Being Prepared on the Road

I told a story once of me Pops and his cousin Jim having taken a cross country trip when they turned 18, to celebrate getting out of high school. If you missed it, here it is: Room to Roam

Their journey went without major incident, but that didn't mean there wasn't a concern or two along the way. As me Pops tells it: "To save time and money, we'd only get a motel room every other day or so. Often one of us would sleep in the back of the station wagon while the other drove, just to keep a move on." There were few freeways in 1954, and things were far apart in the American west you see.

Dad was at the wheel one day while Jim caught some Zs. Jim had curled up into a ball and threw a blanket over himself and dozed off.

A little while later, Pops came across a hitchhiker. They were way out somewhere, no one or nothing else anywhere near them, and Dad took pity on the guy. He pulled over and let him in the car.

The guy seemed all right at first, but then he began talking out of his head, as Dad put it. Me Pops thought, "Uh-oh, what have I gotten us into?" He wanted Jim to be awake and aware but didn't know how to signal him without upsetting the hitchhiker into a frenzy. 

The problem solved itself. Dad could see his cousin in the rear view mirror, and noticed Jim's hand slide out from under the blanket and grab a full pop bottle by the neck. He stealthily slid it back under the blanket with him. Pop bottles were glass back then, and could be very effective weapons. But for me Pops, the important thing was that Jim was aware of the situation.

Thankfully nothing came of it. It wasn't too much farther down the road before the passenger indicated they were at his stop. He thanked my Dad and left without trouble. Still, they didn't pick up any more hitchhikers.

To Be Too Late

There was this very helpful and concerned fella who used to come into the old barn, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who really cared about our well being. Indeed whenever we might face peril, he'd call out a warning. Trouble was, his warnings were always just a tad too late. Or at least, late enough that they'd have been no help at all.

"Watch it Phil!' he'd yell to me brother just exactly one instant after Phil had lost his grip on something and it fell to the floor, shattering. 

"Watch it Marty!" he'd scream at me the very moment after the tool I was using under pressure had slipped and was flying across the Shop.

"Watch it Bill!" Cloyce would belatedly warn me Pops precisely when a red hot fitting he had been heating had already popped out of the bench vise and just missed falling into his boot. 

To this day whenever I have narrowly averted catastrophe I can hear Cloyce's panicked yell, "Watch it Marty!"

Cloyce's warnings were truly just in time to be too late. Every. Single. Time. But I suppose he meant well.

It's funny now but wasn't at the time

A few years ago we had a serious health issue with mom. She was suffering fainting spells and eventually ended up with a pacemaker, but is doing well now. That allows me to view the incident with a bit more humor today, because, as with much of life, there is humor even in distress. Especially when the distress has passed.
While at work one day my phone rings, and I saw it was mom. I knew it because our phones tell us everything today, so as I took it out of my pocket the words 'incoming call Mom' stared back at me. "Hi Mom, what's up?"
I didn't like the uncertainty immediately obvious in her voice. "Do you have my doctor's phone number?"
"Yeah, somewhere, why?"
"Well, I blacked out and fell and hit my head..." I interrupted her to say, "I'm closing, ma, and I'm taking take you to Emergency."
"I'd rather you call the doctor to see what he says."
I replied tensely, "He's gonna say take you to Emergency."
"I'd feel better if you'd call him." So, not to make her any more upset, I said I would and then call her right back. The doctor, of course, though very nice about it, made it quite clear that I should not be speaking to him but rushing her to the hospital instead. I do believe I could hear his eyes rolling as we spoke. I called Mom back and said I would be at her house right away.
As I had a key, I let myself in. Mother was not to be found, until I noticed her bathroom door shut. I knocked frantically and said, "I'm here, ma, let's go."
"In a minute. I'm brushing my hair and fixing my lipstick."
"We're going to Emergency, Mom, not a wedding reception," I barked in dismay. "They're not going to say, 'oh, don't treat Mrs. Cosgriff, her hair's mussed' Let's go!"
"I'll only be a minute." She had responded with the finality of tone that told me I would be waiting until she was good and ready to go. Being a North Carolina girl, she would not be pushed, and I knew not to push back when she became that way. It would only make things worse, 'cause them southern gals, when they get riled, they's fractious.
So we get to the hospital, they take her in right away, and we begin to sit and wait. She was soon lying on a gurney in a room as I sat next to her. After a while she opined, "Well, I hope they find something, but I've lived a good life, no matter what."
I said nervously, having been thinking about the never never myself all along and not wanting to, "Let's not talk like that, Ma, let's see what the doctors say."
About half incensed she asked, "What, don't you think I've had a good life?"
"No one says you haven't, Ma, but let's not think about that just yet."
"Well, I've lived a good life anyway." There's that finality again, so I clammed up. But I really didn't care for it that second.
An hour or so later I was standing next to her. She said, stating more than asking, "It don't look right, does it, you seeing your mother lying in a hospital bed with all these wires and needles."
"No, Momma, it don't," I whispered. I couldn't help but remember barely a year before, watching my dad as he lay dying in that same hospital. She was right on the money. It didn't look right at all.
"But I've had a good life." she said again. Aw, c'mon, ma, didn't we just go through this? I felt the exasperation of Ray Romano.
So a few weeks and several tests pass, and the doctors became sure she needed a pacemaker. It was obvious that even Mom was now believing that her good life had an indefinite amount of time left and that she needed to get about living it. I sat with her on that Wednesday morning, waiting for the procedure. She fretted, "I wish they'd hurry up and do it. I have to weed my garden.", getting anxious. "And I'm hungry. But you know they won't feed me until after they're done."
Several starts and stops later (you know how hurry up and wait hospitals can be), and after not too little worrying about all the things she had to do, they put in the pacemaker. After she left for the OR, the next time I saw her was back in her room, all rosy cheeked after appearing grayish and wan a few hours before. She was eating and complaining, "They better let me go soon. I've got to get to work on my garden, and you know the house needs cleaning."
As my siblings were by then with her, I slipped out to find her doctor. I advised him to release her soon for his own good, because them southern gals, they's fractious.

Dad's Birthday

Dad would have been 89 today. I sure didn't think we'd lose him at 77, especially as his dad, me Grandpa Joe, did every health thing completely wrong, indeed almost obstinately, spectacularly wrong, yet missed 86 by just two days. I almost believe Joe would still be alive today somehow if he'd have taken even modest care of himself. If anyone could have willed himself to 120, it was Joe.

The thing is, I have to feel as though me Pops was given twenty more years. He had stage 4 cancer at 57, and the treatment the doctors employed on him was so new he was told that an identical diagnosis five years earlier would have led to, 'Here's some morphine, Mr. Cosgriff, we'll make you as comfortable as we can these next few months'.  Dad fought the cancer too, fought it hard, had vowed on Day One that he'd beat it. By the grace of God, he did. If I ever face such odds, I hope I can find his courage.

We don't appreciate the world we live in as much as we should. Something like with Dad, Mom had a pacemaker installed in 2014 because her heart started stopping. Started stopping? What an odd turn of phrase. But to the point: she lived until 2022, just about 8 more years on the dot in fact, because of technology, of improvements in medicine. In 1914, one day later that year her heart would have simply stopped and never restarted. 

It's easy to be melancholy; I'm fighting it right now. But isn't sadness looking too hard at the wrong side of the ledger? Life itself is a gift, indeed the greatest gift. Twenty Eight more years with my parents? This isn't such a bad old world we live in.

Staring Contest

Old Amos was tight. He was a good man yet he was very careful with his money. Consequently, me Grandpa Joe would often send Amos out to buy this or that for the welding business. He knew Amos would get him the best deal. One story me Pops liked to tell involved such an event.

I can't remember now what it was Joe wanted, but he sent Dad and Amos after it because it would take two people to handle whatever contraption he wanted to buy. Dad drove, and then simply stood back to watch Amos at work.

Amos tried every way in the world to get the seller to back down on price. He begged, he pleaded, he pointed out flaws in the machine. The guy wouldn't budge. It reached the point where Amos stopped talking and began pacing. He would pace a few steps beyond the man and then return. On his return, Dad said, Amos would stop abruptly right in front of the guy and spend a few seconds just glaring at him. Then he'd walk on, return, and do the same thing. He must have been trying to intimidate him, was all Pops could think.

After as few minutes of this, during which the seller did exchange a quizzical look at the old man, the guy finally said, "Look, just give me my price. But I'll put a lower one on the bill of sale to help you out on the sales tax."

Amos would have none of that. "Now, listen here. I want to get the best price I can out of you," he explained to the seller. "But what goes on paper is going to be right no matter what we agree to." Amos then resumed his pacing tactic.

As I recall (I wish I'd have listened more closely to Pops' stories) they eventually agreed on a price and Dad and Amos took the thing to the Shop because Joe had to have it. But I sure would have liked to have seen that battle of wills, that staring contest.

Pretentiousness

I am a man of few passions. No, honest; I can hear you snickering. But I am. Yet what I love I adore and what I hate I despise. And I despise pretentiousness, the idea that things are more meaningful than they in fact are, and those of us who don't 'get it' and simply obtuse.

I hope obtuse isn't a pretentiuos word.

Anyway, I find that art and music are two worlds where pretention runs amok. When bananas taped to a wall are considered art, it's pretentious. When people pay millions of dollars for that, they're stupidly pretentious. As a political conservative, I have routinely been called out (falsely) for not caring about the poor. Sure seems like a lot of the poor could have been cared for with the six million bucks wasted on a banana duct taped to a wall. And when something which is only a big green dot can be hung on the wall at the Detroit Institute of Arts, something even I could paint, it's not art. It's pretentious.

With regard to music, nobody, and I mean nobody with a brain defends the Beatles' Revolution 9. It's nothing but noise. My apologies, a 'sound collage', whatever the hell that means. No, no, no. That's just John and Yoko, with a little help from George (Paul and Ringo wouldn't touch the thing) being pretentious. Revolution 9 is the only Beatles track which I've never listened to all the way through, and I've withstood You Know My Name (Look Up the Number). A group of twelve year olds with a tape recorder could have done it. A supergroup like The Beatles? Either of those tracks could only have seen the light of day because they were the Beatles. If they'd have taken those sounds to George Martin for their first audition we'd have never heard of the lads from Liverpool again. He'd have laughed them out of the studio.

There you are: pretention. I'm done being crabby. For now.

Um, Okay

Oh, that Marty. His books are getting good to great reviews on the whole. But he's not always sure what to think about certain individual opinions.

One reviewer has given me five stars on Amazon (the most you can earn) for my book Michael's Story. I appreciate that, truly and from the bottom of my heart. But among other encouragements this particular person opined, 'An interesting read even if this wasn't the author's intention'. And I thought, huh?

I mean, I'm glad he read and liked and was kind enough to review Michael's Story. But, but, what author doesn't intend for his writing to be interesting? Has he read other things of mine which he thought were not interesting (Quiet, Ron) and is praising my improvement? Or are there writers out there whose dreams are, I hope readers find my book uninteresting? When at their computer or with pen and paper in hand are there authors actually thinking, how can I make my characters more dull and lifeless? How can I present a more gray, less colorful picture of the world I'm inventing?

I am not making this up; it is a real review. I'm just not sure what to think of it.

A Memo From the Department of Obvious

I wrote last month, in a rather sarcastic vein (it's my superpower), that food packaging can be incredibly obvious. It was when I had discovered that tea could be served in a cup. I know! Who would have thought it?

Well, that sort of universe expanding knowledge goes beyond hot leaf beverages, let me tell you.  In recent years I've took to keeping pepperoni on hand because it livens up a sandwich. Ham and swiss on rye? Toss on a few pepperoni. Even good old bologna on white bread becomes a party of tastiness with it added. In fact, pepperoni might be right up there with bacon as a garnish. You can even snack on it too. I'm not sure there's a meal it would not enhance.

Yesterday as I was making lunch, I grabbed pepperoni to add to the ham and provolone cheese on wheat sandwich I was intent upon. It was then that I saw, in bold print right on the front of the package, in capital letters and with an exclamation point for added emphasis, that pepperoni was GREAT ON PIZZA!

Pepperoni pizza? Are you kidding me? I can put that on pizza? 

Mind. Blown. I wish I'd have thought about it before. Why doesn't somebody tell me these things? 

Air Head

There was once an employee at the the old barn, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who sometimes couldn't grasp simple ideas. One such concept was the difference between weight and pressure.

We had a lot of trailer mounted welding machines which had pneumatic, that is, air filled, tires. The typical pressure in a properly inflated tire was 32 psi, or 32 pounds of air pressure per square inch. 

One day I had my bicycle at the Shop. The tires were low, so I turned on the air compressor to fill them. "What do they take?" Cloyce asked me.

"50 psi," I answered.

"What?" a stunned Cloyce demanded. "How can those small tires take more air than a welder tire?"

"They don't take more air," I responded. "They have a higher air pressure."

"But we put 32 pounds of air in the welder tires. You just said you put 50 pounds of air in the ones on your bike."

"There's a difference between the volume of the air in something and the pressure the air creates within it, Cloyce."

He pondered that a moment, but it was obvious he didn't get it. Cloyce walked away shaking his head. "How can you put 50 pounds of air in a small tire but only 32 in one a lot bigger?" he was asking himself.

We would talk about it from time to time, and he even asked me Pops to explain it, but Dad couldn't get through to him either. I guess science just wasn't Cloyce's strong suit.

How I Think

Inside the mind of Marty...

Surfing around the Internet this morning, I stumbled upon an ad for a charity. It was asking for help feeding the poor in undeveloped countries. The ad said, 'Help us get nourishing milk to a hungry child'. I thought, does this mean there are organizations getting un-nourishing milk for them?

I know, I know. I'll let myself out.

Too Soon?

I will begin by saying up front that I was not on the Detroit Lions bandwagon this year. I wasn't in 2023-24 either. The main reason is plain: either the team itself, or forces outside its control, just seem to sting them, and too often at exactly the wrong time.

Yes, the 2024-25 season was historic, so far as it goes. But I couldn't help feel they were playing above their heads the whole while. How they managed to go 15-2 in the regular season while decimated by injuries was indeed impressive. Yet it caught up to them in the playoffs. That, and the team's apparent invincibility at laying eggs at precisely the wrong time, allowed a Washington team with a dynamic quarterback to beat them. With all due respect to Coach Campbell and crew, it was almost bound to happen. I've seen it regularly in watching Lions football for around 60 years.

Many if not most of you may disagree with me, but Campbell is the reason we didn't make last year's Super Bowl. He needed to go for the field goal while holding a 24-10 lead in the third quarter; it's that simple. I like his aggressiveness on the whole. Yet aggressive is one step from foolhardy. Campbell needs to learn the difference between the two and stay on the right side of the line. As such, I can't escape the feeling that the 2024 NFC Championship game was this squad's high water mark, this team's Gettysburg.

I've seen them lose playoff games 5-0 and 58-31, absurd scores to put up at anytime let alone in season ending games. I've seen otherwise reliable kickers miss field goals they would normally drill, for us to lose. I've seen high quality players just walk away due to frustration, and don't even start on how and when officiating has burned the team over the years. I've seen Lions teams do very well and look quite promising (the 1991 squad comes to mind) only to slip right back into mediocrity the next time around. That team went 5-11 in 92. We can't trust the future in Detroit.

All that (and a great less else) being said, until they win it all they're the Same Old Lions. I cannot give them my emotional investment. It's not worth the time or effort.

Full disclosure: as much of a Detroit Tigers baseball fan as I am, and as much fun as 2024 was, I'm not letting that get too much of a hold on me either. They played over their heads, and got a lot of breaks (Minnesota and Kansas City tanked badly) to scratch into the playoffs. They are no sure bet for 2025, and that will always be at the front of my mind. But at least they've won a couple of World Series in my life.

Post Inauguration Thoughts

All right, it's over. The Biden years are behind us (I wish I could literally run into him simply so I could say, "Pardon me!") and that's the best thing for the United States going forward. Trump is a threat to democracy? Do you think that maybe trying to protect (through pardons) every single person responsible for any possible transgression against the American people (I'm staring daggers at you, Fauci) enhances a spirit of bon homme?  Pressuring social media to edit opposing viewpoints certainly reeks of diversity, equity, and inclusion, doesn't it? 

Still, as happy as I am at Trump's victory (I say with no hyperbole that, for the first time in my life, I was actually relieved at the outcome of an election; I felt the Democrats were that much of a threat to our future) we do need to be careful. Going forward, it's best to remember that overreach can hurt - hard. That's what got Biden and his team in hot water. We are responsible for our actions, spoken or active. We just can't allow the government (outside actual slander, libel, or a 'clear and present' danger to the body politic) to tell us what we can say and do.

Although I voted for him knowing he spouted about tariffs, as a free market guy I don't think they're a good idea. But as it appears they're happening, all we can do now is hope for the best. I am afraid, deeply afraid, they'll be our own shot to our own foot. Unfortunately, we can't have everything.

Let's be honest, too.  Elon Musk's salute is not good imagery. If we're going to criticize Biden for an ominous red backdrop during a speech, we should be aware of our look as well.

Birthright citizenship isn't going away without a Constitutional amendment. I'm not sure that it's worth wasting political capital on it. Just make the border secure. The rest will take care of itself.

Do I have say again that Trump needs a better filter? Shut up about a 51st state with Canada or Gulf of America talk. Such drivel serves no purpose. And please don't overuse pardons. "He (Biden) did it too!" is not justification. Let's not be children about serious matters.  

I could go on, but you get the point. It's January 21, 2025. The future looks good. Yet outlooks can change on a dime, and we should keep aware of that.

Monday Holidays 2025

You may as well say, there he goes again. It's time a for regular rant of mine about the Monday Holiday law.

Today is Martin Luther King Day, and that's a good and right thing. If anyone deserves a holiday it's the icon of the Civil Rights movement. But for those of you who don't know, I never liked moving holidays to Mondays. I get the reason for it: three day weekends. I don't doubt that makes things like business scheduling easier or that it gives people the opportunity to plan for longer breaks. Yet I can't help but believe that such mundane and arguably selfish concerns distract from the real point of honoring someone or something.

If we are supposed to remember and honor Dr. King why aren't we remembering and honoring him on a day which would have meant something to him? Why does his holiday get moved around to suit our purposes? I would argue that it smacks of nonchalance, of, perhaps, even dishonor.  However so subtly we're putting our business and/or personal lives ahead actually honoring a man, woman, concept, or event.

Now while I'm sure Dr. King would likely, in modesty, argue he is underserving of such laurels, I believe that if we're going to look past that (as we should) then let's at least give remembrances on a day of import to him. It doesn't even have to be a birthday, birthdays after all being somewhat benign compared to what a man or woman actually achieved in life. It could be to commemorate the I Have a Dream Speech or the Selma March, or any number of things. But pick a day which would be important to what he stood for and stay with it.

Or at least stick with their actual birthdays. Monday Holidays detract rather than uplift the person or place or event they purport to recall.

Wither Faygo?

I don't normally fall for clickbait, the ads which entice you about trivial things yet take pages and pages to navigate. But every now and then I succumb to the temptation. This morning was one such time. It involved what are purported to be the most unusual foods from each state.

I can't find it now but trust me. From North Dakota was offered lutefisk, a seemingly awful fish, uh, treat. It sounded awful, both overcooked and overly pungeant. Yet that other North in our Union, Carolina, offers livermush, which I love. I'm not sure if it's one word or two, livermush or liver mush, but I love it. Indeed I've written about it here:

https://thesublimetotheridiculous.blogspot.com/2017/07/potted-meat-and-liver-mush.html

Yet what this particular article claimed was the most unusual food from right here in Michigan, right here in the D in fact, was, I am not making this up, Faygo.

To be fair, the writers conceded that Faygo isn't actually a food (really), explaining that it's a cornucopia of flavored pops. But my question is, what's so odd about flavored pop? Isn't that everywhere?

And now you know why I avoid clickbait. It's stupid.

Zeke's Flat Tires

You read that right: flat tires. It's not about any particular flats which me Uncle John who we call Zeke had in his lifetime, although he had his share. More than his share, he might argue. But this is about potential flats.

Any sharp object can cause a flat: a screw, a nail, even a small bolt under the right speed and angle can imbed itself into a tread. Ask a math nerd. However it happens, a few miles down the road and you're on the shoulder fighting to break lug nuts loose, lamenting your poor luck. You didn't, you couldn't even see when it happened. But you would find the dread nail and curse it.

Again, this isn't about real life flats but possible ones. I can't tell you how many times we'd be walking to and from the old barn to one of our satellite garages and Zeke's eyes would zero in on an object laying in the alley as though he were Iron Man seeing with the ultra sensitive sight of his metal suit. He pick up that vile nail and hold it out for you to see, right in front of your eyeballs. "That's a flat!" he would proclaim with scorn.

He was, of course, right. For all the actual flats we dealt with, it was best to get all the potential ones out of the way. 

And Don't Know It

As many of you know, I've been working on book promotion this year. You can find my books here A Subtle Armageddon here David Gideon here Michael's Story and here The Interim Generation. 

One thing about book promotion is that you begin to get reviewed. Reviews are nice; they help Amazon's Magical Algorithms drive folks to sample your wonderful prose. But some reviews are questionable. One such review which gave me pause praised my book A Subtle Armageddon for its great poems. Yet there isn't a poem in it.

Poetry is something which has never really peaked my interest. Perhaps comic poetry holds a certain appeal for me as it did for me Pops. You can read about his favorite poem here Me Pops the Poet. Yet on the whole, I find that poets are simply trying to tell us things without actually getting to the point. At least, that's my take on the vast bulk of poetry the teachers forced upon me in high school English. 

I expect now that the poetry crowd will be breaking down my door, hurling vile epithets upon me in sonnets, free verse, and odes. I should be quite interested in the haiku which might condemn me though.

The Elm Rustled

The Psalmist says, Psalm 46:11, 'Be still and know that I am God'.

I have experienced many trials in life. This doesn't make me special as we all deal with the various challenges which make life at times a chore, if not, of course, worse. At times worry and fear come close to devouring us. And then, life becomes still. 

Way back in 1985 as we were expecting our second child I went through a period of intense worry. Adulting had become scary; we had the one child already and I couldn't avoid fear for his future and how I might see to it. Now there would be another to add to that worry. You quite easily feel small. You don't know that you can live up to the responsibility. All those things which you can't control well inside you too. The future becomes daunting; what will you do? What can you do?

I dealt with such feelings for several weeks in August and September 1985. It led to an intense sense of fear and, oddly, loneliness. I felt too alone to deal with it.

While walking the dog one day this worry seemed to reach a peak. We, the dog and I, were next to the big elm which still rises above the south side of the house. The future stared me square in the face, the fear was trying to overwhelm me. I remember exhaling heavily. Then a breeze came up, and I noticed the leaves rustling. After a moment all became quiet, and I realized the quiet. Next was stillness. In the stillness, all the worry left. Vanished. In an instant I was eased.

Although I have in the 40 years since still experienced my share of foreboding I have not again felt the same near despair as I had up until the day the elm tree rustled and the stillness descended. It is a fine calm on which to moor my boat. 

Laughing at myself

I just spent a half hour laughing at myself. Sure, I've done that before. But this time let me tell you why.

I play Words With Friends, a Scrabble like game which in my case is played over my cell phone. In a recent match I was stuck for a word. Then I saw where I could spell 'God' and score nine points. And I actually, honestly thought to myself, "I'll play God for 9 points."

I found that funny. I just hope it's not blasphemy.

The Trouble With Stupid

Do you remember the other day when I spoke about doing stupid things? If not, refresh yourself here: 

Marty being stupid 

For those who don't want to give me the additional page views by clicking on that link, I was talking about how I openly decided to do something very stupid one day last week: I cut through a weld with a high speed saw. It was something I should not have done once.

I did it three more times yesterday.

The problem with stupid is that if you do it one time and all goes well, it's easy to do it again. And a third time. And a fourth. See, you get comfortable with stupid. You and stupid come to terms. You make a treaty with stupid which you know in your heart stupid will break one day. That's how and why stupid things eventually physically hurt you.

By the time I was making my way through that fourth weld I had almost forgotten the hazard of what I was doing. Then I saw, er, realized that the knuckles of my left hand were within about 3/4 of an inch of the high speed wheel as I held the metal I was cutting through. That knowledge having come upon me, I nearly jerked my hand away, which is precisely what you do not want to do. Sudden motion is when stupid acts with the greatest flair.

Steeling my nerves, I finished that last cut. I fully intend not to do such a thing again. I don't think I'm all that far into the comfort zone with stupid. But time will tell.

Gambling Odds

There's an awful lot which can and should be sorted out about the Los Angeles wildfires, in due time. One of those things might be the role which insurance companies played in the disaster.

As far as I understand it, several major home insurance companies at the end of 2024 opted to cancel accounts in the region of the fires because of fear that the fire hazard had become too great in the area. Some folks call that greed on their part. But is it?

Me Pops used to say the having insurance on anything was essentially a bet. If you're buying life insurance, for example, you're betting that you'll die during the, uh, life of the coverage. The insurer is betting you'll live. Likewise, with fire insurance you're betting your house will burn down. They're betting it won't.

Cut to December 2024 Los Angeles. Fire insurers saw a significantly increased risk, for whatever reason, of losing the bet if they continued to play. Consequently, they cancelled policies at the end of the terms. There's nothing wrong with with that, if. If the policy was up, no one, you nor the insurance company, had any obligation to continue it. 

In analyzing the issue my first question would be, what was in the contracts? If they ended December 31, 2024 then the insurers did nothing wrong. They aren't obliged at all to re-up. Sure, they got x amount of cash from you over time. But that was the deal, wasn't it? For a certain amount of money they would insure your property for a certain amount of time. When that period ended, they owed you nothing.

The second question is, what else might have been in the contract? If there was an opt out for the company and they took it, again, where's the evil? Cancelling your insurance didn't mean that a fire would occur. It was simply the company taking the educated guess that it was much more likely, too likely in fact to risk the bet. So they took the opt out. Would you, had you been in their position?

As I have no way of knowing the exact answer with each case, I'll avoid a blanket statement. Still, what was in the contract? It's a fair question. No one is guilty of a grave sin if a contract is legitimate. It's that simple.

Marty PSA

Warehouse clubs are a bit of a gamble. You might find a real bargain, and the deal you find may only be relative to the product. Brand names might well be cheaper per item than in a regular grocery store. But a store brand could be less expensive. And let's be honest: corn is corn. What difference does it make what label is on the can?

As such, I resisted the monstrous box of Cherrios offered me at my warehouse store yesterday. I like Cherrios well enough yet I don't want to have to eat them just to get rid of them, and store brand rolled oats so far as I can tell taste about the same, yet cheaper.

That does not of course mean there are no bargains at a big box store. I found vitamin D soft gels (I take one per day for vertigo) at a great price: two years worth for ten bucks, where a year's worth has been costing me $18. The allergy pills which I also take once a day were $15 for 365 tablets. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's a year's supply. The over the counter store brand with a 30 count was costing thirteen bucks every month. I checked the expiration dates, too: well after I will have consumed the pills.

So in doing the math, I saved $167 on both. By themselves that paid my year's membership while leaving me $112 ahead. And that's just two examples.

What it means is that if you're judicious, warehouse stores are worth the membership. Just avoid the Cherrios.

Something Borrowed

Me brother Phil would regularly chauffer me Grandma Cosgriff or me Grandpa Joe around, for whatever reason. One day for whatever reason he was taking Joe out, but they had to borrow Grandma's car. She gave them a list of cautions about how to drive her vehicle.

The roads were a little dirty that day, causing specks of dirt to form on the windshield. Phil wasn't paying much attention to them as they weren't really obstructing his vision.

Apparently, however, they were obstructing Joe's. Yet in his own quaint manner, rather than asking me brother to use the washer he instead barked, yea demanded, "Did your grandmother tell you you couldn't use the windshield washer?"

Phil cleared the window.

Observant Joe

Me Grandpa Joe had a way with words. In fact, Joe's ability to make the word hell declarative of many and varied emotions would find its modern equivalent in I am Groot, if that means anything to you. Trust me, the analogy fits.

Be that as it may, his use of language could actually be rather profound even in areas where mild expletives were not at all involved. I doubt that most of my cousins or other family members knew the pleasure of hearing Joe remark, when leading into a happy explanation or in demonstrating a welcome development, "Please observe."

Grandpa Joe said that whenever he had found a solution to a vexing problem at the Shop. We had our share of vexing problems at the old barn, believe me. But to cut through to the point here, if a particular issue had been tormenting us for many hours (or sometimes days) it sounded delightful to have Joe stop you and say those two simple words, please observe. It meant a problem was solved.

I thought of that a few days ago as I solved what had been a recent vexing problem involving a snake repair. Try as we might, neither me brother Phil nor I could get a piece of threaded pipe, the leg of a machine which sits as a tripod, out of the body of the unit. The leg had broken off flush so that there was nothing to grip it.

At a hardware Phil had discovered a tool to extract the broke piece yet we could not get it work. In desperation, as I didn't want to heat the body of the snake for fear of making things worse, worried that if I made it worse the ornery thing would need a body as well as a leg (and who knows how long that would take, our supply lines being disrupted by COVID) I heated it anyway, carefully. Within a few minutes, lo and behold, I used that tool that Phil found and walked that broken pipe right out of the body of that machine.

I could hardly wait to tell Phil "Please observe," as soon as he got back to the Shop. I had to channel my inner Joe Cosgriff for full effect.

Putting It In Perspective

I know what I'm not doing. Really, I do. Um, I don't. Ah, you figure it out.

My only birdie, my only one under par in golf, was on the 8th hole, a par 3, at Dearborn Hills Golf Club on August 2, 1990. It was a 180 yard hole and I was on the green off the tee. I had about a twenty five foot putt on a wide arc to birdie. I didn't actually know what I was doing. But lo and behold, I struck the ball and into the cup it went. Marty birdied.

Leap forward to 2018, to my only no putt. I was off the fringe, in the second cut, on the second hole of the back nine in my golf league, my third shot off the tee. One of my playing partners said I should not putt, I should chip. But I struck the ball as he spoke.

The ball jumped slightly, rolled rightly, and slipped into the cup. My only technical no putt. 

So I have a birdie, and I've no putted. I feel I have nothing more to prove in golf. But watch me try. Or not try. Or, you figure it out.

Ferengi Plumber

All types of customers have crossed the threshold of the old barn. There's Eeyore, who was always gloomy. Cash Adams, to quote me Grandpa Joe, lived by the axiom of Get Cash, Pay Cash. Joe actually nicknamed Adams that because he didn't trust him; by labelling him 'Cash' Adams he shamed the man into paying up front for everything. California was a plumber who sounded exactly like, and I mean exactly like, Huckleberry Hound. And then there was the Ferengi Drain Cleaner.

For those of you not familiar with the Ferengi, they were meant to be the villains in Star Trek: The Next Generation. They were a race of the future, and supremely, bizarrely capitalist, childishly obsessed with money making. They were the epitome of buy low, sell high. They were short, with oversized heads, ears, and bad teeth. They quickly proved too comic to be formidable adversaries for the Starship Enterprise and crew. 

One of them was somehow transported through a time warp to the late Twentieth Century, to become a plumber in Detroit and environs. He had an oversized head, massive ears, and was rather short. He was not bald, however, as our Star Trek, um, enemies were. Ferengi Drain Cleaner had quite a head of hair. So all you Trekkies out there, imagine Quark with an Elvis wig.

He also was manically concerned with getting things on the cheap. Ferengi guy constantly hassled me Pops and me for better prices. We learned through the grapevine though that his own prices were significantly above the curve. All, of course, for his own profit, as any caricature of capitalism would have it.

Ferengi Plumber. He was out of this world. He was out of his mind, too, if you ask me.

Respect

Uncle John whom we call Zeke and me Grandpa Joe, his father, well, their relationship was rocky, if I may be cryptic and dance around the issue. Yet Zeke impressed me with his sense of decency when Joe passed. Riding along with me and me brother Phil as we drove to Jacksonville, Illinois for Grandpa's funeral, Uncle John became surprisingly open and introspective about losing his father. He remarked, "Me and that man didn't always get along. But he gave me life. I have to go to his funeral. I owe him this."

Zeke was a man with his demons, God bless him, but he knew right from wrong. He knew that he had to do what was right, and damn personal histories. I think I learned all I needed to know about him on that road trip to his father's hometown.  You do what's right by your folks. You owe them that.

Mom's been gone over two years now, and I miss our Sunday trips. I did them out of love and was happy to, but we need to remember that part of love, perhaps the most important component of it, is doing what you're supposed to do. Ideally you do this freely and willfully. Yet even then, part of it is recognizing obligation. There's nothing wrong with admitting that fact.

During a homily one Sunday the priest was lecturing on the Ten Commandments. The first three deal with our relationship with God; the following seven with relationships between ourselves. What's the first of those? Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother. Before we do anything else, even before we're told not to kill or steal, we're told to honor our parents. That's how important our debt to them is.

If five hour drives and McDonald's cheeseburgers made my infirm mother happy in her last years, I owed her that. I owe her much more, but we do what we can at the time. If the best Zeke could do at the time was attend his father's funeral, he saw that he owed him that. I say Zeke paid his debt. And willfully.

Random Tuesday Writings

The Lions won convincingly Sunday. It's kinda making it hard not to believe in them.

College football is now a type of professional football, with all the NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) money going around. Ohio State for example paid around $20 million to its players. I'm not saying that's wrong. But it is causing athletes to jump around from team to team (Marshall couldn't play its bowl game because so many players had left the team for greener pastures) and ripping the game from its roots. So can we be spared the myth of the scholar athlete, the hype about how important 'the game' is to 'the kids playing' at least where the big revenue sports are involved? It's all about the money now, folks. Again, not bad. Yet decidedly different. I, for one, don't know that I like it.

I mean, it really just adds to the hype, the artificiality, of the whole thing. It's turning me even more off of a game which I've been slowly losing interest in for years now. Maybe I do know how I feel after all.

Glad we missed that big winter storm a few days ago. Winters haven't been bad in Detroit recently. Am I tempting fate bringing up the issue?

Well, there's a machine with an oil leak, another 'not saying nothing' as the customer related to me (I had no idea drain snakes might be sentient or self aware), and a third which needs a new motor table adjustment. I suppose I should get to them. 

Patrick's Question

Yesterday  I spoke about the relationship between me Uncle John (who we call Zeke) and me brother Patrick. They would typically ask one another questions about this or that, and comment on the answers.

One of Patrick's favorite types of query was an either/or question. Would you prefer pizza to fried chicken, for example. One day he asked Uncle John, "If you had the choice between retire now or..."

Zeke interrupted him abruptly. Indeed, his tone was rather sharp. "Retire now."

"But you didn't hear the rest of it!" Patrick cried.

"It doesn't matter what the rest of it is. If one option is retire now I'm retiring now!" stated Uncle John emphatically.

A man after my own heart. I don't think Patrick ever got the rest of the question out.

Zeke and Patrick

Me Uncle John (often here called Zeke) and me brother Patrick are two of a kind. I honestly think Zeke sort of took Patrick under his wing at the old barn. I've wondered if he saw how me Grandpa Joe, God bless his soul, would grate on Pat a bit and thus sought to help him cope. Oh, he'd tease him and get a kick out of Pat's answers. But I really believe there was something of a fatherly spark toward him in Uncle John, who never had kids of his own. They made many deliveries together, which surely helped build their relationship.

Patrick has his eccentricities; Zeke like to jibe at them. When he asked Pat what his favorite food was Patrick answered, "Cheetos."

"What, Oreos not filling enough for you?" Uncle John responded.

In 1979 he asked Pat if he could live in any other time or any other year, which would it be? Patrick thought a second and answered, "1978."

Zeke laughed and said incredulously, "You'd go back to last year?" and shook his head. "A chance to go anywhere and any time or place and you'd go back one year?"

There's more, and these exchanges aren't the best. I'm saving the best one though. Keep reading and you might catch it someday.

Sorryness

Me Grandpa Joe, while not exactly the most cautious worker himself, nevertheless coined the word 'sorryness' to describe a worker who wasn't considerate enough about his tools and equipment as he earned his daily bread. I think it's a useful addition to the language.

I've seen it at the old barn for years. One fella, more than one actually, would use the power unit of their drain snake as a cart for their cables, something you should never do. You can easily damage parts on the unit. Guys were routinely breaking off the toggles on the reverse switches doing that, then complaining about the quality of the switch when I'd charge them fifty bucks each to replace them. Then they'd do the same thing again, continuing to wrongfully use the machine as a dolly. Sorryness.

Other times on many different machines guys would break capacitor covers or switch boxes off their motors simply due to abuse. They weren't taking proper caution or time loading, unloading, or in the general use of their snakes. Then just as with the reverse switches, they try to blame the quality of the unit. Sorryness.

There's your English lesson today, friends, courtesy of Joe Cosgriff. You're already thinking of when to use the word, aren't you?

Spider Thoughts

One day me brother Patrick sat on the front porch. He noticed a spider up at the corner of the porch roof and the support post begin to work on a web. The spider worked steadily this way and that, spitting out web strand lengthwise and then along the height, adding crossing hairs as he prodded along. The arachnid moved delicately about the web, taking its time until it was done. 

Patrick watched the whole while, up to when the spider moved to the middle of it's brand new insect trap and set up shop. Then my brother stepped inside the door to the front hall, came back with a broom, and with a mighty omnipotent swing swept the spider web out of existence.

Imagine what that little spider must have been thinking. "Aw, come on, man! You watch me spend all that time working and destroy my home as soon as it's done? You're kidding, right? A more considerate god would have stopped me right away. What kind of sick fiend are you?"

Of course, spiders can't think. But I don't believe we would have to imagine too hard what it would have been thinking if it could.

Normalcy

Today is the 2nd of January. We're back to normal. Oh, there's still some decorations up. There's a fair amount of Christmas food and snacks hanging around the larder. I bought another fruitcake, so I'll have fruitcake until, oh, next Christmas, the way it lasts. It's the Spam of the holiday table, right?

All that said, I think that we may have the Christmas season backwards. The Polish observe Christmas through February 2nd, which is in the Church calendar Candlemas, the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. Take that, Groundhog Day.

The Polish are onto something. Before Christmas is just that: before Christmas. It hasn't come yet. We're singing carols and getting gifts wrapped and having parties and family get togethers before the actual reason for the season has occurred. We really ought to be doing those things after December 25, oughtn't we?

Ah well. Things feel like normal now, and that's okay. It's high time I tried normal anyway.

In The Zone

New Year's Day has taken on a special meaning for me in the last decade or so. At least two channels, SyFy and H & I, run Twilight Zone marathons. I catch up on as much as I can.

I almost hate to talk about specifics, though. If you've seen the great episodes you already get them. But if you haven't, I'll spoil them for you. That just wouldn't be right. So I'll drop names and offer show titles, and you'll either shake your head knowingly or, maybe, look for that episode. I'll just keep things vague.

Billy Mumy could act as a kid, couldn't he? He was in three great episodes. He and Jack Klugman starred in In Praise of Pip. That one tugged at the heartstrings.

Donald Pleasance, something of a hero among ham actors, is solid in The Changing of the Guard. It has A Christmas Carol vibe working for it.

Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery absolutely nail their roles in Two.

You gotta see The Hunt. It's a lesser known episode, but man, it leaves a lump in your throat. Trust your dog, friends. They know.

I could go on and on, and I know I'm excluding a lot, but you get the point. New Years Day is Twilight Zone time anymore. That's what makes the day for me.

But I do hope that 2025 itself isn't a kind of Twilight Zone, though.