Saved by a snag

Regular patrons of this here blog know well that me Grandpa Joe rented arc welding machines, and that he trained as a welder. I've too lamented how he hated tangled welding cable, hated it with a passion. So it was quite a surprise one day when he told me that if he ever took a ride on an airplane, he'd take a length of welding cable wrapped around him.

Completely perplexed, I stammered, "Why would you do that?"

"Cause if I fell out of that plane it would save me. Welding cable always snags on something."

Who says Joe didn't have a sense of humor?

Hit It

One of me Pops favorite jokes involved hammers. 

When something had to be hammered into or out of place but required two people, he would employ it. He'd take the part in question and proceed to line it up with where it had to be driven. His exact instructions were, "Let me line this up, and then when I nod my head, hit it."

Dad meant hit the object, not his head. Just so you understand the joke.

Sorry About That, Chief

Maxwell Smart, the famous Agent 86, used to say that with regularity to his boss, called simply the Chief. Indeed it became one of the Max's catch phrases. Yet it seems appropriate to me and my family.

We had a beagle named Chief. We had that dog for about 12 years. He was a good, family dog.

Trying to encourage our kids to eat healthy as they grew, we tried to keep a lot of fruit around the house. Apples had kind of defaulted to the fruit of choice; they were plentiful and cheap. 

Over time, who knows how such things start, old Chief began to follow an apple eater around the house. We all took to tossing him the apple core when we were done. Chief would typically catch it in the air and chomp it down in a few bites.

It turns out (we discovered this relatively recently) that the seeds in apple cores contain trace amounts of cyanide. I don't think it had any serious long term health effects on the old family pet. Further, how could we have ever imagined such stuff as that? Still, I think about it from time to time now and feel bad about it.

Sorry about that, Chief. But we all thought at the time, including you, that it simply a nice treat. 

Toddlers Being Heard

One fine summer day a few years ago a neighbor woman stopped by me Mom's house as she, me self, and me brother Phil sat on the porch. It was a nice, friendly visit. I'll call her Mrs. Cloyce just to give her a name; she had her toddler son in tow.

"We're just coming back from his first protest!" She was explaining in great excitement. "I was so happy to have this experience with him. I hope he'll remember it the rest of his life." She went on to coo and ahh and gush over the event as if the child had just said Mama or Dada the first time or had taken his first steps. In her opinion apparently this was a great thing for the boy. She sure was making that big a deal out of it.

Okay, fine, I guess. We all expose our children to what we think important, even early on. Yet the best observation of the whole thing came after Mrs. Cloyce and her son had left to go home. "So that's the trouble with our world," me brother Phil remarked when they were out of earshot, "The lack of a social consciousness on the part of our nation's two-year-olds."

I personally believe it a rather apt interpretation.

Mom Playing Cards

I know this is a retread (the original post is dated 2017) but I like it and I'm running it again.

When we watch others playing games, it's kind of hard not to at least want to tell them what to do. Even when they're playing solitaire.

Klondike solitaire is the choice among my family. Grandpa Joe played it often; I remember fondly watching him run through a game as we sat in silence at his kitchen table. Pops played it a lot too, sitting at our kitchen table contentedly reshuffling actual decks of cards for each new game, unlike lazy players such as myself who play on the computer and reshuffle at the touch of a key. My 82 year old mother never played it that I know until Dad passed. Now she plays it all the time, I think because it connects her to him. But it's also good intellectual exercise, which is itself a good thing too.

I was visiting her the other day. We were at that same kitchen table where Pops played, and Mom was occupied playing Klondike even as we talked. And she had this four of diamonds which she could play on a five of clubs. Only she wasn't playing it. 'You could play that 4 onto that 5', I thought, but didn't say it out loud.

We went on talking about whatever. She kept on going through her draw cards yet doing nothing with that four of diamonds. Still I thought to myself, ever more insistently, you can play that red four onto that black five. Still also I remained silent.

The conversation went on. The four continued to sit untouched. The thought, 'Come on Ma, play the stupid four' repeated itself over and over in my head. Yet I still said nothing aloud, despite how increasingly anxious I was becoming.

Minutes passed by as we went on conversing. Finally she stopped, looked up at me over the top of her glasses and asked, "Do you want to me play that red four on that black five?"

"Yes, dear Lord, please. Play that four!" I responded emphatically.

"I knew it was there. We were just talking and I kept forgetting it."

I don't believe that for a minute. She sensed I was getting antsy and was driving that feeling along. Moms.

All in a Day's Work

Granted, I came in in the middle of the movie, so perhaps I missed important background information. Still, what happened in the old melodrama which I woke up to a few minutes ago perplexes me. 

I tend to leave the TV on when I go to bed at night. I probably shouldn't exactly for these moments, but that's another question. As it is, I woke up to see two men in a heated discussion, one a young man, another quite obviously elderly. The older guy was the accountant for the firm the younger man apparently owned.

The accountant was agitated, angry, and adamant about what needed to be done. The young man came towards him threateningly. "What are you going to do?" Elderly Accountant demanded.

"I'm going to kill you!" Young Business Owner asserted. He grabbed the accountant's neck and began to choke him.

There was a knock on the door. Releasing his grip, the young man simply went and opened it. In walked a man who immediately showed a badge and identified himself as a police lieutenant. "I'd like to ask you fellows a few questions," he began. Pretty soon the business owner was clearly hedging in his answers to the cop's inquiries, while the old accountant in response to a demand began digging files out of a cabinet as though nothing had happened a few minutes earlier. And all I could think was, "Why don't you tell the nice police officer who arrived so fortunately as to prevent the attack that the other guy just tried to kill you?"

It never came up. Everyone just went on as though nothing dangerous had ever happened. The closest they came was when the old guy told the cop, while staring daggers at young guy, that he was now the former accountant of the company.

I suppose I would tender my resignation too if my boss tried to strangle me. I fact, I think I'd take it a few steps further, what with a police lieutenant present and all. But as I say, maybe I missed something.

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 headed for Church one Sunday (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 simply 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 great Grandpa James didn't mind such tales making the rounds.

Umpire Steak

Me Uncle John sometimes called Zeke, me old golf buddy from back in the day, had his own special form of humor. When he got on a roll I would laugh until I cried.

He had this story where he and another driver for Grandpa Joe, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, were racing south on Interstate 75, each with a truckload of welding machines, weaving in and out of traffic trying to best each other, to get to their destination first, recklessly tearin' up jack, all the while being trailed by an undertaker in anticipation of business. That was one hilarious tale. I wish I could recreate me Uncle's style when he was on his game. He could make you laugh until you hurt. Really. But I can't recreate it, so I won't even attempt that. I will, however, tell you one of his favorite, more droll jokes.

There was at one time, there probably still is I would assume, a school in Florida ran by MLB which trained its on field baseball officials. Uncle John used to say that if he had the money he would open up a restaurant directly across the street from the place. It would specialize in beef entrees. He would name his restaurant...

...wait for it...

...the Umpire Steak Building.

I have always liked that quip. Thanks Zeke.

Cloyce at 10

A fine way to get on my bad side is to try to dictate my schedule. One customer, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, tried to do that a few minutes ago.

Cloyce called yesterday and asked when he could bring his machine in for a chuck. I told him to be at the Shop this morning at 10 and I'd take care of it.

So why was he calling at 7:45 AM asking if I was available yet?

Times like that I completely sympathize with me Grandpa Joe's temper. I wanted to lose mine at Cloyce. "Cloyce, I told you be here at 10," I reminded him, calming myself enough to not yell it in his ear, even though Joe would've. 

That irritated me, no, angered me, no, infuriated me no end. He had an appointment. I would honor it. But I also had to honor commitments made to other customers, such as the ones I promised could get their orders or repairs by ten. If their stuff isn't ready at 10 they would be rightfully upset at the excuse, "But guys, Cloyce needed his machine." They would likely think, if not say out loud, if not half scream in consternation, "Cosgriff, you told me I could have mine by 10. I need mine too." I most certainly would not hear, "Oh? You had to get Cloyce's machine ready? I understand, Cosgriff. Go on and do it. Hey, I'll wait until next week if you need me to. Anything for Cloyce."

If I give you a time, I will honor it if humanly possible and anticipate that you will too. But as I write, if Cloyce gets at the old barn even at Nine Fifty Nine and Forty Five seconds, he'll get nothing but a stare for that last quarter minute.

Bill Cosgriff, Tax Expert

Me Grandpa Joe, he had that welding rental business. He also had rooming houses. You might imagine that required a lot of accounting. Joe, then, had contracted with an accounting firm.

Me Pops was always good with numbers, and he worked with Joe, his dad. One year as tax season approached, Joe asked Pops (my dad) about what he thought his taxes might be.

Dad proceeded to look over Joe's books, scribbling numbers on a paper as he went along. He eventually gave his dad a number of what he might expect to pay the IRS.

It turns out dad was within about ten bucks of the actual total. "Why am I paying Jack Donahue (his accountant) when you can do my taxes for me? Why don't you do them from here on out?" Joe asked his son.

Me Pops flatly refused. "No way. Maybe my numbers are good, but Donahue knows where to put those numbers on the right lines on all those tax forms." 

So Pops got out of being Joe's accountant. It was surely best for both of them. All three, counting Mr. Donahue.

The Changing Seasons

My day was made yesterday by a very simple thing. I happened into University Foods, the local supermarket, just to buy a paper. Still, I kicked around the store a bit to see what might catch my eye. Lo and behold, they had fruitcake.

I bought two. I love fruitcake. It's all right by me now if Christmas encroaches on Thanksgiving.

Hey, everybody's got a price.

The Quiet Voice

Saturdays, when I'm in town, I take me Mom to Mass at 4 O'Clock. One of my uncles used to tease us that we weren't Catholics, we were Seventh Day Adventists as we went to Church on Saturday. I still get a good chuckle out of that. He was a good man; it was all in good fun. And imagine that: people who can joke and take a joke even about something as important as their religion. What a concept.

In the Catholic Mass, at one point the congregation says the Our Father. I first noticed several weeks ago Mom's voice when she recites it. It's a small, quiet voice, yet to me it's become the loudest voice in Church. You see, she forgets; she forgets easily. And she's slowing down, gradually becoming weaker so that she more often sits when we're normally standing during Mass. I just let her. God understands.

But at the Our Father she never fails to stand and say the prayer with the rest of us. Her little voice stands out, though. And God hears.

Pure Copper

Whenever me Grandpa Joe would scrap out a fried arc welder he would toss the stripped copper into a 55 gallon drum. When the drum was filled, it was me Pops' job from early on to take it to the scrap yard.

The scrap yard they frequented was owned by an old gentleman. When Dad would go to put the drum on the scale the old man would ask him, "Young man, is that copper from the top all the way to the bottom?" He would motion with an upward pointer at the beginning, turning it down until he was pointing at the floor when he finished his question.

"Yes, sir," me Pops would always answer. He would add, "I can dump it onto the floor to show you."

Holding the palm of his right hand up as though to stop Dad in his tracks the man would reply, "Your word is enough."

This happened every time, me Pops often related, that he took copper out to scrap. "Young man, is that copper from the top all the way to the bottom?" "Your word is enough."

Dad wondered if perhaps it was some form of ritual, simple habit, or the owner's way of letting you know that he trusted you while being sure of what he was getting. Or maybe he simply believed in believing in people.

Well, a man's word should be his bond, right?

Not Just for Roofing Anymore

Me Grandpa Joe once had this big black Cadillac, I think it was an Eldorado, and it was a monster. A veritable battleship. I mean, that thing was huge. It's passing by would cause a solar eclipse. And like most of Joe's cars, it was, well, unique.

We never did get the brakes working quite right. You learned while driving it to anticipate traffic lights, slowing down blocks away when it looked like the light would go red soon. Me Uncle John known in some quarters as Zeke once suggested we install those big parachutes like they have on drag racers to help the car stop on time because, being big and heavy, it took a lot to stop that vehicle. The engine required so much work that Zeke also quipped that once he saw the car on the street and almost didn't recognize it with the hood down.

But what got me the most about the car was the first time Joe had me changing the oil. Crawling under the belly of the beast to drain the motor, I couldn't help but see that the oil pan had apparently once sprung a leak. The clue? The pan was covered in heavy roofing cement.

I called to me Grandpa, "There's roof cement slathered on the oil pan. Maybe it used to have a leak."

"Does it look like it's leaking now?" he yelled back.

I studied it closely and replied, "No."

"Then we won't worry about it," Joe answered.

A typical Grandpa Joe view of a typical Grandpa Joe car. Damn, I miss that old man.

Why He Won

Why did Donald Trump win a second term as President? I believe that the answer is fairly straightforward: rank and file Americans are tired of being lectured to by people who claim to be for diversity, tolerance, and inclusion yet will not include them. It's an attitude, an arrogance, which speaks volumes.

The argument against biological men playing biological women in sports is a rational opinion to hold. Being against DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) does not make me a racist or misogynist. Asserting that a unique human being is formed at the moment of conception is an argument which at least deserves vetting by the body politic. Asking immigrants to come in through the front door is eminently reasonable. Getting scolded rather than engaged when I disagree becomes tiresome if not downright infuriating. Convince me on reasonable grounds that you're right and we may be on the road to understanding. Wave a finger at me? That approach is just all wrong. Even some liberal wags are beginning to get it.

Sure, Trump is a basket of contradictions himself. He's a walking PR nightmare, quite frankly. I can't fully understand his appeal and will not begin to defend everything he's said or done. His personal life is, well, problematic. He's pompous. He's a braggart, he's self absorbed. Yet one thing he does not do is wag a finger at basic conservative beliefs. He has vowed to defend them against a relentless culture who's basic argument against us is that we're just wrong, and too stupid to realize it.

As we have no option but to deal with imperfect human beings in elections, we have to look at candidates as sum totals. In a center-right nation such as these United States, the totality of Donald Trump beats the totality of Kamala Harris. Most people saw that. And that is why he won, writ simple.

Presidential History

Simply to be more lighthearted today - I think we could stand a dose of levity - I have now seen two things repeat themselves in history. Thirty years ago I would not have expected either.

As a student of history I was always somewhat amazed that any father-son combination would end up in the White House. Yet Presidents 2 and 6, John and John Quincy Adams, accomplished it. That'll never happen again, I once thought. Then, George and George W. Bush become Presidents a mere eight years apart.

As a side note, John, John Quincy, and grandson Charles Francis Adams were all at one time in their respective careers US Ambassadors to Great Britain.

Now Donald Trump becomes the second split term President, after Grover Cleveland, who was the 22nd and 24th Chief Executive. What are the chances that would happen once, and now we have it twice. 

History is interesting, even in its trivia.

No, Really

Today is Election Day in these United States. One particular voter in my precinct will remember it for a long time.

This voter, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, intended to vote absentee. In Michigan, this means that your ballot must be returned in the envelope issued with the absentee ballot. Cloyce received his ballot and filled it out. Yet before he could mail the thing in - I am not making this up, it actually happened - his dog ate it.

Cloyce still wanted to vote, of course, so he duly went to the precinct this morning. The officials didn't want to allow him to vote, on the grounds that he registered to vote absentee. "Where's your absentee ballot?" he was asked.

"Uh, the dog ate it," Cloyce answered in complete honesty.

The poll worker stared at him, raised eyebrow and all, exactly like your teacher would. When I left, they were still trying to sort it all out.

Oooh, Shiny

Does it happen to you? Do you have trouble finding things you just had?

I was up at the old barn this morning to make sure I had a repair completed for 10 o'clock. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Everything was done except for the chuck. I had attached the chuck to the drive shaft of that particular unit and was promptly distracted. Minutes later, I can't find the shaft with the new part. 

Not on the work bench. Not back in the office. Not on a shelf near the bathroom. I couldn't find it. It wasn't near anyplace I'd been, it seemed. You would think that a drive shaft with an obviously new silver chuck would stand out. Nope.

It had reached the point where I had determined to go into my parts bin and simply get new everything to install when I saw what I sought. The drive shaft and chuck were sitting right next to the repair. And I mean right smack dab next to the machine. How could I have not seen it?

It's gonna be a long week...

Plastic Saw

Young kids, especially around 4 or 5 years old, can be very literal. It makes sense. They aren't old enough to appreciate nuances such as jokes.

As I sat on the bottom step of my porch handing out candy this past Halloween, a small boy in a serial killer costume approached. He was holding a clearly plastic chainsaw. "I'll give you candy if you please don't hurt me with your saw," I teased.

He stopped and pulled his mask onto the top of his head. "I won't hurt you," he told me with complete sincerity. Holding the chainsaw up for me to examine he continued, "See? It’s just a toy."

"Ahhh," I responded, trying to sound like I was comfortably reassured. It might have been the cutest thing I heard all night.

Hard Luck Highway

Well, they've gone and done it. The current owners of the property have torn the Clubhouse down. Undoubtedly that's because they did not know its history.

Me Grandpa Joe had dubbed it 'The Clubhouse' because that's where the neighborhood drunks (and I call them that affectionately I assure you; I thought well of each one of them) hung out in it. It was an old brick garage behind the house Joe then owned, and he didn't care if they used it as a hangout. Pop Turner, Tall Glass (he drank from a long tall glass, Joe would say), L.B., Chuck the mechanic (he was a crackin' good  mechanic when sober), Grandpa (not Joe, but another guy everyone called Grandpa, Heaven knows why anymore), a guy named Watson and a few others. They just sat within its confines on old makeshift benches and passed out whiskey to each other in plastic cups, talking in low mumbles once the juice had been flowing a while.

Sometimes a craps game might break out. Then the whole neighborhood heard the ruckus. Yells and screams and ooos and aaahhs; sure, they shouldn't have been wasting their money like that, but they weren't hurtin' nobody and only vaguely disturbing the peace. They never fought over a result either. They just shot craps and drank.

I did see them pretty down one day though. They had invited Mr. Moss to play with them. Mr. Moss was a dignified old gent who lived on the block. He had a small electric company and generally kept to himself. But for whatever reason, maybe he had no work and was bored, he joined the boys in the Clubhouse that one afternoon. They invited him to play because he had money. Simple as that.

He proceeded to clean them out. What they hoped would be an easy road to a large payout for somebody became a payout for Mr. Moss. He dominated the game so completely that everyone else was out of money in about 45 minutes. I never seen such a dejected group in my life. Easy Street had become Hard Luck Highway.

I think Mr. Moss felt a bit sorry for them, because he left quickly only to return with a couple bottles for the boys. He didn't drink himself but I imagine he felt obliged. And the guys themselves were thankful for a small victory.

I don't believe Mr. Moss was ever again invited to shoot craps with them, though.

Halloween in Review

So I donned the old Gerry Cheevers style hockey mask last night and did the Jason thing as I passed out candy to trick or treaters. I was happy with the reactions.

"It's Jason!" screamed several kids as they approached my house. They were screams of delight, quite honestly. I must admit though, that I am a bit concerned about the number of seven and eight year olds who know who Jason is. But if I can know the character despite having never seen a single Friday the 13th movie, maybe they can too.

One child, who seemed truly afraid, said, "Please don't hurt me," as she carefully held out her Halloween bag for a piece of candy. Another young boy, obviously more a man of the world, asked plainly, "Please don't cut my head off."

"Well, since you said please," I growled in return.

A few wondered aloud if perhaps I were in fact Michael Myers. Those were the ones I thought should have their heads lopped off.

I'm thinking we had about 400 kids over two or two and a half hours. Almost all I must say were very well behaved too. It was indeed a Happy Halloween.