Cash Is Indeed King

I have been consciously going back to using cash, at least on smaller purchases. The libertarian in me has come to suspect the increasing use of credit and debit cards because, yes, the government could use that against me if I'm a bad boy. China is the obvious example. Yet Canada used it recently against COVID protesters, and Canada is supposed to believe in freedom.

But I digress. While I carry a debit and a credit card, cash is becoming king, and it should. I've stopped taking cards at the Shop because I see no reason to pay someone three percent or so for a service I simply don't need. Every single customer whom I've told bring me cash has brought it, and with no debate. I think more and more of them see the advantage too. 

I do see where, based on a supposed penny shortage, some businesses round change. The tendency is to round up, I suppose to avoid argument, yet many places do give me exactly what I'm owed. I don't argue when they round down; it's a nuisance, and perhaps wrong, I'll say, yet not worth the fight. But I have begun keeping track of whether I am ahead on such transactions, or the stores and shops I deal with.

In calendar 2026, I'm $1.64 in front. A pittance, but, well, my pittance. I wouldn't get it using a card.

Lunch With Cloyce

Nowadays the operators of drain snakes are taught never to handle the rotating steel cable because of the threat of serious injury. But that wasn't always the case. 

Time out of mind, drain cleaners opened sewers by shoving the spinning cable into the line by hand. The real old timers actually did it bare handed, would you believe it? They handled the greasy black cables, the greasy black coming from the sewer sludge, without gloves. One old plumber, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, took it to a new level. 

To tell it true, Cloyce was a top notch sewer man. Still, his personal habits left something to be desired. He did not for example wash his hands while working. He allowed all that greasy gook to build up on his paws while unclogging those drains all day.

When lunch came, typically an oily sardine sandwich, he would find a place to park his van and eat. With horribly dirty hands. Cloyce would hold his sandwich by a corner, and eat around it until all that would be left was that corner held by slick, black, greasy fingers.

Cloyce would then throw away that part. He wasn't that gross.

Fr. John

One of our pastors at old St. Dominic in Detroit was Fr. John. We liked him a lot, and he was comfortable enough to show up at our house unannounced for coffee and conversation. Those were good times, back in 1990-1991. The only bad thing was that he insisted on walking home, alone, after dark. He wouldn't take a ride; it was only four blocks to the rectory, he said, and he liked the quiet. He wouldn't even let me walk the dog along with him. I mean, I'm a lifelong Detroiter who genuinely feels comfortable around the neighborhood. But safety's safety.

So I did what my conscience compelled me to do. I would put the dog on the leash and shadow him. I'd give him about a block head start and then I'd follow him until I was sure he was safe at the Church.

Yet as it was, Fr. John liked to meander. He liked to take different routes home just to see different things. Then he would stop to smell the roses, so to speak. If something caught his eye, a building under renovation, a star or satellite in the sky, maybe even an actual flower, he'd stop to study it. And boy, could he study. Sometimes it was 45 minutes before I got back home.

One night, I was caught. I got a little too close and he spotted me, coming back to assuage my fears. "Don't worry about me, Marty. I know where I'm going if something happens."

"I don't doubt that," I replied. "I just don't want St. Peter's first question to me be, why'd you let that priest walk home alone at midnight?"

We had a laugh, but he finally indulged my fears and let me, and the dog, walk him home after visits.

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.

Huh?

The things you see while driving around making drain snake deliveries...

Yesterday, west of Midland, Michigan, a pickup with New York plates passed me. Neither is unusual. I see New York license plates with some regularity, and my new old van is routinely passed. What caught my eye, though, was the vanity plate on that pickup. EVL DAD. Evil Dad?

I am curious what the story is behind that one.

The Harmless Catch-22

Dad jokes.

Don't buy flowers from monks. Only you can prevent florist friars.

I'm opening a car repair shop. I'll call it Auto Correct.

And then there's the ones which ensnare young kids in a vicious catch-22. My own Dad's favorite was to ask a kid, "If you have twenty-six sheep and one of them died, how many would have left? " If naive, unsuspecting child answered 25, he's say no, you'd have 19, insisting he said twenty sick sheep. If poor, unfortunate young 'un actually replied 19 me Pops would insist he said 26. It was a vicious, unwinnable cycle.

But no long term psychological damage was done. I don't think.

Doggone It

Is it a bad sign when Senior moments begin running together?

Yesterday, I made my way up to the old barn at around 9 in the morning. Almost as soon as I got to work, I realized that I left my cell phone on the dining room table. As tempting as it was to leave it, my conscience insisted I go get it. Doggone conscience.

Right around Noon I went home for lunch. The instant I walked in the door, I reached for my pocket to grab my phone. Of course, I had left it on a workbench. 'I won't be long', I told myself. Yet also, of course, within 90 seconds I was headed back. The most important call in the world was certain to come in if I did not.

I'd love say I didn't do that again. But we all know the truth, and we all know I couldn't leave it at the Shop all night. 

Doggone conscience. Hopefully today goes better.

Vote No On All Millages

I'll be voting today in the Michigan primaries. 

I don't know how I'll vote on everything but I do know how some of my ballots will go.

I will vote against every single millage, especially new ones but even renewals. Millages are taxes against property, and I believe that property taxes are as immoral as income taxes. The people, with the government as an intermediary, are saying, "Nice house you got there! Give us $4,000 a year or we'll take it away." That's the very definition of extortion. If it was the mob demanding protection money we'd have a fit. But, hey, democracy, which is really just tyranny of the majority quite frankly. That's why even in a republic as we have you need minority rights protected somehow. 

But, but, libraries! Police and fire protection! Schools! Can't you see how bad public schools are for the body politic (and their students) with their propaganda and lack of honest education? Time to defund them. Police and fire protection ought to come from the general budget, because they're a general interest. Paying them through property taxes simply lets government get fat while using the general fund for vote buying schemes. Libraries too, if you're going to have them at all, should be through the general fund. I am not convinced we should have them.

The fact is that governments at all levels tax us enough already. We have no direct recourse against it except denying millages. It's the best we can do as individuals to stop feeding the beast.

Well, that was more of a rant than I started out for it to be. 

Charles Martin Cosgriff, M.D.

Believe me, you do not want Marty as your kindly old MD. Even I will admit that. For starters, I doubt I'd be all that kindly. Then there's fact that I don't care for blood, which might just make being a doctor a tad difficult. But perhaps I could be mistaken for one.

I did actually play a doctor in the background of the movie Little Murder, which was filmed in my neighborhood back in 2009. I was in two blink and you miss them scenes but I was in there, lab coat and all. So there's that. I could believably be mistaken for a doctor. In fact I was once mistaken for one. Or, more precisely, the doctor was mistaken for me.

Me Uncle Frank, who lived up in Hessel in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula, had to have surgery. He told me that as he was coming out of it and still very groggy, a doctor came over to speak to him. He thought that the doctor was me. All the while he was answering the surgeon's questions Uncle Frank said he was thinking things like, "Marty's not a doctor," or "Marty's not here, he's in Detroit," and the like. A funny story, in a cutesy kind of way. I assured him it could not have been have been me, for the reasons he cited plus one other. "What's that?" Uncle Frank demanded to know.

"You survived the surgery," I replied with a laugh. 

You know what? When he told the story the next time he added that reason to his list. 

The Amish Store

A few miles north of Bellefontaine, Ohio, is a small store run by the Amish community. It sells Amish made goods as well as candies and herbs and a few other things. They have the best chocolate covered raisins I've ever had.

A few weeks ago I stopped in on my way back to Detroit from Electric Eel. I grabbed a couple things and went to the counter to pay. I could see many young women in a small room behind the counter, working hard at whatever they needed to get done. Although there was a ringer by the cash register and a sign to ring it for service, I didn't do that. I was in no hurry, and the staff was busy. They'd get to me soon enough.

A young Amish girl, maybe four years old and standing right behind the counter, had other ideas. She looked up at me and smiled. She clearly had an impish thought percolating in her mind. Then she boldly stepped up to the counter, smiled a bigger smile, and reached up for the ringer. Ding ding ding ding ding ding! She rang the bell several times in quick succession and with great glee, then jumped back out of the way.

A young woman turned around, obviously a bit irritated, and rushed to the register to take care of me. I looked at the child and winked. I know the cashier presumed it was me who had rung the bell so emphatically. But I wasn't about to throw an Amish toddler under the bus. Especially since she had so much fun ringing that bell.

If Need Be

At around Noon yesterday I sat along the concourse of Comerica Park waiting for the Detroit Tigers-Baltimore Orioles game. It was an awful 10-9 loss for the home team, one which makes me hate removing pitchers too quickly and the ghost runner in extra innings all the more. But enough of that rant, even if it needs to be said. I have a joke to tell this morning. A very bad one, but better than the game. Honest.

A few feet away from the picnic table where I ate a piece of pizza and drank a Diet Coke, there was, mounted on an iron beam, a defibrillator. They're rather common these days, and understandably so. Yet that one heralded across the top of the box, 'Emergency Defibrillator'. Does that mean it can only be used when the regular defibrillator doesn't work or is not available?

Look, I was up front that it was a bad joke. But it was better than the game, at least for us Tigers fans.

All in the Details

Writing can be hard work. For me, sharpening my crayons is a constant hassle.

But seriously, folks. In reading reviews of my books, I find, at times, good and interesting questions. One reader asked, in so many words, how plants could survive in the world of my book A Subtle Armageddon. Spoiler alert, if you have not read ASA: all insect and animal life has been eradicated.

Well, how does one answer that? It isn't something which had occurred to me during the writing process, honestly. But plants as we know them need bees and such for pollination. So how can I make it make sense that plant life was still around in my future world?

Or, must I? I think we may be dealing with two basic issues here. The first is whether an explanation is necessary. After all, most readers haven't seemed bothered by it. If a reader is lost enough in a story, and that's what I believe most writers want, then I'm not sure every objection is important. Must everything be explained, down to the last iota? It is a work of fiction, after all. Is it even possible to explain everything away?

Which leads to the second point. The society which brought about A Subtle Armageddon was clearly highly advanced, at least scientifically. What's to stop us from presuming they overcame that stumbling block? Perhaps they developed a way in which plants regenerate on their own. In short, why not allow the reader, if it even crosses his mind, to dismiss the objection on that basis? After all, it doesn't really matter to the point of the story. Well, that I can see, anyway. Yet maybe I'm prejudiced.

I'm just thinking out loud. But I am interested in your thoughts.

Matthew Thinks

 Matthew reviewed my book A Subtle Armageddon on Amazon. He said:

This book is one of those rare science fiction novels that stays with you long after you've finished reading. It combines imaginative world building with deep philosophical questions about humanity, technology, freedom, and what it truly means to be alive. The story unfolds at a steady pace while rewarding readers who enjoy thoughtful, idea driven science fiction rather than nonstop action. What impressed me most was how the book balances its big concepts with genuine emotion and a sense of wonder. It raises important questions without feeling preachy. Making it an enjoyable read as well as one that encourages reflection. This book is definitely worth your time if you're a fan of classic science fiction that explores the human condition.

Is Matthew right? Find out here.

Laying the money down

They're always in a hurry until it's time to lay the money down. That's an old saw of me Pops, and it holds true as much now as whenever he first said it. Yet it still amazes me that it happens, that people will hold off on paying for things which, theoretically at least, pay for their living, their food and trucks and houses and such.

For larger projects and orders, except from well established customers, we get significant down payments. Even then, with as much as half down, we'll have folks leave things hanging for weeks, or even months. Yet there are repairs which we simply do and trust that they guy will return. Generally that involves things which we can easily sell to someone else if it comes down to it.

A good example is repaired sectional drain cables. If a fella doesn't return after awhile we just sell them. I won't bore you with the details, but we can make it up to the original customer if it comes down to it. Why, I would even honor our oldest obligation on that count.

We have a man, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, whom we owe six cables from 1983. We called him several times back then until the old man decided it was no longer worth his trouble. Yet if he comes in today I will give him the cables he's owed. I will even sell them to him at the price we charged back then, nine bucks a cable (they're $35 each now) just for the novelty of it. And out of an odd respect for the chutzpah it would take to try and claim them 43 years later.

Hey, it may even make good PR, right?

Woodbridge Nature

Nature is resilient. It adapts. That's the main reason why environmental issues aren't at the forefront of my worries. Yes, we should be good stewards. But Nature rules its own sphere.

Over the years in Woodbridge, my local Detroit neighborhood, I've seen wildlife come back in abundance. I've observed pheasants, hawks, rabbit, beavers, and opossum. Feral cats are everywhere; there aren't near the rats there once were, and perhaps that's why. 

In the last year there have been two deer sighted, one right by the old barn. And this very day while on my morning constitutional, I saw a wild turkey. No, not an empty bottle of the famous rotgut. A wild turkey, with a baby in tow. 

Nature rebounds, it answers all challenges. My own Detroit environs prove it.

Donations with Extreme Prejudice

A few weeks ago at Mass, I helped with the offertory collection. In one pew sat a family with a small child. She was maybe three, and her mother had given her the money to put in the collection basket. She was encouraging her daughter to put the money in the basket, not unlike we did with our kids when they were very young. It's a common thing.

So as I arrived at their pew, the little girl looked up at me, took two or three steps towards the basket as I held it towards her and - wham - absolutely slammed dunked the money into it. Then she smiled at herself. Oh yeah, I did it, I helped. I'm the girl.

It just so happened we had a second collection. The same thing happened: I approached, she toddled over, and slammed that cash right into the basket. She made absolutely certain, left no doubts at all, that SHE made the donation. She was very happy and proud to have done her part.

You gotta love that moxie.

Silent Outtakes

We, me son Charlie and I, watched the German silent film Die Nibelungen yesterday. It was very good; I'm starting to really like silents. You have to invest more in them than those talkies so many people obsess about. Silent movies make you pay attention.

Still, it can be difficult for me not to think about jokes even while viewing an engrossing film. In a scene where the lead character brandished a sword I thought, what if he had dropped it? Would we have a silent film outtake for history? Would a dialogue card have appeared which said, "Crap!"

Perhaps a couple of actors fell into laughter during a shoot. We've seen that with more recent movies, where concentration is busted and there's moments of uncontrollable laughing. Would a card pop up saying, "Aha-hahahahaha!"

I'm just wondering.

Estimating Grandparents

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

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

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

"No," she responded curiously.

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

She laughed. Can you believe that?

Saying So Long

I'm never sure that I should write the type of blog I'm about to author. They become about you, and I don't really want this to be about me. I think you'll understand.

A dear friend died yesterday. Forgive me if I stay cryptic and vague, but most of you wouldn't know him anyway, and as the family has made no announcements yet I feel it's a matter of their privacy that I not get too specific. 

Still, I owe the man. He was 10 or 11 years older than me, but we'd known each other more than fifty years. Over those years we've had many good conversations, and a lot of good natured joking and jiving went on between us. Yet what I was most grateful for was in how he kept in touch with me, at least once a week, every week for better than a year, after my Dad passed. Many, many of you did too, and believe me, those kindnesses will never be forgotten, will always be treasured. Yet right this minute his are on my mind.

He didn't have to make it a point to check in. He didn't have to offer such regular support. But he did, and still did at least with some regularity, ever since. 

His passing is a genuine shock. Godspeed, you old Lutheran. Trust me, he'll laugh at that quip.

It's so easy to fix a snake

 No, Mungo! Never kill a customer! -from Monty Python's Dirty Fork sketch

Those are certainly words to live by. I have never come close to killing a customer. At least, so far as the police know. But I have snapped at a couple of them.

Several years ago during a period when we were extremely busy and running about one week to ten days behind in repairs (not unlike now quite honestly) a guy walked into the old barn. He had a machine which wasn't running and wanted me to take a look at it. I said I would, but that if it required anything serious he'd have to leave it and I'd get to it as soon as I could.

I followed him out to his van and he produced a little General Sewerooter Junior which had wires hanging out of the motor in a terrible jumble. A real bird's nest, me Pops used to say. It would have taken an hour simply to sort everything out, to get all the wiring back in place so that I might then start diagnosing the real problem. On top of that, his cable was tangled inside the drum. I shook my head and said to the man, "You're going to have to leave that with me."

He began, "Well all you have to do is..."

I cut him off right there. "Then you do it," I replied, admittedly rather harshly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Then you do it," I repeated. "If it's all that simple, why are you bringing it to me? Why don't you have it done already?"

"You don't have to get that way, man," he protested.

In me best Grandpa Joe voice I half yelled back, "Yes! Yes I do! Everybody thinks their mess is so easy to fix after they messed it up worse and then expect a miracle from me! I'm not putting you in front of anybody else for this!"

The man left. I didn't kill him, but I haven't seen him since either.