I suppose there was a time when baseball caps were worn only for playing baseball. I should like to hear the complete and unabridged history of the invention and popularization of the baseball cap.
Just in case you feel the same way, let me tell you it isn’t in the encyclopedia. However if you google baseball cap history, you will return about 1,300.000 entries, which is a lot of history. The first and second sites disagreed on which baseball team first wore them, so history, schmistory, I made one up and here it is.
One hot summer day, at the height of baseball season, Ty Cobb (probably the earliest baseball players that I know of) complained to his manager that the sun got in his eyes when he stood in centerfield (if he played centerfield), and he needed something to shade his eyes. The manager took the problem to his wife who borrowed her son’s beanie and sewed a bill on it.
Ty was a pioneer who wasn’t afraid to show up in never-before-seen headgear, so he tried it out the next game, and it worked pretty well. The seamstress had the foresight to make it in the team’s colors, and the skill to put a block letter on the front of it.
Soon the left fielder and the second baseman wanted one too. And the catcher, who had been looking for something to keep his hair clean when he replaced his mask after throwing it in the dirt around home plate, asked for one too. It didn’t take him long to realize that wearing it backwards was about the only way he was going to be able to wear it at all. (Credit catchers with being first to wear baseball caps backwards.)
Fans and fishermen were probably the first to wear baseball caps off the playing field. Fans wanted to look just like Ty, and fishermen wanted a place to put their flies. From there it snowballed. Truck drivers began to wear them, as did farmers and bald men. Cowboys discovered that a baseball cap fit into the cab of a pickup truck better than a Stetson did, so baseball caps crossed over into the rigid realm of cowboy attire.
Sometime during the 70s it was discovered that the sun got into the eyes of women also, and so the baseball cap crossed another line—the gender line. About that same time denim pants crossed the same line, and one just followed the other.
Baseball caps began to appear in more types of social settings, and they began to be worn to make a fashion statement as well as a literal statement.
Which just about brings us up to the present. Everyone needs a few baseball caps in his or her wardrobe. One to wear to the mall, one to wear jogging, one for visiting friends, one for camp, one to wear to school outside of class, one to wear to work, and oh yes, one to wear to the ballgame.
You can say just about anything with your baseball cap, as well. But pay attention. Make sure that the cap you wear and the way you wear it, i.e. frontward, sideways, backward, inside out, makes the correct statement about your political preferences, your lifestyle, your socio-economic attachments, etc. If you think a baseball cap is neutral, you are mistaken. It can cross the gender line, but be careful about taking it across any other lines. It sits up there on top of your head like a billboard. It isn’t like a wallet that hides in your pocket. Make sure it makes the correct statement.
Well, not a bad reconstruction of history given the evidence in the closet, right? It was easy. Someone needed a sunshade in centerfield and the hat scene is changed for ever after.
I was thinking I could take this history thing a step further and tackle that more useless part of the baseball uniform—the stirrup—but I am having a hard time with it. Which baseball player walked up to his manager and said, “Hey Joe, now my socks don’t match my cap.”?
Monday, October 19, 2009
Dreams do have meaning, but only one
Half of the modern novels I’ve read have some chapter or scene where the hero has an intricate and convoluted dream which the author describes in great detail. They are usually about the character being in a large grassy field with mists or fog. I guess the reader is supposed to interpret the dream and understand what is going to happen next in the story line or what character traits the heroine has buried under layers of consciousness. I never get it. Even by the end of the book, I never get it.
Should I ever write a novel (not to worry) the dreams will have only one theme, which as near as I can tell from my real-life research and my personal observation is the only theme dreams ever come in. (Those novelists are up in the night.)
As you will notice, this is a timely as well as controversial subject, but as far as I am concerned, all dreams are about one thing—being late for class and not being able to get your locker open. Either you have forgotten the combination or it doesn’t work.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that your school years are unimportant. You will literally be dreaming about them for the rest of your life.
Okay, there are variations on the theme, but they are all the same thing. You can’t get where you need to be (class or school) with all of your stuff and on time to save yourself.
One variation is the “I can’t remember my schedule” dream in which you keep trying to find clues to help you get where you need to be, but you can’t. You keep slogging around trying different classrooms or halls to see if any of them ring a bell, but they don’t. You can’t even find the principal’s office in order to ask someone what your schedule is. Or if during the odd dream you miraculously find it, they can’t find your schedule either.
Then there is the “I can’t get ready for school” dream in which you can’t find the right clothes or shoes, or you get to school and discover that you forgot the most important article of clothing—your pants (or when I went to school, your skirt).
There is also the “I forgot basketball tryouts” dream in which your friends find you after the fact and ask you why you weren’t at tryouts running multiple ladders like they were.
One more variant of the school dream is the one where you find, when you finally get to your class, that there is a 100-question test for which you are totally unprepared.
I guess fairly recent dream research (not similar to the kind I have done) has shown that people need to get the right kind of sleep so they can dream which in turn makes them well-adjusted and psychologically healthy. Well, either I am not getting the right kind of sleep or not dreaming the right kind of dreams because after one of the locked-locker dreams, I wake up in the middle of an anxiety attack. And that hardly feels healthy.
I have read that anxiety dreams are telling us about current behavior patterns or psychological imbalances that need to be corrected and also that they are present in people who are diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. What does all of this tell you about high school?
Well, I am not a psychologist, but it’s not that hard. High school is pure raw trauma—an experience from which you will probably never recover no matter how many times you dream about it which explains why you dream about it.
Your only hope is to have a subsequent traumatic experience which will eclipse the high school one and “graduate” your psychological imbalances so that you dream that you can never get to work on time with your trousers on.
Should I ever write a novel (not to worry) the dreams will have only one theme, which as near as I can tell from my real-life research and my personal observation is the only theme dreams ever come in. (Those novelists are up in the night.)
As you will notice, this is a timely as well as controversial subject, but as far as I am concerned, all dreams are about one thing—being late for class and not being able to get your locker open. Either you have forgotten the combination or it doesn’t work.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that your school years are unimportant. You will literally be dreaming about them for the rest of your life.
Okay, there are variations on the theme, but they are all the same thing. You can’t get where you need to be (class or school) with all of your stuff and on time to save yourself.
One variation is the “I can’t remember my schedule” dream in which you keep trying to find clues to help you get where you need to be, but you can’t. You keep slogging around trying different classrooms or halls to see if any of them ring a bell, but they don’t. You can’t even find the principal’s office in order to ask someone what your schedule is. Or if during the odd dream you miraculously find it, they can’t find your schedule either.
Then there is the “I can’t get ready for school” dream in which you can’t find the right clothes or shoes, or you get to school and discover that you forgot the most important article of clothing—your pants (or when I went to school, your skirt).
There is also the “I forgot basketball tryouts” dream in which your friends find you after the fact and ask you why you weren’t at tryouts running multiple ladders like they were.
One more variant of the school dream is the one where you find, when you finally get to your class, that there is a 100-question test for which you are totally unprepared.
I guess fairly recent dream research (not similar to the kind I have done) has shown that people need to get the right kind of sleep so they can dream which in turn makes them well-adjusted and psychologically healthy. Well, either I am not getting the right kind of sleep or not dreaming the right kind of dreams because after one of the locked-locker dreams, I wake up in the middle of an anxiety attack. And that hardly feels healthy.
I have read that anxiety dreams are telling us about current behavior patterns or psychological imbalances that need to be corrected and also that they are present in people who are diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. What does all of this tell you about high school?
Well, I am not a psychologist, but it’s not that hard. High school is pure raw trauma—an experience from which you will probably never recover no matter how many times you dream about it which explains why you dream about it.
Your only hope is to have a subsequent traumatic experience which will eclipse the high school one and “graduate” your psychological imbalances so that you dream that you can never get to work on time with your trousers on.
How to make good use of commercial messages
I am sure that the world’s advertising agencies go to great trouble to make commercials that will make us all sit right up and pay attention for thirty seconds, a minute, or however long it is that ads run. I don’t suppose they are as long as they seem. If they were, there wouldn’t be any time left for regular programming because there are at least eight of them during a half-hour television show.
None of that is anything you didn’t already know, but even if the ads are only thirty seconds long, they are long enough to put me to sleep. When regular programming is on, I can stay awake. When an ad comes on, my eyes fall shut.
Ironically, the worst kind are the ones that promote sleep aids. The background music is restful; they feature people lying in comfortable-looking beds; even the colors and images are calming. Add all of that calmness to the fact that this same commercial has already aired six times during the last half hour and ended the same way every time—with the subject falling asleep—and hmmm, I have direct access to the thirty-second power nap.
And I don’t have to worry about missing any of my program because I always wake up at the end of the commercial during the enumeration of the product’s side effects. Now that part of the promotion is a little jarring to the nerves. Especially when they say, “in rare instances, this product may cause heart attack or stroke.”
That’s enough to wake me up and get me thinking about the possibility of having a stroke, and I further think that if I were going to have a stroke, I wouldn’t want to have it during a pharmaceutically-induced sleep session. I might miss “my program.”
After a few of those kind of commercials, I have resolved that I don’t want to take that kind of product ever, which is also ironic.
Who needs to take anything? You could just record a couple of commercials to play when you get in bed, making sure to edit out the parts about the side effects.
So, after a good night’s sleep plus or minus a few power naps, I might be found in my car going here and there. When I am driving, I listen to talk radio. Believe me, it has it’s share of commercial messages as well. Given the effect that television commercials have on me, I need to be careful about listening to radio commercials while I am driving—power naps and all notwithstanding. So far, my radio station is judicious enough to refrain from advertising sleep aids.
On the contrary, they often air “paid announcements” that serve to wake me right up. One of those is paid for some entity called “Save Our National Parks Foundation” or something like that. Obviously this commercial has failed to drive home to me what the name of the organization is, but their message I got: our national parks are in disrepair because they are underfunded, so please send money to improve them.
So, this is a little jarring to the nerves, and I think that commercials like this might give me a stroke. When Bertha, who is not well-known for her rationality but sometimes has a lucid thought, analyzes this commercial message, it comes out like this:
Say you own a really nice house. Someone more important that you are comes along and takes over the care and upkeep of your house because you might not know how to do that. Their rationale is that they have more resources and can do that better than you can. They pretend that you still own your house, but you don’t; in fact, you will have to get in line to visit it, and you will have to pay a fee to use it, You will have to pay not to use it also. Besides that you will have to pay for upkeep and expenses on it. But the party soon gets tired of spending the money that you give him on his house, and he wants to buy jet airplanes with it instead.
Consequently the repairs and maintenance have fallen behind. He implores a third party to beg you to send more money to fix up the house you don’t own so you can pay more money to visit or not visit a house that you don’t own that this time we are going to fix up. Promise.
And by the way, some of the money will be used to pay for this commercial message which you can record and play back whenever you need a non-pharmaceutical jolt to keep you awake.
None of that is anything you didn’t already know, but even if the ads are only thirty seconds long, they are long enough to put me to sleep. When regular programming is on, I can stay awake. When an ad comes on, my eyes fall shut.
Ironically, the worst kind are the ones that promote sleep aids. The background music is restful; they feature people lying in comfortable-looking beds; even the colors and images are calming. Add all of that calmness to the fact that this same commercial has already aired six times during the last half hour and ended the same way every time—with the subject falling asleep—and hmmm, I have direct access to the thirty-second power nap.
And I don’t have to worry about missing any of my program because I always wake up at the end of the commercial during the enumeration of the product’s side effects. Now that part of the promotion is a little jarring to the nerves. Especially when they say, “in rare instances, this product may cause heart attack or stroke.”
That’s enough to wake me up and get me thinking about the possibility of having a stroke, and I further think that if I were going to have a stroke, I wouldn’t want to have it during a pharmaceutically-induced sleep session. I might miss “my program.”
After a few of those kind of commercials, I have resolved that I don’t want to take that kind of product ever, which is also ironic.
Who needs to take anything? You could just record a couple of commercials to play when you get in bed, making sure to edit out the parts about the side effects.
So, after a good night’s sleep plus or minus a few power naps, I might be found in my car going here and there. When I am driving, I listen to talk radio. Believe me, it has it’s share of commercial messages as well. Given the effect that television commercials have on me, I need to be careful about listening to radio commercials while I am driving—power naps and all notwithstanding. So far, my radio station is judicious enough to refrain from advertising sleep aids.
On the contrary, they often air “paid announcements” that serve to wake me right up. One of those is paid for some entity called “Save Our National Parks Foundation” or something like that. Obviously this commercial has failed to drive home to me what the name of the organization is, but their message I got: our national parks are in disrepair because they are underfunded, so please send money to improve them.
So, this is a little jarring to the nerves, and I think that commercials like this might give me a stroke. When Bertha, who is not well-known for her rationality but sometimes has a lucid thought, analyzes this commercial message, it comes out like this:
Say you own a really nice house. Someone more important that you are comes along and takes over the care and upkeep of your house because you might not know how to do that. Their rationale is that they have more resources and can do that better than you can. They pretend that you still own your house, but you don’t; in fact, you will have to get in line to visit it, and you will have to pay a fee to use it, You will have to pay not to use it also. Besides that you will have to pay for upkeep and expenses on it. But the party soon gets tired of spending the money that you give him on his house, and he wants to buy jet airplanes with it instead.
Consequently the repairs and maintenance have fallen behind. He implores a third party to beg you to send more money to fix up the house you don’t own so you can pay more money to visit or not visit a house that you don’t own that this time we are going to fix up. Promise.
And by the way, some of the money will be used to pay for this commercial message which you can record and play back whenever you need a non-pharmaceutical jolt to keep you awake.
Who knew I was a morning person?
When I was a kid, everyone was a “morning person.” Night people were social outcasts. Well, at least our parents let us know that “early to bed, early to rise” described the expected norm.
When I got old enough, I was permitted to stay up only until the TV news was over at which time even the high school seniors went to bed. Next morning, breakfast was served at seven. Everyone came to breakfast. Everyone ate the same food, and everyone began his day thereafter.
Then someone shattered family life as we knew it by getting a grant and discovering that there are “morning people” and there are “night people.” Morning people like things the way they always were. They like to get up early, plan their day, then get their day’s work done, watch the news, and go to bed afterwards.
Night people are the ones who begin to come alive around nine p.m. They clean their rooms well after sundown. They call fellow night people to come over and make cookies after the news is over. They go shopping at midnight—to the stores that are open, which are only the video stores and the grocery stores, but that is enough to outfit a party.
I know all this because there are people of both kinds in my family. When they all lived at home, the night people stayed up at night, and the morning people got up in the morning. Guess who lost sleep on both ends?
I myself have been known to go to bed before the news begins. Now don’t start jumping to conclusions about my psychological makeup. If I don’t know what kind of person I am, neither does anyone else. I have also been known to stay up late with a good book. However, I do remember that back in the day I didn’t get much sleep when the night people were phoning or when Saturday Night Live was playing. Sometimes I just got up and ate cookies and read yearbooks with everyone else.
On the other hand, I didn’t sleep too well with morning piano practicing or the sounds of someone fixing breakfast. So I usually got out of bed and poured milk on the cereal before someone else poured it on the floor.
What could I say? The morning people had tradition on their side, and the night people had the studies in the medical journals on theirs. (Trying to turn a night person into a morning person can have long-term negative psychological effects, just as trying to turn a left-handed child into a right-handed one can.) And which is worse, a very sleepy mom or a bunch of neurotic kids?
I may have finally overcome the social pressures exerted by the night and morning people in my life who did their level best to turn me into a person of their own order. Perhaps I have blossomed into the kind of person I was meant to be—originally.
For a while there, after most of the kids left home, I rebounded and became an afternoon person—someone who goes to bed early and gets up late. It seemed that I should take advantage of the opportunity to get extra sleep whenever I could, just in case everyone moved back home again.
As for now, in case anyone cares, I seem to be a traditional morning person At least I find myself awake early most mornings trying to get a plan for the day, and ready for bed by the time the news comes on.
Speaking of which, I hear the ten o’clock news winding down right now. It must be time for me to be done here and to be going off to bed.
When I got old enough, I was permitted to stay up only until the TV news was over at which time even the high school seniors went to bed. Next morning, breakfast was served at seven. Everyone came to breakfast. Everyone ate the same food, and everyone began his day thereafter.
Then someone shattered family life as we knew it by getting a grant and discovering that there are “morning people” and there are “night people.” Morning people like things the way they always were. They like to get up early, plan their day, then get their day’s work done, watch the news, and go to bed afterwards.
Night people are the ones who begin to come alive around nine p.m. They clean their rooms well after sundown. They call fellow night people to come over and make cookies after the news is over. They go shopping at midnight—to the stores that are open, which are only the video stores and the grocery stores, but that is enough to outfit a party.
I know all this because there are people of both kinds in my family. When they all lived at home, the night people stayed up at night, and the morning people got up in the morning. Guess who lost sleep on both ends?
I myself have been known to go to bed before the news begins. Now don’t start jumping to conclusions about my psychological makeup. If I don’t know what kind of person I am, neither does anyone else. I have also been known to stay up late with a good book. However, I do remember that back in the day I didn’t get much sleep when the night people were phoning or when Saturday Night Live was playing. Sometimes I just got up and ate cookies and read yearbooks with everyone else.
On the other hand, I didn’t sleep too well with morning piano practicing or the sounds of someone fixing breakfast. So I usually got out of bed and poured milk on the cereal before someone else poured it on the floor.
What could I say? The morning people had tradition on their side, and the night people had the studies in the medical journals on theirs. (Trying to turn a night person into a morning person can have long-term negative psychological effects, just as trying to turn a left-handed child into a right-handed one can.) And which is worse, a very sleepy mom or a bunch of neurotic kids?
I may have finally overcome the social pressures exerted by the night and morning people in my life who did their level best to turn me into a person of their own order. Perhaps I have blossomed into the kind of person I was meant to be—originally.
For a while there, after most of the kids left home, I rebounded and became an afternoon person—someone who goes to bed early and gets up late. It seemed that I should take advantage of the opportunity to get extra sleep whenever I could, just in case everyone moved back home again.
As for now, in case anyone cares, I seem to be a traditional morning person At least I find myself awake early most mornings trying to get a plan for the day, and ready for bed by the time the news comes on.
Speaking of which, I hear the ten o’clock news winding down right now. It must be time for me to be done here and to be going off to bed.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
They do what with clunkers?
I am just dying to stroll into Scary Harry’s Used Car Emporium and say, “Boy, have I got a clunker for you!” Wouldn’t that just about give the “what-goes-around-comes-around axiom a whole new meaning?
Now I don’t know a whole lot about the Cash for Clunkers Program (I don’t think anyone does), but if I can find something funny about it, think what the late-night hosts are likely saying. I do think that you only get to buy the equivalent of two-seater lawn mowers with your cash, which means you might have enough to go ahead and do just that.
If you know me, you are likely surprised that I don’t have the Clunker Program thoroughly researched and dissected because even if I don’t have a qualifying clunker, one that I can unload on Scary Harry, I have had and driven my share of clunkers.
It is partly my own fault. I seem to be the only one in my family who considers that a car is a means of conveyance—a way to get to the grocery store and back again. Maybe you could use it to get to the ball game or the bank, too.
But my family members have collectively and separately held the mistaken idea that cars are for other things. Some of them think that the purpose of a car is to enhance your social position. Some think that a car is for saving. (Using it will only put mileage, scratches or dents on it.) And others think that cars are for fixing up, whether they run, or will ever run, or not.
I’m all for fixing a car if it doesn’t run or if it won’t pass inspection, but if it has a perfectly good black rubber steering wheel cover in it, I don’t see the point of putting on a new oak and chrome one.
Speaking of fixing cars, I’ve told Mr. B. many times that he should be in the auto parts business. The auto parts business is something I do know something about. I should. I have been sent to the parts store as many as five times for the same part. I know how the auto parts stores work. According to my calculations, it would cost about $1,364.000 to build a car from scratch using parts from the parts store. You might come out ahead buying the ingredients to make dinner at home, but don’t try it with a car.
One of the reasons, just one, that I have to go to the parts store so many times is that we look like we run a used car lot. (Don’t even think about unloading a clunker at the Butterbean car lot though.) Mr. B. belongs to the group of family members that thinks cars are for fixing up. Due to patriarchal authority, we have many cars that need fixing up.
We nearly got arrested once for abandoning the Duster. Well, it did look that bad, but it was only out of gas. We paid $50 for that car, and the officer told us we got took. Would we dust a Duster? No, we would fix it up.
Since we already have a fleet of lawn mowers (some of which run), I haven’t been thinking of trading in my SUV for one. Okay, I just now did a little research. My SUV does qualify, however by Butterbean standards it is hardly a clunker.
A clunker is a car that is so bad that it’s windshield wipers are falling off. We launched the left one into the Great Salt Lake once simply by turning them on. And speaking of wipers, I’ll bet that there have only been two cars in the state of Utah whose windshield wipers were activated by hitting a bump in the road, and we have owned both of them.
It takes two good men and a pipe wrench to open the windows in the pickup, but we don’t roll them up very often because when we do, the air pressure in the cab begins to decrease in spite of the fact that we have never yet gotten off the ground.
Now, I know that wipers and windows do not a clunker make, but neither do they a lawn mower make. And in the what-goes-around department, trading in for one does not a deal make either. It’s like throwing money out one car window and hauling it in the another. You are going to lose some along the way.
There is still the issue of what they do with the traded-in clunkers. I read that they run them on a solution that seizes the engine. I also heard that they are crushed and sold as scrap metal. Either way, the Butterbean car fixer-uppers are quite alarmed. What a waste of fixable cars.
So, if your car is going to qualify for the program, it has to be a gas guzzler, over 18 mpg combined city/highway, whatever that is; it has to run; and it has to have been manufactured after 1983.
Sounds like a perfectly good fixer-upper to me.
Now I don’t know a whole lot about the Cash for Clunkers Program (I don’t think anyone does), but if I can find something funny about it, think what the late-night hosts are likely saying. I do think that you only get to buy the equivalent of two-seater lawn mowers with your cash, which means you might have enough to go ahead and do just that.
If you know me, you are likely surprised that I don’t have the Clunker Program thoroughly researched and dissected because even if I don’t have a qualifying clunker, one that I can unload on Scary Harry, I have had and driven my share of clunkers.
It is partly my own fault. I seem to be the only one in my family who considers that a car is a means of conveyance—a way to get to the grocery store and back again. Maybe you could use it to get to the ball game or the bank, too.
But my family members have collectively and separately held the mistaken idea that cars are for other things. Some of them think that the purpose of a car is to enhance your social position. Some think that a car is for saving. (Using it will only put mileage, scratches or dents on it.) And others think that cars are for fixing up, whether they run, or will ever run, or not.
I’m all for fixing a car if it doesn’t run or if it won’t pass inspection, but if it has a perfectly good black rubber steering wheel cover in it, I don’t see the point of putting on a new oak and chrome one.
Speaking of fixing cars, I’ve told Mr. B. many times that he should be in the auto parts business. The auto parts business is something I do know something about. I should. I have been sent to the parts store as many as five times for the same part. I know how the auto parts stores work. According to my calculations, it would cost about $1,364.000 to build a car from scratch using parts from the parts store. You might come out ahead buying the ingredients to make dinner at home, but don’t try it with a car.
One of the reasons, just one, that I have to go to the parts store so many times is that we look like we run a used car lot. (Don’t even think about unloading a clunker at the Butterbean car lot though.) Mr. B. belongs to the group of family members that thinks cars are for fixing up. Due to patriarchal authority, we have many cars that need fixing up.
We nearly got arrested once for abandoning the Duster. Well, it did look that bad, but it was only out of gas. We paid $50 for that car, and the officer told us we got took. Would we dust a Duster? No, we would fix it up.
Since we already have a fleet of lawn mowers (some of which run), I haven’t been thinking of trading in my SUV for one. Okay, I just now did a little research. My SUV does qualify, however by Butterbean standards it is hardly a clunker.
A clunker is a car that is so bad that it’s windshield wipers are falling off. We launched the left one into the Great Salt Lake once simply by turning them on. And speaking of wipers, I’ll bet that there have only been two cars in the state of Utah whose windshield wipers were activated by hitting a bump in the road, and we have owned both of them.
It takes two good men and a pipe wrench to open the windows in the pickup, but we don’t roll them up very often because when we do, the air pressure in the cab begins to decrease in spite of the fact that we have never yet gotten off the ground.
Now, I know that wipers and windows do not a clunker make, but neither do they a lawn mower make. And in the what-goes-around department, trading in for one does not a deal make either. It’s like throwing money out one car window and hauling it in the another. You are going to lose some along the way.
There is still the issue of what they do with the traded-in clunkers. I read that they run them on a solution that seizes the engine. I also heard that they are crushed and sold as scrap metal. Either way, the Butterbean car fixer-uppers are quite alarmed. What a waste of fixable cars.
So, if your car is going to qualify for the program, it has to be a gas guzzler, over 18 mpg combined city/highway, whatever that is; it has to run; and it has to have been manufactured after 1983.
Sounds like a perfectly good fixer-upper to me.
Oh, what a ride!
After a long respite from going “up to the lake” to engage in that variety of water sports that requires a boat and a tow rope, I found myself doing just that today. The sky was clear, the sun was merciless, and getting wet didn’t seem like such an improbability after all, at least not for everyone else.
Those tube toys which resemble tire inner tubes, and which are pulled behind a ski boat were probably invented so that more people could have more fun. You don’t have to be able to balance on a slalom ski, or two skis, or get up on the wake board to be able to ride behind a boat on something. You just have to be able to get on and hang on.
All kinds of people are able to enjoy the sensation of air travel, even if they have no physical prowess whatsoever.
However, I think that when the tube gets loaded up and pulled along, the people who have the most fun are the observers who get to watch the riders from inside the boat. The tubes that are made for two riders seem to offer the most entertainment.
I watched two skinny twelve- or thirteen-year old boys get the ride of their lives today. I, in turn, had a laugh worth driving all the way up to the lake for. Two skinny boys don’t weigh the tube down much so it sits up high in the water. They sit a little higher yet, even though they try to spread out like syrup on a pancake.
The driver of the boat eases them into the ride gradually building up speed, and just when the “tubers” think they have mastered the sport and can let go of the handles and stand up or something, the skipper rises to the challenge and begins to take them down a notch or two.
Incidentally, he considers it his responsibility to thoroughly dunk the boys, so he executes a few high-speed loop-the-loops and S-curves embellished by sudden variations in speed in order to give them a good ride before he does. Pretty soon the boys are bouncing around like popping corn, with arms and legs flailing and projecting out of the pile in all directions.
They start out side by side, but soon aligning themselves properly becomes impossible. Boy 1 bounces on top of Boy 2 who is flailing a free arm behind his head trying to clear him off. In a second, Boy 2 is on top of Boy 1 who is trying to extricate himself from a wicked Half Nelson while struggling to keep his legs on the mat and hang onto the grips.
Then the boat’s “slingshot” maneuver has them both clinging to the uphill side of the tube with their legs fishtailing out behind them. A sudden change in speed and direction leaves it terribly off-centered, and its empty side bobs up out of the water.
The tubers execute a disjointed uphill crabwalk as soon as they feel the boat turn the other way, but not in time to stabilize the tube, which rises out of the water and flips over. Boy 1 is launched over the top of Boy 2 who is ejected at a lower altitude and is slowed by rhythmic skipping over the water like a flat rock, getting introduced to the phenomenon of surface tension outside of science class.
It was a good ride, with the boys trading places on the tube a total of three times.
Just as comical is watching the tube loaded up with a much bigger rider on one side and a light-weight on the other. (It’s kind of like me sleeping in bed with Mr. B.) The lighter rider has all kinds of trouble keeping to his side of the tube. It is largely irrelevant though because soon the tube will be tipped over anyway.
What a tough bunch of kids! Might as well put them through the wringer. All of those dunked doughnuts remind me of why I wasn’t sure about getting in the water in the first place.
Those tube toys which resemble tire inner tubes, and which are pulled behind a ski boat were probably invented so that more people could have more fun. You don’t have to be able to balance on a slalom ski, or two skis, or get up on the wake board to be able to ride behind a boat on something. You just have to be able to get on and hang on.
All kinds of people are able to enjoy the sensation of air travel, even if they have no physical prowess whatsoever.
However, I think that when the tube gets loaded up and pulled along, the people who have the most fun are the observers who get to watch the riders from inside the boat. The tubes that are made for two riders seem to offer the most entertainment.
I watched two skinny twelve- or thirteen-year old boys get the ride of their lives today. I, in turn, had a laugh worth driving all the way up to the lake for. Two skinny boys don’t weigh the tube down much so it sits up high in the water. They sit a little higher yet, even though they try to spread out like syrup on a pancake.
The driver of the boat eases them into the ride gradually building up speed, and just when the “tubers” think they have mastered the sport and can let go of the handles and stand up or something, the skipper rises to the challenge and begins to take them down a notch or two.
Incidentally, he considers it his responsibility to thoroughly dunk the boys, so he executes a few high-speed loop-the-loops and S-curves embellished by sudden variations in speed in order to give them a good ride before he does. Pretty soon the boys are bouncing around like popping corn, with arms and legs flailing and projecting out of the pile in all directions.
They start out side by side, but soon aligning themselves properly becomes impossible. Boy 1 bounces on top of Boy 2 who is flailing a free arm behind his head trying to clear him off. In a second, Boy 2 is on top of Boy 1 who is trying to extricate himself from a wicked Half Nelson while struggling to keep his legs on the mat and hang onto the grips.
Then the boat’s “slingshot” maneuver has them both clinging to the uphill side of the tube with their legs fishtailing out behind them. A sudden change in speed and direction leaves it terribly off-centered, and its empty side bobs up out of the water.
The tubers execute a disjointed uphill crabwalk as soon as they feel the boat turn the other way, but not in time to stabilize the tube, which rises out of the water and flips over. Boy 1 is launched over the top of Boy 2 who is ejected at a lower altitude and is slowed by rhythmic skipping over the water like a flat rock, getting introduced to the phenomenon of surface tension outside of science class.
It was a good ride, with the boys trading places on the tube a total of three times.
Just as comical is watching the tube loaded up with a much bigger rider on one side and a light-weight on the other. (It’s kind of like me sleeping in bed with Mr. B.) The lighter rider has all kinds of trouble keeping to his side of the tube. It is largely irrelevant though because soon the tube will be tipped over anyway.
What a tough bunch of kids! Might as well put them through the wringer. All of those dunked doughnuts remind me of why I wasn’t sure about getting in the water in the first place.
Safe haven for all God's creatures
Safe haven for all God’s creatures
Knowing how we in this part of the country are all partial to keeping animals—horses, dogs, cats, mice, etc. I thought I would tell you the story of our one and only cat. We were able to keep that cat for about a day and a half.
Needless to say, we have plenty of mice out here in the hinterlands, and we needed a cat—or better mousetraps. Unfortunately our dog Steve was pretty sure that we didn’t need a cat. Actually he was pretty sure we didn’t need any animals on the place except for him. He kept the deer, the wild turkeys and the neighbors at bay whenever they passed too close to what he considered the boundaries of our, or maybe his, domain.
In spite of Steve’s antipathy toward extraneous animals (except of course for mice), when an estranged neighbor offered to give us an offspring of her mama cat which was an excellent mouser, it took only a small bribe to get us to take the little thing.
I must further explain that we happily negotiated on the amount of the bribe because we had just spent a rugged couple of weeks characterized by elevated mouse-in-the-house sightings with me passing a good part of that time standing on a chair. Where was Steve when mice were prowling around the perimeter?
Steve also neglected to keep the other natural rodent predators, besides cats, out of the house. Yes, I could be found standing on the dining table when a pretentious snake came inside, ostensibly looking for dinner. (He probably thought he had found the sushi bar.) That is another story, but we came down considerably from our asking price when I came down from the table.
True to form, Steve didn’t take to the cat. One or the other of them had to be penned up, and Steve knew he had seniority. Whenever we tried to encourage the two natural enemies to be friends, somebody got scratched or bit. Usually me. The cat soon learned to stay away from the dog. At least she could run inside the proverbial mouse hole when Steve happened to notice her.
We didn’t see her much that Saturday. She came down from a tree or from under the car when she got hungry.
The next day being Sunday with church on the docket, no one paid much attention to either the cat or the dog. Everyone was too busy finding his shoes or ironing his clothes to worry about a couple of animals that were outside and therefore out of mind.
When Mr. B. said the car was leaving, with or without all of us, we piled in and off we went down the canyon to the church, 15 miles away.
As usual, we arrived at the church with negative three minutes to spare so we hustled inside. Back at home after church, someone, namely me, wondered where the cat had gone. No one had seen her all day. We called her and coaxed her. We shut Steve in his doghouse to see whether that would precipitate her appearance, but she had seemingly vanished.
We got the family together and held a conference. Where was the last place the cat had been seen? And the last time?
“The last time I saw her, she was jumping down from on top of the spare tire under the car.--“
“Is that where she was hiding when she went under the car? Someone see if that’s where she is now.”
No cat.
Youngest child: “I saw a cat that looked like her down at the church.”
“What?”
Child two: “So did I. ”
Ding-a ling-a-ling.
“Why didn’t you say so? Where at the church?”
“She was running fast toward the field next to the parking lot. Oh-oh.”
---We went back to try to find her, but no cat. I just hope the neighbor who gave her to us didn’t find her there.
Knowing how we in this part of the country are all partial to keeping animals—horses, dogs, cats, mice, etc. I thought I would tell you the story of our one and only cat. We were able to keep that cat for about a day and a half.
Needless to say, we have plenty of mice out here in the hinterlands, and we needed a cat—or better mousetraps. Unfortunately our dog Steve was pretty sure that we didn’t need a cat. Actually he was pretty sure we didn’t need any animals on the place except for him. He kept the deer, the wild turkeys and the neighbors at bay whenever they passed too close to what he considered the boundaries of our, or maybe his, domain.
In spite of Steve’s antipathy toward extraneous animals (except of course for mice), when an estranged neighbor offered to give us an offspring of her mama cat which was an excellent mouser, it took only a small bribe to get us to take the little thing.
I must further explain that we happily negotiated on the amount of the bribe because we had just spent a rugged couple of weeks characterized by elevated mouse-in-the-house sightings with me passing a good part of that time standing on a chair. Where was Steve when mice were prowling around the perimeter?
Steve also neglected to keep the other natural rodent predators, besides cats, out of the house. Yes, I could be found standing on the dining table when a pretentious snake came inside, ostensibly looking for dinner. (He probably thought he had found the sushi bar.) That is another story, but we came down considerably from our asking price when I came down from the table.
True to form, Steve didn’t take to the cat. One or the other of them had to be penned up, and Steve knew he had seniority. Whenever we tried to encourage the two natural enemies to be friends, somebody got scratched or bit. Usually me. The cat soon learned to stay away from the dog. At least she could run inside the proverbial mouse hole when Steve happened to notice her.
We didn’t see her much that Saturday. She came down from a tree or from under the car when she got hungry.
The next day being Sunday with church on the docket, no one paid much attention to either the cat or the dog. Everyone was too busy finding his shoes or ironing his clothes to worry about a couple of animals that were outside and therefore out of mind.
When Mr. B. said the car was leaving, with or without all of us, we piled in and off we went down the canyon to the church, 15 miles away.
As usual, we arrived at the church with negative three minutes to spare so we hustled inside. Back at home after church, someone, namely me, wondered where the cat had gone. No one had seen her all day. We called her and coaxed her. We shut Steve in his doghouse to see whether that would precipitate her appearance, but she had seemingly vanished.
We got the family together and held a conference. Where was the last place the cat had been seen? And the last time?
“The last time I saw her, she was jumping down from on top of the spare tire under the car.--“
“Is that where she was hiding when she went under the car? Someone see if that’s where she is now.”
No cat.
Youngest child: “I saw a cat that looked like her down at the church.”
“What?”
Child two: “So did I. ”
Ding-a ling-a-ling.
“Why didn’t you say so? Where at the church?”
“She was running fast toward the field next to the parking lot. Oh-oh.”
---We went back to try to find her, but no cat. I just hope the neighbor who gave her to us didn’t find her there.
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