Biscuit City

I don’t change much in my life.  We have lived in the same house since 1988, gone to the same church since 1970 and drive cars at least ten years old if not older. I taught at the same high school my entire career and otherwise don’t change much or easily. What we have is comfortable and familiar and that’s how I like it.

With computers and telephones and television service, there is always pressure to update to the latest (and generally more expensive) technology.  I probably should have gotten one of those digital conversion boxes and used an external antenna, but that would have involved a change from cable. When Verizon, our telephone company and DSL provider, offered fiber optic internet service they called Fios (indeed pushed it, calling me every other day to see if I wanted it. I told them I would let them know), I put it off until I was ready. I became ready when they offered it for the same price as DSL. The upgrade was done by a technician and the service has been great (I know this is not true for everyone). Then they started calling me about converting my cable service to Fios as well.  I told them I would let them know.

We have had Comcast cable for quite a while and I wasn’t ready to switch to their digital service, Xfinity. We don’t watch that much television, but I do admit an attraction to shows like Animal Police on the Animal Network (or whatever it’s called).  Then channels began disappearing, replaced by a screen saying that they were now digital and we had to upgrade to–guess what?– Xfinity. I finally gave in an ordered the self-install kit, expecting the worst.

The upgrade came in a big box containing four smaller boxes, one for each of our sets. I took them out and found there was one large converter and three smaller ones. I put the large one on the big set in the studio (naming it the Mother Ship) and the smaller converters on the smaller set.  The instructions didn’t say, but I supposed that the big converter used a wireless signal to broadcast to the smaller converters.  I set everything up and activated the service online. It all worked! Everything, that is, except the one set I forgot to turn on for the activation.  I called the number on the screen and was connected to one of those robotic voices that never work well, except this one did. “She” diagnosed the problem and after a series of strange electronic noises activated the inactive set. Pretty impressive.

The last step was to program the remote controls which used the procedure that anyone who has set up a universal remote is familiar with.  Punch some buttons, put in the code for that brand of television and see if the remote will turn off the set. Repeat with another code when it doesn’t.  Repeat some more. I managed to get all the remotes working except for the one in our bedroom on a set that must be about twenty years old.  I finally called the service line and got a real person.  When I described my problem, he asked how old the set was. When I told him, he said that was most likely the problem–the set was too old to recognize the code. I could use the old remote to turn it on and off and the new one to change channels and set the volume. I kept fiddling with the Xfinity remote until I accidentally found out that if I pressed the Return key and then Power, the set would turn on or off.

All in all, the changeover wasn’t bad, taking about two hours on a Saturday afternoon. Now we have about 200 channels we won’t watch.  Like I said, I don’t like change.

Becky and I were coming back from something last evening, and there beside the railroad tracks was a billboard sized sign for Geico Insurance showing my favorite ad character, the gekko. Nothing unusual in that, but the caption said something to the effect that Geico was in Gainesville. The sign is in Manassas and Gainesville is about seven miles away. It’s sort of disconcerting, as if we had been suddenly transported seven miles west.

There are all kinds of crazy signs if you watch for them.  Another favorite local sign of mine is the one at the exit to the local Costco parking lot, near the loading dock. It says, “Attention drivers–be sure the fork lift operator is out of your truck.”  You just know that at least one fork lift operator had an unplanned trip to Ohio at some point. As is the case with most of these signs, someone must have tried it.

We were in Atlanta a few years ago and visited the Georgia Aquarium. On the list of prohibited items posted at the front door was “fishing tackle.”  I asked a guard if people really tried to bring in fishing gear.  He said, “Oh, sir, they try to bring in everything.” I can see someone going home exclaiming, “Hey Betty Lou, I caught me a three-hundred pound grouper!”

It seems that most of the women I know, including those I am most closely related to, are engaged in a continuing round of jewelry parties.  The jewelry is quite nice and they seem to enjoy the parties. It seems that the economy is being kept afloat (such as it is) by people buying and selling jewelry.  Not a bad idea, that. Keeps everyone entertained and keeps the cash flowing.

I think that if someone wanted to make a lot of money they could have cordless power tool parties for the guys. I am not a very skilled handyperson, but I do enjoy a good cordless power tool.  And I have accumulated a lot of them.

Normally when I work on a project I pull out the tools I think I’ll need and then have to go back until I have dozens of tools to use. Each project is an opportunity to acquire more tools because, after all, you can’t do the job without the right tools.  When a group from our church rehabbed a townshouse, I had to buy a compound cut miter saw since we were putting in a lot of trim. I also got an air compressor and pneumatic hammer to nail the trim.  Good stuff.  Last summer when I replaced all our flat panel interior doors with six-panel versions, I had to have a power planer and a router to do the job.  The power planer was necessary because the new doors were about 1/4 inch too long and that’s a hard cut to make with a circular saw.  I am really terrible at chiseling out mortises, hence the router.  I did manage to take some of the end of my left index finger off with the planer…on the last cut of the last door.  The hand surgeon who treated me also gave me a little lecture about being older and having slower reaction times.  I think inattention have more to do with it than reaction times, but we old folk are troubled by both.

As I finished each of about the last four projects I piled the tools on my four foot by two foot workbench in the basement thinking I would organize them some day.  Eventually it got to the point I couldn’t find anything, so I started sorting one afternoon and put each type of tool into a box: woodworking tools, metalworking tools, cutting tools, glues, nails, screws, and so forth.  It didn’t take nearly as long as I thought, and now I can find things. The smaller pieces I still have to sort, but that will come.

I worked on several projects with my friend Jay Jones, a fine fellow who passed away a couple of years ago. I miss Jay and the stories he told.  He seemed to have a tool for every purpose and could find it.  He put all the tools he thought he would need for a particular job into a box and took that to the work site.  I was trying to use several toolboxes to carry mine, but I have since adopted Jay’s system. It works like a charm and I think of him every time I fill a box with tools.

Eavesdropping is possibly a backformation of eavesdrop, the portion of a house where rainwater will drip off. A person who surreptitiously stands at the windows to overhear is known as an eavesdropper. That makes a lot of sense, particularly in close-packed medieval cities where the houses were right on the streets. The French are more direct about the term, saying ecouter aux portes, or listen at the doors. Makes sense to me. That explanation is a lot better than the one for the expression “raining cats and dogs” which supposedly came from the habit of cats and dogs climbing up into the eaves of houses to sleep. When rain came the cat and dogs would jump out of the eaves and so it looked like it was raining cats and dogs as well as rain. I think this is a silly explanation since no self-respecting cat or dog would go to that much trouble to find a place to sleep.  Usually they look for some place that is warm, dry and easy to reach–qualities house eave are notably lacking.

It used to be a lot easier to eavesdrop in the days of party lines when three or four families shared a telephone line. Each household had a distinctive ring (ours was two shorts and a long) and all you had to do to listen in on a conversation was pick up the receiver.  Maybe this is where I got into the habit of eavesdropping. I can blame it on Ma Bell.

Sometimes, though, a good eavesdropping opportunity doesn’t pay off.  I was in a store the other day when I heard a rather agitated woman ask a clerk to speak to the manager.  Bingo!  I sidled up to them, pretending to look at some merchandise. I was all ears.  When the manager came up I expected a good listen, but all the woman wanted to do was ask something about the store’s inventory.  Apparently her default expression and manner was one of agitation.  So it didn’t work out that time, but sometimes it does, and it’s the best free entertainment around.

Early on, I loved listening to the radio. We’re not talking about FM or satellite or HD, but plain old static-filled AM radio. I wanted to be a radio announcer, although I never had the voice for it, but I thought maybe something would work out.  I built a crystal radio set from a kit and listened to it in preference to the table radio in the kitchen. The crystal set entailed stringing a rather long antenna from the house to the garage and also running a ground wire to make it work. But work it did and I had the thrill of listening on headphones with a radio I had built.  Eventually I got a table radio of my own and listened to that.  I preferred top 40 rock music and sang along with all the songs. In the summer I listened to the broadcasts of the Washington Senators baseball games, hearing the static from distant thunderstorms during the play-by-play.  They usually lost, but they were, after all, the home team.

When I went to college, I was thrilled to learn that the campus has its own 5-watt FM radio station, WESU-FM, the voice of Wesleyan University. We had to take a test for a license, and so many people were interested in broadcasting that the freshmen started out doing newscasts. We had a teletype machine we could rip wire service stories off and tape them together for our script.  I didn’t like this very much, but I persevered and I think shared a three-hour show with another guy. He played rock and I played folk music.  Sophomore year I was in Europe the first semester, but found on my return that the other guy had lost interest and I would have a three-hour show if I wanted it.  The only catch was it was on Saturday, but I usually stayed around on  weekends so that worked.  I did the “Come In, Stranger” Folk Music show the rest of sophomore year and the first semester of junior year. I called it that after the Ian and Sylvia cover of the Johnny Cash song. If I were doing it today I would call it, “Biscuit City.” I played strictly folk music, and while I was never sure anyone was listening, I had a good time.  Surprisingly, although I am a shy person, speaking to an unseen audience didn’t bother me at all.  A friend of mine told me that my show was the favorite of the professor who ran the biology rat lab Saturday afternoons.  Seems the rats did better at their tasks on a diet of roots music.  Could be.

I never did any more with radio, save a turn at sound effects when the Chorale did a 40’s radio show for a concert a while back.  That was fun and a real addition to my resume. A few years ago, some of the current students were cleaning up the studios at WESU-AM & FM and came across my third-class radio-telephone operator’s license. I have it here somewhere, proof that once upon a time I was on the radio.

Writing as it is taught these days encourages writers to think about (and write about) their writing history.  Mine is quite long–in fact, I had forgotten some of the early experiences with writing, mostly with newsletters.

I think I might have learned to read by reading the daily newspaper.  There was so much in the paper and it came every day!  I decided to do my own neighborhood newsletter and sell it for five cents a copy.  I forget what I called it and how I duplicated it is a big puzzle since copying machines were not that common in those days. The only duplication processes I was familiar with were the dittos at school and the mimeos at church.  Somehow I can’t see that a secretary at either place would have typed up my little newspaper. I do recall typing it on a big used Underwood typewriter we had.  It took me forever but finally I had my one-page newsletter and somehow made copies of it.  I then went door to door trying to sell it.  No one wanted to pay as much for a kid’s newsletter as they paid for a real daily newspaper, so I didn’t sell a single copy.  I wish I still had one, but it’s long gone.

A few years later the school established a newsletter and I wrote a few articles for that.  One was about how cool science was and the other I recall was about the importance of obeying the safety patrols. Yes, we were pretty much a mouthpiece for the administration, but it was something.

In high school I took journalism and then became copy editor for the W.T. Woodson High School Cavalcade. My buddies and I had the second (editorial) page to ourselves and generally made up all our copy, rather than do any actual reporting.  Our long-suffering sponsor, Dot Spencer, carefully reviewed each issue, pointing out the more egregious mistakes.  She let us make mistakes and we learned from them.

When I went to college, I did articles and reviews for the Wesleyan Argus and the American University Eagle.  I had known the editor of the Argus in high school, and I thought he would give me an easy pass on my articles.  Not so.  I of course kept a copy of what I submitted and compared it to what was published.  There was little resemblance, and after I got over feeling insulted for not having my great style recognized, I began to learn from what Paul did to my writings. At the Eagle I was edited less heavily, and published several reviews and articles. I even covered a speech by Harold Stassen, who ran for President every election.  I called him a “perennial pretender to the Presidency,” which I thought was a great and descriptive phrase. It was cut.

When I became an English teacher, I turned my attention to teaching writing.  This process was given a quantum boost by the Northern Virginia Writing Project out of George Mason University and headed by Don Gallehr, who recently retired and encouraged countless writers and teachers of writing. The intention of the project was to establish a community of writers who taught writing.  If you are a teacher of any kind, take the first class, English 695, and then do the summer institute.  It will change your life.  Details are available at http://www.nvwp.org.

When I retired, I mostly wrote emails to my brother and an occasional piece for church and the Manassas Chorale. I edited the church newsletter for a while, but my big break came when Susan Svihilik, executive editor of the News and Messenger, heard the eulogy I wrote for my mother’s funeral.  She asked if I would like to write a weekly column for the paper.  I would and I did, for three years and 148 columns and other pieces until Susan was summarily fired a few weeks ago for ridiculous reasons.  I stopped the column out of  a protest for how she was treated.  She is an incredible newspaperwoman and person who deserved better.  Anyhow, I immediately started this blog and enjoy writing it immensely.  I hope you do, too.

I was thinking of this phrase when I was having trouble getting a lock to turn.  Actually, it doesn’t have anything to do with a lock. Of course, the phrase means “everything” or the totality of something.  It actually refers to parts of a musket.  The lock is the flintlock or the firing mechanism; the stock is the wooden part of the gun; and the barrel is, well, the barrel, down which the musketball travels. If you have a lock, a stock and a barrel you have a complete gun.

Anyhow I was thinking that most of us know how to use locks and keys, really, if you think about it, without any instruction. It’s one of those things that you learn by watching.  Keys are a symbol of responsibility and authority. I know the school I worked for was serious about keys.  Every summer we had to turn in our keys and God help us if they weren’t the ones we were issued in the fall.  I never lost a key so I don’t know exactly what happened to teachers who did, but I understand that it involved a lot of paperwork.

Most of us remember the first time we were given the keys to the family car. There is a representation of freedom and responsibility. Or the keys to our first house. It made the acquisition seem real.

I don’t know if you’re like me and have about a dozen keys that you have no idea what they got to any more.  I have them on one ring, and I should throw them away, but who knows?  They might fit something I need to get into.

And I think all of use are familiar with the various forms of key jiggling necessary to make a lock work. There’s the up and down, the partial withdrawal, the lifting of the key and the depressing of the key.  How we figure out what works is anybody’s guess.

Recently we’ve acquired a couple of cars with fobs, and it’s a whole new world. I like this twenty-first century we are living in.  I feel so cool when I press the button and the car locks pop open and it flashes its lights at me.  It’s like I accomplished something.  Then of course there’s the wrestling match with the steering wheel that we sometimes go through when the key won’t turn.  I’ve known people who have broken keys off in the ignition trying to get them to turn. I’m not strong enough to do that.

Then there are keyless start buttons in cars. I don’t expect we’ll have one of those for about thirty more years by which time we’ll be using it on our Rascals. The start button on cars reminds me of the start button or link on computers. Oddly enough, the start button is also the stop button on computers.  That’s a little odd, and maybe material for another blog, another day.

It occurred to me in thinking of all that transpired with cleaning my deck this weekend that there are a lot of terms from sailing ships that are used figuratively in our everyday speech.  Most people have probably had no more experience with a big sailing ship than a tour of the Susan Constant at Jamestown or the Constitution in Boston or the Mayflower in Plymouth, and yet we make frequent use of terms used by crews of sailing ships.  I know that language is conservative by its very nature, but that conservative?  You could have fooled me.

“Hit the deck” means of course, get out of the way, whether what we’re hitting is a deck or a laminate floor.  The expression “at the end of one’s rope” also comes from sailing ships. “Chew the fat” came from the tough rations aboard ships. “Fly by night” referred to a small temporary sail.

Anyhow, last Friday I was trying to clean my neglected deck.  With each application of deck cleaner I gained about two square feet of relatively clean wood. After about ten applications of cleaner I had what I am sure looked like a giant leopard skin print when viewed from space. (Hey!  Homeland Security!  See my leopard skin?) Clearly this wouldn’t do.

I thought about using my portable planer to take about 1/64 of an inch off the boards.  This was the same power tool I used to plane about 1/64 of an inch off my left index finger last summer. The finger is fine, but I don’t recommend trying to shorten your reach that way. As it turned out, the planer was too narrow to take down a board in one pass, so I thought it the better part of wisdom was not to try that.

Then I thought of sanding the grime off.  I had some 60 grit sandpaper.  As far as I know 40 grit is about as coarse as sandpaper gets, although there might be some coarser (with big chunks of abrasive embedded in the paper). So I took my power sander and hit the deck with some 60 grit.  Not much happened other than a big cloud of dust.

I had heard of pressure washers and concluded that it was time t use a new power tool.  I checked into renting one, but it cost $50 for six hours, so I bought a small electric model for $100, thinking I could use it every year to clean the deck.(You heard it here first.  I expect you to hold me to it.)

The washer was rated at 1400 psi, which was supposed to be adequate for wooden decks so I put the machine together and fired it up. The high-pressure stream of water cleaned the crud off the deck; initially I was holding the tip too close to the wood and ended up with an engraved deck, mostly on the handrails.  After a while I was enjoying using the tool, which throws up a big cloud of spray.  It’s kind of gratifying to use and see years of dirt (and layers of wood) wash away.

And so I was left with a clean deck although it did have something like wood fuzz on it.  I swept and sanded it and got a fairly smooth and clean surface, not too shabby for 45-year-old wood.  A couple of coats of sealer and we’re good to go until next year. I learned a lot doing this, like don’t neglect maintenance chores around the house, but beyond that, I can’t think of anything else I learned this time around.  Maybe something will come to me.  I’ll let you know.

I would think that anyone with any awareness at all realizes that Memorial Day is just not a holiday marking the beginning of summer, or an occasion for sales.  I think we are all aware that it is a day for honoring the sacrifice of those who died in our country’s wars (about a million people all told) to insure that our freedoms and way of life continue. As we have watched the videos of troops departing for combat and returning home, and some coming home in flag-draped coffins, we know the cost of protecting our country. In my lifetime, we have had the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, the Gulf Wars, and the War on Terror, including Afghanistan. Currently we are in a war that has lasted a decade, with an abundance of sacrifice from millions of people.

A friend sent an article about the losses of aircraft and crews during World War II. On average, 6600 American servicemen died per month, or about 220 a day. A single B-17 bomber going down meant the loss of ten men. It was not uncommon to lose 10, 50, 100 bombers on a single mission.  It adds up.


George Orwell said, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” I would change rough men to “courageous and dedicated men and women” because I think that reflects the reality of the situation. I hope we can be aware of those who made the supreme sacrifice and of those right now who are giving their all so that we may sleep peaceably in our beds.

I think all of us in this country have some Puritan influences in our characters. I don’t mean that we enjoy three hour sermons or want to hang our neighbors as witches (or maybe some of us do). These influences show up in subtle ways, like my reaction to commercials on British TV. Let’s just say there’s a lot more nudity in ads in the mother country. And at the funeral of French President François Mitterrand in 1996, his wife and long-time mistress stood side by side at the service.  Think that would happen here? Just think of the reaction to John Edwards’ and Arnold Schwartznegger’s indiscretions and you have the general idea.  The difference is the Puritan basis of our culture.

I was thinking also about the Puritan tendency to make parables out of daily events. If your barn was struck by lightning and burned down, you were being punished by God for some secret sin. If your cow went dry, it possibly meant your neighbor was a witch.  They devoted a lot of time and effort to trying to make sense of what they called “the Book of the World.”

Now, I’m a Baptist, not a Puritan, but I sometimes see parables in events.  One is happening right now as I’m trying to clean my deck. Let me say first that we are not Outdoor People. We don’t camp or spend much time outdoors but rather scurry from our house to our cars and then to our destination, which is usually indoors.  I appreciate the National Parks as much as anyone, but I can enjoy them on PBS. Anyhow, we have a little ten by ten deck on the back of the house where we keep the trash can and recycling bin and a propane-fired grill (which we rarely use). I have probably not cleaned the deck for five years? six years? I forget. It got to looking so bad I decided I had to clean it.

I read up about cleaning wooden decks online and saw something called “House Clean” which is a hose end cleaner that you attach to the end of a hose (go figure), apply the special solution to the deck and then rinse it off.  Right. I think this method cleaned about two square feet down to the brown wood.  The rest of the deck stayed the same nasty black or green.  The green is mold or fungus or something.  The black is particulate matter from jets landing at Dulles Airport. When we had our roof redone a few years back, I asked the guy about white shingles, thinking they would reflect some of the heat from the sun.  He didn’t recommend them because the black stuff from the jets caused the shingles to look streaky.  So we went with gray shingles which have worked out well. No black streaks.

So, I applied another round of House Clean and came up with about four square feet of brown deck. I then switched to detergent and scrubbing on my knees with a brush. About six square feet. Then I tried a bleach solution, which gave me eight square feet. I’m creeping up on it, but I know I used something last time that worked well.  So, I’m off to the hardware store to see what they recommend. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

And the parable in all this?  It’s to not let things go, no matter what they are. It’s better to keep up with whatever you need to keep up with whether it’s a deck or a relationship.  If you don’t, there’s always a price to pay.