What have we been missing....?

My wife, dog and I just returned from a relaxing, 3 day trip where we were fortunate enough to stay at the “Hidden Rest Cabins,” Pinetop, Arizona. We were looking for a break from everything, work, the summer heat in the desert (still in the high 90’s), and just a break from the routine. 

We had also been out of the house about a month ago for a couple of nights, staying at a local place, The Smoke Tree Resort, just down the road from our house. Now we’re not jet setting or spending a fortune on travel. What’s unique and great about these places is that both of them are family owned and maintained, neither one is a huge property, and both have been in existence since the 1950”s. Here’s the kicker, neither one of them was over $80 s night!

But that isn’t today’s story, (but will be later ones).  A couple of years ago we, like many others, realized that we were paying a crazy amount of money to Cable TV, for shows we had no interest in watching, as a matter of fact in spite of the number of channels available, we were having trouble finding anything to watch, so we cut the cable cord and went with Netflix. Now we watch what we want, when we want, with the surprise benefit of being able to watch a 60 minute show in 42 minutes…can’t beat it.

What I didn’t realize we were missing, till we stayed in a couple of places with cable, was, Infomercials! Holy Cow!  I had no idea what we have been missing!  I had no idea that life could be so easy. We can be thinner, stronger, more stylish, cook with three types of ovens, make crazy shakes, vacuum the rug right off the floor, dress stylishly, have the latest computer, get a knife set that will replace everything including my axe, light the exterior of the house with lasers and…well, I’m running our of breath.

Since most of these products come with a complete, money back guarantee and free return shipping, I think a realistic strategy is to order a different product one at a time, use it till just before the expiration period and then return it. Seems pretty sound to me, and I’ll be improving my life! And doing if for free!

It seems the hardest part of making a decision on what to buy is the timing, so many of the offers end AT THE END OF THE BROADCAST! 

We’re going to have to check into a hotel again soon, I feel the need for a Ninja Coffee Maker creeping up on me.

Cutting the Lawn

There’s nothing like the smell of a fresh cut lawn.  If you grew up in the Midwest it’s an aroma that brings back a lot of memories. Unfortunately there is only one way to get the smell of fresh cut grass and that is with the lawnmower.

When we moved to Arizona in 1971, my father and I rejoiced in the concept of “desert landscaping.”  He vowed to never cut a lawn again and I’m pretty sure he kept that vow to his final day.  I too made that promise to myself, but with different results.

When I graduated from high school, with no real plans for the foreseeable future, I jumped at the offer of a job that a friend of mine told me about. He had gone to work for a landscaping company, they needed more help and were paying the crazy amount of $2.50 an hour, (this was 1974).  So, it was off to work I went.

My first day on the job was tough, up early, working in the summer sun in Phoenix. Not being overly familiar with many plants I spent most of my morning pulling up what I thought were weeds, till the foreman showed up and informed me that I had been pulling up the groundcover they had recently planted. Lesson learned, I began to develop a discerning eye.

Summer moved on and I became skilled at digging holes, spreading decomposed granite, staking and tying up newly planted trees, etc. There was talk about maybe making me a supervisor!

On all of our large jobs we did 90 days of maintenance. One day my friend who had gotten me the job, David, and I were sent to do the maintenance on one of our large recent jobs, a long greenbelt. It was a good gig, they trusted the two of us to be on our own. I was moving up in the world at the age of 17!

We finished up the work, loaded the cut grass in the back of the truck and loaded our tools into the trailer. Riding lawnmower, hand mowers, rakes, edgers, gas cans, the various tools of the trade, and headed to the freeway and back to the yard. It was Friday afternoon and we were done for the week.

Cruising down the Black Canyon Freeway at 2:30 in the afternoon, ready for the weekend I looked in the rearview mirror. There as plain as day was our riding lawnmower taking a bounce off the freeway, my reaction was immediate and responsible.

“Hey David, did you lock the gate on the trailer?”
“No, I thought you did.”

“S*#T!”

We pulled over, pushed the faintly recognizable mower to the side and saw that we were also missing two push mowers.  Right about that time I saw the red lights coming up behind us. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to fake my way out of this one.

The officers were helpful, after receiving a  handful of tickets they followed us back down the road till we found one of our mowers, the other seemed to have disappeared completely.

We called the yard and told them that we had a slight problem on the way back, but everyone was alright and we would be back soon.  I’ve been met with some cold stares and silence before, but man that still stands out in my mind as a memorable day.

Next Monday, we were incredibly still employed. They gave us a truck, about a thousand feet of rubber hose and three thousand feed of wire and sent us to a park to wire up newly planted trees. A couple of the foreman did make stops out that day to see how we were doing.

Needles to say my landscaping career ended soon after that.  But, I did cut the lawn today.

Summer Begins

I know that it isn’t the “official” beginning of summer, but June has established itself and it looks like we’re going to be hitting about 107 today, close enough to call it a start.  Another major indicator of it being the beginning of summer is I just finished watching “Stand by Me,” a classic summer movie.

My guess is most guys my age, which is to say those of us who grew up with The Beatles, Space Food Sticks, Captain Crunch, bell bottoms, Nehru Jackets and expressions like far out, cool, and groovy, can watch this movie and be brought back to the age of 12 or so. Give or take. 

Now I didn’t grow up in the fifties, in a rural town in Maine, or Oregon, pretty far from it to be precise, but, the experience is there, the friends that we had in those years before life came barreling at us a little faster and a little harder.

We were still riding our bikes with our fishing poles to Izaak Walton Park, or Wampum Lake, where we would do battle with Bluegill and Crappie. The ride to Wampum Lake was a little hairy, going around the backside of the Thornton Quarry, a little intimidated by the size and depth of it. Izaak Walton Park had better trails to ride on our Stingrays, but Wampum was better for fishing.

There was also hanging out at the Lion’s Club Pool. An all summer pass at that time was about $35 and with that minimal purchase our folks would know where we were all day.  We’d spend the day climbing the high-dive and perfected our cannon balls, jack-knives and inevitable belly-flops.

Another hobby that got extra attention in the summer was souping up our HO slot cars, changing types of tires, springs and bushings for more speed. It was time to get new sections of track, banked curves and squeeze lanes, and then dream up new layouts.

One friend had a great A-Frame fort in his back yard that included a loft. This thing would withstand any summer storms the Chicago area threw at it. Spending the night in the fort pretty much consisted of roaming the neighborhood all night, smoking corn-cob pipes. 

Summer is different now, in some ways.  Fortunately the magic is still there when I look for it.  The last sentence in “Stand by Me is, I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?

I’m fortunate; I still have a couple of those friends.

Rockin' the House

Thursday night at our house is a different kind of night for us (Hobie and I).  On Thursdays my wife gets together with one of her sisters for a few hours, leaving the dog and I to our own devices. 

Tonight’s example, I’ve got coffee brewing in the Chemex and Elk Pot Roast going in the oven.  Now I’m not going to put on a fur suit and go running around the neighborhood with a spear or anything, but we’ve got a definite routine for these Thursday evenings.

Once dinner is done and the dishes are tossed out, it’s off to the living room for our special evening. The living room is carpeted, with a large soft couch and easy chair. It’s got the old popcorn ceiling, which is great for acoustics. It’s also home to …not a big screen TV, or any other visual device, but, the dreaded stereo.  I’ve been hearing “you gotta turn that damn thing down,” since I was 16.

Amp, receiver, CD Player (there is a turntable, however we’re not fully functional with vinyl yet, but one of these days), and a beautiful set of original, reconditioned, full size Advent speakers. 

Thursday nights Frank Zappa, Mountain, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Humble Pie, The Beatles, Chicago, Stephen Stills, The Allman Brothers, Neil Young, Jerry Jeff Walker, Waylon Jennings, The Grateful Dead, Thursday nights they take over the living room, they play loud and long and I sing along and play along with them. Hobie howls!

I kind of wish that when I was a kid, that my parents had gotten me guitar lessons instead of the accordion. I’m learning to play the guitar on my own these days,  but, I could have been light years ahead. There has never been too much of a demand for accordion players, Polka bands and so forth. Weird Al Yankovich was able to carve out a niche, but that’s about it. I think Lawrence Welk may have played the accordion as well.

In 5^th grade I moved from accordion to trombone, I don’t know why. Maybe because the school band didn’t have a need for an accordion player, and the trumpet section was already full.  So, I invested 5 or 6 years into the trombone, again, maybe not the wisest choice. But, it was fun and I was a pretty mean trombone player, 1^st Chair, Second Trombone to those of you in the know.

One of my brother-in-laws and I have been getting together and playing music the past few years, (guitar, not accordion or trombone), and it’s what it’s supposed to be, fun.

Still, once I crank up the old stereo and get going, there is always the thought....if it had only been the guitar….

Rock on everyone! Happy Thursday.

What's that up there?

Last week’s Blood Moon, officially known as a partial lunar eclipse was pretty cool, which oddly is officially known as, pretty cool. There is synchronicity to that isn’t there? 

To put the Blood Moon in its place, there weren’t any earth ending events, no werewolves or vampires, not even much howling by the coyotes. It seems that it is simply what it was, a partial lunar eclipse.

What’s interesting, and sad in some aspects, is it’s been 43 years since Apollo 17 made the last manned lunar landing.  A lot of people around today weren’t even born the last time that happened. Kind of like LP albums, dial phones, slide rules, the internet, manners (oops, that was some kind of a psychological slip), which have all disappeared.

Growing up the entire space program was an incredible story to see unfold, being a kid at the time made it all the more exciting. In 1961 President Kennedy made the commitment to landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. I’m sure most people thought he was crazy, but by the next year we had our first flight.

July 20, 1969 Apollo 11 landed on the moon!  Eight years from a speech to reality.  Here’s how cool the entire deal was. That summer I was at Camp Betz, Michigan, for Boy Scout summer camp. Bill Steiner, (we called him Mr. Steiner), rigged up some car batteries and who knows what else, to power a portable black and white TV so that we could watch the landing live.

 

There was a thrill in frequency of flights. Astronauts returning home were treated to ticker tape parades; 600 million watched the live landing. There was the tragedy of Apollo 1, which nearly derailed the entire space program. In spite of it and partially because of it, the Apollo program became even safer and better.

Apollo 13 is a true story and accurate movie. These guys did the nearly impossible, took a spacecraft that had exploded and got the astronauts home safe.

Next time you look up at the moon take a moment, we’ve been there.

Procrastination?

Webster’s Universal Unabridged Dictionary,  the hardbound, print copy, defines procrastination as:  1. to defer action; delay.  2. to put off till another time or day; defer; delay. (page 1147).

Writers Block: not in the dictionary…kind of makes me wonder.

Is it writers block?  Or procrastination?  It’s an experiment I’m conducting. I see by my mailbox and looking at my latest writing that folks have been eagerly awaiting a post since January. February, being a short month doesn’t seem to count for much. Sorry to those of you who have February birthdays. And, it’s dark an awful lot in February.

Truth be told, I can’t tell which it is and I’ve been doing yard work. We’ve got a lot of yard that needs a lot of work. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been working on the north 40. I have dreams of purchasing a small Massey Furguson Lawn tractor to help with the chores. Uncle Andy on the farm used Massey Ferguson’s.

We spent a lot of wonderful time at the farm when I was a kid. Uncle Andy was my godfather, not in the criminal sense, but in the family sense, but I digress, or is it procrastinate?  See,the actual dilemma in action!

 

I’ve also been playing the guitar and recording. I’m doing some vocals now. Since my bout with throat issues last year I’ve developed a new singing voice, kind of Kris Kristofferson, Tom Waits sounding.  It’s a pleasant change for me, as well as a nice change to once again have a voice.

Spring cleaning has jumped in as well. We’ve taken enough stuff to the thrift store to supply an emerging nation. Windows have been washed; walls are ready to be painted, as soon as we get the paint, (that’s not writers block).

It’s hard to write with this darn internet on all the time as well. I started looking up some punctuation rules, but somehow ended up reading about chemtrails. According to my study, there is a sinister purpose for our government spraying us with exotic, unknown chemicals. The sticking point on them is….why? 

I’ve got to look that up….see ya.

An American Original

It’s the time of year when things really start hopping in Scottsdale, Arizona, which at one time had the motto of, “The West’s Most Western Town.”  I believe that the new motto is more along the lines of “The West’s Most Silconed, Botoxed Town.”  That however, is another story for another time.

But I digress. Currently the Barrett-Jackson auto auction is going on. Barrett-Jackson started in the early “70’s, as an auction for collectible cars. That got me to thinking about the vehicles I’ve had in my life

A quick rundown shows that of the 9 vehicles I’ve owned since I’ve been driving, 7 of them have been, yep, Pickup Trucks!  Pickups are an American original, the first pickup was the Ford Model T, offered for $281, April 25, 1925, in black, been a bit of a change since then.

I learned to drive in a pickup on Uncle Andy’s farm, in Michigan, this goes back to the days of “three on a tree” and if you know what that is, we’re from the same generation. If you don’t, ask some guy with white hair (silver in my case). 

Prior to learning to drive in the fields, we looked forward to going to the farm and being able to ride around in the back of the truck, sitting on a bale of hay. One time, with the tailgate down, we hit a bump so hard my little brother went bouncing out the back. Gives me pause to wonder on that one.

Pictured here is one of my favorites, a ’59 Dodge; I wish I still had that one. It had a flat-head 6, AM radio with an FM converter, Easy Rider Rifle Rack, four on the floor, and I could get it going close to 60 heading down hill. It wasn’t built for speed or beauty, but it got me around, it was a great truck for cruising around and exploring the desert.

There’s a certain magic to having a truck, kind of a built in freedom. In the back of your mind is always the thought that, if necessary, you could throw everything you needed in the back and still be fine. Put a shell on the back and you’ve got yourself a mobile house.

You can pull things, push things, move things, put a couple of bean bag chairs in the back and they’re great at the drive-in picture show.

Plus, pickups are just plain cool. Everyone needs to own one awesome truck in their life. Us lucky ones get a whole succession of them.