It's been said there are two things one can usually find in the home of a bachelor type male. These two things are a set of weights with which to improve his muscles and a homemade bookcase with which to impress the ladies.

I darn near gave myself a hernia, lugging those weights up three flights of stairs to my first apartment. After lying sprawled on the living room for an hour till I could breathe properly again, I took off to the nearest lumber yard.

I carefully chose two long planks that would run the length of my living room wall. I then picked one about three feet shorter, then one only four feet long. I topped these off with a three foot board and an itty bitty one just eighteen inches long.

Next, I bought some black paint, paint brushes, a can of kerosine and fifteen cinder blocks in varying sizes. Down in the parking lot of this apartment building, I painted those boards and left them to dry as I hauled all those cinder blocks up the three flights of stairs.

You can imagine the shape I was in as I staggered through my front door with the last of those cinder blocks. Sophia Loren cudda been doin' a belly dance when I walked through that door and I wouldn't have had the strength to even wave before I collapsed on the floor.

The next morning, I put it all together. In one corner was a set of weights to attest to the muscles that would soon be rippling up one side of my body and down the other. All along one wall, from floor to ceiling, was this grand bookcase to attest to the thousands of books that would soon have enriched my mind and made me the most erudite male in the whole darned county. I was now ready to begin my life as an eligible bachelor.

Have you ever tried to fill a wall to wall bookcase from scratch? I didn't even have enough books to fill the top shelf of eighteen inches. The one below that, I used for my new set of Melmac dishes, cups, saucers and such. Below those, were my pots, pans, skillets and an assortment of empty jelly glasses, P-nut butter jars and two beer mugs I had stolen from a tavern down the street. I was now ready to entertain all the visions of loveliness who would be visiting me in my new quarters.

Over the years, I lugged the componants of that bookcase from one apartment to the next and even through two marraiges. Believe it or not, I even managed to fill the shelves with books. That same bookcase now sits in my little library/computer room/ den and takes up an entire wall. I have even read each and every one of the books on that bookcase. Only trouble is........I ain't a bit smarter than I was all those years ago and likely have even less common sense than I did way back when.

I never did get started with my weight liftin' program neither. Even so, I stayed in pretty good shape just lugging those weights up and down stairs these past thirty years.

Well..........as Forest Gump would say "And that's all I've got to say about that."