The Horse in My Garage and Other Stories Read Online Free

nearly finished.”
    â€œYou’re telling me,” I gasped.
    When the physical was completed, he fed all the information into a computer, which spewed out a stream of paper filled with a mass of graphs. Then he sat down to interpret the results for me.
    â€œOh, oh,” he said frowning. “A&P Iron has dropped thirty points. I’d better schedule you for a couple of operations.”
    â€œWhat? What!” I exclaimed. “Does that mean I’m done for?”
    â€œNo, it means I am. This is a report from my stockbroker. Now let’s take a look at your printout. Ah, I see you have some squiggles here in the cardiovascular section.”
    â€œUh, are squiggles serious, Doc?”
    â€œI’ve never had anyone die from squiggles, but we’d better keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t develop into doodles. Actually, I have to say you are in excellent condition, even for a man twice your age.”
    â€œGreat!” I said.
    â€œOf course that doesn’t mean you couldn’t drop dead stepping over the cat.”
    â€œBut I wanted to run up and down mountains, camp, hunt, fish!”
    â€œThat’s all right,” he said. “Just don’t step over any cats.”
    After receiving a clean bill of health and another bill I interpreted as an attempt to recoup his stock market losses in one fell swoop, I immediately started shaping up for the impending hunting season.
    The first exercise program I tried was from a book called, simply, Yoga . I chose it because yoga could be performed in the privacy of one’s own home and didn’t require making a public spectacle of one’s self, as did, for example, jogging. Somehow Finley heard I had taken up exercising and kept glued to the window hoping to catch me in the act.
    In my first yoga posture, I attempted something called the Lotus, from which posture I was finally able to extricate myself by snagging a cane from a corner next to the door and prying my legs apart. It was then that I perceived yoga would be an absolutely useless exercise when it came to shaping up for the hunt. No, there had to be something else. I quickly reviewed all my hunting experiences and immediately came up with the perfect exercise for hunters: standing still!
    People who are not outdoor sportsmen don’t realize how much time is spent standing still while hunting. Very often, a hunter will stand still behind a tree, while a mile away a deer also will choose to stand still. The first one to move loses. Brilliant! I immediately got up off the floor and stood still in front of the television for thirty minutes straight. It was exhausting, but one must do what one must do in order to shape up for the hunt.

A Bit about My Writing Life
    I
    have just taken the measure of Mark Twain’s autobiography, the edition published in 2010. Despite small type, it is two and three-quarter inches thick. My own autobiography, which I am starting at this moment, twenty minutes after two, the ninth of January, 2011, a snowy afternoon, will not be so thick. Its main advantage over Twain’s is that it can be read in a matter of minutes as opposed to years. As with Twain, I will not let facts stand in the way of a good story, but for the most part will stick to the truth as I know it. In regard to pertinent events that occurred before I was born, all that would be hearsay. I cannot vouch for any of it. Much to my disappointment, my family apparently contained no known bandits, murderers, pirates, bank robbers, or even any common criminals.
    Counting my own father, we did have a couple of war heroes. The other one was my great-grandfather, Archibald Hall, who fought for the North during the Civil War. One of the interesting things about him is that he was wounded during one of the many battles in which he was a participant. I was perhaps only six or seven when my grandmother told me about her father’s getting wounded in the Civil War.