Opening Day 2018

This afternoon at about 1:10 Eastern time at Comerica Park in Detroit (I almost said Tiger Stadium there in wishful thinking), Jordan Zimmerman will throw out the first real pitch of the 2018 MLB Season. The true American national pastime will be underway.

Opening Day in baseball eclipses opening day in any other sport. Sure, the fans of those other games games revel in the beginning of their seasons, and that's okay. To each their own. But their games don't hold a candle to our game.

The mystique of baseball is greater than the, well, I won't call what other sports have mystique. They have sheer brutality as in American football, and that is hardly a plus. Others may have speed, but that again is not the same as acumen, and acumen, true athletic ability, is what baseball has in abundance. The other big games simply don't have that.

Don't bother with complaints about baseball taking too long. Basketball is interminable particularly in its closing moments, and football has gotten that way too. All major sports other than soccer take 3-4 hours to play. Baseball is no slower, nor faster, than they are. Hell, I quit watching basketball years ago simply because the last 30 seconds take a half hour to play.

Baseball lets us enjoy the game. It is leisurely, even quaint perhaps, yet excitement still builds as we wait for the pitch or watch the action as men speed around the bases and fielders perform relays. And at least for today, my beloved Detroit Tigers are in first place.

The good bad ting

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 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. 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 its 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.

The drain snake sameness fallacy

I'm sure that I've lamented this before. But I'm going to do it again. Because it just happened. Again.

I sell and repair drains snakes, as regular readers know. I took a call a few minutes ago from someone who had a snake to repair. So I asked the natural first question which any repairman of any product would ask: What's the make and model?

"It's got a big round cage, and it's on like a cart, and the cable's about as big as my thumb."

Heavy sigh. That simply doesn't help. It's like going to an auto parts store and describing your car as being a large metal thing with four rubber tires and an engine. As I've explained to people too many times, "Fords and Chevy are both cars, but Ford parts won't fit on a Chevy." Drain snakes are as context specific as most anything else.

I told him he had to bring it to my shop so I could see it, and he heavy sighed. But without complete information I can't help and that's all there is to it.

Rain delays

You know how one song can often get stuck in your head for it seems like days on end? For me lately that song has been Close to You, sung by Karen Carpenter. It really is a nice little soft rock song, and I genuinely like it. Usually. But not after hearing it over and over in my mind during my waking hours of the last several days. Even at that, I used to hate it even more.

While it's almost certainly only my childhood psychology of the time at work, back when most major league baseball games were on the radio rather than television it seemed as though every time my beloved Detroit Tigers were in a rain delay the first song the emergency deejay played was Close to You. I came to despise that song, because when I heard it meant that I was trying to listen to baseball while the game was under a weather suspension.

It's nothing against Karen Carpenter, who had a lovely voice. I think it even interesting that another song of hers, Rainy Days and Mondays, almost captures the same sentiment. Yet that still doesn't quite explain it. Karen Carpenter singing meant the Tigers weren't playing. I realize that that isn't even her fault. She had no control over what some radio station in Detroit played when it couldn't air sports.

Still, even right now, even 40 plus years later, even a few days before the next baseball season, I'm mad hearing the song because in my own mind it's means no Tiger baseball. I suppose that's little more than self imposed Pavlovianism. But man, I can't wait til the tarp's off the field.

He didn't really mean anything but...

He didn't mean anything by it. I could tell by the sound of his voice and the vaguely horrified look on his face. He meant well; his intention was to be helpful and considerate. He meant well. But still...
I met a customer in Toledo yesterday, to deliver a couple barrels of cable and a set of smaller cables. I grabbed both baskets of small cables and set them in the back of his truck. Then I went back to get one of the large barrels with the large cables. As I reached for them the young man, I'm guessing he is indeed about 30 years younger than I am, raced over and cut in front of me. "Let me get those, sir! I'm a lot younger than you!" he explained hurriedly.
I beg your pardon?
As I say, I know he meant well. And as too many people these days aren't considerate enough, I don't want to disparage an honest and real concern. But it was an unusual way to express it.
I had to be careful not to let the old geezer in me respond. "Now, lookee here, young feller, I been liftin' heavy loads out o'the back of trucks well nigh on 40 year. I know somethin' 'bout liftin' heavy things without hurtin' meself!" But I held geezer in check. I stammered something like, "Uh, okay, thanks."
It's funnier now than at 6 o'clock last night. Yet there is that part of me that's still a bit insulted.

Grandparents

Me Grandma Hutchins, we lost her in 1979. I believe it was June 18. It was something like that anyways.
I took the call from me Pops. He told me she had passed away. I remember my life was different after that. I remember feeling weird, lost, after that call. It was a bit after mid-day.
Apparently he had called his folks, me Grandpa Joe and me Grams, either right afore or after he had called home, where I and me older brother and just younger sister stayed while everyone else had went down south to North Carolina that year. It still seems surreal.
I had little reaction. I told me sibs. Then I went to the Shop, where me Grandpa Joe waited, alone for whatever reason, pulling on a cigarette, a Carlton, as he sat by the coffee table. I went back to work, just like that, like normal.
Seeing as Joe had a coffee, I made me one. And we sat.
Joe pulled again on the cigarette. "I'm sorry about your grandmother," he said, unusually quietly, after a minute.
"Thanks," I said. I sipped at my coffee.
After a bit I said, "Well, not many get to have four grandparents until they're 19. I guess I'm lucky."
"Yeah," Joe said. He pulled again at his Carlton.
And we sat there. We just sat.
Memories.

Vittles

There were two things in particular which I loved to hear me Grandpa Joe say and they were both associated with working for him. They were, "Let's get that coffee," and, "Let's get them vittles," whenever he decided it was time for a break.
It struck me even back then that his words sounded almost as though we had to hunt them, had to track them down, as if the coffee pot didn't just sit there on a table by the office or that the snacks weren't right alongside it. The vittles were the snacks which he always had me or me Pops or me Uncle John buy for the morning coffee break. Joe paid for them; I think he genuinely liked treating us, but I don't doubt at all he looked forward to them too.
Vittles were the height of the workday for a young boy like me. There were always single serve and two for everyone, an assortment of cupcakes, pies, donuts, and cinnamon rolls. I hoped every morning for a Hostess French Apple pie, which was really only their apple pie with raisins added, but it seemed significantly different. Joe and Pops and me and whomever else was there would lay into them vittles like we hadn't ate in days. Uncle John rarely did, and I don't know why. He would buy a paper and sit nearby reading it as the rest of us fell into sugar induced stupors. At times I wondered if something was wrong with him, but that was surely the kid in me thinking such stuff.
It was 15, maybe 20 minutes of the day. But man, I miss gettin' them vittles.