Oh, I'll still be working in the Shop today. There's no reason not be at the Old Barn for the sake of walk-ins, emergencies, and for the machine repairs we already have with us. But I'm not going on the road as I had planned, neither this morning nor Thursday AM. I've put that off until Friday. It's simply too c-c-cold to put myself at unnecessary risk.
Truth be told, me Pops wouldn't have done it either. Me Grandpa Joe, though; him I ain't so sure about.
While we nowadays do most of our own pickup and delivery, at one time we had most things shipped. This meant that our large orders came truck freight. One day as we unloaded a shipment out of the trailer of a semi, the driver asked me Pops, "What are these things?"
Dad answered, "Drain snakes. What people use to open drains."
"Oh," the man replied. After a pause he asked, "Know a guy they call Jake the Snake?"
Dad answered questioningly, "Yeah?"
"Ya like him?"
Pops figured by then the fella must know old Jake. Still, he responded tactfully, "I don't care for his company."
"Neither do I. None of the family does. I'm Ron; I'm Jake's brother." Ron went on to explain the family excluded Jake from all and any functions because all he would do is disrupt them in any way he could.
Blood runs thick, but apparently has its limits too.
There are few ways in which I never wanted to emulate me Pops. Well, actually only one. As a kid, I remember him always carrying a handkerchief. He routinely would take it out of his pocket, blow his nose, crumple the thing up and put it right back in his pocket. I vowed quite often, quite emphatically, that I would never do that.
I think you can guess what has actually happened. The short, quick answer is: I carry a handkerchief in my pocket.
You're still my hero, Pops. Happy 83rd Birthday.
I'm not sure exactly how Jake earned his moniker, but I have a suspicion. He argued everything. If a part was available in red he wanted to know why it wasn't scarlet. If told cables were readily available in twenty-five foot increments he'd cry he had to have one thirty foot long, nothing else would do. Yet most of all he argued price. He argued price until the day Pops was sick of it.
Jake came in for some ten dollar part. "Ten dollars," Dad told him.
"You give it to me for seven," Jake countered, demanding rather than asking.
That set Pops off. He slammed the part back into its bin and yelled, and I mean yelled, "Get out of my Shop. I don't want your business!"
"You throwing me out?" Jake asked, appalled. "I can buy you out ten times over!"
Pops barked back like a drill sergeant, "The Hell you can, 'cause I'm not selling. Now get out of my Shop!" Jake stomped out, and Dad stomped into his office.
You could get away with a lot with Pops. But you could still push him too far.
I was awake at 6 AM Tuesday. I worked, then played my curling match that night. We won, demonstrating the importance of a solid third in a curling lineup. I immediately left on a sales trip, figuring I could catch a few power naps along the way.
That didn't happen. The two times I tried I never came close to falling off into dreamland. The first time I was at a truck stop, but the chairs in the rec room were simply too uncomfortable to sleep in. So after an hour I gave up and went back to driving, to try to catch a nap later. That didn't work either, rental van seats being equally unconducive to sleep, so I just went about my day.
It's a funny feeling when, after being up and about for around 30 hours, in my case Noonish yesterday, that you realize you're tired but don't actually feel like sleeping. I felt profoundly fatigued yet was wide awake and very aware of what I was doing. My eyes weren't drooping shut; I was not nodding off in the least. I was driving well, and dealing with customers quite normally, chit-chatting and answering questions as though I knew what I was talking about. Indeed, I felt I could go another thirty hours. If anything, I had anxiety. I was anxious to keep going, to prove that I was up to my unintentionally imposed challenge.
Arriving home just after 4, I unloaded my own order at the Shop, returned the rental van, and on getting home I got on the computer. You know, to catch up on e-mails, not play games or anything (how could you think that?). I soon thought I'd stay up until 7, to break my record by an hour. Why not? And surely lying in bed with a book would seal the deal.
I woke up at 7:25 this morning with a book crunched under me. I think I made it til 5:30, or 35-1/2 hours. I missed it by that much, as Maxwell Smart would say.
"Anything," we said.
Soon enough the waitress appeared. My wife or I one ordered for our younger children, then each for ourselves. The waitress turned to our eldest. "What would you like, honey?" she questioned him.
After much deliberation he replied, "A bowl of oatmeal and a tuna sandwich."
The woman looked between my wife and I quizzically and we said it was fine. Hey, it was his birthday. If that's what made him happy, we were okay with it.
The older I get the less use I have for winter. It's just cold and slippery, and dirty once the pristine whiteness of newly fallen snow becomes mixed in with the grime of city streets and sidewalks. The irony, if irony is the right term, is that I'm really no fan of summer either. It's too hot and uncomfortable even with baseball and golf as saviors. I like May and September: warm enough that you can wear shorts and tees during the day, and maybe need one blanket at night.
I keep telling myself that I should be thankful that winter has been mild here, especially considering how badly beaten up the east coast and our neighbors south of here have had it. I remind myself hourly (okay, every few minutes) that we're actually only six weeks away from being past the worst of winter storms and temperatures. Yet when I look outside this morning and see winter's grip, to open my laptop to read the weather report for the next ten days (cold, too cold), such encouragement doesn't help.
Especially as I have to go outside and scrape off the cars in an hour.
Now that I'm on the road a lot I play the game myself. I've notice some things which might help you do even better when you play license plate bingo. It all begins with paying attention to the trucks on the highway.
To begin with, you'll get Maine and Oklahoma rather easily. For whatever reason, probably registration fees I presume, an awful lot of truck trailers are plated either Maine or Oklahoma. While Oklahoma may be fairly easy to spot on cars, Maine isn't, being small and tucked away in the far northeast of the US. With this tip, it's an easy gain of one relatively hard to find state.
It's also easier to find various plates if you look for the name of the truck line. If a truck trailer is blue (although it may be white) and says WERNER, it's plated in Nebraska. If the trailer is white and says SAIA, it's from Louisiana. Heartland Express trucks are plated Mississippi. It works every time: see those trucks, you gain three states.
This works for Canadian provinces too. If a trailer says 'Moe's Trucking' it will have an Ontario plate. With Bourassa or Normandin, the plate will be Quebec. Spot Bison Trucking and you'll gain Manitoba. These work every time too.
And that's how you can gain several states or provinces easily when you play license plate bingo. But one more caveat. If at the top center of a plate you see spelled out U-T-A-H, all in capital letters, it's from Utah.
That's a joke, son.
Now go play the game and enjoy these easy and exciting tips.
To be sure, as those of you who knew him will attest, he took the idea to an extreme. He drove vehicles which he probably should have not. Yet I think his basic idea is well and true. It taught me, rightly, I will assert, not to care too much for what I drive.
Consequently I tend to have cars with quirks. Take my current van, for example. If you hit the gas too hard when you pull away from the curb or a traffic light, it rumbles like hell before smoothing out and going on. But when I accelerate easily, it does just fine. Why? Don't know, don't care. It gets me from A to B and that's it's job.
The door ajar and check engine lights stay on constantly. Why? Don't know, don't care. The old girl starts every time and that's all I need her to do.
Sometimes when I roll the driver's window down it won't roll back up. But when I restart the engine it rolls back up. Why? Don't know, don't care. It rolls back up. That's good enough.
Joe's right. It's just a car. And it does what I need it to does. That's good enough for me. If it ain't good enough for you, I can live with that.
"You're a world traveler. What's your next stop?" I'm thinking Allen Park.
"You get to make the rules. What are they?" Only one: bow before me, foolish mortals, and obey my every whim!
"Last night's dream came true. What happened?" I really was at school in my underwear.
"Make up a rap about your day." No. Not a chance. Never.
"What made you stand out today?" Me just being me, of course.
I am sometimes just too proud of myself.
Late one Sunday a customer walked into the store and asked for a pack of cigarettes. Mr. Bush reached into the display and handed the man a pack, which happened to cost twenty five cents. The guy opened it, took a cigarette out, and lit it; again, it was no faux pas to smoke in a store back then. Next he drew his wallet out of his pocket and offered Mr. Bush a twenty. A Canadian twenty. "It's all I've got," he explained smugly. What he was trying to do was get American money in place of the Canadian without the trouble of going to a bank or currency exchange.
Mr. Bush didn't say anything. He merely reached under the counter, took out an old cigar box, and gave the man $19.75.
Canadian.
It seemed Mr. Bush had accumulated a bit of Canadian cash over the years and had kept it for no particular reason.
But things happen for a reason. In this case, to teach a smart aleck a lesson.
I found a drip from a radiator hose on my van this morning. As I went to pull away from the curb I saw steam coming from under the hood. A hose had a leak, dripping anti-freeze onto the hot manifold where it burned off as steam. On to my mechanic then rather than my sales trip. Should I mention this was about 4 AM this morning? I'm really quite happy to have discovered it then instead of when the hose would have blown completely several miles down the road in the wee hours of a cold January day. Reading in a warm bed beats sitting by the side of the road in the dark. I can make the sales trip well enough tomorrow.
So I go back inside and at 8 I begin the trip to Sam, my mechanic. He's only a mile and a half away so I figured I could drive that far as it was only a slow leak. But I texted my brother Phil to please pick me up at Sam's around 8:15. He never replies.
Well, he's occupied but he'll see the text soon enough, I figure. I drive down to Sam's and get the repair set up. We're good to go at 8:20, but no Phil to get me. Okay, I was a little put out. But I walk more than a mile and half routinely in the morning. I started walking home. Phil will know which way I'm headed, I reasoned.
Half way home, then three-quarters of the way home, and eventually all the way home. No Phil. I must confess (don't fret, still not about religion) that I was by then kind of upset. About then I got a text...from my friend Mike. He wanted to know who Sam was and why he should meet me at his place. I had texted the wrong person.
I had to walk all the way home from my mechanic. And it was my most grievous fault after all.
While driving out to meet some friends for lunch yesterday, I passed a store. Okay, I passed dozens of stores. But one in particular gave me pause. A sign, displayed loudly and proudly in its front window, screamed PRE-SALE IN PROGRESS!
So, then, you're having a sale, correct? A sale right now, this very moment, correct?
Pray, then, it's not really a pre-sale, is it? It isn't a pre-anything, is it? It's an actual we've cut prices and have specials event, isn't it? In other words, A SALE.
Am I the only upset by things like this?
I said they're funny, and I mean that as a good thing. They joke with you and you can joke with them. And then, a sign in their shop says they treat you like family. Yesterday's tire buying adventure offers a glimpse of all that.
Mike and Paul Warholak are the brothers who own the shop. I dealt primarily with Mike yesterday, though I had a good how's the weather conversation with Paul. Once my van was finished, Mike came into the customer waiting area to tell me such, and to tell me what I owed. I duly paid. Mike said thanks. And then, apparently realizing that I hadn't been in in awhile, said, "And oh, Happy New Year!"
"You too." I responded. Then I added, "Yeah, come to think of it, I haven't been in since last August."
Mike got this big grin on his face and replied, "But it's like you never left." He turned to go to his office.
I thought about that for a second. Then I called after him, "But that's a good thing, right? Mike? That's a good thing?" He ignored me. Willfully.
I think that exchange was funny. And it is part of why I buy my tires there. They're good guys.
He never went more than two weeks without a job, even during the Great Depression. That's considering he would quit a job, when jobs were scarce. Why work for someone or something you didn't like, he reasoned.
Once he and a buddy found themselves working long hours. They decided, in friendly rivalry, to see how long they actually could work (this was before rules and laws forbade such things). The two of them concurrently pulled 61 hour shifts, which only ended when the foreman ordered, "You're both crazy. Get the hell outta here!"
Joe took a new job once while he was already employed; it paid twenty five cents an hour (significant at that time) more than the one he held. While getting his gear together his suddenly former employer begged him to stay, ending his plea with an incredulous, "So you'd leave me for a quarter an hour?"
"Hell, I'd leave ya for a nickel an hour," Joe said simply as he left.
I don't know about you, but I admire the man.
Pops and Uncle Junior joked around a lot. One time Uncle Junior swore he'd never again go out to dinner with me Pops. He was embarrassed, he said, because Pops ordered a ton of food. Indeed, too much food. "I never saw a waitress bring out a plate with side boards before," he quipped.
Me Pops once owed me Uncle some money. Before a trip to North Carolina, Dad dutifully got together what he owed Uncle Junior. When he saw him a couple days later, Pops gave him the cash. Me Uncle just stuck it right in his pocket. "Aren't you gonna count it?" Dad asked.
"What for? You done counted it a dozen times," Uncle Junior replied. I'll take that a sign he trusted the old man.
As more comes to mind, I'll let y'all hear more.
A customer of mine, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, hit a deer while trekking along up north several years ago. It did little damage to his big old van but the deer was killed. Cloyce and a buddy who was with him heaved the unfortunate animal into the back of the van, figuring they would have themselves some free deer meat and deer sausage. There was only one problem. The deer wasn't dead.
Cloyce found that out several miles down the road when the back of the driver's seat got kicked hard. He glanced up to see the deer glaring at him through the rear view mirror. That's when the real fun began.
The enraged and injured deer showed its displeasure by wreaking havoc on the interior of Cloyce's van. It jumped, it kicked, it bit at Cloyce and his passenger and at the walls of the van and seat backs. The motions rocked the vehicle back and forth so hard that Cloyce had trouble keeping his van under control. And the deer, I don't know, brayed, bleated, roared, whatever noise it is that deer make, until the sound itself was deafening.
It took Cloyce about a mile to find a spot next to the road big enough to pull into. When he could finally stop, he and his friend leapt from their seats and into safety. They watched as the van was still being beaten up from the inside, until Cloyce muscled up the courage to open the sliding door. The deer shot out like shells from a shotgun and ran about 50 yards into the forest when it collapsed, presumably really most sincerely dead by that point.
But Cloyce had lost his appetite for deer sausage by then.
No red blooded American male will ever say that he doesn't like the slapstick of the Three Stooges. Not. One. But the slapstick towards the end of Home Alone (the first one) is about the most inspired slapstick I've ever seen.
I like farce, and both overstated and understated jokes. One of my favorite lines is still, "Wait a minute, Doc. You're telling me you made a time machine...out of a DeLorean?" Silly humor can be fun if well done and without self-conscience. I think of the Canadians Wayne and Shuster when I think of that. Loved their shtick. Did you know that they were Ed Sullivan's guests more often than any other performers? It's true.
Bob Newhart gets my vote for great understated humor. His stuttering and stammering are priceless. For farcical, outlandish humor It's either Monty Python's Flying Circus or the Marx Brothers. I give Python points for the often inspired cleverness of their insanity (Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!), but the Marx Brothers get the nod on comic timing. Even though it's been done a million, jillion times, you have to see Harpo and Groucho doing the mirror gag in Duck Soup. I still laugh out loud at it. Hell, I'm laughing out loud thinking about it.
Then there's unintended humor. Look up The Room or At Long Last Love for a taste of that. Sometimes people are so serious that it becomes funny. As the then movie critic Michael Medved said, "You haven't lived until you've seen the powder room scene in At Long Last Love."
Yes, I enjoy jocularity. How about you?
Uncle John, who me Pops called Zeke, noticed this as well as the rest of us. He used to quip that the road test for new drivers ought to be making it from I-75 to Trumbull along Warren without killing two people.
You caught that, didn't you? He was willing to spot you the first fatality because in that stretch of road you were going to kill somebody. And it would not be your fault.
Personally I think old Zeke had the right idea.
Curling bonspiels are different than a lot of tournaments. They aren't double elimination or anything like that but, rather, come with game guarantees. You are guaranteed to play a certain number of games, typically 3 or 4 depending on the length of the spiel. With the Detroit Men's, it's a four game guarantee. Everybody begins in the championship or 'A' event. Lose and you drop to the B, lose again the C, lose again to the D, lose then and you're out. You've played your guaranteed four games.
But I remember one time, I assume because of a scheduling quirk or an odd number of teams or some other unusual circumstance, that in order to make sure everyone got to play a fourth game, the Detroiters were forced to add events. Events E through Q were invented basically as dumping grounds to give everyone their fair share of play. Events E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, and Q were one-offs. And that was the year Team Cosgriff won the prestigious J Event.
We've done better. We've won the B, C, and D Events in the past. But we honestly, and proudly, can claim to be the sole ever J Event winners in the history of the Detroit Men's International Bonspiel.
We're still waiting for our trophy though.
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