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 what 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.

The Voice

It happened again last night at curling. I had an old friend come up to say, "I heard that laugh, and I immediately thought, Marty's here!" Yes, with the exclamation point.

Remember last week? I had virtually the same thing happen, as I wrote here . While it's good to be known for something, I have to admit stuff like this makes a guy just a bit self conscious and vaguely paranoid. 'Someone told a joke, and I laughed. Was it that laugh?' 

"And you do have a distinct voice," my buddy Nick tells me. Yeah, distinct. I've been told I have a future with the Cartoon Network. Seriously. Right on TV, on a baseball pregame show: Tiger Pregame

Oh, I'm not going to stop. If it's that much a part of my personality, that ingrained after all these years, I probably couldn't if I wanted to. And it is good to be remembered. It leaves me interested for what may happen next Thursday..

Irish Attitude

Let's not have a sniffle, Let's have a bloody good cry, And always remember the longer you live, the sooner you'll bloody well die.

As I listen to Irish music while St. Patrick's Day approaches I'm struck by its piety, its spark, its sentimentality, and its vague fist raised at solemn things like, oh, death.

The above chorus is from Isn't It Grand, Boys, a traditional Irish ditty. Its most famous version is courtesy of The Clancy Brothers, and sort of either mocks, dares, or is matter of fact about death and dying. I love it. It's very, well, Irish. Here it is, folks, the song says. It is what it is. 

And it makes me proud of me Irish heritage. I love this time of year.

It Happened One Day

I remembered I was running low on coffee pods at the old barn when I happened to be at a Dollar General, which was fortuitous as they can be difficult to find. I happened to discover they sold coffee pods, so I happened to buy some. As they happened to be on sale, I happened to buy several boxes.

As it happened, one flavor I chose was 'donut shop blend'. But they didn't happen to say which donut shop. Yet as there happens to be this thing called the Internet where all of human knowledge appears to be kept in storage, most of it in very deep storage unless you happen to like cat videos or morally questionable entertainment, I decided to find out which donut shop blend Dollar General's happened to be.

It happens to be from Fred and Mary's donut shop and troll doll emporium in South Witchita, Kansas. Closed Mondays. You're welcome.