Stone Age Bodies

Okay, for the purposes of this discussion, puberty is defined as the time when you become physically capable of performing the sex act. Well, that's just for the guys, it's a little more complicated for the girls. I think that, for the girls, we should define it as the time when they are physically capable of becoming pregnant.

Of course the original purpose of sex was to make babies but, from early on, humans, unlike the other animals, have tried to make more out of it than that. I really think that all the religious restrictions that have been imposed on sex were intended to keep, or restore, it to its original purpose. Making a baby, however, is only the beginning, then you have to protect and nurture it until it becomes old enough to make a baby of its own. If people hadn't done that, the human race would have become extinct a long time ago. In primitive societies, the father took care of the protection part and the mother took care of the nurturing part. Nowadays, it seems to take a whole village to raise a child, probably because a kid has to learn more skills than fighting, farming, and fucking to become a successful adult.

Puberty comes to different people at different ages, but the average age is about 12. In ancient times, kids got married and started working on their own families at about that age. The men were usually somewhat older than the women, but that's about the average. Nowadays it would be unthinkable to encourage procreation at that age but, in those days, people didn't live as long as they do now, so they had to get an early start if they wanted to ensure that their kids would be old enough to take care of themselves before the old folks kicked off. If you had two kids by the time you were 14, by the time the last one grew up, you would be 26, which was about the average human life expectancy in the Stone Age. When people started living long enough to raise three kids, that's when the population started to increase. Of course it's way different nowadays, and that's the problem: We are trying to live in the Space Age with Stone Age bodies. Theoretically, evolution will solve that sooner of later but, if we don't want to wait thousands of years for that to happen, we might think about giving Mother Nature a little boost to speed things along.

Puberty is useless without sex. It consumes time and energy that could be used for other things. We can't all cure cancer, but we could all use a little more time to develop the skills necessary to be successful in the modern world. Separating sex from procreation might be a step in the right direction, but why not just put the whole program on hold for a few more years? A few years might seem like a long time to a kid, but that kid will likely be old a lot longer than he was young. So what's the hurry?

From what I have heard and read about the Chinese one child policy, they don't exactly force people to have abortions. What they do is offer young couples a bunch of benefits, like better jobs and living quarters and better education for their kid, if they will sign a contract agreeing to have only one child. Then, if they screw up and have a second child, they have to reimburse the state for all those benefits. Under those conditions, abortion must seem like the only logical alternative to many couples. Another thing they are doing is aborting many of the girl babies so that their one child will be a boy. This has resulted in a shortage of women in the country, forcing many men to bring in mail order brides from other Asian nations. If you have one child, and that child brings another person into the country, the net population gain is still two, the same as if you had two kids in the first place. What I heard on the news, though, is that China is reconsidering the policy because they are having a hard time filling all the job openings in their booming industrial economy. Hence, my somewhat sarcastic assertion that they are running out of cheap labor.

the pill

All this prudity in the Abrahamic religions comes from the Jews.  The Romans, when they weren't  in the mood of conquering and putting down rebellion, were an easy going lot.  They loved their orgies, and if the current Caesar was gay it was no big deal.  And as far as religion goes you could keep your old one, and as a matter of fact, some of the Romans would probably take it up because they loved religion so much that one was never enough, but you did have to pay lip service to the Roman gods.

But all that went into the crapper with the Jews who had that pesky First Commandment.  Much mayhem ensued, because they wouldn't put the Roman gods before that jealous Yahweh, not even lip service, so they had to be conquered several times.  And just when the Romans thought they had put the lid on this shit, up pop the Christians, who were pretty nice guys with the poor and all, but awfully puritanical.

But here is the deal, why were the Jews, and the Romans too, though they were looser, and pretty much everybody, so down on sex?  Well it has to be the babies, right?  It's just disruptive.  A guy wants to be sure that all his wive's babies are his (though why is that?  What's the difference?  I have to think the selfish gene comes in here), and that his daughter's kids are whoever's he chooses her to marry.  If babies came from picking each other's noses, I don't think anybody would care who anybody had sex with, but they damn well better keep their noses to themselves.

I don't know if you are a reader of Vonnegut, seems like you would be, seems like he would be a writer you would like, but there is one of his books where the phrase "I once read a science fiction story where...' occurs over and over again, so I like the fact that you have brought up a science fiction story.  But I am a little puzzled about what is meant by puberty.  Normally puberty embraces a whole range of changes in behavior, but I think what we are mainly talking about is the sex drive.

And here again isn't the problem here that people have babies, that all those kids are not getting past high school, and that there are all those babies with no means of support?  If they were having sex with no babies, wouldn't that be perfectly fine?  It would by me.

Ten years old?  That sounds awfully precocious Beagles.  But then it sounds like you took the problem in hand. And still you had time for hunting and fishing and putting on that uniform and marching up and down the field.  People are always ruing what looks like wasted time, but the fact is that if they don't waste it one way they will waste it another, it's not like we would all be finding a cure for cancer.

You speak about our technology giving us a way to postpone puberty (the sex drive), in the sense of if we can put a man on the moon why can't we invent a toothpaste that goes back in the tube, but really we don't want to delay puberty because you can never become an adult unless you go through it.  But yet again, sex is not the problem, babies are.

And here's the thing, I think most people believe that everybody has the right to have as many kids as they can pump out, and I say that is just not true if everybody else has to end up supporting them.  Does everybody have a right to eat steak every day?  But of course this is a little dicey for a good liberal like me, because isn't it like saying, rich people have a right to as many children as they want, but poor people only as many as the rich people decide that they can have.  And of course there is a racial component to this.

I believe the Chinese enforced their program with abortions and the Chinese society is generally much more compliant than us Americans, and of course we could never do those abortions.

We could do a pill thing, something like everybody has to be on the pill (maybe we could invent a male one too, so as not to be sexist) until high school or GED or something like that, but I don't know how we would enforce it, and I know it would be the end of the career of whatever politician broached the subject, but I do think we would be better off.

Sex and the Single Girl

I remember that thing with Dan Quail and the Murphy Brown show. They took Quail's speech and actually worked it into the show. With a little editing, not all that much really, they made it look like Quail was talking about Murphy Brown as a real person. Brilliant!

Different religions deal with sex differently. The Hindus and the Buddhists are all for it until, if you live long enough, you get to become an ascetic and give up everything that is fun. The Muslims are kind of like our parent's generation was, they think it's fine for the guys to do it, but not the girls. Then they wonder why there's so many gays around, and they certainly don't approve of that either. The Israelites, at the time Moses was writing all those laws, thought that sex was great as long as it was between married couples who would have lots of babies that would grow up to become soldiers just in time for the invasion of Canaan. Anything that bypassed the baby making process, like sodomy, homosexuality, bestiality, and coitus interruptus was, of course, forbidden. Oh, and you were only supposed to marry a virgin Jewish girl, not one of those Canaanite whores because, in the days before DNA testing, that was the only way to make sure that your kids would be 100% Jewish. Christianity, with all its talk about love, and its belief that the end of the world was imminent, should have developed a kinder, gentler code of sexual conduct but, for some reason, it never did. The Catholics don't even let their priests get married, and then they wonder why so many of them end up fooling around with the alter boys.

I heard recently that the Red Chinese are thinking about abolishing their "one child" policy, mostly because they are running out of cheap labor. Of course, there's no telling if they will actually do it because, as everybody knows, those Orientals are inscrutable.

The more I think about it, the idea of delaying and regulating puberty that I got from that science fiction book makes more and more sense. Forget about the birth control implant in the females, if we take care of puberty, the birth control will take care of itself. I went through puberty at the age of 10, but I never got laid until I was 18. That means I wasted eight years of my life trying to figure out what to do with all that energy. Actually, I did manage to handle it, but all that time and energy would have been better spent hunting and fishing or learning how to make money. Plenty of time for sex later, when you have a better chance of finding a willing partner. I don't know about you but, in my experience, it was virtually impossible for 10 year old boy to get laid in those days.

We wouldn't need a lot of regulations either. If we restrict it to high school graduates who are at least 18 years old, that should solve the problem of children having children. One thing is that it shouldn't come automatically at any age, you should have to apply for it like a driver's license. The application process wouldn't even need to be that difficult, just difficult enough so that anybody who is too lazy to put on a rubber would also be too lazy to go through the trouble of getting his puberty permit. Then there should be a badge or something so that you could easily tell who was in the game and who was not. That way, those who were not interested wouldn't be bothered by those who were.

At the time I read the book, something like this was a futuristic pipe dream, but I think today's technology puts it in the realm of the possible. They already know what every human gene does, and that there are some genes that only serve the purpose of switching other genes on and off. All they need to do is switch the puberty gene off at birth and switch it back on when the time is right. I think it's an idea whose time has come.

This reminds me of a story. Stop me if you've heard this one:
When God made man, He gave him 20 years of normal sex life. The man wanted more, but that's all he got. Then God made the monkey and also gave him 20 years of normal sex life. The monkey, however, only wanted 10 years, so he gave 10 of his years to man. Then God made the lion and gave him the same deal. The lion, like the monkey, gave 10 of his years to man. Finally God made the donkey, and the same thing happened. So it came to pass that man has 20 years of normal sex life, 10 years of monkeying around, 10 years of lion about it, and 10 years of making a jack ass out of himself.

As for me, I don't remember lion about it for 10 years, but I'm sure I made up for it with jack ass years.

Murphy Brown

I've been thinking about this.  I remember the Murphy Brown kerfuffle and Dan Quayle's moment of glory.  How strange that is, how somebody can be so close to the presidency at one point and how utterly forgotten they are later.  Well not necessarily forgotten, whenever he pipes up something
Guliani gets press, and nobody lets a quip by Mama Grizzly fall to the ground unnoticed.  On the other hand I think they realize that the more outrageous thing they say the more ink they get and that motivates them to go further to the fringe and they just become more clownlike.  Why can't they be like genial old Fred Thompson and hawk something like reverse mortgages and quietly collect a steady paycheck and not be all the time shoving their faces into the media?

But anyway, Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown.  The big controversy was Murphy Brown, a television character, was having a child out of wedlock, and Dan Quayle spoke out against it because he thought tv was setting a bad example.  Kind of crazy thinking that tv is telling us how to live and we are following their example.  But anyway it got him his face in the public eye and there was talk of him getting into the current primary, but he had no follow up, and soon faded away and spent the rest of his life playing golf.  I think he is still alive, but I'm pretty sure he will spend whatever time he has left playing golf.  What is it with golf?  I think it establishes you as a regular rich guy.  Does Mitt Romney play golf?  This sent me to the google where I entered 'Mitt Romney golf,' and out popped that very question, 'does Mitt Romney play golf,' so I guess others have been wondering. The answer is he doesn't.  Poor Mitt, he is not even a regular rich guy, just a peculiar man.

But anyway the Murphy Brown controversy was because there were all these stats about how poor unwed mothers were and how poorly their children fared, and here was Murphy Brown promoting it on tv.  Again I don't know how many of those single women were watching Murphy Brown and deciding that if she had a baby so would they, but that never dampens a good controversy.  Maybe because of Murphy's tv job, something in the media, she became associated with the left and so the left was accused of trashing morality, and the left came back, chiefly through the women's movement (you know the women's movement is a strong reliable component of the left, so the rest of the left tends to back them wherever they go, but we also do that because we all know what comes of crossing a woman.  They have no sense of humor.  Don't let any liberal woman know I said that.), with the idea that Murphy was rich and would do okay with the kid, but the problem with these other women, and of course there is a racial component to this, is not that they are immoral, it is that they are poor.

You know there is this religious thing where having sex is bad, period, regardless of whether it results in pregnancy or vd or whatever.  And it's not enough for you, the believer, to abstain yourself, God wants you to make everybody else abstain too, so you should make laws keeping them from doing it. and punish them for doing it, and certainly having a baby is a punishment.

Except that the punished don't always see it that way, they think, look I have this adorable baby, and now I am a mother, I am somebody.

But when all the work and expense of having a baby becomes apparent, the baby is not so adorable, and soon the mother has to have help, and, since we are not barbarians, that means we, well off guys like you and me, and all those religious people who don't like contraception have to dig into our wallets, so we are the ones who get punished.

You know that Chinese law limiting babies, a lot of people think it is terrible, but I think it was a pretty good idea.  More on that later.

A War of Words

Some time ago it occurred to me that, in retrospect, the Sexual Revolution was mostly a war of words. I don't think that there's any more sex going on now than there ever was, what has changed is that people are more willing to talk about it openly and realistically. If you remember, when we were going through puberty, reliable information about sex was hard to come by. The adults were reluctant to talk about it honestly, and the other kids didn't know what they were talking about. The result was that a lot of the information we got was just plain wrong. Puberty is a rough time in any kid's life, but not knowing exactly what was going on made it even rougher. I mean, we knew that something important was going on, and we had an understanding of the basic mechanics of it, but we had little understanding about how it fit into the grand scheme of things. At least that's the way I remember it.

Kids nowadays have better information available to them, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are paying attention. People were all excited about the pill when it first came out, but it turned out there were a couple of problems with it. One problem was that a woman couldn't just stay on it for the rest of her life. I forget how long it was but, after a time, she had to switch to something else or there were undesirable side effects. That shouldn't have been a problem because there are numerous other methods that are reasonably safe and reliable, but none of them, including the pill, will work if you don't use it. That's the other problem, people just don't use that stuff as much as they should. I think that most females, when they get to a certain age, have this biological imperative to have a baby. They may not consciously realize it, but it's there, like the elephant in the closet. I'm not sure what the guys are thinking. Maybe they think it should be the woman's responsibility, or maybe they're just not thinking at all.

I once read something in a science fiction story. In this scenario, everybody, male and female, had some kind of procedure done to them at birth that prevented them from becoming sexually active. Later, when they decided they were ready for it, they would go to a doctor and get switched on, but first they had to get approval from some kind of board or committee. Additionally, the women had an implant in their arm that prevented them from getting pregnant. When they decided they wanted to have a baby, this implant could easily be removed by a doctor, again with the approval of some kind of government body. Of course this raises civil rights questions, which was kind of what the story was about. I doubt that a program like this would ever play in Peoria, but I think the basic concept is sound. Instead of taking something to prevent pregnancy, you should have to take something to enable it. That way there would be no more "accidental" pregnancies, every single one of them would be on purpose. Well, in the book, there was this rebel faction that opposed the whole concept, along with other concepts that had become ingrained in the main stream culture. I don't remember all the details but, just when it looked like the rebels were going to overcome and trash the whole civilization, this big mother ship came down out of the sky, loaded all the rebels up, and took them away to some utopian paradise on another planet. They kind of lost me at the end, but I still think that birth control thing would be a good idea, if they could find some way to implement it without pissing everybody off.

the pill

Sacred objects, family heirlooms, graven images, vows from fathers to son, and in the end a little litany which I predicted, but was not interested in hearing, about the guns you owned.  I'm surprised you didn't include their baby photos, didn't tell me their names, cute little anecdotes of things they said.  That guy who you said was like a son to you is clearly not your favorite son, because your favorite sons, along with your daughters, Old Betsy, Cindy, and Dorothy, and the aged grande dames Evangelina and Floradora, dwell in some well appointed space in your house in genteel luxury.  

Bull goose looney, the whole lot of you.

The sexual revolution is probably overrated.  I think it has always been going on.  There seem to be alternate waves of prudery and licentiousness, but even in the most prudish of times there was probably plenty of it going on because, well because people are people.  The 50s were pretty prudish though, in fact the 50s were downright straitlaced, it seems like there were all these rules for everything, but those were the years when we grew up, so it is hard to compare them with anything.

There was the pill, that had to have some effect.  Let me pause here because it just occurred to me, how come we have so many unwed mothers fifty years after the invention of the pill?  Isn't that one thing keeping poor people down, that they have so many babies?  They can't finish high school because they have to take care of the baby, and the baby grows up in poverty because mama was on the dole and doesn't get any kind of education and ends up in jail unless it is a girl and then she gets pregnant before she finishes high school.

There were a couple guys who wrote a book called Freakonomics, and one of the things they asserted was that the beginning of legal abortions coincided with a drop in crime because basically you didn't have as many poor kids running around with no place to go but jail.  I'm not sure how good the statistics were on that, but it makes a good case in seat of the pants common sense.

What if, at the age of fertility, like we give vaccines, we gave every girl birth control pills.  I don't imagine we could make them take them, but surely more would than do now.  Oh a lot of people would be outraged, but I think that would be mostly because they would think their daughters would be having more sex than otherwise, but, you know, as long as they weren't getting pregnant who cares?

Well I don't see how this could ever actually become a program, but I think it would be a damn good idea.

I guess the best thing about the sexual revolution, and this would go hand in hand with women's lib, is women didn't have to be so ashamed about having sex.

Anymore we have this strange political correctness about it, having sex, which is, if you ask me, nothing but that old time morality posing as enlightenment and empowerment.

I guess that will do for this week. 

Some Guns Are Priceless

I have nine guns, and only one of them doesn't work. My old muzzle loader could be made to work, all it needs is a new operating spring. The thing is, they came out with better ones shortly after I bought it. I still used it for years but, when it just wouldn't work anymore, I bought one of the new improved models rather than fix up my old one. If I knew somebody who wanted the old one, I might sell or give it to them, depending on how close a friend they were. Of course I would tell them what's wrong with it. It's not old enough to be an antique, but it's kind of obsolete, so I doubt I could get much for it. I do have one that really is an antique. I don't know how much it's worth, but I don't want to part with it anyway. Of the remaining seven, there are two that I use regularly. There is nothing wrong with the other five, but they are not suited to the kind of hunting I do now. If I ever do the kind of hunting for which they are suited, I would hate to have to buy a new gun knowing that I used to have one like that and had gotten rid of it. There is an old saying that guns never lose their value, until you try to sell them. A lot of things are like that, there's one price when you buy them, and another price when you sell them.

My father had an old Winchester Model 12 shotgun that he grew to dislike. He sold it cheap to one of my Outdoorsmen friends, who didn't tell him that the Model 12, which was a very popular gun, had recently gone out of production and, at the time, was fetching a higher price on the used market than it ever did on the new market. By now it probably is a bona fide antique and is likely worth more than it ever was. They made a lot of them, and nobody knows exactly why they stopped. Normally, something that they made a lot of like that would never have a very high antique value no matter how old it got, but most people who still have an old Model 12 would never part with it for any price. They shot theirs till it wore out and then made a wall hanger out of it. Come to think of it, most of the people who owned a Model 12 back in the day are probably dead by now. Their son or grandson who inherited it would be even less likely to sell it because it has now become a family heirloom.

As a result of his experience with the Model 12, my father resolved that he would never sell another gun, he would pass them all down to me when the time came, and he made me promise to do the same.  Five of the guns I have came from my father, he gave me three of them while he was still alive, and I got the other two, plus the two pistols, after he died. The trouble is, neither my daughter nor my granddaughter wants anything to do with those guns. There is this guy, who I gave the two pistols, who is kind of like the son I never had. It's a personal story, and my hypothetical wife doesn't want me spreading it around but, suffice it to say, he is the closest thing I have to a son. He doesn't hunt, but is an avid target shooter and gun collector. It looks like he will get the rest of my guns when I go off to the Happy Hunting Ground. I will not, however, ask him to make the same promise that my dad asked me to make when he gave me his guns. He may decide that on his own, but I won't make him promise. I mean, the buck has to stop somewhere!

To my mind, the most important thing that came out of the 60s was the Sexual Revolution. Of course it didn't turn out exactly like it was supposed to, but revolutions seldom do. It's still better than it was before, and maybe someday a new generation will take up the cause and perfect it.

how cool is it not to have to ever wear a tie?

I have devoted more time in my life than I like to admit thinking about what was cool.  It was a more powerful motivator in my younger days than it is now.  In fact it was a bit of a relief just chucking the whole thing in my old age.  I had spent considerable effort on it, and I never was very successful at it.

But I think I have a different idea of cool than you do because I think an important element of it is what other people think, in fact thinking about it, I think that what other people think is what it is all about.  But not just any people.  If the squares think you are cool that doesn't mean a lot, and especially if they are very square, you don't want them to think you are cool.  What you really want is for other cool people to think you are cool.

I don't think it is as important to the rich, they can buy whatever they want, and I think they only care what other rich people think, and that can be measured by how much money they have,  The old rich is different, they are like the nobility, and they have their own ways of measuring things like who married into what family or whatever.

But of course none of that is available to the poor, but everybody wants status, so they put the value on other things, the way you wear your hat, the music you listen to.  I think most cool pop stuff comes from the poor.

I have been thinking about what you said about having something that was of no use but I kept it because it was cool, and I don't think I have anything like that. I have my art crap, and my books, and out on my balcony, my garden, but I use all that stuff.  I have useless junk, but I don't think it's cool, I'm just too lazy to throw it away.

But I have to admit, despite all I've said, I do have my recent surge of extrovertism, which I think is something like cool, I want to be noticed and I think about what other people think about me.  I have my hipster hat (which would look mundane on an actual hipster, but on an old fart, kind of has a beatnicky Daddio flair), my Santa beard between shavings, my improv group, my Marina City art club, promoting my shows at the Ten Cat.  One thing that's a little better about this old age cool as opposed to teenage cool is that I used to worry about fucking up and looking like a dork or an asshole or whatever.  I don't worry about that anymore.

But it's not stuff.  Do you every now and then pull out the busted guns and admire them with a misty smile on your face?  Do you go about your daily life with a bit more of a spring in your step knowing that they are tucked away somewhere in a closet?  If somebody stole them would you be bummed?

There was a certain hippy cool, certain clothes to wear, certainly certain music to listen to, certain political views to hold, but that was not something you had to pay attention to.  Nobody was going to put you down for not wearing bellbottoms.

There you go again with the war being a conspiracy to keep the baby boomers from coming together.  I don't know what you think we could have accomplished if we had all been together.  All we wanted to do was end the war, and though some of us like to take credit for it, I think it wound down on its own.  It looks like we are finally going to get legal pot, and people don't have to dress up as much as we did in the fifties.  That's one thing that I think hippies and nonhippies can get together and be grateful for.

Guns Are Cool

I once asked a kid on my school bus what it means to be cool. Specifically, what makes one person cool and another person not cool? The kid thought about it for a few seconds and than told me, "If you have to ask, then you probably wouldn't understand." Of course I know what "cool" means, but I don't think I could put it into words any better than that kid on the bus. Guns are just cool, that's all. They're cool to own, they're cool to look at, and some of them are even cool to shoot. Of course you don't think guns are cool, but there must be something that you think is cool. Maybe it's not a material thing, which would be even harder to put into words, but you must think that something is cool, not because it's useful, not because it's valuable, it's just cool in and of itself. I've heard you say that smoking is cool, but I never thought of it that way, it's just something I do because I like to. I never thought of my beard as being cool, I just got tired of shaving every day in the army and resolved to quit once I got out. I didn't care if anybody thought it was cool or not. Well, if a girl thought it was cool, I wouldn't argue with her about it, but I didn't grow a beard to impress the ladies or anybody else. I don't keep my old guns around to impress other people either, but that's different. Guns are just cool because they're cool, that's all.
 
I don't remember ever wearing Hippy clothes, unless blue jeans and work shirts were considered Hippy clothes. I didn't think of them as Hippy clothes, I thought of them as work and leisure clothes. I had some other clothes too, some perma-press cotton pants that I think were left over from high school but, when they wore out, I replaced them with jeans. I had one suit for weddings and funerals, and a sport coat for less formal affairs. I still have them, but I'm sure they don't fit anymore. It's funny how clothes can shrink when they hang in the closet for a few years. We don't use moth balls or anything like that, so it must have something to do with the humidity, or lack of it. The last wedding I attended, back in the 1990s, was an informal outdoor affair, and everybody just wore what they had on at the time. The last funeral was my mother's in 2002. The suit fit me then, but I haven't had occasion to wear it since, and I'm sure the shrinking gremlins that inhabit my closet have gotten to it by now.

I never thought of myself as a Hippy, although I knew some people who were, and I got along with them okay. Looking back on it, though, I must have been part of some kind of counter culture. I never went to any meetings, so I don't know who else was in it. I suppose it had something to do with my age. All us war babies were growing up at the same time, and that must have made the old timers nervous. Maybe that's why they tried to keep us being kids for as long as they could. If it wasn't for the Vietnam War splitting us up like it did, we might have been a force to be reckoned with. For a long time I believed that was the main reason they had that war, and I'm still not so sure that it wasn't. Who knows what we might have accomplished if we had all stuck together?

QED

I think a lot of people save things just because it is easier than throwing things out.  There is that sentimental stuff, but in a way that has a use, every now and then you can drag it out and get misty eyed looking at it.

It wasn't so much saving things that I was making fun of, it was your reference to guns as sacred objects.  Maybe that was just a casual phrase that you plucked out of your mind without thinking about it too much, but it just struck me as an odd way to think of a tool that is no longer of use.

I've never had an easel.  Watercolorists paint with the paper flat on a table because water does not resist the law of gravity the way oils and acrylics can.  But if I had one I think you said I wouldn't toss off an old one as long as it still worked, and maybe not, but the point is that you hang onto guns that don't work.  I think it's nutty enough to have several that do work, but you never know when those commies come over the hills Old Betsy might jam and you will be glad you have Old Cindy and Old Dorothy, that still work, but what the hell good will be Old Evangelina and Old Floradora who don't?  You will be better off with Old George the bowling ball, who as I pointed out earlier will never wear out and you can just roll them at the commies charging down in that triangular fashion on your freehold.

Oh embarrassing, what do I do with my old paintings that don't sell?  You mean the 99.99 percent?  Fortunately watercolor paper lies flat and I have five units of plastic shelving, so I'm probably good for the rest of my life.  One time in watercolor class I was showing some of my early work and I brought in maybe a dozen of my early paintings that I had spent hours laboring over, and then on the way back I left them on the train and never recovered them, and I felt terrible about it for like five minutes and then I thought well what the hell.  You can think of a painting as a priceless work of deathless art, or you can think of it as a used up piece of paper.

Oh there are people who collect stuff, and of course there are rich people who have all kinds of crap, and then there are hoarders who everybody already agrees are crazy.  And there are probably a few people who will hang onto an old motorcycle or boat or something.  But there is no group, no group, that consistently hangs onto tools that don't work anymore like gun nuts, and that just goes to prove that they are all crazy.  There, QED.

Oh yeah, there were times when I got static for looking like a hippie.  Every now and then I would be strolling down the streets of my neighborhood and some old coot would stick his head out the window and yell, "Hey you, get a haircut, get a job, join the army."  There were some hippies who liked to, I don't know, wear extreme hippie clothes and act goofy to freak out the squares, but I never got into that shit  I just wanted to look like a hippie to show my opposition to the status quo and the unpopular war and antiquated drug laws, and shit like that, which was pretty stupid too, I will admit.

What's interesting too, is that some people, like those freak out hippies, like to be part of the out crowd and thrive on the disapproval of the in crowd, as if that somehow validates them.  But sometimes that disapproval isn't because of what they believe in or how they dress, but just because they are different from the majority.  Like Old Man Fochman, probably didn't care if you were a hippie or college student or a Coastie, the fact was that you were not one of the founding fathers of Cheboygan or whatever he thought he was, and the reason he didn't want your car in his parking lot was that he was afraid your ilk, whatever it was, was planning on taking over the town.

Old Stuff, Old Men, and Dead Animals

I don't know about the people you know, but I know lots of peoples who save old stuff that they don't use anymore. Of course some people are collectors, but I'm not talking about them, I'm just talking about people who hang on to some of their old stuff. Maybe it means something to them, or maybe they just have no good reason to get rid of it. I have only owned two guitars in my life. I gave the first one to my sister after I bought the second one, and I still have the second one, although I haven't played it since 2007. I still have my father's old fishing reel and all of his guns except the two handguns, which I gave to a close family friend.

You said that you don't save your old art supplies like paint brushes. I can understand that because paint brushes wear out and you buy new ones, but what about that stand you put your pictures on while you paint them? Let's say that you buy a new one that you like better, but there's nothing wrong with the old one. Do you just pitch it, or do you keep it for a spare, thinking that you might give it to your nephew or somebody you know that is just getting started painting and doesn't have one yet? Or maybe you put it out on the balcony for your morning glories to climb on. And what about your old pictures, what do you do with the ones that don't sell?

I'm not sure that there is an afterlife for dead animals, or even for dead humans for that matter. The people who are convinced that there is have mixed opinions about the animals. Some believe that animals don't go to Heaven in their own right, but that a beloved pet might go there as a reward for its deserving owner. Your assertion that, if animals can go to Heaven then they can also go to Hell, is logical, but many people's religious beliefs are not all that logical. They might tell you that all the logic they need can be found in the Bible but, if you point out some passage that doesn't seem to make sense, they will tell you that you've also got to have faith. Furthermore, I seem to remember reading that more people believe in Heaven than believe in Hell. (Polls have been taken, studies have been done.)  Also, many people's concepts of Heaven and/or Hell are inconsistent with the official doctrines of their churches, and that doesn't seem to bother them.

I can understand how people can become attached to their horses or pets. I mean some people get attached to a car, boat, or motorcycle, and those things aren't even alive. Then there are others who think that all of those things and animals are just tools to be used for the benefit of their owners. I'm sure that most cowboys got attached to their horses but, in an emergency, they would not hesitate to sacrifice their horse to save their own life or the life of one of their comrades.

I found out later that Old Man Fochman was indeed the founding father of Fochman's Auto Parts, and that he was also known to be a little funny in the head. I think it was mostly my beard that set him off. I got a lot of that in those days, but most of it was more subtle than my encounter with Fochman. I remember now that he asked me several times if I was "from the ship", referring to the Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw, which calls Cheboygan it's home port. There have always been some people in town who didn't care much for the "Coasties", I suppose because they tend to get drunk and fuck the local girls in their off duty time. In those days, they used to let the Coasties grow beards during ice breaking season. Lots of Cheboygan men grew beards during deer season, which is in November, but this happened just before New Years, so Fochman must have taken me for a Coastie, or a Hippy, home from college for the holidays.

I know at least one other Cheboygan merchant who took me for a Hippy. I came into his drugstore looking for his son, who really was a Hippy. He said that he didn't know where his son was and, if he did, he certainly wouldn't tell me. "You Hippies are all alike", he ranted, "You don't wash, you don't shave, and you don't work. Not only that, you look like girls!" he added, as I absentmindedly stroked my beard. I calmly informed him that he was right about the shaving part, but wrong about the other things. I took a shower every day after putting in eight or more hours in my job at the paper mill. Furthermore, the only girl I had ever seen who looked like me was the Bearded Lady in the circus. I also told him that, since there were several other drug stores in Cheboygan, he needn't worry about being offended by my presence in his shop again.

can animals go to hell?

Well that is passing strange, holding on to something that is no longer of any use.  I don't think fishermen hold onto their old reels, or tuba players onto their old tubas, or bowlers on to their old balls.  Well that is an odd one isn't it?  Surely bowling balls don't wear out.  Why, once you had a bowling ball would you ever want another one?  I think your piano example is a red herring.  I never knew anybody like that, and if they were it was only because it was too hard to haul it down to the dumpster and they always hope little Johnny will come upstairs and plunk on a couple keys and the next thing you know he will be a pop sensation,

You play guitar don't you?  I expect you don't hang onto your old guitars.  See, as a good protestant, well as someone who used to be a good protestant, I get the heebie jeebies when I hear the term sacred object.  I think some of our freedom loving Afghan allies recently stoned to death and tossed into a river a woman because they thought she had burned a quran.  But then it turned out it was just a Persian prayer book, kind of late to say they were sorry though.  Well I thought you gun nuts were nuts anyway so this is no revelation.

I remember when Sue bought her horse.  I'm not sure if I remember the story exactly right, but she spent so much time watering and haying and riding on the whatever and feeding it carrots that she had no time for a real job, but luckily she got one where she could slave all day at the stable for pennies, and, as Bruce explained at the time, she was never happier in her life.

It was kind of a stereotype of western lore that the cowpoke loved his horse more than anything. but then in the movies they are shooting at the Indians using the belly of the dead horse for cover and not sheddng a tear, and they are always eating them when there is nothing else to eat.  What about those war horses, where cavalry attacked cavalry, and maybe the soldiers' heads were full of dreams of glory but what about the poor horses who only wanted to go home to a warm stable and a bale of hay?  It just seems so cruel, but they say that war is hell.

Of course only people go to hell.  Every now and then you run across some article about do animals (particularly Fido or Fluffy) go to heaven.  And anybody bringing up that idea probably thinks they do.  But you never see an article about do animals go to hell.  Seems to me that if you can't go to hell, you can't go to heaven.  Maybe that is something we can discuss.

Was that Old Man Fochman who tried to chase you out of his lot?  I expect maybe he thought you were too nattily dressed and  were going to waltz over to the Classy Clothes Emporium and buy some spats and a new fedora and then drive off to your fancy rented trailer without so much as a by your leave.  Was it a good battery?

Gun People, Horse People, and Crazy People

Not all gun owners are like this but, to many of us, guns are kind of sacred. We all have one or two favorite guns that we use regularly, and the rest are called "wall hangers", although not everybody hangs them on the wall, many people keep their extra guns in a closet or locked safe. A wall hanger is just a gun that you don't use anymore but can't bear to part with it. There may be memories associated with it, or it may be a family heirloom, passed down from father to son for generations. It's kind of like the way many homes used to contain an old piano that hadn't been played in years. It might be relegated to the attic or the basement, but nobody would think of getting rid of it. Somebody in the family must have played in the past, and that old piano might be all that was left of Grandma or Uncle Joe, so it was kept forever.

I never was a horse person, but I have known people, and still know people, who are, my sister Sue among them. She gave up riding a long time ago, I think for health reasons but, last I heard, she still kept her old horse, although it may have died by now. A gun or a musical instrument may be kept in storage for generations, not so with horses. A horse is a living thing, and you have to take care of it. A horse requires a lot more care than a dog or a cat, and you shouldn't get one if you're not prepared for the commitment it involves. They're not allowed to send them to the glue factory or grind them up for pet food anymore, at least in the U.S. When an old horse dies or has to be put down, about the only thing you can do with it now is dig a big hole out in the back forty and bury it. My own grandfather had a horse for 20 years, a big old draft horse that he used on his little farm in Stevensville, Michigan. Most farmers had switched to tractors by then, buy Grandpa didn't buy a tractor until his old horse died. The only reason he replaced the horse with a tractor instead of another horse was that he didn't want to go through the grieving process again in his lifetime. After Grandpa died, Grandma sold the tractor and the pickup truck and bought a little Nash Rambler with an automatic transmission. It lasted longer than she did.

I had only lived in Cheboygan for a few months, in a rented trailer, when the battery in my car died. My landlord gave me a jump and told me to hurry over to Fochman's Auto Parts because they were having a sale on batteries. They were closing an a half hour and, if I didn't get there in time, I would be faced with a long holiday weekend without a working battery in my car. I pulled into Fochman's parking lot with minutes to spare but, before I could get out of my car, this skinny old guy came running out, waving his arms and hollering at me. I said, "I'm sorry, are you closed already?" "No", he shouted, "but you can't park there!" "I'm sorry", said I, "Where do you want me to park?"
"I don't care where you park, but not anywhere in my lot."
"Okay, why can't I park in your lot?"
"This lot is reserved for my customers."
"What the hell do you think I am?"
"You're not one of my customers, I don't know you."
Do you sell car batteries here?"
"Yes, I do."
Okay, I came here to buy a battery, so that makes me a customer."
"Well, how do I know if I have the right size?"
"I suggest we look under the hood and measure my battery, then we go inside and see if you have the same size in your inventory."
"I can't hear you, turn off your engine."
"If I turn off my engine, I won't be able to start it again because my battery is shot."
"Turn it off, turn it off!"
(Turns off engine) "Okay, now you have to sell me a battery, give me a jump, or help me push my car out into the street, where I'm sure somebody will stop and help me."
"I've got nothing here to jump you with, and I'm not helping you push your car."
"Then you have to sell me a battery or my car will sit here till I can hitch hike home and get some help."
"You can't park here, this lot is for my customers!"
"Then sell me a battery."
"I'll call the police and have you towed!"
"Good! I'd like to hear what the police will have to say about this."
"Well, I suppose I could sell you a battery."
"Thank you very much!"

guns 'n horses

I don't recall the story about how the shopkeepers of Cheboygan were hostile to new kid on the block, Beagles.  Was it just because you were new?

I don't recall either the guy who put himself into tv plots.  A lot of guys like him though, guys who when given perfectly good reasonable advice, cast it to the winds.  Well I'd wager the guy was not a Bohunk like us.  I remember once I got a fat tax return and my spendthrift pal was all panting about what I was going to spend it on, and I told him, "Ed, I am a Bohunk, this money is going straight into the bank."

That was back when you got more than one lousy percent interest on your savings and you could watch your money grow.  That was back when you had a little bankbook and you took it to the bank every quarter and the clerk would write in your interest.  Those were the days my friend,

Remember that song?  At the time I thought wow, I bet when I get old, me and my friends will play it every time we get together.  Not that I really thought I would ever get old, but now that I am whenever I get together with my friends we never play it.  Too depressing.

What is the deal with horses?  At one time when I was living in Champaign one of the women I knew bought a horse, and when the other women found out about that, they all went out and bought horses, and then when they got together all they talked about was their horses.  These were city folk.  They didn't keep the horses in their garages, they were kept, well I don't know, out in the country.  I think there were stables that kept these horses and fed them and the horsewomen would come out there every chance they got, though they did have jobs and kids, so it wasn't that often, and then they would do what, feed the horse a carrot and ride once or twice around the whatever?  Well women, you know they are always up to some crazy shit?

But  men?  Why would a man keep a horse?  And why two?  You know one of my old Champaign buddies came to town last summer and I assumed he was a good liberal like me, but when we got to talking it turned out that he was a gun nut.  I want to say moderate gun nut, but I don't believe there is such a thing as a moderate gun nut.  Maybe there are gun nuts who happen to be talking to their liberal pals and don't want to get in a big argument so they become moderate gun nuts.

Anyway he turned out to have like seven or eight guns, and now that I think of it, all you gun nuts have a bunch of weapons, and if given the chance, will describe every one of them as if they were talking about their children.  I was going to make a joke here about a gun nut pulling out his wallet and showing off the pictures of all his guns, but probably this is no joke, it probably happens all the time, but nowadays it would be on their sooper dooper phones.

You know that is another thing about those phones, people are always handing them to you so that you can look at their kids, or their horses or their guns, and when you take it from them you have to be careful not to touch some button or tilt it the wrong way or something because then the picture goes away, and then you have to hand it back to them, and then they have to fiddle with it, which they love to do anyway, to show you a picture which almost always you never wanted to see anyway, and when they fix it they hand it back with this patronizing smile like they are handing you a string of beads for the island of Manhattan,  Assholes.

Well speaking of assholes, how come you guys have so many guns?  I paint every morning and I have one set of brushes, one set of paints, one palette, and whenever that palette cracks or gets too crusty I will throw it away and buy another.  That's the other thing half the guns you gun nuts have don't work, but you just keep them around because well,you guys are always up to some crazy shit,

Friendly Folks and Savy Shoppers

Since I have taken  over the grocery shopping, I find that both the help and the customers in the stores around here are friendly and polite. It doesn't seem to matter what kind of store it is either, big or small, everybody seems to be on their best behavior when they're in a shopping environment. I think I have told you about some of the hostility I ran into in certain stores when I first came to Cheboygan, but it's been a long time since I've seen anything like that around here. I think that some of those old store owners had all the steady customers they wanted and weren't really after any new business. They ran their establishments like a private club and expected you to kiss their ass to be allowed to shop there. Well, those guys are all dead and gone, and now everybody is nice to me and to each other in the local stores.

Now that you mention it, I have read about those "food deserts" before, but I had forgotten that's what they are called. National Geographic has been doing a series of articles about food and hunger lately, so that's probably where I read it. They said there is a surprising amount of hunger and poor nutrition in America, for a number of reasons. It kind of centers around poverty, but it's not just because people are poor, it's because of their circumstances and their buying habits. One reason is that, with so many single parent families and regular families where both parents work, there is nobody at home to cook nutritious and economical meals, so they subsist on fast food and junk food. In the old days there might be a grandma or elderly aunt who kept the home fires burning, but nowadays extended families seldom live together, although I have read that this trend is starting to reverse itself. Another reason is that a lot of people don't seem to know how to shop sensibly. They buy smaller packages because they cost less, without realizing that the "large economy size" is actually a better buy.

I used to know a guy like that. He's the one I told you about who put himself into TV and movie plots. We used to ride to work together sometimes and, almost every day, he would stop at the convenience store on his way home and pick up a six pack and maybe a pound of baloney or hot dogs. He would also put a little gas in his tank, which was never more than a quarter full. I tried to tell him that stuff was cheaper at the supermarket, especially if he would buy it in lager packages. He said he just didn't have the money to shop like that. One day I told him how it's done: Quit drinking beer for one week, it won't kill you. Then take the money you saved and buy a couple cases at the supermarket, and you will be money ahead. Take the money you saved and put it towards more economical food purchases. Take the money you saved from that and fill your gas tank full at the cheapest station in town, even if you have to drive a little out of your way to do it. Once the tank is full, it won't cost any more to top it off when it gets a quarter down than it costs you now to maintain it at a quarter full. He replied that rich fuckers like me just don't understand how poor people like him have to live. I pointed out that he made as much money as I did. He responded that he had four kids and I only had one. I said, all the more reason to buy the large economy size.

This guy, as poor as he was, was still able to keep a couple horses, which he took care of the same way he did his family. He would stop off at a local farm on his way home from work and buy two bales of hay, which was all he could fit in the trunk of his car. I told him he could probably get his hay cheaper if he bought a whole winter's supply in the summer when everybody was harvesting their hay. If he would offer to help the farmer bring in his crop, he might give him a reduced price and deliver it to boot. (Farmers are always looking for free help.) Then all he would have to do is stack it up and throw a tarp over it and it would keep all winter.

It so happened that I was snowbound in this guy's house for a three days once. I had picked him up for work in a howling blizzard, missed a corner, and put my truck in the ditch. The snow quickly drifted over it, and we couldn't have gone anywhere anyway because the roads were impassable. It's a good thing I had packed a hearty lunch for work, because that's almost all we had to eat for the first day. Then a neighbor came by on skis, said he was going to the store, and asked if we wanted anything. My friend gave him some money and told him to pick up a pound of baloney, a loaf of bread, and a bag of potato chips. I offered to make a contribution so we could get something more substantial, but my friend wouldn't hear of it. He said the roads would be plowed by tomorrow (they weren't) and we could go get some more baloney or some hot dogs then. Meanwhile, his horses were chewing the bark off the fence posts because they had run out of hay. By the second day there were snowmobiles going up and down the road, packing a trail that would make it possible to walk the ten miles to my house, which I resolved to do in the morning, not wanting to spend another night in that place with those people. As luck would have it, though, the plow came through and opened the road in the night. We walked the quarter mile or so to my truck and started digging, when this nice man with a bulldozer came by and pulled me out. He wouldn't take any money, saying that he had been helping people all morning and was happy to have a chance to play with his bulldozer. We then drove to the farmer to get some hay. I told my friend that, since we were there with the truck anyway, we should get more than his customary two bales. I even offered to pay for them in exchange for three days lodging, but he said two bales was all he ever bought at one time and he wouldn't know what to do with any more than that. I guess he was right, rich fuckers like me just don't understand how poor people like him have to live.

cheery cashiers

We have something here called food deserts. which are areas in the ghetto where there is no supermarket around for miles, and the only places people can buy groceries are at these little stores, mostly owned by Arabs and Koreans which don't offer the freshest of produce and whose prices are high, and every now and then one of them gets robbed and shot.

There are plans to entice grocery stores into that area, the latest one being a Whole Foods, which sounds a little odd, it being kind of pricey, but I have read of a Whole Foods that opened in the Detroit ghetto and is doing very well.

I like Whole Foods.  At one time a Whole Foods was the closest store to me and I shopped there until the Jewel opened up closer to me.  I'm not much of an organic or healthy food guy, but what I like best about it is the cheerful cashiers.  I don't know if the bosses tell them to smile or if it just comes naturally, but they are always cheery, and I am cheery back and I enjoy the exchange,  The cashiers at the Jewel are not rude by any means, and sometimes I can coax a smile or tell them a little joke, but usually I just want to pay for my food and get out,

I think what it is is expectations.  When I approach the Whole Foods cashier I am expecting good cheer and I come to them with a good attitude, and they, having experienced a long line of jolly customers expect me to be one too, and so they also have a good attitude.  At the Jewel I don't expect much cheer, so I generally don't go beyond a perfunctory nod, and they, expecting someone to just shove their money at them generally don't make chatter.

When I first moved to Herrin, I noticed that you didn't just shove your money at the cashier in the mom and pop store, in fact you acted like you were making a social call, and only after a discussion of the weather did you happen to notice that pack of gum in your hand, and pay for it.

That was kind of nice but it would have no place in the big city where everybody is in a hurry (and it's an odd thing where even if you have no reason to be in a hurry, you are because everyone around you is in a hurry).  Most all the Dunkin Donuts in the city are run by Asian Indians, and as immigrants do, they send back to the old country for relatives and put them to work in their stores,  I remember once the local one had this new girl and she was friendly and cheerful and you assumed she was just off the boat, and sure enough, within a few weeks she was looking bored and mumbling whaddaya want?

Like the Amish.  They have a couple booths in the farmers market downtown, and when you buy something from them and expect that Amish shyness and sweetness, but it has been rubbed out by all the mumbling Chicagoans who came before you.


That interspecies thing.  There is a great movie called The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, about this hippie type guy who charts the wild parrots, and in this one group of red parrots there is a blue parrot, who seems to have lost his way, and the other parrots accept him.  And when I was at my friend Debbie's brother's farm, they had a pigeon hanging with the chickens like he was one of them.

I love those interspecies friendships that are all over youtube.  The cats and dogs are okay but no big deal, but I like the really off the wall ones like crows and kittens.

Shops, Cars, and Birds

 All our convenience stores sell booze, or at least beer and wine, cigarettes, and things like that. Now that I think of it, that's the principal difference between them and the old mom and pop stores. There is one old fashioned butcher shop, not in Cheboygan, but on the road between Petoskey and Harbor Springs. It's considerably larger than the old neighborhood butcher shops, but not as big as the supermarkets. I find it interesting that they still have the old mom and pops in some Chicago neighborhoods. I suppose it is at least partly because many of the residents don't have cars. I have read that, in some cities, it's a disadvantage to the poor people because they can't get to the supermarkets and have to pay the higher prices at the mom and pops.

I saw your finch picture on Face Book the other day. I don't know if we have finches here or not. I don't remember seeing them, but we have some birds that seldom come out in the open, and we know them only by their calls. We have a book and a recording of some bird calls, but there are still a few mystery birds out in the swamp that we haven't been able to identify yet. Judging from the behavior you described, I'd say that your first two finches are a mated pair and the third one is an unwelcome interloper in their territory. It's funny how some animals will become used other animals being around and not pay them much attention. The new kid on the block is always at a disadvantage but, after he's been around awhile, the regulars grow to accept him, or at least tolerate his presence. With  animals of the same species, the new guy has to find his place in the pecking order, but animals will generally ignore members of a different species if they don't consider them to be a threat, or something good to eat. Your cats probably leave the birds alone because they are well fed and have no hunting experience. Trying to catch a bird on that balcony of yours could prove to be dangerous for a cat, but I don't know if they're smart enough to figure that out. Do cats ever fall from tall buildings in your neighborhood?

I went to that tractor store I told you about today. I had just been there a week ago to get a part I needed, only to find out that I actually needed two parts and had to make another trip. You know, it's only 30 miles, but it seems like a long was to go to buy something. A 30 mile drive around here is nothing, really. A lot of people drive that far to shop or work and think nothing of it. Since I retired, though, I don't get around much anymore. It's not that I can't, it's just that I don't have to, so I don't. I can't remember the last time I was  more than 50 miles from home, and most of my trips are less than five miles. I used to spend a lot more time on the road when I was younger. I enjoyed it at the time, but I don't miss it now.

7-11s and finches

I remember the butcher shops, seems like their used to be a lot of them.  My mother always went to one on 55th Street and Spaulding because she thought they had better meat than the High Low.

We have a lot of 7-11s in the city.  I'm sure I told you about how when the first 7-11 opened up at 54th and Kedzie how thrilled I was.  Imagine a store that would open at seven in the morning and not close until eleven at night!

There is a neighborhood southwest of downtown, around 18th and Ashland called Pilsen after the town in Bohemia, and is where all us Czechs used to live.  My mother was born there, and now it is where the Mexicans live.  Well it is where the Mexicans first come when they cross the border. They live there maybe a couple years, working hard and saving money and then they move further southwest, into Gage Park, and then to Berwyn and then deeper into the burbs just as our forebears have done.

The thing about it is that Pilsen, having this transient population, nobody builds new condos, and the 7-11s and McDonalds don't move in, maybe because the locals work harder and cheaper in their own little stores and restaurants, so going back there is a little like going back to the 50s.  Everything is Mom and Pop.  I imagine those convenience stores are mighty convenient, but they just don't have that smell, those old wooden floors and the scent of years and years of groceries and little kids, their heads barely over the counter pointing at cheap candy displayed behind the kindly (but penny pinching) old grocer.

There is one place still in Gage Park, on 55th just west of St Galls, The Cupboard, which is kind of a convenience store which doesn't appear to be part of a chain.  And you know how the old neighborhood was always rather prudish, but you push past the doors of the Cupboard, and there are lottery tickets, cigarettes, booze, dirty magazines.  It's like Satan's Little Portal down the street from the church.

Along the interstates when Debbie and I are going on our trips the convenience stores are ubiquitous, we stop for gas and get a soda and take a leak, we call them Pop and Pees.

Speaking of gas, I'm glad I don't know much about that.  I last had a car in 1971, and back then they did put in the gas and clean the windshield and sometimes make a little chitchat about the roads or the weather or whatever.  It was nice.  Anymore I don't even know how to put gas in a car with credit card and the buttons and that hose thing.  I'm pretty sure I could figure it out, but Debbie never lets me, so I sit there like I don't have a thought in my pretty little head while she does the card and the buttons and hose thing, and usually with my credit card.  Kind of emasculating.

I certainly don't have a need for a tractor, but I have been getting a little wildlife action this spring.  A pair of finches that used to come by last year and snatch the string that held up last year's tomatoes for their nest and peck out some seeds from last year's sunflowers, and some morning glory seeds from the floor of the balcony, have returned.

There is the matter of the cats.  They do that chattering thing, and they look very interested, but they don't have that killer instinct like my previous cat, Annie, had.  I have long heard that if Mom doesn't show the kids how to hunt they never pick up the habit. and I think it may be true.  The other day both the birds and the cats were on the balcony without either one paying much attention to the other.  So I went out and bought a millet sock, and tied it up to the railing, and at first they paid it no mind, but the day before yesterday they found it and pecked the hell out of it.

Then yesterday they came back with a third finch, friend, neighbor, how does that work?  Anyway when the third finch started pecking they both tried to chase him away, or I think that is what was going on.  Who can tell one finch from another?

Mom and Pop Are With Us Yet

I remember those little mom and pop stores, as a matter of fact, my own mom and pop had one. My dad was always complaining about how the big chain stores were putting him out of business. Eventually he did close the store and joined with four other guys to operate a pop, grandpa, two uncles, and another guy store. They kept it going long enough for everybody to retire, but I understand they were losing money by the end.

There are still lots of small and medium sized stores around, only now they are called "convenience stores". Their prices are higher than at the supermarkets, but people still shop there because they are so convenient. Sometimes you only need a few items and you don't want to walk across a 40 acre parking lot and stand in the checkout line for 20 minutes while the clerk waits for a supervisor to come over ride the computer because it refuses to accept somebody's credit card even though there's nothing wrong with it. Some of the convenience stores in Cheboygan even sell live bait, which is nice because they are open early in the morning and are right on the way to the boat launch. There is one that also fills propane tanks. Many places will exchange a full tank for an empty one, but they don't fill them up full and who knows where that tank has been. The South End Party Mart has a big tank out back and they will fill your own tank up for you. They actually charge less than the gas station down the road, which is the only other place in town where you can get you own propane tank filled.

Speaking of gas stations, do you remember when they used to do auto repairs and oil changes at gas stations? Nowadays most gas stations are also convenience stores, but they don't do mechanical work anymore and you have to pump your own gas, check your own oil, and wash your own windshield. If you're a quart low, they will sell you a quart of oil in the store, but you have to pour it in yourself. They might have a funnel that they will let you borrow, but that's about it. There are places that will change your oil for you in a matter of minutes, but that's all they do there. There might be a car wash associated with the Jiffy Lube, but you have to feed it quarters and wash the car yourself.

We have one family business in Cheboygan that only sells and repairs tires. Other places sell tires, but these guys charge less and they won't tell you that you need a new tire when all you really need is a new valve core. They used to have a beer cooler in the back room and would offer you a free beer while you waited for your tire work, but I'm not sure if they still do that. I don't think it was legal because they would ask you not to stand by the window while you drank your beer.

We used to have a Midas Muffler shop, but they closed down some years ago. I don't know why because they were relatively cheap and quick and they had lots of business. Walmart has an auto repair section, but I have never used it. I understand that they do everything that gas stations used to do except sell gas. We also have several small shops that do that stuff, but they don't sell gas either. One of them also has an auto parts store in the same building, which is nice because they don't tell you they have to order a part and it should be here in a few days, they just go into the other room and get it.

One thing that we don't have in Cheboygan is a farm tractor dealership. You can buy those little garden tractors all over, and there is one small shop that repairs them but, if you want a regular farm tractor, the kind with the big rear wheels, you have to go to either Gaylord or Alanson. I got mine at Alanson because my hypothetical wife used to be friends with one of their kids. Now that's a mom and pop store if there ever was one. Mom and Pop are retired now, but they have 11 kids and numerous grand children, many of whom still work in the family business. They even opened another branch in Williamsburg to accommodate all their progeny.

 

shopping

There's a fb page called Forgotten Chicago  where people post old photos of Chicago,and one day I went there, and there was a photo from the fifties of the brand spanking new High Low (High quality, low prices).  Progress had come to 57th and Kedzie!  Used to be there were these little stores where Mom would send you to get a loaf of bread or a quart of milk, there was one on 55th and Homan, and another on 57th by Christiana, and I was going to say that they were both gone justlikethat, but now I recall that the one on 57th lingered into the 70s, but that doesn't serve to prove my point, so I'll just take a little stroll down memory lane.

I knew that supermarkets (which that little High Low was considered in that day) were a big deal.  I know that because Mad Magazine ran a feature called Sooper Dooper store about it.  It certainly had a big effect on me, I had never seen doors with electric eyes before (I  don't think they call them electric eyes anymore, I don't think they call them anything anymore they are just everywhere and you don't notice, until they are not there.  How often have you been in a public bathroom and held your hands under the faucet or the towel dispenser and been surprised to realize that nothing happened and you were going to have to actually turn the faucet or pull down a towel, like it was the stone age or something.).  And back then all cereal boxes contained some kind of toy so going to the cereal aisle was like going to a toy store, and the aisle seemed to stretch for miles.


There are no box boxes in Chicago, well maybe on the outskirts.  I guess probably property values  are too high and there is competition from smaller discount places all over.  There was a big battle over Walmarts coming to town. The unions and good liberals such as myself hate them.  Well there is the fact that they don't pay a living wage.  What would happen if Walmart raised their prices say five percent, in order to keep their employees off welfare?  Would people say I don't mind paying that extra nickel on the dollar knowing that all those employees, many of them my friends and neighbors can now put good shoes on their kids' feet, and send them to a four year college.  Well we remember those Buy American campaigns, in fact I believe that was one of Walmart's boast back when they were just a discount store, and we all know where that went.

That part about sucking the life out of small towns, doesn't seem to have happened in Cheboygan, but I hear reports about other towns where it has.  Particularly towns where the Walmart drove local retailers out of business and then closed down that store and now they have nothing.  Well that is anecdotal too, I don't have any statistics for that, and I don't know what form those statistics would take, but just thinking it through logically it seems like when the Walmart comes to town the local stores die out,

And then there is just the power of Walmart because they are so big, and of course one of their goals is to stamp out competitors,  Didn't we used to be against monopolies?  Didn't we break up the phone companies?  But I don't recall how that came out, not so well I think.

When I first moved to Marina City in 1992 I had to walk about a mile to get to the Jewel, but it was nicer when they put one in a few blocks south on State Street, even easier when they put in a Target a few blocks north on State Street where Carsons used to be.

Competition is Good For Business

I think the stuff they put on your computer to get you to buy stuff is called "crap-ware". I have gone through my desktop display and deleted all the icons for stuff like that. If any programs try to interfere with what I'm doing, I uninstall them. There is one, though, that I can't get rid of. It comes on every night and asks me if I want to update my Java program. I have tried to uninstall Java, since I never use it, but it won't uninstall. I asked my local computer guy about it and he said that I can't get rid of Java, and that I shouldn't anyway. He recommended that I accept the update because it might come in handy someday. I tried to do that, but the update didn't work either, so now I just click "no" when it asks me to update. It's a minor annoyance, I'm just glad that I don't have more stuff like that. I don't think that I have any apps. If I do, they must not be intrusive or it seems I would know that I have them. I don't think I'm connected to The Cloud either.

I have heard bad things about Walmart on the internet, but our local one seems to be different. Of course they don't pay their help much, but neither does anything else around here since the paper mill closed. Sometimes it's hard to find a clerk when you need help but, once you do, they are always happy to be of service. Before I took over the grocery shopping, I only went to Walmart when I wanted something that I couldn't find anywhere else. Now, since I go there once a week anyway, I pick up some of my own stuff while I'm there. Since our town is so small, Walmart is no farther away than anything else. There is another supermarket right next door to Walmart, it's had several name changes over the years and is currently called "Family Fare". The prices are higher, but my hypothetical wife says that their milk, meat, and produce is of a better quality. There are also a few items that Walmart doesn't carry, so I get them at Family Fare too.

When Walmart first came here, and when they later expanded to include groceries, people were predicting that all our other stores would shut down, but the opposite has happened. Some of the family businesses have close over the years, but that's only because the owners were ready to retire and their kids didn't want to take over. We've got more stores now than we've ever had, in spite of the fact that our population hasn't increased in decades and actually decreased a bit in the last census. Now they are planning to build a great big Meijer complex just south of the city limits. I went to one of those in Petoskey once, and I think you could fit the whole town of Cheboygan in there. I hadn't been through that neighborhood in some years and was surprised to see that it's now all shopping malls as far as the eye can see. Petoskey is a bigger town than Cheboygan, but not enough to support all those stores. I have no idea where their customers come from.

I remember in Chicago that it was not uncommon to see a gas station on each of the four corners of an intersection. Then there were all those car dealerships lined up on Western Avenue for miles. My father, who knew about stuff like that, said people like to shop in places where there's lots of the same kinds of stores. I suppose they figure that, if one store doesn't have what they want, another one will.

Back in Cheboygan, right across the street from the Walmart and the Family Fare, is a Walgreen. When they first built it I thought they were nuts. Who is going to go there when there's two stores selling the same merchandise right across the street? Well, they've been there for a decade or so, and they seem to be doing fine. Their specialty is cheap prescription drugs, and now the other two stores have lowered their prescription drug prices too. Family Fare will even give you some prescriptions for free. That's right, for free! I asked their druggist how they can make any money that way, and he said that it was an incentive to get people into the store, where they will hopefully buy something else.

On the other end of town we have a K-Mart. It's been there longer than the Walmart, and their prices are generally a little higher. We go there only when we want something that we can't find anywhere else. There are so few customers in there that it's downright spooky. It's so quiet that you can hear your own footsteps when you walk down the aisles. For the life of me, I don't know how they stay in business. Some years ago, when the parent company went bankrupt, they were shutting down K-Marts all over the country but, for some reason, they kept ours open. Some time later, Sears bought K-Mart, but it hasn't seemed to have effected out local store. I have advanced the theory that the place is a front for some nefarious activity, but my hypothetical wife says that I'm just paranoid.  

walmart sux

The reason they put a lot of stuff on my computer is that the vendors of those products pay them to put it there so that they can make money off of you.  They hope you will buy their stuff and sometimes they will give you stuff because then they can collect information on you and sell that, or something.  Some people are outraged that if they express an interest in buying a lawn mower in their email the very next day ads for lawn mowers will be all over their fb pages.  Myself I don't care about that, there's going to be some kind of ad on fb anyway, it  might as well be for something I want.  What I hate is that it gets in the way, I'm always being asked if I want to sign up for this and that, and it's always implied that if you don't you won't be able to use whatever app you want to.  And that's another thing, we don't have programs anymore, we have apps.  I got on the computer bandwagon because I liked to program.  Programs were manly.  Apps are what valley girls download onto their pink phones.

And vendors pay to get shelf space on supermarkets.  Coca Cola pays Jewel so much every month or year or whatever, for like six feet of space, more if they want more space.  This not only gives Coca Cola some space, but it means less space for Pepsi Cola.  Walmart is notoriously hard on its clients, telling them exactly what they want and how much they want to pay for it, and if the companies don't meet their standards, fine, they can sell their stuff somewhere else.

As a good liberal, of course I hate Walmart.  One reason is the way they pay their employees so little that they are dependent on government assistance, and then the fat cats who got fat on Walmart stock vote down every form of government assistance they can so that they can pay lower taxes.  And the other is the way they suck the life out of the small towns, so that now you have to drive twenty miles to buy a hammer, and the guy who would have sold you that hammer last year, who used to have that nice store where you could hang out and talk hinges or whatever, and whose kids were fed and clothed and schooled by the profits from that store, is now making peanuts working at Walmart, and is on government assistance which is being cut because the new right wing governor who was elected by the fat cats who got fat from paying their employees peanuts bought the election,

The cloud means your data and your software is not on your hard drive.  It is on some server farm far away, and only appears to be on your computer.  What's nice about it is that when your old computer dies you can buy a new one and hook into your data and be up and running just like that.  The bad thing is that it's easier to hijack in the cloud than on your computer.

About this personality and stage presence vs issues, let me say this about it.  They are all liars, so they are going to lie about the issues, and also maybe the guy has the issues you like, but they can never be implemented because most people hate them, or that your candidate is too incompetent to deliver them.  I'm going to substitute character for personality and charisma for stage presence, and of course I hate charisma.  I think character is good because than the guy is more likely to do the reasonable thing, and not get carted off to the hoosegow.  Of course character is a lot like sincerity in Hollywood, if you can fake that, you have it made.

We may have more to say about that, and about Walmart maybe, but I am done for the day.

Bells and Whistles

I don't think you paid extra for all those bells and whistles that you will never use. They put all that stuff in there just because they can. In the old days, hard drive space was limited, but now they have more space than they know what to do with, so they fill it up with everything they can think of. It's kind of like the way they stock the shelves in the supermarket. Empty shelf space puts people off, it gives them the subliminal impression that everything has been picked over and they're getting the leftovers, so they try to keep the shelves full to make people think they are living in the land of plenty, or something like that. Our local Wal-Mart has carried this to extremes. They not only have full shelves, but they have pallets of stuff in the center of the aisles. Most of that stuff can also be found someplace on the regular shelves, so I'm not sure why they have to stack it in the aisles. Their marketing research people must have told them to do it, thus justifying their own jobs. Truth is, it makes the aisles hard to navigate. There is only room for one customer to pass on either side of the display so, if somebody stops to look for something or chat with somebody, you have to go around to the other side of the display to get by. Then, like as not, you meet somebody coming the other way and one of you has to back into a side lane so the other can get by. I hate to think of what would happen if there was a fire or something and everybody had to evacuate the building in a hurry. "Oh, the humanity!"

I have an HP with Windows 7 too, but I have one of those old fashioned desk tops. I like it just fine, and have no desire to go to anything smaller. I heard that the companies would like to stop making desktops and go completely mobile, which would suck. Remember when the auto companies wanted to stop making stick shifts? That's one of the reasons they lost so much business to the foreigners. There will always be people who like the old stuff and, if one company doesn't give it to them, another company will. I understand that vinyl records have even been making somewhat of a comeback. What exactly is "the cloud" anyway? My daughter tried to explain it to me, but I'm not sure that I got it.

You know what's wrong with politics? There is too much emphasis placed on personality and stage presence and not enough on the issues. When they do talk about the issues, they tell you what the other guy will do if elected, not what they themselves will do. What are they, a bunch of mind readers?

finding fulfillment late in life

Well you know, a computer, especially a new computer is like a big mansion.  There are vast sections of it where you will never go, and never want to go.  I have like my functions, the email, a little writing, editing my photos, my web page, fb, and that's about it.  I would love to buy a computer that had just those functions, so I wouldn't have to pay for all that other crap, and so I wouldn't risk hitting the wrong key sometime and finding myself in wonderland without knowing how to get back to civilization.

I bought a Hewlitt Packer.  I guess I would rather have a Dell, but this one was cheaper, in fact it was the cheapest in the place, and what the hell do I know anymore.  Way back I would pick a computer based on the chip, the internal memory, and the hard drive.  But who knows what either of those first two are anymore, and they all have a gazillion gigabytes or terrabytes or whatever, and it really doesn't matter everything goes to the cloud.  My stuff is going to the cloud.  I didn't mean for that to happen, but when I was trying to get it up I kept getting asked all these questions which I wasn't sure what they were asking, but it seemed easier to say yes to everything in order to go forward, so I did, so probably I said yes somewhere,

Oh and I never did like the laptop so I got what they call an all in one where the cpu is in back of the screen so that all you have is the screen and the keyboard (Oh, and I got a nice keyboard with real keys that go click and not those awful chicklet things), so it takes up less space, but the downside is that after every session I want to pull the screen down, which could lead to some trouble down the road.

I got Windows 7, but it has an option so that it looks like previous windows instead of like a cellphone.


I used to wonder about the great hate Bill Clinton aroused in much of the Republican-o-sphere.  He was a little sleazy, but so are a lot of politicians, and as dems go, he was more rightward than most.  And after long thought I came to the realization that it was because he won the primary and the general election and became president.  Any democrat that was president would be hated by the republicans.  If some other democrat had won they would hate him just as much.

I have to admit I hated George Bush, but not from the start.  I had reluctantly come to think his dad was not such a bad guy, and that compassionate conservative crap had the wool pulled over my eyes.  I could put up with his cornball crap, because again, most politicians do that, but when he invaded Iraq, that's when he lost me, and that's when I began to hate him.

But back to Clinton.  Even though she was the wife of satan, she was looked at a bit favorably by the reps when she was running against Barack Hussein Obama, mostly because she is a bit of a hawk, whereas he ran as a peacenik, though once in office he became too damn hawkish for my taste.

But the reason they hate her now is that unless she gets run over by a truck she will be the democratic nominee, so it never hurts them to throw dirt on her.  But the reps have no self control, once one of them has a zany idea they all sign on as fast as they can, lest they be branded with that shameful tag of moderate.  And now that whole email thing has become complicated and with all the rep screaming she is beginning to appear a victim, and the reps may,as they have done so often with the Clintons, snatched defeat from victory.


Well I was discussing this with an old Champaign buddy on the phone last night, and he got a little exasperated and told me the election is still a year and a half away.

So it is I suppose,but politics is my sports and I think about it all the time.

As a kid I was always told that the way I loved to argue I should be a lawyer, but that was too much work so I was a bum most of my life, and in my golden years I hold forth on the Beaglesonian Institute.

Jesus Saves

I have forgotten the details of this story, but I remember that it was about Jesus and Moses having some kind of contest with their computers. The power went out right in the middle of the contest, Moses lost all of his work, but Jesus didn't lose any of his work. You know why? Because Jesus saves!

I hardly ever back up text anymore, but all my photos go onto a disk right after I have saved them to my files. I only use three passwords, and they're all the same except that two of them have numbers at the end. A few yeas ago, when I had to install a  new operating system, the guy who did it transferred all my files and settings for me, which was nice, but I don't have a lot of text files, and none of them are very important to me or they would already be on a disk.

What kind of computer did you buy, and what operating system came with it? I have heard bad things about Windows 8, and my guy recommended Windows 7 instead. I don't suppose you can buy Windows 7 off the shelf anymore. Has Windows 9 come out yet? I was happy with Vista, but Microsoft quit supporting it and my new email wouldn't work with it, so I had this guy install Windows 7.

There was a column by Gene Lyons in our paper today about Hillary Clinton. He says that the scandal mongers have been after Hillary for over 20 years now. He calls it "The National Bitch Hunt". It seems that they've never been able to make any of it stick, but that doesn't stop them from trying, generally making fools of themselves in the process. Why do you suppose that is? Lyons says, "This is what happens when the Heathers at the Cute Girls lunch table suspect you're smarter than they are." I think what he's trying to say is that some people are resentful of Hillary's intelligence. I don't know much about Hillary myself. I would never vote for her, but that's no reason to go slinging mud at her. It seems that her record should speak for itself. I guess the same could be said about Obama. He seems to be pretty smart too, but you don't get to be President of the United States by being stupid. I can understand why some people would resent it if one of their peers was a lot smarter than they were, or thought that he was. But isn't a high level government leader supposed to be smart? There are lots of reasons not to vote for a politician, or to not like him once he gets elected, but it doesn't seem like one of them should be that he's too intelligent.

Maybe that's why you or I never became president. You think? Mrs. Jordan told me that I would make a good politician or lawyer, but I told her that I was too honest for that. Without a moment's hesitation she came back with, "So what else are you interested in?" She acknowledged that honesty might be a liability in politics, but she didn't say that intelligence was.

new computer sweeps clean

I'll tell you when I get the gumption up and fill a big bag up with stuff, and take it out to the hallway and toss it down the garbage chute, or even better, when it's such a big bag that it won't fit into the chute and I leave it in the stairwell, I get a feeling almost as good as when I get myself something spanking new.  I have a general rule that if I haven't used something in twelve years I probably can safely get rid of it.  But there are always exceptions.  And the thing is, you can't just throw it out, you have to decide to throw it out first and that means you have to think about it a little, and you know, it isn't taking up that much space, and maybe I could just leave it there for now and make the big decision the next time I am on a purge.

Speaking of getting myself new things, I just got a new computer.  The old one conked out.  Bad hard drive.  Shit,  It had been creaky for the last few days and it was in my mind to back it up any day, and this last time once I coaxed it back to life, I was going to back it up for sure, but then I never got it back to life, and so I never got stuff back.  Stupid,  Stupid.  Stupid.  There are still a couple things to try to get the old computer working again, but I don't have much hope.

The good news is that you can get up and running almost right away.  There was an awful fifteen minutes when I was trying to remember my wifi password, and then I found it on this scrap of paper in this box of old computer crap that I should have thrown out years ago.  But once I got out to the web and in the arms of Google, who handles my mail and my browser, and this very blog, I was up and running in less than an hour.

One bad thing though, is that I lost my personal little spelling dictionary that I have built up over the years, there are all my peculiar words and words that I like to spell as one word rather than a hyphenated word.  Not a fan of the hyphen myself.  I would not be caught dead using the semi colon, though I may use a colon every now and then when it occurs to me and I feel like being spiffy.  I like the parens, but I am always a little uneasy with quotes, when to use double or single, and then does the period or question mark at the end go inside or outside?