I’m not sure if I’m getting dumber or just now realizing just how dumb I have been and nobody has bother to tell me. I’ve got three examples; curiously, two of them involve gasoline.

EXAMPLE #1: About three months ago, I suddenly realized I’ve stared at something for a long time and never, ever, had the light bulb go off. You how when you look at your dashboard and there is the little gas pump icon? Have you noticed the little arrow/triangle that is beside the icon? Of course you have. And of course, you know that it indicates on which side of the vehicle the gas tank is located. I had no idea. I don’t know what I thought it was beyond that it must have been some kind of decoration. And I have driven in vehicles in which the has tank has been on either side. Never had a clue. Duh.

EXAMPLE #2: I went to buy a gas can the other day and thought the only complication might be what size  can to get. Until I got there. I soon discovered the ugly truth: Gas can technology had evolved exponentially since the last time I bought one (late ’90s?). I’ll skip to the bottom line — I walked out without buying one BECAUSE I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO USE IT! I know where the gas goes and that’s about it. I don’t know what’s going on with this complicated spout business and how it’s supposed to work once the gas is in the tank.

EXAMPLE #3: This will be simple example of my stupidity. If the only differentiation between the salt shaker and the pepper shaker is the number of holes at the top, it’s 50-50 whether I’ll get it right. Two nights ago, I poured pepper in the boiling water to season my spaghetti noodles. One had three dots and the other had five dots. How was I supposed to know? Y’all learned that and didn’t tell me?

Blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Castor, Louisiana is now represented in Cooperstown.

Lee Arthur Smith, major league baseball’s all-time saves leader from 1993-2005 — he finished with 478 career saves while pitching for eight teams — was voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday by a veterans committee.

Castor is about 50 miles southeast of Shreveport. John James and I rode around with Lee Arthur in my truck back in July, 1987, a few hours after he’d been the winning pitcher for the National League — he was pitching for the Cubs then — in the All Star Game played in Oakland. He’d planned to come home after the game, and he did just that. I remember the cab of my truck being very full.

You can read that story on DesignatedWriters.com. The part of that day I remember most is the kids shooting basketball in Lee Arthur’s yard, a precious and optimistic little boy selling cantaloupes from his wagon on the side of the road, and riding by the spot in the nearby Jamestown community where the house Lee Arthur grew up in once was. As we passed, he fixed his eyes on a spot. “Gone,” he said.

Congratulations to a Hall of Famer whose enshrinement is long overdue.

A seven-time All-Star and a four-time top 10 finisher in Cy Young voting, he’s now third on the all-time saves list behind Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman.

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