The Keys to the Kingdom of the Shop

How many of you have old keys hanging around? Maybe they're on your key ring, or perhaps in your junk drawer. At the Shop, we have keys hanging on nails right inside the office door, most of which haven't been used in ages. 

Some are the keys to cars which have long met the compactor.  I know that one key is for the last flatbed truck we had for delivering welders. That truck's been gone 35 or 40 years. We also still have the key from a 1961 Ford delivery truck. Interesting thing about that one: me Grandpa Joe bought it off of Seven-Up, the soda pop company. He didn't bother removing the logo, simply painting over it. You could see the Seven-Up image underneath the red of the driver's door.

Smaller keys are old shop locks for padlocks which are who knows where. Most of them have not been touched since well before Pops died, and he's been gone coming up on eleven years.

Why don't we get rid of them? I dunno. It's habit to have them there I suppose. One key is attached to a key ring which has the baby from the first Incredibles cartoon. That's, what, 2004? The baby is no longer bald but has a nice head of dust hair. It's to be expected I suppose, after hanging inside the doorway for close to 20 years now.

Some of those keys might even fit locks we still have if we were to try and find them. I'm not fired up to find out though. I suspect me kids when clearing out the old barn hopefully way, way into the future, will wonder why the hell we kept them, and just toss them out. So it goes.

Last Shot

No, it isn't what you think. But headlines are supposed to generate interest, right?

My final curling shot in the Windsor Granite Curling league last night was - I am not bragging because I truly am rather humbled by it - a perfect center guard. I had not thrown a guard all evening. Not because I couldn't (Quiet, Ron) but because one had not been called for me. Then on my very last shot of the game we needed a dead perfect guard. And I made it, with good sweeping and a good line call. Thanks, boys!

I remarked to Dave and Steve, my sweepers, that I didn't know if I could throw the stone light enough to be a guard (don't make me say quiet Ron again) after throwing nothing but draws and hits all night. But there you go. You save the best for last.

I don't know what's going to happen with Granite curling next year. We move to a new arena owned by the City of Windsor and, quite frankly, I think the future of the game in southwest Ontario is, well, uncertain. Still, I'll give it a chance, and maybe make a few decent throws as I go. Either way, last night's last shot was satisfying.

Eclipsed

Yeah, I'm just staying home and watching today's eclipse from the D. The more I thought about it the more I thought, I do have work to do (well, that was my boss's, and conscience's, thought anyway) and what real difference can half a percent off totality (Detroit is predicted to have 99.4 sun coverage)  make? So I'll slip on a welding helmet and step outside the old barn and catch the thing as it grows and ebbs.

But the corona! That sliver of sunlight at totality! Ah, I've seen it before, in pictures. And again, it simply can't be that much better. I doubt I'll be on my deathbed wishing I'd have seen the whole eclipse. I'll be on my deathbed wishing I'd spent more time at work.

Ha, ha, no. But in this world sometimes work must be a priority. I would have probably been more inclined to drive further for totality if, say, Detroit were only at 80 or 90 percent. As it is, I'll take what I get.

Actively Listening

Bill Newman was a fella who used to come into the Shop a lot. He was a plumber and a gregarious sort. Mr. Newman liked to talk. Perhaps the best word to describe him was raconteur, a teller of fanciful stories. 

Now, me Grandpa Joe liked to talk too. I remember many days where Mr. Newman would come in and Joe would stop his work to visit. And, no doubt, swap tales with his cohort.

One day they were off to the side talking and things became animated. Not because they were mad or upset with one another, no. It was due to the fact they were each wanting to tell their stories so much so that they were constantly interrupting one another, making it hard for either to finish what they was sayin.

Finally Bill Newman, who was about a head taller than Joe and quite strong, grabbed me Grandpa by his lapels and lifted him off the floor just enough that Grandpa's toes were all that was left touching the ground. He pulled Joe's face in close to his own. "Joe! Joe! Joe! We got a problem here!"

"What's that?" me Grandpa asked, actually, believe it or not, laughing at his predicament.

"We're both talkers! We gotta find us a couple'a listeners!"

Maybe you had to be there, but it was funny watching Joe being held by the lapels like that, and him just laughing along with it. Yet it was all between friends, right? 

Detroit's Holiday

Well, the Detroit Tigers lost the second game of a twin bill to the Mets yesterday, 2-1. They were the last undefeated team in MLB to fall this year and are now five wins against that one loss. So it goes. The Tigers weren't going to go 162-0 anyway. 

After six road games Detroit is now home for Opening Day against the A's. I'm not sure we can call them Oakland, now that they're heading to Sacramento for three, or four, or who really knows how many seasons. But that's another question for another day.

Baseball owns Opening Day. For lo, the winter is past. Spring is here and all is new. Baseball opens us up to summer. Sure, football is trying to horn in with the UFL. Let the 12 people who watch that have their fun. We know the real national pastime, and it begins again this afternoon a little after 1 in the D. I intend to catch it.

Cloyce Certainty

I have a good friend, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who had fretted to the point of insanity over a recent jury summons. His instructions were to call jury service after 5 PM the afternoon before the scheduled service date to find out if he actually had to report.

Now, Cloyce is just a bit paranoid. He never feels certain about certainty even when it's perfectly obvious what a given situation means. Duly calling the phone number on the summons the night before, he was told he didn't have to report. Yet he nonetheless checked online, where it showed his service was cancelled. Cloyce even scanned the QR Code on the summons, and was informed he could stay home. Still, Cloyce expressed fear over the matter. "I hope I don't actually have jury duty after all," he remarked to me.

"Well," I replied, "Maybe send them a telegram. What about a carrier pigeon? Have you tried smoke signals? Semaphore? An aldis lamp? Drum messaging like the ancients used? It doesn't seem that you've employed all your options."

Cloyce just stared at me. Yet I think he was simply processing the information, although I did see a Western Union van outside of his home later than night.

Like, Totally

The big solar eclipse is coming up next Monday, April 8. I had been planning for months to take the day off work and head down into northwest Ohio to see it. A total eclipse? A once in a lifetime event? I wasn't going to miss it.

Then in yesterday's paper I read that Detroit, where I live, will be at about 99.4% totality. Almost ninety nine and a half percent of the Sun will be blocked right at home. Do I want to drive a minimum of an hour each way, and fight the expected crowds, for around three minutes of complete coverage? How much of a difference can point-six of a percent make?

So now I don't know. I reserve the right to make the trek. But is it worth it?