents of Colorado and other western haunts that the keeper’s four sons—Larry, Scott, Rick and Mike, have assembled at Rick and Becky’s home near Denver in what they claim is a simple exercise in “brother bonding.”
Ha!
Give us a break, boys. We—the keeper in particular, having been in your lives since early on when you originated and honed your boundless trouble-making talents, are not that stupid: Numerous speeding tickets, joining an outrageous cult, breaking into the keeper’s toolbox, girlfriend hiding under the bed, running away, falling off the roof in a sneak out. The list could go on and on.
You don’t raise four boys through the long-haired protest hippie years in Madison Wisconsin without suffering scars and without developing some talent for extracting your beloved offspring from all kinds of trouble.
As a preemptive, this is a notice to the western half of the country: The Stokes boys are in town and their father assumes no responsibility for any trouble they may cause.
And as he puts it to his boys: “Fool me once, fool me twice, and keep fooling me, I am your father and I love you in spite of it all.”
Photo by Bill Stokes