I Just Wanted to Water My Tomatoes, But the Lovely Sicilian Had Other Ideas

By John Kass

August 17, 2022

It has been a week since my shoulder surgery last Tuesday. It’s time for an update:

I called my sister-in-law Regina to thank her for sending me a nice get-well gift. She sent a baseball book about the top 100 greats of the game. Then Regina asked “What’s new?”

So, I told her. And I suppose I’ll tell you, too:

I’m filing elder abuse charges against Regina’s little sister, The Lovely Sicilian, my wife of 36 blissful years, also known as Betty Kass. And other charges against our twin sons, her accomplices, for helping repress my vegetable rights and prevent me from watering my own garden.

“You want my sister in jail?” Regina said.

Ah, the sisters and this Sicilian “thing” of theirs.

I really don’t want my wife and children to go to prison. But I wouldn’t mind if the three of them cooled their heels in the pokey for a bit, eating jailhouse baloney sandwiches. She hates baloney.

I’d also like Attorney General Merrick Garland to send a bunch of FBI agents over here right now and search her closets. Not mine. Hers. Don’t tell me the FBI has better things to do. They’re spending most of their time scheming and leaking to the lords of the Washington Democratic Media Complex.

And I told Betty, I’m going to write about this.

“Like I care? Call anybody you want, call Biden, call lawyers, call the police,” said Betty. “And you’re not watering the garden. You’re not dragging the garden hose out into the lawn to water your vegetables. You just had surgery. You have one hand. You’re going to trip on the hose and fall on that shoulder. And I’m not having it, honey.”

You’re ‘Not having it honey?’

“That’s right. I’m not going to have you dragging that garden hose all over. You’ll trip. You’ll fall.”

But my plants! They need me.

She said she’d water the vegetables and the roses, and I could sit and shut up about watering. Sit? And watch?  Really? That’s not my métier.

That’s my garden, those are my roses. The only way to know your plants is to water them slowly, while talking to them. Our sons who don’t talk to plants, backed her up. They gave her big hugs, even as I announced they’d be cut out of the will.

Everyone we know backed her up. Infuriating.

“That’s a good Italian wife for ya!” texted Regina. “Always fussing over you or at you.”

But she says she’s Sicilian!

“Listen to Betty,” said our friendly neighbor John who stopped by offering to give me rides to physical therapy. He’s had his shoulder replaced. “Listen to your wife. Don’t touch that hose. You’ll fall. I’m on her side.”

Then he told me therapy for rotator cuff tears was far more painful than having your entire shoulder replaced.

Why did you tell me that?

“Well, you should know. To get used to it in your mind.”

Others also agreed with her and said I should just sit quietly and not make trouble. Two guys named Tom backed her, too. And  their wives, Vita and Ann, backed Betty.

This is America, I guess. You get injured. Then you’re a feast for crows.

“The caregivers get the worst of it,” said one Tom. “You really shouldn’t be laboring in the garden. You’ll trip.”

Glad it wasn’t a zoom call, or he’d have seen me Moutza him.

So, I should just start writing columns on pain meds? Isn’t that like drinking and driving?

Writing on serious matters while taking pain meds would be like drinking four or five Peoria Street highballs—whiskey and ginger ale with a maraschino cherry–and then driving a truck down the Dan Ryan. Anything could happen and it would not be good.

While I’m on those pills, my  shoulder stops hurting, but my head gets fuzzy. And writing is like trying to pick up toothpicks off a polished tiled floor while wearing mittens.

There are serious matters to consider. Including Chicago’s main event, the race for mayor, with former Gov. Pat Quinn making noises in his throat that he wants Chicago to pay attention to him and run for mayor as a “reformer.” That will thrill Mayor Phallus Maximus, because a Quinn campaign will be used to undercut the mayor’s true nemesis, Paul Vallas.

The only thing Quinn accomplished in his career was to create Boss Madigan. That’s right.  It was Pat Quinn and his  progressive fantasy, his “Cutback Amendment” that created the conditions that Mike Madigan would leverage to become Boss Madigan and rule Illinois for four decades.

I should also write about a recent interview on The Chicago Way podcast available right now, of a practical, thoughtful man, mayoral candidate and 6th Ward Ald. Roderick Sawyer. He says he has a $20 bill in his desk drawer that I signed a while ago. I’ve asked Sawyer to write a guest column, too. And other mayoral candidates are welcome to write.

Talking into a microphone on pain meds is one thing. But writing is another.

There are columns to write about inflation, and all those Washington donkeys breaking wind. And columns on  Garland and the Biden White House weaponizing the U.S. Justice Department by targeting former President Donald Trump in the hopes of stopping him from running for president in 2024. FBI leadership has willingly become Democrat political muscle, just like Chicago in the bad old days with cops directed by City Hall and the Outfit to take opponents down.

By the FBI raid on the home of Trump, a likely presidential challenger of the Biden Obama regime, the Democrats have taken out the tomahawks, with corporate legacy media cheering them on. But will they cheer when Republicans take over and apply the same to Democrats? Because that’s what they’re setting up. Do they care what they’re doing? Or are they blinded by all that blood in their eyes?

Tomahawks are offensive weapons, developed by stone-age warriors to crush skulls. You need to be close to use them. They’re not defensive weapons. They’re all about blood. Is that where the Democrats want to take the country?

And columns of the millions of illegal immigrants coming across Joe Biden’s wide-open Southern border with Mexico, a nation run by the drug cartels. All that fentanyl from China coming over that open border is poisoning  America’s young people. Known terrorists on the Terror Watch List free to walk across and do what they’ll do.

Perhaps a column or two about the Democrats Internal Revenue Service Expansion Act?  Those 87,000 IRS agents, who will be armed with 5 million rounds, will target the middle class and small business owners, people like me.

But I’ll need a clear head to do those columns. I should be back after next week. I owe you. You signed up for this journey, for this adventure with me, and I ask for your patience. In the meantime, other writers—some you know well–have volunteered fine guest columns.

One is a thoughtful treatment of criminal justice and crime in the city of anarchy and violence. And another is a movie review of the most Chicago Way political film of all time. There’s one about a kid working construction. One on culture and politics when the culture is broken. Another on science in the tribal age of the internet.

I’ll be back full time in a week or so. For now, I’ll sit and watch Betty water my tomatoes and my roses. I love her. She loves me. She takes good care of me. And she’s right. I can’t risk tripping on a garden hose.