Grandpa Joe

I always knew Joe would be the last of my grandparents to take the final journey. He didn't take care of himself. He smoked like a chimney, as the saying goes. He took chances that would have surely killed any other man yet he, somehow, survived. Exercise? What was that?
He was the perfect candidate to outlive the other three.
He was not easy to get along with. But damn it, you could get along with him. If you wanted to. If you tried. We hear so much anymore about just getting along. Well, it took more than just getting along to get along with Joe. Yet he could be got along with. If you let go of your predispositions and tried.
He was tender. Yes, I know that those of you among my friends and relatives are laughing right now. Yet he was. He made me a simple little toy out of string and a button. He grinned as I played with it, laughed a bit, happy at the gift, happy at my glee. It lead to the only time I saw me Pops jealous, when he saw me playing with what his father had made for me. That's okay, I get it. The relationships between grandson and grandfather are different from that of father and son. The dynamics aren't the same.
But if I could have anything more human right now beyond my own father, I wish I had that string and button.

What are the odds?

Dad liked to play poker. Well, once years ago when he and his brothers and friends played almost every Saturday night he found himself on a hot streak which lasted several weeks. As most games were played at his house, Pops was teased a lot about marking the cards before the guys arrived for a game. So he decided one day to, I guess you'd say call their bluff.

He bought a brand new deck of cards to use for the next Saturday's game. He left it in the plastic wrapping until time for the first deal, which would be his. Dad was going to make a show of how that game would be fair by opening the cards in front of the guys.

So Saturday night came, everyone sat down, and Pops pulls out the new deck. You can all see for yourselves, fellahs, that this is a new set of playing cards which are obviously untouched, he says, or something similar. He gets a knife and cuts the clear plastic wrap, opens one end of the box, and triumphantly fans out the red-backed poker cards for all to see.

The guys saw the cards all right. Each card was red...except the one blue-backed card (which happened to be an ace of spades) amidst all the others. Sure, Bill, you don't mark deck.

Even Dad got a belly laugh out of that. As poker players might say about such things, 'What are the odds?'

The feel of small town America

The things you see, the things you learn on the road.
Yesterday morning at 4:30 in the little hamlet of Arlington, Ohio (Flag Village USA you might recall) I saw two young teenage paperboys riding their bikes along the main drag, delivering (obviously) their papers. I don't think I've seen an actual paperboy in twenty years. And I'd have never let my boys ride unsupervised in Detroit at that time.
Then I came to Bellefontaine, Ohio. It boasts of having the first concrete street in America, dating to 1891. I saw the stretch of road; it does look like it dates to 1891. But hey, who am I to question Bellefontaine or its claim to fame?
Finally, during the afternoon I made a stop in Fairmount, Indiana. This small town holds 2,992 people according to Wikipedia (and who am I to question Wikipedia?). But more than that: the actor James Dean grew up in town, and is also buried there. And there's still more: Jim Davis, creator of Garfield the cat, grew up there. Talk about the proverbial sublime to the ridiculous!
Yeah, a bit of a shameless plug, that last line. However that may be, it does seem that you can see a lot of interesting things in small town America even until yet.

First World Problems in Hessel, Michigan

I am a day late with a new blog post due to circumstances beyond my control. The Internet, the one and only, was out all over the eastern Upper Peninsula yesterday. So too was cell phone service. All cell phone service. I had to drive more than 14 miles to get a signal, and that on the shoulder of the road of M-48 northwest of Pickford. At least I could tell my family I had arrived safely.

Later on, back at Hessel, I could not get the TV to work. I spent a couple hours scanning and rescanning the over the air antenna before successfully having six channels.

The fact is that twenty years ago none of this would have vexed me. We had no cellphones and no TV. And we didn't care. We were happy to be in Hessel on vacation, doing things with family and seeing old friends. We did not need the modern world.

I feel a certain sadness and regret not only that those days are gone, but that I spent a significant amount of what little time I have this long weekend fretting over things which did not concern me not that long ago. To be sure, I'll still enjoy the weekend. But in front of a TV instead of observing the beauty around me.

I shall make time tonight to walk under the stars and hoping to see one quick meteor flash across the night sky. And perhaps a steadily passing satellite. It's the least I can do for myself after wasting so much of yesterday on the frivolous.

Mom playing solitaire

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

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

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

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

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

Minutes passed by as we went on conversing. Finally she stopped, looked up from her cards and asked, "Do you want to me play that four?"

"Please, Dear Lord, yes. Would you play that four!" I responded emphatically.

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

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

The spike in electric costs

I had several times heard of it happening to someone else. Now it's happened to me. And I laughed out loud.

Yesterday's mail brought me the electric bill for the Shop. Now, I'm sure there's been a simple mistake and that it will all work itself out. But whereas my electric bill is usually only about $90 a month, DTE Energy's current invoice for its services is $13,218.76.

Yep, Thirteen Thousand, Two Hundred and Eighteen Dollars. And Seventy Six cents.

I have no intention of paying it of course. It's nonsense. But as I say, I'm confident it will all work out in the end. It's just an honest mistake on someone's part.

Why do you think I laughed when I opened the bill?

The new old

The TV in my bedroom went out Thursday. I woke up in the wee hours of Friday (I tend to leave my TV on overnight nowadays) and there was a blank screen, with only a buzzing noise. Rats.

But all is well! I now have a new old TV, and life is good.

The truth be told, I felt yesterday like a kid at Christmas. I bought my daughter's old TV and left that one on all last night. I had no need to buy another; no shopping, no hoping they (whoever they are) had what I wanted in stock, no gas burned nor time taken. Just a shower after work and a stretch across the bed and boom, life was back to normal.

In fact, the room looks bigger now, with a flat screen TV as opposed to the old one I had had. And I still feel like a kid at Christmas.

Ah, life, I like you.