The Dead Hubcap Society

1941 OLDS HYDROMATIC Sam Smith, 2007 Your editor welcomes readers to join him in forming the Dead Hubcap Society, open to anyone whose lifetime fleet of personal vehicles has included at least half made by brands no longer in existence. With the passing of Oldsmobile, I barely fall into the category - having owned two …

Running things

Sam Smith, 2006 - Kind reader William Davidson writes to ask, "Sam, I want to know why we can not get you to be the president." Your editor tries to soft--pedal the many nice notes he receives but this one is so excessive it deserves some sort of response. In fact, I reached the pinnacle …

Marion Barry: Some notes

Mark Thompson & Sam Smith interview Marion Barry (a few months before his death) Marion Barry and me SAM SMITH - Marion Barry and I split over a quarter century ago. I can't remember the exact issue, but it was one time too many that Marion had promised one thing and then done another. I …

Hooligan days

By Sam Smith The Greyhound rolled the 180 miles towards Yorktown, passing weathered, weary places where nothing seemed new, nothing shone, nothing smiled. As I sat alone in the dark of tidewater Virginia in the winter of 1961, my own past seemed to fade as irretrievably as the deep, distant line of shadows where the …

Games of chance

SAM SMITH, 2002 - A new prostate cancer study confirms what many have learned on their own: the disease is one of the better crap shoots going. Your editor has some interest in this matter since come December it will be ten years since he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I had surgery the following …

The Bush codicil

SAM SMITH, 2004 - I woke up this morning to find in the Washington Post a map of the damage that a radiologically dirty bomb would do if it exploded at a certain location in downtown DC. The area of serious damage came within five blocks of my house. The dividing line between a policy …

Sears: Nothing but usefulness

SAM SMITH, WASHINGTON POST, 1993 - Eugene Talmadge used to campaign through Georgia saying, "Y'all got only three friends in the world. You got the Lord God Almighty, you got the Sears Roebuck catalog, and you got Eugene Talmadge. And you can only vote for one of them." Eugene Talmadge died long ago and this …

A computerized personality test

Sam Smith, 1964 - They’ve got a computer up at the Mayo Clinic that takes a patient’s answers to 550 true-false questions and uses the information to indicate whether he should see a psychiatrist. The machine comes up with diagnoses such as: “Patient is probably somewhat eccentric, seclusive and withdrawn. Has many internal conflicts. Consider …