Cagle World

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

“Welcome back, your dreams were your ticket out…” – John Sebastian

The fall 1975 TV season remains special for me for several reasons.

For one thing, it’s when I began my life’s mission of collecting Fall Preview issues of “TV Guide.” The 1975-1990 issues stayed neatly stacked in one location, but since then, life has gotten messier. I think one issue is keeping company with my missing socks. Another two are probably engaging in a throuple with that elusive warranty card. I suspect one of the digital issues wound up in the Steele dossier.

It was also special because each viewing opportunity suddenly became more precious. I had started an after-school job in a convenience market, and – since VCRs were prohibitively expensive and there were no streaming services – I couldn’t depend on watching every favorite show every week. Not only did my preferences have to compete with those of my parents and my brother, but they had to compete with stocking soft drink coolers and dusting pickle jars.

Fall 1975 was also significant because of the institution of the Federal Communications Commission’s “Family Viewing Hour.” Based on this quaint initiative (abandoned after two years because of First Amendment concerns), the networks agreed to keep the first hour of primetime devoid of any content that was too violent, too sexy, too vulgar, too likely to give the FCC commissioner’s maiden aunt a fatal conniption fit…

Yes, Americans were battered by inflation, but they could take solace in having at least 60 minutes per day when household tranquility was marred only by their own genteel utterances such as “Where’s the &%$#@ remote?” and “I swear I’ll kill your sister’s boyfriend if she interrupts ‘Little House’ to tell us she has VD!”

Fall 1975 was special because of bittersweet dalliances with programs that were canceled too soon, such as the Mel Brooks Robin Hood spoof “When Things Were Rotten” and NBC’s retro whodunnit “Ellery Queen.”

(I daydreamed of becoming a programming executive so I could block such cancellation travesties; but cold, hard reality would probably have made me a hypocrite. “Cancel a washed-up vaudevillian or cancel my spa reservation? Hmm…decisions, decisions…”)

Most of all, fall 1975 was memorable for the shows that endured for two or more seasons, such as Cloris Leachman’s “Mary Tyler Moore Show” spinoff “Phyllis” (I’m catching up on YouTube videos now) and “Starsky and Hutch” (the cop buddy show with its iconic Ford Gran Torino and America’s favorite snitch Huggy Bear).

And..Oooh! Oooh! (forgive me, Arnold Horshack)… we mustn’t forget ABC’s “Welcome Back, Kotter,” which gave stand-up comedian Gabe Kaplan a sitcom venue, started supporting actor John Travolta on the road to superstardom and inspired me to nag my mother into applying a Kotter iron-on transfer to my T-shirt.

Kotter’s misfit band of “Sweathog” students resonated with viewers who had never ventured within a thousand miles of Brooklyn. My history teacher, Mr. Holt, identified our class as “F Troop,” but a Sweathogs designation would have been just as fitting (which may explain why the school nurse’s answer to everything from a paper cut to anaphylactic shock was “up your nose with a rubber hose”).

Will 2025’s TV landscape be so fondly remembered in 50 years?

Only if 2025’s extended-warranty card can be pried away from “Fall 1997” and “Fall 2004.”

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Copyright 2025 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

“Here’s a novel idea: read more fiction,” blared the headline of a recent Wall Street Journal article by Gerard Baker.

(The less said about that other Journal headline, “Here’s a limerick idea: buy a timeshare in Nantucket,” the better.)

Baker gruffly lamented the digital age and society’s abhorrence of reading books in general, but he laid a particularly strong guilt trip on the males who do still read for gravitating toward nonfiction (history, biographies, self-help, The Big Book of Just A Couple of Beers, Officer Explanations, etcetera) instead of novels or short stories.

I must plead guilty as charged, regarding Baker’s accusation. (Don’t worry, folks: one of the self-help books I read was “5 Easy Steps to Disarming Your Ankle Monitor.”) Although I enjoyed the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lewis Carroll, Roald Dahl, John Steinbeck and Emily Bronte back in school, the only novels I’ve read in the last 15 years are “11/22/63” (Stephen King) and “A Million Ways to Die in the West” (Seth MacFarlane).

I make no apologies. My daily routine of reading three newspapers, 100 comic strips and whatever magazine articles and Christian apologetic books I can skim does not leave a lot of room for curling up with a work of fiction (i.e. a glorified version of “My dog ate my homework”).

It’s still a free country, so I’ll concentrate on the fate of the apostles rather than the fate of the Character Who Is A Representation of the Author’s Own Adolescent Id And You’re A Dummy If You Don’t Recognize That.

(And I’ll probably learn more about keeping it a free country by reading a nonfiction book by Mark Levin than an account of “the dame with legs that seemed to go all the way to the Big Dipper.”)

Although nonfiction writers can sometimes seem preachy about finance or time management, fiction writers have spent millennia failing to read the room. In spite of the fact that nobody likes a know-it-all, along comes insufferable Mr. Omniscient Narrator.

(“His facial expression did not betray it, but John was thinking about cotton candy — just like the cotton candy he consumed on April 7, 1973 while in the company of that girl of Lithuanian-Salvadoran ancestry, who was preoccupied with memories of the blister she wore on her left pinkie on the evening of February 27, 1965…”)

Baker implied that immersing yourself in a good novel is a superior way of learning about the Human Condition, but I’ve found that mere good intentions are sufficient.

Spend a few decades of saying, “Sorry, John Grisham, but my boss will pound me with a gavel if I don’t accept a double shift…sorry, Agatha Christie, but I can’t solve the mystery of how to get out of my child’s cowbell recital…sorry, Leo Tolstoy, but my ‘honey do’ list is longer than ‘War and Peace’…” and you’ll be intimately acquainted with the Human Condition.

Baker seems to have more time for reading than some men do. It’s hard to care about the symbolism of a Great White Whale when you’re dealing with the reality of a Great Green Blob that needs pressure washing.

But, guys, if you do have the time and inclination to read a novel, go for it.

It’ll probably have fewer unpleasant surprises than the pop-up version of the Officer book: The Big Book of Just A Couple of Beers, Officer…Blaaarrrgghh!!!

–

Copyright 2025 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Let me check my calendar.”

“Meh.”

“You mean I still haven’t outlived all those #@%& low-lifes?”

As you doubtless know, those are the four main responses when a class reunion invitation arrives. (Close runner-up: “If I remember my eighth-grade civics teacher correctly, this first-class stamp cost almost as much as FDR’s New Deal.”)

Me? I had a wonderful time at the recent reunion of the Marshall County High School (Lewisburg, Tennessee) Class of 1978 (our first in 17 years).

But I know several people (including my brother and the office manager at work) who have never attended a single one of their reunions.

For good or ill, school is a unique “lived experience” for each student. For some, it is a breathtaking blur of trophies, passionate romances and legendary antics. For others, K-12 is an eternity of unrequited love, detention hall, unshakeable nicknames and P.E. torture. (“*Gasp* Can’t I swap and get the breathtaking blur in place of the…breathtaking 100 laps?”)

Encountering long-unseen classmates can be a triggering event for people who hated school and still have nightmares about being cooped up studying the Pythagorean theorem or Dante’s Inferno. Ironically, they thought they were bettering themselves by snatching their diploma and going on to spend decades with the Landlord from Hell, the Cubicle from Hell and the In-laws from Hell.

Many alumni suffer from anxiety about running into their peers who were always more attractive, more popular or more affluent than they were. But years of front-page divorces, downsizing, grim diagnoses and parental funerals can have a leveling effect.

And in case the years have NOT been unkind to your old frenemies, you can still puff out your chest and assert your dignity. (“I am not a loser! I have gained a pacemaker, gained a third mortgage and gained a stepson who promises to move out of the basement as soon as his old job at the AOL CD factory opens back up…”)

Personalities can evolve, too. One classmate confided that he and some infamous buddies had acknowledged what (jerks) they had been in olden days. Granted, some bullies and blowhards never change. (“Sorry. I didn’t have room for photos of my grandkids in my wallet — but I do have this honkin’ big check from Publishers Clearing House. Help me unfold it.”)

Reunions can be fun for everyone, provided the right games are played. (“Hey, I found last year’s Easter egg! No, wait — it’s just a hapless spouse who wandered away from the Table of Misfit Plus-Ones.”)

Some reunion-despisers claim they might have enjoyed school more if they could have hand-picked their classmates and teachers. When you feel that you were arbitrarily thrown together with ill-matched strangers by accident of birthdate and birthplace, it’s difficult to yearn for hanging out with their older selves.

I, on the other hand, honestly feel that God meant for me to have exactly the friends, acquaintances and rivals that I grew up with. (Apparently, He also meant for a plague of locusts to lay waste to the flowing locks of some of us, but that’s another story.)

Be true to yourself, but I’m certainly looking forward to my next reunion.

Wouldn’t miss it for the …world’s largest ball of dryer lint having a festival that same weekend? Oooo…

And that’s when you know you’ve outlived all your #@%& punchlines.

–

Copyright 2025 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

“Hear that lonesome whippoorwill/ He sounds too blue to fly/ The midnight train is whining low…” – Hank Williams

Among the books I mean to get around to reading is Neil Ansell’s “The Edge of Silence: In Search of the Disappearing Sounds of Nature.”
Although Ansell’s book focuses on his gradual hearing loss and his globetrotting quest to experience endangered species in the wild, I suspect we can find applications closer to home.

Just as sprawling city lights have rendered most of us incapable of doing the sort of stargazing our ancestors took for granted (“I think I see part of Orion’s Belt…it’s getting closer…wait, did the Greeks have any myths about Orion delivering packages for Amazon?”), an unrelenting barrage of ambulance sirens, beeping car horns, diesel engines and jackhammers separates us from the once-familiar sounds of nature.

Granted, you can have too much of a good thing. Even Mother Nature has been known to reach her limit with roosters crowing, donkeys braying and bobcats growling. (“I’m cranking up the ‘white noise’ machine. The bra comes off next! Avert your eyes, Father Time.”)

We spend so much precious time in our homes, in our vehicles and in noisy shopping/entertainment venues, we don’t get to hear the chirping of birds, the rustling of leaves or the babbling of brooks. (“Who needs babbling brooks? I’ve got babbling podcasters!”)

Even if we’re outdoors, we are bombarded by squealing tires, souped-up lawn equipment or the music filtering through our wireless earbuds. (Yes, the closest some of us come to wildlife reverberations is listening to the Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” album at 95 decibels.)

There’s something soul-satisfying about the simple life. I had way too much fun after dark last night carrying out the garbage and hearing the tree frogs serenading me from their perch. Most of us could benefit from more hiking, camping, birdwatching or petting-zoo visiting.

Unfortunately, we face a double whammy. Even if we finally seize the opportunity to get “up close and personal” with nature, we have damaged our eardrums to the point that we don’t get the richest listening experience. (“Hold it, hon. There’s a piece of lint on your shoulder. Let me fire up the leaf blower!”)

Promise me you’ll (a) seek out out the wonders of nature and (b) practice proactive hearing conservation.

My late mother (bless her heart) serves as a cautionary tale here. Her hearing was terrible for the last several years of her life (as in couldn’t hear a Whoopee Cushion factory explode next door).

Mom was in denial about the profound problem, refused to visit an audiologist and expressed a perverse pride about using bobby pins to dislodge her ear wax.

Hearing aids were verboten, but I was finally able to communicate with her without shouting so much when I purchased a less expensive set of headphones.

Towards the end of her life, I asked if she used the headphones when my softspoken brother made his daily visit.

When she answered in the negative, I inquired, “Well, how do you carry on a conversation?”

“Oh, I already know what he’s going to say and he already knows what I’m going to say, so we just make do.”

Come to think of it, maybe that’s why y’all aren’t encountering enough of nature’s creatures. Because I went out into the woods and screamed and screamed…

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Copyright 2025 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

Pay no attention to the seemingly frozen clock in sixth-period trigonometry class. Time is moving way too swiftly.

My son graduated from high school four years ago, and I have yet to sit down and fully appreciate the work he put into the yearbook. (Cut me some slack. The turkey picture that Gideon had traced around his hand *mumble mumble* years earlier called “Dibs!” on my spare time, after all.)

In light of such regrets,I call upon students, teachers, staff members, bus drivers, parents and grandparents to savor every fleeting moment of the 2025-2026 school year.

(Well, not the fleeting moment of the Dodgeball Ambush of the Century, you masochistic freaks. Or the time that Mikey became so enamored of “dead poets” that he decided to MAKE some more. The other moments.)

Trust me: in the blink of an eye, young scholars will transition from “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” essays to mid-term exams and on to caps and gowns and “always stay cool (especially when I bump into you in five years and can’t remember your name).”

Romances, cliques, alliances and petty rivalries come and go; students should seize the chance to make new life-long friends, especially among the unpopular outcasts. That’s good practice for the school fundraiser, powered by the catalog of Crap Nobody In Their Right Mind Would Ever Purchase Without Being Guilted Into It.

(“Thank you for ordering two steam-powered shoehorns, Mr. Green. Coincidentally, I learned that your ancestors gave quite a lot of orders to my ancestors, if you know what I mean. Oh, five more steam-powered shoehorns? Thank you!”)

Wallow in the time-honored civic-pride traditions of the homecoming game, by promising to smash, whip, pulverize, destroy, annihilate the team from Springfield. This, of course, is good preparation for when you eventually take a job in Springfield and have to tell everyone, “Have a nice day.”

Make the most of the winter “holiday party,” where the air is filled with festive remarks such as “No, your mother can’t help decorate because she’s a manager, and that sounds too much like ‘manger,’ you little religious bigot.”

Educators, grin and bear it when slackers whine, “When will we ever use this information in the real world?” (“Oh, wait — dissecting frogs, dissecting congressional districts. Never mind.”)

Family members should take it in stride when whippersnappers getting ready for “dress-up days” are disappointed not to find powdered wigs and knee breeches along with the platform shoes, bell bottoms and disco ball in the back of the closet.

Kids, keep on smiling through the sentence diagrams, footnote citations and pop quizzes. Someday you’ll laugh about it (especially if you land a sweet job selling “mystery meat” contracts).

Students, never forget abruptly-departed geometry teacher Mrs. Veeblefester. Maybe she couldn’t pound words like “hypotenuse” or “isosceles” into your noggins, but even the slow students learned the word “statutory.”

Parents, don’t balk at chaperoning a field trip (unless it’s a lame-o tour of the Museum of Lost/Wadded/Snot-soaked Permission Slips). If worse comes to worst, maybe you can volunteer for the autumn festival dunking machine and fill it with poison ivy lotion.

I hope these words have inspired y’all to make the most of the coming year. I’m inspired to dig into the turkey drawing and the yearbook and…

Hey! Who made all these oddly spaced pencil marks on the door frame???

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Copyright 2025 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

“For whenever two or more of you are gathered in His name/ There is booze, there is booze…” – apologies to Paul Stookey

According to the Wall Street Journal, six percent of couples polled by wedding-planning website Zola will host a completely alcohol-free wedding in 2025.

(Coincidentally, six percent of America’s potential guests find themselves telling each other, “Dear, I’d love to attend your sister’s wedding in November, but I think that’s the weekend I’m having an emergency elective root canal, darn it.”)

Yes, whether it’s because of health-consciousness, religious values or guilt about unleashing inebriated guests on the highway, more couples are embracing the “dry” weddings trend.

But their more traditional friends and family are ready to put up a fight against substitutes such as mocktails, coffee and soft drinks. And those aggrieved loved ones don’t intend to holler “uncle.” “Drunk uncle,” perhaps, but not “uncle.”

Generations of celebrants have come to regard wedding reception liquor as an outright entitlement. (“I believe Sir Isaac Newton said it best: “For every gift-wrapped toaster, there is an equal and opposite flow of vermouth.”)

The wedding attendees even invoke scripture to bolster their position: “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: ‘cause everybody wants an excuse to watch an impersonation of Tom Cruise in ‘Cocktail’!”

“It’s not really a wedding if you can’t drop your inhibitions and have a little fun,” is a familiar refrain. But when you consider that Aunt Zelda can accumulate four divorces, seven maxed-out credit cards and 273 speeding tickets while stone-cold sober, maybe we should keep some inhibitions handy.

Many people think it’s an existential crisis to spend three or four hours in a room with fellow well-wishers without imbibing. I’m glad they somehow manage to control their other impulses, or wedding halls would ring with cries of “Anybody seen my toenail clippers? Hey, kid, quit bearing that ring and bear a can of Cheez Whiz instead and there’s five bucks in it for you. Ahh…freedom for my man-boobs! What? They don’t teach you about man-boobs in flower-girl school?”

There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground. Most couples assume that the wedding day is THEIR Big Day. Many friends and relatives think the guests should be pampered. I guess they’re looking for one of those $8 “ultra-deluxe speshul” ceremonies that Marryin’ Sam promoted in the “Li’l Abner” comic strip. Sam would officiate while being drawn and quartered by four raging jackasses. (“Yeah, I could go for that. But I’ll provide the four jackasses. See if your father and his brothers have gotten liquored up enough.”)

If you’re contemplating a dry wedding, don’t be surprised if you suddenly get pushback from the cousins who built backyard forts with you, the former co-workers who braved countless deadlines with you, the little old ladies who taught you in Sunday school. (“Just lemme finish this second pot of coffee an’ maybe I’ll remember which of those categories I fit in. *Hic*”)

If I sound prejudiced, it might be because my wife and I have been happily married for 34 years, even though our wedding reception boasted only the simple refreshments whipped up by the Methodist ladies and the single bottle of Pink Chablis that my father-in-law sprang for.

Love (or her threats to pencil in an emergency elective root canal) will keep us together.

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Copyright 2025 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

“And we was too broke to even pay heed/But that’s how it is when you’re po’ folks.” – Bill Anderson.

I was intrigued by a recent USA Today article about “poor-people” habits (i.e. vestiges of frugality that persist even when a person becomes financially comfortable).

My family has finally clawed its way into (lower) middle class status, but I found myself nodding at most of the article’s examples (including turning off unneeded lights, stooping to pick up a penny and comparing unit prices at grocery stores, especially unit prices on pain-killer for relief from stooping to pick up a penny).

Collecting extra napkins and ketchup packets when dining out? Yup. Shopping at thrift stores? Of course. Endlessly reusing containers that once contained lunch meat, margarine or whipped cream? Been there, done that – but I haven’t got the T-shirt because I’m waiting for it to go on the clearance rack. Duh!

I even added a few “best practices” of my own: reuse gift-wrapping paper (“Um, Natalie, your baby shower gift may wind up being a kindergarten graduation gift because I can’t remember where I stashed all the paper”), patronize Mother Nature’s car wash (“Sorry I can’t contribute to your trip fundraiser, kids, but you realize that war-torn African village is a tourist trap, don’t you?”), read someone else’s copy of USA Today…

And don’t hesitate to shop for generic products. Even generics of generics. “The store-brand licorice fruitcake that dares not speak its name.” Mmmm…

My mother possessed a microwave oven, TV and flip-phone, but she was “old school” in many ways, like using a clothesline instead of a dryer. The practice lost some of its allure for me after I observed the family tomcat (who existed because Mom didn’t want to waste money on spaying and neutering) marking his territory on the sheets. Thread counts are enough to keep track of, without worrying about pH, nitrites and glucose counts.

Sometimes even “the one percent” shows glimmers of frugality. (“Shut that door! Do you think I want to air condition the whole neighborhood? Wait – I just remembered we bought the whole neighborhood. Carry on.”)

Most of the folks who remember penny-pinching childhoods or cash-strapped newlywed days (and realize a simple twist of fate could renew their money woes) are the salt of the earth, but some people hate to see them coming.

For example, utility industry employees. (“Any scratch-and-dent electricity today? How about day-old unlimited data? Seems to me you’re asking more than the Blue Book value of that natural gas…”)

Firefighters are similarly leery of possessors of “poor-people” habits. It’s hard to sell beefcake calendars when your potential customers can grab a free calendar from the funeral home. Not that funeral directors are any keener on seeing a cheapskate coming. (“So, where do you hide the caskets made of milk crates? Or do you recommend the ones constructed of repurposed ramen noodles instead?”)

Still, the nation needs more people with common-sense money ideas. Just don’t let them around certain projects, such as the decommissioning of a nuclear power plant.

(“Wait, don’t decommision it yet! Put some water in it and shake it up first! I swear, what did you do before I came along and…AIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!”)

Body count in tomorrow’s USA Today. Be finding a shoulder to read over. Maybe you can bribe ‘em with those little shampoos from the motel…

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Copyright 2025 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

Is work-life balance dead, and will you even find time to attend the funeral?

During different phases of my five-decade working career, I have worked all three shifts, toiled every holiday, struggled with doubled production quotas, accepted 48 hours as a standard work week and missed countless family events.

Still, today’s job applicants are facing unprecedented obstacles to squeezing in a little “me” time.

According to the Wall Street Journal, in the post-COVID business environment, remote work, clock-watching and water-cooler gabfests are history.

Employers are bluntly (gleefully?) warning applicants that attendance at after-hours events is non-negotiable, do-or-die projects may be dumped in their lap without warning and flinching at routine 70-hour workweeks brands employees as sissies/underachievers/traitors.

Yes, as the labor market loosens up, companies are back in the driver’s seat. (“That’s right. We’re back behind the wheel! We may doze off, sideswipe a schoolbus and send it careening down a ravine – but we’re back behind the wheel, baby!”)

Job-seekers are encouraged to apply elsewhere if they don’t lust after mandatory overtime. Some start-up companies are even stipulating retroactive mandatory overtime. (“Signing bonus? There’s no signing bonus. In fact, we’re docking you for all those times you shut down your front-yard lemonade stand in November.”)

Entrepreneurs such as Mark Cuban snidely advise that workers better get on board with the New Normal, because unless they give 110 percent 24-7, that bogeyman The Competition is going to eat their lunch. (“Dude, I’d be glad if somebody actually found time to eat my meals! I can’t. And trying to catch a red-eye flight while hooked up to an IV pole is not what my high school guidance counselor prepared me for!”)

I know there’s a lot of alpha-male (or maybe “The Devil Wears Prada”) bravado exacerbating the “survival of the fittest” mentality; but it also looks desperate when you force your employees to upend their downtime for Zoom meetings with vendors/customers halfway around the world. Better to bluff your way through. (“Listen, you can make yourself available when it’s convenient for MY people, or I’m buying your whole %$#@ time zone!”)

These managers and HR directors remind me of Steve Martin as Navin Johnson in “The Jerk.” You know the speech: “I don’t need this stuff and I don’t need you. I don’t need anything except this. This ashtray. And this paddle game. The ashtray and the paddle game and that’s all I need. And this remote control…”

Except their message is more “This company can’t survive without humbly indispensable me working 80 hours a week. Well, me and my dedicated hand-picked team. And their long-lost friends from summer camp. And, oh yeah, that litigious guy who hasn’t been able to fall sleep since one of our delivery trucks hit him and…”

Ambitious college graduates find themselves having to reconfigure time-tested life goals. The mantra used to be “Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.” Now it’s “Live fast, die young and leave a really good stock portfolio for…the blood relatives who forgot you were alive…um, the Significant Other you never asked for a date…uh, the faithful dog you never adopted…er, the museum whose doors you never darkened…”

Don’t get too cocky, bosses. Pendulums swing both ways.

“No, you may NOT vacation on Mars… not until I’ve given you a raise and a footrub and let your darling rugrats rummage through my desk!”

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Copyright 2025 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

“In a great big land of freedom, at a time we really need ‘em/They don’t make ‘em like my daddy anymore.” – Loretta Lynn

With the 100th anniversary of my late father’s birth now in the rearview mirror, I find myself wondering if “the Greatest Generation” (the demographic group born 1901-1927) truly has to be a one-off convergence of skills, virtue and vision.

True, the generation that survived the Great Depression, won World War II, built a booming postwar economy and (for good or ill) handed the baton to the Baby Boomers is a hard act to follow, but is it an impossible act to follow?

I realize it looks impossible when you encounter umpteen youngsters waddling around with a soft drink refill taller than themselves. Or when F-bombs flow freely from the descendants of folks who had to learn Latin, Western Literature and debate in school. Or when goofy college sophomores are ambush-interviewed and can’t tell how many dimes are in a dollar, how many weeks are in a year or who won the Civil War.

But there are glimmers of hope.

My wife the college biology teacher encounters her share of unserious students, but sometimes she is pleasantly surprised by a pupil who is polite, humble and conscientious.

I have worked around young men who play hard, but they also work hard. Some of them work two jobs to meet their family obligations.

If you can wade through all the doom-and-gloom sensationalized news, you will still find reports of adolescents and young adults who defend a classmate from bullying, rescue a neighbor’s dog from a burning house, mow the lawn free of charge for senior citizens or perform countless other random acts of kindness.

The numbers could always be better, but many young people do take career paths of sacrifice for the greater good.

One of the sayings of Edwin Lewis Tyree (1925-2000) that sticks with me most is “There’s no such thing as a simple job.” Dad’s axiom had a double meaning: projects require foresight and preparation — and even then Murphy’s Law intrudes.

So, yes, nurturing productive future generations is a daunting task, but not an impossible task.

Parents, teachers, political leaders and entertainers all need to convey high expectations and contribute to the fulfillment of those expectations.

Classes in civics, economics and practical skills (Shop, Home Ec) should be non-negotiable.

Children deserve a stable home-life, not rotating deadbeat live-ins. They need an introduction to religion/spirituality before they stumble across it (or don’t) at age 18.

Youngsters need to be nudged more toward a JFK “ask not” attitude than the prevailing mania for “free stuff.”

I know the cesspool has been the norm for a while, but consumers should challenge Hollywood, the music industry and the fashion industry to come up for air every now and then. Celebrate the uplifting things in life.

Someone needs to brainstorm a way to build self-esteem without exhausting the world’s entire supply of satin on “participation ribbons.”

We need more “little engine that could” than “little engine that plays the victim card.”

I pray that we never experience a nuclear war, a famine or another 1930s-style depression, because all but the most seasoned survivalists would go into panic mode.

But if we believe in future (potentially great) generations and give them the proper tools, they just might rise to the occasion.

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Copyright 2025 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

“A Classic Childhood Pastime Is Fading,” blared a recent headline in “The Atlantic.”

The article lamented the fact that the number of youngsters (ages 7 to 17) who report having ridden a bicycle at least six times in the past year has fallen by nearly half since the Nineties. Fewer than five percent reported riding “frequently.”

(Or maybe they’re just LATE in reporting, as in “Hey, Mom, I was supposed to tell you I need you to whip up a diorama of Victorian London in time for school today. And, oh yeah, Liam and I discovered an alien portal in the creepy woods outside town last Saturday.”)

This data comes from the National Sporting Goods Association and is corroborated by data from the National Vegetating in the Basement Association.

Don’t blame it all on the kids. Parents have not exactly set a sterling example about the need for exercise. Many young viewers have been traumatized by movies such as “The Goonies” and “E.T.” (“I can’t believe it — those kids are traveling around on non-stationary CLOTHES RACKS!”)

But it would be misleading to perpetuate the nose-stuck-in-a-smartphone stereotype of modern youngsters. The article does not shame kids for failure to pedal around in the fresh air, but in fact acknowledges their pent-up desire for freedom.

Unfortunately, higher speed limits, heavier automobiles, ill-designed intersections and other factors have made bicycle travel a daunting task compared to the days of “The Brady Bunch.”

Additionally, our shifting standards for heroes have tarnished the allure of bike-riding. Adventurous pre-teen explorers used to be placed on a pedestal. (“You went across the county line? And brought back these neat arrowheads? Cool!”) Now they’re more likely to have their statues torn down. (“He’s a colonizer! Let’s show him where he can stick his Schwinn!”)

The writer opines that the navigation and decision-making of bike excursions can rewire young brains toward confidence and self-esteem. Of course, even “stay at home” or “shuttled to events by their parents” children become more creative without the crutch of a bike to leave lying in the driveway for dad to back over with the station wagon. (“Now, where did I leave those Faberge eggs?” *CRUNCH!*”)

The article postulates that bike-friendly city planning will bring more children outdoors and thereby increase overall neighborhood bonding. (“Hey, neighbor! I’m Tommy’s dad. Been dying to say hello – and borrow your chainsaw – so I can carve up that campaign sign posted by the jerk at the end of the street.”)

I must admit I am an outsider on this subject. Complications from chickenpox did a number on me when I was the prime age for learning to ride a bike (leaving my sense of balance only slightly more balanced than that of an Iranian newscast covering Irving Forbush’s bar mitzvah), and attempts to find a safe, peaceful practice venue as an adult invariably tempt fate. (“We normally stage the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain; but the GPS got it wrong by a few thousand miles.”)

Still, I’m optimistic that bikes can restore their glory days, just as long as kids swerve to miss the milkman, keep their coonskin cap from blocking their vision and wear clean underwear in case they have an accident and the doctor makes a house call.

Norman Rockwell would pop a wheelie for the chance to paint the scene!