Biscuit City

Like most working class lads, I spent some time in my teens fooling with cars. I wasn’t very sophisticated about it, sticking with oil changes, shock replacements, radiator flushes and the like. I did replace a muffler and exhaust line once, and decided that would be the last time I did that. Some people I know did much more with cars–my brother and a friend completely rebuilt an engine.  I’m not sure that it ran afterwards, but they did it.

Then, of course, cars changed.  They became computerized and fuel-injected.  I think most of these changes (except for thinner sheet metal and the dreaded “doughnut” spare) were for the better, although the gentle art of manipulating a manual choke is long lost. (Ask your grandmomma.)  On the whole, cars are safer, more environmentally sound and more sophisticated than back in the day. I know, they don’t have the soul of your ’59 El Dorado, but they are better in so many ways. You just can’t work on them like you used to.

Changing tires is something that can still be done, especially by fathers shortly after Father’s Day, so when my daughter Amy told me she had picked up a screw in the tire of her Mazda I told her to bring it over, take one of the other cars we have, and I would put the doughnut on and we would get the stricken tire to the shop to have it plugged. Or so I thought.

I jacked the car up with the world’s worst emergency jack (the metal kept deforming as more weight piled on it), took off the lug nuts and tried to pull the tire off.  I say tried because, unlike any of the perhaps 100 tires I have changed, the tire didn’t budge.  It seemed frozen to the hub. In fact it was frozen to the hub. I pulled on it for a while and then I pushed on it.  I stuck my legs under the car and kicked the tire from the inside. I sprayed WD-40 on it and waited for that to work.  I pounded the assembly with a rubber mallet.Nothing seemed to help.

After an hour and a couple of skinned knuckles, I gave up.  I told Amy she would have to call AAA and have them use their expertise.

I was telling my dad about the stuck tire and he said, not entirely humorously, “Get a bigger hammer.” When the AAA tow truck showed up, the driver couldn’t get it off either. He said, “I need a bigger hammer.”  Then another two truck showed up and this driver got it off with a bigger hammer and a block of wood.

I later learned on a Mazda owners’ forum that the steel of the wheel often bonds to the some other kind of metal in the hub.  Either that or the wheel rusted to the hub. Since it’s oxidation, it a very slow fire, hence the title of today’s post.

So, Mazda owners, you might want to check your tires or have them checked. It would be better to be sure they’re able to be removed than to find out on a dark roadside that they’re not coming loose. I would also replace the emergency jack with one that doesn’t look like it was made in Santa’s Tin Toy Shop. In this case,  I thought I knew a little about cars, but as with most everything else, I still have a lot to learn.

I know there are people who are annoyed by spam in their email inboxes.  Heaven knows, there’s a lot of it, but it doesn’t bother me that much.  If I don’t recognize the sender, I delete it.  It’s easy and painless and doesn’t take that much time.

That said, I’m not sure why I get some emails that I do.  Somehow I ended up on a list for Major League Baseball, which is all right since I like baseball, but they do send a lot of messages.  I got one the other day urging me to vote in the All-Star balloting. I thought, why not, maybe I can vote for some Nationals.  I logged on to the voting site, picked out all the Nationals on the ballot, and voted for them.  Then a window popped up: “Thank you for voting!  You can vote up to 25 times for each email address!”

I hadn’t expected this.  I know there are some places in the country where people say about elections that they should vote “early and often,” but I never had such a chance. My mother told me that before and during World War II the area in Tennessee where she was from was controlled by a political machine which used political machine tactics including multiple votes and intimidation of voters to control offices.  When the vets came back from World War II they were having none of that and made sure no one voted more than they were supposed to and that no one was intimidated.  I’m sure they felt they had just fought a war to guarantee free and democratic elections and that’s how it was going to be. Another achievement of the Greatest Generation.

So, anyhow, I voted 25 times for the boys and then checked the leaders. Not a National to be seen, and the top runners had vote totals in the millions. I felt a little funny voting more than once, but not having any of my candidates in the top ten seemed like a kind of cosmic justice. We’ll have to wait and see how it all turns out.

Yep, it says here that someone has figured out a way to connect a manual typewriter to a computer, Ipad, smart phone, smart refrigerator (saw an ad for one with internet browsing capabilities–wonder if it tells you when the salad dressing needs to be thrown out) or what have you.  It’s called a “USB Typewriter” and you can read all about it at http://www.usbtypewriter.com/. It’s a kit requiring the electronic skill of a rocket scientist as nearly as I can tell that allows the connection of the manual typewriter to a “USB device” which sounds like a form of birth control but isn’t. The guy who invented it says this about it:

“The USBTypewriter™ is a new and groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence.  Lovers of the look, feel, and quality of old fashioned manual typewriters can now use them as keyboards for any USB-capable computer, such as a PC, Mac, or even iPad!  The modification is easy to install, it involves no messy wiring, and does not change the outward appearance of the typewriter (except for the usb adapter itself, which is mounted in the rear of the machine).  So the end result is a retro-style USB keyboard that not only looks great, but feels great to use.”

I like his feel for oxymoron,  and the demo video features the sweet sound of keys clattering and the return bell ringing. (Those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, ask your momma.) You can install the kit on your own typewriter, or you can buy one that’s ready to go for about $850.

I would like to say, Only in America.  I am in awe of Jack Zylkin, not only for his technological prowess but also for coupling a form of technology with the machine that replaced it. It would be like pulling a car with a horse or putting piston engines on a 747 (that idea wouldn’t fly, ar, ar) or retrofitting a microwave with a heating element. In the case of the USB Typewriter, there’s a certain aesthetic experience to be gained.  Looking at a horse’s rear end from your infinitely adjustable leather driver’s seat would never be an aesthetic experience unless you were smitten by horses.  And their rear ends.

I remember our first typewriter that my dad brought home when I was about ten.  It was a giant Underwood that I could barely lift, but I immediately set to work making a newsletter for the neighborhood. I used it to hunt and peck papers for school. When I went to college I bought a reconditioned Royal portable that I still have. It’s entirely made of metal which I think is amazing.  We later on bought an electric SC that Becky mostly used, and I used the IBM Selectric at church to do the church newsletter for a while.  I thought the Selectric was the ultimate writing machine.  Then computers came along.

I have to say that I would not like to go back to using a typewriter to write with. When computers came along I taught myself to type but I am still really bad at it.  I remember wrestling with correction fluid or using that horrid erasable typing paper and  running out of space for a footnote and having to retype the entire page. (By the way, the word processer killed the footnote and gave us the endnote. I don’t think anyone mourned for a second, not even the MLA. It also put an end to the typing pool but I’ll leave that one to the sociologists to comment on.) And computers can do so much more than the humble typewriter, USB or not. I’m sure, in fact, that one could be set up so that the keys click and a return bell rings with a hard return.

So, while I salute the inventor of the USB Typewriter, I don’t think I will be using one any time soon.There have been too many erasures and strikeovers to go back. While I have a hate/hate relationship with my computer printer, it’s still better than having to use Corrasable Bond.

No, this is not me weighing in on the recent Sarah Palin/Paul Revere contretemps. I know better than that. Rather, it’s about my Mystery Machine, the 2002 Chevrolet S-10 my father gave me. I’ve found it’s more vehicle than we need (we have access to four) so I want to sell it, but it’s been interesting to have it around. A few years ago when our kitchen was being renovated one of the fellows doing the work got something out of his truck. It had four doors, which seemed like a useful feature, so I told him that I wished my truck had four doors.  He said, “You have three.”  I said, “I do?” since I only saw two.  He walked over to it, opened the driver’s side door and then opened…the third door. I never knew it was there. What a surprise.

Then, the other evening, we were coming back from something about 10 PM. I was carrying something we had bought and apparently struck the truck key fob.  It started flashing its headlights and sounding the horn.  Somehow I had set off the burglar alarm…an alarm I didn’t know I had. Yet another surprise.  I eventually figured out how to turn it off, although I don’t have any idea how to set it.  Maybe I’ll learn before I sell it.

We had another surprise about the same time when we picked up Becky’s Avalon which had a “check engine” problem.  When she turned off the ignition, the car beeped five times.  We had never heard it do this in the eight years we’ve had the car. So, I checked the owner’s manual for a hint as to what the chimes meant.  They didn’t sound like the seat belt or headlight warnings. Finally I noticed the sound was coming from the radio. I got the manual out for that and found that the sound was a warning to remember to remove the face plate as an anti-theft measure.  The radio had never done this since it had been installed.  I figured that when the shop did the work on the car they disconnected the battery.  When they re-connected it the radio reset itself to a default configuration which included arming the alarm. I dug through the manual, found the disarm procedure, pressed buttons for about five minutes and disabled that bad boy.

All this goes to show, I suppose, that sometimes we don’t know as much about familiar things as we think we do.  There are surprises waiting around every corner, and I think that is a good thing.

In our neighborhood, almost every house has a gas lantern out in front.  Most of these lanterns either have been converted to electricity or turned off: We were one of the last  houses with a working gas lantern. Or it did until about a month ago when it quit working. That’s not too bad for an appliance (I suppose that’s what you’d call it) that is 43 years old. Anyhow, I found out that it would cost about $300 to have it fixed  or to have it converted to electricity (I do not mess with gas or electricity).  I also found out that the darned thing burned $9.00 worth of gas a month as it sat there merrily chewing through cubic foot upon cubic foot of gas 24/7/365.

Then I stumbled on another alternative and that is solar. I could get a solar-powered lantern head that would go right on the existing pole and cost about $100. I have to say that I have thought solar-powered whatevers were very cool for a long time, from the solar-powered water heaters to arrays that power the entire house, but think that they are not quite ready for widespread use. This is my English major opinion about a complex scientific and technical issue, but I think the technology needs more time, just like a real electric car. (Prius owners, please do not throw batteries at me.) But a solar-powered lantern seemed different. The  one I got has 18 LED bulbs (and eight rechargeable AA batteries) and seemed promising.  Besides, an operating cost of $0.00 appealed to me.

Some people I talked to were not impressed with outdoor solar lights, finding them weak and not durable. I took off the gas lantern (some serious metal there), put the one I bought onto the pole in front of our house and waited while it charged for a couple of days. I thought about the guy who put a full solar electricity system on his house and was bragging about it to a neighbor who said, “What do you do when it rains?” (Use the batteries?)  I also thought about the International Space Station which has huge solar arrays, but then I remembered that it doesn’t rain in space. (Pretty good observation for an English major, I think.)

Since the lantern has a light sensor that turns it on at dusk, I had to wait for dark to fall to switch it on. Shazam! It threw a respectable light which perfectly filled in the dark space along the sidewalk that the porch light didn’t reach. The light was whiter than an incandescent, but it is better to light a single solar lantern than curse the darkness.  Whatever that means.

So, in a small way, I feel like I’ve gone solar. We’ll see how it works out. I have to add cleaning the solar panels on top of the lantern to my maintenance tasks. I’d like to hear about anyone else’s experience with solar power. There’s a lot of free sunlight out there waiting to be harvested, even if we don’t live in space.

I’m sure most everyone has heard of the idea of a bucket list, a list of things you want to do before you die, or “kick the bucket.” A phrase like this is bound to have uncertain origins, and this one certainly does.  One theory is that people who were being hanged, short of a gallows, were made to stand on a bucket which was then kicked out from under them. Another idea is that “bucket” is an old word for a wooden beam (it’s used this way in Shakespeare) from which pigs who were being slaughtered were hung.  When the animal struggled it was likely to kick the bucket (beam). Yet another explanation holds that when a person was dying in the Middle Ages a bucket of holy water was placed at their feet so visitors could sprinkle them with it.  In this process the bucket was almost certain to be kicked. And a final surmise is that it came from a children’s game in which the object was to kick the bucket (and fall down dead, apparently).

The phrase has been used for a recent movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman and also for a sermon series at our church–spiritual qualities to develop before we die. I would say that most people have an idea, if not a list, of things they want to do and most of that involves travel. For example, I would like to visit Australia and New Zealand.  I believe Australia has the most venomous species of any continent so I would have to be careful. I would also like to meet Gordon Lightfoot and establish a foundation to encourage young people to major in English.  See?  It’s easy to come up with three or four or a dozen things you’d like to do in this life. I’m game for most anything, and I think a lot of people are.

But I am also working on an anti-bucket list, which is a tally of things I never want to do.  The list is presently short, possibly because I am open to most things (except watching The Sound of Music again (sorry everyone) or eating liver (yuck) so it was hard to come up with a very long anti-bucket list, so here it is in all its two-item glory:

1. Number one on my anti-bucket list (as indicated by the number one to the left) is to never go to Chuck E. Cheese. Now I like children and I like pizza but from what I’ve heard this place combines the two at eardrum shattering noise levels. And I’m told the pizza is not good.  Avoid.

2. The second item is to never go to Las Vegas.  I don’t care if Celine Dion is there, it’s not worth it.I don’t gamble (because I’m cheap) so there’s no attraction there.  I also understand that food is expensive and there is smoking everywhere. No, thanks. There are some obvious places never to go, like Afghanistan and Myanmar, but I’m holding this list to higher standards and not noting the obvious.

So there’s my anti-bucket list. I’ll keep trying to add to it.  I’d be interested in what’s on yours. Maybe I could use some of your ideas. Let me know in the “Comments” section.

The list would be long, so I won’t put down everything, but I have been thinking about some small ordinary things that I enjoy.

The alarm on my Nokia cell phone. I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s a happy little tune that makes it a pleasure to wake up.  And for me that’s saying a lot!

Chuck Bell, the weatherman on WRC-TV (Channel 4).  Chuck’s relaxed, sincere manner and loopy humor make any forecast easier to take. He is so cool.

Our daughters’ conversations. Whether it’s live or on Facebook, they come up with some of the funniest and most insightful exchanges I’ve ever heard.  And I’m not just saying that to get a big expensive present for Father’s Day.

The almost continual conversation about ideas and people I have had with my wife Becky for nearly 39 years now. It’s the best.

The New Yorker magazine.  Great articles, great writing, and one of the few magazines that still runs cartoons.  Even if some of them don’t make any sense.

The Washington Post newspaper. Yes, I know it’s liberal but then so am I. Always full of ideas, insight and information. It has a surprising local touch for an international newspaper.

Crossword puzzles and jigsaw puzzles. Stimulation for the mind and soul.  I learn a new word every time I do a good crossword.

Choral groups.  I’m a member of three of them , and choral groups are great, whether we’re learning the music or listening to another group. Nothing like SATB harmony.  How sweet the sound!

Vintage acoustic guitars. They’re works of art, really. It’s amazing that something fifty years old sounds better than the day it was created. One of my happiest acquisitions was a 1964 Gibson B45-12n twelve-string.  They don’t make ’em like that any more.

Nationals baseball games on the radio. I find I prefer listening to them to watching them. It’s a warm comfortable feeling to follow the play-by-play, even when we lose. Even when the new guy uses baseball slang I’ve never heard. “Inside-out curve ball”–huh?

So, to quote someone else, these are a few of my favorite things.  I hope you can think of a few of your own. Happy Monday, everyone!

I think it’s interesting that there is sort of a curbside giveaway going on, at least in this area. I’ve talked to people who didn’t want the bother of transporting a sofa or a washing machine so they put it on the curb and, with or without a sign, the item disappears in short order. It’s a win-win: someone gets a free whatever and someone is rid of something they don’t want.

I had a contractor grade wheelbarrow that a mason left when he redid our front porch about ten years ago.  I reminded him and called him a number of times about the ‘barrow but he never came and picked it up.I eventually covered it and offered it to several people I know, but no one was interested. I didn’t need it–I have spent more than my share of time behind a wheelbarrow. A week or so ago I decided to clean up the back yard where the wheelbarrow lay in a corner, covered by plastic. I put the wheelbarrow by the curb with a sign that read, “Free–please take.”  I expected it would disappear quickly like the things left out by people I talked to.  It wasn’t new–the pan was caked with concrete and rusted through here and there–but the wheel and frame were in good shape.

It might have been that my sign folded over in the wind, but no one picked it up the first day. Or the second. I began to feel like an anti-Diogenes, the cynic philosopher who went searching with a lit lantern in the daytime trying to find an honest person. (Who said a minor in philosophy would never be useful?)  My problem was the people passing by were too honest. No one would take a wheelbarrow sitting by the curb. Not that we haven’t had things stolen. Someone took the bed liner out of my truck this past year.  The police said it could have been worse–thieves also were stealing catalytic converters. We have also had the fog lamp insert from Becky’s Avalon stolen and the license plate year sticker off the car. But it looked like no one wanted a wheelbarrow.

On the third day, I made sure the sign was secure and visible and put the wheelbarrow out. By mid-morning, it was gone.  The curbside market had worked.

It’s good to know that I can leave things out and they won’t be taken, although I’m not about to leave power tools lying around outside or park my 1964 Gibson B-45-12 by the curb just to see what will happen. I believe most people are honest, but I also believe in not creating tempting situations.