Author: bdharrellauthor

A retired bellyacher, sometimes writer and guardian of the dog Filbrix.

Shadetree Mechanics

Shadetree Mechanics

I’ve been sitting at my desk for about an hour or so, watching the man across the street attempt to fix a minor boo-boo on his front bumper. Hammers, paint, perhaps a screwdriver or two. I was beginning to think that do-it-yourself was completely done in as far as fixing your own car. There are still shade tree mechanics out there – they’re just fewer and further between.

Back in the day, doing an oil change, changing out a battery, or doing a tune-up was something almost everyone I knew was doing. Did it myself, don’t cha know. Almost had to because of the “Little Yellow Monster.”

The LYM was a 1969 Austin America I purchased for $350 from a private party in The Plains, Ohio (not a misprint – the name of the town was The Plains). A good portion of the reason I purchased the LYM was that I had a job out of high school working for the local Austin/MG dealer. It was a learning experience. Didn’t take me long to figure out that British Leyland was having problems building a decent automobile. I mean, the Austin America started out as a decent idea, what with the front wheel drive and the hydrolastic suspension, but at the same time, it was hampered by Lucas electrics. For those of you who do not know, Lucas was nicknamed “Prince of Darkness” because of the spotty reliability of the parts they built.

My employer was sympathetic to my ills with the LYM, allowing me to work on it on the weekends when the shop in the back was idle. I had to use my own tools, but still, I had shop manuals and a parts bin to work from, so, I was able to learn auto mechanics more or less on my own. There was at least one job I couldn’t do – and that was to replace the Constant Velocity Joints when they crapped out on me.

One of the dealer’s mechanics helped me out on that one.

There was one job which became a major frustration to me. The starter drive kept going out on me. After replacing the drive a couple of times, I went ahead and purchased a new starter motor at the same time as I purchased a new drive. Pulled out the old starter, installed the new one (I had the process down to 15 minutes from the time I started) and then put the new drive on the old starter, ready for the next time the starter drive decided not to work.

The LYM was not the only car I’ve worked on. Had a Renault LeCar which had its own little glitch (several bad batches of distributor condensers) and a few other adventures, including replacing the exhaust system in a parking lot while it was snowing.

These days, I’m sort of limited to what I can do as a shade tree mechanic. Nothing to do with my getting older – everything to do with the computerization. I have been having a fight with the cooling system on my better half’s Chevy Cruz, and that’s about it. Well, I have replaced the battery and the spark plugs, but that’s about all I’ve done.

So, watching the guy across the street work on the bumper of his newer Dodge, I’ve started to have the notion that maybe I’d like to have a project car to work on from time to time. Something relatively simple, and maybe a convertible.

We’ll just have to see what comes next. The wife has been warned, the garage is almost empty, and the local AutoZone is just a hop, skip, and a jump from my own little corner of the DFW Metromess.

Be Seeing You!

Texas Sweet Taxes

Texas Sweet Taxes

Everyone in my corner of the DFW Metromess has their bowels in an uproar this week, with the arrival of the estimated property tax bill sent out by the local tax collector.

Happens every year. The estimated tax bill is sent out and everyone has their bowels in an uproar about it. For the next month or so, there will be a rush to the tax office to protest whatever value the tax people put on their property in hopes of reducing the bill when it comes due next January.

The better half and I are lucky on two fronts. For one, we are both over sixty-five and for us, one of the taxes is frozen. I believe it will be the school tax. For the other, we have what’s called a “Homestead Exemption,” which limits the increase of the taxable value of our house to 10%. Considering a Real Estate listing I saw for a house identical to ours in our subdivision, 10% is quite reasonable.

The listing I saw (and showed to the better half) priced that identical house at $400,000 – more than double what we paid for ours. Given the way home prices are soaring in this general area, it would not surprise me if the seller gets every penny he’s asking for.

What’s nuts is that we are getting people calling/texting/emailing us on a regular basis, offering to buy our house for way more than we paid. The latest offer was between $300 and $350k in cash. What’s even nuttier is that if we accepted that offer, we would have to scramble to find similar accommodations and deal with the higher prices I’d have to pay for something similar – not to mention having to go to the trouble of moving. Again. I mean, since moving to north Texas, I have moved five times. By myself. Even with what help I got; I’m not getting any younger.

Besides, I like where I am. We have what we need. We can accommodate guests. When we don’t have guests, we have enough room for more stuff than we need, along with a separate room I use as a study. The other half has a study, too – when she’s not sharing mine.

As far as the house itself, well, it’s modest. Non-pretentious. The lot is a fair size, it presents somewhat well, and it fits in with the rest of the neighborhood. It is by no means a $400,000 house. Or even a $300,000 house. Even with the solar panels, it would be a stretch to say that the house is worth a quarter of a million dollars. To me, a quarter million is one hell of a lot of money. As a “Person of Lesser Means,” anything more than, say, $100,000 is a hell of a lot of money. So, where do I get off living in a house “worth” $400k?

Still trying to figure it out. In the meantime, I am happy, the better half is happy, and the dog Filbrix is happy with where we are. We can afford the payments and that’s all that counts for the time being.

Be Seeing You!

… and Chips

… and Chips

I had a memory bubble up in my head earlier today, one which would be a continuation of the previous blog, Fish.

The fish shown at the top of that blog (as well as the top of this continuation) were quite delicious “Beer Battered Cod” obtained in a recent trip to Costco. They were served with “Chips,” what the British call “French Fried Potatoes.” I consider myself as much a connoisseur of Fish and Chips as the people on the Aleutian Key were connoisseurs of catfish.

The memory released was one of a trip I made with my children to visit the first wife while she was working in London (England, not Kentucky, Ohio, or Ontario). On our first night there, we decided to go to a nearby fish and chips chop just down the street (or up the street) from the hotel.

The place was best described as a “Hole in the Wall.” It was small, crowded, and not at all like one would find at a restaurant here in the States. There were no pretenses. We sat down at a table with some of the locals and had a choice of what type of fish we could have with our home-made chips.

Our server was a small woman – at most, four-foot-five and maybe ninety pounds soaking wet – who took our order and our money, returning with what I recall was the best (or at least the most authentic) fish and chips I had ever had. Period. Bar none. I was also introduced to “Shandy” and recall seeing a British Television game show called “The Weakest Link.” (Has possibilities, I thought. Sure enough, the show was transplanted here to the U.S. within just a few months)

Up to that point, my favorite fish and chips came from a small chain called “Alfie’s.” One of the few Alfie’s was in Chillicothe Ohio – not too far from where my parents lived. One of the people working for that Alfie’s was a woman I knew from high school. I still keep up with her and occasionally bring up the fact that there’s still an Alfie’s in Lompoc California. The rest of the chain went by the wayside long before the start of the millennium.

Since the trip to London, the best fish and chips I’ve had in the Metromess was in a place named “The Londoner.” They seemed to understand how to properly do cod and chips – and when the local branch changed hands (It’s now named “The Celt”) the recipe transferred to the new owners.

Here in my little corner of the DFW Metromess, we have “Big Spray,” a brew pub with a decent cod and chips. The owner is an avid water skier and transplant from Indiana, hence the name. (I’d mention that he also offers Pork Tenderloin Sandwiches, but since this blog is about fish and chips, I won’t bother to mention it.)

And regarding Long John Silver’s, on occasion, usually when I’m on the road and there’s not a Whataburger nearby. For the record, there is, or at least was, a Long John Silver’s in London. Kentucky.

Be Seeing You!

(Products and/or services mentioned on this blog are not mentioned in exchange for goods, services, or hard, cold cash.)

Fish

Fish

When last we heard from this intrepid author wanna-be, a blog about micromanagement would be the topic of his next blog. Instead, a word (or several hundred) about fish.

A friend of mine mentioned going to a restaurant the other day and enjoying catfish – while her husband enjoyed cod. His remark about catfish (according to his wife) is that catfish tastes like mud.

I agree. With one exception. I’ll get to that momentarily.

My friend defended catfish by saying that catfish is best prepared by dipping it in buttermilk prior to breading and cooking it. That may be how that one exception was prepared. The only catfish I’ve ever really liked was at a small strip restaurant just around the corner from where I lived in Allen, run by the son of one of the Tuskegee Airmen. It was delicious.

Perhaps my aversion to catfish came about some forty years ago when I was working on an offshore oil rig. I was the northerner on a steel island inhabited mostly by southerners – some of them raised Catholic, meaning that the tradition was that they would eat fish on Fridays. Being southern, the preferred piscatorial delight was catfish. Deep fried catfish in a cornmeal batter. It was… okay, I recall, but there was a mud-flavored overtone which didn’t really appeal to me.

I ate it, in hopes that someday, something better would come along.

The promise that something better would come along came around in the summer of ’82 when the rig I was on was towed from the Gulf of Mexico to a point in the Atlantic Ocean about a hundred miles off Martha’s Vinyard. It was reportedly a prime fishing area, home to a large variety of fish in large numbers – surely enough to supply a drilling rig with something other than southern catfish for a change. That promise was broken. The quartermaster ordered massive amounts of farm-bred catfish to be sent to Massachusetts for the consumption by the mostly southern crew for Friday dinners.

I did manage to treat myself at a decent restaurant in Boston before getting on an airplane to go back home to Houston.

Houston, and by extension, Galveston, was a great place to get decent fish other than catfish. I became particularly fond of Gaido’s in Galveston for the many ways they managed to prepare shrimp. Another favorite was just around the corner from my Aunt and Uncle’s home on the west side of Houston. It was there that I sampled and came to like escargot and Spanish paella.

After moving back to Ohio for a few years, the first wife and I became enamored of a couple of places to indulge in seafood – Mauger’s in Lancaster Ohio, and the Friday night seafood buffet at the Holiday Inn in Parkersburg West Virginia. On the first trip to the Holiday Inn, the first wife declared ahead of time that she would absolutely not eat snail. Period. End of discussion, until she had two or three pastries which she just loved. I told her the truth about the pastries when asked. Yes, they contained snail!

I have to go the next town over from my little corner of the DFW Metromess to get decent seafood (we have nearly two dozen places to purchase tacos here, making purchasing tacos from the outside somewhat illegal in my reckoning). Yes, catfish is still available, but never considered, at least by me, to be a viable alternative to almost any other seafood.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to prepare cod and chips for this afternoon’s lunch.

Be Seeing You!

The Naked Truth

The Naked Truth

If you are offended by nudity or the mention of nudity, you may as well turn around and wait for my next blog – probably having to do with micromanagement (or mismanagement – your choice).

I’ll wait…

We’re probably safe, now. Let me begin.

I got into a conversation on Facebook here in the past week having to do with planting cucumbers. According to someone’s book of lore, cucumbers are best planted in the early morning hours on the first of May by a naked boy. That’s just a couple of weeks away. Since the better half likes cucumbers and I’m usually up before the sun, I thought that I might just try planting cucumbers in the early morning hours of the first of May. Having the prescribed “equipment,” I qualify as a boy. Besides, I thought the first Saturday of May is usually designated as World Naked Gardening Day. Never mind. May first is on a Sunday. So why not? Unless one of my neighbors decides to stay out and watch me (which I really doubt as I don’t believe any of my neighbors read this blog), I might just go ahead and plant those cucumbers as prescribed.

The dog Filbrix will likely go out with me as she usually has business in the wee hours of the morning anyway. She watches me shower, so no big deal for her.

Well. The conversation on Facebook took the turn one would usually have when the conversation on Facebook turns toward being out of doors in one’s birthday suit. The story of when and how to plant cucumber seeds came from a woman of my acquaintance and the next thing I know the conversation became a bit risqué with what I would call “the usual comments” people have when nudity is mentioned. There are lots of grins and giggles, along with raised eyebrows and declarations that being outside in the nude is something which just isn’t done.

“If we were meant to run around without clothes, we’d have been born naked!”

Yeah. Right.

As I’ve aged, my attitude toward nudity has shifted. Maybe I should say that my attitude toward my own nudity has shifted. Part of that has to do with some of the scars I have accumulated over the years as a result of modifications made to keep me alive. Those scars aren’t necessarily pretty, but on the other hand, I’d much rather have them instead of having to go through the suffering I would have had had I not had them. Too, I’m a tad heavier than maybe I should be (Iost 35 pounds last year, but still, another 50 pounds over what I consider to be an ideal weight). I may not be an Adonis, but I am secure of who I am in my own skin.

While I’m secure in my body image, I am not going to demonstrate my security in public. Now, there are times when I step out of the shower, hang up my bath towel and not bother to dress for a few minutes – or even a few hours. I’ve been outside in the buff in a private setting, have been skinny dipping, and have even visited a naturist resort. Going outside in the early morning hours to plant cucumbers in my opwn back yard while wearing my birthday suit would be a lark.

Besides, the dog Filbrix would likely need to go out to relieve herself at that hour. It’s what she does.

Laugh if you will or consider making a snarky comment. It is considered to be socially acceptable to laugh or make snarky comments about a male thinking of going au Naturale. “No photos. Please!” is the usual line. Our “hangy down parts” are not considered to be photogenic anyway – unless of course, those parts are inordinately large.

Again, I’m no Adonis. I’ll settle for who I am and for planting cucumbers in the dark!

Be Seeing You!

Slap me silly – But I already am!

Slap me silly – But I already am!

Earlier today, I read on another channel about an incident where some kids walking down the street somewhere in my little corner of the DFW Metromess shot at someone’s dogs. Seems that the dogs were in their owner’s front yard roaming free at the time. Shooting at the dogs was definitely out of bounds, so to speak – but it should be noted that the dogs were not tethered or restrained as required by the city’s leash law. Both the dog owner and the shooter were culpable in that situation. Neither one was justified in their actions.

Last night, there was an incident at the Oscars involving a pair of well-known celebrities. You saw it, or at the least, heard about it. Much the same situation as happened here in my little corner of the DFW Metromess. Both are at fault. Just because the “joke” was uncalled for did not excuse the slap (or the foul language) dealt by the other celebrity.

A couple of millennia ago, an itinerate preacher roaming a small section of the Middle East suggested turning the other cheek when dealt a blow by someone else. The shooter and the slapper should have followed that preacher’s advice instead of attempting to take the law into their own hands. Somehow, I believe that the same sort of scenario happens much more frequently than it should. We seem to have forgotten a valuable lesson from the past.

Be Seeing You!

Shoes

Shoes

[Before I start, let it be known that I have not been offered nor have I been compensated for any of the brands mentioned in this little essay. Not to say that offers will be rejected outright.]

With that out of the way, I’ll start by stating that a new pair of shoes came by way of Amazon yesterday. They were my new shoes, purchased for my better half’s birthday. Before you call me an uncaring so and so, I will be quick to point out that on my birthday, we went out and purchased her a new set of shoes. She endorsed my purchase. In fact, she requested that I go and purchase my new pair of shoes.

The better half and I are like that with each other. We don’t purchase shoes very often because we usually make our shoe purchases with an eye to keeping them in the long run. Or in our case, walk.

Both of us do quite a bit of walking. A good pair of shoes are a necessity. She is a nurse. I worked a sales floor, and before that, I was a route supervisor for a daily paper. I now have the dog Filbrix who I take out at least three times a day. Both of us put quite a few miles on our feet every week.

Back when I was a route supervisor (I was called a “District Manager”), I would go down to a small shoe store to purchase a pair of relatively stout walking shoes every four to six months. The proprietor kept nudging me to purchase a pair of Clark’s, claiming that they would outlast the whatever it was I was wearing at the time. Me, being me, rejected his sales pitch. The notion of paying over $100 for a pair of shoes was something I was not about to do.

A move to Texas and a Christmas gift in anticipation of a trip overseas led me right back to the man who had recommended Clark’s, and a purchase which more than proved his point about shoes outlasting what I had been wearing. That first pair lasted 3+ years, including the miles I walked in London and daily use on a concrete sales floor. I still have a pair of Clark’s I wear today – they’re my Sunday Go-To-Meeting shoes.

When the better half needed a new pair of shoes to do her rounds, I took her to a Clark’s store in our corner of the DFW Metromess and purchased a set of Clark’s for her to wear. Again, years of wear instead of having to replace shoes every few months.

I got away from Clark’s for everyday wear and started to purchase Merrills. Good shoe, moderate price, long-lasting. My brother-in-law in Columbus loves ’em. Until a year and a half of purchasing my last pair, I loved them, too. Unfortunately, one of the effects of being a seasoned citizen is that apparently our feet grow, not only in length (from a size 11 to size 13), but in width as well. I developed a painful corn on one of my feet and went looking for something a bit wider.

My son came by and suggested that I try a set of New Balance shoes. They worked, in large part due to the fact that the shoes I purchased were wide, instead of a medium width. A good shoe… for a while. The soles were softer than most and they ended up wearing down within a year. [Nine months, really, but I don’t want to upset the lad too much. They were, after all, purchased on his recommendation.]

Which brings me to the day before yesterday when I went on Amazon to find a pair of decent shoes to buy for my better half’s birthday (as explained above).

Before the Great Lockdown, the better half and I found a SAS factory store in San Antonio (SAS = San Antonio Shoe). Her Clark’s were about due to be replaced and we had heard that SAS shoes were every bit as good as Clark’s, so we gave them a try. Not only is she still wearing the pair purchased in San Antonio, she has another pair which she wears on Sundays.

As I started to say (and to make a long story short) I found a decent pair of SAS shoes to wear at a price which made me think twice. At the same time, if they wear as well as my first set of Clark’s, it will be money well spent. And besides, I don’t have to tie the things.

Time to go take a walk…

Be Seeing You!

Rainy Day Fun Day

Rainy Day Fun Day

We’ve been getting a little bit of rain here in our little corner of the DFW Metromess, so, some of the bets are off. Won’t be going out much, what with a tornado watch on until sometime after ten tonight, so, I decided to see what was going on in the wide world of Facebook.

Two of my correspondents were busily working both ends of the political crazy train.

On the left is someone I’ve known for some time, posting what amount to rationalizations for Russia to invade Ukraine while killing innocents and destroying buildings. The claim is that the current leadership of Ukraine was installed by the CIA (plausible) and has targeted Russian nationals in one of the provinces for elimination (also plausible). There’s bad blood between Moscow and Kiev. It happens. But these days, if there’s a problem, we have the United Nations to turn to. Make a case. Deal with it in a civil manner. If our CIA is really involved and their involvement can be proven, shame on us for whatever part we played in this fiasco. Going into another country and killing people is nothing more than a land grab. At the same time, it sure knocks the credibility of the invading country.

Side note – Kremlin. Sounds evil, doesn’t it?

On the right is a fellow who has a good education and should know better. This morning he was kvetching about all of the investigations going on around the former President, and how those investigations have hampered Congress from doing its job. The next thing I hear from him is a blurb from a “conservative” mouthpiece on the latest attempt to pin something on Hunter Biden. From what I gather, it’s okay to investigate someone from the other party, leave our party alone. Witness the almost endless examinations by conservatives into an incident happening on the watch of the other party’s Secretary of State.

I consider myself to be in the middle. I take the position that the CIA can be a bunch of schmucks – and that both political parties are culpable when it comes to examining what the other party is doing. As far as both are concerned, the arguments need to be played out in a courtroom. Not on the battlefield and not in “hit” pieces written by “journalists” with less than stellar credentials.

Be Seeing You!

Cleaning up the Mess

Cleaning up the Mess

Several years ago, I leased a house with a ticking time bomb in the form of a large tree in the front yard. The good news was that it cut my summer cooling bills by a considerable margin. The bad news was that the tree was still growing underground.

The lease on the house had a stipulation that the landlord would not be responsible for any drainage problems that I had. “Fair enough,” I thought, knowing that I have heard complaints from landlords about items flushed down toilets causing problems, like tampons and other miscellaneous items not made to be put down a drain.

About three years into our seven-year adventure at the leased house, the stepson noted that the toilet he was using needed additional help each time he sat down instead of standing up at his toilet. We put up with it for about six months before calling out a plumber to see if there was a problem. A few hundred dollars later, we were told that the tree in the front lawn had grown into the toilet’s drain. It was blocking solid matter which otherwise would have flushed from flushing.

“You are responsible for any drainage issues,” the landlord reminded us when we told her of the problem. “It’s in the lease.” That was the end of that discussion for a while at least.

At the end of our stay, cut short by the landlord’s wanting to put the house on the market, it wasn’t just one toilet with the problem. Most of the other drains in the house wouldn’t. When we got our notice 15 days into the standard 30 day notice period, we were more than happy to leave the place for someplace better.

It wasn’t until six to eight months later that a loophole was brought to my attention. While a landlord can impose certain restrictions, those restrictions are by the wayside when the health and safety of the occupants is at risk. Not being able to flush a toilet due to an invasion of the sewer line by a large, friendly tree falls into that loophole. The landlord in our case dodged her responsibility. Had I known sooner, I might have had a lawyer press for the needed repair.

Live and learn, I suppose.

The point of this story is that sometimes one walks into a situation which may or may not have been deliberately sabotaged by a landlord or a previous resident.

Or the previous President, in the case of the White House.

For the past thirteen or so months, the fellow we had elected President has been fighting the mess left by the previous occupant of the Oval Office. Every time he seems to have handled one problem; another crops up. And it’s always the fault of the current occupant. The former guy and his supporters are quick to fix the blame instead of fixing a problem.

It would seem that the former guy deliberately set up certain roadblocks to hamper his successor. For instance, it was noted that during his tenure, the former guy deliberately withheld aid from Ukraine (wanting the powers there to come up with evidence to smear his opponent in the 2020 election) and was a frequent basher of NATO. Just like he effectively surrendered to the Taliban, releasing thousands of Taliban fighters, leaving the execution of the drawdown of U.S. troops smack dab in his successor’s lap. And then there’s the Covid thing which was nothing more than a “hoax,” until it was too late to contain the disease. Deliberate actions. Revenge, perhaps, for losing the election?

I can forgive my former landlord for putting in a clause excusing herself from the responsibility of maintaining the drainage system of the house she owned. She had no idea – nor did I have the idea that a tree could interfere with the drain line. When people’s lives are at stake because of the actions or inactions of a “leader,” that’s the proverbial horse of a different color. What looks like deliberate sabotage needs to be addressed for what it is – and an apology at least to the people of Ukraine is in order.

We could use that apology as well.

Be Seeing You