Fruit Salad

Under doctor's orders, I am resolved to try to eat better. Let's see how long this lasts. 

Now, to be fair to me, a few years ago when I embarked on a similar voyage I actually did manage to lose twenty pounds and drop my blood pressure thirty eight points. So hey, it can happen. Deep within my being is some semblance of willpower.

Last Friday I was heading into my local supermarket determined to get fried fish from their deli as my lunch. Then that lurking spirit of will crept up. Passing the deli counter I approached the fresh fruit, where some reasonably priced fruit salads were on display. The one I selected had a mixture of watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew obvious through the plastic container. The bottom layer seemed to me to be black olives. That struck me as odd, olives in a fruit salad. But I like black olives, so I bought it.

Once home and checking email, I ate the fruit rather quickly and went after an olive. The sweet taste informed me that the black olives were in fact grapes. 

It all makes sense to me now. Fruit salad wouldn't have any bit of vegetable, would it?

Memorial Day 2022

Today is the day where we remember those who gave their lives for our country defending our nation in war. I think this year I want to especially remember those who died because of the wars and battles they fought while not having actually been killed facing the enemy.

I'm thinking specifically about me Pops youngest brother, me Uncle John. While he didn't die until 2005, I don't think he ever completely left Vietnam. I believe there were others in similar trials who even after they came home were still fighting. They deserve our thoughts and prayers too. Give them a minute this Memorial Day.

Can I Trust Groucho?

I received an email from, I am not making this up up, the law firm of Wagstaff and Cartmell. It deals with the possibility that William Cosgriff Sales may be entitled to around $275, and perhaps a thousand dollars or more, as part of a class action suit settlement against a company which processes credit and debit cards. I don't know what to think.

In the first place, we haven't used the company since 2013 when Dad passed away and I dissolved his sales business and formed mine. So William Cosgriff Sales hasn't existed since December 31, 2013. Do you think I can I get that money? It's no windfall, and I would give it to me Mom of course since anything from that era, being Dad's entitlement, would now be hers. She would be tickled just to get it, even if she didn't really understand where it came from.

But more than that. Can I trust a law firm named after one of Groucho Marx' most famous characters, Quincy Adams Wagstaff? He was a college professor in the Marx Brothers college romp Horse Feathers. Here's a clip of his famous little ditty: 

Professor Wagstaff Song

What do you think? Should I go for it?

Cloyce TV

Me Pops had an old friend growing up, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who spent part of his adult life as an over the road trucker. Cloyce liked the job, other than one particular day.

Generally, Cloyce didn't haul one load of one given item. His truck trailers would be filled with all sorts of miscellaneous flotsam and jetsam destined for someplace other than where they began. He merely picked up a trailer, drove it to terminal, and was given another trailer for the flip flop. Easy peasy.

But one day he was given a load which was nothing but brand new RCA color console TVs. You know, those wooden behemoths which were the centerpiece of most of our dens and living rooms in the Sixties and Seventies. The retail cost of the load was around $60,000, not chump change today but a much heftier sum in 1967.

Cloyce found he was scared to death the whole time he had that trailer full of television sets. "Bill, there's people out there who hijack trucks when they know such valuable things take up the whole trailer, " Cloyce was explaining to me Pops. "They'll kill you over that!"

It wasn't too much later that Cloyce found another job. He didn't want to get another haul like that.

Whatabouters

Whatabouters. I hate them.

You do too I bet. I'm talking (ahem) about those people who object to everything. No choice, no option, is legitimate or proper. Yet they object to any and all suggestions put forth.

I've been on my Parish Council at Church, involved in politics, social clubs, kids sports and what have you and they all have whatabouters. Worse, whatabouters seem to be the most common attendees at meetings for any such organizations. I guess they have nothing better to do.

If A is presented, what about B? If B, have you thought about C? They then commence to run you through the entire alphabet and more of objections. But they won't themselves to commit to anything. Something must be done, but all ideas are all wrong.

Whatabouters. I hate them. They're just a bunch of time wasters.

James and Cloyce

I'm going to try to get this story right. I'll just ask all of you out there to remember that stories and memories can get garbled over time.

Me Great Grandpa James wasn't a drinker. Yet one day he found himself with a jug of whiskey; I just don't recall how. But as he tooled along in his horse drawn wagon (this would have been in early 1900s Illinois) he noticed the town drunk ambling towards him. I'll call the guy Cloyce just to give him a name.

Anyway, me great grandfather could tell that Cloyce was ailing. So he pulled up and asked what was wrong. He was recovering from a drunk, Cloyce explained, and that maybe a little hair of the dog would help. Yet he didn't know where he might find any that morning, a fine Sunday morning as it were. James gave him the whiskey he had and went about his business.

He ran into Cloyce a few days later and asked how the whiskey was. "Just fine, sir, just fine," Cloyce answered. "Any worse and I couldn't have drunk it, and any better and you wouldn't have given it to me." 

As an aside, me Great Grandpa later found out that Cloyce had been going all over town bragging that he had gotten a drink from old Jim Cosgriff, and on a Sunday morning no less. But he didn't mind such tales making the rounds.

Good Rude and Cool

Travelling across west central Ohio yesterday I came across Rude Road. Even our highways and byways are losing their sense of decorum, it seems.

But there's hope. Not too long after that I discovered Cool Road. It's all cool, man, we just chillin'.

Along the cool road there also happened to be the Good Farm. Who's a good farm, who's a good farm? You're a good farm!

I am glad I got the rudeness out of the way early.

A Medical Opinion

As I sat tying my shoes across the examination room from my doctor yesterday I asked, "So, Doc, what's the verdict?"

"You're old and fat," he answered.

I responded, "I get told that for free a dozen times a day. Why do I have to pay a $320 office visit to hear it from you?"

"To make it official," he explained gruffly.

My doctor never did and never would have put it that way. My manner of interpreting the conversation is simply funnier. Oh, he definitely said I was old and fat, in so many words. But he was much more diplomatic and charitable, properly mixing in all the old saws about continuing to exercise and eating better (and less), cushioned in the right sense of calm urgency. 

Perhaps that's why it's $320 for the office visit. I believe most of us would measure our words much more carefully for that kind of money.

Just Don't

There's a thing which happens occasionally on my Facebook page which I find annoying. I'm sure it's happens to others too, on their pages, and I wonder if it annoys them as well.

At times I will post items which I confess are provocative in the sense that I know they'll provoke, at least in the minds of another person, certain reactions. Yet I will also say that, while sometimes pointed, I try to avoid plain old rudeness. That never helps engender decent conversation. So I resent having rudeness thrown back in return. I say this admitting that I have all too often been rude of my own volition, my own lack of tact and consideration. Being human, I have allowed myself to fail the test of charity (and a great many other tests too I assure you) from time to time. Yet when it does finally get through my thick skull that I've been rude or what have you I do try very hard and very sincerely to make what amends I can.

That said, I've posted serious things on serious matters which get thumbs up signs, angry smiley emojis, and all in between. But I find it profoundly aggravating when someone posts a laughing out loud emoji in response to a very serious post. I wonder why they would do that. And the only explanation I can come up with is that they have nothing better to offer in response. I wonder whether they, in their hearts, know that any argument they might make in their own defense must be tepid and shallow.

If you want to disagree with me, disagree with me. But to respond, basically, that what I just said is so stupid and moronic that all it deserves is to be laughed off the stage indicates to me that you have no sane rebuttal. Otherwise, you would have offered it. No one who genuinely seeks truth simply laughs off the rational opinion of another. They respond calmly and rationally. They only call it insane or inane if it truly merits that. Even then, they should do so as charitably as possible.

For the record, I see this on the left and the right and even from the center. And no one should do it. I don't care how stupid you believe the other person to be, or even how rude they're being. If that's all you got, just don't say anything. Don't respond at all.

Wake Up Call

Me Grandpa Joe, he liked to travel. He liked to get out on the open road to see where it would take him. Me Grandma Cosgriff, not so much. A lot of that I'm sure had to do with Joe's driving. And the cheap hotels he'd stay in. And the quality of cars he'd drive. Ok, I suppose there were myriad and varied reasons why she would let him go off on his own. She was quite content to stay home when the wanderlust bug bit Joe.

Joe would of course call home regularly to let her know where he was and that things were okay, even if it was only Joe okay. Early one morning, one very early morning, right around two AM in fact, the telephone rang at the Cosgriff household. Grandma struggled out of bed to answer it.

"Hey, just calling to tell you I'm in California and I'm fine," Joe's gruff voice told her from the other end of the line.

"Well, I'm glad you're okay, Joe, but you didn't need to call me at two o'clock in the morning to tell me that," me Grandma said in response, in the quiet way she tended to address Joe.

He had gotten the times mixed up. Calling from California at 11PM, he knew there was a three hour difference from home. But he had it backwards that day and thought it was eight in the evening in the east.

Just another day in the life of Alice Cosgriff I'm sure.

Riddle Me This

Are there more bad drivers these days, or do we just notice them more as we have more years of driving experience behind us? I don't know the answer. But I know I see a lot of bad driving.

Some of it, no doubt, is that too many folks are readily distracted. Three times this past week alone I've had to tap my horn because the driver in front of me hadn't moved several seconds after the light had changed. I've even driven around cars which can't seem to obey green lights. Put your phone down, honey.

Yesterday on the freeway as I motored along in the right lane I was passed by a car in the center lane. No surprise there, right? Yet I noticed his signal on; his left blinker in fact. Okay, he wanted to change lanes. Only he soon moved into the right lane despite the left indicator clearly displaying the opposite intent. What's worse, he inexplicably stopped at the top of the next exit smack in the middle of the ramp. No coasting as though the engine had died: bright brake lights came on and he virtually parked with no attempt to jump onto the shoulder. I could have plowed right into him if I hadn't noticed. What up with that?

I swerved around him as I had no time to stop. It didn't help that the driver at the bottom of the ramp was another nitwit who couldn't figure out what green meant.

So: more bad drivers or simply a bad Saturday morning out and about for yours truly? I'm not sure, and the other drivers aren't helping me figure it out.

Good Mornings

This is just about my favorite time of year for my morning walks. It's warm, and you can start early as dawn begins around 5:30. In da U.P., Michigan's Upper Peninsula - I'm sorry, Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula - you can be out before 5 AM and it's light enough to see.

Yep, I like walking this time of year. I surely do.

Go on now, that's all you're getting out of me today. I have to walk the walk.

Mild Expletive Driver

In Indianapolis yesterday I saw a Jeep with a threatening message. The message warned, 'If you hit my car while my kids are in it, I will whoop your (mild expletive).

How I came to notice the vehicle was as it sped past several of us other drivers sitting in the left turn lane to enter the freeway, safely waiting for the red light to let us proceed. The Jeep shot alongside the line at a high rate of speed before jumping into a small opening three car lengths ahead of me, just as the car it cut off began to move forward. It darn near clipped the bumper of the vehicle already in the left lane.

I saw the warning and thought, I'm not sure her kids are more safe as passengers in her car than they might be from other drivers. But rules for thee I suppose. I bet we wouldn't get away with whooping her (mild expletive) over her driving.

Danse Craze

Several years ago I happened to be at a wedding reception with a friend who happened to be French. I'll call him Monsieur Cloyce just to give him a name.

At one point as Monsieur Cloyce and I were chatting the DJ called for anyone interested to come out onto the dance floor for a group dance. When all were assembled he began playing began The Chicken Dance. Hilarity ensued.

Monsieur Cloyce and I had elected not to participate. But he did turn to me and remark, "At home in France, we have a similar event at weddings. We call it, Le Danse Du Coq."

"Really?" I asked. "What does that translate to?"

"The Chicken Dance," Monsieur Cloyce answered solemnly.

I suppose I might have guessed that.

Cloyce the Engineer

There was this drain snake customer of ours, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who might have been the penultimate re-inventor of the wheel. There wasn't a drain snake which was safe from his passion to do things different under the guise of making them better, which to my knowledge he never actually managed. His improvements tended to make things harder rather than easier.

Ol' Cloyce had a large plate installed atop a snake to turn the motor a hundred and eighty degrees around because it would then magically give the machine more power. It didn't, but it sure made working on the motor a greater chore. 

He welded the power feed onto a machine, backwards too by the way, because that made it easier (he argued) to access the actuator handle. Not in the least, I tell you, but replacing bearings was then a true challenge because you had to take the entire feed apart to do it. Normally you take the unit off and set it on a work bench where, trust me, putting in new bearings was much more readily done. 

Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was retrofitting a thirteen horsepower gasoline engine to his electric drain machine because he was absolutely going to destroy any root bed in any sewer which came his way. Those roots would never know what hit them. 

There wasn't simply one thing wrong with that approach. There were many.

A typical electric snake has a 3/4 horsepower motor. Cloyce increased the power nearly twenty times the necessary strength. Overkill much, Cloyce?

Then the unit was too heavy and bulky to get into a standard basement in a private home. But that was probably just as well because, you know, toxic fumes from the exhaust just might be a problem in a small enclosed area. Maybe.

Professor Cloyce took care of that with an intricate series of detachable piping which could be run from an open basement window to the drain access. Of course, that put you as much as forty or fifty feet away from the job and left you blind to the work. I guess progress doesn't absolutely require that you see what you're doing, but still.

I'm sure he did rip those roots to shreds. I'm sure he destroyed a good many lengths of sewer pipe too. Ah well. Here's to Cloyce, the Thomas Edison of the snake world.

Or more honestly, the Rube Goldberg. But I'm sure the old boy had fun tinkering in his laboratory. Uh, garage.

The Evil Universe

There are those who argue that there cannot be a God on the grounds that an all powerful being would not allow evil in the world, or even that, if truly all powerful, He could not. Though I don't agree with the argument, I get it. They're arguing against something on at least superficially rational grounds. All right, then, what are they arguing for?

As the Universe we inhabit clearly exists I have to think that that is their replacement for an almighty being. It might well be their only option: the Universe simply is. We're here and that's that. 

My trouble with such a conclusion is twofold. Firstly, it makes us mere accidents of fate. I can't see where there's any real dignity in that. Second, doesn't that mean the universe is evil too? It doesn't seem to care about your trials and tribulations any more than your dismissed God, really, because you still have them, don't you?

You might say such existence isn't evil but merely indifferent. I don't see a useful distinction. If the Universe doesn't care a fig about you, even if it is only neutral about your cares and woes, I would have to argue that makes it evil. Many people were indifferent early on to the rise of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia and Maoist China. Was their indifference good or evil? 

Still, you might press the point that indifference means neither good nor bad. Well, if so, if you take God out of the equation because in allowing evil He can't possibly be good, it seems all we are left with is something else which can't possibly be good either. And what are we to do with that?

Grandpaw's Coffee

I hate trigger warnings but, hell, sometimes they add to the joke. And this is only a joke, a family remark which actually offends both major parties when you think about it. There's a shot at a Republican and a Democrat so, you know, it's an equal opportunity put down. 

Okay, part of what brought this to mind is surely the recent rampant inflation, but whatcha gonna do? That is what it is. This is not meant as a shot at any currently active politician. Honest. It's only a family story.

Like quite a few people in my family tree, me Grandpaw Hutchins loved his coffee. Me Mom to this day will remark with laughter, "Daddy used to always give us coffee, and Mom would complain, Mal (what me Grandmaw Hutchins often called him, short for his name Malachi) you can't give them young 'uns coffee!"

"It ain't gonna hurt them, Mae," he'd softly respond.

Coffee prices jumped huge during the terrible inflation in the late 1970s. Someone asked Grandpaw, "Mal, you gonna have to cut back on yer coffee ain't ya?"

He simply answered in his quiet drawl, "Hoover couldn't make me quit drinking coffee, Carter won't either."

Grandpaw was going to get his jitter juice, and no mere President was about to stop him.

Mistaken Identity

I know she didn't mean anything by it. They were simply honest mistakes, which I'm sure the woman doing the readings at Mass yesterday didn't even realize she was doing. By the same token, it was all very, very distracting.

The readings involved the apostles Paul and Barnabas travelling around Asia Minor spreading the Gospel. That's all well and good. But the reader kept saying it was Paul and Barabbas.

Barabbas of course is who the crowd demanded rather than Jesus when Pontius Pilate was trying to appease their wrath immediately prior to the Crucifixion. 

I cannot begin to tell you the amount of personal discipline it took a 62 year old man who was suddenly becoming a giggling preteen to keep his cool during Mass. The woman would say, Paul and Barabbas, and I would sit in the pew having to bite my tongue to not laugh. Then she said again, Paul and Barabbas, and I thought, of course, Barnabas. It's Barnabas, dear woman. Barnabas.

Ten seconds later she revealed that Paul and Barabbas were preaching in Antioch and Cappadocia. And I would have to stifle a laugh. Again.

There weren't many people in that large Church and let me tell you, a quick stifled laugh which sounded like a painful stifled sneeze rather echoes under such circumstances. I just know a couple folks turned around to find the source of the sound which might have been a startled animal but was rather an old man trying desperately not to regress to 11 years old. Of course I then had to hear one more time about the good works of Paul and Barabbas. 

I was squinting my eyes shut and holding my hand over my mouth by that point. Then I began to lurch towards the opposite impulse of laughing out loud. I wanted to stand up and shout, "Paul and Barnabas! It's Paul and Barnabas for crying out loud!" 

Thankfully the organ began playing. The child in me finally left, and not a minute too soon.

Of Packards and Purple Caddys

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. It was the car I drove through a small lake, on orders from Joe, when I was 17. You can read about that here: https://thesublimetotheridiculous.blogspot.com/2017/10/high-tide-in-milan.html if you care to.

Yep, me Grandpa Joe had some cars. There's more where this come from, and I'll get to it someday.

Kleenex Philosophy

I don't mind serious discussions of serious issues. In fact, I rather love it. But I do mind when someone tries to chime into a conversation with nothing more than shallow, insulting intent. 

A few days ago I posted on Facebook something serious about a serious issue. I won't say which issue because that is not important in this context. My complaint applies to conversation generally on any critical question. But to get on with it, one response from a person who disagreed with my point was merely a derisive laughing out loud smiley face emoji.

You know what that tells me, poster? That you have nothing relevant to add to the debate. In fact, I have to believe that you posted such a timeless response because you know you have nothing better to say about the issue. Your own heart teaches you that all your arguments are nonsensical, irrational. You know it. So your contribution to the discussion is derision. It's all you have.

If you don't want to or, as appears to be the case all too often, can't offer anything serious to a serious discussion, then you can blow your opinion out your nose. In serious debate, comment intelligently or don't comment at all. Leave your snide, unscrupulous, pig headed beliefs where they belong: on a Kleenex in a trash can.

Dear Athletics Fan

On a lighter note today, since yesterday's blog was only on attending a couple of baseball games yet had become rather more whiny than I honestly intended it to be, I will tell you of the vaguely humorous aftermath of that doubleheader.

Here's a bit of background which might help you understand things: the first game of yesterday's twin bill (do the Minnesota Twins ever play twin bills?) at Comerica Park in Detroit was technically a make-up game from a postponement from week one of this year's baseball season. The Tigers were supposed to play the Oakland Athletics in Oakland then, but in order to play a full 162 game baseball schedule one game of the postponed three game series was added onto the only trip Oakland was to make to Detroit this year (The Tigers and A's will play a doubleheader in Oakland in July to make up the other two). As such the Tigers, even though the game was in their home stadium, batted first as the visiting team. Oakland was considered to be at home due to the rescheduling, and batted in the bottom of the innings.

It was weird enough to watch the Tigers bat first while wearing their home uniforms, well, at home, as they should. Yet as I had purchased my ticket online apparently Major League Baseball thinks I'm an Oakland fan as it was supposed to be a home game for them. That must be the case, as this morning in my email was a letter addressed, 'Dear Athletics fan'.

You see, MLB wanted to know about what it was like for me to be at an Oakland home game. The email explained that the sender was interested in my experience at the Oakland Coliseum, where they play their honest to goodness home games. It would only take me 9 -11 minutes, I was assured.

I might just answer it. You know, mess with their heads a little. I could sing the praises of the Coliseum even though it is generally considered the worst stadium in the league. After all, the Tigers won. I would have been just as happy about that In Oakland as I was in Detroit.

True Twin Bill

For me, if there's one thing the baseball lockout accomplished which I rather like is that it forces MLB to play true doubleheaders. Doubleheaders are two games played on one ticket.

Twin bills, as they were often called, were at one time rather prevalent. Going through some things in the attic sometime last year I stumbled across my 1971 Detroit Tiger yearbook. The Detroit Nine that year played 18 scheduled doubleheaders between the road and home. 18. Now true twin bills are extremely rare. Typically baseball has one scheduled over the course an entire season, if that.

The Tigers actually played one last Wednesday (May 4) but I couldn't make it. There was simply too much work which had to get done, and even a self employed grunt has to have something of a conscience. But things had eased up a vague bit this week and I decided the hell with it, I was taking the afternoon off and going to yesterday's. Who knows when the next one will be?

I used to live for doubleheaders. As a teen I would check the schedule out the instant it was available and mark them off, scrounging up the money to attend as many as I could. Once I had a family of my own the entire crew would go, although by then there was usually only one a season. By the early 1990s they only appeared due to scheduling necessities. 

There appeared to be few such necessities. Oh, there are the atrocities of what are called day-night doubleheaders, where one game is played in the early afternoon and the other in the evening. Yet they require separate tickets and are not, so far as I'm concerned anyway, true twin bills.

I could go into the reasons why things have changed. But that would quickly become a screed, which this threatens to do as it is. I don't want to do that. I simply want to revel in the fact that, for one Tuesday afternoon, all was right in the baseball world. I was happy to take advantage of it.

Teen Cloyce

A few years back (okay, quite a few years back; quiet Ron) when my children were in middle school, I spent some time as a baseball coach on their various teams. It was generally fun, and made for easy Dad points. I got credit for doing stuff with the kids all the while doing something I liked, namely messing around on a ball diamond hitting and catching and throwing with relatively like minded young individuals.

One day before a practice a fellow dad of a young boy on the team, I'll call the kid Teen Cloyce just to give him a name, asked if I could possibly give his son a ride home. "Sure," I told him. It was no trouble at all, and it wasn't. Mostly.

After practice I waited for all the other kids to get picked up, as I was head coach at the time and that was part of the job. When the last left I told me son Frank and Teen Cloyce, "I'm a bit hungry. You guys feel like McDonald's?"

It was surprisingly easy to convince a couple of 13 year olds that that was a fine idea. So we headed for the nearest Mickey D's.

We went inside and ordered at the counter. That's when Teen Cloyce out of the blue asked the young woman cashier, "Do you guys have one of those hidden warning buttons that you push to call the cops when someone's trying to rob the place?"

I'd have rather he had been brazen enough to ask her for her phone number. Instead she stopped suddenly and, mouth agape and eyes becoming pied, stared at Teen Cloyce. Then she looked fearfully at me, who was standing aside stupidly, my hands in my hoodie pockets exactly as though I might be carrying a hidden weapon. Her eyes began darting around for the manager.

That was when it hit me what Teen Cloyce had asked. "Cloyce! You don't ask things like that!"

"I was just curious!" he replied, slightly panicked by then himself.

Turning to the cashier I said, overly and overtly calmly, "We're just here for a late lunch." 

With a nervous smile she gave me my change. But I insisted to the boys that we would take our meals to a nearby park to eat.

Just Trying for a Picture

As I was enjoying my daily constitutional this morning, I reflected on how pretty nature can be even in the big city. The wispy red clouds which greeted me as I left my house were sublime; a thin mist held sway just above the grounds of nearby Wayne State University. A few minutes later I noticed the morning Sun shining straight down Warren Avenue, wonderfully illuminating even the asphalt pavement in a yellow glow. I decided to try to get a picture of that.

Taking out my phone, I tapped on the camera icon. I sought the best angle for the shot without the bright Sun obliterating the scene. Too much Sun and you wouldn't see anything; it would overpower the lens. Once or twice I tried but things weren't quite right. A third attempt seemed to offer the best picture. 

As I began to take it, other sweet morning sounds came to my ears. There was the blaring of a bugle which may have been a car horn; there was an earnest voice which offered, "Hey old man! Get out of the street you're gonna get killed!"

So maybe morning rush hour traffic isn't the right time to catch nature's beauty. At least not in the middle of Warren in the city of Detroit.

I Didn't Strike It Rich

I don't know the first thing about horse racing. Hell, I don't know the first thing about horses. Yet I like watching the Kentucky Derby. For me, it's the sense of event more than anything else.

When I turned the coverage on about an hour before post time - for those out there even more neophytes than yours truly, post time is when the race is scheduled to start - I found myself wondering which horse with the longest odds had ever won the race. Then I saw a horse named Rich Strike was entered at 80-1 odds. And I knew, I simply, honestly, absolutely knew, knew beyond question, that Rich Strike was going to win the 2022 Kentucky Derby. There was no doubt in my mind.

With that knowledge, and I will call it knowledge as I was that certain, I thought about going online and placing a bet on the horse. But every single reason why that would have been stupid marched to the front of my mind. 

He's an 80-1 longshot, odds determined by experts on such things.

The horse wasn't even in the race until the day before. He got in only after a last minute scratch. What does that say, in practical terms, about its chances?

Rich Strike was purchased by its current owners for $30,000, a significant amount of money to most of us but a pittance for a high level racehorse. What should that tell anyone, especially a guy who, to repeat, knows nothing about horses?

You can't invest real money on something you know nothing about. That's dumb.

You're going to feel like a fool to lose $100 on a horse who had no reasonable chance to win. Yes, I was seriously thinking I would put a C-Note on Rich Strike. I mean, hey, 80-1 odds? That's an $8,000 payoff. But if I had bet and lost, none of you would ever know.

So I talked myself out of placing the bet. And that 80-1 horse came in exactly like I knew it would. 

To be sure, it wouldn't have put me on easy street. But this blog wouldn't have been so rueful today either, because I knew Rich Strike was going to win.

Pre-nonsense

Pre-selected? How can you be pre-selected? Once you've been selected, you're selected, aren't you?

I received a piece of mail yesterday that said I was 'pre-selected' for whatever. But they sent me the letter; does that or does that not mean that I have in fact been selected? How else would I get the invitation? I do not understand it at all.

Yet another thing for the useless terms pile. It's becoming quite a pile of, quite a pile of, uh, stuff.

Moving On

Today's missive is courtesy of the Department of Trivial yet Interesting Information to Baseball Fans.

Baseball fans know that teams have sometimes changed cities. At least three have moved twice: the Braves, Athletics, and Orioles. The Braves were in Boston, Milwaukee, and currently Atlanta; the Athletics Philadelphia, Kansas City, and now Oakland (with rumors of an upcoming Las Vegas arrival); the Orioles began in Milwaukee, ventured to St. Louis, and call Baltimore home these days. There are other instances of franchises finding new homes too. But does anyone know about the teams who nearly abandoned their original home towns?

Cleveland seriously looked at relocating to Minneapolis in the 1950s. The St. Louis Browns were all set to move to Los Angeles for the 1942 season, but World War II and its travel restrictions got in the way. The St. Louis Cardinals nearly moved to Houston, but the Busch family and beer money saved them (and forced the Browns to move to Baltimore). It's all trivial yet interesting stuff to baseball wonks.

But what always gives me the opportunity to wipe my forehead and say, "Phew! That was a close one," is that the American League almost moved my beloved Detroit Tigers to Pittsburgh in the early 1900s to compete directly with the National League's Pirates. Detroit was the smallest city in the AL at the time and the League questioned whether it could support major league baseball. Thankfully that move did not happen. And we showed 'em that Detroit is a worthy baseball town, didn't we, Tiger fans?

Raising the Breakfast Bar

For the first time in two years I was able to enjoy a complimentary hot breakfast at the hotel I stayed in last week. I am honestly a tad ashamed at the amount of sausage and scrambled eggs and toast and biscuits and gravy I consumed. I ate more than I should have. Far more. Quiet Ron.

Still, it reminds me of a story where me brother Phil and a good friend of the family, one Fr. Scherer, had went out to to eat together at a dinner buffet restaurant. It may help non-Catholic readers to know that the Church teaches there is a difference among sins. Mortal sins are very bad and separate us completely from God. Think murder, for an easy and (I hope) noncontroversial example. Venial sins are sins, but not so bad as all that. Think the proverbial little white lie here.

Anyway, Phil and the good padre, by their own admittance, readily availed themselves of the buffet. A bit too readily they each, again, conceded. They sat at the table afterwards like bloated, contented lions on the Serengeti. "I ate too much," Fr. Scherer remarked.

"So did I," Phil agreed.

Father observed, "You know, gluttony is a sin."

"Yeah," my brother shamefully allowed, with slowly shaking head.

"But we didn't eat so much as to make us sick," Fr. Scherer continued. "So it's only a venial sin."

I like how that priest thinks. I don't feel so bad about last Thursday now either.

An Ill Wind Blows

Let's shut down the media and the government for two weeks and see how quickly this crisis passes.

-Me, two years ago on Facebook

I said it at the time and I fully meant it. This was right at the start of the COVID panic, and I meant it as a slam on government, the media, and all too many regular citizens. We needed to calm down and take a breath in confronting the COVID threat.

We did not do that. Instead, we shut things down. We destroyed lives and livelihoods simply because we were scared. We stopped caring about human rights essentially because of raw, unfiltered fear.  We allowed irrationality to rule our thoughts.

That set the precedent that the government has the right to shut us up in our homes if it and only it deems the act necessary. This same government which is currently setting up a board of disinformation to determine what is wrong and what is right. 

Anybody but me feel a chill lately?

Democracy Dies in Darkness

It has been leaked that the United States Supreme Court is set to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow individual states to decide for themselves on the question of abortion. All that really does is line the issue back up with the Constitution, a perfectly understandable and reasonable idea so far as it goes. So why did abortion become a federal mandate to begin with? The simple answer is that our friends on the left who love democracy don't like it when democracy don't get them what they want. They go to the courts and try to twist the Constitution to force their way. They attempt to mandate their will.

It's no different an attitude than what they hold in other areas. Tolerance is great...except tolerance of ideas they don't like, such as tolerance of the pro-life. Free speech is great...except for the speech of those who disagree with them, especially in areas which cast doubt on their pet causes. Diversity is our strength...unless it's fed by the diverse ideas of conservatives and capitalists.

Ultimately, they can't be bothered to trust the political process about their ideas, oh no no no. They can't have their aims subject to debate in the arena of democracy. Their ideas are too important to be left to the people. The people might disagree. We can't have that now, can we?

Abortion has been and will continue to be a divisive issue. I can live with that myself, so long as debate about it is open, honest, and rational. But can those who disagree with me? Or are they too afraid, deep in their souls, that they might be wrong? For that, I believe, is the ultimate and final reason why they want the might of the government of the United States to wield as their cudgel. They don't trust their own values to actually win in the court of public opinion precisely because they fear they might be wrong. So they ditch their praise of democracy and employ raw power to get their way, because important decisions can't be left to the people. In their Orwellian newspeak, that's undemocratic.

Cotton Pickin' Ella

As we drove past farmers' fields' in southeast Michigan yesterday which were just beginning to show growth, me Mom remarked over a huge one, "You could get a lot of cotton on that field."

She turned to me and asked, "You ever pick cotton?"

"No ma'am."

"Oh, it was hard work," she responded. "We had to pick it all by hand. And they was these sharp things all over it."

"The cotton come in a ball like this," Mom held out her hand in an upside down fist, "and then it broke open" and she opened up her hand, "and they was these needles" and with her other hand she tapped on the top of each finger of her open hand "that was sharp as all get out." 

"Then you had to reach in and grab that ball of cotton and try not to get stuck. I pricked my fingers a lot doing that. You had to be real careful, but you learned to be quick. I got pretty good at it. But I wouldn't want to do it no more. It was hard work out in the hot sun."

So I learned from me Mom how to pick cotton. But I believe the best thing was just hearing her tell the story.

Cloyce is Important

One of the fun things the whole COVID debacle has done is mess up the supply chain. But it's a cross to bear and we simply have to deal with it.

A customer of mine, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, is a bit self-important. He didn't want to hear supply chain issues about getting his drain snake back. He only just dropped it off Tuesday and I told him expect ten days or so, which is actually an improvement over the last year on such things. To my irritation, that did not stop him from dropping in Friday. "I already told you ten days, Cloyce," I explained.

"Well, why don't you get on the phone and tell them I need my machine?" he demanded.

"Let me do that. I'll call and say that I really need that part. They'll tell me supply issues. I'll say it's for Cloyce. They'll pause, and I'll hear their worry, panic, and concern. Then they'll say, why didn't you tell us it was for Cloyce to begin with? We'll fly someone out immediately to pick up that one part, then drone ship it right to your shop door. It will be worth all the expense to get Cloyce that twenty dollar part right away and keep him happy." At that I stopped and stared at Cloyce.

He stared back. "You ain't even going to try, are you, Cosgriff?"

No, Cloyce, I'm not. You'll get a call in about ten days. Deal with it.