DRINKING OF ELDER MEN: Collected Essays 2009 to the Present

Ticket to the Horror Show

2012-05-30T07:07:00.000-04:00

The phone rang a little after nine o'clock that Wednesday. Why was I there? Did it rain that morning? Usually I would have been finishing up a hike through one or other of our state parks. The body is made to move; keep moving and you keep things working.

Very few people call me, especially in the morning, except one persistent caller named "Unidentified". Unidentified calls a lot, usually to tell me this is my last warning to take advantage of a Obama bailout that will lower my mortgage interest rate. Unidentified has been telling me this is my LAST warning for many months now and more than once a day. I generally don't answer calls from Unidentified or from his cousin Unknown either.

I thought I better answer this call. It wasn't from Unidentified. It was coming from my parents. My first thought was, "It's THE Call."

My parents (meaning my mother, because dad never calls me) would not phone in the morning unless...unless it's The Call.

The Call, the one that would say, "Your father's dead," was what I expected. I had been anticipating such a call for years, ever since my dad had been rushed to the hospital in the spring of 2009 with his legs the size of an elephant's. We thought he was going to die then and there, but he pulled through. It changed his life. Under doctor's orders his driver's license was taken away. His heart was too weak. He was a danger to others if he was driving and had a seizure.

That must have hurt. My father had driven almost all his life. He had been a long haul truck driver until he was 75. At that time he qualified for driving school buses with a Class B CDL (Commercial Driving License). I guess he decided to give up the rigors of the distant roads for something near home and far less hours. Anyway, if one obtains a Class B CDL, one must give up their Class A. My father didn't have a CDL license of any kind until he was 68, even though he had been driving 18-wheelers since he was 28. Why had he driven 50 years without a CDL? Because that license didn't exist until 1986. Prior to1986 any fool with an ordinary driver's license could drive a big rig, whether they knew how or not.

He drove school buses for the next ten years of his life, until he turned 85.

Now at age 90 they said he couldn't even drive a car anymore. This also meant he had to quit his job. Yeah, at age 90 he was still working as a church sexton, him and my mother both.

In 2009 dad became officially "elderly". It took a while after leaving the hospital before he could walk and then it was with the aid of a walker. He could walk some with just a cane, but gradually the walker became necessary.

He got a pacemaker and a slew of ailments, Atrial Fibrillation, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Hypertension, Macular Degeneration and Skin Cancer. He is also prone to falls.

And so when the phone rang early that Wednesday morning and the Caller ID was my parent's number, I thought it was "The Call". I was surprised when I was greeted by the gravelly, gruff voice of my father, who never calls me. "Your mother is in the hospital. She had a stroke. I want you to come up here."

My wife had a doctor's appointment at 1:00. It was an exam in order to renew her medication. She only had a couple days left and she does need her medicine. Still, this seemed like an emergency situation. I called the doctor, explained and postponed the appointment. My wife and I left at once for the hour drive to my dad's.

I didn't know yet that my mother had the stroke on Sunday, April 1. This was April 4. He had waited four days to tell me and now it was critical for me to rush there immediately? Things were very under control on that Wednesday. They were to soon slip from control to chaos, but that was still a few days into the future.

I also didn't realize that when dad called me he was about to hand me a ticket to a horror show.

Dark House

2012-05-23T00:06:00.000-04:00

Thomas Wolfe wrote a novel, "You Can't Go Home Again", and the title became part of our language.

You can go back to that place once called "home", but you can't go back home.

I've been back in that place lately--a lot, and every time I can't wait to flee. I grew up there; now I can't stand visiting.

The house is dark inside, dim and close. It was then, too, but I didn't seem to notice. It was even worse then, actually, because the walls were painted a dark green that absorbed what light they were exposed to. Since those years the walls have been painted a light neutral color. But yet it remains a dark house.

And it is too cluttered.

The top photo is my old bedroom. The bed I bought when I got my first real job after high school is still the centerpiece. A cherry wood single bed with a bookcase headboard. I took the other furniture I had bought when I moved out, but left behind this bed. I bought a new one when I left, because I married out of my parents home and needed a two person bed. It had a bookcase headboard as well because I was a veracious reader.

My old room looks like a scene from "Hoarders: Buried Alive" now. It is the "Cat's Room", but it is also the "catch-all" room from the looks of it.

The whole of the house is cluttered. Some rooms may be arranged and neater than my old bedroom, but they are still too stuffed with furniture. This is one side of the living room. The photograph is deceptive because it looks light and bright. In reality the room is dark and gloomy. I enhanced my picture so things were visible. The big brown chair is my dad's. It is where he spends most his waking hours now. It is a chair with a control panel. You push a button and the chair raises up to help you stand.

Dad doesn't walk well anymore. He uses a walker to shuffle from place to place, which is why it is bad this house is so overstuffed. The passage ways between furnishings are narrow alleys. It is awkward for me to pass through some of the pathways; which must be a virtual obstacle course for him.

To the right of his chair is another large chair and two tables with lamps, lamps almost never on. The narrow alcove behind is the passage to his bedroom to the rear and mother's room to the front.

To get to the bathroom, he must maneuver between a coffee table, that other large chair, a table, a display unit and the TV into another narrow hall. That passageway is barely wider than his walker. And he is a man prone to falling easily and when he falls he can't get up.

This is the view from the very cluttered dining room into the living room toward his chair. I would get rid of much of these obstacles as the path of good sense, but dad would have a cow if I moved something. "Mother wouldn't like it," he'd most likely say.

But mother isn't there right now and chances are high she won't be back to this place. If she should return, these will be obstacles to her as well.

(Again I mention the deception of the photos giving an appearance of light to these rooms that are not light at all.)

So why am I back here in these rooms after so many decades. That's is the tale I am beginning to tell.

Superman vs. Captain Marvel

2012-04-12T06:36:00.001-04:00

My friend apparently is having a conflict of shall I comment on these two super gentlemen or not. His post appears and then it disappears. I'll comment on these two gentlemen anyway and see if my post remains in place.

Comic Books were a big deal in my boyhood, such a big deal in fact, that the 1950s usual gang of idiots sitting in Congress blamed them for all the ills of society, at least as far as juvenile delinquency and youthful misdeeds were concerned. A few years they blamed all such ills on Elvis Presley and Rock 'n' Roll and then on Television. The current gang of idiots in Washington DC now blame all our ills on computer games.

Superman first appeared in Action Comics in 1948. Captain Marvel slipped on his cape in Whiz Comics (a somewhat unfortunate name) in 1939. As far as this kid was concerned the two super heroes existed in mutual peace; however, the real conflict was one of super dimensions between Fawcett, DC and Marvel Comic Book Publishers that went on for decades. In fact, Captain Marvel disappeared for a number of years after 1953 when DC sued Fawcett for copyright infringements. Somehow Marvel snatched up the rights to Captain Marvel in the dust that followed and DC couldn't actually publish the Captain until those Marvel licensed the character to them. Bizarre how these legal affairs get entangled.

My friend showed pictures of the two superheroes of a more modern time. They look all chiseled and in his opinion attractive. Back in the day when I was reading their adventures they were so fine looking. Both the covers shown here are from 1953, just before Captain Marvel was vanquished by DC to comic book limbo. Superman has some hint of muscle, but no six-pack or rippling muscles down his forearms. Captain Marvel just looks a bit chunky.

I didn't care about how they looked as a kid. Most of the early comic heroes were not well drawn. I just liked the stories. And I liked Captain Marvel better than Superman. Maybe it was the persona of his alter ego. I mean, Billy Batson wasn't just Captain Marvel in glasses. He didn't even wear glasses. He was a kid just like us boys reading this stuff. He could call out to this wizard Shazam, and be transformed into Captain Marvel. How cool is that? You didn't have to come from some other planet, you just had to know a good and powerful wizard. Man, that could happen to any of us and then let the bullies look out.

I never saw much reason to single out Captain Marvel for copyright infringement. He seemed quite different enough from Superman to stand on his own. Most those super heroes fed off each other anyway. A lot of them ran around in long underwear and capes. Look at Batman.

Speaking of costumes, at least most super heroes got shorts to wear over their tights. It must have been a bit embarrassing for Captain Marvel dashing about in those form fitting red leggings. No wonder he was red.

In those early years both of these characters made it to live action films and TV. They were not represented well in that media. The actors just didn't really look that super. There was George Reeves, kind of more puffy looking than he-man bounding about on TV for a number of years.

Here he is on the right having his bicep admired by TV comedy great Lucille Ball.

On the left we have Tom Tyler, an actor who played a couple costumed super heroes in his day. Beside Captain marvel, he appeared as The Phantom. He is pictured with Radio comedy great Judy Canova.

This is downright embarrassing. At least George Reeves looked somewhat imposing towering over Lucy. Tom Tyler looks ready to do a pas de demux from Swan Lake with Baby Snooks here.

But no matter these choices of thespians to portray our The Man of Steel and The Big Red Cheese, I liked the comic and I liked Captain Marvel better than Superman.

I liked Batman better than Superman, too. After all, Batman was just a mortal man who trained himself to be a super crime fighter. Bullets didn't bounce off him and he couldn't fly or leap tall buildings. Maybe you could never be as good as Batman (especially his repelling up and down those tall buildings since I feared hight), but at least with some dedication and effort you could improve your body and your skills. You didn't have to be born in outer space or even know a wizard.

There were certain super heroes who had more appeal to me than others. I never liked Submariner at all and I didn't really get into Captain America. Aquaman was more appealing than Submariner, but still a lesser light than say Green Lantern. I am not sure why anymore, but I liked The Green Lantern when I was a kid. I always looked forward to his stories.

Maybe it was because my favorite color was green.

It sure couldn't have been that costume he wore.

But my mostest bestest favorite of all was Plastic Man. I loved the way he could stretch into any shape and be purling about as a chair. Here comes our villain to sit down right into Plastic Man's clutches. Of course Plastic Man was written with a good deal of humor. It was almost a satire of the genre.

Here is a final look at our main featured characters in live action.

Just plain embarrassing.

Suspicious Dishes at the Buffett Table

2012-02-27T06:15:00.003-05:00

As long as we're talking of people who get under my skin (re: Mitt Romney) or perhaps I should say, get my goat, since this guy has rounded up a lot goats in his life. Or at least rounded up a few bucks. He has a herd of about 37 Billion give or take a billion.

Warren Buffett sings a good song, but there is something wrong with his lyrics. Lets long at this man who spent his life bellied up to the Buffet Table of wealth.

He says he has no real need for money, he lives a modest frugal life, and he doesn't believe in inherited wealth so his kids be left enough to sit about on wealthily bottoms doing nothing, but will have to earn their own keep. It isn't right people just got lucky in the sperm lottery. He is going to give away 99% of his wealth when he dies because he looks at what he earned as a collection of Social Credit Claims. He also famously complained about paying less taxes than his employees and how unfair that was.

All very righteous statements it seems.

After all he had such a rough beginning, being the son of a Brokerage Firm owner and four-time Congressman.

Buffett is an example that if you're only goal in life is to rich, you can become rich. Now, he did get paid a salary of only $12,000 a year for the job he took at age 24. A modest sum, right, except it would be a starting salary of about $100,000 in today's money. He got almost as much in that first year as I paid for my first house in 1961. Put that $12,000 in perspective. In 1959 my starting salary was $2,808 a year and that was considered above average for a beginning wage. When I was a teenager we dreamed of making a fabulous $100 a week and really successful guys, guys who were at the top, guys who had it made, earned $10,000 a year.

He doesn't feel any guilt about doing nothing in life but chasing after more money. He says he has little use for material things and so doesn't spend a lot. (Then why didn't you have an ambition to go out and become a plumber, garbage collector or something useful like that, but not as well paid?) After all, he still lives in that modest little house he bought for $31,500. Of course, that modest house is valued at $700,000 today and I guess his $4 million home in California doesn't count. But then again, when you have $37 Billion dollars more or less $4 million is a modest sum.

But his viewpoint on consumption is this: "The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. Its like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GDP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die."

Well, why didn't he take that money and hire those 10,000 people to do AIDS research? Or use it to train those 10,000 as teachers and nurses and pay their salaries for the rest of his life so they can nurse the indigent or teach the downtrodden? Wouldn't that still help the GDP? Wouldn't that be a good use of those claim checks?

He does make charitable donations. For instance, he auctioned his 2001 Lincoln Town Car off on eBay to raise money for Girls, Inc. Don't know what it went for. I've given three of my cars to charity, by the way, and I don't rank on any Forbes List; I can't even afford to subscribe to Forbes magazine. Big deal, Warren.

Lets see there was also:

He auctioned a luncheon with himself and got $650,100 for charity.
He auctioned a Power Lunch with Himself and got $2,110,100 for the Glide Foundation.
And Salida Capital Corp. gave $1,680,000 to dine with him. (I bet they wanted to get some valuable advice for their "gift".)

Don't you love how the really rich people are always getting praise for the charitable contributions that cost them very little of their time and nothing out of their own pocket.

And why don't the people who can afford to pay $650,100 for lunch, just give the money to a charity without having to get something in return, even if only a Buffett?

But never fear, he is going to give 99% of his fortune to charity when he died. Why not now? Just do it. Give the 99% away now while you can bask in all the testimonial dinners and see the plaques they'll hand you. You'll still have enough left over to live your modest life style.

But when he dies he'll give the 99% away elsewhere so his children will "have enough to do what they want, but not enough to do nothing". I would love to leave my children in that position, to tell the truth, but I don't have enough to leave that they could do what they want. My kids will inherit one-third of an artificial Christmas Tree and one-third of an electric wok and they'll have to fight over the tree stand and the power cord.

He will leave behind to his heirs a meager 1% of his fortune, which is $370 Million. His three kids will have to get along on a mere $123,333,333 each. Now maybe, just maybe considering his children are all middle-aged and doing okay in their own right, that just might be enough they could kink back a bit in their later years.

Finally we have the big tax concern of the man who spent his life on his one great purpose, making money. Poor thing doesn't pay enough taxes. His statement was made in 2006, and his claim is he only paid 19% of his $48.1 million income in tax and his employees paid 33% on theirs. His employees evidently are paid well to be in that 33% bracket, so some generosity there. So his complain was he only paid $9.139 Billion in tax. Well, if you felt so bad why didn't you just give a gift to the government that would equaled with your tax that 33% rate? You can legally do that, you know?

Besides, why this discrepancy anyway? You didn't pay the 33% because you took measures to avoid paying income tax in the first place. He paid himself a salary of $100,000 a year. A nice sum, but far less than other CEO in his league. A lot of these CEOs take these modest salaries, some only take One Dollar a year. My, aren't they a generous lot? They care about the welfare of the company so much they take almost no salary. But they do take a lot of Stock Options and that kind of compensation, because then they only have to pay the capital gains tax of 15% on their income -- while their employees have to pay the full measure of their tax bracket because they are getting a salary considered earned income!

You want to pay the higher taxes, give yourself a great big salary! And don't take the allowed deductions! Then maybe you'll be happy.

And stop running about patting yourself on the back and telling everybody else to give away their money.

Mitt Gives me Fits

2012-02-25T11:20:00.000-05:00

I have always avoided writing anything political in my Blogs. For one, I don’t like politics. For two, I think it is a good way to lose friends. For three, no one seems able to discuss issues rationally. All people do is stick some brand on your hide and then they tell you what YOU supposedly think on every issue, whether you do or not. For four, I usually let anything these windbags of any and all parties say roll off my back blow away in the breeze.

But for some reason this Romney guy gets under my skin.

When asked recently if he thought he had the best chance to beat Obama, he said, “I don't think if I have the best chance, I think I have the only chance."

Maybe its just hubris, but we already have an egomaniac in the White House we don’t need another. He says things in a stupid way that can be used against him, maybe that’s why? A man running for President should know better how to phrase his remarks. “I just love firing people…”, “I don’t care about the poor…”, “I don’t think people want their President [paying more taxes than he owes…”

Opponents and Press took these out of context of what he meant, except the last statement where he was preparing everybody to hear just how little he pays in taxes compared to what he makes, yet he seems too dumb to understand that is the way his remarks will get played.

Now he tells us he is the only person in the whole wide world great enough to beat Obama. This guy doesn’t even know how to fake humility.

But he should learn or he shouldn’t give speeches in stadiums that make it look like nobody showed up to hear him. Maybe his ego told him 65,000 people would actually show up and fill the seats.

Personally, I don’t know why anyone wants to be President, but I really don’t know why this guy does. I can’t see where he has any strong convictions about anything. I get the sense of a salesman selling whatever is hot at the moment, but ready to switch his pitch as soon as it wanes. But his faulty marketing sense tells me he doesn’t understand the market he’s pitching too.

I think he wants to be President as a resume enhancement.

Now he is campaigning on rising both the age for receiving Medicare and Social Security. Well, isn’t that cute. If I had a quintillion dollars stashed away in the Cayman Island and a Swiss bank Account where I could avoid income tax maybe I wouldn’t care what age I got Social Security either.

To tell the truth, I think we might have all been better off never having the Social Security System. We would have been better off knowing it was up to us to set aside for our old age and as a society to look after each other within communities rather than ending up at the mercy of Washington politicians. But we DO have Social Security and just about every person living in the U.S. today has grown up under this system. It is what it is and I think we’re stuck with it. They promised us this would be there for us and forced by law to contribute to it all our working life. I am in my seventies collecting it, but also still paying into it when I work, and then paying some income tax on the portion I receive.

I remind those such as Mitt, rhymes with Nitwit, that I paid into this. I made premiums as I would into any annuity promising an investment to provide for my old age. I am sick and tired of politicians talking as if we are getting some kind of welfare. We are simply collecting what we paid for. It was the politicians who cheated and took from the fund; it wasn’t my fellow seniors or I who not paying our premiums. We met our obligation; now the government must meet its own.

Mitt can run out there and talk about how everybody lives longer and therefore the age of payout should be later. Mitt finds that easy to say when he doesn’t have any worry about whether his car breaks down or the roof leaks or he gets sick, because he has a quintillion dollars. If I hadn’t been able to get Social Security when I did, I would have been in a world of hurt, maybe I really would be on welfare…and homeless. Mitt doesn’t have to worry about being homeless.

If you rich politicians, which is most of them and most of whom never did an honest days work in their lives, want to raise the age people can receive Social Security and Medicare, you better darn well do something on the other side of the equation.

You better tell those businesses out there not to terminate us old people. My friends and I talked about the fact that we don’t know anyone – NOT A PERSON – who managed to stay with a company and retire at 65. They could save a little in salary and benefits so bounced me out at age 60 after 21 years.

We can’t all get elected to the Senate and leach off the public until we die, now can we?

Many I know, including me, started working early in life. I began working in Grade School. I’ve worked continually ever since. I continued working after at 60. My jobs have been physical part time labor paying just above minimum wage. They keep laying me off because of the economy. You know, the ones on the bottom go first when the CEOs sees his or her stock options tail off. And you know at 70 it gets a little harder to get hired and a little harder to keep the body in working shape.

So, give me somebody with some positive ideas that help everyone, not the typical Corporate-think of let’s cut costs by cutting the employee health care and wages. Give me somebody who says what he means both today and tomorrow, and knows how to say it correctly so it isn’t misunderstood. And give me somebody who isn’t so rich they know knowing about the real world where most of us survive.

It is so sad if Romney is the best we can come up with.

Asta

2012-02-24T08:29:00.002-05:00

Somehow cats always know when the end has come. They will wander off and find a private place to lie down and wait for death to visit.

So it was with Asta yesterday. I had come back from the store with bread and pills. My right ankle has been ablaze with arthritis all this week, as if a welder was shooting his flame up my leg. I got some Aleve. It didn't help. I got the bread for lunch because we were out.

I sat down on the sofa and noticed Asta was lying on the edge of the carpet. I thought this odd. She doesn't usually lay on the floor. She likes the back of the furniture or the window sill.

I leaned in over her and she didn't jump up and dash away. Asta has always been the scariest of fraidy cats. She jumped if you moved too quickly and ran at the least provocation. Besides when I sat down she would usually be quick to come up behind my head and then walk down onto my upper chest.

I though, did she have a stroke? But then she got up and walked across the room and out into the dining area. But she moved slowly and she is a quick cat. Still, cats have their moods.

Later in the day I realized I hadn't seen her since. The same come evening and I asked Laurel and Lois if they had seen her. We began looking and after searching the house could not find her. I was concerned. Did she get outside somehow?

My wife thought not and I couldn't see how. Lois said she will probably turn up, she had hidden well before and then popped up.

She had gotten out before, too. A half dozen years ago our basement window broke somehow. Before I was able to put something over it, some of our cats escaped. Brad, of course, because he was always finding ways to get out. He would always stay outside a few days and come back. A couple others we were able to grab right away. Sephoroth and Asta also fled out the hole and into the night.

Brad did come back, but Sephoroth (pictured left) disappeared and we didn't know his fate. A few weeks ago a cat began appearing in our yard occasionally that looked like Sephy. Could it be that Sephoroth had been taken in by somebody back six years ago? If so, had he escaped again or been discarded or what? This cat came around about every day for a couple weeks, but would run if it saw anyone. Then one day coming back from a morning walk I saw this cat dead in the middle of Glenrock, hit by a car. It may have been Sephy and if so, then Sephoroth died this year as well.

We didn't see Asta for a month that year she got outside, and then one day she appeared in our utility room. There is a place where cats can get into the house beneath the flooring and exit into this room. I was able to grab her and bring her upstairs. She was very clinging from that time on. I think it was a trying experience for her.

She also had a problem with her mouth after that. It would hurt her sometimes and she would growl and rub at it. Still, most of the time she was fine.

Asta was a tiny cat and different from any of the others. She was a brownish color. Her ears were tufted and she would flatten her ears against her head if you stroked her. Maybe because she was small she didn't like other cats to come too close and would snarl and hiss at any who did. She was a feisty little girl.

She had been in one of the litters this feral cat kept dropping in our storage shed. She was with the group of Amber, John, Thorn and Ridge. (That is Amber, Thorn and Asta as kittens on the right.) Amber, John and Ridge all died last year, so now only Thorn remains. Thorn and Asta are 11 years old.

After Lois and I had searched last night, Laurel looked again. She found Asta curled up inside a cat condo right by the dining room entrance. I hadn't even realized this particular cat condo had an inner chamber. Laurel, who is a VetTech, knew right away she was dying. She brought her out, wrapped her in an old shirt and held her on her lap the rest of the evening.

When Laurel went to bed she fixed a place for Asta in the bathroom and put a litter box and some food beside her. When I awoke and went into the bathroom this morning she had passed away.

We will miss her. Rest in piece -- Asta, 2001- February 24, 2012.

Living and Reliving

2012-02-23T16:54:00.000-05:00

It has been a blue moon since I posted here. Some may have seen my last subject, "Quitting the Writing game" and decided I did indeed quit writing. Maybe some are happy with that idea. Forget about it. I have been writing and posting everyday, sometimes several times a day.

I have been writing my autobiography.

I call it, Impressions of My Life: Autobiography of a Recherché Poet.

Why such an odd title? When I think back over my existence my memory often lets me down or things come back somewhat as if in a dream. The mind begins to wander through a fog of days and months and years after a while. I can't always pin something down to an exact time. Sometimes I am not sure of the Five Ws, the who, what, where, why and when, let alone the how.

What I write is what I recall and this may only be impressions of what happened. I may see the events and the facts differently than others do or did. I only know what these eyes have seen or I've been told.

The Recherché Poet? I originally subtitled it "Autobiography of a Minor Poet," but my friend, the same one who pushed me to write my life, though it made me sound like I was a child poet. I meant it only as a poet who had a limited following and publishing history. He suggested changing it to "Insignificant Poet". Well, my ego vetoed that! I may not be the Poet Laureate of Delaware or anything, but I do not think of my poems as insignificant.

He then suggested, "Unknown Poet," but I am not completely unknown. Therefore, I choose Recherché Poet as covering most of the bases. It means, rare, exotic or obscure. You may take your pick.

So, if I have been doing this opus daily, why aren't readers of this or my other Blogs seeing it? That too was a choice I made. I am doing it on a private Blog. The Blog is not completely closed to readers, but it isn't being Googled about the Internet or advertised.

There are a couple of reasons. When I did decide I would do this, I also decided I would try to be as honest as someone can when spilling the beans about themselves. The first half of my life was not exactly PG rated. As Richard Nixon (a fourth cousin, by the way) famously said, "I am not a crook,," but I have not been a paragon of virtue either. I have broken my share of the Ten Commandments and partaken of the Seven Deadly Sins. My lief is not always pretty reading.

Now, if everyone would be completely honest, all of you could have written that last paragraph about yourselves.

A second reason is no one lives in a vacuum alone. People weave in and out of our lives. Life is a great tapestry of relationship, good and bad. If I am honest about my life, I must be honest about my view of those who shared in its making. Sometimes this is not flattering. Sometimes it is quite critical. I have no wish to offend anyone.

Someday when I get old (Ha!) and many others have passed on, I may open it up to general readership. For now all and sundry who to my knowledge have secrets or sins are safe.

Writing one's life may seem an ego trip, but I recommend it. It is very helpful in learning and understanding yourself.

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 man don’t have a lick of sense.” Now we all have slips of the tongue or say things without thinking, but if you are running for President and making public statements you need to have a good editor up in your brain.

Mitt Romney looks good. He cleans up real nice, don’t he? Has that little touch of gray at the temples, his tie on straight. He “looks Presidential” 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 right now, but his handlers better get him into Poli-Speak College for the course 101 - How Not to Give Your Opponents Negative Sound Bites.

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

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

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

In other words it sounds as if he is exploiting a bunch of loopholes to avoid paying tax. It may be legal, but it doesn’t look good and the average guy can’t do it. You know, like having a secret Swiss bank account or 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 voters want a president who pays more than he owes." That quote just triggers people to be suspicious and look for something hidden.

Well, I suppose we don’t want anyone paying more than they owe, but why in the world would you make such a remark? It just reinforced the idea you pulled some shenanigans to avoid paying tax. It also indicates a person knowing his returns are going to show something he wants to prepare people for because he knows it will look like he got off cheap. It also says he is out of touch with the common man. It ranks up there with Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake," when people were asking for bread. As an old Credence Clearwater song goes, "I ain't no privileged son." Mitt is a privileged son.

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

His “I love firing people” was only part of the statement, because he was referring to getting rid of service people who failed to provide the service promised. We all have done this at times. I switched phone companies some years back for service issues. It was the correct thing to do. But it was stupid to frame this very sensible and commonsense practice using the words “love” and “firing”. And the predictable happened. Only that part of his comment was used in a totally different way than he used it to make him look like Ebenezer Scrooge rubbing 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. He explained how he was concentrating on the vast majority of Americans, strengthening the middle class, an absolute necessity if we are to bring this country back to economic strength. He also said he would help fix any “holes in the safety net” for the poor.

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

Now this is not a political post. I am neither endorsing or non-endorsing any candidate of either party. I am angry that the press in this country does not bother to explain and illuminate rather than glory in “gotchas” and even will distort things in order to create one. But it is what it is and the fact Romney can’t seem to get a grasp on that fact bothers me. He manages to get his ties properly tied, but he needs to find a way to tie down his tongue.

Of course this constant distortion by the Press and others of what people actually say is what keeps good people from running for office. 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 at unreasonably 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 charges borrowers interest above an established legal rate. Depending on where a person lives, lenders typically cannot charge more than 60% interest per annum. A loan shark, then, would be someone who illegally charged interest over the state's legal limit, which could range up to, 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’s the difference between Congressmen and manure?

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

While congressmen 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.)