Stove up beefhearts

There are things which folks say which I never understood. Pops used to say, when disgusted at some tool or whatever, "Whoever invented that ought to be beat through Hell with a beefheart". I don't quite get it but I like it. It's somehow quaint.

Grandpa Joe used to talk about being all 'stove up' I never got that one either. Until recently.

What he meant, speaking in general terms, was that when you had been active for a while and then sat for a while, your muscles tightened up. You became stiff and sore; achy. It might take a few steps before you were walking comfortably because your joints weren't limber.

Well, after taking my walk yesterday I got back home, to sit at my computer and check e-mails, hammer out a blog, and yes, play a few hands of video poker. Then when I went to get out of my chair, my back was tight, my shoulders sore, my knees ached, and it took about 15 steps to walk fully upright comfortably. I was all stove up.

Sometimes you just have to experience something to get it.

Wisdom and experience on a Friday

A few years ago, on a Friday as it happened, I was replacing a light fixture in our upstairs hallway. Easy peasy, right? Only the ends of the electrical wires feeding into the fixture were badly frayed. So I thought I ought to peel them back a bit.

All went well until I was trying to shave off about a half-inch of insulation from each side of the power cord. I had just thought silently to myself that the knife I was using was particularly sharp and that I should be careful. But Hell, I'll be done in a second, right?

I was done in a second. Done enough for my knife to slip and cut every bit of an eighth inch deep into the pointing finger of my left hand.

It hurt and it bled. Luckily I was five feet away from our upstairs bathroom. I jumped into it to the sink and held my bleeding finger, bleeding like a stuck hog as the saying goes, under hot water for several minutes. Then I applied pressure, fixed gauze and white tape, and stopped the blood flow. I then finished the job. Carefully, and basically with just one hand.

A few minutes later I was explaining to my daughter the lesson I'd learned: cut away from yourself. I added, trying to be whimsical while waxing philosophic, "Experience is when you learn from your mistakes. Wisdom is when you learn from the mistakes of others."

My darling daughter only smiled sweetly and said, "You just learned from experience. I just learned from wisdom."

Well, what could I say?

The hole in the Joe

The Joe Louis Arena, or simply the Joe to Detroiters, is soon to be gone. With the Red Wings hockey team in a new stadium, the Joe is being deconstructed rather than torn down. As such, it's now in a state where you can see inside it from outside.

It is an odd, sad sight for a building that has brought concerts and circuses and four Stanley Cups to the city. I drove by yesterday and took a few pictures just for posterity's sake. Of course, that made me deeply sentimentally aware of what the arena meant to me and my family.

We went to hockey games there and watched on the big screen when the Wings won the Cup playing the Capitols in Washington. There were arena football games featuring the Detroit Drive and No-vo-boy-o-vic. Our family saw the circus there and even indoor lacrosse. My eldest son saw professional wrestling on several occasions, and I want to say he saw Kid Rock in concert when Mr. Rock was still only locally famous.

Seeing that hole in the Joe was sad for me. Not the closing of Detroit's Tiger Stadium sad (our sentimentality being generally stronger over our own youthful experiences) but sad just the same. It may be poor taste or bad timing to say this, but with the Joe only 40 years old well, it shows me all the more that Americans don't really take history to heart.

And so it goes. Farewell Joe. I will and do miss ya.

Bad sports

I didn't golf last night. To be sure, my league was on, despite the very certain rain which was coming. But I don't play golf in rain. Period.

I wasn't alone in this as my golf partner bailed too, on the same grounds. Which brings me to my point today: while I care less about sports less every day that doesn't mean I never enjoy them. It doesn't mean I don't have a philosophy about them. A very big part of that philosophy is that we shouldn't play in bad situations, situations unsuited for fair play.

I reject out of hand the argument that everyone is playing under the same conditions. I argue instead that the conditions should be good for everyone because good conditions allow us to play whatever game the best way it should be played. For example, curling on bad ice, ice where the stones run straight maybe, is not fun. You aren't curling: you're playing against the point of the game and begin thinking in wrong ways. It's called curling because you make the stone curl. If the stone ain't curling, you ain't curling.

Baseball isn't played in heavy rain because it affects the sport too much. It slogs down the runners and the ball and the defenders, and the argument that everyone has to deal with it does not address the very real way the conditions change the game. When I want to play baseball I want to play baseball, not slide around on a field of mud puddles. Football quite frankly should not be played in bad weather either, for much the same reasons.

And golf as well. I want to play as the course was made to be played and not around casual water and across soggy greens. I want to curl when the stone curls because that's the whole point of the game. If field conditions are bad, let's stay inside and play euchre. We can play whatever other sport on better days.

Things on the road again

A couple more of things hit me as I drove through northern Ohio last week.

Just south of Toledo is an exit for Ohio State Route 582. The signage for the exit reads that 582 will take you to the towns of Luckey and Haskins. When passing I found myself thinking, 'Oh, that Luckey Haskins!'

A few miles down the road I came to Arlington. You know, the village with sibling issues. Anyway, I noticed a building for sale. The sale was being handled by Farthing Real Estate. So, I wondered, might the company be owned by Hobbits?

Come on, on long drives a guy has to find ways to entertain himself.

What I wanted to say

Sometimes I really want to be a smart aleck. That's okay too, among family and friends in playful situations. But generally when working, you have to choke down that urge.
I called a customer yesterday morning to tell him that his machine had me stumped (yes, some things are beyond even old Marty). I told him I tried everything I knew to try but to no avail. I suggested he pick it up and take it to an electrician, as the motor simply would not run for me. I even suggested a place for him to take it to, someone I've known for years who is honest and does good work in a timely manner.
The customer was at the Shop within the hour. As he wheeled his unit towards the door he asked, "So what do you think I should I do?".
This is where not being a smart aleck is important. I said, as though I had said nothing exactly like it sixty minutes ago, to take it to the electric motor shop.
Yet that is not what I wanted to say.
I wanted to say, perhaps, I have no idea what to do, simply to see if he'd remind me I had recommended someone. Because he would then remember, you know, even though he just seemed himself ignorant of what I had said on the phone.
Or, it occurred to me, I might have led him through an entirely new process. I might have explained the situation in snide detail.
I might have started with: Okay, here's the deal. Try to keep up.
I sell and repair drain snakes. It's what I do to make a living.
Are you with me so far? Good.
I wanted to call and tell you that I could fix your machine for this very reasonable price in this perfect time frame, because I sell and repair snakes. I wanted to be able to repair your snake, not send you away.
Still with me?
Now, all that being said, don't you think that if I had had any solid idea what to do I would have done it? Why might I have you pick it up to take somewhere else otherwise?
Got that?
Good. Because I was afraid I might have to repeat it.

Coffee flavored with everything

As I type this out I am drinking a pecan praline flavored coffee. I can't help wondering what me Pops and me Grandpa Joe and me Grandpaw Hutchins, avid coffee drinkers all, would think of such a thing.

My family's history with coffee has always been for it brewed strong and black. Honestly that still is my favorite way to drink it, even though that method is going by the wayside it seems. When I'm in a hipstery type coffee shop and ask for a large black coffee I get that look: it either means that they don't actually know how to  make it like that anymore or I'm from an alien world.

Maybe I am. Yet I do like certain flavored coffees. This pecan praline is good; the toasted hazelnut I have in the larder is very good. I love highlander grog with its taste of Scotland. On the road to Arizona last month I tried and adored a raspberry lava cake coffee, and was delighted that my increasingly fallible memory was still able to find the gas station and restaurant where I found it first while on my way back to the D. I may never find it again. But I will look sharp for it on my next journey out west.

Now autumn approaches and I look forward to, well, not all things pumpkin spice but certainly to pumpkin spice coffee. Then too, there's a shop called Frontier Town in Romeo, Michigan which brings in a holiday blend coffee every October, in anticipation of Christmas. Yes, we celebrate Christmas far too early. But that holiday blend with its touches of cinnamon and nutmeg and I swear a vague hint of apple is worth the consternation of other holiday excesses.

My respective grandfathers I think would turn their noses at such coffee travesties. Me Pops I believe would try some flavors while sticking more firmly than me to the traditional brew. And I will readily admit they are right: strong and black and without airs is the best coffee. I typically still take it that way.

I'll figuratively sneak out behind the barn for the occasional contraband flavor just the same.