My Two Cents Worth

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Why, I've become adept enough that I monitor my banking activity online, thank you very much. I've even learned to get comfortable with and use the ATM in the lobby of my bank. I make deposits and withdrawals all by my lonesome. It's what the bank wants, to not deal with Marty directly. Likely enough most folks don't want to deal with me. Beat you to the punch, Ron.

But technology is not without its issues, and I had one yesterday while banking. The first machine failed to work properly. It wasn't my fault, the bank employees assured me. They'd been having trouble with that particular ATM all day. Moving to the next machine, everything worked fine.

But in checking my bank account online this morning I noticed an unexpected deposit for, I am not making this up, two cents. Yes, two Lincoln coppers. Two entire pennies. The explanation was that it was an interest payment, an apology of sorts, for my trouble with that first ATM. 

So you ain't gotta worry about Marty's two cents no more. It's laying right in the bank. But if you upset me enough I may still give it to you anyway.

Rain, I Don't Mind

Yesterday I did something I've never done before. I let rain stop me from driving. Well, more specifically, I allowed a little voice to convince me that I should stop.

I was on my way home from a short road trip and could see the ominous clouds grow on the horizon. They meant business. Between they and I was a travel center. Pull into that truck stop, the voice said. Wait out the rain.

So I did as told. There was an IHOP, so breakfast called as well. Right as a country omelet was placed before me it commenced to pour outside, the proverbial sheets. Most likely flannel, the rain was so heavy. I ate, and knew that I had also avoided a terrible fate, or at least bad trouble.

How could I know that? How do you prove a negative? Nothing bad happened, really by definition. I was safe, fat, and happy watching the rain from my booth.

I knew because the cautionary voice told me. It pays to listen.

Clean Slate

Bush's Drug Store was pretty much right across the street from the house me Pops grew up in at 1104 Putnam in Detroit. The Cosgriff family frequented it for their medicines and whatever other sundries the store might have offered.

One day when in his teens me Pops and a friend were drifting around the old neighborhood, killing time on a winter afternoon. As the pair neared the store his buddy said to Dad, "Bet you can't hit Bush's sign with a snowball." Above the doorway, adorned with the Coca-Cola moniker, was sign which said 'Bush's Drugs', a typical way of advertising in the day. Actually, until yet I suppose.

"Sure I can," a supremely confident Teenage Pops replied. He scooped up a handful of snow, packed it tightly, and let it fly, striking the sign dead center.

It shattered into dozens of pieces. Pops assumed the sign was metal or wood, but it was slate. On that cold day, a well pitched snowball was bound to do irreparable harm.

'This is going to take weeks for me to pay for,' Teenage Pops thought woefully. But right was right, and the Cosgriffs and Mr. Bush were friends as well as patrons and druggists, so Dad went in to confess what he had done.

"I threw a snowball at your Coke sign and it shattered, Mr. Bush," he explained when the pharmacist came from a back room.

Mr. Bush offered a wry smile. "Well, young man, you picked a good day. They're coming out tomorrow with a new sign to replace it. Clean up the debris and we'll be fine."

The fog lifted, the angels sang, and Teenage Pops' Shop salary wouldn't be dunned. Life was good.

Learning From Me Pops

I just received my new business cards. I had the Shop address put on them. That should not surprise; the locals who actually come to see me need to know where its at while it doesn't really matter to the out of towners. And I learned from me Pops not to use me home address on such ephemera.

Me Pops was a smart man. But like so many of us he made his share of tactical errors, as he would himself confess. One was putting his home address, since it was also his business mailing address (mail never has come to the old barn, for whatever reason), on his first business cards. He found out quickly that that was a mistake.

Customers, and not the good and worthwhile ones, would hunt him down at horribly odd hours, 8:30 at night on a Saturday for example, to fix their cable or machine which had been broken for five days because they had an emergency job to handle. Dad, having a wife and bunch of rug rats to feed, clothe, and house, and also being concerned with someone else's emergency (who wants a backed up sewer at any time let alone late on a Saturday evening?) would generally open up and take care of business.

Yet that got old very fast. And, again, it was the less than stellar drain cleaners who demanded his time. Add this to the fact that a homeowner in dire straits would find another way out of their dilemma somehow, and he stopped such late night weekend nonsense. It would teach those special plumbers a valuable lesson too: get your drain snake fixed when it breaks, and not only when you would need it, potlikker.

March 8, 1987

I'm not sure how certain memories stay strong in my mind. Especially those which seem at the surface decidedly unremarkable.

March 8, 1987, was an unusually warm late winter Sunday here in Detroit. It hit 75 that day, and that may still be the record. I was with my son Frank, who was about 14 months old then. I don't remember at all where my wife and oldest son were, only that Frank and I were home alone most of the day.

My son and I ate hot dogs for lunch and went to a school park a block away. I held him in my lap and we swung gently on a swing; a couple times I put him snugly in the kids' size swing and pushed him a little less gently but never too hard. We climbed atop the small slide and slid down several times. Often Frank simply toddled around as I followed, picking up this or that for intense study before dropping it when interest waned.

The sun shone bright and, as I said, it was warm. And I've always remembered it as a nice day yet on a very deep level. If there's such a thing as sublimity, I learned it on March 8, 1987.

A Blind Squirrel Clock

Last week I had to rent a van for a trip to Electric Eel (Electric Eel: for all your drain cleaning needs) because of the amount of product I was getting. My new old van is good and reliable but would have surely buckled under the weight of what I was picking up. So it was to U-Haul I did go.

For whatever reason, the clock in the rental van was one hour and twenty eight minutes behind. Yep, 1:28 behind. Why that odd number, I don't know. But it bugged me enough that I had to try to set it straight.

At my stop for coffee around 3 AM, before returning to the highway, I proceeded to punch various buttons in various orders trying to find where to reset the clock. Lo and behold, the method paid off: I was able to set the clock to the right time. Thank you, thank you very much.

Yet the key thing is I didn't do any damage. I don't believe so anyway. Well, there was an explosion somewhere after I hit one of the buttons. But it was faint and far away - you could barely see the flash - so I don't think that was me.

So I figured out how to reset the van clock. Just don't ask me to do it again.

Spliced Cloyce

I don't think you need to know a lot about drain snake cables to understand this tale.

Back in the 60s and 70s there was this one plumber, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who was as the parlance says, so tight he squeeked. He had the first dollar he ever made. He'd squeeze a penny so hard Lincoln would yell. You get the picture.

One day old Cloyce came into the Shop to have me Pops repair his cable, which had broken. Again. When a snake cable breaks you can use a threaded metal piece called a splice to fix the break. In this particular case the cable was broken less than 18 inches from the end. Typically in such instances Pops would put on an end fitting rather than a splice, as splices too close to a cable end can cause problems. Trust me on that.

So the old man says to Cloyce, "I'll just put an end fitting on."

Cloyce was aghast. He was almost panic stricken at the thought. "Oh, no, Bill, splice it. I can't lose any length; that's my good cable.

Me Pops looked over the snake. He counted 18 splices in Cloyce's 'good' cable. The thing needed to be replaced, but Cloyce was too tight for that. So Dad spliced it and charged accordingly. 

The fact was that with what he had paid for over 18 splices (well, 19) he could have more than paid for a new cable. Probably two, honestly. Yet that's simply not how old Cloyce thought. He was a forest for the trees sort of guy.