DIE, YOU DIRTY DOG! DIE!

Blog number fifty-six                                                                      Oct 31 2006

If you find this entry morose, I'm sorry.  It is not meant to be.  It is meant to be an assurance that existence is a serene sacred blessing.  It is meant to be an assurance that there are benevolences cleverly disguised as cruelty.

When I was seven years old I stepped off into a deep hole in a water-filled gravel pit and I didn't know how to swim.  The best I could do was to continually push my hands upwards and bring them down to my sides -- over and over.  My head never broke the surface but evidently my struggles brought the attention of a young girl who grabbed me by the hair and pulled me out.

I did not thank her.  I never spoke to her.  I didn't even look at her.  I was embarrassed.  I simply walked to the car where my mother and Aunt Aunie were waiting for me, climbed into back seat and off we went.

While I was underwater I kept trying to wake up.  I thought I was having a nightmare.  At some point I realized I wasn't drowning right because no bubbles were coming from my mouth like I had seen in the movies.  So in order to do it right, I opened my mouth, tilted my face up towards the surface, relaxed with my arms hanging backwards behind me and sank, letting water run down my throat like chugging beer, creating the desired bubbles.  After doing that for a while, I resumed by fruitless churning of the water above me until the girl grabbed my hair.

In the days after that I thought about that experience constantly and this was when I began to experience intense fear.  Not during the ordeal, but afterwards.  A creation of Mind, you see. 

It was at about this time that I had to get to bed before my siblings so that I could go to sleep with the light on.  I slept with my hand over my heart so I could be assured my heart didn't stop beating without my knowledge.  I saw ghosts behind every door at night, especially in the closet next to our bedroom.  My father once took me in there with a flashlight and said, "See?  There's nothing in here."

"Yeah, NOW there isn't," I thought, "big deal.  But just wait 'til you leave."

My fear led me to read all I could on the topic of death or dying and I used to ask new acquaintances if they had ever almost died and if they said yes, I would ask them what it was like.  None of them nor I, had ever felt any fear or pain.  The fear sat in later when we had time to think about it.

I think that maybe while you are dying, there's too much else going on to be thinking about abstractions such as fear or pain.  These things come if you don't die.

I talked to one guy who had got caught in an undertow, and seemingly, from outside his body, a little above and behind, he knew his body was going to take a breath and he would die.  His head broke the surface just as his body took a breath.

I asked him if anything was beautiful, this being reported by all the near victims in the books I had read.

He said, "There wasn't anything to see.  Everything was black. All I could see was black."

I asked him again if anything was beautiful, thinking of the occasional report of beautiful music or peacefulness.  He started to shake his head, "No," again, but then he stopped and got a thoughtful look on his face -- as if he were remembering the incident, and then a look of wonderment as he announced, "Yeah! There WAS something beautiful.  The black!  It was beautiful!"

A man being mauled by a lion, a man falling from rock to rock down a mountain, a man flying through the air after being tossed from his smashed automobile -- each viewing the incident dispassionately amidst vividly beautiful lights and colors in a peaceful silence, as if time had stopped.  Beauty, peace, entertainment.  Dying sounds like it might be more enjoyable than we've been led to believe.

Death is hated and feared not because of what it is -- a natural and necessary blessing, but because of what it takes from us -- our loved ones.  And what it gives us -- sorrow.  Selfishness then.  Other people's deaths affects us personally and negatively.

Every one of us is going to die.  What does it matter to the one who dies, when that happens?  What do the dead care about time spent living?   

Life insists upon suffering being a part of it. Life and suffering, the only wedded couple that will never divorce.  Buy one, get the other free.

I don't understand people who accept the miraculousness of being born a human once, but firmly believe it cannot happen twice.  And if you do believe you will be born, die, born, die, forever, what's the problem with one death?

Or if you are only born once and die once, you go to heaven and live forever there.  Or to hell, and shame on you for that.  It's what you deserve.  What's the problem?

Or you are your body (despite all the evidence against that nonsense) and you die once and the worms eat you and that's it.  What's the problem there?  You become an inert stone.  Does a stone regret death?

No matter how you look at it, death is a certainty that cannot be avoided.  If it's horrible, it'll happen.  If it's a blessing, it'll happen.  Lighten up.

It is a common dictum of Eastern Philosophers that one should ponder on one's own death daily.  That way one doesn't get so torn up when one sees one's life beginning to come to an end.

I once read that if a person fears death, they should look at it and see if it is death they fear, or dying. 

I looked and found that I feared dying.  I looked to see why I feared dying and found out that I was afraid I was going to be afraid when I was dying.  I feared fear. 

Thank God we'll all know the truth about death in just a few years. 

Until then, lighten up.

BE GRATEFUL TO THE TWENTY PERCENT

Blog number fifty-five                                                                      Oct 30 2006

I just finished reading an essay in the New Yorker by Robert Stone under the subsection, "Life During Wartime," entitled, "Antarctica, 1958."

Okay.  What war are we talking about in 1958?  The Korean War is over by five years, The Vietnam War did not officially begun until 1962 - give or take four or five years.  So if this happened during wartime, it happened right after the French left Vietnam.  And the essay takes place in Antarctica.  Seems to me to be a stretch to make this vignette into a wartime story, but let's give them that.  It's not that important.  Poetic license, one might say.  But what IS important, at least to me, is that it is a story about nothing.  They see a flock of penguins off in the distance, think it a ship, realize it isn't, beginning and end of story. 

But the story uses excellent writing skills, you see. 

The only essay I have ever read in the New Yorker that I liked was one by David Sadaris and that was because it was humorous.  It had a theme, you see.  A purpose.  Most stories in the New Yorker do not have the function of purpose outside the words themselves.  These essays are like abstract paintings -- pretty, but meaningless.

The essay started me to pondering the idea that the New Yorker magazine has a reputation with people who are supposedly people of discernment and influence in the world of writing. 

The literati. 

The written word experts. 

The written word authority. 

From pondering this,  I beganpondering the field of experts and authorities in general that I have run across in my life's experiences.

I like to ponder.

Beats working.

I took a fiction writing class once and the Prof - the expert, the authority, used to rave about this one student's writing.  The guy used flowery words in artistic ways, but he never said anything.  Evidently Teach couldn't see that, being mesmerized by the writing --like New Yorker editors seem to be.

Come a time when we were to try our hand at writing a fiction story and this guy came up with an obvious knockoff of The Wizard of Oz.  I mean, obvious.  I KNEW he couldn't write a story, just from listening to him read what he did write.  Teach didn't know he couldn't write.  Teach praised everything the guy wrote.  The student had the explanation that he "just couldn't think of anything."  Well, duh!  Writing a story is more than just alliterations.

I used to listen to two funny radio personalities in Sacramento.  One day they were talking about a list of the hundred funniest movies and in the course of this they both agreed that "Singing In The Rain" was the funniest movie ever. 

I took these two guys to be experts -- to be authorities on humor until I heard them say that.  "Singing In The Rain" was a musical -- not a comedy.  There was a little sophomoric humor in it, but I wouldn't call it a funny movie.  And most certainly not the funniest movie ever.

And the TV series, "Sex In The City."  That series got awards for being the best comedy on television.  I watched that series for a year and not once did I ever even giggle.  The show is nothing more than an exercise to see how many different kinds of sexual activity could be portrayed.  It definitely is not a comedy.  It's simulated soft porn at best.  It's not even as funny as "Singing In The Rain."

One of the best examples of the power of authority I ever heard came from a radio call-in talk show host.  A caller would say, "well, St. Aquinas said..."  And the host would come back with what some other authority had said, and it went on like that for a while until one caller said, "Before there were religions, there was God."

The host immediately wanted to know who said that.

The caller, "uh ah, well... I did."

The host, you could tell was at a loss for a while and then said hesitantly, "well.... I guess you could say that."  Giving him permission.

You see, the host was looking for an authority.  He couldn't see for himself whether the statement was true or not.  He needed an authority to tell him.  Where he thought an authority would find the idea, I don't know.  In some text book I guess.

There is a story about a man in the desert dying of thirst that refuses a cup of water offered him because "the cup is rusty."

The water stands for truth and the rusty cup symbolizes one who is not an accepted authority.

Now this authority-expert thing is not all cut and dried.  There are thousands of people who see Frank Sinatra as one of the world's greatest singers and I think except for one song, he is horrible.  I can't believe that all those thousands could be mistaken.  There must be something in his singing that I miss.

At one time, until I was in my late twenties, I couldn't stand oysters or asparagus or avocado.  Now I love all three and I realize that the very same taste and texture that used to disgust me I now find delicious.  The very same flavor and texture.  So Sinatra has something that tastes good to many but not to me.  Those two radio hosts that thought "Singing In the Rain" to be the funniest ever.  Are they wrong?  Who's to say?

Are those stories in the New Yorker really as I see them or is there something I am missing -- that a story isn't at all necessary when telling a story?  This is true of music.  The story isn't all that necessary in a song, even though it is telling a story.

When I was doing graduate work in Experimental Psychology we were to write up our finished experiments with ten references for each of our papers.  We would get these references from something called the Psych Abstracts - a set of books of all the published work in psychology -- experiments, studies and the like.

If I was trying to find out how chickens picked food from pebbles so quickly, I would just find a mention of a study involving chickens as, "In the 1935 study by Wilkenson and Brady, it was found that chickens favored corn over oat grain."

What that had to do with my study wasn't important evidently.  We were learning to write up experiments.

One study that I found in the Psych Abstracts showed that in over thirty percent of all psychology experiments, the statistics shown were in error by a large degree.  Something like ten percent of them actually showed a result different from the one declared.

I told that to a friend of mine and he said that is probably true in the soft sciences, but not in the hard sciences such as physics and biology. 

I sure hope so.

Our first homework in this experimental psychology class was to go to the zoo, pick out an animal and write down exactly what the animal did, and make sure not to assign any human behavior onto the animal.  Anthropomorphism.  No-no.

So I did that.  "The bear sat down.  The bear looked to the left.  The bear put his right paw on his head" and so forth.  Never anything like, "The bear looked sad."

A day or two after we turned in our papers, I was in the room and the Prof began going over my paper with me and the Teaching Assistant wanted to know how I knew to write like I did. Did I get it out of a book? 

I got the idea that he had to learn not to anthropomorphize.  And found it very difficult.  For a first timer to get it immediately seemed to be beyond his ability to comprehend.  This student, going for his MA in Psychology, would supposedly someday be one of our respected Experimental Psychology authorities.

Behavioral Modification is a psychological method developed by B.F. Skinner that enables a change to take place in a person's behavior by giving negative or positive reinforcement for an action.  Put simply, if a person does an action you want to put a stop to, you punish him in some way every time he does it.  Or, you can reward him every time he does something else instead.

Now, Skinner vehemently declared that negative reinforcement is not permanent.  He gives the example of sheep held in a field by an electric fence.  If the fence ever becomes not electrified, as soon as the sheep find this out, they will escape.

So. Many people have paid big bucks and no doubt are still paying big bucks to quit smoking or drinking by having a small electric shock administered every time they smoke, or every time they take a drink.  Negative reinforcement.  What the creator of the discipline specifically declared to be a temporary fix at best.

The problem is that once the subject leaves the room in where they are being shocked, they can buy a pack of cigs and hit the bars.

And it is the graduates of Behavior Modification schools -- the Phd's and the M.A.s and even the B.A.s that are doing what the guru of Behavior Modification -- B.F. Skinner, explicitly told them wouldn't work.

And as we saw, even a little bit of reasoning will tell the discerning scientist that it won't work.

I was taking a class on dreams in a Clinical Psychology class and one day we got into a discussion about experiments to prove astral projection.  The instructor suggested that one experiment might be to hide something written up in the rafters of a building and if someone could tell what was on the paper without going up there, that would prove that he must have astrally projected. 

Now this guy had a doctorate in clinical psychology -- a scientist, you see.  I pointed out some fallacies with such an idea, but no one else in the class of six psych graduate students along with this Professor with a Ph.D. in Psychology saw anything wrong with a proof like that. 

I didn't push it very much, as I felt very embarrassed for them.  I liked them.  They were kinda like friends and I didn't want them to see that I thought they were kinda naive and dense.  But Damn!  What kind of therapists were they going to be with such sloppy reasoning?

We must never forget, when we have a tendency to believe what an authority in some field tries to tell us some "fact," that eighty percent of the people in any profession are incompetent in that profession.

I finally lost all interest in Experimental Psychology when I ran across a study done on whether first born and only children are more apt to become beauty parlor operators. Sheesh!

                            

A MISTAKE WAS MADE BECAUSE HE HAD A MISCONCEPTION ABOUT THE NATURE OF MISCONCEPTIONS.

Blog number fifty-four                                  Oct 27, 2006

Whenever I saw workmen using a jackhammer, I always thought that the one using the jackhammer was the supervisor and the ones standing around watching were the workmen.  I thought that because it looked like fun, using a jackhammer, and I noticed that all the fun jobs - driving the tractor or the truck, were always done by my father or my grandfather. It was only when I rented a jackhammer to break up some cement borders that I understood things are not always as they seem.

I picked out a sixty pounder, thinking it an odd description of a tool.  I thought it might have to do with force or energy or something  horsepower-like.  It doesn't.  It is how much the damn thing weighs, and why it is classed by weight became understandable after a few minutes of usage.

Another thing I thought about jack hammers was that the hard work came with the hammering of it - trying to hold it steady.  That's not true.  That'‘s the easy part.  You just hold it upright - probably do that with one finger.  The tool does all the work.  No, the hard part comes when you move it a few inches to another spot.  You have to lift it up, you see.  And when you lift sixty pounds every few minutes for hours at a time, it's like lifting free weights for hours at time. Makes your arms melt.

Those were supervisors and replacements standing around watching that man working a jackhammer.  Obviously.
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My wife and I were discussing things and at one point she said, "The Pope was a hotsy totsy Nazi.  Say that out loud for the full poetic effect.
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I was just daydreaming about when I was stationed at Mather and I got to thinking about the six B-25's that were stationed there when I first arrived in 1955. They are a beautiful bomber.  Twin vertical stabilizers on the tail, a small bomber.  Anyhow, they used to take off in the morning for practice bombing runs.  I saw one take off at night once and blue flames shot out the exhaust.  Very impressive.

One morning a couple of us saw them loading up practice bombs for their morning bombing runs and we volunteered to help them load up.  Well, I was sitting here daydreaming about that and it suddenly struck me.  Why were they practicing bombing runs with obsolete B-25s in 1955-56?  Who were they going to bomb for real?  Were they to train some South American pilots for their South American purposes?

I wish I had thought of it back then and asked why were they doing what they were doing and what it was that they were doing and if they had any spare change.                                              

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One morning a crowd was gather around a t-29.  There was a swarm of bees on the tip of the right wing.  Discussions were going on about how they could be dispersed so the aircraft could take off.  Finally, above the chatter could be heard the voice of reason, "Leave them alone.  When the aircraft takes off, they'll be blown away."

Duh.

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Underneath our fatigues we all wore tee shirts.  Mandatory.  Come time to get flu shots and a handwritten sign in the clinic said, "Please do not remove fatigue shirts.  We do not want airmen standing around with tee shirts visible to female dependents."  Makes you want to cry, doesn't it?

That was the first and only year that sign went up.

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When you go to any management training anywhere, one of the main things you are always told is that when you take over as a new manager, make sure you wait long enough to find out what is going on and to get a feel for the place before you start making changes that might upset and/or infuriate the employees.  Sound advice, no?

Every couple of years we would get a new Chief of Maintenance and ALWAYS, within days, changes would be made that would make certain parts of our jobs impossible to accomplish.

One year we got orders via a new Chief of Maintenance that the only persons to call in work orders were the crew chiefs.  Now, a crew chief's main job was to take out the trash and call for fuel and towing and to run up the engines, checking them out, taxiing the aircraft if need be.  They had no training whatsoever in electronics or structure repair.  How could they know what needed repairing from reading the writeups?  They couldn't. 

So that morning we all sat around waiting for the light to dawn in the Chief's head so that he would make everything go back to the way it was always done.  That happened about time for lunch - 1100.

Where were his advisors in all this?  Were they new too?  Or never did  understand the operations the working men did?  Probably that.

I think I told you this next story once, but I'll tell it again just in case, because it points up my theory that they never understood what we did.

We used to have to come in on the weekends whenever the C model T-29's were flying, in case they had Bomb/Nav problems.  The fact that they were not Bomb/Nav flights meant that they never had Bomb/Nav writeups and they never would and therefore our weekends were often messed up for no reason at all.

We complained to our supervisors, who knew the problem, but they said they couldn't do anything, it was the Chief'scall and if he wanted us there , we would be there.

One Saturday I  met a Lieutenant in the hall and I told him of the idiocy of our working on week ends when none of our equipment was being used.  He said, "Well, I'm sure the General (Of the base) knows what is going on."  I told the Lieutenant, "How would he know?  Nobody has told him.  You didn't know until I told you."  That was the last time we had to work week ends.

Fact-finders always go to the supervisors to find out what is going on instead of to where the answers really lie - with the peons doing the actual work. I have seen that happen time and again
You wanna find out if there is mud in the bottom of the ditch?  Ask the guy doing the digging, not the supervisor sitting in his office.

I think we win our wars because of a very few men that know what they are doing, and not because everyone knows what they are doing.  I love humanity, but does it have to be composed of so many idiots?

IMAGES. ARE THEY MERELY THIRD EYE INHABITANTS?

Blog number fifty-three                                        Oct 26, 2006

A few years back, when I was walking the streets of Sacramento in my bib overalls, black hat and barefoot, there existed a local newspaper called, "The Suttertown News." The owner/publisher/reporter was a local Midtown guy, often seen on his daily newspaper duty rounds. We would sometimes wind up at the same coffee houses.

One morning, reading his paper, I see a news article about a guy wearing bib overalls, barefoot, who came into the Suttertown Newspaper office ranting something about the "king of Jupiter’s imminent arrival and to beware.

Now, I knew right away that that wasn’t me that did that. And who else in Midtown dressed in bib overalls? No one that I knew. What adult - or child above the age of ten for that matter, went barefoot in the city? None that I knew. So what the hell was the owner/publisher/reporter doing putting something like that in his paper? What gripe did he have against me? I never talked to the guy. Said , "Hi" once in awhile, but why would that upset him? And why such a strange response to anything I might have done to upset him?

I had no solution to offer for that mystery until one day a young neighbor girl - Erinn, the daughter of Maryanne of an earlier blog entry, told me that she had seen a guy that looked just like me - clothes and everything - that she really thought it was me until a closer inspection convinced her it was not I. Ain’t that weird?

Was he the guy that stormed into the newspaper office? Probably.

Did I ever encounter him? No.

Was he a doppleganger? Possible.

An alternate self? God, I hope not.

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One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my grandmother’s knee with my older by two years brother Bill while she read the funnies to us. Pointing to a panel, she read it and went to the next. Passing a panel without reading it, reaching the end of the panels and stopping, I point to the panel she had not read and tell her, "read that one." She tells me that she can’t – that there were no words there to read.

Now, I don’t know if that was the beginning of my life-long love affair (what a trite saying) with the written word, but I remember it made an impact with me that there was a depth to the funnies that had escaped my consciousness, and I do still vividly remember that scene.

I read a lot.

A lot.

My favorite books are well-written biographies. I like Jon Carroll’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle for that reason - he writes about what he sees and what people say to him and what he thinks about these things. But there is one group of people who write autobiographies that I have sworn never again to open one of their efforts, but time and again I forget and get fooled. These autobiographies are those written by politicians.

They will not reveal themselves in their autobiographies as do actors, for instance. They hide the goodies. I think that might come from always presenting an image of themselves to the public instead of presenting their real selves. They just can’t get out of the habit. Or maybe more to the point, they don’t want to risk losing out on another run for office by saying something their opponents can use against them.

I never listen to speeches by politicians either. For the same reason. They never say anything that isn’t coded in some manner so they can backtrack if they have to. "No, I didn’t say that. You misunderstood me."

Have you noticed that after a speech by a politician we need pundits to tell us what the guy said?

I suppose you have already noticed that most of our lawmakers are lawyers? Coincidence? Could there be any special benefit for a lawyer to write the laws that he will be interpreting for his paying-big-bucks clients?

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I did some volunteer work at a hospital once and I found myself in the hallway that runs between floors talking to three nurses. We were laughing,joking around, and I was about to leave and I did a little dance which I used to do occasionallybecause it usually got a laugh - a takeoff on Jackie Gleason’s "And away we go..." Sure enough, the three nurses started laughing, but because a lot of my joking is of the schizophrenic type where you pretend it is serious, I did not laugh or smile with them. I kept talking as if nothing untoward had happened. They continued laughing until all at once, all three of them stopped laughing and began to look very uncomfortable. I realized I had gone too far, but I couldn’t think of a way to get back on track, so we four left each other at that.

About a year goes by and walking out of a restaurant in Midtown, I see one of those nurses. She acts like she doesn’t know me. I walk up to her and say, "HI. Remember me?" She says, "Yeah, I remember you," flat-like. As in, "go away, Creep" I realize then that they thought there was something wrong with me when I did that little dance and then acted as if I did no such thing. Oh well. Their loss, right?

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Hitchhiking from Iowa to California in 1955, on the western side of salt Lake City Utah, I see, from my seat on the passenger side of my ride, hitchhikers lining the highway going towards Los Angels. Hundreds of them! One guy was five mile outside of Salt Lake, on crutches. Did he walk that far on crutches or did he carry them in order to elicit pity and thus a ride? I was ever so grateful to have already gotten a ride and didn’t have to buck that competition. It was a sight I had seen no where else in all my years hitchhiking. I wonder if some of them are still there.

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When I was stationed in Perrin AFB, Dennison, Texas, we had to, each morning, polish our shoes because during the night cockroaches would eat the polish off and at night, walking downtown, the critters were constantly being crushed underfoot. Funny thing was, you got used to them and never paid them any mind.

Coming back from Oklahoma early in the morning, I pick up a guy who was also stationed at Perrin. I get too sleepy to drive any more, so I told the guy that and asked if he could drive. He agreed and I went into the back seat and fell asleep whereupon I was awakened by a loud crash and being thrown around. The guy had fallen asleep and ran into an oncoming Greyhound bus. Fortunately, not directly head on.

I get on the bus after some confusion due to the circumstances and the late hour, but also because I found out that we had passed Perrin. I asked my wayward driver where he had been headed and he told me he was going to Dallas. The creep done stole my car after I gave him a ride. I don’t know what happened to him after that. Probably started hitchhiking towards Dallas.

I had fifty dollar deductible and I hounded the guy until he at least paid me that. Strange thing was that an insurance guy came to my work and told me that due to the accident and the payoff by the insurance company, I still owed some insurance payments. He asked me if I was willing to pay them up and I told him I would, but I never did.

Two things. How did it come to pass that an insurance company allowed me to owe them money? And what made them think I would give them money for something I didn’t need or want? Crazy people.

 

 

THE SAINT THAT IS MY WIFE

Blog number fifty-two                                  25  Oct 2006

My wife is a wonderful, darling girl, takes care of me, feeds me, gives me an adequate allowance.  All in all, a pretty great person.

She puts up with a lot of crap from me - I dirty the sink, forget to set the alarm and lock the doors at bedtime, leave dishes in the wrong place, am always in the kitchen when she wants to be there.  I should be ashamed of myself, but being the type of person I am, I ain't.  I never dwell on what a dork I am and how much that affects the beautiful woman that is my great wife. 

She even has to put up with women falling at my feet, begging me for a little lovin'. 

She is a great cook -- tamale pie, chicken soup, tamales, stew, bean soup, good stuff.  She takes all my stress which allows me to skip through life with a silly smile on my face, grabbing at women and small dogs.

My cup runneth way, way, over.

STAR STATUS GONE AWRY

Blog number fifty-one                                       Oct. 24, 2006

In 1954 I saw a great movie called, "Sundowners," starring Robert Preston - a vastly underrated actor.  Ever since, I see "The Sundowners" coming up on the telly and I think, "Oh, boy.  Maybe this time."  But nope, it's always that horrible flick starring Deborah Kerr about sheep ranching in Australia.

The one with Robert Preston is a rancher having trouble with rustlers and he hires his brother to help him out, which he does, by rustling the rustler's cattle. 

Preston's character had this neat "shtick" of saying, "Why shure" real quick, with a wry smile which my younger brother picked up and used a lot.

In the same vein, I was cross country one time and a buddy lent me a paperback book called, "Anatomy of a Murder."  I flew home and forgot the damn thing and I was only half way through and I really wanted to find out how it ended, but once again, just like with the movies, we have two books with the same title and the one that always comes up when I search for it is the one of which they made a movie starring Jimmy Stewart.  A movie which I think should never have been made, by the way. 

WRM (which reminds me), somewhere around Healdsburg* Calif. - in the redwoods, is a farm, ranch, home, whatever, with a wooden sign on the road leading to the house reading, "The Fred MacMurrarys."  From "My Three Sons"?  The television program?

I just put that down because it strikes me as a bit odd.  I mean, Fred has no fear of Paparazzi?  Is he looking for fan visits?  Why not just a mailbox? Seems like misplaced hubris to me.  Would Cher's house have a ""The Chers" sign in front of her house?  I don't think so.

I was in a movie once.  "Leave Yesterday Behind." It was a made-for-TV-movie, so don't ever look for it at your local theater.  It was me, Carrie Fisher, John Ritter, Buddy Epson and a lot of other people. 

My part was the father of a college kid going to Columbia University who sat in the bleachers watching an indoor polo game with a hundred other drama students.  I got to sitnext to the actors playing John's father and mother.  I got to sit right next to both because they had me move once.  The mother's face was very familiar to me, but I don't know her name

Before the polo shooting, the director told us that John Ritter was afraid of horses and for us not to make any signs of laughing at John's horsemanship.  We did good.  You could tell John was scared to death.  I would have been too.  To be a new rider riding with a dozen other horses at a full gallop, wheeling and turning in the arena. If it had been me, I think I would have taken some riding lessons and did a lot of riding first.  But that's just me.  He had a lot of guts, doing that.

My daughter wanted me to get John's autograph so I went to his trailer and there were about twenty girls all gaggling around him.  He saw me coming a a big smile broke out on his face.  I asked him for his autograph and he smilingly took my paper and I told him to make it out to "Trinja" and his smile dropped, he signed, handed it to me and turned away to talk to the girls.

I have always felt from his reaction, that I did a faux pas.  I think maybe he thought I was a real fan, unlike silly girls and then he found out I was just a stand-in for a "silly girl."  I dunno.  He might have been gay.

The movie was a tear jerking sop.  Horrible thing.  Ruined my acting career.  Couldn't show my face in Malibu after that.  Fan mail stopped.  No hate mail, thank God.
                                     
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When I was stationed in Northern Texas, my immediate supervisor was Sgt. Cox.  One day four of us were sitting around and he told us that his landlady had once introduced him as, "Mr. Dicks."

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My younger brother once got into a full box of ex-lax, ate the whole box and when my mother found out, she gave him an enema.  I was four years old and even at that young age I knew that was like pushing a river downstream.

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It was in Britt Iowa that I worked for that guy buying produce from farmers and selling to stores that I told you about earlier.  Every year Britt held a "Hobo Day."  A king and queen hobo was picked, a carnival with rides and games were allowed to set up.  A fun day for the hicks.

One of the shows was an all-Black dancing, ribald comedy show.  The performers gave a bit of a show on the stage before the curtain and before the show -- kind of a teaser.  The costumes looked dirty to me, the comedy not funny, the dancers lackadaisical.  Besides, these were Blacks in Northern Iowa in 1950.  All in all, they should have picked up with another show.

When they finished their spiel, everybody turned away to look at other things except this one white guy who ran up the steps, looked around at all the leaving potential clients, and waved his hand, beckoning to them, saying, "Come on."  A shill, you see.  Bad show, bad performers, bad shill. 

I really felt very sorry for them.  Where were they going to get money for food, costume repair, costume cleaning?  How did they ever get started in this business?  What were they going to do if all of them went flat broke?

One of the things I most enjoyed on the farm with my grandparents were the magazines she had.  One of my favorites was "The Saturday Evening Post."  I read in there about a cheating carnival.  It explained lead bottoms in the bottles in a "knock them over, win a prize," game, a game where plastic or wooden -- probably wooden, ducks would swim in this trough, go behind a partition and come out again.  They had numbers on them and you would bet on a numbered duck -- each betthat you lost, if you added a little more money, your chances would improve greatly and there would come a time when, if you had kept paying more and more money, you would be almost certain to win.  Unknown to the sucker, the ducks had magnets on them, the con man would flip a switch and viola!  You lose.

Another one was a basketball-type thing.  He would give you three free-throws and you would easily sink the baskets and would have won if you had paid your money.  When you saw how easy it was, it was a sure thing to bet and sink.  Unfortunately there was a lever that would place a board against the backboard which made the ball rebound way back over the basket.  And you had to hit the backboard for some reason I now forget.

So I'm at this carnival maybe thirteen years later and the guy calls me over and gives me a free free-throw.  I sink it easily.  I pay my money and the first throw hits the board, bounces way out of range.  It suddenly strikes me that I am at that carnival I read about in The Post.  I walk away without trying any of my other throws because I know there is no way I am going to sink anything.  The proprietor calls after me, but I ignore him.  I don't remember from the magazine, but I am pretty sure it was a "pay more money, chances get better" type of thing.  The whole carnival was set up to cheat.  That's all it did, except for the rides.  I watched a couple lose twenty dollars of 1950s money on the duck game. I watched the whole thing from beginning to end, and it was just like in the article.

I figured there must have been complaints.  Were the town fathers getting a cut or were they just ignorant?  I dunno.  I did nothing, told nobody.

* My darling wife just informed me that Fred's house wasn't in Healdsburg, it was in Cazadera.  She also said I was stupid.

 

SURE IT'S PRACTICING MEDICINE WITHOUT A LICENSE BUT I AM JUST PRACTICING.

Blog number fifty!                                                                Oct. 17, 2006

When I was a youngun' spending my summer days walking around Des Moines with my friends, one of our favorite past-times was to go down to the capitol and swim in the water surrounding two of the bronze statues placed in the capital garden.

We would stay there until hunger drove us home.  Walking in the alleys we would often come across green apples.  I don't know how this came about, and I think it is commonly known, but if you take a sour green apple and bang it on a rock or a log, the resulting bruise will taste sweet.  Ain't that odd?  We always used to bang sour green apples against an object and thought naught of it.

I once read that if you have cucumbers that are bitter, what you do is to cut it in two - I used to cut near the end, and rub the two cut pieces together, resulting in a sort of foam forming.  This would make the bitterness disappear and the cuke would be sweet.  Sounds impossible?  I thought so to when I first read it.  But I tried it and it works.  here's an even more impossible thing:

A carpenter was working on our house and got something in his eye -- probably wood dust, and we couldn't get it out.  I tried pulling out on his upper lid, pulling the lid down over the bottom lid, I tried rolling up his upper lid with a wooden match stick, I tried everything.  Nothing worked.  I then asked him if he wanted to try something that my grandmother had taught me and it always worked, but it was going to sound pretty crazy.  He said, "OK."

I told him to close the eye that had the particle in it and blow his nose from the nostril opposite the side the eye was on.  He did and it worked, like it always does and it makes you wonder, "What the hell?!"

MY grandmother also taught me to drink a cup of ginger dissolved in hot water with a little bit of honey for taste for upset stomach.  I remember I would drink as much as I could, tell her I couldn't drinkany more and she would always say, "Just one more sip."

I have recently found just by experimenting that Desenex athlete's foot cream placed on a cold sore will not only cure the cold sore, but if you get it early enough, the cold sore will not even develop.

For many years I have found that pouring plain old rubbing alcohol into the ear will cure most ear aches.  Scuba divers use it when they get done diving for the day in order to prevent an ear infection caused from water being in the ear.

Stationed in Texas, I would occasionally have to go on sick call for jock itch, a horrible painful rash.  The salt from sweat will increase the pain exponentially.  Jock itch is located in the inner thighs near the groin and has nothing whatsoever to do with the sensation of itching.

The nurse there -- a young male corporal would give me a tiny bottle of a clear liquid and tell me to rub this over the jock itch area.  I go to my barracks, take down my pants and shorts and pour some of the liquid into my hand and proceed to rub the painful sensitive raw area WITH RUBBING ALCOHOL!  Yeow!

I went through this scenario three separate times.  The alcohol would fix it right away.  But what gripes me is that the guy at the desk that gave me the alcohol never told me what it was.  I figured out from the smell of it and the looks of it and the result of putting it on a raw sore place, that it must be rubbing alcohol.  The next time I got the itch, I bought a bottle of rubbing alcohol and cured myself.  Now, why didn't that guy tell me what was in the bottle so I didn't have to go on sick call every time I got jock itch, and I didn't have to suffer more than a few minutes?  Huh?

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I'm having dinner in the mess hall. One section is closed, but I see three or four tables over there with a bunch of guys eating steaks while I'm eating hamburgers or stew or something like that.  I don't remember exactly, but I DO remember that I wasn't eating steak.

I asked the cook what was going on and he said that was the Air Force wrestling team.  When I got back towork, I calledthe mess hall and asked to speak to the man in charge.  I asked him why it was that people in the same military, eating in the same mess hall, were eating entirely different meals.  He said that was the wrestling team and they brought in their own steaks and the mess hall just cooked them.  I asked him if I brought in my own steaks if the mess hall would cook them.  He said, "No."

I said something to the effect that I thought the Air Force's primary raison valable was to fight off our enemies and since I was more in a position to do that with my job than a wrestler was with his, why do they receive star treatment and the rest of us who are protecting our way of life, don't.  He asked, "Don't you want our team to win?" 

I replied, "No, not especially.  I don't care whether a bunch of athletes win or not.  Do they care whether I do my job better than anyone else?"

The conversation ended with my getting no satisfaction except the chance to blow off a little steam at a suspected injustice.

In a similar vein, we that were taking courses could not read our text books or do homework during downtime in the shop.  we were told to "read tech orders" if we wanted something to do.  However, come World Series time and a TV was set up in the shop, the lights were turned off, and all work stopped until the game was over.  This went on every day during the World Series.
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We guys in analysis were to come up with a plan to wash off aircraft that happened to get contaminated by radioactive dust.  Fortunately we had on board a sergeant that had been trained in procedures to follow after an atomic blast.

He told the rest of us that the best people for a job like that were the wash crew, because that's what would be done and those were the people that did it every day.  Whether it was contaminated dust or plain old dust, the washing would be accomplished the same way.  To wash is to wash.  We all agreed that that was a good plan and we signed off on it and sent it upwards to the powers that be. 

It came back that since we had a radioactive "expert" already in place, the most efficient crew tobe assigned to wash the contaminated aircraft was us.  None of us had ever washed an aircraft in our lives.

Now here's what really frosted me.  They asked the advice of an "expert" and then took the advice of someone that had absolutely no training of any kind in radiation contamination, even though it went against the advice of the only person that did have any training.
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The guy that most impressed me during my twenty-one some years in the Air Force was Senior Master Sergeant Chin.

He was of Korean extract, once told me that his father was a village chieftain until he had to leave Korea because the Communists didn't much care for "elitism."  The family now lived in Hawaii.  He said his father would mediate arguments among the people, that he wore one of those funny black hats that have a stiff brim and the crown is a cylinder about eight inches high and sits right on top of the head.  I think they wear black frock coats too.  He said that "uniform" was a sign of a village chieftain.

He told me about hunting mongoose as a child -- that they were rather stupid because they never learned.  He also said there were a lot of cardinals in Hawaii, which surprised me because I always heard that where there were mongoose, you couldn't have birds because the mongoose would eat all the eggs.  Another scientific urban myth?

He would not let anyone put their feet upon the table or a chair.  He once chewed out the captain for sitting on a table and the captain took him aside and kinda whined, "Gee, Sarge, you didn't have to chew out in front of the men," and Chin replied, "Captain, I don't let my men sit on the table.  Why should I let you?"

Sgt. Chin was stationed at the Pentagon before he came to Mather.  He was looking for a place to retire and California looked good, so he created a job for a senior master sergeant in our shop and had himself fill the new opening.

I once had a job going around with a colonel placing posters, etc., about "Zero Defects," another silly worthless piece of moral-building crap.  I didn't like it at all and one day I asked myself what would Sgt.Chin do if he had this job and I realized he wouldn't do it!  So I quit without telling anybody.  Worked fine.

They had a contest to think up a good slogan for Zero Defects and a lieutenant won with the slogan, "Hit 'em High, Hit'em Low. Zero defects, Go Go Go." 

Now this damn thing WON!  it won, I tell you!  The best damn slogan in the contest.

A friend and I were laughing about this and we came up with the slogan, "Hit 'em low, Hit 'em high.  Zero defects, my my my."

I HAVE A SUGGESTION WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH IT

Blog number forty-nine                                                                      Oct. 15, 2006

Starting in the sixties, a Suggestion Program was initiated in the Air Force, and I think in all government agencies.  Cash awards were given if a suggestion was accepted that would save money, make a process more efficient, or anything else that would benefit the Air Force and ultimately, Our Government. A few years into it, I was assigned to a task that enabled me to walk around the base talking to different people, watching what they did -- a general all around wonderful job.  I had absolutely no responsibility.  I did whatever I wanted.  Which wasn't much.

I began watching the awards given for suggestions and I noticed that while a suggestion was accepted and the suggester awarded a great deal of money -- sometimes in the thousands and not all that rarely, in the tens of thousands, the suggestions were very often never implemented.  I started checking out why, and I found that the "new" way of doing something was not worth the trouble -- it was tried and found wanting, or the "fix" fixed something that wasn't broken in the first place, or the department never got around to implementing the new suggestion because they had work to do and didn't have the time to waste on what was obviously a dumb suggestion.

It seems obvious in retrospect, that if an idea was any good, it would already have been initiated and used, anyhow.  Without any award.  I mean, I don't think the invention of the wheel or of the steam engine was accomplished because of any suggestion program.  Sheeze!

The problem basically lay with the suggestion being evaluated by the suggester and his buddies -- although of course, it was not supposed to work that way, but anyone with half a brain could see that only those people with the know-how that enabled them to evaluate a suggestion had to be employed in the department that employed suggester.  I mean, a mechanic was not going to evaluate a new form for writing up payroll.  A clerk was not going to invent a new process for checking the balance on propellers.

I remember one suggestion that came from an enlisted man that had just finished a course in colbol language for computers in college, to have the data cards changed into colbol language I asked him how this could be done and he didn't know -- "have someone else do it -- just pay me the money for suggesting it and I thank you."  Or words to that effect.  Made me want to suggest that someone invent a time machine so we could make WW2 come out even better -- maybe have a large force of aircraft carriers on the ready at pearl harbor in 1941.  I could make a lot of bucks if I got that suggestion OKed.

Another suggestion was to put trash cans in the barracks parking lot so the men would put their trash in it instead of on the ground. That one was evaluated and denied by the Bobbsy Twins that I told you about earlier with the explanation that it was against the rules to litter, so the men shouldn't be throwing trash on the ground anyhow.

All in all, a pretty sorry mess.  Cost the Air force lots of money, lots of wasted man-hours, lots of other bad things -- probably even global warming in later years, I dunno.  The suggestion program was still going on when I left in 1974 and I imagine it is still going on.

One day I decide to put in a suggestion to do away with the suggestion program, listing the different suggestions that had been approved and awarded and their total noncompliance and why they were not implemented, and the money awarded.  I heard about a week later from my Pinochle buddy who sat in on Chief of Maintenance meetings that the guy running the suggestion program had sent my suggestion to the Chief of Maintenance along with a remark that I "evidently didn't understand the suggestion program."  My friend said the Colonel said that I seemed to understand the suggestion program very well.

The guy running the suggestion program denied my suggestion and I wrote back saying that he was obviously biased since he was being paid to run the program I was suggesting be obliterated.  He responded that a new person would be on board in six months and we could have him evaluate it.  I agreed and lo and behold, when the new guy took over the suggestion program,he denied my suggestion.  Saw that one coming a mile off.
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I had a sergeant that told me that he was in an aircraft that caught on fire and the pilot told everyone to bail out but my sergeant refused.  He said the pilot kept insisting, and all the other crew members bailed out, but he said he was too scared and he would be damned if he would.  He said the pilot argued with him, but he was adamant and finally the pilot stayed with him and eventually landed the plane. 

Too bad the suggestion program wasn't in effect then.  For my sergeant's suggestion to stay with the plane, he saved the Air Force and our Government a lot of money.  I don't know how much since I didn't have the curiosity to ask the sergeant what type of plane it was, but it must have been a large one, carrying a crew.

This same guy was being hounded by the suggestion program to have his department put in more suggestions so in order to satisfy them, he started putting in silly suggestion, like keeping the base swimming pool open all winter so those who like to swim in freezing water could do so.

One of his men got injured during a basketball game and when that happens, you have to fill out a form describing how and why it happened and what is being done to prevent such injuries in the future.  He suggested that basketball players wear helmets and shoulder pads, and a face mask during games.  He said the Captain called him on the phone and asked if he were being sarcastic.  He said, "Why no.  Football players didn't wear protection at one time, but now it is thought to be a good thing."  He mollified the Captain, who probably wasn't all that convinced, but what could he do?
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I was flying with a training mission once and I heard over the intercom the navigating instructor notify the pilot that a mountain was coming up and we wereflying below its crest.  A few minutes pass and the instructor again notifies the pilot -- "Uh Pilot, there is a mountain dead ahead and we are below its crest."  "Roger, " replies the pilot.  A few minutes go by and the instructor again notifies the pilot and this time his voice sounds a little stressed.  I start to lose my confidence in the pilot's good sense.  And a few minutes later, almost sounding like a command, "Pilot!  Mountain dead head."  A pause, then, "Roger."  Another pause and the plane begins to rise.  I kinda think the pilot for some reason, was messing with the instructor's head.
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THINK OF A MOTH AND THE UNIVERSE COLLAPSES

Blog number forty-eight                                                Oct. 13, 2006

Today, on the wall of my house I saw what looked like painted stucco had peeled off a tiny part.  On closer inspection, it turned out to be a tiny gray moth that was so tight against the wall that I could not see any depth to it.  It looked like it was painted on.  I realized that this most probably was the type of moth -- likely the same species, that used to be given as an example in our science text books of how Darwin's theory of evolution works.

Supposedly, in London, there used to be thousands of these tiny gray moths and they hid from their enemy on the trunks of trees, etc., but as London got darker from the smoke coming from its many industrial smokestacks, the moths became black.  The gray moths stood out, you see, while the black ones didn't, birds ate the visible ones, the gene for black was passed on to the offspring, and viola'.  Of course this doesn't explain my moth because my house is painted tan.  Oh well.

I got to thinking.  How the hell does anyone know that that is what happened?  I mean really.  Think about it.  Maybe the moths did turn black.  I don't even know that.  I have to take my science book's word for it.  I used to trust my text books -- as we all did, I'm sure.  But Gosh darn, don't you think that they could have insisted that it was just a theory -- just what somebody thought might have happened?  It DOES sound logical, but I can think of a much better theory for how it happened, if it did, but I don't want to go into that right now.

I have heard many people say that Darwin's theory is fact.  And argue it!  Like anyone knows why anything does anything.  Pshaw.

And did you know that I was also taught that there were forty-eight chromosomes in human cells because some scientist counted them?  And did you also know that in my later years we found out that there is really forty-six because the first guy counted wrong and nobody thought to check the count?  Maybe somebody should count them again.

I was also told that neither matter nor energy  can be changed.  Along comes an atomic bomb.  Blew that theory all to hell.  And what frosts me about that was that I read later that scientists knew that matter could become energy -- theoretically at least, via Einstein et al. at the exact same time they were telling us poor children that it couldn't.

And we are still buying, aren't we, that crude oil comes from dead dinosaurs?  Ever see a dead animal turn into oil?  Huh?

I think they got that idea because of the fossil prints of leaves in coal.  So plants turn into coal, animals into oil.  Peat comes from non-decaying plants, peat turns into coal.  Coal turns into oil?  Seems like that was also in my science education, but I'm not sure.

Lotta iffy things about what happened eons ago.

I don't know why coal and oil can't just be hydrocarbon rocks.  Can anybody enlighten me a little more on that whole thing?  There IS a place for comments on this blog you know.  Or should.

I read in some book years ago that in the bottom of a running  stream in Texas they found human and dinosaur fossil footprints placed so that it seemed like the dinosaur was chasing the human.  They showed photographs of the fossil foot prints.  The story against such a thing was that they were fakes, made by people in the area to sell to gullible tourists.  But one of the locals was quoted and what she said convinced me that they were real fossil foot prints.

She said that the locals were selling fossils that they made, but you could tell the real ones from the fakes because the fakes were perfectly flat, carved from the same stone, while the real ones had ridges like if you stepped in mud, the mud would ridge around your feet.  The ridges were not all the same depth.  The fake ones were carved from the same stone.  It would take a skilled stone carver to carve prints that had realistic ridges.  And if they were that skilled, I'm sure they would have been carving other things as well.

The real ones were also much larger than the fakes because you had to be careful not to break the footprint when you took it from the rock.  With fakes, you start with the rock.  It could be any size you wanted.

Also, who would think to fake such a thing if there were not real ones to give them the idea?  Like theSufis say, there is such a thing as fake gold because real gold exists.

One of the photographs showed where the human had made a sharp turn and the dinosaur print made the same sharp turn as if it were following the human, and you could clearly see the ridges pushed out on the part of the print away from the turn.  Like would happen if you were running in mud and turned quickly. 

I told this to a friend of mine once and he asked if I was saying that humans were around when dinosaurs were and I said, no, what I was saying was that there were dinosaurs still around when humans existed.

And do you notice how those photos are totally ignored by the scientific community?  We already know that dinosaurs and humans didn't exist at the same time, so any evidence to the contrary must not exist.  Yes?  If it doesn't fit what we believe, ignore it.

I was also taught, as you were, that we see when light reflects off an object, hits the rods and cones in the back of the retina setting off a chain of electrochemical reactions from nerve cell to nerve cell up the optic nerve and into the brain and we "see." 

We see with our brains then, not with our eyes.  Right?  And doesn't touch work the same way -- we feel with our brain, not with our fingers?  We hear with our brain?  Smell with our brain?  Yes?  So the whole physical universe that we know is contained completely within our bony skulls.  Right?

Not only that, but all the evidence seems to suggest that there IS no "out there" out there.  It seems that we do not sense things -- our senses create and then shoves it "out there" so that we are able to differentiate between the perceiver and the perceived.

And what about the proof that the whole physical universe that each of us knows is contained totally within our heads?  Ever taught anything like that in elementary, high or college schools?  Ever see it discussed in "Psychology Ptoday" magazine?  Or in any other "scientific" magazine or book?  Or anywhere?  Why is that?  I'll tell you why.  Because it is not logical, that's why!  We KNOW out there is out there, so any evidence to the contrary must be in error. 

What evidence do we have that we really ARE looking at something that is really out there?  None.  Itseems to us that we are seeing, feeling, hearing things out there, so it must really be out there. Is that scientific or what?

Very strange.

The eye detects light frequencies.  The brain detects form and color.  We see a yellow pencil.

The ear detects air pressure variances.  The brain detects sound.  We hear music.

The fingers detect pressure and frequencies.  The brain detects texture and warmth.  We feel the touch of a loved one.

But don't worry.  Nothing is different.

I may seem a little harsh on scientists, but it's only because they are more visible than the guy that lives under the bridge or hiding out in a safe-house.  Scientists are people too, so what they do, everybody does. I know that.  You know that.  The only difference is that they have a credibility in their field that the ordinary man on the street doesn't have.  So they should be more careful with what they proclaim, don't you think?

It would be a good start if they would, instead of saying "The cavemen drew pictures on the walls of their caves in order to have power over their prey," they could say, "I don't know -- I wasn't there."

Or, if they say, "After careful experimentation, I think that such and such is the reason for the results," if someone says, "but what about this" they can say, "Well, I don't know.  Let me get back to you on that."  More honest. 

If the guy that counted wrong on the chromosomes had simply said, "I counted them and I came up with forty-eight of them," instead of saying, "there are forty-eight chromosomes in a human cell," he wouldn't have been wrong.  And isn't that what life is all about?  Not being wrong?

Nobody knows anything.  Take guesses, but admit they are only guesses.  That way science can be a little more open to other possibilities.  Kids won't be so likely to grow up with insane ideas.

PROSECUTORS WILL BE VIOLATED!

Blog number forty and seven                                                        Oct. 06, 2006

A dream: I'm walking with Teresa at the downtown mall in Sacramento when I suddenly realize I am naked.  I get very uncomfortable and tell Teresa that I don't have any clothes on.  She asks why I didn't put on clothes.  I tell her I just suddenly realized that I was naked.  I tell her that it is just like I sometimes dream that all of a sudden I am naked.  It does not occur to me that being naked is one of my signals that I am dreaming so that I can wake up in the dream -- have a lucid dream.

She asks me what bothers me about it -- are people looking at me?  I look around, and nobody seems to notice, but I still feel very revealed.

It seems very strange to me that THAT really was me, but THAT me had no knowledge whatsoever about ME that was sleeping in a bed.  THAT me never knows about me, but I know about "him."  Why is that?  Is there right now a "Me" that knows about me, but I don't know anything about "him?"
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When I was nineteen years old and married, I worked for a family wholesale fruit and vegetable business.  We would sometimes go to Texas to pick up watermelon, sometimes to Joplin Missouri to get cantaloupes and radishes at a farmer's market -- a real one, not these "Buy a few crates of peaches and sell them to the locals" type of farmer's market.  This stuff came direct from the farmers who grew them.

One day my boss -- a guy of about forty who I liked a lot, asked me if I would like to take the pickup to Marshalltown Iowa to pick up a load of bananas.  He said to look the bananas over really carefully because the lady who ran the warehouse was a slick character and for me not to let her give me crap.  I jumped at the responsibility.

At the warehouse, watching the crates of bananas come by me for loading into my pickup, I realized I couldn't tell a good cratefrom a bad one.  What does a nineteen year old look for in a crate of banana's?  I suspicioned that I saw several crates come at me again that I originally rejected, but this time around, accepted.  Anyway, I got loaded and I no longer felt content with what I was doing.

I was to go to stores on our route on the way back to see if I could sell any crates.  So I'm tooling along and it starts to rain so I stop and cover the bananas with a tarp.  Why I thought rain would hurt them, I cannot now imagine.

I get back in the truck and I'm cruising along and I hear this "flap flap flap" sound.  It keeps going and I cannot imagine what it must be.  I look around and I happened to glance in the rear view mirror and here's the tarp, wrapped up like a towel being used to slap someone's ass in the shower, whapping at the top layer of bananas.  I quickly stop, get out, take a look, and every crate is banana soup.  Shit!

Not only that, but in order to hide some of my error, I dropped off a crate of the worst looking bananas I could find at one of our most valued customers.  The lady that owned the store trusted us so much that she never even looked at what I gave her.

I never heard anything from my boss about the whole thing, but I never delivered anything to that store again.  My boss always went.

Another day, the top of my truck tears out a metal awning over the front of a grocery store.  I go to the restaurant where I'm supposed to meet my boss.  I sit next to him and the first thing I say is, "Do you have insurance?"  He looks straight ahead, and replies, "No, why?"
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I worked in a fancy Des Moines cafeteria as a bus boy once.  One Sunday they served prime rib and as the customers came down the line, some would ask the prime rib guy to cut them a slice of the rib.  One lady asked if she could have a slice that was a little more done.  The guy flipped the rib over in the au jus it was sitting in, and sliced her off the top of that.  A few minutes late I hear, "Could I have a slice a little more well done?"  "Sure, lady," and he flips the rib again so the rare part winds up in the brown juice while the rare part that had been standing in the brown juice was now on top, looking like it was well done.
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One Sunday in Denver I was to pick up a friend of Teresa's and bring her to our home.  I was a little early so I stopped at a bar to have a beer.  (Taverns open on Sunday in Denver?  That's the way I remember it.)  I'm sitting at the bar and I overhear two men and a woman talking about the previous night in the same bar.  They talk about a man rolling around on the floor, screaming and carrying on something fierce and then one of the men says, "He held out his arm and said that he bet I couldn't straighten out his arm."  A few beats, then "Hell, I didn't know he was crippled."

BLOG VIGNETTES

Blog number forty and six                                                        Oct. 04, 2006

Late at night at Mather AFB, I'm walking to my car which I park outside the gate because I don't have insurance.  No insurance, no driving on base.  I see a big burning ball moving horizontally over my head, then it explodes and disappears.  I think it was a big meteor.

Bye the bye, the Air Force got to be real big on their personnel being lean and mean.  I always thought they should have built a big parking lot outside the gate and the only on-base motor traffic would be military vehicles.  If I had been General of the base, that's what I would have enforced.

Everybody walking everywhere, good exercise, and lots less traffic on base, making everyone more peaceful.  "Good idea," I thought and still do think.

Also late at night, same base, and this is a true tale although it might sound like a racist joke, but I was coming out of the mess hall late at night after eating midnight chow and I hear this female voice ask me something.  I peer around, trying to see where she's at.  Then she smiles and I see her standing about ten feet in front of me -- a Black girl in dark blue uniform.  I honestly couldn't see any part of her until she smiled and I saw her teeth.
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I caught a very small catfish one summer and inadvertently left it in the trunk of our car overnight and most of the next day.  When I finally found it, it was covered in coal dust and still alive.  No water for about sixteen hours.  Is that a survivor or what?  I put it in our water tank.

We used to put live fish in the water tank and sometimes I would go there and fish, catching them again.  I have caught catfish that were on a string that had gotten loose from its mooring.  Trout won't do that. You catch one, the rest of the school are done for the day.  Catfish are like pigs.  They'll eat all day long.
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I lived in a housing development with my wife and kids for a few months one year, got to know the neighbors pretty well.  One afternoon one of the neighbors came over and asked me to look at his mother because he thought she might be dead.  When I got there, her eyes were open, but there was no sign of life, and since the son was convinced she was dead, that was good enough for me.  This was when I was afraid of dead people and I just wanted to get out of there.  I closed her eyes and said, "Yeah, she's dead."  The next time I looked, her eyes were open.  I never said anything.
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Was watching "Weeds" on the telly the other night, one of the guys was being bitten by a pit bull and one of the other guys said for someone to stick a finger up the dog's rectum.  I got to thinking, "I'll bet that would work."
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Used to do twenty-five pushups if I couldn't sleep, then I'd crawl into bed and drop right off.  After my bypass, even after a year's workout three times a week at the gym, couldn't get more than two pushups. It was not like I was straining, either.  It was more like trying to fly or something like that.  I think some nerves or muscles were cut that prevents me form exercising the right muscles.  They just won't move.
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I repeated an est training.  Cost me ten dollars for a repeat instead of three hundred for the first.  Girl asked me what I wanted to get out of est and I told her I just wanted to have the experience again.  She said I couldn't do that.  I asked, "Why not? -- that's what I wanted to get out of it."

We argued a bit and I finally asked if she wanted me to lie and she said yes, so I did.  Now you have to realize that est was a very, very ethically oriented training, and magic also, because what you went for was what you were going to get, so I was kinda curious as to how this new factor was going to play out.

So the third day we were supposed to choose between an imaginary chocolate ice cream cone and a vanilla one.  Then the trainer (a different one than I had the first time through) would ask why we chose that particular one and the answer was supposed to be, "Because I chose it." 

This one lady, I don't know what her problem was, but she absolutely refused to go along with it.  The trainer finally said she would have to leave, so she turned in her name tag and left, whereupon the trainer went out after her.  They came back and he asked her again which cone she would choose and she, very upset, said, "But you told me I wouldn't have to do that if I came back."  He kept insisting.  She was finally cajoled and threatened into it.  The TRAINER lied to her!

I realized I had seen the first result of the girl insisting I had to lie in order to get to go through est again.  This was going to be a "lying est."

I began to get bored toward the end of the third day, so at the break I told the assistant trainer that I was going to leave.  She said to wait until after the break and we would talk about it.  I said, "OK."

The break ended and she never approached me, (she lied) so I went to where she was behind the table and told her I was leaving.  She asked me if I had made an agreement to stay and I said yes, AND I was leaving.  Est taught us that too. It is not, "Yes, but..." It is "Yes, AND..."  One circumstance does not determine another circumstance.  I put my name tag on the table and walked out.  A young girl followed me and we started talking about my leaving.  I explained to her that I had had a "cosmic experience" that told me If I did what I wanted, everything would be all right and what I wanted right then was to leave. 

We were enjoying each other's company, it seemed, just chatting, and then the trainer's assistant came out.  She started in on me again about didn't I agree to stay and why was I not keeping my agreements and I told her about the cosmic experiences and she got this very, very angry look on her face as she said, "Don, you're crazy."

I figured this was going nowhere, so I said, "Well, at least we can still be friends."  She responded with, "This isn't about friendship." Hearing that, I turned to the pleasant girl to say good-bye to her, and lo and behold she had the same angry look as did the trainer's assistant.  From friendly to hateful without me saying a word to her, nor any insulting thing to anyone.  I left.

As I was walking away, playing the whole scenario in my mind, I realized that just before the break, the trainer had told everyone -- these two women heard it too, he said that if you tell someone that you are going to do what you want, people will tell you that you are crazy.
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Remember what I told you about people having watches on their person after being repeatedly told not to have them?  Well, when you repeat an est training, you are not allowed to share (est is where that term came from that is now part of the American lexicon) or to ask questions.  You have a different colored name tag.

This one guy is asking the Trainer about something and the trainer is answering him and then the trainer stops and says, "Wait a minute."  Aren't you a repeater?"  The guy says, "Yes."

The trainer says, "You're not supposed to be talking."  The guy resounds with, "Yeah, but I wanted to know what you meant by what you said."

People!
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I was watching "Cops" and this young girl was talking to the cops that came as a result of a domestic disturbance call.  She hadbeen beating on her much smaller husband, She kept telling the cops, over and over, "When you get married you're supposed to be happy.  I'm married.  I'm not happy."