Respect

Respect

Back home after a week of travel to see my daughter in Georgia. Two days out, two days back, 2,000 miles, and many good memories made.

I had a couple of conversations with rangers at two different National Parks sites about the dog Filbrix and my refusing to enter into the sites with my pet because it was clearly posted “No Pets Allowed“. While there was an exception for service animals, the signs were clear. Out of respect for the policies declared by the Park Service, the dog Filbrix and I stayed outside while my better half went inside to spend time with the displays.

My first conversation with a ranger was with a woman who was admittedly a dog lover. Filbrix and I were standing near the exit of an airplane hanger (part of the Tuskeegee Airmen Monument) in the shade when she came by. We discussed the prohibition and she told me that she appreciated my abiding by the rules. Apparently, there are some people who either disregard the rules, or try to slide past by claiming their animals are support animals. We agreed that the tactic of trying to slide past the prohibitions was nothing but bullshit.

The second conversation was at the Selma-Montgomery March Interpretive Center in Alabama. The conversation was a bit shorter, with us coming to the conclusion that one of the biggest problems we have these days is an almost universal lack of respect for others, encouraged by certain politicians. (I mentioned one in particular. The ranger laughed and then told me with a straight face that she was not allowed to discuss politics. I told her that I knew why she reacted, assuring her that if pressed, I would say she never said a word!)

The ranger’s junior partner followed me out the door and offered to watch Filbrix when I went inside to view the Interpretive Center. (They were good buddies when I came back out)

Respect is a theme that hit me in the face while going through the Center. Rather, it was a lack of respect for a group of people by people wanting to hold onto power and privilege. Most of the people giving the marchers grief for wanting the right to vote had no real power themselves, but they believed they did because of the color of their skin contrasting with the color of many of the marchers. What was missing was empathy – respect if you will – for another human being.

The same holds true today.

There seems to be no empathy for others. Should I say, little empathy for others because of hatred being stirred up by certain politicians and/or talk show hosts. Some of those certain politicians have managed to wrangle our system of elections to favor their own interests – effectively disenfranchising certain groups in order to swing elections in their favor.

The bullshit quotient is as bad as the bullshit being offered on the internet by firms assuring people that they can have their animals declared as support animals so that they can bypass “No Pets” rules.

Yes, I have the freedom to do what I want, but the limits on my freedom end when I trample on another’s freedom by disrespecting the other (and vice-versa).

Be Seeing You!

Incognito

Incognito

The internet is a wonderful thing. It’s the font of all knowledge. The Sage to confound all sages. A wonderful meeting place. A place where a person can go incognito.

We’ve all seen it on the internet – the people with names like Jerry Mander, Connie Lingus, Frank Furter, and (almost anything) Smith. Some of the names can be used as jokes, some used as cover for someone wanting to keep from being traced. Going incognito, to be sure.

Something else to be sure of is that many of the people using cover names are the same people who insist that they are being totally honest all the time; insisting that what they hate the most are people who lie.

Ah, the skullduggery.

I ran into someone this past week looking to romance older men, stating her age as less than half mine.

“This particular platform is not where you want to be if you are looking for romance,” I told her.

“Have you ever dated someone on the Internet?” she asked.

I told her that I first met my current wife on the Internet. Her response was, “Oh. Are you married?”

Her oblivious question (posed several times during our exchange) and a few other comments she made led me to believe that there was something up. Well, that and her telling me she could not wait to meet me in person.

I didn’t have the heart (or the stupidity) to tell her that I would be within a two-hour drive from where she said she was from at least twice in the coming week. And yes, my wife would be with me and so would the dog.

Something recommended by the AARP is that if someone wants to meet you, or have you send money/gift cards/candygrams, or want you to invest in (Crypto comes to mind for some reason or another), it’s a good idea to have a video chat first before taking that next step. Chances are that if the person on the other end is having problems or has objections to having a video chat, there’s something rotten in Denmark.

A video chat is a good way to call someone’s bluff. It makes me feel good about calling that bluff.

Yes, there’s the possibility that the person I had been “talking” with was sincere about wanting an older man, or that she was lonely, or that what she really wanted was a family, or she really didn’t care that I was married; but I’m not making book on it. She might not even be a she. Someone incognito, for instance.

For that matter, I may be incognito myself!

Be Seeing You!

I have this Uncle…

I have this Uncle…

While poking and prodding around social media, I’ve been followed by the occasional Crypto pusher. They’re somewhat easy to spot – usually a young (under 40) female following a ton of people, yet, only a few followers. If one becomes a follower, there is a small period where there is a mundane conversation, followed by a suggestion to move to another platform (Telegraph and/or WhatsApp) where eventually the conversation winds around to how the young female is living the good life by trading in Cryptocurrency.

“It’s fun! It’s easy! It allows me to lead a life of luxury!”

Uh huh. So, what do you know about how to make money in the Cryptocurrency (racket) market?

“Well, I have this Uncle…”

Uncles reportedly know everything there is to know about life, the universe, and trading Crypto.

I have two uncles.

One worked practically all his life for an electrical utility, the other worked for an oil company and invested in electrical utilities. One of those Ying and Yang deals. Neither of them met the other but they both benefited from the other’s enterprise.

Now, I’m an uncle myself with four nieces and four nephews (I need a moment or two to count. Bear with me… yeah, I’m correct. Four of each). Not one of them has asked me for financial advice. I honestly don’t think I’d ask for financial advice from me either.

I’ve been known as an “Uncle” for a few people in Southern Ohio who listened to me on the radio back in the day. Some people still remember me – including a woman I met while I was working in a retail store in Texas. She remembered listening to me back when I was “Uncle Bruco” (think Harpo, Chico, and Groucho) between sporting events.

And no, she didn’t ask me for financial advice. That’s why we’re still friends.

There were other “Uncles” in my life – Like Uncle Donald and Uncle Jimmy. Both Godfathers. One of them worked for an electrical utility, the other, a dermatologist.

Great Uncles included a car dealer, an uncle who I believe was under the care of a psychiatrist, and Mosby. I never met Mosby, but my father told stories about Mosby. I’ve been known to use Mosby every once in a while when a story I’m telling needs a character to cover for another character.

I am not going to use Mosby as a source for financial advice. Besides, he’s been on the other side of the grass for many years.

I’m not going to use this (probably fictional) uncle quoted by the sirens trying to get me into investing in Crypto.

I have better sense than to do so.

My uncle told me.

Be Seeing You!

Money

Money

I ran into a piece the other day where an author stated that women are more careful about their money because traditionally women have had less money than men and had to make their money stretch further.

I get it.

The way I look at money leads me to believe that I may be a woman.

I spent a fair amount of my time this morning balancing the family checkbook, making sure that what we have coming in is more than what we will have going out. For the record, I was successful. To the point, we have the resources to pay the bills for the rest of the month with money to spare.

It wasn’t always like that for me or for my current spouse.

When I met my current spouse, she was in the last stages of paying off bankruptcy with her former husband. Their second bankruptcy together. She made good money, but her ex found ways to spend every last cent that he could get his hands on. My ex had a similar problem. She would go overseas on business, charge up a storm and then ignore American Express when it came time to pay. She whined about my ruining her credit rating while I was pinching pennies to make sure our children had what they needed to live.

My current spouse and I were emotionally drained by our previous spouses and were determined that we wouldn’t fall into that virtual money pit.

And it has worked.

Not to say that we didn’t have moments where we wondered if we would be able to make it to the next paycheck… but we’ve made it work.

There’s something about making less money than other people we know. I can find it intimidating when someone makes a show of their ability to have lots of money. Not everyone makes me feel as being less than I am because of my modest means. A couple of my friends in particular are quite well off (thank you), but neither of them goes out of their way to rub it in my face.

At the same time, I can think of a few people who make a show of what they have. One person, call him Bob, loved to brag that he had $100 gasoline bills when gasoline was available at seventy cents a gallon! He always found and had the “best” of everything and wasn’t afraid to show it. Another fellow took me on a tour of his “Ranch” and openly bragged that he loved having people over and showing them what he had. I recently had a conversation with a woman living in Washington D.C. who decided that she wanted to meet me face-to-face and decided that she would fly to DFW the next day – demanding that I pick her up despite any previous commitments I may have had. Besides, I can’t afford to have a wife and a girlfriend.

I like to think that I’m like most people – making do with what I’ve got. There are certain victories I have on the way… heck, just last month I got a royalty payment of a whole two dollars when someone bought one of my books on Amazon. There are defeats, too, like an unexpected charge to remove and reinstall the solar panels on my house when a wind storm made replacing my roof a necessity, but we have managed to weather that storm… and have the means to weather other storms.

Anyhoo, the statement made in the first paragraph rings true. Women generally are better money managers. Gender does not necessarily predict how well people manage the means at their disposal, however. Some men can be good money managers. Some women can spend like drunken sailors on shore leave.

I’m just happy to be where I am – and hope to be at for some time to come.

Be Seeing You!

Fifty

Fifty

I did the math. An acquaintance posted that her fiftieth birthday will be coming soon. I honestly think that she is a little panicked about the coming milestone – not really an unusual occurrence. The woman I married turned fifty when I first met her. She was one of several women I met at the time as a recent divorcee making the rounds on the internet.

One of the first women I met after separation from my first wife was an agent of an apartment complex I was looking at. I was a little taken aback by how easy it was to take her to lunch and have my invitation accepted. We went to a Thai place about a mile from where she worked. We had a lovely conversation that led nowhere romantically, but I did take a neat suggestion from her. She told me that when she and her husband separated, the first thing she did was make a list of things she wanted to accomplish now that she was “footloose and fancy-free.” One of the items on her list was to sample new foods. She had never had Thai, so our date enabled her to scratch that item off her list. The idea had merit, so I adopted it for myself.

My current wife (#2 – with no #3 even being considered) was goaded out of her comfort zone by her daughter. She had just turned fifty and her daughter talked her into going onto a dating website to see what might turn up… something out of her comfort zone at the time.

I had been dating a woman in her forties. It was a case of we were biologically compatible and not much more. I found the future Mrs. on a dating website, messaged back and forth a time or two and finally met her in a rainy parking lot of an all-you-can-eat pizza joint. Wouldn’t you know, I pull up in a parking space, look in my rear-view mirror, and there she is, driving a vehicle identical to mine! Our first date included her youngest son, her granddaughter, and the granddaughter’s mother. (Her older son is still with but has yet to marry the mother of his children – although by this time, their union would be covered under common law. It’s complicated.)

We spent a lot of time talking over the next month and a half, finding our likes and dislikes before proving that we were biologically accommodating. The time I spent getting to know the fifty-year-old woman, became the basis of a relationship that has lasted for a total of 16 years (to date).

While I was musing on the significance of fifty, I recall being in contact with a few other women of a similar age prior to the interim relationship mentioned above. I wasted time with a Harley rider (when she said she liked to ride her cycle, I understood it to mean her bicycle), a woman living in Russia (too far to commute, besides, all she wanted was out of Russia on my dime), and the woman who never married living in the mid-cities (between Dallas and Fort Worth) who called one evening, conducting something akin to a job interview before flat-out telling me that she wasn’t interested.

Good to find out before making a commitment.

My brother’s wife made an “Out of the comfort zone” list for her 50th birthday. The wife and I were both amused and amazed by her list – including overseas trips and jumping out of an airplane. With a parachute. More than once. What was really amazing was that she convinced my brother to jump, too.

You’d have to drug me and throw me out of the plane.

This new acquaintance of mine could use a list. She needs to go out of her comfort zone if she wants the companionship she appears to want. I understand raging hormones combined with a need for reassurance that she is still desirable. We all need human connection. I’ll be a friend without benefits – someone she can talk with every once in a while. But the first step she needs to take if she is serious about finding a new partner is she needs to make a list featuring at least two feats of derring-do that are clearly out of her comfort zone.

If she does that, I’m sure she’ll find her Prince Charming. My wife wishes the same for her.

Be Seeing You!

Roller Skates

Roller Skates

A few months back, the better half’s car bit the dust and had to be replaced. She really wanted an electric, but electric then (as now) is a bit out of our price range. What we got instead was a small, Korean-made Chevrolet Spark. I call it the “Roller Skate.” Now that we’ve had it a few months, I’m starting to like our Roller Skate. It’s zippy, eats very little gasoline, and darn it, the Roller Skate is fun to drive!

I had forgotten how fun driving a diminutive car can be. Two of my favorite cars were Roller Skates, too!

The first car I ever owned was a 1969 Austin America. I paid something like $350 for a slightly larger version of the Mini. It needed work, and as I worked for the MG/Austin dealership at the time, I ended up getting an education about how cars work – or how British cars of the era worked. British cars had a terrible reputation, especially for the electrical parts made by Lucas… nicknamed “The Prince of Darkness.” The only electrical problem I had during my time with what my father called “The Little Yellow Monster” was with the starter. It ate up starter drives. I finally broke down, bought a second starter, keeping it reserve so when one starter failed a replacement was readily available.

I could change starters in five minutes flat.

When the Austin ran, it ran quite well and was perfectly suited for the driving I was doing at the time. And she could corner. I scared the snot out of a college roommate by taking a 25 MPH curve at 50. Looking back, I was damn lucky neither one of us was killed during that maneuver.

The Austin eventually died, a cracked head which I almost fixed was the culprit. I sold it for $50 as a parts car to a mechanic I knew. Both of us were happy with the deal.

My second Roller Skate was a Renault 5, with little letters on the side declaring it to be a LeCar. The car was manufactured and sold before Renault and AMC hooked up in the mid-seventies. The dealer was glad to be rid of the car as it was sitting in his back lot for over a year. I traded a troublesome Mustang II and was happier than the proverbial Pig in Mud with my purchase.

On my way home from the dealer, I was side-tracked by a collection of Corvettes in a mall parking lot. They had set up a track, of sorts, with cones, and for $20 (Donated to Big Brothers/Big Sisters), you could run through the course with the best time of the day being awarded with a trophy. I had $20 and took my turn. Second-Best-Time-of-the-Day. There were more than several Corvette drivers with their jaws on the ground. My performance probably generated another $200 – $300 from drivers attempting to best the time of my Roller Skate.

“Froggy LeCar” as I called her was usually reliable and stayed with me for the better part of three years. I managed to load the car up with most of my belongings and drove it down to Houston where I had a job waiting for me in the Oil Patch. I was waylaid in Memphis when I had a problem with the car running. A tune-up was all it needed. Did another overnight in LaFayette Louisiana where I got a phone call in my hotel room from a strange woman wanting to invite herself over to see me. It was my first time being solicited by a prostitute, but I didn’t realize it until sometime the next day while crossing the Sabine River.

I eventually let “Froggy” go, as it had no Air Conditioning. If you’ve ever lived in Houston, you’d know that AC is mandatory. I almost regret letting the car go. It was zippy and easy on gas.

Just like the better half’s Spark.

My little Jeep is larger and can carry more. Willy (Willy the Jeep – for somewhat obvious reasons) has been my favorite for most of seven years, but the Spark… well… there’s a part of me that wants to commandeer the Spark and call it my own.

For old time’s sake.

Be Seeing You!

New Chapter

Taking an opportunity this afternoon to revisit the first chapter of Still Life. Hope you’ll enjoy it.

Quarter to Three

Horsepower, torque, elapsed times, tires, gasoline.

            The bragging began shortly after midnight, lasting until a quarter to three. Chester O’Reilly, Ray Wheeler, and Roy Thomas were holding court in the parking lot of the Buffalo Gulch public library talking about a variety of subjects; most of the talk centering around Chester’s ancient Chrysler 300.

            It was his pride and joy. That and a dozen cases of white lighting hidden underneath piles of old periodicals leaving room for no one other than the driver.

            The car was potent enough. Back in the day, it would have had a glorious career, sneaking around the “Revenoors” from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to deliver the dozen or more cases of white lightning hidden underneath piles of old periodicals leaving room for no one but the driver.

            That was back in the day.

            On this early Monday morning in the first week of October, the car, the white lighting, and Chester himself was part of a ruse. There were no “Revenoors” chasing after Chester O’Reilly and his cargo of white lightning. His operation was quite legal – in fact, ATF agents were aware of Chester’s distillery, or, “Still” he was running out of a large garage behind his house on his property between Buffalo Gulch and Cottonflower.

            It should be noted at this point that Ray Wheeler was attached to the county sheriff’s office as a duly sworn deputy, assigned specifically to the portion of the county which included Buffalo Gulch and Cottonflower. His side gig, of which the county sheriff was well aware, was helping Chester O’Reilly brew, distill and bottle the white lightning made on Chester’s property.

            “When should we get started on the next batch?” deputy Wheeler asked Chester after spitting out what remained of the toothpick he had been chewing.

            “I’ll get the grain we’ll need when I take Tabasco up to Paris tomorrow afternoon,” Chester answered. “We can get started on that next batch before I have to go into the hospital Friday.”

            “Will your ticker make it till then?”

            “Hell, Ray, he’s been overdue for the operation since last year this time,” Roy Thomas chimed in. “A few more days ain’t goin’ to hurt him.”

            Roy took one last drag of the cigarette he’d been smoking and tossed it so it landed in the hollow of a root of a tree ten feet away.

            “The way you been puttin’ away them cancer sticks, it’s a wonder you’re still alive,” deputy Wheeler remarked as he pulled another toothpick out of his front pocket so he could start chewing on it. Something he didn’t note was one of his business cards falling on the ground next to Chester’s car.

            “I suppose I’ll be givin’ them up the day I die,” Thomas mused.

            He lit up another and the subject drifted in another direction.

            “When are you gonna tell that colored gal what you really been doing?” Wheeler asked.

            “Before I go to the hospital,” Chester promised. “And quit calling her a colored gal. She’s smarter than the three of us put together.”

            The trio laughed. Deep down they knew Chester was right.

            “What do you see in her, anyway?” Wheeler asked. “You pushed awful damn hard to have the library hire her when Ms. Swisher resigned.”

            “I have my reasons,” Chester told him. “You’ll find out in due time.”

            “Before or after the anesthesia wears off?” Thomas laughed.

            “When the time is right.”

            Chester wore a knowing smile as his mind drifted off to an incident over sixty years ago.

            “And Ray, if you don’t quit talking about her as “that colored gal,” I might take a notion to cut you out of the business.”

            Ray Wheeler grumbled for a few moments before changing the subject again.

            “What’s this I hear about you going and making a new will?”

            “I needed to update it before the operation,” Chester explained. “Standard stuff. Things change. People go out of your life, new people come in. My daddy changed his will every five years until he died.”

            “That’s good thinking,” Roy Thomas chimed in. “I damn near lost the business when my daddy died. He left half to my brother Joey, but Joey had been gone for ten years by the time daddy kicked the bucket.”

            “Joey was nowhere near the mechanic you are,” Chester complimented him.

            “Had he lived, he would have run the business into the ground. Took about a year for the probate court to find in my favor. Well, that and a few thousand dollars to that shyster Benjamin.”

            “I wasn’t too confident of him, either,” Chester revealed. That’s why I hired that new kid, Greg Barclay, and set him up with an office in Buffalo Gulch.”

            “Ain’t heard of him,” Wheeler harumphed.

            “He specializes in probate law; although I believe he could defend a DUI if worse came to worse.”

            The three men laughed. Each of them knew that they had evaded getting DUIs by the skin of their teeth on more than one occasion.

            The conversation made the rounds for a couple more hours, until Roy and Ray excused themselves so that they would be ready to roll in the morning.

            At a quarter to three, Chester O’Reilly sat in the driver’s seat of his ancient Chrysler, awash in memories of a time when he was young and in love. He was going to marry that woman, no matter what anyone said. The Korean War and the U.S. Army had other ideas and his love was lost to him.

            “I’ll take good care of our grandchild,” he promised to the memory of the woman he would never have.

            Chester laid his head back and closed his eyes.

            He fell asleep, never to wake up again.

Nuts!

We seem to have hit some sort of “Twilight Zone.” Over the weekend, there was a report from a school in Florida where the Principal retired because of a parent’s complaint that children were exposed to photographs of the statue of David as part of an art class. It seems that the “parent” was aghast that their children would be exposed to a statue of a naked man with his hangy-down parts showing. It’s just nuts!

The wags have been having a bit of fun about this outrage, dressing the statue in dresses (uh-oh… Drag!) or covering the offending parts in (among other things) a map of Florida and an AK-40. There was even a drawing of God handing Adam a pair of underwear in the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (Tighty-Whities. Boxers are out because you might be able to see Adam’s hangy-down parts through a gap which “lets your business breathe”)!

Apparently, the state of Florida allows even a single parent to have something removed from the classroom if they object to it. Lessons about the struggle for Civil Rights? Gone. Books about the hardships of Slavery – “Who says it was that bad?” The list is endless as it keeps growing by the day. And it’s likely to get worse before it gets better, especially since anyone with any objection will be taken seriously.

Had this nonsense been in place when I was in elementary school, my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Gillahan, would have been fired on several different occasions. Like, when she talked about milking a cow and pulling on the cow’s teats (pronouncing it “Tits.”) When the inevitable laughs came from the boys in the room, she went into her “Don’t fool around on me, I’m serious” mode, staring us down and smacking a ruler across her desk as a warning as to what may happen if we continued. Or, there was the time when she excused the girls while the boys in the room were given a clinical description of what was involved in circumcision.

You could have heard a pin drop.

To her credit, Mrs. Gillahan was the product of a different age. She was likely older then than, say, Willie Nelson is today. She may still be around. I wouldn’t put it past her. But she couldn’t teach school in Florida.

Back to Florida – I read an essay recently about a trend where opinion becomes the truth. The gist of the article was that there are certain groups of people who listen to opinions that are taught as truth. Anything not aligning with what is being taught as truth is automatically condemned as part of some sort of “Culture War” being waged against what is (inaccurately called) the Silent Majority.

It’s more like a vocal minority that the state of Florida (among others) is allowing to run things. It’s one thing for a parent to object to what his or her child is exposed to – It’s quite another for a parent to be able to keep all children from being exposed to something that one parent objects to.

Nuff Said

Seventh Grade

Seventh Grade

A question posed the other day on Facebook asked why square dancing was included in physical education classes. The question was, more specifically, about why fourth graders were square dancing in physical education classes. My answer was based on having had square dancing taught when I was in the seventh grade. The classes went a long way towards teaching basic social skills to boys and girls undergoing the changes brought about by puberty. At least that’s the way I look at it over my shoulder. It was useful in that it was one of the first times us seventh-grade boys came to the realization that girls didn’t have or pass along the dreaded “cooties!”

That being said, there is nothing filthier than the mind of a seventh-grade boy.

Seventh-grade is about the time when certain changes start happening in our bodies. Formerly flat-chested girls start to develop breasts, something noted by seventh-grade boys. Seventh-grade girls are well aware of the reactions of seventh-grade boys and some of the, shall we say, less gifted of the girls attempted to “pad their resumes.” There were several instances of boys telling other boys about seeing bits of tissue peeking out of the shirts of certain girls. Those certain girls usually were friends with other girls who developed at a faster rate. They just wanted to keep up.

I found that the girls worth talking to were unconcerned about what other girls thought. Flat-chested or quickly developing, it didn’t matter to me. Much. I was surprised when a girl I met up with at a seventh-grade mixer showed up in a dress which hinted at her bosom not being augmented by tissue. Of course, I was asked about it by one or two of the other boys, but I said nothing. She had become too good a friend to betray her trust.

Many of the other boys were dealing with issues of their own, including nocturnal emissions and communal showers after gym class where they were noticing that they had hair “in places where they didn’t have hair before.” There were gross jokes about parts of the anatomy between the shoulders and the knees of both genders, as well as size comparisons not usually mentioned in polite company.

It was square dancing which became the equalizer. The division between the girls’ side and the boys’ side of the gym was gone. Had something to do with basketball. And the entire gym became a dance floor. We’d pair up, form squares, and learned the basics, all while learning valuable social skills and generally having a good time. For once, some of the filthy minds of the seventh-grade boys were tempered by having to interact with seventh-grade girls with (undoubtably) similar mind sets.

I put aside square dancing for a couple of decades, coming back to it when the first spouse suggested we take square dancing lessons. We had fun for a while, enjoying the company of other dancers who would burn off calories, only to get them back by stopping at the Big Boy on the way back home.

It has been a couple of decades since. The current spouse and I have said something about getting back into square dancing, but the discussion was short. Nothing against it – we’re not sure if we want to invest the time at this point in our lives.

And about seventh-grade boys… well, there’s a saying out there about the difference between men and bonds: “Bonds mature.” Not all men are immature as seventh-grade boys. I’d like to think I’ve matured. However, there is still a part of me which harkens back to the day!

(Notice the evil grin at the top of the page!)

Be Seeing You!