Electrocuting a young helper.

I had a customer come into my Shop one day for a chuck on the front of his machine. He had a thirteen or fourteen year old kid with him as a helper.

As I gathered my tools and the new chuck I noticed that the cord which should have had a push button on/off switch on the end had nothing but two exposed wires. I said, "I have on/off switches on hand. I could pop one on for you." This was more than a mere upsell, Marty sticking his hand in a  guy's pocket. To start the machine you had to have that push button switch.

"Naw, I don't need it Cosgriff. That's what the kid is for," explained the customer, pointing at the young teen.

Incredulous, I asked, "What do you mean?"

The guy explained, "I have the kid hold the wires and I tell him to touch them together when I want it on. Then I tell him to pull them apart when I want it off."

"You're gonna kill this kid," I quite emphatically replied. "Oh, he'll be all right," I was told.

I went into my office, brought out a switch, and began installing it on the cord of his machine. "I ain't payin' for that, Cosgriff," the idiot tightwad said.

"I ain't asking you to," I barked back at him. And I barked it too. "But I can't let this thing go outta here knowing how you're using it. You're gonna hurt that boy."

I haven't seen him since, and good riddance to bad rubbish. And contrary to the opinion of some, I know I ain't God's gift to humanity. But some things you just have to do simply because they're the right thing to do.

Not good names

The things I think...

I passed a place called the Pain Clinic the other day. I thought, why would anyone want that?

Yes, yes, yes, there are all sorts of clever answers to that question. In this case it was a chiropractor's office. I'm just not sure that's the kind of name it should have. It's sort of like when I passed a car repair shop called The Collision Specialists. Kind of sounds as though they create their own work, doesn't it?

Well, perhaps that's where crash test dummies are employed.

See you tomorrow, I'm here all week.

Too hot Cloyce

I of all people can appreciate wanting a cup of hot coffee in the morning. It's as American as apple pie, right? Yet I do believe some folks can take it too far.

A good buddy of mine, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, thinks that programmable coffee makers are fantastically innovative innovations right up there with sliced bread. As a percolator man myself, I'll take his word on that. Anyway, he likes that he can have freshly made coffee the moment he gets up every morning. Fair enough.

He also likes microwaves; we all know how convenient they are. But what he really likes is that he can pour a hot cup of joe from his programmable coffee maker and put that cup into the microwave for another two minutes so that it gets really hot.

That's too much for me. I'm not big on piping hot anything. So far as I'm concerned, whether with food or drink, you aren't tasting anything after a point. You're only feeling the sensation of intense heat. It's like when you take of a bite of a bratwurst too quickly off the grill and all the boiling juices burst out. You aren't tasting the food, you're just burning the hell out of the inside of your mouth. In the case of Cloyce's coffee, we're talking searing, flesh burning, scalding heat that way I see it. Then what's really stupid, if you ask me, and I notice you haven't so I'll pretend that you did for the sake of my answering, with coffee that hot you start blowing across the top of your cup and taking dainty little sips trying to cool it. If there's sense in that I truly can't fathom it.

I suppose that if that's what he likes, so be it. But I sure don't see the point.

Driving for work is a pleasure

Like me Pops and me Grandpa Joe before him, I really like going on the road. I like to drive, I like seeing places I've never seen and even seeing places again I've seen countless times before.

I wish I had Joe's penchant for just getting up and leaving. Oh, he didn't do anything like say tomorrow he's going out west and then git. But when he made up his mind to go, when the wanderlust called him, he was gone as soon as feasible. If not sooner.

Me Pops drove as far as Las Vegas with trailer loads of machines and materials for trade shows. Those trips made his jaunts to Orlando, laden similarly, seem like walks in the park.

I haven't been called on to do that but I have driven quite a bit for work. Usually it's just within my territory, but I have drive to northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, and even northern Mississippi, for my job. I don't know that I could take ten days to go to Vegas what with it just being me and my brother now. But my own wanderlust is sated quite well in and around the Midwest along with the occasional ventures to points further (farther?).

One of the benefits of my job being in the wastewater supply line is that the current COVID issue doesn't affect me. I can still drive as business commands, and I have. I'm glad of that. I suspect Joe and me Pops would have been too.

Random Thursday

Random thoughts...

I still get to the Shop in the mornings and see the locks on the door and think, huh, the old man's late.

Della and the Dealer popped into my head a couple days and has become my ear worm. Yet any song heard over and over gets tiring.

73 two weeks ago and snow squalls all this week. I'd say welcome to Michigan but I think all states have similar complaints about their weather.

I believe my cousin Keven likes Ford Mustangs. Just a guess.

It's hard to be random when you're thinking about being random.

Bye for now.

Reflections on 60

Well, yours truly hit the big 6-0 today. I supposed technically not until 4:30 this afternoon as that was the exact time of my birth. Maybe I should enjoy a few more hours of 59 while I can. Now where did I put that Things to do before I'm 60 list?

I don't understand why, because I haven't felt this way since I was a kid. In fact, I haven't felt this way since I got a baseball uniform from my parents on a birthday long ago. I put Number 6 on it and felt like a big leaguer all day.  But the truth is I feel downright giddy this morning. I haven't felt this way for quite a while anticipating this day, honestly. But why? Dunno.

Maybe, hopefully, it's a portend of things to come. A good portend I might stress. Be that as it may, life is good and I feel good.

I suppose one ought to reflect on life at these milestones. Yet I do that every day. I can't think of a day where something from my past, good, bad, or indifferent, hasn't popped into my head. I think it's more important to rekindle the good yet not entirely bad to consider your regrets. It's not wise to beat yourself up over the bad, methinks. Still, it ought to be acknowledged even if only in your own mind as reminders of how you could have, should have, done better. A man with no regrets probably isn't examining his life well enough.

But the good should mean more. And I have had a lot of good in my life, all of which is - kindly don't crack the obvious joke - precious to me. I thank God all the time for it.

So, to the future! What will 60 bring? I don't know. But I feel good about it. And I rocked 59, so there's a good sign.

And then Marty realized

I don't know about you but we had one hell of a snow squall in Detroit at about 6:45 this morning. Dark grey skies were overhead. Big, heavy, flat snowflakes were driven nearly sideways by a mighty wind. It was impressive. I stood in the open doorway of my Shop staring into it with awe.

Then I remembered that I was standing in the open doorway of my Shop. The snowflakes were in all-out attack mode, pelting me in the face. They stung too. I closed the door and went back to the work I had went in early to cover.

Everything just exactly wrong

I've had long days; we've all had long days. Some days things just seem to pile on, and all we can do is be thankful we're past them.

Once I was on the road for 19 hours. Midnight until Seven PM. I concluded a hard sell (okay, that part was good) and then got caught in a traffic jam within an hour of starting back home. It lasted about ninety minutes. When I had cleared what had caused the problem - a truck trailer by then to the side of the interstate looked like the Hand of God had karate chopped it midsection into an elongated V shape (how that happened I don't know) - I decided to heck with it, I'd take the scenic route for awhile. Why not? See something different than the freeway, enjoy the country air, just have a nice ride.

A train caught me at a railroad crossing. It only delayed me about, oh, ninety minutes. The train for some reason sat completely stopped for most of it.

This put me in Toledo during rush hour. I-75 in north Toledo was under a massive reconstruction, so that obviously slowed me down all the more. But eventually I was through all that mess and in south Detroit (you sang it, didn't you?) and as I neared my exit I actually said aloud, "Thank God I'm home."

The exit was closed.

Okay, all I had to do was go to the next and circle around. First World problem. It still felt like my shoelace just busted.

But I supposed we've all had worse too. When it happens to me I'll let you know.

The day that made America

On this day in 1775, the Shot Heard Round the World was fired. American militiamen turned back the Redcoats at North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts. The Revolution had begun.

I said it before and I'll say it again: I believe in American exceptionalism. I believe the United States is a singular nation in world history. How many other revolutions have had the unprecedented positive success of ours over such a long time frame? Not many.

Are we perfect? Of course not. We have stains on our historical record which we should never ignore. We must, if we are to be true to our ideals, admit and learn from our mistakes. Yet that doesn't mean we cannot be proud of our achievements. The citizen soldiers of the 1770s made those achievements possible. If anyone ever really understood responsibility towards their fellow peoples, they did.

The world is a better place because of the United States. I am proud of that fact, and proud to be an American.

Talk about the weather

Well, today looks nice. So far. Sunny even though chilly.

What was with that snow here in the D yesterday? I mean, it was April 17th for crying out loud. And it showed all day. At least everything was too warm for it to stick, but still.

I imagine the folks up north will laugh at that. Or even my buddy who lives in Saskatchewan, who sent me pics of a one foot snowfall in May 20 a few years back. A foot of snow on May 20? Unimaginable. But the old guy within me who is becoming a weather wonk had me look up the latest Detroit snow. The latest measurable amount fell on May 9, 1923, and we have had flurries as the late as the 31st, in 1910.

But things look good today. I'm even taking my morning walk for the first time since Monday. Cold weather and the snow have kept me from my daily constitutional. Then I have to put in about six hours at work. Yep, we're still that busy. And my boss is still a jerk.

How convenient

Yesterday I renewed my license plates over this neat little thing called the Internet. It was quite convenient, especially as all Michigan Secretary of State offices are closed due to the corona virus panic attack. But I've done it in the past anyway. It's very easy. So why was I being charged $1.65 as a 'convenience' fee?

Isn't it quicker, easier, and healthier (he snidely points out) to renew this way? And I certainly do confess that I wouldn't stand in line at the MSOS for two or three hours to save a buck sixty five. Still, to do something in a manner which is quicker and cheaper for everyone (I'm not tying up an SOS employee for ten minutes) and yet be charged for it grates on me.

It's not just government agencies doing it. I go to the stadium to buy baseball tickets (when there's actually baseball that is) because I don't see the point in paying three or four bucks per ticket for the convenience of buying them online. But at least I have the option of not attending baseball games. I have to deal with the state government. A government which gets plenty of money from me anyway through the myriad forms of taxation such as license plate fees.

Rant over.

In droves

I think many if not most of us have remarked at times how things seem to happen in bunches. The old saw death comes in threes comes to mind. The truth is I find that idea generally accurate.

I haven't needed a certain particular reversing switch in about eight or ten weeks. Today I need three. There's a part called a gear shaft which comes out of the motor of an Electric Eel Model C. We will literally go months, maybe as long as a half a year, without needing any and then bam - we need four.

Why is that? An friend of mine who is a math teacher once explained to me that statistics actually prove (or at least strongly indicate) that a given thing or things will as a matter of course happen in bunches. The trouble is we tend to think, or want to believe anyway, that even what would be considered random events (those shafts wearing out for example) happen in a nice, linear timeline. A, then B, then C and D and so forth, all nicely spaced. As we typically replace 12 in a year's time we should replace one of them a month, we expect, rather than two in January, none in February or March, four in April and so on.

Yet things don't happen that way. Or I suppose more accurately things over which we have no control happen over an evenly spaced time. They will happen as they happen, and statistically that means in droves. Usually: there will be singular events of course. Yet that too is covered by statistical theory. Sometimes things just happen and that's that.

Another teacher friend of mine is fond of saying math is life. I think she's right. And I think that even more each time I need three reverse switches all at once.

Me Grandpa Joe's cars

I really don't know where to begin. Me Grandpa Joe had a plethora of cars which ran the gamut from neat to bad, and on downhill to particularly, excruciatingly bad. Yet he was proud of every one of them, and I was somehow proud that he was proud. He often had so many that it qualified him for the fleet rate with his insurance company.

There's the 12 cylinder Packard I wish I had seen. Pops always seemed impressed, even wistful, talking about it. Perhaps Joe's biggest claim to celebrity was a big white Chrysler Imperial (which I did see, and even rode in) which supposedly had a governor of Florida as a former owner. Man, that thing was huge. And who could forget the 1961 Ford Fairlane which he bought for thirty five bucks? It went from zero to sixty in, in, well, I don't think it ever actually made it to sixty. Oh, and a 65 Chevy Bel Air which always smelled burnt because he had flicked a lit cigarette out the driver's window only to have it sucked into an open back window and burn out the rear seat. That one became (more or less) my brother Phil's. It lasted until 1983, when it was t-boned by a guy who ran a stop sign. But the one I remember the fondest was a 1967 Cadillac. It was purple.

Well, more like lilac really. He had bought the car while we, me Pops and Mom and the family, had been in North Carolina visiting her folks. Joe felt it needed painting and found a paint shop running a special obviously intended to get rid of unpopular colors. Since Joe always said "I ain't Hell on pretty," he didn't care about the color. He cared about the great price for the paint job. I can still hear me Pops, as we pulled up behind that beauty on the return home, asking incredulously "I wonder whose purple Cadillac that is?" He should have known.

Joe being Joe, he had a hitch installed on that thing because any vehicle could pull a welder. That's exactly what he had me doing when I was an older teen: delivering welders with it. I heard every purple Cadillac joke imaginable taking machines into factories and onto job sites.

Still, it was a neat car in its own way. It was the last style of Caddy, I believe of any American car, with tail fins, modest though they were.

Yep, me Grandpa Joe had some cars. As I remember more I'll tell you about those too.

Guys don't talk

Got a call from an old friend, we used to be real close. So goes the old Billy Joel song. Happily the two friends I'm about to discuss, while both indeed being old friends (I feel I've accumulated a lot of those and that's a good thing), we're still close and see each other regularly. This is more about the phone calls.

They both called me over the weekend. They both called just to talk. So we talked, and both conversations were pleasant. But I want to stress that they had called respectively just to talk, just to pass time. What was odd about it was, well, guys as a rule don't call to talk.

Think about it. When a guy uses a phone it's almost always for information purposes. You busy, how about breakfast? What's our tee time this Saturday? Can I borrow your rake? Is your internet out? If they're still working they call other guys about work related stuff. Guys don't call to chat. They call to find things out. They may well talk quite pleasantly at breakfast or on the golf course. But they don't use the phone just to talk.

I do believe this shelter at home thing is affecting us guys profoundly.

Easter 2020

Well, to say that this will be an unusual Easter is certainly understatement. Yet it will still be Easter and Christ will still have risen. And that's the real bottom line.

Happy Easter.

Good Friday when Pops was younger

When me Pops was growing up, the neighborhood was more of a neighborhood. There were more stores, more houses, and religion still had a more direct effect on lives. So much more of an impact in fact that many stores and small businesses would close from 12-3 on Good Friday in commemoration of Christ's death on the Cross.

One day the Catholic school Pops attended had signs made up for the stores. They said simply, We will be closed on Good Friday from 12-3. Sister Principal called on two eighth grade young men to carry them around to neighborhood establishments and ask if they would like a sign for their window. Pops was one kid and a friend of his, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, the other. They didn't mind. Doing God's work got them out of school for a couple hours.

Sister instructed them not to try to talk anyone into taking a sign. Give them one if they wanted, go about your business if they didn't. In most places, Dad said, that's exactly what happened. They either took a sign or did not. Yet one small store owner decided he wanted to grill the two Catholic youngsters, and Pops himself felt the guy was being a little too pointed.

"You kids really believe all that stuff?" the man asked. He went on, and on, Dad explained later, knocking religion and what they were doing to the point where him and Cloyce felt truly put upon. Yet being kids, they weren't quite sure how to deal with it.

Cloyce soon determined a solution. After one too many snide barbs Cloyce said to the guy, "Look, mister, you can go to Hell for all I care. Do you want a sign or not?"'

He declined. Yet he obviously called the school to complain, because Sister Principal caught them at the door on their return. "Anything happen out there?" she asked suspiciously.

"No, nothing," Pops and Cloyce both answered. Dad said he didn't think she believed them; indeed, he was quite sure she had gotten a call. But she let things go at their assurance. Dad always wondered whether she knew the whole story and if in fact they had her tacit approval.

Bill's blood for whiskey

Me Pops used to give blood regularly. One day as he went to do so he ran into an old friend, whom I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name. "Where you headed, Bill?" Cloyce asked.

Pops told him. "May I ride along?" Cloyce then asked. Sure, Dad told him. He assumed his buddy might want to give blood too.

They soon arrived at the Red Cross building. As a nurse began to prep the old man she asked Cloyce, "Are you here to give blood too, sir?"

"No," he answered. "But someone told me that blood donors get a shot of whiskey afterward to help replenish themselves. Bill don't drink, so I figured I could get his shot."

They made Cloyce wait for Pops out on the sidewalk.

Spider solitaire

Somebody asked me once, they really did, how to win at spider. And I told them, you roll up a newspaper and you beat holy hell out of it. Then I realized that they were asking about the solitaire game.

As to that, uh, well, you play cards of the same suit on each other in numerical order, then you play cards of opposing suits on each other in numerical order until you can cross match them into tiers of the same suits and eventually you win.

But beating holy hell out of the cards with a rolled up newspaper works too. It works off the frustration.

Number 6

Damn. Just, damn. Your childhood heroes aren't supposed to die.

Detroit Tigers legend Al Kaline passed away today at the age of 85. He was my Tigers hero when I was a kid. I remember him playing right field at old Tiger Stadium. I remember standing in right field one day in 1998, and I just stood looking around the old ballpark, just to see what it looked like to him all those years, the 22 he suited up for the home team.

He told manager Mayo Smith not to play him in the 1968 World Series, his first and only one, because he didn't deserve it. He hadn't been playing well enough and believed others merited his spot. Smith found a way to get him into the lineup. Kaline responded by hitting .379 and driving in the runs in Game Five which put the Tigers on the road to wining the Series. They never trailed again.

I remember watching him play first base in a game in 1970 as his career waned. He looked like he belonged there as much as he belonged in right field.

Years ago my family bought me a Tigers home jersey with Kaline's number on it. I always cherished it, and now it means that much more. I wore it to the hospital the day me Pops died because I knew Pops would like it. I'll wear it tonight. I'll wear it on my walk tomorrow.

Godspeed Number 6. Baseball will simply never be the same again.

Just checking

"One thing about my checks. They're always good."

That might be the worst sentence I hear in sales. And it was spoken to me a few days ago as I was given a significant check.

Maybe I'm just paranoid. I had no actual reason to suspect the check is not good. The man who gave it to me has been a customer for around 10 years. Yet before today he always paid cash (which is certainly nice) or with a credit card (which of course I could run immediately). Then he gives me his first check, and his reassurance was not reassuring.

It seems as though every time meself or me Pops before me heard those or similar words we'd have trouble with the check which was always good. Oh, I'm sure not every time. But admit it, when a body has to make it a point to tell you their check is good it actually makes it suspect. I had already agreed, on my admittedly unspoken word, that I trusted his check. After that point, why must he assure me it's good? He even went to the point of showing me that his address was on the check. O-kay. Why would I not expect that?

I was sure the check was good. But I ran it down to the bank right away just the same.

It was good by the way.

Marty's walkies

The sun rises this morning at 7:09. You know what that means?

I can start taking my walks earlier.

I love the long days for all kinds of reasons. But one of them, one of the more childlike reasons I admit, is getting out the door at 6 o'clock and it's already bright. I know we aren't there yet. But those days are coming. They aren't that far away at all.

I'd like to abandon daylight savings time just so that the long days at the end of June start would start at about a quarter to five. I love the idea of being out walking at that time of day in sunlight.

It's a small thing. But sometimes, yes, the small things are the best.

Estimating grandparents

I remember a Grandparent's Day once at my granddaughter's school. Well, there were several over the years, but today I'm thinking about one in particular.

It was a nice day. Among other activities we attended the school Mass and had lunch in the classroom. Yet what I remember most came from the priest's sermon. He told everyone that the grandparents' role in their grandchildren's lives was not to be underestimated. That's nice to hear.

But being a grandfather though, I naturally had to make a joke of that. During lunch I reminded my granddaughter of what Father said. Then I asked her, "Know what I take from his words?"

"No," she responded curiously.

"Don't underestimate your grandparents!" I said to her sternly, with a pointed finger.

She laughed. Can you believe that?

The first thing to go

The perils of getting old...

I do a middling amount of work from home, so much so that it isn't unusual to lock up my Shop for a few minutes at a time so I can do something online or what not. I've even cautioned my customers to call if they get to the Shop and it's locked, because I'll come up if I can (it's only a couple blocks away). Often I'll drive my van back and forth to save a few seconds as against walking.

Yesterday as I worked from home I got a call about some cables. I told the guy I was at home, but call when he was close and I'd meet him. An hour or so later he calls; he's at my Shop. I ask him to give me five minutes and I'll be there.

I walk out the door, lock the house and start fumbling in my pocket for my van keys. At the same time I look out at the street: no van. It wasn't in front of the house or across the street from it, or even down the road a bit. My van wasn't there, anywhere.

Of course I began to get mad. I can't believe this is happening! And in the middle of the day! Someone took my van...no, Marty, you took your van. To the Mechanic. Because it had a broken coil spring.

In my defense, this was around 12:30 and I had already been up since 1 AM and driven a 400 mile road trip. But you aren't going to cut me any slack for that, are you?

Get this Pops

Hey Pops, how are you this morning?

So I broke the coil spring behind the driver's front tire on my van yesterday. Yet I had needed pickups to make at Electric Eel this morning. You know what that meant, don't you?

I drove to Eel and back today with a broken spring.

The van drove fine the whole 400 miles. I only had to deal with the tinkling, ringing sound I heard when I turned the heater off. It really didn't act out of the ordinary at all. The tinkling did sound weird on US 68 in the pitch black at 4:15 this morning, though. But I never thought twice about making the trip.

I guess this makes me a true Cosgriff, eh? Be sure to tell Joe. I don't doubt he'll get a kick out of it.

Until next time,

Marty

PS: The car's at Sam's now. I don't want to go too long without getting it fixed.