Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Manual Labor

I've been building a porch on my daughter's mobile home for several months now. When it's too hot, I quit. If there's something more interesting happening, I quit. If it's too cold I don't start. If it's raining I don't start. If I just don't feel like it, I don't start. After all, I'm retired. Maybe they'll get to enjoy it next summer. I'm up to the point I'm ready to put down the outdoor carpeting (that's the roll laying on the porch in the picture). I decided to leave the railings off until the carpet is down to make it easier, so they'll be installed once that's done. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. One more detail will be lattice work around the bottom, or something (depending on when she makes up her mind). I've never built a porch before. In fact a couple of sheds and a dog house are about the extent of my construction credentials, so after buying all the materials I needed I've made a half dozen more trips to the builder's supply house for stuff I forgot.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

"B" Sandwiches

We decided to have a light supper this evening, so we had B sandwiches. That's kind of like a BLT but without the lettuce or tomato.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Saving our history




I've been following the progress on the restoration of a circa 1820 house in Glasgow Kentucky. It's an interesting old structure with a kitchen separated from the house, and slave quarters in the basement. There's a covered porch between the kitchen and the house, and a door in the porch leads to a root cellar beneath the kitchen. One feature I found interesting is the three doors between the porch and the dining room. The center door leads into the dining room, but the doors to each side open into closets. The kitchen slaves would open the door to the right and place the clean dishes, tableware, napkins and the like in there. The closet door on the left is where they would place the prepared food. Once these outside closet doors were closed the serving staff would open inside doors that provided access to the same closets, set the tables and serve the food.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Shades of Carrie Nation

Back in the days when prohibition was repealed, the state of Kentucky decided to allow each county to set their own liquor laws. As the result there are many "dry" counties around this area where it is illegal to buy or sell alcoholic beverages. We were in Glasgow the other day, the county seat for Barren county, and there are signs all over the place saying "Vote NO to legalizing alcohol". A sign in front of a church said "We don't want liquor in Barren County". Evidently residents of Barren county were able to submit enough signatures to get the wet or dry vote on the ballot once again. This is generally the case in every dry county in every election, then comes the hysteria, the signs, editorials in the papers and ads on radio and television all asking you to vote no. I never see signs, ads or editorials in favor of legalized alcohol.

The wet/dry county question is a classic example where emotion wins out over reason every time. There is the huge emotional outpouring against allowing liquor in the county, but simple reasoning will tell you there is already liquor in the county via the bootleggers. Now bootleggers today aren't like in the days of prohibition with stills cranking out white lightning. Though that is still done in limited supply, your main bootleggers in dry counties simply truck liquor in from the nearest legal source, mark it up and sell it to locals. All you want, any time of day. The thing they never consider when talking about such a vote is, if they had legal liquor the county would be drawing taxes from these stores, the store owner would have a license to protect so wouldn't sell to minors. Bootleggers don't care if your 21 or 12, if you have the money you can have the liquor. Many of them also sell drugs which a legal liquor store owner wouldn't do. Most bootleggers will also take stolen merchandise in trade, which again a legal store would not do.

In other words, the emotional votes against legalizing liquor sales encourages the availability of alcohol to minors, makes drugs easily available, and offers a fencing operation for stolen merchandise. Emotion trumps common sense because their slogans sound better to the uneducated. Obviously we still have an abundance of people in that category that go out and vote their ill informed emotions.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

us kids

I was happy as a lark just being a kid, and some busy-body adult asked me "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Grow Up? I'd not thought about growing up. I was perfectly content being a kid, and now all of a sudden there was this question in my mind, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" After watching adults for a while I realized they didn't seem to be having any fun, so I decided my best choice was just not grow up.

So far so good.

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Do Your Own Thing

I had a friend for years that enjoyed life more than most people can even imagine. He was always very presentable, kept himself in good physical condition, was interested in every subject you could bring up, and could generally comment intelligently on them. The last few years we lived in Vegas, about once a week he'd drop-in for a few hours in the evening, and we'd just talk. He had his quirks though. When leisure suits came out he'd bought several. He loved them, thought they were comfortable, and when we went any place dressy he would wear one of them. Of course there would be that occasional stupid comment by someone much younger. It didn't bother him. He'd spent the entire day at Normandy on D-Day driving a landing craft between ship and shore, and anyone who has some knowledge of that day understands the carnage along that beach. Some jerk making a snide remark about his leisure suit was not about to bother him. He'd earned the right to damn well dress as he pleased.

Another friend was a hippy. In fact he never got over being a hippy in many ways. He is very intelligent, a responsible citizen, earns his own way, has his own home and the like, but he still smokes some grass now and then, and even though he's bald on top, still wears his hair in a pony tail, wears an earring, and dresses pretty funky when he's lounging around home, or even out in public.

Older people dressing young or funky or wearing a pony tail, seem to be a source of mirth to many youngsters. Often criticized by the younger crowd. Makes me wonder where the younger crowd gets off griping about criticism by older people when they insert metal in all parts of their body, wear brightly colored hair spiked like the Statue of Liberty or someone that just stuck their finger in a wall socket, and sixteen earrings in each ear. They act like they invented the idea of "doing your own thing", rather than just being the inheritors of the concept. A lot of a double standard there I would say.

Personally, I never was into fads. I've never pierced anything intentionally, have no tattoos, never had a pony tail, hell I didn't even wear bell bottoms when they were popular. Blue jeans are a great piece of attire, and a button up shirt without any messages printed on them works just fine for me. I guess I missed most of that while playing "up-the-corporate-ladder" during the sixties and seventies with three piece suits and ties. But if you want spiked hair, body studs, tattoos as a kid, or want to wear a gray pony tail behind a bald head, or speedos under a beer belly, have at it. Just stop belly-aching about how someone else chooses to "do their own thing".

Friday, October 05, 2007