Less Healthy

"You ever had deep fried Twinkies?" me brother Phil asked me the other day.

"Can't say I have."

"I was going into a restaurant one day and there was a sign which said, We have deep fried Twinkies," he explained. "So I bought one."

"Was it any good?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact."

"Why'd you try it? Curiosity?" I asked.

"I suppose," Phil answered. "But mainly I wondered, how can they make something unhealthy even more unhealthy?"

Yeah, you do wonder if there was a brainstorming session for that.

The Pumpkin Spice Wars

Ah, Facebook. You do encourage folks to get lathered up about trivialities. 

Almost every day lately I've seen memes which hammer at the onrushing autumn and it's mavens who love pumpkin spice everything. It's not unlike those (one of whom might be me) who lament Christmas displays being raised in mid-October, nosing out Halloween when it's still two weeks away. "Summer isn't over until September 22!" one friend, or, more to the point, one friend's meme yelled. "Put your pumpkin spice lattes away while I have another margarita!" Ah, hilarity.

But I've noticed that weathermen say something different. They say that fall begins September 1st. Meteorological fall begins today. We are, to those stout professionals, at this very minute already in autumn.

There, I've sold both sides ammunition. Entertain me. Start the Pumpkin Spice Wars.

Using a Cheater

You're about to learn something about drain snake repair, but I'm sure it's a lesson which can be equitably applied to any and all repairs, whether at work or in the household.

The SC-10-A drive shaft on an Electric Eel Model C is held in place with (2) 5/16 allen screws. Most of the time they come loose fairly easily. Yet as all things made by human hands, things don't always go according to plan. In the case of these screws, they sometimes seize. They insolently will not come out. When that happens you either heat them with a torch in an attempt to coax them out, or do what I do. Put a length of pipe over the top of the allen wrench, a 'cheater' as me Pops taught me, to give you greater leverage turning the wrench.

Now, I know there is a school of thought that you should never ever, ever use a cheater bar. Well, me Grandpa Joe and me Pops both believed in them, so I believe in them. So there.

Anyways, you turn the wrench with the cheater, increasing pressure as you go, and one of three things will happen. You will either (A) break the allen wrench, (B) strip the allen head on the screw, or (C) you will hear a tiny but sharp little 'ting' exactly as the wrench turns suddenly. That ting is either good or bad. But usually, it's good. Usually it means that screw has broken loose and you are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Your job will soon be over.

The good bad ting. Listen for it when you do your own repairs. And don't be afraid to use a cheater.

Full Speed Ahead

The Rosary is a set of prayers widely said by Catholics. It is made up of traditional prayers well known to most: The Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be, said in a particular sequence. 

But there are variations. Most folks, when they say prayers, say them with a certain pacing. 'Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee'. So it is with the Rosary generally.

Yet me Pops, having grown up in a parish staffed by Dominican priests, always said there were Rosaries, and then there was the Dominican Rosary. It was said very, very fast, almost at a machine gun rate. HailMaryfullofgracetheLordiswiththeblessedartThouamongsywomenandblessedisthefruitofthywombJesus.

Could you follow that? Then you might be a Dominican.

Joe's Birthday

Today is me Grandpa Joe's birthday. He would have been 121. Sure, that would not be a likely age for him to have made. But I can imagine the hell he would have raised if he had.

He passed away August 27, 1991, just shy of 86, so we buried him pretty close to his birthday. He smoked heavy from his teens (his doctor at the end remarked that his lungs were probably like leather). No doubt some tobacco farmer lived the high life because of Joe. 

I remember him smoking Carltons. It's a silly thing to be sentimental over but I can still see clearly those red packages they came in, and him opening a fresh one on his front porch, tearing the cellophane off with a carpet knife because that's what he did when something didn't open readily enough. Which, for his purposes, they typically would not. 

He went home in style. Me Pops rented a large black Chevy Suburban and drove Joe back to Jacksonville, Illinois for internment. Joe always promised himself he was going to buy one new car before he died. He never did, but his last trip was in one. I wonder if, perhaps, that was Pops' salute to his old man.

Down at the funeral home in Jacksonville I remember me and me cousin Art were standing by the casket. One or the other of us said, "This ain't right."

"What?" the other asked.

"He can't leave this world without a pack of cigarettes."

"I'll get the smokes, you get the lighter," I said. Off we were to find a store. I bought a pack of Carltons for the first and only time in my life. Art got the lighter. The undertaker solemnly placed both in the vest pocket of Joe's suit.

A little while later we were talking to an uncle, telling him what we'd done. "I don't know that that was a good idea," Uncle remarked. "What if that butane mixes with the gases of the body decomposing? It might cause an explosion."

Hell, Joe would have loved that! Dirt spraying up and the headstone falling over to the side? Magnificent. And I can't help imagining me Grandma Cosgriff lying next to him, shaking her head and tsk tsking. She had to do that often enough in life, and now two of her grandkids go and give Joe one final reason to annoy her. Everyone else in the cemetery would be thinking, 'That's just Joe'. Grandpa would simply be cackling in the way he always did when he found something funny, a hee hee hee as though forced out of his body.

Happy Birthday Joe. I know you're still rooting that explosion.

Can't be that busy

I remember me Pops would frequently ask, to no one in particular and everyone in general, "You ever notice that the guys who claim they're the busiest always have the time to tell you how busy they are?" It sure seems that way.

I had a customer at the Shop yesterday who came in (without his machine for some reason) and wanted to know how much and how long to put a chuck on his Eel. I told the man twenty five bucks and we could do it while he waits. "Cool. Let me go get my machine Cosgriff and I'll be right back. I got a lotta jobs waiting."

He left to get his machine an hour later. Several times in the interim as he was supposedly about to leave he would stop before reaching the door and ask about a cutter, or the turnaround time on rewiring his unit, or simply to tell me about how much he loves his Model C Eel. I ended up fibbing to him and said I had to close at three, just to expedite things. Well, to move him on anyway. "Okay, Cosgriff. Let me go get it 'cause I'm really busy. Got a lotta jobs lined up."

I hope he was very busy, because he was really selling me on the point. Yet he did not return by three. Or by my actual closing for that matter.

Trashy Cloyce

The sectional drain snake cables which I sell come in large barrels. They're maybe three feet high and about two feet wide. They make great garbage cans once I've sold the cables, as they're just about the ideal size for 33 gallon trash bags. I have a couple in the Shop set aside for that purpose.

Once a plumber, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, came down from Saginaw to buy some cables. He paid me, and then grabbed a barrel. "What do you think you're doing?" I demanded.

"I'm loading my barrel, Marty," a confused and somewhat annoyed Cloyce responded.

"Well, if you really want to drive my trash to Saginaw, Cloyce, who am I to deny you the pleasure?" I then explained what he was doing, latching onto the first barrel he saw thinking it filled with sectional cables. Peals of laughter and much knee slapping then rang throughout the old barn.