Halloween 2017

Tonight is Halloween, a day that I've come to look forward to more and more as time goes by. I think maybe it's the atmosphere: we simply don't have many days when there is a true neighborhood wide party feeling. My area, Woodbridge, and most neighborhoods I fancy, come to life in a manner which simply doesn't happen often.
Oh, they'll be the occasional annoyance, mild pushing and shoving, even an adult or two who want free candy. That last one used to burn at me, but not so much anymore. You can't let the twerps ruin your mood.
My family will take turns passing out goodies and walking around the hood. I'll wander a bit through my mother's yard, where my brother Patrick goes to town with the outdoor decor, and just be happy to be around it. Then when we're done we'll go inside and order the Charlie Brown Halloween special to cap off the night.
Happy Halloween all!

Mom

She just sits there, mostly. Where she used to waltz around, barking orders, butting in on conversations, asking if everyone has had enough to eat, she now just sits. When she does offer conversation it's usually sudden and incongruent. "How's everyone doing your way?" she asks me out of the blue, right as my brothers are in the middle of ranting about something unimportant. I just answer that we're all okay. Silence follows.

Her right hand shakes, not tremulously but noticeably, but she takes it in her left to control it. It's an unconditioned reaction. You can tell. You just can.

I've begun driving her to Church on Saturday afternoons, even though I don't like her Church. But it satisfies my Sunday obligation, and, though it's the only driving she had still until then done, we feel she should not do that. And it was Dad's Church, Dad's Mass, so it's important to her to go there. She's an usher, like he was, and she smartly marches down her aisle collecting donations, although the other guy handles the cash.

She seems to like my being there, to drive and at Church. She introduces me as her son to the same people I met last week. I pretend it is new. So do they, bless their souls.

I'm no martyr. My brothers, especially Phil, bear the brunt of her illness. I do next to nothing. But the parents raise the kids, then the kids raise the parents, eh?

The trouble is, the kids know the endgame.

The true to himself jerk

I've come to discover that I don't much like the phrase be true to yourself, or any of its various incantations. I find it ultimately, as I find so much else, conditional. Left unexamined, it begs a lot of questions, the most important of which is, what if you're a jerk?

I mean, if a guy's a jerk and he just stays that way, isn't he being 'true' to 'himself'? Why shouldn't he, if being magnificently whatever he innately is is the standard to live by? He would be being true to himself. But we don't say that. We tell him, don't be such a jerk.

So I'm officially kicking a whole phrase into the pile of meaningless words (if unexamined) such as peace, freedom, education and so forth. I assert that you should not be true to yourself unless and until you have become a better person. That means asking yourself and answering honestly what actions and beliefs will make you positively better. Before you do that, I suggest that you should not be true to yourself. A child will always be a child unless he grows into adulthood. And jerks will stay jerks until they evolve past that.

Memories in the rubble

Yesterday afternoon I felt all kinds of emotions, running the gamut from, well, the sublime to the ridiculous.

I watched like a giddy child as a demolition crew tore down an abandoned house in the neighborhood. It's interesting how destruction enthralls us. Maybe we wish we were handling the levers of that scoop shovel ourselves as it ravenously engulfed and tore down walls. It's easy to be impressed by such power over otherwise strong materials such as wood and brick. I even filmed through my camera phone four minutes of the work. The once magnificent house of the middle class was a pile of debris in less than an hour.

Yet there was a sadness in the air too. Most houses in my neighborhood have stood since the 1890's, so that old girl was in the range of 120 years old. Workmen, professionals like brick masons, carpenters, plasterers (everything was wet plastered back then), electricians, roofers and more had pried their skills over several months to create a tidy Victorian home which had served as refuge for who knew how many for over a century. It had all fell down in a matter of minutes.

And there was a piquancy as well. The folks I knew who had lived there were a sister and a brother. Miss Jeter always had a laugh, smile, or honestly pleasant how are you. She had a big blue Buick she loved. I still see her and that car rolling across the hood. Her brother, Mr. Wilson A. Watson, was about as unassuming an old gentleman as you could know. He lost a leg in World War II and hobbled around as best he could with his cane. He would laugh and joke with you quickly, and wore a grin which was all sunshine despite his obvious challenges. He never in my presence complained over them. I don't remember when they died, and I'm ashamed that I don't know.

This world just keeps on turning. Yet every once'n awhile it does seem to stop to let us reflect.

A new door on the old barn

Hey Pops, hey Joe, you'll never believe what we did today.

We put a new door on the old Shop.

I think you guys'd like it too. We contracted the local handyman, who made the new one from scratch as the old door and frame were, well, um, not exactly done according to industry standards. He made it out of new wood, and boy is it solid. I'm surprised myself the old door stayed up so long. Between you two back in the day and me and Phil lately, well, it had been scabbed over so often the hinges should not have held up from the weight. Even at that, it had become so loose that it could have easily been ripped down.

Yeah, I hear ya. We were afraid too that a new door would stand out, making folks realize something was going on in the old barn and attract their mischief. So what'd we do? We took the old boards off the outer layer of the old door and nailed 'em to the outside of the new one. From the street, it looks like an old door on an old, maybe abandoned building. From inside it looks new and purty. Smart thinkin', eh?

Yep, there's a new door on the old barn. Shuts tight too. As I say, you guys would like it.

Until next time,

Marty

Woodbridge wildlife

Nature is resilient. That's one of the reasons that I'm not all that concerned about global warming/climate change/nuclear winter or whatever it's now being called. Nature will rebound; it will adapt. I need look no further than my neighborhood, Woodbridge in Detroit, to see that's true.

Over the years we've seen pheasant, rabbits, and raccoons living vibrantly nearby. And along with them come the predators. I recall watching a hawk land upon the top of a utility pole, it's wingspan at least five feet, the large bird honestly majestic as it settled gently on its perch. It looked down at me like, yeah, I could take you. If I wanted to. I'm glad it did not want.

But recently an unexpected denizen has taken up in our area. Three times recently, right outside the Shop, my humble workplace, I've seen a beaver. I have no idea where it came from, although there is a larger block nearby which appears to have turned to swamp or wetland. I presume it comes from there.

If such a variety of wildlife can adapt to a central city, I'm not too worried about the world as a whole.

The polar opposite

As I related yesterday, I took my van to my mechanic. He tuned it up and it's running great. Yet there's still something wrong.
Driving home, I couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't quite right. It drove smoothly and accelerated well. It did better than it's done in a long time in fact. I couldn't quite put my finger on the problem though.
That's when I noticed this blank spot on the dashboard. That blank spot didn't look right at all. I wondered what it could be. I began to worry about what it could be.
Then I realized that my service engine soon light was not on. My mechanic had tuned up the van, and that apparently caused the warning light to stay off. So today, right after stating that I did not worry about idiot lights begin on, I'm concerned about the fact that one particular idiot light, one that I'm very used to being on, is off.
It'll be weeks now before I'm really comfortable driving the thing. Maybe I should have left well enough alone.

It's just a car

I took my van to the mechanic today. It's been running rough when accelerating, although when I get to speed it holds the speed well.

I tend not to fret about my cars. If they start and get me from point A to point B, I'm happy. To give you an idea of how little I watch my cars, I never, ever worry about the 'check engine' or 'service engine soon' lights being on. All they mean are that the mix of air and gas isn't spot on or that the engine is somehow not running ideally. I say the hell with that. Live with it; all those sensors cars have these days simply detect too many things too delicately. Check oil lights and heat gauges are the ones to watch. If you're car's running too hot or has low oil pressure, those are the real danger signs. If it's making noises it obviously shouldn't make, then be concerned. And of course, check fluids regularly. Otherwise, no worries.

Anyway, the old girl's been running rough enough that I figured it should be checked this time around. "Does the check engine light come on?" my long time and no doubt long suffering mechanic asked.

"It's always on, Sam. You should know that, " I answered.

He snickered, "Right. Well, does the light flash when you accelerate hard?"

"That it does. Then it stops flashing when I reach speed."

Sam responded, "It probably just needs a tune up. I'll put the tester on it and let you know."

Boom. No worries, no big deal. Don't worry so much about your cars, folks. I would have kept driving it if I'd known that was all there was to it.

Dumpster diving Dan

When we moved into our house, the upstairs bathroom had a nice mahogany toilet seat. But as with all things human made, it eventually broke. I went to the hardware and bought a decent replacement. We simply threw the old one in the common dumpster which we shared at that time with about six neighbors.
Several days later I happened to be in my neighbor Dan's house. Excusing myself to use his washroom, I saw a nicely refinished mahogany toilet seat. "When did you get this, Dan?" I asked.
"Out of the dumpster. Isn't it cool? Someone was throwing it out; can you believe that?" He had taken the thing, reglued and refinshed it, and put it on his commode.
I answered, "Yes I can, because it was mine. I can't believe you took something like from a dumpster!"
"It's perfectly good," he protested. But that didn't keep him from chastising me several days later when the seat had rebroken and left a blood blister on the back of his thigh. "You toilet seat did that to me," he whined.
"Serves you right dumpster diving stuff like that," was all I said.

Talk is cheap

There are many things which no one seems to oppose. We're all for peace, correct? Education? The environment? Observing the Golden Rule, perhaps, if such references are not too religious? Yet so often these claims ring hollow. They must, you see: for peace and education are just words. By themselves, they really mean nothing.

It is critically important that we bring up and discuss the questions which must follow these words if our actions are to mean anything; indeed, if the words themselves are at some point to be of value, of good use. WE must ask: peace under what circumstances? Peace for whom? Because of course peace in the sense of a lack of war was very useful for Hitler yet was a rather poor mantra for Austria.

Simply put, the next time someone asks you if you are for peace, or education, or the environment, ask them relevant questions before you answer. Ask them, peace under what conditions? Education to what purpose and in what manner? The environment for whom and how? Before these issues are addressed we have nothing but a shallow and insipid pool of vacuous semi-thought. Yet afterwards, we may actually accomplish things.

Squirrel bacon

Tonight, after work, I get to work some more. One of the problems with living in the city is the number of squirrels that need places to live. The large furry rats seem particularly adept at finding the worst possible place to homestead.

Such as the rafters in my house. This evening I will be repairing the fifth hole in my roof line where the obnoxious and definitely not cute little rodents have chewed their way into my humble abode. Obnoxious? That isn't even near to the best word to describe them. When you are woken up at four in the morning because of their skittering around in your walls and ceilings (I do so hope they're only skittering around) the thing you want most is a shotgun. Which is probably why it is good that I don't have one, or I would be repairing dozens of holes in my inside walls too.

They make my wonderful daughter say bad things: things that wonderful daughters definitely should never say except, one day, to husbands who deserve it. But as she has a loft type bed which puts her very close to the ceiling, I will cut her slack. The dancing of the rabid giant rats is closer to her than me in my more traditional bed, so I assume more startling and maddening. Still, I am mad enough all of five feet farther below them.

Some folks go on and on about animal rights. Animal rights? There is no animal with the right to wake my family in the wee hours of the morning. Well, maybe the dog, if she has to go out. But she's trained to do that and saves me a worse issue later, so she's being considerate. She has a reason.

I am told squirrel tastes like bacon. I like bacon. The little fuzzballs might be in worse trouble now.

Cloyce in reverse

A good friend of mine back in high school, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, was the first of our troop to earn his driver's license. He was proud of that, as a teenager would be, and we envied him, as teenagers would. But the first time I rode with him proved to tarnish some of the luster on his driving ability.

I happened to be around when his mother asked him to go to the store for something or other, so I went with. He drove the few blocks to the old A & P and, seeing the parking lot jammed, decided he would show off his skills by parallel parking on the street. He pulled just past a space, lined up his seat with the driver's door of a parked car, shifted, then turned all the way around in his seat, arm over the back, and began to gently give the family's old station wagon gas. Rrrrrrrrr, the engine revved easily. But the car didn't move.

Cloyce looked confused, but went on applying the gas. RrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRR...but still nothing.

RrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. He was soon giving it too much gas. The engine was racing as though participating at Indianapolis yet would not even try to move. He finally let off the accelerator, and saw that he hadn't shifted all the way into reverse. The car was only in neutral. Seeing this myself, and seeing as this was in the days before texting, I began rolling on the floor laughing out loud.

Cloyce punched me in shoulder, hard, and made me swear I wouldn't tell anyone about this tale. But as I haven't seen him in ages and the statute of limitations having surely ran out, I decided to tell it today.

I'm not who you think I am

I certainly hope this post comes across as innocuous. That's my intention, just to write a fun post based on something that actually happened.

Last week I found myself needing a valve stem for an old sink. When I say old, I mean sixty to seventy years, if not more. Fortunately I knew where to go for the stem. There's a place called Tenny's Plumbing in Hazel Park, and they specialize in old, hard to get parts. They've helped me before, and I highly recommend them.

And they did have the part I needed. But before paying, I had to take a call, so I stepped back from the counter and dealt with it.

When I apologized and returned to the counter Mr. Tenny was there. He looked at me and asked, "You're Cosgriff, right? Bill Cosgriff?"

"No, he was my dad. He passed away a couple years ago," I answered.

He coughed and said, "Sorry to hear that. But Cosgriff was a black guy, wasn't he?"

"No," I replied.

"But he had two black guys working for him?" Mr. Tenny pressed.

"No. Just my brother and I."

He studied me more closely and ventured, "Your shop is across from Murray-Wright High School, on Rosa Parks. Just after a green house, back from the street."

"That's right," I said.

Tenny just kinda shook his head and said, "But Cosgriff was a black guy. He had black guys working for him."

"I'm afraid not," I responded. I even showed him my license, just so he'd know I was me. He then shrugged his shoulders, and I paid for the valve stem and left. It was all on good terms, and he just seemed to have a mental block about it.

And I think he still thinks we're black guys. Ah well. No harm no foul, right?

What I could buy with enough money

What would I do if I had all the money in the world?

I'd get lawn service before anything else. I hate yard work with a passion.

I would buy a Stradivarius, but only allow Orange Blossom Special to be played on it. Okay, and The Devil Went Down to Georgia. It's just a fancy fiddle after all, isn't it?

I would completely rehabilitate the Old Barn. Lord knows she needs it.

I'd donate heavily to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.

I'd buy seasons tickets for one year only for the Detroit Tigers, and go to every game that year. And make someone else bring me hot dogs of course. Hell, I might even ride the Ferris Wheel and Merry Go Round. Or at least pay for a couple hundred kids to ride them.

Yeah, my dreams are simple.

Pops and Ty Cobb

No, Dad never actually met Ty Cobb. But one of his favorite jokes revolved around a supposedly true story about the famous Detroit center fielder. So why, as they say, let questions of truth interfere with a good story?

Cobb was visiting a ballpark one day in the late 1950s, openly lamenting what he believed the woeful pitching of the era. Finally he was asked, "So what would do you think you could hit against today's pitchers?" Bear in mind that Cobb's lifetime batting average was (and still is) a record .367.

Cobb thought about it for a minute, then answered, ".270."

"You'd only hit .270 against these guys?" the inquisitor responded, taken aback at an answer from someone known to be cocky.

"Give me a break. I'm 70 years old," Cobb said.

Rim shot!

The old bat

I still have it: the old bat. It was the first one I ever bought.
It cost me I believe five bucks of birthday money. It was at the K-Mart in east Dearborn: an Eddie Matthews signature model Hillerich and Bradsby Louisville Slugger. He was on the cover of the first Sports Illustrated as a member of the Milwaukee Braves, you know, and a member of the 1968 World Champion Detroit Tigers. That last part was serendipity. He was not yet a Tiger when I bought the bat, but I used it proudly once he became one. Mom was with me when I bought it, patiently allowing me to look over the baseball bat selection until I finally made my choice.
I used it for years as I played pickup baseball in the old neighborhood. It served me well in my mind. I might even loan it out to you for an at bat, if you promised to hit with the label away from the ball. I used it until I was 12 or 13. It had begun chipping by then, and I retired it out of fear it would break. That was a thought that I could not stand. It would have killed me for that to happen, so I set old Ed aside.
He now sits in my hall closet more than 50 years after purchase and about 43 years after last use. 16 years after Matthews himself passed away in fact. The main chipping is on the knob, though there is a noticeable crack on the barrel just before the label. And although it is tempting to take it out to a batting cage and swing it one last time, I would never dare do that. I think I'd cry like a baby to break it now.
It's silly to be that attached to something so unimportant, isn't it? That old bat.

A minor family squabble

I come from a relatively large family; I'm the second oldest of seven. My sister Susan arrived a little more than a year after me. Consequently, she was just a grade behind me all through school.
One day a teacher asked me, as Susan and I stood in the hall near his door, "Cosgriff, just how many of you are there?" I answered that I had four brothers and two sisters.
"No you don't," Susan corrected me. "You have five brothers and one sister."
I was caught off guard for a moment before her confusion dawned on me. "Nooo, YOU have five brothers and one sister. I have four brothers and two sisters," I explained, surely in that denegrating voice elder siblings speak with towards their younger ones caught in obvious mistakes.
But I'm right, aren't I?

Going old school

I'm begining to go old school again. I've found myself buying the morning newspaper on a more and more regular basis rather than catching up on news through my computer. That's not to say I don't use my desktop or laptop for, especially, breaking news. But buying the paper does seem to have its advantages.

It begins with my now routine morning walk. There's a party store/gas station near the end of my usual route. One day at the end of my daily constitutional I just decided I wanted a paper. For a buck and a half day it's not a bad deal. And other things are at work too.

The newspaper never freezes. It never takes forever to load; if I'm reading and article which concludes on page 3D, I simply turn to page 3D and it's right there. And while there are adds trying top distract me they are easy to ignore. Nothing pops up on my newspaper page forcing me to click it off, nor does my text get shoved downward on the page where I have to scroll to keep up with, or look for that insolent little tiny box with the 'x' to click on, to roll what I'm reading back up. I also get the puzzles for my entertainment, and the comics are found nicely arranged on one page. No going to a couple dozen different web pages for a comic fix.

My computer and smart phone will always be available, and I certainly get my use out of them. Still, the morning paper has reacquired for me a certain charm. I read as I want to read, jumping from page to page I feel more quickly than my computer sometimes does. It's simply a nice way to ease into my news day. Into any day.

Wow. I'm loving golf and reading actual newspapers. I am getting old school.

The silent non-killer

Ah, Biology 10, the science course I took during my sophomore year at old St. Hedwig. I don't remember much about the course except that it was taught by Sr. Christine, a sweetheart of a nun, one of the most pleasant people I've ever known. Subject matter-wise, I really only remember the day when she spoke about how heart disease develops and affects the body.
Sister went over all the usual things which typically precipitate a heart attack: chest pain or pressure, numbness in the arms (particularly the left), sweating, difficulty breathing and so on. Then she lectured on something which none of us kids had ever imagined. She spoke about silent heart attacks, those where there are no obvious symptoms.
As Sister went on with her talk, several of us, myself included, began feeling our chests and monitoring our bodies. If the other students' thought processes were anything like mine, they were something like: 'No sweats, no trouble breathing, no chest pain. Oh my God, I'm having a silent heart attack!'
The power of suggestion however unintended (Sr. Christine of course meant nothing, as she was merely teaching a section of a class) can be very strong, and rather childish, in adolescents.

Cosgrove the horse thief

Mom's had a few brushes with celebrity. She met George Clooney once when he was filming a movie (Out of Sight, for those interested) in her neighborhood. She met Jennifer Lopez then too, but said that Clooney was much nicer.
Once she met Martin Sheen. He had come to Mass at her Church and somehow they were introduced. When told she was Ella Cosgriff, he asked, as so many people seem to about our surname, "Cosgrove?"
"No, Cosgriff," she replied. Then she repeated the family tale that we were once Cosgroves, but as an ancestor was reputedly a horse thief back in Ireland we had changed our name so as not to be associated with villainy. "Cosgrove was a horse thief," she finished.
The actor laughed out loud. "Really? I'll have to tell my lawyer that story. His name is Cosgrove," Martin Sheen explained to Mom.
The legend continues...

Reading within the lines

I wish I had read more in days gone by. Now I have a lot to read and nowhere near the time to do it. This is considering that I watch hardly any television anymore. TV entertainment quickly becomes the same old stuff; so too do movies I've found.
But it's finally struck me that with reading, you control the medium. No channel surfing, trying to discover something by chance. No risking ten bucks on a movie; let's face it, movies really are a great unknown. You're taking a chance that it won't be worth the time much less the money. I feel similarly with movies on TV, albeit with less cost.
Books, though, you control them. Yes, they do cost something. That's where patrolling discount shops and second hand stores comes in. The costs aren't so high. The risks are lower that you get a bad book than see a bad movie. You could, of course, get a bad book. But you at least get the chance to peruse it, at least a little bit, before purchase. And you learn what authors and genres you like.
When I discovered Ellery Queen and Sherlock Holmes I had built in supplies of new (for me) books to grab. Even before that, if you like a genre it's easy to find good, cheap books in subject areas you like. This summer alone I read my first book on black baseball, Shades of Glory, which I picked up at a discount store for $2.99. It was a good, informative, entertaining book. Similarly I'm now in the middle of The Kid, a biography of Red Sox slugger Ted Williams, which was at the same store for the same price and has been a good read too.
You get the picture. Can you turn on your TV and be assured of finding the entertainment you want? Maybe, but not necessarily. But your book is your book, and it waits patiently while you channel surf. That's a pretty good friend in my, uh, book.

High tide in Milan

I drove past Milan, Michigan yesterday, and it reminded me of something I had long forgotten.

Back when I was a teen, I was there with Grandpa Joe picking up one of his welders. It was at a Ford plant when they were doing an expansion. It had apparently rained the night before, and rained hard. Although we were in a building, there was a large pool of water, about three feet deep and a hundred yards wide on all sides. The welder itself was land locked on the other side of that pool. And the only way to get to it was straight through that water. "You have to drive straight," a foreman was telling Joe. "If you drift to either side the water's about six feet deep." Joe got out of the car and told me to drive through the water to the welder just like the guy said.

Thanks Grandpa.

Of course I did it; you don't argue with your grandfather when you're 17.

I drove that old Cadillac he had right through that water, straight as a tack. In my memory the water came to right below the driver's side window; how the engine didn't stall is beyond me. I was nervous and scared. But I got that Caddy through the ocean and right up to that welder, slowly but surely. But then the powers that be decided that the machine was too heavy to be pulled through the water by a car. They would get a bulldozer with a long heavy chain and drag it through the water.

And I would have to back the car out through the pool, as there was no way to turn it around. I hadn't known that when I started. I have no idea how we were supposed to hook up the welder now that I think about it.

But I backed through it and lived to tell the tale. The tale I remembered after 40 years yesterday.

Half in jest

Remember a few days ago, I blogged about the jokes that sometimes just pop into my mind? How some of them were silly, and some actually rather crass, or at least of questionable taste? I've had another crass one I'm afraid.
I was leaving a funeral home the other afternoon (you know, the other one), to find that an ambulance was sitting in the parking lot, lights flashing. I immediately thought, "Aren't you guys a little late?"
Am I a bad person?

120/70

120/70. Man, them are some good numbers.

This morning I had my regular checkup with my regular doctor and I think those numbers tell it all.

120/70.

My blood pressure as of 8 O'clock this morning.

To say I'm pleased is understatement. Sublime understatement. It hasn't been that low since high school. Even then, I seemed to have the opposite problem. For my senior year physical it was 101/59; the doc then was concerned that maybe it was too low.

But now - contented sigh - 120/70.

Oh, I've somehow gained three pounds since June, and my pulse (48bpm) is a bit low. The Doctor chided me over those factoids. They have to complain about something, you know. I know how I gained the weight too: I have not in the least bit watched what I eat in the last few months. But for now...

120/70. I think I'll make it my mantra.

Helping me do my job

A customer brought a machine in for repair this morning. There's no real news there: we repair what we sell. Yet before he left he took a minute to tell me all that he had checked. "That'll save you time, Cosgriff," he explained. I thanked him and he went on. And the first thing I did as I began to work on his unit was to double check everything he told me he had done.
Part of me hates to be that way. But the fact is that when someone who doesn't know what they're doing begins to do something anyway, they miss stuff. Sometimes they make it worse. Sometimes I have to undo everything they did just to get back to square one. They don't do it on purpose I know. Still, it delays me rather than helps.
So unless you know what you're doing, and what I do isn't brain surgery anyway so I will allow that a guy could well be able to fix his own snake, be careful about trying to help. Even though you mean well.

Snorting Coke

No, it isn't what you think. But what a hook, huh?

The traffic light caught me as I made a Michigan left on Telegraph Road in Taylor yesterday. As it happened, directly across from me as I waited I saw a family restaurant which used to be a Denny's. It was a Denny's when I was in high school back in the seventies (the NINETEEN seventies, just to clarify). My friends and I back then ate there with some modest regularity.

One such time, six of us stopped there on a Saturday night after a movie for a late dinner. We ordered food and pop. Of course, with six people there were orders for a few different types of pop: Coke, Dr. Pepper, and likely even a Diet Pepsi were in the mix. The waitress as was the norm brought our drinks first.

Only she had apparently forgotten who ordered what and what was what. She had too neglected to somehow mark them as some servers did even then, with two straws for the Coke, one for the Dr. Pepper, and so forth. So arriving at our booth, the young woman improvised. She stuck her nose almost into a pop, snorted loudly and, deciding the first was a Coke, handed it to one of us who ordered one. Then she snorted the next, another Coke, and set it before the next of us, then likewise determined which was the Dr. Pepper and handed it out.

Caught between silent snickering and uproarious laughter, we did what teenage boys would naturally do. We laughed uproariously. The girl looked at us as if we were insane and asked if everything was okay.

It more than was. In fact, her entertainment was better than the movie we had seen. It brought a whole new meaning to snorting coke.