Emergency Not?

Last Tuesday I took a call from a plumber, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who said he needed 4 drain snake cables. "Believe it or not, Cosgriff, my own sewer's plugged, ha, ha!"

"It can happen to any of us, eh, Cloyce? Well, I got plenty, come on by."

"Okay. You gonna be in Friday?"

"Well, yes."

"Great. See you then, Cosgriff." You do you, Cloyce, but when my sewer has backed up, ASAP isn't quick enough to get it open. But, fine, if that suits you.

Friday morning he called back. "Can I get those cables at 4, Cosgriff?"

"Absolutely."

"Cool. See you then"

Cloyce calls at three. "I ain't gonna make it. Can we meet next week?"

"It would have to be Tuesday. I'm not available Monday." 

"Tuesday's good, Cosgriff." 

We'll see if he shows. I'm surprised Mrs. Cloyce isn't on his case. Either way, I don't get it. When there's nasty sewer water on my basement floor, it's gotta go, right now kapow. But, you do you, Cloyce.

Ram Parts

One of the many neat tools you can buy from Electric Eel is a little cylindrical unit called a Kinetic Water Ram. It has a pump with which you can build up air pressure, and a trigger whereby you release it. You stick it over a drain opening, build up the pressure, and wham! A burst of air opens the line. Neat, huh?

But like anything else it requires service from time to time. After a lot of use the washers inside the unit wear so that it won't hold pressure, for example. There's a repair kit available for when this happens.

One day a customer called and explained his trouble and I said he needed that kit. He asked if I'd order it and call him when it arrived. Fair enough; we do that regularly. I told him sure.

When the Ram repair kit came a day or two later I called the guy to let him know it was in. Thanks, he said, but he was by then in the middle of a large plumbing job and couldn't get to my Shop for a couple days. No problem, I replied, we'd hold it for him.

As I hung up the phone I sat and I looked at the kit. O'er the Ram parts we watch, I thought.

Not bad. Not bad at all. To me.

Ready, Set, No.

The 8 foot long drain cleaning cables I sell come in barrels of 20. At just about a pound a foot, that's 160 pounds each. At 66, I appreciate help lifting them into the new old van. Indeed, it's almost a necessity, though I can manage it if I must.

Wednesday last I went to Electric Eel (Electric Eel: for all your drain cleaning needs) and was happy to have me brother Phil along. But I did learn that when you ask a question, it's really important to wait for the answer.

I rolled a barrel up to the side door of the van and leaned it backwards for us to lift. As we each bent down opposite one another and began to take hold of the barrel I asked, "Ready?" and immediately started to lift.

"No," Phil replied. Consequently, I nearly heaved myself into a hernia. Fortunately, my hands just slipped off the barrel, and I was able to regain my balance with one backward step.

Have a question for someone? Wait. For. The. Reply. Your back will appreciate it.

No to the New Narnia

They can't leave anything alone, can they? Hollywood won't respect established source material, and I am sick of it.

The latest travesty comes from a reboot of the famed and well-loved Narnia children's books written by C. S. Lewis. Aslan, a male lion and obvious Christ figure, is the penultimate character in the stories, the true guiding light. The fifth title in the series, and my second favorite (after The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which begins the Narnia tales), The Magician's Nephew, was lined up for being put on film. I was genuinely excited.

And then they cast Meryl Steep to voice Aslan. After promising to be true to the original books too.

You want to know why I don't care, liberal, progressive friends, about President Trump seeking to rename lakes and mountains? You have no respect yourselves for what has been well established for years, but you have the gall to be righteously indignant over Lake America or the Gulf of America? It dirties your mantle.

A female actor, even a well-known and respected one, voicing a male Christ figure. A character created by a serious, traditional Christian who surely would object. Damn your characters and intentions, Lewis. We know better how to express your meaning. That's Hollywood's modus operandi.

Well, express away. You won't do it on my dime, a dime you certainly would have gotten had you played it right. The bulk of Lewis readers and Narnia fans won't pony up either, I'm sure. Of course, you'll only argue Narnia wasn't really marketable, or that fans like me are somehow sexist or palpably self righteous ourselves. Har-umph. You might try an iota of introspection. Just one little bit.

Instead, no respect for fans or original sources. You're better than them and that, aren't you? 

Old Oil

The things me Grandpa Joe used to have us do at the old barn make me shake my head these days. At the time I didn't think much about it, but looking back, I often wonder why.

The gasoline powered welding machines he had had long side panels which folded upwards to allow access to the engine and welding unit. These panels (which were as I recall where about four foot in length) had what amounted to long hinges. That they required occasional greasing I get. Joe did that with old oil.

We changed the oil in our own cars back then, and the engines on the welders needed changing too of course. Joe would save all the old oil and have teens like me at the time paint the gray, sticky goo across and into the hinges.

Suffice it to say, it left you smelling like oil. It got oil all over everything: your clothes, the entirety of the machine, and a lot on the cement. For days afterwards you would get a light spray of oil when opening a panel on the machine. It was simply one big, slick, greasy mess.

I understand his reasoning. He felt the oil penetrated well, that it worked itself more into the joints. But thinking back on it, I have to believe there were actual penetrating oils which might have been less hassle: WD-40 or something. But back then I was only a 14 year old doing as he was told. Thinking wasn't in my job description. Joe did that for me...for whatever that's worth.

Extending greetings

As regular readers know, I try to walk for an hour every morning when weather and circumstances permit. That leads to an average of five days a week, nine months of the year. December through February get iffy.

Other than for the sake of the exercise itself, one thing I try to do while walking is to greet everyone I meet. It's interesting that a simple 'good morning' can appear to make other folks smile. I can't tell you how many people approach where you can see they're keeping their heads down, unsure whether they should make contact. Then I say "Good Morning!" and they invariably smile and say it back. I like to think it's good for us both.

To be sure, some do not respond, or respond surly. Yet I try not to let that bother me. I don't know what's on their minds or how their lives have been lately, so why make a big deal of it? Even if they are surly by nature, my good morning certainly can't hurt.

It all actually makes my walks better. I've never been much on psychology but I can see that when we choose a good attitude we tend to develop one. With that in mind I say to all of you out there, Good Morning!

Or good afternoon if you don't see this until then.

Going by the Numbers

Did you know that in 1953, Joe Cosgriff Welding Machine rentals bought more new Hobart welders than anyone else in the country except Ford and Chrysler? Well, now you do. I'm not sure how many units that was, but it must have been a lot.

At its height I know me Grandpa had over 200 welders. In the 1970s, I remember them being numbered up to 210, the Shop number painted on the top with the prefix JC. That number, of course, does not include the total number of machines he ever owned. Things go bad; things get scrapped out or, horrors, stolen.

I'll tell what impressed me most, though: me Pops had every serial number memorized. If I asked him the 'Joe Cosgriff' number, say, JC-167, he'd rattle off the machine's factory assigned serial number. Right now kapow. I was awed by that when I was 10. I'm still awed by it. I mean, we're not talking simple little four or five digits with maybe a letter. We're talking number and letter combinations like 12CW5497 or 5DW68873. I remember the 5DW ones were 400 amp welders, so there was a code to it which could help memorization. But still, over 200 (likely closer to 300 counting machines out of use over time) committed to memory? Wow.

Now they're all gone. The last one we rented, fittingly enough, was the month Joe died, August 1991. The last ones we had we sold to a guy who shipped them to Nigeria. Yes, that sounds like a joke. But it's what the fella told the old man, and he paid cash. He could do whatever he wanted with them after that.

There. Now you're all set for when 'Cosgriff welders' is the Jeopardy category.

Spinning

Just when you think it's safe to go outside...

I was diagnosed with Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo, or maybe Meniere's Disease, or something, about ten years ago. Call it what you will, what it means is that I get dizzy and they don't know why. 

I haven't had a major episode in several years. I had hoped it was in my past. I take vitamin D as recommended, and do the exercises, and hydrate, just like I'm supposed to. Then, around four in the morning today, I was sliding along the wall to get to the bathroom. Yes, I'm old too.

This is not fun.

Don't Cross or Blur the Lines

The Lindsay Clancy trial has brought about strong emotions, and understandably. There are serious and profound issues of justice involved, issues of basic right and wrong, and none are to be taken lightly. We must be able to speak out; we must be able to say things which need saying, even to be strident and emphatic. Justice requires that we draw a hard line.

But it does not require casual, flippant, mean-spirited comments. Indeed, justice condemns them. There are things you simply cannot say or do.

We must never, ever, under any circumstances, wish or presume Hell on anyone. Holy Mother Church has named many Saints. She has never proclaimed anyone to be in or deserving of Hell. Not even Judas Iscariot. If the Bride of Christ will not do it, neither may we. No matter what.

We must never, ever, under any circumstances, encourage violence against the person. We must not, for example, tell someone to kill themselves, no matter how heinous the acts they commit. It's just plain wrong.

Christian charity is required of all of us, at all times. This may be most necessary when the most important questions are at play. For while we may be, and perhaps ought to be, strident, we may never become subhuman. Or act as though others are.

Snorting Coke?

No, it isn't what you think. But what a hook, huh?

The traffic light caught me as I made a Michigan left on Telegraph Road in Taylor yesterday. As it happened, directly across from me as I waited I saw a family restaurant which used to be a Denny's. It was a Denny's when I was in high school back in the seventies (the NINETEEN seventies, just to clarify). My friends and I back then ate there with some modest regularity.

One such time, six of us stopped there on a Saturday night after a movie for a late dinner. We ordered food and pop. Of course, with six people there were orders for a few different types of pop: Coke, Dr. Pepper, and likely even a Diet Pepsi were in the mix. The waitress as was the norm brought our drinks first.

Only she had apparently forgotten who ordered what and what was what. She had too neglected to somehow mark them as some servers did even then, with two straws for the Coke, one for the Dr. Pepper, and so forth. So arriving at our booth, the young woman improvised. She stuck her nose almost into a pop, snorted loudly and, deciding the first was a Coke, handed it to one of us who ordered one. Then she snorted the next, another Coke, and set it before the next of us, then likewise determined which was the Dr. Pepper and handed it out.

Caught between silent snickering and uproarious laughter, we did what teenage boys would naturally do. We laughed uproariously. The girl looked at us as if we were insane and asked if everything was okay.

It more than was. In fact, her entertainment was better than the movie we had seen. It brought a whole new meaning to snorting coke.

Another 9/11

Twenty-five years have now passed since what may become the defining point of a generation. Sixteen years, almost to the minute as this is being written, terrorists attacked the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, and were overcome by the passengers of an airplane over the hills of Pennsylvania. All that time, and we still cannot make any sense of it.

The trouble is that there is no sense to be made. To be sure, we can understand the reasons for even such terrible actions, in the same way that we can understand the reasons Hitler did what he did. Yet that is not the same as understanding.

How do we, how can we, come to actually understand rape or murder or thievery, mass murder or any any other evil which may be added to such a gruesome list, if we are to be decent human beings ourselves? It is only in a warped mind where such heinous acts may be justified. As such, reasonable people simply cannot understand them. It is beyond their ability; it is, to them, pure nonsense.

So the goal today should be to remember. Remember the victims and their families, remember the countless acts of heroism that day, remember even the perpetrators of such despicable carnage if for no other reason than to remind ourselves that such twisted souls do exist, seeking the ruin of those not in lockstep with them. But hopefully, remember even so that their redemption may be possible. If we are the good people we claim to be, even that shouldn't be so difficult of a task on so difficult of an anniversary.

About Lindsay

Jeffrey Dahmer. Ted Bundy. David Berkowitz. Charles Manson. And yes, yes I am. I'm about to add Lindsay Clancy to this list.

I'll be blunt: you have to have at least a touch of insanity to commit gruesome murder. Every person on that list demonstrated a degree of it, at times to reprehensible proportions. Ted Bundy violated the corpses of his victims until they were too decomposed to be of any use for his wicked desires. Berkowitz thought, if we can take him at his word, a dog from Satan was ordering him to kill. Charles Manson? He clearly broke the code of the Beatles' White Album to gain instruction. You get the point.

Lindsay Clancy systematically executed her three small children. She clearly put a lot of thought into it. Was she insane? I'm not sure if or how much that matters. 

The men on this list were put to death, or, at least, institutionalized for life. Jurors created no excuses for them. Yet "He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children," said one Clancy juror, knocking the holdout juror who would not grant a not guilty verdict. That statement itself is insane. She couldn't hear the profound stupidity in what she was saying?

Another juror said the holdout couldn't point to one piece of evidence for a guilty verdict. Does Lindsay murdered her children not count? Again, an insane comment.

This type of dismissal of murder one worries me more about the future of humanity than the Iran War, Donald Trump or AOC, homelessness and many other societal ills. A segment of society is trying to defend murder based on mental health. Never mind that thousands of women who suffered post-partum depression did not kill their babies. Lindsay should not get excused for that. What kind of jury pool do we have when folks think that way? Are any of us safe when and if such an attitude towards very basic questions of justice permeates society?

Did you notice she wasn't quite so successful at killing herself? Yet she was a nurse. She surely knew how to accomplish that. If she actually meant to. Yes, I think her attempt at suicide a rather obvious subterfuge.

Bundy got the chair. Manson died in prison. Clancy should be in jail or confined to a mental institution. For life. An overwrought sympathy for her dilemma if, and that's a big if, she really was momentarily crazy, is a denial of justice to her children, and thoroughly despicable.

Cleveland

This past weekend was a great one, for me anyway. My sons and I spent it in Cleveland, Ohio, where there was more to do that I had expected.

For starters, we picked the right baseball game to attend. The tumbling Detroit Tigers lost three of four to Cleveland, but won Saturday night 6-0, the game we saw. I picked up another MLB hat, and the Cleveland home cap is a nice one. It will see the light of day from time to time as I try to rotate my baseball hats; no point having them if all they do is sit in boxes. 

Sunday we saw the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. One of my favorite bands, Paul McCartney and Wings, were the centerpiece display, so it was pretty cool to view that retrospective along with all the other exhibits. There was even a chance to vote on the 2027 inductees to the Hall. I voted for Weird Al Yankovic. He deserves it. I mean it.

The Hall is right on Lake Erie, and as it happened there was an air show. After the Hall, we were treated to the Blue Angels, the US Navy's tactical flying squad. Very impressive, close quarters formations. Those pilots must have nerves of steel.

We ended the main part of our visit watching Coyote vs. Acme at a restored theater (The Capitol) just off downtown. A great place to see a movie, and Coyote vs. Acme, about Wile E Coyote suing the ACME corporation for its defective products (anyone who has seen the old Warner Brothers cartoons know ACME) was worthy of the hype. I laughed out loud often. 

As always seems to be the case, it was over all too soon. C'est la vie. We'll just have to improve on it next year.

Shared Birthdays

As I picked up my rental car the other day, I dutifully offered a credit card and my driver's license to the young woman at the counter. "Hey! We have the same birthday!"

"You're 66?" I exclaimed.

She did not find the joke as funny as I did...

First Fruits

An Amazon reader mentioned this about my book A Subtle Armageddon: 

What I really enjoyed about the book was Mr. Cosgriff’s attention to detail. I could feel the things the man was experiencing for the first time. The way he described the man tasting an apple and drinking water for the first time was written really well. I thoroughly enjoyed man’s first encounter with wine! I’m a true crime/cozy mystery buff but I’m telling you, this book did not disappoint.

Thank you, dear reader! That's one of the points I want to get across. This last man on Earth begins with a total lack of experience of anything. Neither the world of the mind nor the physical world have any meaning to him as his journey begins. I want you to feel what he's feeling as he discovers the things around him, things we take for granted. yet what if we were to experience them for the first time? What would that apple taste like? What would sunrise and sunset mean to him as he saw the first of each? How could these experiences create a fully human being out of him?

Intrigued? Look here for the answers to these and other important questions.

Donut Anxiety

For a few years I taught college test prep classes. In an attempt to make students feel more comfortable and, hopefully, more open to learning, we allowed food and snacks in our classrooms. So I thought little initially when a young woman brought coffee and a donut into class one day. She set down her coffee, put the donut on a napkin, and, with the rest of the students, dutifully opened a textbook to the page I had indicated.

I began to expound about English grammar. She listened quietly and wrote a couple of notes as I went along. After a minute of two she took a pinch, literally a pinch, hardly enough to call a crumb, off of her donut and ate it. I thought quietly to myself, and very calmly, 'Take a bite of the donut'.

I continued with my lecture. Before long the young lady had another infinitesimal bit of her donut, then a tiny, bare, meager sip at her coffee. 'Eat the donut,' I said to myself, a little more encouragingly.

Rules of the comma were the rule of the day, so I pressed on. She took another vague nip of her pastry. 'Take a bite of the donut,' said Marty to himself, becoming perturbed at her manner of consumption.

After an explanation of comma rule three and a note about such, another pinch of donut. 'Take. A bite. Of your donut,' I thought emphatically. By then it looked as though a mouse had been nibbling at it rather than a human being eating it.

Comma rule five followed comma rule four. Pick, pick, pick at the donut. She wasn't eating the doughy ring so much as slow torturing it. That pastry was undergoing a horrible, painful death. My pulse raced; a drip of sweat formed on my forehead. My blood pressure rose volcanically. In my mind I was yelling, 'For the love of all that's good and holy in this world, take a bite out of that stupid donut!

The math instructor appeared in the doorway. We tagged teamed our classes and she had arrived to do a math review. I finished up, gave a homework assignment, and rose to go to the other room to talk about the comma there. As I made my exit I took a furtive glance over my shoulder. The young woman had just consumed another atom of her snack.

'Take an actual bite out of that donut,' the math teacher thought, with a touch of anxiety. I could see it in her eyes.

Lamenting the World

Everything, it seems, is a catastrophe these days. But is the modern world really that much different than the worlds left to history?

To be sure, there are superficial differences, and I don't mean superficial as unimportant. I mean it as not different in a substantial way. The atomic bomb is really only 'one more terrible way to die in a world filled with terrible ways to die' said the writer C. S. Lewis. I just finished a book about Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo and believe me, many of those soldiers died horrible, gruesome deaths. My point is that scale doesn't necessarily add to substance. Men have been horrible to other men pretty much forever.

It will continue. There is no antidote, no way to prevent abominations of any sort. That's not to say that we shouldn't try. But even if we could prevent evil in one area, it's going to happen in another. In no way might we anticipate where the next awful thing will appear. Quite bluntly and, I will add, obviously, we do not have the capability to see the future. We only have the evidence of human failure, which points to continuing failure.

I think the problem, and I do look at it as a problem, is the furious rush of bad things which inundate our world. We hear about everything that happens almost instantaneously. It makes the world appear worse. Most of the time it's bad news because that sells, another curse which always is with us. The spigot ought to be turned off, if for no other reason that it isn't good for our collective or individual mental health. 

There will always be, as me Grandpa Joe might say, the next catastastroke. I rather believe the best we can do is do right in our own lives, help others when we can, and not fret too much about the rest. You weren't born to save the world. You were born, if I might co-opt Jordan Peterson, to clean your room. Seeing to yourself might just be the best way to fix the world.

Less Healthy

"You ever had deep fried Twinkies?" me brother Phil asked me the other day.

"Can't say I have."

"I was going into a restaurant one day and there was a sign which said, We have deep fried Twinkies," he explained. "So I bought one."

"Was it any good?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact."

"Why'd you try it? Curiosity?" I asked.

"I suppose," Phil answered. "But mainly I wondered, how can they make something unhealthy even more unhealthy?"

Yeah, you do wonder if there was a brainstorming session for that.

The Pumpkin Spice Wars

Ah, Facebook. You do encourage folks to get lathered up about trivialities. 

Almost every day lately I've seen memes which hammer at the onrushing autumn and it's mavens who love pumpkin spice everything. It's not unlike those (one of whom might be me) who lament Christmas displays being raised in mid-October, nosing out Halloween when it's still two weeks away. "Summer isn't over until September 22!" one friend, or, more to the point, one friend's meme yelled. "Put your pumpkin spice lattes away while I have another margarita!" Ah, hilarity.

But I've noticed that weathermen say something different. They say that fall begins September 1st. Meteorological fall begins today. We are, to those stout professionals, at this very minute already in autumn.

There, I've sold both sides ammunition. Entertain me. Start the Pumpkin Spice Wars.

Using a Cheater

You're about to learn something about drain snake repair, but I'm sure it's a lesson which can be equitably applied to any and all repairs, whether at work or in the household.

The SC-10-A drive shaft on an Electric Eel Model C is held in place with (2) 5/16 allen screws. Most of the time they come loose fairly easily. Yet as all things made by human hands, things don't always go according to plan. In the case of these screws, they sometimes seize. They insolently will not come out. When that happens you either heat them with a torch in an attempt to coax them out, or do what I do. Put a length of pipe over the top of the allen wrench, a 'cheater' as me Pops taught me, to give you greater leverage turning the wrench.

Now, I know there is a school of thought that you should never ever, ever use a cheater bar. Well, me Grandpa Joe and me Pops both believed in them, so I believe in them. So there.

Anyways, you turn the wrench with the cheater, increasing pressure as you go, and one of three things will happen. You will either (A) break the allen wrench, (B) strip the allen head on the screw, or (C) you will hear a tiny but sharp little 'ting' exactly as the wrench turns suddenly. That ting is either good or bad. But usually, it's good. Usually it means that screw has broken loose and you are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Your job will soon be over.

The good bad ting. Listen for it when you do your own repairs. And don't be afraid to use a cheater.