Reviews of
Dinner
with W.T.
The Cybermouth Chronicles
by Rick Baber
"Rick Baber is a comic genius..."
I almost wish this was a novel, becauseI think southerners
in Mark Twain's day were holding their guts and howling in
a similar fashion.
I am the privileged owner of a copy of Dinner with W.T.,
a collection of short stories by Rick Baber, the comic genius
who brought us the title story of a close, personal relationship
with a reptile.
While the range of Baber's stories (along with some poetry
lyrics) is broad, the interlinking theme is simple: the juxtaposition
of the life of a middleclass, southern-raised boy of the Baby
Boom generation with -- ha ha snorthee hee hee hee chuckle
chuckle guffaaaaaaaaawwwwwww!
I apologize for the interruption but I am reading the collection's
secondstory, 'The Great Ice Capades of 1971."
"Come out of the vehicles with your hands up!"
commanded a voiceover one of those bullhorns.
Larry looked at me calmly, and quietly spoke in his slow
southern drawl. "Do ya reckon we oughtta run?"
I knew I was going to be in jail in a few minutes -- if these
guys didn't just start shooting and kill us -- but something
about the way he said that just struck me as incredibly funny.
I was laughing uncontrollably when one of the cops jerked
Danny's door open and started dragging us out of the truck.He
was the one who had been driving the car that was spinning
on the ice. He obviously failed to see the humor of the situation.
................................
As we neared the cemetery, Larry leaned over to me and said,
"Tell him to turn the radio up."
"Sir," I said, all too happy to comply, "Could
you turn the radio up a little?"
It was ten or fifteen seconds before he answered "Shuttup!"
It is just this kind of suspense that Baber creates in his
wild stories of misspent youth in what must have been a way
boring town. On the other hand, Baber has remained in Arkansas,
married to his high school sweetheart, Becky,and continues
generating such rib splitting humor, sometimes even at the
expense of his wife, as in "The Night Becky Dropped the
Baby Off the Maytag."
Okay, Baber quickly explains that the title of this one has
nothing to do with Maytags, little to do with Becky, and is
really about another time when the tension was so thick that
laughter erupted "like a two-stroke motorcycle."
I will continue my review once I have caught my breath. And
this is at least the third time I have read the Maytag story.
As though afraid things will get slow along toward the middle
of the collection, Baber throws in a song called "A Yuppie's
Lament (WhoDied?)"
"So now it's your week to carry the beeper/My week to
drop our boy off at school/Somehow we kept getting deeper/'Til
we were trapped just like the rest of those fools./The ones
that we used to make fun of/And tell them how we pitied their
lives/The ones that we never dreamed we'd become/When we were
living back in '75"
With lyrics so catchy, I can almost here the ending double
stroke of the country guitar or mandolin, and see couples
two stepping the night away, wistful for a time when the world
was their adventure, Baber shows his equal aplomb for lyrics
and short stories.
After that interlude, however, which includes another future
country hit in "Who are You? (And Why Won't You Let Go
Of My Leg?)" it is refreshing to sink back into a story
with all the humanity of sitting on the front porch, all the
tangy zip of an Arkansas barbeque, and the sweetness in spite
of himself that is Baber, just like a hot apple pie.
"Rhumors" tells the story of a latter-day Baber,
an insurance adjuster, and his attempt to help an old lady
with a curious affliction get a decent insurance claim, and
how Baber and his friend got an education in homonyms in the
process.
"The Cold Shoulder" tells of a marriage gone awry.
"I'll leave the greasy cast iron skillet on the stove.
The open bread wrapper here on the counter. Maybe I'll spill
a few potato chips on the floor. And this iced tea. What if
I spilled a few drops right about...there?I can leave this
mess. All I want is something to eat. In a few minutes she'll
come walking in here, barefoot, to get another Coke out of
the refrigerator. But it will really be to see that I can't
fix myself something to eat. That would give her a perverse
sense of satisfaction. She won't get that tonight."
Speaking as I was earlier of tangy barbecue and fresh, hot
apple pie, you won't find any of that in "Ruth Ann's
Hacking In the Bread Box." And there's no free lunch,
or mini corn dogs in Arkansas any more.
Baber's work doesn't stop at amusement. He takes it a step
further and provides instruction, as in "Taking Care
of Business," which provides a helpful way to deal with
telephone collectors.
From fiction on line with a modern-day Twain, to lyrics worthy
of your favorite honky-tonk bar, to essays on getting through
the 21st century in the South, Rick Baber provides a full
barbecue buffet of good readin'.
~ Amy
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"Baber is a man of vision; not of the present, but of
the past"
I have just completed reading Dinner With W.T, and as soon
as I wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes, I hope to give
you the reader, a true and accurate view of the book. Rick
Baber is a man of vision, vision not of the future but a vision
of the past. Much along the lines of Garrison Keeler, Rick
takes us into his world to give us a place to belong.
His masterful use of verbiage brings to life long forgotten
moments from our own pasts and allows the reader to once again
visit those sometimes confusing, sometimes painful, but now
with age and time, often times humorous incidents. He paints
with a colorful palette, telling how he and friends conspired
to get a snow day. How he dealt with a poor, old woman with
Rhumors. He slashes his canvas with bits or quiet watercolors
in the form of poetry and lets the reader gain an insight
into his persona. He even opens a part of his life that few
allow us to see - his anger. His focal point and the title
of the book is so hilarious that might I caution the reader
not to have a cup of coffee in their hands when reading! I
really do believe he owes me a new keyboard since I spilled
my coffee because I laughed so hard.
Rick has a hit here, he will have a following and those of
us privileged to take his journey will grow from the experience
of knowing this fine gentle man. This book leaves us wanting
more, we want to again live our lives vicariously through
his, we want him to again dredge up those long forgotten memories
of past lives, lives before minivans, before IRA's, before
we had to have the toys that define our mundane lives today.
A side note to the author, please continue to enlighten our
world Rick and don't ever put down that pen!
~Jacquie Britton, Author of the Herman the Hermit Crab
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"..good, old-fashioned story telling.."
A smooth blend of wit, irreverence, nostalgia, and whimsy
are how we visit the past, deal with the present, and contemplate
the future in Dinner With W.T.---The CyberMouth Chronicles.
Dinner With W.T.is certainly the main event in this eclectic
collection from the diverse mind of Rick Baber. In this hilarious
tale of "life on the road," he demonstrates his
adaptability for good old fashioned story telling. With deftness
and vivid imagery he draws you in for the ride; the anticipation
takes hold, as you eagerly fasten your seat belt. This compilation
also contains a spattering of Baber's poetry. A few of them
have the makings for great songs, while the others strike
knowing chords of humanity. (Not enough of these in this collection,
as far as I'm concerned.) In other pieces included in The
Cybermouth Chronicles, he transports us to small town life
---you remember when, and dissects modern day frustrations
with his unique perspective. Rich with character, personality,
and humor, each offering in the Chronicles is a crowd-pleaser;
together -- unbeatable.
~Jennifer Koplitz
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
" [Barber] is the thinking man's redneck.."
A completely unauthorized review of “DINNER WITH W.T.”
The Cybermouth Chronicles: What can I say about Rick Baber
that hasn’t already been said - he's a “Poet”,
“Humorist” "Lover of barnyard animals”?
Okay, scratch the last one. Truth be told, Rick Baber is a
burgeoning star on the horizon. His brand of “down-home”
humor and “every man” sensibility, gives him an
accessibility that is a cross between David Sedaris and Jeff
Foxworthy. A thinking man’s redneck if you will.
The title piece, “Dinner with W.T.” was perhaps
the funniest and most absurdly amusing work I’ve ever
read. Rick’s ability to self-deprecate in the face of
such embarrassing circumstances, is a testament to the charm
of his Southern-fried wit. You will revel in his tales of
adolescent rebellion in “The Great Ice Capades of 1971”,
and you will you will almost certainly shed a tear in his
nostalgia look at the Baby Boomer’s most beloved dinosaur,
the drive-in movie, in “ Ode to a Silver Screen”.
You will also delight in his appreciation for the eccentric,
as he paints an elaborate portrait in a muddied homage to
Arthur, in “For Unlawful Construction (K) Nomenclature.”
Rick Baber’s literary debut is pickled with poetry
about his amusing existence, as well as a working man’s
survival guide on how to deal with bill collectors, unhygienic
bakers, and the annoying “Sunday drivers”. All
in all, Rick Baber has a finger on what makes people laugh,
unfortunately for him, that finger is pointing at him... and
he wouldn’t have it any other way.
~ John Sarmento
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In his first offering, Dinner With W.T., Rick Baber serves
up a mixture of stories and poems guaranteed to satisfy anyone
hungry for homespun humor and charm.
While his wife, Becky, (who did not drop the baby off the
Maytag), frequently refers to him as a “redneck”,
Rick appears to be more a misplaced renaissance man. Writer,
musician, insurance adjuster, field soils god – he leads
us into the mundane world of drive-ins, marriage, unemployment,
bill collectors and “regular food at as cheap a price
as possible” and turns it into an hilarious adventure.
His coming-of-age stories, Ode to the Silver Screen and The
Great Ice Capades of 1971 capture the innocence and idiocy
of teens in the late 1960s with painful accuracy. Anyone who
ever snuck into a drive-in movie or “put Fred in a 55
gallon barrel and rolled him down the hall” will appreciate
the wry humor of these tales. On the other hand, The Cold
Shoulder, and the poem “Rhythm Machine” explore
some of the more peculiar aspects of marriage. Anyone who
can incorporate a fried bologna sandwich into a story has
to be good.
Still, the main course of this literary feast is the title
story Dinner with W.T. I don’t want to give away too
much of this riotous tale, but W.T. is a turtle and what he’s
dining on would make any man holler and curl up like a spider
on a hot stove. How he gets into this situation and how he
ponders getting out of it create a laugh-out-loud (and squirm
inside) saga you won’t forget.
If you want to kick back and have a good laugh then Dinner
with W.T. is a great way to spend an evening.
~ Hannah Hanszen
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