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Keith Kehrer has finished work on a full length motion picture for Three Day Dawn called Standalone.

Read Interview with Keith Kehrer about film scoring

Part 1 - The breakfast nook bench incident.

My father was a quiet a man who was raised by German parents and the work ethic was part of his being. He loved to work with his hands and he loved to sleep in on weekend mornings. He also had a contentious relationship with cats. Ok, contentious is a little mild. He really hated cats and of course cats being cats, they knew it and would take every opportunity to mess with my dad, doing the cat's version of the raspberries as they escaped fleetly and completely from his grasp. Know these two things will help understand what transpired one early morning in the Kehrer backyard.

Imagine a quiet, pastoral, Saturday morning. The sun is barely showing its face, the birds are chirping, termites are chewing andŠ We had a very nice arbor attached the back of our house. Wisteria climbed up and around it like an old woman's hand. The flowers were blooming while the bees did their jobs and a family of birds made their home there, confident that the knarled branches would protect them from marauding cats. So, this family is singing some birdie song, chirping like Jeannette McDonald in full song. Little did they know that a very agile feline was slowly climbing up the branches intent on having a tasty bird breakfast. I can only imagine the horror the birds most have felt when they that big cat head appeared next to their nest.

Meanwhile, my dad is sleeping peacefully next to the window that looks down over (you guessed it) the Wisteria with birds and cats. What he heard as he was jolted from a sound sleep was the sound of shrill chirping and what sounded like a million cats. Being very sleepy and very angry (not a good combination), my dad ran downstairs and out the back door and grabbed the first thing he could find. It turns out that it was one of our bright green breakfast nook benches which are the size of a small pew. With bench in hand he proceeded to yell and chase the cat out of the arbor and (so my mom told me) the next thing she saw was my dad bounding down the backyard, bench in hand chasing this little cat who was absolutely hauling ass in fear of its life.

I am not sure what my dad would have done with the bench if he had caught that cat, but, I shudder to think of what he would have done in the state he was in.

Needless to say this story has passed into Kehrer legend to pass down from father to son which is why I am writing it now. My ancestors will thrill to the tale of Erwin the mighty and the phantom fur ball menace.