Better Than Nothing

Getting old means Medicare. Medicare A is what we've paid for all our working lives. Medicare B covers things A doesn't. Then there's, well in my case, anyway, Medicare G, which covers stuff A and B blow off. It costs me $173 a month.

But it's $173 dollars well spent. Yes, it is. Why, I just received a letter from the Medicare G agents informing me that they happily covered my 52-cent co-pay on a recent medical test. Yessir, 52 Lincolns which ain't coming out of my pocket. And all the privilege set me back was $173. A month. That's $2,076 a year.

All right, full disclosure, they've paid for more than that in the year and a half I've been on Medicare, although still far under the yearly sticker price. I just got a kick out of them taking the time to send me a note for their generosity in covering that particular 52 cents for me.  They have my back.

Dragnet Hockey

I was just watching the intro to a Dragnet episode. You know, the one where Jack Webb tells us all about how great Los Angeles is. He liked to give short tours of the city as he lead into that day's program. 

This morning he was talking about the sports scene. There was a shot of the sports arena where the Los Angeles Kings played at the time. Webb explained that they played ice hockey. My question: is that a dated reference? Does anyone say 'ice hockey' anymore?

That's what I got for you today. Enjoy your Friday.

Bounce Cars

You all know what bounce houses are I'm sure. They're the large, inflated play pens often seen at children's parties. Kids jump up and down in them, caroming off the floor and walls and each other. They're meant to burn all that excess energy out of the young 'uns so they'll fall asleep as soon as they get home.

I happened to catch an episode of the old police procedural Highway Patrol the other morning. If you think Sgt. Joe Friday has a machine gun delivery, Broderick Crawford, the lead in Highway Patrol, puts him to shame. Crawford's delivery is so rapid fire you almost need captions. No one talks that rat-a-tat in real life. 

Anyway, Highway Patrol aired in the late 1950s, when vehicles were monstrous land battleships. Not only were they huge, the bounced around as though shock absorbers and springs were an afterthought. It appeared as if the front and rear fenders were bouncing up off the ground whenever a car would stop or turn or even wink at a pothole. Those cars rocked back and forth like a teeter-totter even when slowing to a stop.

"Should we put something on our vehicles to make the ride smoother?" I could imagine an automotive engineer back then ask during R&D.

"Nah," his supervisor might reply. "They're land battleships. Let 'em bounce along the road as though they're really on the high seas."

Watch an episode of that old show. You'll see what I mean.

The Sigh Moment

I made a trip to Electric Eel in Springfield, Ohio yesterday, just one of dozens (maybe a couple hundred) I've made in the last dozen or so years. It was uneventful, which is good. You don't really want eventful road trips as a rule because that nearly always means trouble. About the worst that happened was the sigh moment. Typically, there's one of those per road trip.

Yesterday it happened as I passed a Wendy's in Bellefountaine, Ohio. For whatever reason it popped into my head that one Friday years ago, me and me Pops stopped there for fish sandwiches for lunch. And a Frosty; you gotta have a frosty at Wendy's. Anyway, we actually had stopped at that particular fast food joint several times over the years. And I looked over at it, merely sighing as I drove past.

At this point in my life I figured that me and Pops would be making these trips together regularly. I had in fact resolved that on his next birthday, when he would have turned 78 (that would have been 2014), I was going to screw up my courage and insist that either me or my brother Phil go with him on all road trips. He was going to get the Son Speech, similar to the Doctor Speech we all get after a certain age. You don't need to be traipsing alone all over the country at your age, Pops. You don't need to be trying to lift hundred-pound boxes at all, let alone by yourself, Pops. Me or Phil need to go with you on sales runs.

Obviously enough by now, I never got to make that speech. Maybe it's just as well. I know the old man would have gotten his dander up to hear it. We'd have likely went around and around about it, reasonably politely to be fair and honest, before coming to tepid agreement. But it would have been uncomfortable for all involved.

Instead, I take road trips and see things which remind of old times. Places and haunts which he liked to stop at whether anyone was with him or not. Places I often stop at solely because he would have stopped there.

And I have the sigh moment. Then it's just on to my next destination.

Cloyce the Engineer

There was this drain snake customer of ours, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who might have been the penultimate re-inventor of the wheel. There wasn't a drain snake which was safe from his passion to do things different under the guise of making them better, which to my knowledge he never actually managed. His improvements tended to make things harder rather than easier.

Ol' Cloyce had a large plate installed atop a snake to turn the motor a hundred and eighty degrees around because it would then magically give the machine more power. It didn't, but it sure made working on the motor a greater chore. 

He welded the power feed onto a machine, backwards too by the way, because that made it easier (he argued) to access the actuator handle. Not in the least, I tell you, but replacing bearings was then a true challenge because you had to take the entire feed apart to do it. Normally you take the unit off and set it on a work bench where, trust me, putting in new bearings was much more readily done. 

Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was retrofitting a thirteen horsepower gasoline engine to his electric drain machine because he was absolutely going to destroy any root bed in any sewer which came his way. Those roots would never know what hit them. 

There wasn't simply one thing wrong with that approach. There were many.

A typical electric snake has a 3/4 horsepower motor. Cloyce increased the power nearly twenty times the necessary strength. Overkill much, Cloyce?

Then the unit was too heavy and bulky to get into a standard basement in a private home. But that was probably just as well because, you know, toxic fumes from the exhaust just might be a problem in a small enclosed area. Maybe.

Professor Cloyce took care of that with an intricate series of detachable piping which could be run from an open basement window to the drain access. Of course, that put you as much as forty or fifty feet away from the job and left you blind to the work. I guess progress doesn't absolutely require that you see what you're doing, but still.

I'm sure he did rip those roots to shreds. I'm sure he destroyed a good many lengths of sewer pipe too. Ah well. Here's to Cloyce, the Thomas Edison of the snake world.

Or more honestly, the Rube Goldberg. But I'm sure the old boy had fun tinkering in his laboratory. Uh, garage.

Shoulda Woulda Coulda

I know it's early. I'll concede that I'm even being, well, just a bit snarky this morning. I even readily admit I am conservative by nature, and while I don't mind calculated aggressiveness, on the whole you should be cautious. You should take what you're given. 

After watching the Detroit Lions lose last night to the Carolina Panthers, a team which lost to the Cleveland Browns of all things, I am wondering: are these the same old Lions, shooting themselves in the foot when a golden opportunity knocks? So, I'm going to say something I've held my tongue on for two years now.

Shoulda kicked the field goal.

Lions fans know what I mean.

Seeing Things

While channel surfing Friday night, I watched a few minutes of a college football game. On one play, a running back made a pretty good move. Pressed up against a stack of bodies, blockers and tackles frantically trying to shove each other aside, the ball carrier bounced to his left, into an opening. He gained 17 yards before he was brought down. 

A nice run, yes. One described by the color commentator as, "He was bottled up, then saw a hole with his vision and hit it for a good gain."

Ah. The football player 'saw' with his 'vision' and had a good run.

An incisive remark, to be sure. I heard it with my hearing, after seeing with my own vision. Then I smelled potato chips with my nose and tasted them with my tongue before chewing them with my mouth. And now I'm thinking (with my brain) that you, too, could be a football commentator.

Ooh boy.