DRINKING OF ELDER MEN: Collected Essays 2009 to the Present

Quiting the Writing Game

2012-02-06T10:01:00.000-05:00

Okay, don't anybody gets too excited that they will not have to read anything by me again. I said, " The Writing Game" not writing.

It is easier for an alcoholic to give up drinking than a writer to quit writing. Writing isn't like an addiction; it's more an incurable disease. One doesn't give it up anymore than someone gives up cancer.

I'll continue writing until they pull the keyboard from under my cold, dead fingers. I've been writing professionally for 60 years if you count the newspaper Stuart Meisel and I wrote and sold in the school hallway in 1952-53. It's been 55 years if you count it from the song "My Little White Lamb" my first New York published piece. I have been published somewhere or other in every decade since.

I have written almost every day since I was 12 years old. It may turn into gibberish if I go senile, but someone would have to shoot me to stop me. (Now I fully understand some people may say I already write gibberish. To them I say, "@&#*!" Just typing gibberish, translate at your own risk.)

The Writing Game has very little to do with actual writing. The Writing Game is what you play when fame and fortune is what you think you want. It is the desperate rules you follow to be published and see your name in print. It is the conventions you cow tow to in order to impress an editor. In other words it is pandering to please someone else's dictates of what writing is, but it is not writing.

In every art form their exist a coterie of elitist snobs who claim privy to what is and isn't proper. Well, there is another kind of privy and that is where their opinions really belong. If we depended on the considerations of these mutually declared haut monde of culture we probably would not have the great variety of art we enjoy. Like most elitist these person's main purpose is to keep things to themselves, for to share is anti-privileged They tend to cling to the last best thing or speak mumbo-jumbo to declare something unfathomable as insightful. We must remember these people generally have stood in the doorway of evolving art for centuries and one wonders how many artists they have killed figuratively speaking over the years.

One must remember Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime. Kathryn Stockett was rejected by 60 agents before one agreed to market her novel The Help. We probably would never have heard of such people as Beethoven, Jack Kerouac, William Faulkner, James Joyce or Jackson Pollack if those elitist who think they uphold the pillars of the media had their way during their times.

Now don't misunderstand, I am not trying to place myself on the level of those I just mentioned. As a teenager I was content to dream of being a hack writer of horror stories. Basically I achieved that and had some success as a pulp writer. If anything I have written rises about that level, then fine. I don't care. I've quit the writing game.

I have seen my name in print many times and it is no big deal. I am tired of changing things to suit some editor or to avoid upsetting the politically correct applecart. We have the internet now and the freedom to write what we would write to the best we can write it. If some read my words and enjoy them or think about them that is enough. If people read my words and dislike what I wrote then they are totally free never to read my words again. That won't stop my words.

What finally persuaded me to quit the writing game was some criticism of a story I wrote. It was made by a college professor, someone very much in a position to poison young mind. Her criticism was not of my style or content per se. Her statement was, "You didn't describe if your character was white or black, American or Canadian or whatever nationality or race; therefore, I could not relate to your character."

Is this what we have come to? This kind of bigoted need of superficialities to understand a story? These things did not matter in my story. The main character could have just as easily been of Asian ethnicity. The main character could have been a black man or a Hispanic woman, these random accidents of birth had no bearing on the story. It was about a human being dealing with life. If the color of her skin had a bearing on the plot I would have put it in there.

I thought, "Gimme a break! Are you kidding me?"

No, from now on I write what I write. Read it for what it is worth. If you like it, come back and read some more. If you don't like it, then go away. That is the freedom we all have now.

This is not a Political Post.

2012-02-01T20:01:00.000-05:00

My grandmother had an old country expression, “That mandon’t have a lick of sense.” Now we all have slips of the tongue or say thingswithout thinking, but if you are running for President and making publicstatements you need to have a good editor up in your brain.

Mitt Romney looks good. He cleans up real nice, don’t he? Hasthat little touch of gray at the temples, his tie on straight. He “looksPresidential” as they say. But he don’t talk good. (Yes, it is ungrammatical,but I’m not running for anything.) Romney is leading in the GOP circus rightnow, but his handlers better get him into Poli-Speak College for the course 101 - How Not to Give Your OpponentsNegative Sound Bites.

This wouldn’t make no never mind (another old countrysaying) if we had an honest and decent Press in this country. We don’t. We havea bunch of vultures more interested in the gotcha moment than reporting fact orexplaining anything fairly and at depth. If a candidate can’t grasp the need forcaution when speaking to the Press, he is a fool.

Last week in the debates Romney made two comments about histax statements that showed he is out of touch with the everyday working personin this country.

First he stated his 2010 tax return would “show he paid allthe taxes he was obligated to pay.”Well, so do I. Of course, to do otherwise would be illegal and the IRS would becoming after me. I mean, what the heck is that? It sounds like every politicianor business executive ever charged with cooking the books or fraudulentactivity. “I have done nothing illegal. It was all within the law as it iswritten.”

In other words it sounds as if he is exploiting a bunch ofloopholes to avoid paying tax. It may be legal, but it doesn’t look good andthe average guy can’t do it. You know, like having a secret Swiss bank accountor money stashed in the Cayman Islands.

Not realizing how such a statement would play in the press,he went up and compounded it with this quote, “I don't think the voterswant a president who pays more than he owes." That quote just triggerspeople to be suspicious and look for something hidden.

Well, I suppose we don’t want anyone payingmore than they owe, but why in the world would you make such a remark? It justreinforced the idea you pulled some shenanigans to avoid paying tax. It also indicates a person knowing hisreturns are going to show something he wants to prepare people for because heknows it will look like he got off cheap. It also says he is out of touch with the common man. It ranksup there with Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake," when peoplewere asking for bread. As an old Credence Clearwater song goes, "I ain'tno privileged son." Mitt is a privileged son.

Now a week later he opens his mouth and stupidityspews out. You would think he would have learned how the press, TV comedians and hisopposition work from his previously and famously misquoted, “I love firingpeople.” You may be saying a perfectly reasonable and logical thing, but if youdon’t frame it correctly, no one will hear the real message.

His “I love firing people” was only part of thestatement, because he was referring to getting rid of service people who failedto provide the service promised. We all have done this at times. I switchedphone companies some years back for service issues. It was the correct thing todo. But it was stupid to frame this very sensible and commonsense practiceusing the words “love” and “firing”. And the predictable happened. Only that part of his comment was used ina totally different way than he used it to make him look like Ebenezer Scroogerubbing his hands in glee because he loved firing poor Bob Cratchet. Unfair,untrue, but today’s reality.

Yet he made the same structural gaff again. Heexplained how he was concentrating on the vast majority of Americans,strengthening the middle class, an absolute necessity if we are to bring thiscountry back to economic strength. He also said he would help fix any “holes inthe safety net” for the poor.

Unfortunately he again framed his statementstupidly. He began it by saying, “I don’t care about the poor…” That is all thereporter heard, not what he really said. Now that bad phrasing is going to showup on the lips of Colbert and Leno and Letterman and Fallon. Now those out ofcontext words will become a nice sound bite for his opponents’ negative ads. Ican hear the spots now: “Here is what Mitt Romney says, “I love firing people…Idon’t care about the poor…”

Now this is not a political post. I am neitherendorsing or non-endorsing any candidate of either party. I am angry that thepress in this country does not bother to explain and illuminate rather thanglory in “gotchas” and even will distort things in order to create one. But itis what it is and the fact Romney can’t seem to get a grasp on that factbothers me. He manages to get his ties properly tied, but he needs to find away to tie down his tongue.

Of course this constant distortion by the Press andothers of what people actually say is what keeps good people from running foroffice. And look what we get stuck with.

You Need Your Knees

2012-01-31T08:09:00.003-05:00

You take a lot for granted about your body when everything is working as it should. You forget that the whole is the sum of its parts. When a part isn't doing what it should it just might bring the machine to a halt.

My left knee just about brought this old contrapion called me to a stop. I wrote about the pain a week ago, so consider this a progress report.

Knees are ugly things, at least on me they are. They are bumpy and scared, and of course a popular gathering place for my psoriasis. I don't really have to look at them all that much. They are down there someplace kind of in a blind spot. I barely consider them, except on those occasions with Mr. Arthur Itis comes by to visit those joints. But as I last reported his cousin Mr. Bur S. Itis moved in this month, lock stock, balloon and red-hot poker.

There's what he looked like back on the 23rd in the right photo.

He blew up enough to take out some of the wrinkles, but who cares if their knees are smooth? Fact was it hurt like blazes and I couldn't bend my leg, not a wit, not an inch.

It is a real inconvenience when the knee won't bend, especially with the pain. I couldn't easily get in the car. I had to push my self up high and half over the passenger seat to slide that left foot up and in. Once I got the leg and foot in the car it was agony driving even short distances because I couldn't stretch it straight out and that little bend I forced upon it keep burning at me all the way.

Getting dressed was another interesting maneuver. You can't bend the thing and you can't hardly lift your foot without Mr. Bur S. Itis shooting a dart down your shin. I had to devise a way to manage.

I would have to hold my underwear so the leg hole was an open target. Lift my left leg a inch while gritting my teeth and then wave the shorts back and forth until I lassoed the toes. After that I gently tugged them over the foot and then slipped in the right foot, because that leg I could bend and pulled them up. Somewhat the same with trousers, except they were too long and bulky to wave at my toes. I would place the left side of them pretty much down on the floor, then ease my foot up on them hoping to get into the top of the leg. Now again an easing up inch by inch until my foot peeked through the other side. Then dip down the right side and slip in the right foot and pull into place.

I would put my right shoe on first. I would place my left shoe on the floor and again force my left leg and foot off the found and over the back into the opening. After than I just had to press until my foot was inside, which usually broke down the back of my shoe under my heel. It wasn't easy getting that leather out and back where it should be either. A lot of pushing with my other foot.

Of course for the first week I couldn't tie that shoe. My wife had to do it for me. "Thank you, mommy. Someday I'll learn to do it myself!"

Now I didn't mention something else. Something goes on between the pants and the shoe called a sock. I figured out how to get the pants on Larry and the shoe over my toes, but I found no way to get the sock on. Again, I had to ask my wife to do it.

So I was dressed with no where to go, because I couldn't blasted walk. I was more or less a paperweight for a week. Then it began to improve a bit. I could bend it a teeny tiny bit.

Here is how I measured progress. "Mommy, mommy, I tied my shoe all by myself today!" Yes, it bent just enough I could lean over while standing up, just grasp my shoelace ends and by gritting my teeth manage a reasonable bow knot. I still couldn't get my sock anywhere near my toes though. I was still dragging myself into the car and trying to hide the pain of driving. I still couldn't sleep but in one position at night, assuming I could get to sleep at all.

But a couple days ago the pain easied and the knee bent a little more. I could actually change how I lay at night and sleep. It was getting easier to dress and to get in the car. Then another day and a bit more bend and bit less swelling. Now I had almost no pain, unless I forgot myself and bent my leg too far. It wasn't too far to too far, either.

I felt my leg was about 85% back to normal. I felt no discomfort now driving, although I still had to be careful getting into a vehicle. And then I actually managed to put my sock on myself. It wasn't all that easy, but I can do it.

I still couldn't cross my legs, but I was walking almost like a human being again.

Now today both my knees are looking more like their good old wrinkled up ugly selves. This morning they almost look like twins, although you can still see a little swelling in the left.

However, I can't catch a break. I woke up at two o'clock this morning from pain. It wasn't my left knee.

It seems Mr. Arthur Itis took up residence in the apartment below. My ankle is killing me and I'm back to an old man's shuffle.

Like a kind of Sanctuary

2012-01-28T13:28:00.000-05:00

I was baptized as a baby in the Grove Methodist Episcopal Church, but I never attended any services there. When I was a preschooler, my mother took me to St. James Episcopalian Church on East Lancaster Avenue in Downingtown one Easter. We didn't attend any service there either from what I remember. She took me there for the Easter Egg hunt and rides in a pony cart.

Sometime about third grade my folks made me go to Sunday School at the Downingtown Methodist Church on Creek Road. They must have figured I was old enough to walk the length of our street to attend, but they sure didn't go to church. I think they might have shown up on Easter and Christmas, maybe. They did come one Sunday when I played a tree in some kind of pageant.

I didn't much cotton to going myself, but I wasn't asked.

The place I came to accept as my church, or my sanctuary, was the building pictured. This was the Downingtown Public Library and it contained magic. It held books, lots and lots of books.

It was and is a lovely building, still there and still a library as far as I know. It sat directly across from the home of one of my best friends, Staurt Meisel. It was built of stone over which ivy crawled from the yard to the roof. Fronting the yard was a stone wall. I use to walk atop this wall and feel so daring, it seemed high and dangerous. When I went back as an adult I was embarrassed to think its two foot high cliffs frightened me.

The building has a history. it was built to house Dr. William A. Todd and his new wife, Ann Downing. It was constructed in 1800 and served as both Dr. Todd's home and office.
In 1839 the house became the Mary B. Thomas Boarding School. Its use changed again by the early 1900s when the Women's Club of Downingtown made it their clubhouse, but in 1917 the Women's Club had to turn it over to the American Red Cross. The Red Cross utilized the facilities during the remainder of World War I to make surgical bandages for the troops. Eventually after the end of the war it became the Library.

The stacks were downstairs. I do not know what was upstairs, I was never up those steps. The Children's Library was the room to your right as you entered. The Librarian sat in the large room on the left behind a large desk just a few feet inside the door. Shelves surrounded her floor to ceiling. To her left was a deeper section full of rack after rack. It was darker back in that area.

When I first took out a Member Card I was not quite ten years old. I was related to the Children's Library. The big room was off-limits. The librarian was an older woman. I remember her as frail in appearance and something of the stereotype of the spinster librarian. She was strict and scared me a little. Still, I came often and took the limit of books out at a time and read them all within the week. I think I read all the Hardy Boys, several books about animals, both short stories and novels, a whole series of science fiction and all of Robert Louis Stevenson's best know works except one.

Oh, how I wanted to read that forbidden work as well as more Edgar Allan Poe.

About the time I went from Grade School to Junior High the librarian either retired or died. She was replaced by a young woman and that young woman opened up the world to me. She was so nice. I had read my way through the Children's Library, or as much of it as I cared to. I was not yet old enough, but one night she agreed to allow me to borrow books but the big room. Oddly enough, Stevenson's book was not the first I withdrew from the Big Room. The first book I read out of the Downingtown Adult Library Room was a play in verse by Edmond Rostand called Cyrano de Bergerac. I guess I was a weird kid.

After I read that I got my Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde at long last.

I spent many an evening at the library and since I was often the only one who came in, the Librarian and I began having conversations. I told her I had decided to be a writer and she asked to see some of what I wrote. She made comments and she allowed me to use the library typewriter to tap out my stories and poems in a more "professional" manner.

If I was engaged to reading books before I ever walked in the doors of the Downingtown Public Library, I was married to books ever after. I am also eternally grateful to that young Librarian for mentoring this poor skinny lad when no one else cared a wit about his peculiar idea of being a writer.

Pain

2012-01-25T10:13:00.000-05:00

Life in recent times is a four-letter word spelled P-A-I-N. This is the cost of carrying this body none to gently through the years. Age has a way of reminding me that the smooth and sturdy container I gave no concern to in youth is now dinged and dented, wrinkled and wrecked.

In my younger days I was a fast runner, but you can't outrun age. Your sprints and dashes gradually become rapid walks and then you find that four miles an hour pace has slipped by a mile. All those old slowpokes you use to breeze pass on the trails are now going by you. You don't outrace that old geezer with the scythe. He was out of sight and out of mind once upon a time, but now I can catch a glimpse of him over my shoulder.

I suppose at this point I should put up that warning that this blog may contain images some would find disturbing.

I am referring to my knees.

Old Man Time doesn't like knees and elbows. He really warps the skin on those body parts. I have seen elephants with smoother skin than what my kneecaps have become.

In fact, I use to have nice looking legs and as these first pictures from the past summer attest, not so long ago I still had human-looking limbs, but this week not so much. Now admittedly arthritis has played a role in rearranging my landscape. My fingers have developed a curve and I can no longer completely close my hands into a fist. My feet have especially suffered the slings and arrows of uric acid overindulging in their joints like some mean drunk always spoiling for a fight. There are days few and far between I wake up pain free. Mostly it is a twinge in a toe or a stinging about the ankle that is barely noticeable in the daily activity of my life. Sometimes it is a flare-up of angry bees with red-hot fireplace pokers for stingers doing battle here or there. Never have these bouts prevented me from working and very seldom deterred me from my daily walk through the forest, even though such pain never rests, even when you do, and it bites you when touched, latching on like a Pit Bull having roid rage. I have a high pain threshold. I can deal with Mr. Arthritic Pit Bull.

But that Old Man Time hit me low this week. I was thinking perhaps tendonitis, but it looks more and more to me like bursitis, his second cousin. I've had a couple bursitis attacks on my elbows. I was a bit self-conscious about my big freak elbow, but after a couple weeks it went back to normal. It didn't much bother me unless I leaned on my arm or brushed against something. This knee thing is a bit more obtrusive. I was wondering if I could get on some weirdo TV show and make a few bucks by claiming I had a grapefruit implanted in my knee.

My daughter and I visited the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia last week, maybe I picked it up there. My knee certainly looks like an exhibit you'd find in that place. Over in this display we have a man with balloon leg! Admittedly my right kneecap ain't no beauty contest winner either, but at least it has some shape to it. My legs look like the before and after pictures of a participant on The Biggest Loser. Besides the pain, I really can't bend the blasted thing. You should see me try to put my pants on (well, maybe you shouldn't) or my shoe and sock. I haven't even been able to tie my own left shoe, although I did manage to do just that this morning. I felt the same sense of accomplishment as I did as a toddler first mastering such a feat. Oh, Larry tied his shoe all by himself, he gets a gold star!

I am doing all one can for such an inflation, keeping off my feet, resting, popping Ibuprofen and getting a healthily understanding why some people get hooked on pain pills. I did notice in this last picture I took this morning that the swelling has decreased ever so slightly. Hopefully in another week I can snap a portrait of matching kneecaps.

It does have me wondering how my dad stands it. I am going stir crazy because I can't do much physically around the house. It is a major task getting in and out of the car. I have to put in my right leg, then push this hulk of body up almost over into the passenger side to drag my left foot into place. But at least I am hobbling about. I took out the trash, took the barrel down to the curve yesterday. I can feed the cats and feed the birds and fetch the newspaper. I also have my writing, which I can sit at the computer to type and it is my lifetime love. Yet my dad can't do anything. He can't go out and get the paper or the mail. He was a long distance trucker until he was 75, then a school bus driver into his late eighties. Driving was his love and passion, but he isn't allow to do that anymore. It pains my knee to drive, but I can do it.

Old Man Time is a mean son of a goat!

Anger at How They Pick Your Pockets

2012-01-06T04:20:00.001-05:00

Now where were we? Ah yes, the Little Woman had accidentally overdraw one of our bank accounts resulting in a $37 dollar fee of 131% on $28.

(To understand how this happened go to my previous post, "Anger from One Year to the Next".)

We do not keep much money in this particular account. There is a large deposit on the First of each month (more about that to come) and by the last week of the month little remains. It's a special purpose account. So there was only $8 remaining when my wife pulled out the wrong debit card to pay a $36 purchase (prescriptions),

I asked a question. Why did the bank allow this overdraft to happen?

Obviously when the card was swiped the computer noted there were insufficient funds and one would expect the transaction to be denied. Isn't that what you have always been told about a debit card? You had to have money in your account for it to be used?

One of the dirty little secrets, among many, is the banks encourage overdrafts. This is one of their most profitable services. This is not what they tell you, of course.

They will give you three reasons to justify this usury interest rate, the overdraft fee.

1. They don't want you to be inconvenienced by rejecting a transaction over such a low sum. Thus, you are paying for not being embarrassed by public rejection. They are doing it for you!

2. Overdrafts cost the bank a lot of money.

3. They impose the fee to encourage customers to be more financially responsible.

They leave out the fourth and most important reason: it's easy and lucrative revenue for the bank. The other three reasons are basically bogus. Only Reason Number 2 has any iota to truth to it, but even that is distorted from reality and should not be considered a valid reason for these high fees.

What kinds of overdrafts do we have? We have accidental ones, such as my wife using the wrong bank card or someone thinks they have a higher balance than they have. It is difficult in these times to sometimes know your balance if you have a joint account. You take some cash from an ATM and mean time your joint partner is buying a new pair of shoes unaware of your withdrawal and voila, accidental overdraft.

We have the knowing overdraft for an emergency situation. This is where the person knows they don't have enough in the account to cover a transaction, but are willing to absorb a fee for a perceived necessity. "If I don't take twenty dollars out of the bank today, my children will have nothing to eat tonight." The person knows money will be in the account in a day or so to cover both what they took out and the greedy fee.

These are overdrafts made by basically honest persons who are good customers of the bank. The bank knows they will get that money back and their fee. If the bank thought otherwise, these people would NOT have been able to overdraw.

That's another of the dirty little secrets, you are coded. As a new customer you may be coded 1 and this tells the system to allow up to a $50 overdraft. This will change over time as you build a reputation and profile with the bank. Each code will bring a higher allowance of overdraft, maybe as much as $200, maybe more if you are wealthy. (I know of cases of wealthy people having no limits and even when they overdrew their account by thousands of dollars paid no fees. You will find in most situations if you are rich enough to afford the fees, you never are charged any.) Naturally, if you become known as a risk or have a very minimal average balance, you may be coded down to a zero and no overdraft allowed.

So there goes Reason Number 3, because if they really wanted to encourage you to be financially responsible, they wouldn't allow you to overdraw at all. But then they wouldn't be able to charge you a fat fee and make money.

And let's forget Reason Number 1, that's just PR. They couldn't care less about you being embarrassed. It's a convenience all right; a convenient way for them to make more money.

What about Reason Number 2, overdrafts cost the bank? It may cost them interest on money borrowed overnight at the Fed Fund Rate of interest. The current Fed Fund Rate is .25%. That is the annualized rate. Banks generally borrow overnight, just as we basically borrowed $28 overnight. So the bank paid a use fee of .000007% (rounded up) for a total cost of $0.00019. We paid a use fee of $37 at a rate of 48,180% annualized. See how they turned a microscopic lost into a big fat profit?

"How about processing costs caused by an overdraft?" you ask.

First of all, there is no direct cost caused by the overdraft, except that minuscule interest rate. The bigger extra cost was having an OverDraft Unit to prepare those notices mailed to the miscreants and the postage to send it. I don't know how big those units are these days. Most of the notice preparation and mailing is probably pretty much automated by now. The costs are a nanosecond of computer time, a bit of paper and postage; and the postage is probably the highest expense. Does this add up to anywhere near $37? I rather think not. Maybe a buck-thirty-seven.

However, there is a legitimate cost from overdrafts of a higher nature. This doesn't come because of those accidental overdrafts or the deliberate emergency of the moment ones. No, there is a third kind of overdraft, theft.

Yeah, there are people who overdraw an account with no intension of ever making it good. They not only aren't going to make a deposit to cover the overdraft, they aren't going to pay the fee either. Now some of these thieves know how to milk the system for all its worth. (They would probably make valuable advisers working for the bank actually. They think alike when it comes to maximizing undeserved profit.) They will make overdrafts here, there and everywhere in a short period of time before the previous overdrafts are noted and their withdrawing spree ended. With the speed of today's systems, though, the banks have probably cut down on this.

But these thieves have nothing to do with our little miscues and small overdrafts. Those people are not going to be encouraged to be more financially responsible. And they can cost the bank a hunk of change, but you and I shouldn't be punished for this. Higher overdraft fees won't stop these crooks.

I am not against the banks charging a reasonable fee for an overdraft. We are using their funds in what could be called a small, temporary loan. When I initially began in banking (40 plus years ago) such fees were kind of reasonable. Our overdraft fee was $10. If you were over from one cent to $9.99 you were not charged. We did not charge anything if under the fee amount. From $10 to $19.99 you were charged half the fee, $5.00 and $20 or above you paid the full fee. Given the minimal cost to banks when the average depositor overdraws this would still seem a reasonably excessive profit for the bank.

However, I would be inclined to say they should be restricted to charging the same rate as their small personal loans on overdrafts. I see that rate is somewhere around 15% currently. That would mean for my wife's little one day loan of $28, I would have paid a fee of one and one-tenth cent. Bank still made a profit, and if the overdraft remained another day, then another one and one-tenth cent. Okay, I can be reasonable. Let them charge a minimum fee, but no more than $12. $12 would be equivalent to a small personal loan of $1,000 for a month (31 days) at 15% annual interest. They still make a huge profit.

But banks shouldn't be living off the backs of honest people making small overdrafts, because every time they want to raise their bottom line, they raise the overdraft fee while they continue to encourage this behavior. As I stated earlier, if they truly wished to stop this behavior, they would allow no overdraft, which they do with some riskier people, so it is possible.

But that overdraft fee, despite how it sounds, was not the true source of my anger. My anger came from that combined with the same bank depositing my pension late. This is why I have an account there to begin with, my monthly pension payment is deposited there and then I have specific payments dedicated to that account monthly, which is why it shrinks almost to nothing by month end just before another infusion of my pension.

My pension check is due on the first of every month. Now usually if the first falls on a weekend, they deposit it on the Friday before. However, the first of January fell on both a Sunday and a holiday and the holiday extended through Monday and they didn't deposit my pension until Tuesday. I guess because I get a yearly pension they have to keep that amount isolated to each calendar year, but still, make it on the due date. If I am late paying something on the due date, I get charged a late fee, usually as outrageous as the overdraft fee. Not having my pension on the First caused me untold worry and aggregation and inconvenience. I am not a well-off guy, I depend on deposits being there when they should be. Not being there could cause me to make a late payment on something and incur more bloated fees.

There is no reason why it could not have been done automatically on a Sunday. They would have put a charge to my account on Sunday if I incurred one. They cancelled an automatic payment I had setup for the Second, even though that was a holiday, so why not make my deposit.

What I should do is bill the bank a $37 late fee. Fair is fair.

Anger From One Year to the Next

2012-01-05T07:02:00.000-05:00

I am not a person easily angered. It usually takes a lot. Nor do I stay angry long. On those occasions in my life when I have reached a boiling point I usually let off steam by throwing something, generally what is in easy reach. I don't throw it at anyone. I just throw it. My anger goes away then like a cold when the fever breaks. I throw it, I feel better immediately and I fairly quickly cool down.

Then I feel bad because I probably broke something of mine I didn't want to break.

These instances occur, thankfully, very, very infrequently.

It's also something those knowing we well are happy about. They know my anger is rare, comes quickly and goes away just as quick. I am not someone whose anger will seethe and continue for hours or days. So this is probably the exception that proves the rule.

I became angered prior to New Year's Eve and it has not gone away. I am still angry. Perhaps it is because I didn't throw anything and it is too late for that now. And I am not angry at one thing, either, but several things.

The first thing that angered me was my wife overdrew our account at one bank. No, I wasn't angry at my wife. I was upset because I figured we'd get charged a fee and I was unhappy because we haven't had an overdraft on our accounts for at least a decade. But I wasn't angry at anyone or anything yet.

My wife went to have her prescriptions filled and she used the wrong card in paying. It had been an honest mistake. We have accounts at two banks. Unfortunately the debit cards of both are green and look similar. She thought she was using the bank card of the account we had money in. It wasn't and this resulted in a $28 overdraft.

I check my accounts online regularly. I was shocked to see an overdrawn account. I did not see any fee charged yet, however, and I went immediately to that bank and deposited $40 dollars. My receipt then showed us having a positive balance, not much, but positive nonetheless.

Thus the next morning I am doubly surprised when I check my account and see it overdrawn $25. Why am I doubly surprised? Not so much by the fact this was caused by the charging of an overdraft fee as the fact my pension check was not deposited as expected. This is when my anger began.

Definition of Usury: the illegal action or practice of lending money atunreasonably high rates of interest.

It would seem that an interest rate of 132% for a one day "loan" is a high rate of interest. Of course there is that phrase in the definition: "the illegal action or practice". Certainly 132% is a high rate, but is it actually legal?

Definition of a Loan Shark: A person or entity that chargesborrowers interest above an established legal rate. Depending onwhere a person lives, lenders typically cannot charge more than 60%interest per annum. A loan shark, then, would be someone who illegallycharged interest over the state's legal limit, which could range upto, or even over, 100%.

So, 132% is more than 60%, but the definition says per annum. This 132% I was charged was daily, actually less than a full 24 hours before I deposited the $40. That is an annual rate of 48,180%, which would make any loan shark drool with envy.

Now I know it would not become 48,180%. If I didn't deposit to my account for two days or a week or a month, it would remain at 132% If I waited a year, although they would probably have closed my account by then, it would still be 131%, but still a lot more than 60% per annum!

Do I think this is fair and right? No, but I will explain why in my next post. I'll give you a partial reason, why did the bank allow her to overdraw? Why didn't they reject the purchase? I'll tell you next time.

Meanwhile, I leave you with this:

What’sthe difference between Congressmen and manure?

Withmanure you can spread it across a field and it will yield worthwhile crops.

Whilecongressmen are full of it, all they produce is crap.

(The photograph of Congress in session taken by the author, 2011.)

My Happy New Years 2012 Steve Jobs Intensity Portrait

2012-01-01T10:52:00.000-05:00

A Nice Quiet Country Christmas Morning

2011-12-25T16:43:00.000-05:00

We all know Christmas can get hectic. So what better than a nice quiet walk in the country to escape all the voice of our more urban environment?

Thus this December 25, 2011 about 8:00 you found me ambling along the Brandywine enjoying the silence of the forest.

Yeah, right, anyone who believes it is quiet in the woods must have grown up and lived all their life in the city.

In the city you might have honking car horns; in nature you have geese.

(I suggest you scroll down and turn off my music player before viewing the video.)

The Great Blue Christmas Heron Takes Flight

2011-12-25T16:37:00.000-05:00

There are Great Blue Herons living in our vicinity. Very large birds that are quite graceful in flight. There is one standing on the downed branches in this photo to the left, although a bit hard to see.

Below is a video shot early this Christmas morning 2011 of one taking flight.

Merry Christmas to All: Second Greatest Event

2011-12-25T11:22:00.000-05:00

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas 2011.

I suggest you scroll down and turn off my music player.

Now if Christmas is the Second Greatest event, what must be the first?

No, not my birthday, although that's in the Top Ten somewhere.

I'll give a hint. We wouldn't have had the first, if we hadn't had the second, so the second came before the first.

Lonely Months: A film

2011-12-14T16:20:00.000-05:00

I would suggest scrolling down and turning off my music player before viewing the video.

All photographs were taken by the author on December 11, 2011 in Brandywine Creek State Park.

Streets that Bind -- Washington Avenue

2011-12-06T14:21:00.001-05:00

From the time I was born until I married there were seven addresses in five townships; from my marriage to the present, eleven in eight places. These 18 addresses may be even more remarkable considering I've been in this house for the last 30 years and here is where I think of as home.

But if one asked about my boyhood home, I think of Washington Avenue. I moved there three times, twice to the same address. I lived on that street for 13 of my first 15 years.

It wasn't the longest street in the world, although it seemed so when, as a child, I walked it. It ran probably less than a half-mile end to end. It ran one block east of my own block, but I seldom had reason to go that way. It ran two long blocks to the west of mine and at the end of these, just before the creek, were my church and the movie theater. A half block off Brandywine Avenue also called Creek Road, at 120 Washington, was an apartment building where my life-long best friend lived when I first met him. (I've told the story of our meeting in "The Kid Met Him in the Funny Pages".)

On the left is 120 Washington as it looks today (actually not much different from then) and my not quite yet best friend sitting in the window of his apartment there.

Gee, he was kind of cute back in those days.

I knew someone else that lived in those apartments during those early years, a blond girl. Her name was Mary Jane and I had a crush on her through most of my elementary grades right into junior high school, although I never acted on my feeling for her and asked her out. I was friends with her and she came to my birthday parties.

We were eight years old in this photo and you won't find any other pictures of me getting quite so chummy with a girl that early on in my life. Now it is true I kissed a girl named Michele around this same time period (and got in a bit of trouble because of it) but I never had any true feelings for Michele as I secretly did for Mary Jane.

I suppose I should explain how I came to be a Washington Avenuer.

The first time we moved there I was six months old and it was to be my third home. My first had been in Modena and my second at Whitford. I've never really known why we moved to 424 Washington in town that Christmas season. We moved there with my maternal grandparents, who were the actual renters of the house (they never owned it). My parents had moved in with them at Whitford earlier in the year from Modena, my father's boyhood hometown. (Photo left: my mom holding me before the porch of 424.)

I know why my parents moved from the Modena apartment (bedbug infestation combined with financial need) to Whitford; but why the move shortly after to town I don't know. The "big house", as they called it, in Whitford appears to be large enough to accommodate two families, in fact, was probably larger than 424 Washington Avenue.

The Whitford house was where my mother grew up, so it had been my grandparents long time abode and was near to my grandfather's own family roots.

They didn't own that place either. It was actually part of the George Thomas III estate. The Thomas family was one of the original settlers of the area and one of its most prominent families. I do not know if George Thomas choose to end the renting of this property or if the move was somehow related to the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Perhaps the beginning of the war in which my father would serve for several years prompted changes. (Photo right: my mom as a child at Whitford.)

We all lived in that house throughout the war years. I made two close friends on the block, Iva and Bill. Iva was to remain a friend for always, but Bill moved away about the time I moved to 424 the second time and eventually we lost contact.

Why a second time? Why did we even move away from 424 a first time? Easy to explain, the war ended.

My dad had been in the South Pacific most of those first years at that 424 address. He got his discharge a couple years after the war ended and returned home in 1947. He got his first job as a long distance truck driver that fall, driving milk tankers for a man named Hines. A friend of his had told dad the company was hiring, but not to tell Old Man Hines he knew mechanics or he would never get outside the garage. Dad got the driver job instead at $100 a month and the house in the swamp.

There was this old home, half brick and half stucco, with scaffolding along one side, owned by the trucking company. It sat back from the highway, surrounded on two sides by a marsh, with a cornfield up the hill behind and a cow pasture to the East. Hines let dad live rent free because he was a returning vet, and thus we packed up our meager belongings and moved from 424 Washington for the next two years. (Photo right: me at the house in the swamp, 1948)

That house in the swamp was to have a great impact on my life and personality, but that is a different story. This one is about Washington Avenue.

So how did I get back there for the next five and half years of my boyhood?

Easy, my dad changed jobs for more money. In late 1949 he began driving for Atkinson Trucking; goodbye Hines, goodbye house in the swamp.

My folks moved back in with my grandparents at 424 Washington. At some point a bit later, a house up the street became available for rent and my parents moved there. 417 Washington was a double house next to a Quonset hut of a garage, a business selling farm equipment. (And yes, during evenings or Sundays when this store was closed and empty, I did sneak next door to play on the tractors in the lot.)

That is a picture of 417 Washington taken several years after I lived there as a child.

I think Washington Avenue sticks with me so much in my memories because I lived there in those growing years. All the adventures of my boyhood are centered on that street, both good and bad. My best friend, Ronald Tipton, lived on that street when I met him. Our grade school was across the street from my home. 424 also means more to me than 417, probably because on weekends, when my dad came home from his trucking runs that kept him away from Monday through Friday, my parents sent me down the street to stay with my grandparents so they had alone time. (Photo right: 424 Washington.)

Eventually I will tell more tales of life on Washington Avenue.

Eagle

2011-12-05T21:26:00.001-05:00

On Sunday morning I went to bellevue State Park to take my regular walk. As I got out of my car and started across the parking lot something flew across the sky ahead into a grove of trees to my right.

It looked fairly large, but I only caught it out of the corner of my eye, so I thought it might be a hawk. We have had Peregrine Falcons land in our backyard a couple times this year and you sometimes see hawks standing atop the lamp post alongside I-95.

I turned on my camera as I walked off the lot onto the road starting my walk. As I rounded the first trees I saw a large bird perched on a branch and still thought it was a hawk, but as my route brought me nearer I realized it was much to large for a hawk.

I stopped at the wood edge and thought, "That's got to be an eagle."

I stood there filming and the bird either didn't notice me or wasn't concerned about me if it did. A car went past, which you can hear in the background of the video, and I stepped a little further off the road. At this point the eagle flew up to a high limb on another tree.

I didn't want to bother it, so I went on my walk. I walked, round trip, about three and a half miles. As I retuned along this stretch back to my car I didn't see the eagle anymore. I assumed it had flown off to where ever these eagles go while I was on my little jaunt. I got in my car, but as I left I saw the eagle was still in these trees. It had just moved a bit further back into the trees and was sitting happily on another branch.

I am not sure what kind of eagle it was. I know Bald Eagles lived in this area. This one did not have the white head associated with that breed, but it could have been a young one. They don't develop those distinctive white heads until more mature, around five years old or so. What ever it was it was majestic. When it flew it was like watching a cargo plane take off, large and slow, although it was probably faster than it appeared. I repeated the portion where it flew in slow motion so you can see the motion of the wings and their span.

Last fall the family and I went out to dinner one night and an eagle flew out of the woods directly in front of my car. This was on I-95 not far from home, which is this same region. The bird came so low and sudden I feared I was going to hit it, but it pulled up enough to just clear the car roof. My kids kidded how it would look if I had killed the national symbol.

I wondered if this was that same eagle.

With the Speed of Now Impossible to Play

2011-12-03T06:32:00.001-05:00

I'm feeling my age this week. Angry Assassin Arthritis did a hit job on my right foot. The problem with Mr. Arthritis is he doesn't come by once to stick a knife in. He hangs about and keeps twisting the blade. I haven't had an attack for a while. This one was very vicious, I guess to make up for Arthritis long neglect. It began on Tuesday evening in my arch and it was scream-out-loud painful by bedtime.

At 11:30 I hobbled, with grimace and groan, out to the kitchen to pop some pills, in this case Ibuprofen, not the pill of my choice, but the ones available. The fix of my choice would have been Tylenol Arthritis, but you can't get it. It was the only stuff that really worked for me. The Ibuprofen eased the pain some, long enough for me to get to sleep, but it was back full-bore in the morning and I have been popping pills all week, alternating between the Ibuprofen and Aspirin with one hit of Motrin thrown in by the mercy of a co-worker. (Yeah, I have been working this week at my on-my-feet-all-day job.)(

The two days I was off I managed my walks, too, because you can't give in to the Assassin or next thing you know you give up the walking; you find this excuse or that.

The pain almost went away on Friday and in fact, it left my arch entirely by Friday evening, only to sneak into my big toe and ramp up again. So I took my two Ibuprofens a half hour ago and the pain has lightened and I expect to take my morning amble, but man I am feeling all of my years physically right now.

But last week I was feeling age in a different way. Now I am going to start off sounding like an Old Foggy rambling on about the "Good ol' days of yesteryear," except my yesteryear is more like yesterday.

I've got about 200 CDs stacked up on racks next to my desk. I used to listen to my music all the time as I wrote. For some reason I got out of that habit earlier this year, but last week I decided I wanted to hear my music again. I plopped on my earphones, selected a CD and placed it in my CD player. Silence and the message on the player said, "No Disc".

No disc? This silvery round thing with the hole in the center looked a lot like a disc to me. I understand sometimes a smudge upon the surface can wreak havoc. I pull the disc out and examine it. There does seem to be a something maybe perhaps there. I wipe it across my sweater and plop it back in the machine.

"No disc."

Okay, I'll try a different singer and a different song. I put this new choice in and close the lid. Whirl, whirl, and the number 01 shows in the window and then, "No disc". Hmmm. I pull out this disc that apparently doesn't exist and look it over. Ah, yes, definitely something stuck along one edge. I take it to the kitchen sink and wash it, dry it and return it to the player all pristine and clean, and assumable presentable.

"No disc."

I go to a higher authority, my wife. "Hon," I ask, "have you been having trouble with the CD player?"

She has her own cache of CDs, especially Bon Jovi and The Who, which she does exercising to. She uses the player much more lately than I have.

"Yes," she says.

Tat settles it. She wants her exercise beat and I really do wish to listen to my music. I grab my hat and head out to purchase a new CD Player. Yes, the current one has some years on it now and obviously it has worn itself to a frazzle and cannot perform its duties up to snuff anymore.

First stop, fully expecting it to be my only stop, is Target. I'm looking for cheap, truth be told. I go straight to the electronics department, you known that place one dominated by TV sets, but now a vast warehouse of cell phones. I go up and down aisles, over and over as if some stock clerk might have hurried out to restock, but no CD Players anywhere. There are iPod Docks and MP3 gizmos and for some reason a lot of alarm clocks, but no CD Players.

Now it is down the highway to a Best Buy.

I figure the most logical place to start is the section selling CDs. Wouldn't you put CD players near what they play? I wander about. They have a bunch of karaoke machines (why for heaven's sake!) but I do not see a CD player. Finally I do see a sales clerk, so I ask.

"Sure," she says and leads me off.

We wind our way across the store. "They keep moving things around," she says. "I think they are over this way."

We have moved over to the far flung sections of the store, over to the desert where once computer software ranged. This is the land of the endangered species and sure enough at the end of an aisle are CD Players.

I thank the clerk and wander into the aisle expecting an array of various CD players to pick from. Ha, there are no CD players down the aisle. No, what there is is only on those shelves on the very end of the displays. I have my choice of ... of... one!

One, and there aren't many of that one left either. I buy the one, an Insignia. It's compact. It has a CD player. It has an AM/FM Radio receiver. It has...well, that is what it has. There is no tape player as my old player had.

Let that be a warning, I think. The tape cassette is gone, gone the way of the 8-Track or the record (vinyl) of the wax cylinder. Soon the CD will also be gone and so will the means to play them.

It is speeding up. Their use to be some manufactures slogan (they are probably gone now too) that said, "Tomorrows Technology Today!" I think the new slogan must be, "Today's Technology Yesterday!"

When I was a little boy my parents had these records. They where about ten inches in diameter with a little hole in the center. They were called 78 RPM records. When I got a little older I got my own record player for Christmas. It played these things about six inches in diameter with a large hole in the middle called 45 RPM Records. Next came the 33 1/3s, which were about twelve inches across and back to a small hole in the middle. I built a large collection of these various records over the years. When I got married we bought this nice Fisher Hi-Fi Stereo

That Fisher lasted a long time, but we had lightening strike one night and it blew out that stereo. I bought a new record player and noticed something. It no longer had a 78 RPM speed. Those old records could not be played.

Then we came to a time we could't find nettles. Then we couldn't even find record players. I am not talking some long ago, I'm talking less than 20 years here. Cassettes were ruling. (8-tracks kind of come and went quickly.) Now the tape players have disappeared and the CD players are becoming rare.

I am not against progress and new technology, but I have a lot invested in my music collection. I have about 2,000 33 1/3 Album representing a broad spectrum of American music as well as hundreds of 45s and 78s. I had dozens of tape cassettes and as mentioned, 200 CDs. I don't ask time to stop, I simply ask they keep the old technologies around my lifetime so I can still enjoy the media I have.

Roger in the Hospital (really Ronald)

2011-12-02T13:30:00.001-05:00

When we graduated from high school, my best friend, Ronald decided to join the Armed Forces, but discovered he had a double hernia. Before he could be accepted he had to have this repaired and went into Chester County Hospital for the operation. There were complications, incisions coming open and he caught a contagious infection that placed him in the isolation ward for a period of time. He was a very sick puppy. The contagious ward was in the basement of the hospital and to visit him you spoke through a window too the outside. It was very surreal to be kneeling on the ground talking to my friend through this wire barrier over the windows. He complained to me there were two babies in the contagious ward and they took turns crying. I wrote this piece at that time. (The photo is a more recent of my friend on another hospital visit, not from those dear dead days so many decades ago.) [This story also appears in my All the Monsters in My Mind blog of short fiction as part of the book, Wilmillar and Other Towns.]

ROGER IN THE HOSPITAL

Larry Eugene Meredith

I am behooved to tell the sad tale of my good friend, Roger Walters. I must say it sent a pang of deep regret to see him lying on a hospital bed (of course also a great deal of jubilation that it was he and not me). His face was pale, not at all its normal wallpaper paste white (it was encouraging to see some color in his complexion.) Then, a-sudden, he stared from his bloodshot optics to the ceiling in fright, something that sent terror through me as well, for he was lying on his stomach at the time.

A look of unparalleled fear contoured his face. He stopped in mid-breath, froze in this position. And then the sheet was pulled over his head and face.

He was hiding from the spider on the ceiling. Oh, the sufferings my friend has suffered since he went to the hospital for a routine operation.

He went into the operating room that day back in June with the fear of having a sponge left in his lower regions. He was assured doctors are careful and keep a specific count of the equipment they insert. His confidence was indeed shaken when a dreaded discovery was made after surgery. They took out one more sponge than they had put in.

This was indeed strange for Roger had one other operation in his whole life. He had his tonsils removed when a boy by Doctor Hiram Hickle, better known as Old Doc Butterfingers.

One afternoon the floor nurse walked in while Roger was hanging the doctor (in effigy). She was rather angry about this. Roger was not supposed to be out of bed that soon. She told him to ring her if he wanted to hang any more doctors. The nurses would be delighted to help. In fact, they would even supply the doctor.

Roger’s new doctor was extremely gentle. He claimed to have magic fingers. This made Roger quite happy, but he still didn’t want his back rubbed daily.

Roger was in and out of the hospital three times since the initial Herniatum neresursum gapduplicisum (which is Latin for double hernia operation, I think, but what do I know, I flunked Latin – curse you, Miss Horner), a total of thirty-two days, four rooms and two floors. He was becoming quite annoyed at receiving recall notices in the mail, especially when one came with an infectious infection.

He spent more than a week in the contagious ward, stuck between two babies who worked separate shifts. Such crying...and have you ever seen a grown man cry? It’s terribly embarrassing. For gosh sake’s, Roger, pull yourself together.

The nurses in the hospital are against him for no good reason other than he attempted to push the head nurse out the window. The other patients are mad at him because he didn’t succeed. That was when he was on a higher floor. The contagious ward was in the basement (closer to the morgue for convenience). It’d be kind of silly and fruitless to push someone out a basement window. What are they going to do, fall up? Besides those windows had wire cages around them so no germs could escape.

They discovered he was allergic to penicillin, but this wasn’t what needled him. His main complaint was they kept giving him blood tests.

“ Blood tests?" He said. “They took so much blood one time that I lost ten pounds.” If you saw Roger in those days and he lost ten pounds; then you wouldn’t see Roger.

They let him play the radio, but drew the line when he wanted to practice his Sousaphone.

He almost got drowned right after his third operation. During the procedure there was a call claiming a bomb was hidden in the hospital. When they noticed that Roger was ticking they threw him in a tank of water. Roger probably would have drowned if his surgeon hadn’t asked if anybody had seen his wristwatch.

After his fourth operation, he was told to go home. And that is the end of Roger...in the hospital, that is.

- 30 -

What Happened to Easy?

2011-11-23T07:44:00.001-05:00

A company named Philips has a slogan, "Sense and Simplicity". Well, good for them, I hope they do what they say, but it seems every other business has dropped simple from their vocabulary. I recall once hearing that technology would make life easier. So, why does my most mundane tasks get more complicated?

Like what, you ask?

I'm going to tell you, but first let me ask you a question. How many people does it take to change a light bulb in an automobile?

Three, with at least one having an engineering degree.

Okay, I exaggerate a little; perhaps. That is my car there on the left, a 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt. The driver-side headlight burnt out recently. Okay, no biggie, bulbs don't last forever and the car is over 6 years old and has nearly 90,000 miles, much of it drove in dark, rain and other conditions demanding headlight use, like the infernal and eternal road construction zones (don't get me started on that boondoggle or we'll be here all night - with half our road in darkness).

Anyway, what does it take to change a headlight, right? I had a headlight blow out before, of course, that was many-years ago; er...decades ago actually. The headlight bulb looked like this one on the right.

There was a thin rim of chrome around its outer edge. You loosened a screw on the bottom of this rim to loosen it. Then you just popped that headlight out of a socket and pushed the new one in, retightened the screw and let there be light!

Took five minutes and you were good to go.

Okay, here is your modern headlight bulb on the left. Sure doesn't look like that old one, does it? Doesn't look anything like that thing on the front of my driver-side fender either. No, it goes inside that thing.

Nothing to it, you just have to dissemble one-quarter of your car to do it. You don't need your screwdriver, though. No, you need a socket wrench, some kind of prying tool and probably, as I did, a pair of pliers. You can see technology is making life simpler all ready, can't you?

Here we go, first lift the hood, duh! Get your socket wrench, with the proper size socket (in metric units) and loosen two nuts holding the headlight assembly. Find the plug holding the fascia to the front above the grill and pull it out. Fascia? What the heck is a fascia? Well, it's that thin molding they stick over a lot of your vehicle. So we have identified the fascia, where is this plug. It said plug, right. My fascia had two plugs, a little one up front and a larger one toward the engine. I had to pop both of these to loosen my fascia. (You got a loose fascia, sounds like some kind of medical condition to me.)

It said you grip the plug, well plugs, with your finger tips and pull them out like you'd pull a toothpick out of an olive. Yeah, if you have the grip of Superman and your olives aren't painted concrete. This is where the prying tool came into play. I had to loosen those babies up before they would pop. The little plug gave the most resistance.

Be certain by this point you have unplugged the assembly wires from the electrical harness. You don't want to mess up your electrical system during the next steps.

Now with the fascia loosened, pull it back a bit, which actually you can't really do. You just got to let it flap a bit and let it go at that. Grab ahold of the headlight assembly and gently pull out slightly toward the radiator and it will come off the two clamps holding it underneath. Be careful not to break anything or it will get real costly. That last warning was a great tension reducer, yes sir.

Okay I got it clear and out. It was big and awkward to hold. It has more than one lightbulb in it you know. Oh yes, you may have to go through this routine a few more times in the life of the car. There is your hazard light and turn signal to consider.

I carried this thing into the kitchen to replace the bulb. It probably does get simple at this point - you'd think. You got the assembly and you're new bulb and it goes in a socket. Trouble is, you have to get to the socket, which is buried in there somewhere. First there is a plastic locking collar around the bulb. You press down and turn counter clock wise, but you better have eaten your spinach before hand. There is a lot of grunting on this step, plus a lot of fear you'll break the dang collar or bulb. Oh man, don't break the bulb 'cause it says it could explode. Anyway, this is where I got my trusty pliers. Yeah, carefully trying to turn this sucker. It's been soldered in there by time, but I did succeed and got this out. Now I had to wrestle the old bulb up from its hole. Once this was out, there is a socket to unplug.

Now you take your new bulb, which at first doesn't seem to want to settle down all the way in the socket (and remember whatever you do you don't want to break this gas filled little bulb). Next refasten the socket to the back of the bulb and replace the locking collar. Un huh, the locking collar doesn't want to go back in either. Women push babies out easier than this thing pushes back in place. And you got to turn it clockwise when and if you ever get it down far enough. Once that thing turned under it's holding ridges I felt I had conquered Everest.

I carried the reassembled assembly back outside to my car with some trepidation. I had to push this baby back in making certain the bottom lined up with the clamps I can't see. Well, I did it. It was in my fender and the bolt holes in the fender lined up with the bolt holes in the assembly and I got the bolts back it and then the plugs back in the fascia.

All done, so I get in the car, turn on the engine and the headlight on the driver's side does not come on. My car has those automatic headlights. My passenger side came on, but not my new bulb. I turned the lever from auto to on and now both headlights on both side worked. Odd, maybe the auto required a special bulb that I didn't buy? I don't care. I am not tearing that thing apart again. It won't kill me to manually switch on my lights, as long as I remember to manually switch them off when I park.

However, the next day when I went out, both my headlights were coming on automatically and all was well.

And you see how simple it all was.

Streets

2011-10-17T06:52:00.001-04:00

I sit here this morning about to enter a new street, and not so far away, and yet very distant another long ago friend has come to the dead end of a one way avenue.

His name is Gary Kinzey, and although he died the other day (October 15) and his life became a "was", I like to think his name remains an "is".

It is in my thoughts, it is in my faded memories and it is in various records somewhere. His name and he will always be part of me until I also travel that last avenue.

This is the only photo I have of him as a boy, in the time I knew him as a friend. Film was costly then, to buy and to get developed. For that reason I didn't take as many pictures as I may have wished. It was taken in front of another friend's home, Stuart Meisel, looking toward Lancaster Avenue. The date I have on this is 1952, when Gary would have been 11.

There is a story about the bike. It will seem an odd one to the children of today with their tricked up little X-games stunt bikes, but that bike was too small. Things were larger then; cars were larger, bikes were larger. The bike may not look that small, but for it's day it was. Notice how the seat is pulled high up on the shaft. The diameter of the wheels on his bike were 24 inches; the rest of us had bikes with 26 inch wheels. Two inches may not seem much, but in those days when it came to wheels, size mattered.

And yes, Gary was sensitive about his smaller bike.

We often feel different in life over insignificant and unimportant things.

When I say he died "not so far away" it is because he lived on a street not so far from me and died at home. But I only knew he lived there and only saw him at a high school reunion a couple years ago. My friendship with him was from that now distant time of childhood, when we were sometimes close friends and sometimes not. So now after nearly sixty years much of those days has blurred and faded.

I know I met Gary when we were very young, somehow, somewhere. He lived in apartments a couple blocks east of me and then, I believe, in a small house near where the Farmers' Market stood just outside of town. He seems to have flickered in and out of my boyhood because he moved and I moved and sometimes we were near and sometimes not.

He played the saxophone and I the trumpet.

What we had the biggest in common was trains, electric trains. We both indulged in building elaborate (at least it seems so) layouts. We had different emphasis, however. I was into building realistic landscapes, with papier-mâché mountains full of tunnels, with elevated tracks over felt-green meadows and little towns with rows of stores and bedroom communities. He was much more taken with the electrical mechanics of it all, building a master control of dials and switches where he controlled his world, of light displays and working gizmos here and there.

My room was full of comic books; his had stacks of Popular Electronics.

I thought him an electronics genius. In Junior High he came to class with a fountain pen in his pocket; except, it wasn't a fountain pen at all. It was a radio he had built inside a pen's shell.

His nickname was Sparky.

One of my last memories of Gary was also in Junior High. We were walking side-by-side between classes and for whatever reason, he began to punch me on the upper arm. Every so many steps down the corridor, wham, a punch to my arm. He ignored my pleas to stop and finally I turned and popped him back, at which point Mr. Caskey grabbed me by the shoulder and hauled me to the principal's office. One of the few times I ever got in trouble in school.

Strange the things we recall.

After school, like many other old friends and acquaintances, Gary and I went our separate lives. None the less, we once were friends and 70 is far too young to die.

(Left - Gary in 2002 at Downingtown High School class picnic at Dave Fidler's. Photo taken by Ronald Tipton.)

...To the Dark of the Dungeon

2011-10-02T18:40:00.001-04:00

As I entered the waiting room and looked around I saw the sign on a mantle.

"I guess my wife's out of luck," I said to another man sitting nearby.

"Uh?" he said and I jerked my thumb to the old notice.

My wife is Irish; well, part Irish anyway. She had an Irish maiden name. Her other main parts are German and Native American (one-quarter Creek).

T'is, me Lads, the irony that Mauch Chunk should end up named Jim Thorpe. It is also an example of how this country can and does change usually in the right ways. You see, Jim Thorpe had a part-Irish, part-Sac and Fox father, one Hiram Thorpe. Jim's mother, Charlotte Vieux had a French dad and Potawatomi mom. Hiram and Charlotte named their son Wa-Tho-Huk ("path lighted by great flash of lightning") and raised him as a Sac and Fox. He was also Roman Catholic, which was probably another strike against him in some places in those times.

Jim Thorpe was born in 1888. Eleven years earlier there was an incident in Mauch Chuck that shows he probably wouldn't have been welcome there in 1877, even possibly the decade-plus later when he was born in Oklahoma. He probably would have been shunned or worse for being (1.) Irish, (2.) an "Injun" and (3.) a papist.

To illustrate some of the mind-set of those times I will take us back to those mansions on top of the hill, specifically the home of Asa Packer. I mentioned therein that the Packers, rich as they were, but people of hard-working humble beginnings, existed in wealth a long while without the prerequisite servants, until Sarah Packer reached a point when doing it all herself was difficult. They hired a Butler and a Maid, who each had separate quarters in the house. The Packers, faithful to their Protestant morals wanted to be sure there was no hanky-panky between this single man and single woman. Thus they hired an Irish Catholic Butler and a German Lutheran Maid, knowing one would never have anything to do with the other. (This is another story with ties to The Little Woman, with her Irish father and German mother, and being raised a Lutheran.)

If that is an amusing story, there are many darker tales to tell of the prejudices of those times, especially against the Irish.

The Irish lot on their native sod was not a particularly happy one in the 19th Century. They were viewed as less than vermin by England, to which they were subject much against their will. Many lived in abject poverty; in fact, it was rare if an Irish family was able to serve one piece of meat a year in their meals. Beginning in the 1840s many Irish began to immigrate to the United States and this flow continued well into the 1880s. The English took a "good riddance to rubbish" attitude and encouraged this.

The United States also encouraged this influx of Irish, at least the industrialist of the day did. They saw these people as an underclass, a supply of cheap labor and a desperate people they could exploit. They were not welcome in every place of business, as the sign at the beginning of this post shows, but they were welcomed into the black holes of Pennsylvania and West Virginia where coal could be harvested.

Mauch Chunk was a coal town.

Working as a coal miner was far from paradise, not only might you be digging down toward Hell, your life was the Devil's own as well, barely a notch about slavery. You worked a long day on a dangerous job for very little pay. Worse yet, you owed everything to the company. You lived in homes provided by the company, so leaving your job was forfeiting the roof over your head. You had to buy your own work tools and supplies from the company, which you could get at the company store, where you also bought the other necessities of your life. You got credit on your purchases, so to speak, but then your bill was deducted from your wages on payday. It wasn't unusual for a miner to find he owed more than his pay and so go home with nothing in this pocket.

During the time of this miserable situation grew a secret organization known as The Molly Maguires. How secret were they? So much so historians really know very little about them. Were they the terrorist one owners painted them to be in their day, killing brutally and often? Were they a discredited and maligned group of fighters for labor reformation? Truth is they were probably somewhere in between, but they had enough influence that owners of the coal industry saw them as a threat to the status quo and of course blamed every dirty deed that came down the pike on them.

One such industrialist was Franklin B. Gowen (pictured left). Like Asa Packer, Gowen was a wealthy, powerful man in Pennsylvania. He was the president of the Philadelphia Coal and Iron Company and the director of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad. He was also a former Attorney General.

To say he was anti-union is an understatement and he did everything in his power to destroy any progress by labor that might effect his business. He made this statement about the words of the Declaration of Independence, "All men are created equal":

“Men were not created equal, the distinction between mind and matter, between the men who labored withtheir heads and those who labored with their hands. There [are] two great classes of people in this world, men of genius, or intellectual men, and those who [are] not so, themen of labor."

Anyway, to make a long and fascinating story short, Gowen came to blame the Molly Maguires for all things Union and hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to bring the group down. Eventually several men were arrested and charged with murder on the word of one detective, James McParlan, who went undercover and acted as an informant. He began accusing Molly Maguires after a murder where he had a hand in and may have been responsible for.

Four men were brought to trial at the Old Jail of Carbon County in the town of Mauch Chunk upon the lone testimony of McParlan. This was not a criminal trial, but a private one in which the county simply supplies the facilities. The Judges were men connected to Gowen and there is the possibilities he rigged the jury. In 1877 four men, accused of being Molly Maguires and murderers were hung inside the Old Jail on gallows brought in for the occasion. They were John Donahue, Edward Kelly, Michael Doyle and Alexander Campbell.

Campbell left an impression behind. Declaring his innocence, he rubbed his hand on the floor and pressed his handprint into the wall of his cell. This was 137 years ago, but the handprint is still there for all to see (I saw it myself). Attempts were made to remove the print, but all failed. Here is the history of the handprint as described at Paranormal@101:

Over the years, county sheriffs have tried to remove thehandprint to no avail.

In 1930, Sheriff Biegler had the wall torn down andreplaced. The next day, the handprint reappeared.

Around thirty years later, Sheriff Charles Neast coveredthe handprint with latex paint, but it reappeared. His son, Tom, in the 1960s,loved to tell friends about the ghostly phenomenon. Word spread and peoplevisited the Carbon County Jail to see the print.

Attempts to wash the image away failed.

In recent years, James Starrs, George WashingtonUniversity forensic scientist, and Jeff Kercheval, Hagerstown MD policechemist, analyzed the handprint using high tech equipment. They found nological scientific explanation for the handprint’s existence. They finallymeasured the exact location of the image in the event it there were attempts toremove it and it reappeared, they would know if the phenomenon returned to thesame location or a different one.

The jail’s last sheriff, Bill Juracka, said he wouldn’ttry to remove the handprint.

Now a days you can tour the Old Jail in Jim Thorpe. It is fascinating and a bit spooky. You enter and get your tickets and then go to the waiting room to await your guide. This area was actually the home of the Warden and his family, so in a sense the Warden was in jail with his prisoners. In fact, when you go upstairs you are brought through the Warden's family bathroom and into a side wing of the jail where women offenders were housed.

From there you wend your way back down into the main cell block where the men were. Here you see the infamous gallows that hung the Molly Maguires and Cell #17, where Campbell's handprint can be viewed upon the wall. (Sorry, they would not allow photographs of the handprint. Now, to tell the truth, it would have been very easy to sneak a picture, especially with my Flip, but I chose not to do that. The photograph seen above is from Weird Pennsylvania.)

To say the interior of the jail is bleak is an understatement. It would not be a place I would ever wish to find myself. That in itself should encourage one to behave. More depressing were the dungeons in the basement. Visiting these isolation cells certainly gave more meaning to the old coal miner's song:

It's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where the danger is double and pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls the sun never shines
It's a dark as a dungeon way down in the mine.

I don't want to tell some of the stories I heard there because if possible I think you should go and enjoy the tour. One of the amazing things to me is this jail was in service until 1995. I will leave you with a few more photos of the place, including our charming young guide holding up the narrow window through which a prisoner once escapes.

Although this prisoner was only sentenced to about a third of a year, he determined to break out. His method was probably worse than his punishment. First he starved himself until he felt he had lost enough weight to squeeze through the window frame the guide is holding up. meanwhile he stole the soap from the shower room until he had a supply hidden away. On the day of his escapade, he striped naked and lathered up his whole body. With help from his cell mates he pushed this window frame out on its pivot. He tossed his clothes down in a pillow case and flung tied together sheets out to climb down upon. Believe it or not, he got through that window and probably would have been far away, except he attempted his escape at 12 noon. Some women eating lunch on their porch were surprised seeing a foamed up naked man shimmying down the jail wall and...well, he was soon caught.

A word about Franklin Gowen, the head of the Philadelphia and Reading railroad. Said Mr. Gowen was found dead in a Washington DC hotel room on December 19, 1889, a small caliber pistol by him and powder burns on his face. His hotel room was locked and his death at age 53 was ruled a suicide. Stories and speculation arose that he had been murdered, and it was claimed this was done by a Molly Maguire who actually looked like Gowen. It was said this assassin had stalked him for years, had even purchased the pistol using Gowen's name and had hid in the hotel room, did the deed and escaped out the window.

People questioned his taking his own life because he was still relatively young, had wealth, reputation and a family. They saw no reason to think he would do such a thing, so it had to be murder and who better to blame than the Milly Maguires. However, I lean toward it being suicide. Gowen was no longer the head of the railroad. In fact, he was seeing a number of bonds he was involved with declining in value at this time and it might have been more a financial concern that led to his self-elimination.

All photos inside and out of the Old Jail by the author except:

The portrait of Franklin Gowen
The Jim Thorpe Wheaties Box
The Campbell Handprint in Cell 17 is from Weird Pennsylvania.

From the Top of the Hill...

2011-09-30T22:05:00.001-04:00

There are mansions top the hill. This one sits the further up, perhaps not so deservingly so. It was the home of Harry Packer; Judge Harry Eldred Packer more exactly. Harry Packer was the youngest son, the unexpected son, the baby, the only child born when the family was secure in wealth so he was raised without knowing any deprivation or the modest means his older siblings had known.

The obituaries of his day speak highly of him at his death, a man who accomplished so much as a young man, Associate Judge of Carbon County and President of the Lehigh Railroad, as well as Board Member of Lehigh University. All positions he had stepped into after the death of his father as he had stepped into that mansion on the hill his father had built for him. They talk of his long and painful illness, his death from the internal hemorrhage brought about by its complications.

A month before his death, The New York Times reported on his illness, how he was confined to that mansion on the hill and attended by, of all names, Dr. Pepper. Dr. William Pepper, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania assured everyone of the ultimate recovery of the young judge. But at 2:00 AM on the morning of February 2, 1884 Judge Harry Packer packed it in. It was mentioned in the Times that the judge suffered from an affection of the liver. What Harry Parker suffered from were the indulgences and indiscretions he chose to adapt as the spoiled baby of the wealthiest family of Pennsylvania. What he died of, at the age of 34, was cirrhosis of the liver. Harry Packer would have been better off if he had drank Dr.Pepper rather than being examined by him.

The Harry Packer mansion stands today as a bed and breakfast where they hold murder-mystery audience participation plays.

Just a bit down the road from it is the mansion of his father, Asa Packer (pictured left), a rags-to-riches industrialist, who started out building canal boats and ended up a millionaire. Along the way he developed boatyards, construction companies and mining industries, as well as the Lehigh Valley Railroad and Lehigh University.

The Asa Packer Mansion sits high atop his beloved town of Mauch Chunk, now known as Jim Thorpe, PA. He could sit out on the front porch and gaze over much of what he had created, the railroad, the homes of his workers, the town and also the church he faithfully attended, St. Marks Episcopal.

Asa had not come to Mauch Chunk as an Episcopalian. He was a Methodist when he came. He took his family to a church in town and they sat down in a pew to await the service. He was embarrassed when he and his family were told to move because he had sat in a rented pew. He swore he would never go back to such a place of hypocrisy, and he didn't.

The Little Woman and I climbed the multitude of steps and stairs to take the tour of the Asa Packer Mansion. Believe me, their are a lot of steps from the streets of town to the front porch of the mansion. The town is in The Poconos and it snakes through the mountains like a low-lying river. You do a lot of steep walking, as I suppose one should expect when in a burg once known as "The Switzerland of America".

We paused for rest now and agin. I have grown use to scaling mounts from my morning walks through the Piedmonts, but inclines are difficult for the Little Woman, especially since she throw her one knee out of whack trying to keep up with our military trained daughter on a country hike a few months back.

This is the view as you approach the midpoint up the yard of the mansion. The tall pointy building in the center is St. Marks. Some of the brick buildings directly below are part of the Carbon County Courthouse.

The beginning point of the enjoyable tour back into the 19th Century life of the prominent begins on the porch, relaxing in a chair awaiting the guide.

You are led around to the left side and enter the building through Asa's office.

The mansion is not a restoration, but a preservation. What you see is how it was, at least at the time it was willed to Mauch Chunk in 1912 by his daughter Mary Hannah.

The Packers, Asa and his wife, a farmer's daughter named Sarah Minerva Blakslee, had seven children, most of whom died young. Daughters Catherine, Malvina and Gerdrude all died before the age of two. We already saw that Harry Packer, the last born died at age 34. The oldest son, Robert died at 40 or 41. Lucy, the first born was the only child to produce any grandchildren before she also died at age 40 or 41. Mary, who was the third child lived to be 73, the only offspring to live into the 20th Century.

All her siblings having died by 1884 left Mary as the heir to the Mansion and property of Asa. But Mary had a slight problem because of the thinking of the times, which simply put, did not allow a single woman to own property. Miss Packer was not about to let such a silly detail take this mansion away from her. She had a simple solution, she got married to a long time friend, a conductor on her father's railroad named Cummings. This marriage was preceded by one of our nations earliest prenuptial agreements. After a couple years, Cummings went his way with a tidy sum of cash in his pocket and Mary Hannah Packer Cummings sat in her home atop the hill.

Since she produced no children from this arrangement, upon her death her will deeded the Mansion and all its furnishings to the Borough as a memorial to her father's accomplishments. The town accepted the Mansion, but didn't know what to do with it (we all know how ahead-thinking politicians are) and so it sat there gathering dust for forty-two years. In 1954, just before the third wife of Jim Thorpe made her appearance that changed the name of the town, the Bear Mountain Lions Club asked to sponsor the Mansion as a community project and they opened its doors to the public on Memorial Day, 1956. [Gee, the Bear Mountain Lions, all they need is the wolf and they would be Cub Scout ranks. Of course, by 1956 when the Mansion opened as a museum, they were known as the Jim Thorpe Lions Club.]

Although it is a mansion, the rooms had a more homey feel to them than other museums of the rich we've been through. There certainly were many things in the furnishings or the imported wall papers, the chandeliers or the other accouterments that speak of wealth, yes, things people of that era put in their homes as status symbols. Still, for a time the Packers did not employee the staff of servants one would expect those of their financial level to retain. For a long time Sarah Minerva Blakslee Packer did all the cooking herself. She was a farmer's daughter and these type of things were in her blood. When first married the Packers attempted to eek out a living from the soil, but after four years they found themselves as poor as ever and he set out to find employment on coal barges. They were in their fifties when they built the mansion at a cost of $14,000. (Yes, 14 and only three zeros.)

I have not found any unkind word or scandal attached to Asa Packer or his wife. Perhaps his humble beginning reflected throughout his life even after he gained his fortune. At his death his estate was valued at $54,500,000, and remember he died in 1879. Certainly in today's money he would be a billionaire.

Although Asa Packer was a decent man and philanthropist (and Lehigh University charged no tuition the first 26 years of its existence), there were other rich and powerful men in the Carbon County coal towns not so generous to others and those who worked for many of these wealthy barons lived a life far below the top of the hill where the Packer's dwelt.

That is another part of the town of Jim Thorpe we will soon visit.

All photos by the author except:

The two mansion rooms (you are not allowed to photograph inside the house).
The oval photo of Mary Hannah Packer Cummings (from the Asa Packer Mansion Association).
The painting of Asa Packer by DeWitt Clinton Boutelle, 1873.

Oh, Tell I Here of the Hotel There

2011-09-29T14:27:00.000-04:00

No, that isn't a hotel shaped as a Wedding Cake. That is our hands fifty years ago in a mid-September. A lot of fuss is often made of the Golden Anniversary, proper parties and such. But times are rough and no one in my family is in shape to throw a big bash. The best we could come up with was a little trip of a couple days.

We may not even went off on such a thing if reservations and plans hadn't been in place before I lost my job at the end of August. But sometimes the best way to deal with adversity is to get away from it for awhile.

So to what grand and exotic spot did we go to celebrate such an auspicious occasion as our fiftieth?

Mauch Chunk, of course.

Ohhhh-kay, why?

Back in 2008 the Little Woman and I started off on an ill-conceived vacation into Northern Pennsylvania. After eating lunch in the Bear Swamp Diner at Macungie (and perhaps that name was a hint of what was ahead) we traveled northwest until we hit wilderness. After a while of seeing naught, but scrub grass and trees we got the heebie-jeebies about where we might stay the night or even eat. I confessed I may not have planned this out very well as we decided to turn around and flee for more civilization. We ended up having a wonderful few days staying in Gettysburg. (You can get the gory details of that truncated jaunt here -- Getting to Gettysburg: Jim Thorpe and Traveling is Broadening.)

Well, between Macungie and dread, we passed through the little burg of Mauch Chunk. (The Little Woman said it sounded like some kind of animal eating. Not far off, the name means Bear Mountain in the language of the Lenapes.) The town was very crowded that day and there seemed no where at all to park, so we only saw it from our moving car, but the Little Woman thought it charming and intriguing and ever since that day wanted to go back and visit the place.

By the way, although the rail station reads Mauch Chunk as do many signs in the place, it is better known as Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Jim Thorpe (pictured right) is considered by some the greatest American athlete ever, even the greatest world athlete. He was born in Oklahoma and, like the Little Woman, was part Irish and part Native American. In 1904 he left the Okay state to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial Boarding School where he first came to fame playing football for the Carlisle Indians. He went on to excel in football, baseball, basketball and win Olympic Gold metals in track.

So, he never lived in Mauch Chuck, perhaps never even visited, and Mauch Chunk isn't exactly a suburb of Carlisle, which is his connection to Pennsylvania. But like all humans, Jim Thorpe, super-athlete that he was, died and when his home state of Oklahoma wouldn't erect a memorial to him, his wife (his third) got angry. Most powerful weapon of mass destruction in the world is an angry woman. She made a deal with Mauch Chunk, an old coal town dying, and they erected a monument and renamed the town Jim Thorpe. He was interred there (His son began a lawsuit in 2010 to have his body exhumed and reinterred on Native American ground in Oklahoma.). His Wife got the memorial she felt he deserved and Mauch Chunk got new life as a booming tourist town. (There is a certain irony in Jim Thorpe and Mauch Chunk coming together this way, but I'll get to that in another post.)

This post is about hotels.

The Little Woman and I have been fortunate enough to do a little traveling. We have over time stayed in some interesting and historic hotels. Not the big grand ones, such as the Waldorf-Astoria, although we did spend a couple night in it many moons ago, but smaller, perhaps lesser known hostels.

(On the left is the Little Woman relaxing in our room at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York, 1962.)

Here are some of the very old and interesting places we have enjoyed staying at over the years:

The Inn on Canal Square in Lewes, Delaware. We have been privileged to stay here several times in recent years. The photo here was from earlier this year. It rained all the first day and then turned to snow overnight, which turned to a blizzard burying the Mid-Atlantic. We always stayed here out-of-season because of the cost in season.

The Lighthouse on Casco Bay at Sebasco, Maine. Like The Inn on Canal Square, we had a marvelous view from our room of water. Here we were overlooking an expansive bay and inlet rather than a canal. It was an unique place to stay.

Part of our room in the historic Hawthorne House, Salem, Massachusetts. The infamous "House of Seven Gables" was a short walk away and across the street was the "Salem Witch Museum". Yes, in was named for Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Independent Park Hotel in the Old City district of Philadelphia, just around the corner from Two Street; surrounded by the history of our country's founding and a few steps away from a world of dining experiences, from an Havana Street at Cuba Libre, the Indian cuisine of Cafe Spice, to eating off a coffin in the Eulogy Belgian Tavern.

These are all fine establishments, places I would recommend to anyone, at least if they have remained as they were when we visited. But here I want to sing the praises of The Inn at Jim Thorpe. I would put it at the top of an enjoyable carefree stay for comfort, cleanliness and accommodations.

Jim Thorpe seems to have a way of taking you to other places, but more on that in later posts. There is a certain reminiscence of New Orleans to the Inn. This had caught the Little Woman's eye when we passed by several years ago.

The flowers trimming the railings are real, I hope anyway, since a man is watering them.

Parking is ever a premium in this town and for a moment I feared I would find no room at the inn for my car (actually the Little Woman's car). I drove about the rather cramped lot twice. It was quite filled-up it seemed and had narrow stretches I had to maneuver to escape on the first run through.

I had to exit thought a alleyway, which grew more cramped the further you went. This deposited us back on the main street we had originally entered from, much to my anxiety. There were no sign of parking spots along this avenue.

"What do we do now?" I said.

"Go back around where we went before," said the Little Woman.

I gave her a questioning look, but did so.

"There," she said as we entered the lot again, "turn left."

Up ahead upon a wall that ended this drive was a sign saying, "Inn Parking" with arrows pointing both left and right. We had turned right before and ended up exiting.

"I thought I saw more parking to the left," she said.

But the left was not a lane to extra parking, simply an indication that spaces lined this side of the drive. I pulled forward and amazingly, glommed what was apparently the last possible spot of the moment.

Yes, that is our little red Fit tucked away between two walls and a large SUV, almost a feeling of being in a garage.

If the parking lot seemed a bit -- oh, I don't know - spooky, intimidating, cramped, this was not the nature of the Inn once inside.

The hallways were like compressed galleries in an art museum, festooned with paintings right and left to escort us to our room on the third floor.

I look at this picture and realize it is some what surreal; it must be the Dali wing. The way the left wall appears to wave and waffle.

I think it sets the mood for this very interesting town.

Someplace that changed from street to street, a place still somewhat frozen in a bygone era, a place of fascinating history and a place with surprises around each corner.

We were in room 312, what was called a mini-suite.

The Little Woman was thrilled when we threw back the door and entered. Ahead we could see a wide-screen television. No, it was not the TV that made my wife thrill; I mean, come on. It was the mantle of what the TV sat upon, a working fireplace.

I am not exactly certain why she has this love of fireplaces, but she does. We had stayed in a hotel in Monmouth, N.J. a couple years ago, near the university. We were there for a concert and I didn't want to make the long trip home so late at night, something ironic as it turned out. It was one of the Marriott Residence Inns and it had a fireplace. Oh, the little woman looked forward to coming back from the concert and nestling down together before a blazing fire.

It wasn't to be. Leaving the University we got hopelessly lost and didn't find our way back to that Inn until the wee hours of the morning, weary and shaken. The Little Woman didn't get her fire and I traveled more miles late at night than I would have going home.

I sort of hated telling her that you couldn't light the fireplace here until October. I had read that in a room description on the website. However, no one at the checkin mentioned not using the fireplace nor was anything posted or in the Welcome to the Inn book in the room. I was tempted to flick the ignition switch and see if anyone squawked. There was wood in the thing. But I didn't.

There were plenty of amenities in the room beside the TV and fireplace. There was A/C and heat, of course. There was a CD player and clock radio, a DVD player hooked to the TV, Coffee Maker and assorted coffees and teas, a microwave and a refrigerator stocked with free bottled water.

There was also a ceiling fan and a skylight, which made other lamps unneeded most of the day. We were blessed with two beautiful, sunny days, a nice respite from all the rain of the last month.

There was another amenity, which we both made good use of and did it ever feel good on this old body, a whirlpool bathtub.

Sorry, it was not surrounded by mirrors so no accidental catching of me splashing about in the altogether.

On the floor below was a lounge for those who wanted to use such a place. Besides some magazines there was a shelving unit holding several board games.

As nice as these facilities might be, we preferred to be out and about the town or snug in our room.

The staff here was very accommodating. In a reversal of the maid accidentally walking in on the guest, we walked in on the maid or maids actually. The two young ladies were very friendly as we sat about watching them work. When the one noticed the coffee we preferred, she left us extra of it.

On Sunday evening after we returned from dinner, the Little Woman had a hankering for a candy bar. Finding such a thing seemed a unlikely mission, but I set out into the dark and empty streets to try. I saw a couple places that probably did have candy, but they were closed. I returned to the hotel defeated, but in my best conspiratorial voice, asked the Desk Clerk if they had any candy bars hidden about.

"No," she said, "but Dugans sells candy bars and he is still open. It is just a block up the street."

She was correct and I came back with a half dozen assorted candy bars. The Little Woman was happy, which is what you want.

The Inn was once known as the American Hotel. In the 1800s it was one of seven grand hotels that graced the town, but today is the only one still remaining and doing business. Those were the days when Mauch Chunk was a tourist destination second only to Niagara Falls and people flocked in to dance at The Flagstaff, its "Ballroom in the Sky". By the time of Jim Thorpe, Mauch Chuck may have long shed its title of "wealthiest town - per capita - in America", home at one time at the same time to 13 millionaires, when a million dollars was real money. (I'll let you in on a secret: a million dollars is still real money to me, so anyone who feels it is chump change can toss it to this chump.)

Anyway, this is the hotel of which I tell and I would tell you to stay there is you ever have the desire to lay over in Mauch Chuck. Maybe go during the October Fall Foliage Festival and ride an old train up through the Lehigh Valley River Gorge or take in Jay Smar, singing coal country classics in Josiah White Park.

And while there enjoying the peace and quite or the colors of changing leaves or the wonderful Inn at Jim Thorpe, learn some history.

See the upsides and downsides of our history. Learn of Asa Packer. Learn of the Molly Maguires. Visit, by all means, the mansions on the hill and then do not overlook or miss the dungeons of the Old Jail.

Then you will know why Mauch Chunk indeed.

All photos by the author, except the portrait of Jim Thorpe.

Why I should Stop Being Lazy and Carry My camera

2011-09-16T14:29:00.001-04:00

I guess I am lazy, but I hate to carry anything when I walk. Thank goodness I wasn't born a woman, I could never tolerate a pocketbook. But I have come to the conclusion I need to get over this laziness and carry my camera. You see, I keep my camera in a pouch strapped to my belt. Very convenient, but very difficult to get to quickly. As a result I am missing some interesting pictures, such as the fox I met face to face on the trail a bit ago. The fox froze in a perfect pose, but by the time I got my camera out it bolded into a nearby field and I missed it.

I've missed a few more good shots the last couple of days.

Today, for instance, I thought a stroll up Rocky Run would be enjoyable. I haven't walked that path recently, especially with the rain and floods we've had. I went up the path, but at the meadow the trail disappeared into a marsh of mud and water. I didn't feel like sinking over my shoe tops thus I backtracked a little ways and went up what I call High Ridge. It is up atop a mount and runs parallel to the main trail. I walked back and followed up where it rises even higher up the Piedmont and through the woods and emerges on a campsite high on the hill. Then I turned around and came back.

As I was walking I heard a twig snap to my left. I glance over and thought I saw a white shirt and movement behind a bush. That made me edgy. Why would anyone be back there? It is the deep scruff and there is no trail, only rough ground and thicket.

I walked on and another twig snapped. I stopped and stood looking over in the direction of the sound. A few moments passed before I realized I was being watched. There between two trees stood a large deer staring at me. I don't know if it was a buck, it didn't have antlers, but it was very large and quite handsome. I reached to my pouch, but as soon as I did it bolted back into the brush. I saw another set of legs follow, so I have no idea how many deer may have been there.

But once again I missed the shot because my camera was zipped away at my side.

I continued down off the mount to Rocky Run heading out this time. As I reached that trail two dogs came bounding up it toward me. The lead dog was a Yellow Lab, looking much like my dog, Tucker (who died earlier). The other was also a large dog, but all black.

As they ran toward me, I froze. They had been at a distance when first I spotted them and there was no sign of a person about. The dogs stopped directly in front of me and I began to stick one hand out for them to sniff. Suddenly the yellow lab begins barking at me. The black dog quickly follows suit. Both are blocking the path and barking and making little lunges in my direction. I am saying something, probably, "It's okay, fellows."

I am glancing about for something to protect me, like a large sharp stick, when I hear a woman's voice far down the trail call a name and yell, "Come here!" The dogs pay it no mind. Finally two women appear and after several calls and admonishments to the pooches, the hounds turn tail and run to them. I see them snap leashes on the beasts.

The women are very apologetic and assure me this was very unusual behavior. We have a little chat of pleasantries and they go up the trail and I go down. After while I wonder if I should have told them of the deer. I wouldn't want the dogs to go chasing, but it is too late now. I go on.

I am coming up the main trail and happen to glance left at the creek. The Brandywine is several yards beyond this trail. There is a narrow barrier of trees along the left side, then the ground dips down to a large apron of grass. Across the way I see the Great Blue Heron sitting up on a downed tree branch.

I ignore the brush and press through the tree line, cross a patch of mud (this whole area had been under water a week ago) and pull my camera free as I step over the grass to the shoreline of the creek. Amazingly the great bird doesn't fly away as it has every time in the past I have tried to film it.

I stand on the bank as still as I can for nearly a half hour filming the Heron. I am staying so long now hoping it will raise its wings and fly so I can capture that graceful departure. But it doesn't leave. It stands on the branch and looks about. It preens itself, looks across at me, but it doesn't fly. I finally move on. I have the bird recorded, but it is still at a distance. You can see it in the photo at the top of this post if you look closely. You can almost see it better in its reflection in the water than its actual body against the background.

But this is what I mean, for the day before I had been walking on the Northern Greenway from Rockwood to Bellevue and back. Coming back I turned a corner and there was a Great Blue Heron standing directly in the middle of the path not more than 15 feet away. Magnificent, what an opportunity, but as usual, when I began to unzip my camera pouch it took flight. For such a large bird it disappeared very quickly.

Later, as I was driving through the woods after my walk, heading home, a pelican flew directly in front of me. This was rather unusual for around here. Perhaps the pelican had been driven northward by the hurricane, but it was definitely a pelican. I was driving then, so there was no chance of retrieving my camera from its garage on my belt.

As disappointing as it was to miss these pictures of wild beastee and bird these were't the most disappointing of all. That missed shot had come earlier on my Rockwood-Bellevue walk.

When I parked at Rockwood and exited my car, I also pulled out my camera. There were three large trees that had been uprooted near the gazebo. I filmed these and walked up the hill and around past the mansion. Here I took some more film of those trees from above. Now I walked on, taking some shots of downed trees and branches in the mansion yard. I decided I would film the creek that ran alongside the woods I was entering. I had been here the day before and that creek was roaring, splashing high over rocks and creating the white foam of rapids.

I came down today and no roaring, no big splashes, no foam. The creek was wider than normal, but pretty calm. I decided not to film and to put my camera safely away in its little black pouch. I stood on a curve of the path struggling to get my camera back in its bed. The pouch isn't large and I carry my id in it (I don't take my wallet or money on my hikes) and also my car keys. It took some effort, but I got the camera in and zipped the pouch closed.

Now as you pass through these woods to the rear of Rockwood you see a community of homes across this creek. Up ahead of me was a footbridge over the water that joined a path which meandered through that community and if you followed it, you could walk all the way into Alapocas Run State Park.

I noticed a woman standing just on the other side of the bridge. As I came nearer on my path, she stepped out to the middle of the bridge and leaned against the railing to the far side from me. She was looking down toward the creek. I then noticed a man on my side, presumedly her husband. He was on the grass and walking down the embankment toward the stream bed.

They were saying something to each other, but I couldn't hear.

He disappeared behind the bridge and down the slight hill and suddenly she pulled her shorts down.

I do not know why, but yes, she pulled her shorts down and she was wearing nothing beneath.

I do not think she was mooning me because I am fairly certain neither of them were aware I was there. They had both been intently looking down at the stream. Perhaps it was an accident, a wardrobe malfunction. I have sometimes had my pants slip down, in fact, a regular happening this year after I lost several pounds when I started walking regularly again, although I always caught my trouser or shorts before they fell that far.

Maybe she was flashing her husband.

I do not know the reason and she pulled them up a moment later. I only know if I had kept my camera in my hand I would have recorded that posterior for posterity.

I must get over my laziness.

Upticks and Updates: More Why the Rich Get Richer and You Don't

2011-09-16T07:47:00.000-04:00

That is pretty much the stock market these days. They seem to jump this way or that on whispers of the least little thing. Yesterday the Dow jumped up 186.45 points for what reason? What have we heard this week that says buy? Retail sales last month were flat, nothing was selling, especially clothes and back to school didn't sent people out spending this year. The number of people beneath the poverty line rose, the medium household income fell. Europe is in financial turmoil. We had a rise of violence in the Middle East. First time unemployment claims were up...again; and the unemployment rate didn't fall. There were no new jobs created last month and a number of employers announced big lay offs to come. The cost of living rose and ever people are moving in together in homes, which tends to decrease spending for goods.

It was noted Wednesday that mortgage applications rose last week because the interest rate had fallen to a new low. Well, hallelujah, happy days are here again. Of course, a good number are people refinancing while they got the chance to maybe lower their payments. Meanwhile, a way too high percentage of home sales are on foreclosed property and foreclosures remain a problem, bloating the inventory.

Stock Markets went well up today on the belief now that Greece won't default. That is the state of it now. We don't have stock growth on positives, just that the worse negatives don't occur.

But no matter the state of the state or whether Greece is well greased or not, it doesn't mean you can't make money in the market if you are a Wall Street type and have wealth. If you have lots and lots of money you can play the Long and Short Selling game and you can even make money by betting stocks are going to fall. If you have enough dough, you can even manipulate the rise and fall by buying large amounts of a stock.

The rich guy buys enough of one stock hoping others jump on the bandwagon seeing his buy and they start buying and the stock goes up. Then when the rich man wishes, he dumps the stock at a high price and sends it plummeting. Once it has bottomed out, he may buy it back at the low cost again. This is having your cake and eating it too. The guy makes money on the profit from his initial purchase and then buys it back low, thus keeping his profit and having the stock as well.

Now to update y'all on my previous post, "Tangles of the Ticker Tape: Why the Rich Get Richer and You Don't". In that piece I spoke of a certain CEO who bought 342,876 shares of his own company at $.92 a share. That was the report I read that day. It seems he actually bought a bit more than that over a couple more days. He bought another 342,876 shares on the 9th at $1.19 a share and then 481,714 shares on the 13th at $1.36. Notice how each time he has bought, the price has been higher. He spent $1,378,599.40 overall and do you know where that stock stands now? It is currently at $1.59, meaning if he sold it this instant it would sell for $1,856,270.94, a tidy profit in a week of $477,671.54 less broker fees.

Now the price has went up because his purchases gave confidence to other investors to also buy that stock. They believe if he has this much faith in his company turning around, he must know something. So, his money enables him to manipulate the price upward.

Could you or I do that? Well, if you be rich, probably. I am not rich. I might have been able to buy, oh say, 100 shares of that stock at $.92, a cost of $92 (plus broker fees of course). I don't think my ninety-two dollars or my reputation is going to encourage any followers to jump on any stock because I do. Then if I sold my 100 shares at the current price I would make a profit of $67 (less those broker fees cause brokers gotta eat too). That is a nice gain on my investment of 73%, but a long way from making me rich.

Besides, by the time we little fish jump in the pool, the sharks have driven the price to the heights, then they drain the pool and leave us high and dry. Of course, a bit earlier in the day I could have made $79, but by the end of the day that stock dropped $.12 since the opening

Will the stock regain today? Will it continue up, stay even, begin to drop back where it started? A lot will depend on how well the CEO's new business plan succeeds. If the efforts to turn the stores around faultier, then so will the stock price, and then will the CEO dump the stock for a profit or go down with his ship?

We shall see.

Waters Rose, Factories Close, So It Goes

2011-09-13T15:16:00.002-04:00

There is a great similarity between this year and June of 1972 in the upper central portions of Pennsylvania. Land covered by flood water. In 1972, Wilkes Barre, Pa. found itself devastated by a little lady called Agnes. The storm and those floods were to have a direct effect on the course of my life.

That particular year found yours truly gainfully and happily employed by Olson Brothers, Inc. aka Olson Farms, Inc. We broke eggs.

Yes, there is an industry known as Egg Breakers.

The name is pretty much self-exclamatory. We would buy eggs, we would break eggs and we'd sell whatever we could get out of those eggs.

My position there was Office Manager/Cost Accountant. At the end of that year I was Assistant General Manager, but that was a brief tenure. The whole experience was somewhat weird, I suppose. In that year I learned a lot about corruption, bribery, stupidity, bullying and never putting all your eggs in one basket.

CORRUPTION

("Broken Eggs", Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 1756)

They say getting there is half the fun. My half of the fun got lost somewhere along the line, replaced by a lot of anxiety. I had been working for a bank, but my managers lied to me. I don't take being lied to lightly and I resigned. But before I dove off the deep end, I did go out and seek another job. I was able to be offered a position within two weeks of looking, and then I quit my banking job.

But then I wasn't hearing anything from my new boss. Time passed and I called the man and a person answered and said he was unavailable. This was not boding well. I had been told he wanted me to start before the person I was replacing had left, so I could get some training. But now the days ticked away and I had still not been told to report and the last day for that guy came and went. Finally I received a call and was told to report on the next Monday.

When I came to work that first day what did I find? A lot of missing people is what I found. The person I replaced was already gone. The General Manager, who had hired me, was gone. The new General Manager was gone, apparently to Puerto Rico although why or for how long was not known.

Eventually all this became clear. The man who had hired me had suddenly quit and disappeared to parts unknown. It was a mystery because he was something of a legend in the industry at that time, well known and the company was certainly showing a profitable operation. I know, because one of my duties was to do the Profit & Loss Reports each month. Each month our statement of condition certainly showed us well in the black and we were running at full production. However, this seemed odd because we didn't seem to be selling a whole lot.

I was to unravel this conundrum, conscientious accountant that I was. I decided to take a physical inventory of stock. Most of our product was frozen egg, frozen whole egg, frozen yolk, frozen white, frozen salted egg and frozen sugared egg. If their was a part of an egg you could freeze, we froze it, excluding the shell. So at the back of the plant was a huge freezer where all prepared egg product was stashed until sold.

Except it wasn't being sold.

I crawled about over and under and around all these big containers of frozen hen fruit, counting and checking off my list each drum there. Well, what do you know? No wonder the old General Manager was looking good. He was running at full production alright, but he was simply storing all that outcome away. We weren't looking good on the bottom line because of our low per unit cost and brisk sales, we were just carrying a very high over valued inventory, most of which would never leave our freezer.

Thus what product that did dribble out to customers was being sold way below cost.

This discovery was one of the nails in our coffin.

BRIBERY

There is no better way to learn a job than to be thrown into it with no one around to tell you how to do it. You just do. With the old boss out the door and the new boss on a distant shore and the once-upon-a-time holder of this job on to his next, I had to pretty much teach myself the egg business. The production manager certainly helped me on that and in the absence of the General Manager, who was officially the wheeler and dealer of the place, we had to step into the gap.

We did pretty good even though neither of us had any experience in buying and selling. We did have one philosophy about it, buy low, sell high. You'd think that was obvious, but I'll come back to this in a bit.

You'd be surprised (or maybe not) by what comes about in the egg business. Eggs are pretty durable product actually. You can store them for like six months if kept at the right temperature and a lot of eggs that look ugly are perfectly fine. Farmers sold us the eggs the supermarkets wouldn't carry. They might be oddly shaped or discolored. Some might have hairline cracks. Some were too small or too big. Mainly they just didn't look all nice, even and pretty sitting in a dairy isle.

You candled every egg that passed through the doors. Mostly you are checking for any fertilized eggs or eggs with blood. Such things would not please the Rabbi.

I guess I should mention the Rabbi. The Rabbi came around couple times a year and wandered though the plant. If he liked what he saw, he would certify your product as Kosher. Now lets be brutally honest here. We knew when the Rabbi was coming and the day before arrangements were made, or should I say rearrangements, so nothing was touching anything that would perhaps conflict with the Laws of Moses, at least not until the days after the Rabbi left again. And also, the rabbi didn't spend a lot of time on his inspection. He tended to whisk through the place until we handed him the check for his services. His services did not come cheap. That check had a one on the left and a whole lot of zeros to its right.

Now, I'm not saying that transaction was a form of bribery, but I will say this next instance probably was.

Representative of a big time chicken guy came in to visit one day, trying to make a deal for us to take more of their eggs. Eggs weren't what they built a reputation upon, it was the chickens that lay the eggs that they concerned themselves with. They sold some pretty good tasting roasters, but I will tell you, they shipped us some of the worse eggs you'd ever lay your eyes on, let alone smell with your nose. Although I had the "white-collar" job of Office Manager and Cost Accountant, there were times my duties extended to a more hands-on approach.

Not that I wanted to lay hands on that companies raw materials, but I was out there unloading their truck and what I unpacked was black eggs, rotten eggs and eggs with maggots.

Now here comes this representative wanting us to take more of this stuff from his company. He came in like a movie cliche, big old cowboy hat and a sur'nuf down home good ol' boy accent, with y'alls and back slaps all around. "Want you boys to come visit our plant," he says. "We'll take good care y'all. You come on down. We'll get you a woman and a good bottle of bourbon."

STUPIDITY

Remember that thing about buying low and selling high? Well, after a few weeks our new General Manager finally shows up back from Puerto Rico. He's all proud because he made a deal to sell the people on the Island a lot of egg white to make meringue.

Now that he had returned, for the moment, the buying and selling was back in his hands. He apparently hadn't read any pillows stitched with the production guy and my philosophy, because he bought high and sold low.

Now, and maybe this will surprise some, but there are consequences to buying high and selling low, and to having an overstocked inventory, and of running full bore full productivity when your sales are underperforming. It is called, NOT MAKING MONEY! Now that the inventory ploy was exposed (by yours truly) and the valuation reevaluated our bottom line so it didn't look so great. It looked a little red in the face. Things needed tightening up and our General Manager's idea of tightening up was not paying our suppliers.

This resulted in some suppliers refusing to sell us anything and those who would demanding a premium to do so. In other words, our buying high got higher.

Then one day, this new General Manager was gone. It really wasn't unusual for him to be gone. He was gone a lot, a la Puerto Rico, but he wasn't selling more meringue this time. Oh no, turned out he had another business on the side and he was devoting more hours to that business than to our eggs. And like our egg products, he was canned.

I suppose this belongs here under stupidity, but I thought I had a bright future with that company. I liked working there, liked my job, liked the people. It looked like we were going to expand. They were going to buy a bigger and better plant in Blue Anchor, New Jersey, move operations out of the confines of North Philadelphia. They had big plans, big dreams and here I was in on the ground floor of all this expansion.

I revisited my old employer, the bank, and discovered those managers who had lied to me were gone. In their place was the former auditor and he asked me if I would come back to work there. He even asked me to name my own salary to do so. But I told him I had a great opportunity where I was and turned it down.

Then my wife and I moved to New Jersey. C'est la vie.

BULLYING

Despite the corruption and the stupidity, it actually looked for a while we might turn it all around and get that dream factory over in Blue Anchor. But something else happened, which I'll get to later. The result of what happened I will deal with here. Basically, we tanked.

When things became clear that hope was going south, the company stopped production altogether. Everybody in the back was laid off, all the sorters and the sniffers, the washers and the breakers. These people weren't paid a lot to begin with, now they were getting nothing.

It wasn't long after the workers were laid off that there came a loud knock on the office door. I happened to be there with my secretary and no one else. We answered the knock and there were these gentlemen standing there who would have made find cast members for The Sopranos. These were guys who instantly made you wonder just how much broken kneecaps hurt. They were Teamsters, the Union that represented our now laid off work force.

Were they here to plead for the works jobs? Not exactly. They wanted us to know that they expected us to make sure these workers continued to pay their union dues.

I told them we couldn't do that. They would have to deal directly with their members.

As you can see I am still around and my kneecaps are fine. I can't speak for those long ago workers.

NEVER PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET

So what happened to finally kill that job? What promoted me from Office Manager to Assistant General Manager helping to oversee the dismantling of the plant? A sweet young thing known as Agnes.

This hurricane came up the Eastern Seaboard and inundated upper Pennsylvania with water, lots and lots of water. Much of the same area was flooded by Agnes as suffered the same fate last week. Up in Wilkes Barre was a big company called Interstate Bakeries. Interstate Bakeries was our biggest customer, too big to fail, at least too big to fail us.

In reality, Interstate didn't fail. They had an old factory in Wilkes Barre and it was destroyed by the floods. Rather than rebuild this ancient structure, Interstate decided to pull up stakes in the region and as a result, they no longer needed our egg product. And without Interstate, we had no reasonable chance to make a profit.

Good bye Blue Anchor. Goodbye Philadelphia. For me, hello unemployment. No company, if smart, should ever depend too much on one large customer.

One other lesson I learned there. Never eat dog food. Eggs rated not fit for human consumption went into big barrels and was sold to pet food manufacturers.

And Then...

2011-09-11T19:44:00.001-04:00

I was on the computer at home, not particularly unusual for me in the morning. It was somewhat later than a normal Tuesday though. For most of the Tuesdays for 21 years prior to that one I would have been sitting at a desk at work by 8:30 AM. I wasn't this time because I had been "retired" the week before.

I was putting together some information about my career for an outsourcing meeting I was to have later in the day.

At some point I was skimming the web when a headline popped up. It said, "A plane has accidentally crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City."

How odd. I figured it was a small plane, some private jet gone astray. I left the computer and went to the living room and flicked on the TV. I didn't have to search for news. By now it was on all the channels and it was not some little plane. It was a big plane, a large commercial jet.

And then...

A second plane crashed into the other tower and this was no accident.

There was chaos, confusion, panic. Another report quickly followed, a plane crashed into the Pentagon in DC. Rumors floated in, reports of planes here, there, everywhere it seemed, although most quickly proved just false fears...except one, which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

On the TV it seemed some disaster movie was playing, one with amazing special effects. Giant plumes of smoke poured upward over Manhattan.

And then...

A tower crumbled downward, great pillows of dust rose like a poisonous fog embracing all that stood about it. People were running, screaming, down the streets. Behind them came the dark gray shroud, seemingly chasing after them, trying to swallow them up.

No one knew anything. The images just kept going on and on and I sat down and watched, unable to take my eyes off what was happening, and like the chattering reporters I listened to, knew not knowing why it was happening.

And then...

Our way of life forever changed. Things have been different ever since. There is never a true sense of real safety. Doing many once mundane things has become more inconvenient, especially flying. Wars have been begun and they go on and on and on. And I don't know who to believe about anything anymore.

During that morning I wondered about my meeting. It was to be the first of several to teach me how to get a new job. I tried calling the place, but no one answered the phone. I didn't know whether to get dressed and drive to the city or not. In the end I decided not to go and as it turned out I made the right choice.

My meeting was to be held on the top floor of the tallest building in town. Someone made the decision to cancel all activity in that building for the rest of that day. No one knew the targets. My city was a financial center, a banking town, and the tallest building was owned by a then very well known, large New York bank.

In the days afterward I talked with a friend who had also been kicked out of a job where we had been employed. He was also scheduled for a meeting in that same tall building on that day. He had other things on his mind that morning. One of his daughters worked at the World Trade Center and the train she took was scheduled to arrive at a station beneath the towers at 8:45 AM. That morning he wasn't concerned with finding a new job, he was concerned with finding out if his daughter was safe.

In one of those strange quirks of fate, his daughter had been to a party on Monday evening and coming home tired, had forgot to set her alarm. She over slept and missed her train. She was safe.

And then...

For sometime after I felt a nervousness whenever I was out walking and a plane engine caught my ear. We are on the path for landing at Philadelphia International Airport. Planes come overhead low in the sky. I would look up and wonder, "Isn't that plane much too low?" There are chemical plants all around us, and refineries, and just across the river a nuclear power plant. And so I would watch the plane move into the distance with that thought, "Isn't that plane too low?"

That is some of what I remember from that day.

Photo taken by the author.