Chester phoned and asked what I knew about Toughlove. I told him I’d look over a book somebody’d loaned me, call the person I got it from. Find out all I could, and get back …

Dear Matthew Alice: Please settle a disagreement between me and my mate. He just bought a brand new state-of-the-art bicycle that weighs about seven pounds less than my older, less expensive bike. I say his …

"Most of the beets we eat in California are carried home in cans. Probably no more than a couple hundred acres of beets are growing in all the state. It’s a very neglected item."

Dear Matthew Alice: A number of times recently I have read about "Tree Huggers.” What are Tree Huggers? Do people really go out in the yard and hug trees? Why do they do it? Or …

Dear Matthew Alice: Why are rolled tacos always served in threes? — D.R., San Diego It all began with a little-known Aztec ritual. No. Scratch that. It has to do with the mystical significance of …

“Developers are basically rapists. I grew up in Uruguay and Colombia, and I saw what developers from places like Miami did there. Holiday Inns all over the place, totally messing up the coastlines.”

Dear M.A.: I have a Swiss Army Knife that has a broken blade. People keep telling me that I can send it somewhere and get it repaired FREE! But nobody knows where. Is this true …

The crowd’s roar sent my blood pressure pounding when, seated at ringside in the press section, I saw a giant green sombrero floating down the aisle, in the center of a group of moving heads. …

At Sanderson’s on Girard, a women’s clothing store, I applied for a job as a model. Mr. Sanderson, a distinguished, middle-aged man, said he liked my style. He gave me a job — starting the next day.

Recently I looked through a microscope at a small colony of the creatures that cause tuberculosis in humans. About a hundred of them had woven themselves into a long structure that — magnified 1000 times …

Dear Matthew (The Wise One) Alice: I recently saw a tugboat hauling a large ship through the bay. It had a large amount of water streaming out of both sides, up into the air, like …

Dear MA.: I brought up the “fact" that there is some sort of chemical or substance that is found in turkey which, when consumed, makes one sleepy. My cohorts either think I'm making this up …

“This year, for the first time, we outlawed picking the president of the United States. We felt it was un-American to profiteer from the death of the commander-in-chief. So, Clinton you won’t see on the list.

"See the marketplace in old Algiers,” sang Jo Stafford quite clearly in the summer of 1951 or ’52, “Send me photographs and souvenirs,” but I heard it funny. (Kids’ ears are like that.) I heard …

It was time to fly, after a series of delays that spanned two months. The Mexican Feds and our connection had a shootout, then a rainstorm had our landing strip under water. Then there was …

Dear M.A. Dude: Where are all the Reader T-shirts people win for solving the "Reader Puzzle*? Me and my friends have never seen anyone wearing one. — Mark Rossi (Ocean Beach), Paul Woodburn (Ocean Beach), …

"I know how it can be frightening to some people. It’s not frightening to me. If the sharp instruments are dealt with in the proper manner, you won’t get hurt. I’m not going to catch AIDS by touching somebody."