Snow Storm

This is a big story, and I just read through 190 of mine to see if I told this tale before, and I can’t find it. It was a life changing experience for me and a great adventure and memory.

It was the winter of 1959 (I think) and I was set to go out with my friends Alan and Edgar (the one we rescued from the hospital in an earlier story) with dates, to do something. Edgar was in a cast and was less than moveable.

Alan was going out with Michael (this was the 50’s and Michael was a girl!) and I was going out with my girlfriend Toby. Edgar had a date with maybe Anita, but we did end up at her house, or maybe Edgar didn’t have a date, it’s still a bit unclear.

It had started to snow and Alan was coming by to pick me up, as he was driving. My parents thought I was nuts to be going out in the snow, but I was fool hardy and went, with just a sport coat and no overcoat or boots, out into the big world.

We went to Anita’s house and decided to stay as it was snowing pretty hard and Edgar had his cast. Later in the evening, having second thoughts, Alan decided to take Michael home and asked me to go with him as it was bad out and besides, Anita didn’t feel comfortable being left alone with Edgar, as her parents were out at business.

Alan and I drove to Michael’s house which was pretty far, dropped her off and returned to Anita’s neighbourhood. As we turned into the neighborhood, off of the main street, we were stopped by snow banks and couldn’t move. After an hour or two of pushing, shoveling etc., tired and weary, we walked the few remaining blocks back to Anita’s, having given up the possibility of moving the car. The snow was up to our knees!

When we retuned to the house, we were half dead and our friends thought we had died! They were glad to see us but were of course disappointed that we were stuck. Anita’s parents had called and were furious that she had boys at the house and that they were stuck miles away, unable to return as well. I called my parents, as did we all and they were concerned as well but understood that we couldn’t leave Edgar, nor could we get out.

Needless to say that in the 50’s, no orgy would take place, and the three boys slept in the living room while the two girls slept upstairs. Anita’s parents never did calm down and I, luckily, left the next morning with my girlfriend Toby, and walked to her house where I spent a wonderful week as the houseguest of her very nice parents who quite understood. Schools in Baltimore stayed closed for a week and it was Friday before my father could come and get me.

Eventually, Alan’s car was shoveled ou,t and Edgar was driven home. I had the time of my life and was deeply in love, as only a kid can be.

In 1977, about 20 years later, I was at a Christmas party with Anita and her family and she introduced me to her mother. When she heard who I was she became upset, and wanted to confront me for staying at their house when they weren’t home in the winter of 1959! I was a 35 year old father of three boys and was not interested in her rambling!

Chartless

Chartless by Emily Dickinson

I never saw a moor,

I never saw the sea;

Yet now I know how the heather looks,

And what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God,

Nor visited in Heaven;

Yet certain am I of the spot

As if the chart were given

These were the words I spoke to my dog Max as we walked last night at about nine o’clock in the dark, rainy streets while he was looking for the perfect place to go! I have no idea when I fist heard these but it was in high school I guess, and have seldom used them since, but as he looked for his spot, this came out of my mouth and stopped me cold!

I was walking down a dimly lit, wet street quoting poetry to my dog in relationship to his bowel movements! School had some influence on me!

I have written before about the parts of my public education that were the most meaningful to me, and clearly these things are a personal matter, in that each person gathers from life the things we seem to want or need. For me it was art, music, shop and English literature.

I think the math I needed was learned by the sixth grade and the science was never really learned. My knowledge of geography is nil, and everything else seems dimly lit.

But, I can quote Emily Dickinson, and sing weird songs at the drop of a hat for no apparent reason like the Erie Canal Song:

I’ve got a mule,
Her name is Sal,

Fifteen years on the Erie Canal.

She's a good old worker

And a good old pal,

Fifteen years on the

Erie Canal.

We've hauled some barges in our day

Filled with lumber, coal and hay

And ev'ry inch of the way I know

From Albany to Buffalo.

Low Bridge, ev'rybody down,

For it's Low Bridge,

We're coming to a town!

You can always tell your neighbor,

You can always tell your pal,

If you've ever navigated

On the Erie Canal.

Low Bridge, ev'rybody down,

For it's Low Bridge,

We're coming to a town!

You can always tell your neighbor,

You can always tell your pal,

If you've ever navigated

On the Erie Canal.

We better get along

On our way, old gal,

Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.

Cause you bet your life

I'd never part with Sal,

Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.

Git up there, mule, here comes a lock,

We'll make Rome 'bout six o'clock.

One more trip and back we'll go

Right back home to Buffalo.

Low Bridge, ev'rybody down,

For it's Low Bridge,

We're coming to a town!

You can always tell your neighbor,

You can always tell your pal,

If you've ever navigated

On the Erie Canal.

Low Bridge, ev'rybody down,

For it's Low Bridge,

We're coming to a town!

You can always tell your neighbor,

You can always tell your pal,

If you've ever navigated

On the Erie Canal

I know this one is from high school music and there are others for sure.

Why do we remember such stuff?

On a white board in a studio in the Maryland Institute, College of Art, in 1959, it said in a childish scrawl, “Tintoretto is Queer!” Why do I remember that!

There are so many of these things in my head that make no sense, that I needed a blog just to get it all out! After more than 190 posts I surprise myself by the never ending story!

I know that Lisa, my secretary for a short while in Detroit, who was the straightest person in that school, loved the erotic novels of Ann Rice, writing under the name of A. N. Roquelaure. There are only three of them so I’m sure she read other stuff as well but I kept this factoid in my head.

After a dance at the high school, our English long term substitute, Doris Seipe, had her classes come back to her house and she served English muffin pizzas, the first time I ever tasted such an invention.

I can’t remember my date but I remember the pizza!

I can go on but I am rambling. The stories will never stop (I hope) but these are the kind of little details that are stuck in my head…

The Hay Ride from Different Perspectives, Four Other Views

My Dear Chronicler,

I recall this Fall sojourn at least once each fortnight. Three trucks of questionable origin and condition. Hay bales stacked two high on the perimeter and a depth of one for our ''floor.'' The purpose was to ''make-out'' on the cool and cozy return from Catoctin State Park.

We all gathered beneath the Koontz Creamery Sign that acted as the Sphinx of Druid Park Circle (Reisterstown parted from Park Heights). The inchoate, at that time, was the relentless question/statement : "For the Carriage Trade". I later understood the play on ''carriage trade'' while reading the ill fated tale of Daisy Buchanan at the whim of Jay Gatsby.

The day was filled with scenes and activities out of "Picnic" & "Our Town" with a touch of "Oklahoma". Food appeared. From whence I do not know. (Ask Ken W.) There was innocent and naive frolicking. Games involving balls, birdies, nets and imagination.CONFESSION: I could not take my gaze from a watermelon cooling in one of the many streams and brooks. For reasons that remain with Oedipus and my analyst, I grabbed this unattended emerald beauty that promised juicy joy ''red to the rind", lifted it skyward as if possessed by the twin spirits of Elmer Gantry and King Kong. Smashed it on one of the rocks that had nestled it. When the owner raced over, I strangely felt no fear. I admitted my wrong, but could offer not a wink of reason. He saw something in my posture or gaze; in a clear modulated voice he thought I should pay its monetary worth. The dollar was rumpled and the quarter shiny as I extracted them fom my dungarees--BL--before Levi's.

I walked back to Phyllis who was out of view.

L'chiam, Be Well, Do Good,

Arthur

ps Camp David, named after Eisenhower's son, shredded the once languorous pastoral of Catoctin

I'm pretty sure it was 1957 and Arthur reminisces seem strangely familiar-- like dusting off and opening a long-ago forgotten book that was important to you as a very young man-in-training.

I don't remember the watermelon, nor Arthur's Elmer Gantry cum King Kong, but I surely would have loved to have seen that (Elmer Gantry was one of my favorite books, along with Arrowsmith-- I guess Sinclair Lewis really had my number).

Anyway, I was preoccupied on that hay ride because I think it was when I first met Sharon and a girl named Jane, whose last name escapes me (help anyone?), but who was very nice. So I went home thinking about them both. Thanks for dusting off that book,

Ken

I remember the hayrides and can even picture being on one of them. I think I was with a woman (girl) named Rochelle, but can't recall any other details. I remember it being an all day sort of thing out in the beautiful Maryland countryside.

Joel

Wonderful memories, guys. The one visual memory that comes to mind was lyingcomfortably in the hay and gazing up at Arthur's date Sue, I believe was her name, though I may very well be mistaken. Anyway, I was entirely entrancedby her nubile physical charms. Embarrassingly, I can't remember who my own date was.

Another thing: We sang a lot. Thanks for tugging my memory strings.

Mark

The Hay Ride

I remember that it was Summer, 1956 or possibly 1957, but we had a hay ride. It was the SED Hay Ride (Sigma Eta Delta Fraternity) and it may have been a pledge class event, but I will need to check with some experts out there who were in attendance. It will be cleared up.

I have no idea if I had a date or if we didn’t take them, but there were boys and girls in attendance, and we went somewhere in the back of a hay wagon (or probably a truck filled with hay) and we went somewhere in Pennsylvania, I think. It was a big swimming hole, I believe, not an actual pool, but the costs included the ride and the swimming.

I remember being out for a very long day in the sun, and this would have been my first (and last) such event (in my life) and I had no idea about sun and time etc. Being fair skinned, perhaps six to eight hours in the sun would not have been a good idea.

I remember there was pizza involved at the end, probably back in Baltimore.

OK, so what’s the story? Why even tell it?

Because while I can’t remember if it was first or second or third degree burns I suffered, but I was in pain, both of my shoulders were completely scabbed over within a day or two, I was red over all my body, and I had to stay indoors, in the dark, for a week or two!

In the days before all the information we currently have about skin and sun, I learned things the hard way!

Razor Wars

In May, I wrote twice about Ockham’s razor. Today I want to write about regular razors, the kind you shave with and the kind everyone knows about.

When I started to shave, we used double edged blades in a safety razor, a nice chrome one with a screw bottom thing in order to change blades. We used to change them when they seemed dull. Then, I found the modern injector blade, a mechanical marvel which had only one useable side but was very sleek, it seemed. Some of us bought the British marvel the Roll’s Razor, a left over from some war which held its own stone and strop and blade in a neat little case and could be sharpened over and over forever. It didn’t work too well for me, and I was cut up a lot, but I figured it worked better under war conditions.

I did try electric ones several times but to tell the truth, I hated them and I have no story there.

Now, we move on to disposable razors. These are made by lots of companies, but my favorite became the Gillette Custom Plus Pivot Disposable Razors. I bought them for about $8 for a bag of 10, or about $.80 a piece. These have become harder to find as Gillette and the other companies go into new worlds. I have purchased them twice at Costco, in a 52 pack (about a year’s worth I guess) for $28, or about $.54 a piece.

While we were away in Montreal recently, I became aware that I took only one used razor with me, and since my wife was going out to the drug store, I asked her to pick up a disposable razor. We were in downtown Montreal, and not near a big box store, so she had to buy whatever she found. She bought a pack of Schick Quattro Razors. They have four blades and System performance in a disposable razor with a rubber guard bar, lubrication strip, optimized blade span and more comfort less irritation (this is from their web site).

I loved them! They were magic! OK, let’s figure this one out.
They last a very long time, about a week plus with continuing comfort where my poor Comfort Pluses go for four days. (I know, 52 don’t last a year, I think it’s a marketing image.)

There was a problem, they cost $12.75 for three, or about $4.25 a piece, which is probably more than the original chrome, last a lifetime, permanent razor cost in the 50’s when I bought it!

A little liquid can cause many problems...

This little foot is not mine!

A little liquid can cause many problems. Slipping on it can cause a major fall. I, however, did not slip on it, I ingested it, and it caused me to hurt myself.

It was Saturday evening, just after five o’clock, and I was getting ready to go out to a dinner party, when the idea hit me that more than anything else, I’d like a drink. So I poured a very generous Black Russian, and quietly sipped my drink while watching the Food Channel. I decided to go upstairs and get ready, and walked down the hall and smashed the little toe on my left foot into the stair railing. This was done with great gusto and hurt mucho! I think I broke my toe!

My wife has been hounding me ever since to go and get an x-ray and see what happened. “Go to the Doctor, Go to the Hospital!” she exclaims, but to no avail.

I know they always tell everyone that there is nothing they can do. I have taped the little toe to the rest of the foot and it seems to help.

On a question the Doctor website it said:

Typically, the person doing this has caught the little toe against a door, or a table leg, running in barefeet. The toe is often broken, but it doesn't need to be to be painful, and strapping to its buddy is the most commonly recommended treatment. Bruising and swelling is also very common, and sometimes causes more concern, but even then the problem is not too bad…..
Apart from strapping it, the toe should be kept elevated, and ice packs applied. The healing process effectively starts the moment you injure it, and steadily improves over the next few weeks(!). By about 4 weeks the bulk of the pain is gone...in the meantime some painkillers and open shoes should make life a little easier...Sadly you will now find out exactly how often one knocks one's little toes throughout the day! It is very rare for these fractures not to heal (if that is what you have), but it can happen....

I limp around, and I do better with no shoes and socks, but that’s not really possible during the day. Lighter shoes work better for me and I still have some dog walking responsibilities.

As I said, “A little liquid can cause many problems!”

WWKD #2

My younger daughter came out of the shower and left the bathroom door open. The wired smoke alarm is outside of the bathroom door, and if you leave the door open, even with the exhaust fan running, the alarm will go off. This alarm, as opposed to the other battery powered ones in the house, sets off our dog Max. He goes bananas when he hears it, and is not bothered by the other ones, even the kitchen alarm which goes off when we open the heated stove.

Hearing Max carrying on downstairs, and having her parents yell at her to close the door, she grabbed a magazine and tried to fan the steam away from the alarm, and succeeded in knocking the alarm off the ceiling.

It stopped screaming of course, but was on the floor and the wires were hanging down.

I ran up and looked at it. The alarm was down, fallen out of it's holder, the wires had a connecter and they were still in one piece, but the electrical box it was connected to was also beginning to hang. This was not a good thing, and as I was going to work I figured I'd deal with it later.

The next morning I investigated, and the box was hanging, and upon further investigation, I realized the box was never correctly installed in 1983, when the house was built.

A long time electrician in the area told me some time ago that these houses were put up at a time when the builder used anyone he could get and some kid had probably done a lot of the work. The box in the basement was running at 80 amps rather then 100. We changed that later on. So, whoever had put this box in the ceiling did so by sticking it in and shimming it, rather than fixing it onto a joist.

The path was clear, in order to correctly repair this problem was to pull out the box, find a joist attach the box, cut a new hole, replace the alarm and repair the ceiling.

WWKD?

Using the Klaus repair ethic, I put the box back in, replaced the shims, used construction grade adhesive to secure the box to it's original place and refixed the alarm.

It works fine, and unless it's knocked out of the ceiling again, it's just fine!

WWKD?

note- the missing part is shown on the right of the photo

I was very excited when I bought my Black and Decker Cordless Mulching Lawnmower this summer. It spelled the end to annual tune ups and gas purchasing and gas remaining disposal etc. It is quieter and better all around and my wife wanted it as it was a “greener” solution. My former mower was fantastic and always did a great job. It was a small Toro mower with a mulching capability and a rear bag. I bought it in 1987 for our new house in Troy, MI, where we only lived for two years. It was bought specifically with that house in mind, with a small, flat lawn. From then to now we have never had the same kind of lawn, but this little devil did a great job no matter where we were.

The old one was held together with lots of homemade repairs, adding screws and bolts when things broke off, and usually getting it professionally tuned up every year or two.

The new one, which I love, weighs 75 pounds, which is not pointed out anywhere as a criticism, but it should be. It is very heavy! It is propelled by me, so it’s noticeably more difficult to push, although not impossible.

So, to get to the point, a part fell off! Somewhere in my lawn lay a long steel bolt and a large black knob which screws on to the bolt and holds the handle to the frame. There are four of these on the mower and one is gone! I noticed as I went to mow yesterday and stood mute. I had to move quickly and knew getting a part would be a forever task.

The thought occurred to me, WWKD (what would Klaus do?) Klaus Fabich, our Building Maintenance Guru, and my friend, always finds alternative things to make things work. He has ways of attaching the unattachable, fixing the unfixable and finishing the unfinishable. I looked toward Home Depot and knew Klaus would go there and search for the solution.

I arrived with a knob and bolt in my hand, which I removed from the lawnmower. I will admit that my first instinct was to go over to the remaining lawn mowers to see if there was one with a knob and bolt that looked like it would work and steal it. However, it wasn’t propriety that won the day, or even doing the right thing, it was that there but a few lawn mowers at this time of year (six to be exact) and although I could see a similar part on another lawn mower, it was clear that I would be caught, as there were way too few in a very big and open space. I therefore, did the right thing and went over to the nuts and bolts, and with great skill (and a good guy from Home Depot) put together the proper bolt, washers and wing nut set to replace the part.

It was a total, with taxes, of $1.76. This was enough to keep me from a life of crime!

and next we have...

My in-laws have never been much in the maintenance area. Not in their house or cars for sure. They do react to emergencies, and so they have replaced an engine that seized because of lack of oil, as opposed to changing the oil and that sort of thing.

Right now, my father-in-law has been in a nursing home and will probably remain there. My mother-in-law, after a series of falls and broken ribs, is out of the hospital but in the same nursing home for the time being, and will be out in a week. Their neighbors have been looking after the house and the dog, as much as they can, as they sort of had the job fall in their laps.

While away, maintenance needs can pile up of course, and problems do occur. They have a quirky water system including a pump and a well, which needs some vigilant maintenance which no one has understood for the last 25 years.

There are a number of shut offs and openings that need, from time to time to be worked, that never seem to have been done and the basement has had a series of floods over the years.

However, today’s story is about a regularly scheduled maintenance activity.

Every month the system self cleans by backwashing fifty gallons of water through the system into the laundry sink and out into the drain field (or so I have been told). This week, with no one home and my mother-in-law being rushed from her house one morning a while back, no one knew the sink had wash in it and was closed.

When the fifty gallons came up it had no place to go but over the sides. While this is surely not the first time this has happened, it is probably the first time it happened with no one home to unstop the sink and end the deluge.

After hitting the laundry room floor it had no where to go but down through the garage roof, where it must have gone before.

Their neighbor is waiting for the insurance adjuster as we speak…..

This however, is not about health care...

My next door neighbor is our optometrist. We all go to him regularly for glasses, contacts and check-ups. Being old, with Canadian health care, the government gives me annual check-ups, and yes, my American friends, they are free. And, yes, as well, if he finds something wrong he can send me to an ophthalmologist, and yes, it would be free.

This however, is not about health care.

When I returned home from my visit, I had some questionable findings, mainly some retinal polyps appeared. Due to my age, these are not a major concern but certainly not a normal find.

I arrived home and my wife and my neighbor (not the optometrist but his wife).
were in their pool. I went over and told them I had a concern, I had retinal polyps.

My wife questioned (she may have a hearing disorder but that’s a different friend), “rectal polyps?”. I said yes, and suggested that the exam was quite invasive, but he thought he may be able to remove them anyway.

Newspapers

"I'm seeing some of you for the last time," Michael Moore said to a roomful of journalists. It wasn't because he doesn't plan on bringing his next film to the Toronto Film Festival. It's because by the time he does, newspapers will be done, he said. "I had a section (in the film) about how capitalism killed the newspaper," Moore said. But then he realized that story could be its own entire movie."It's not the Internet that killed the newspaper; these newspapers slit their own throats by siding with the group of politicians," he said, adding that papers in Europe and Japan aren't suffering nearly as much.

"If you stop reporting things, then who will buy them?"

In the U.S., newspapers have readily endorsed Republican leaders who have in turn made cuts to literacy programs. "It would be like General Motors funding candidates who promised to get rid of Driver Education," he smirked.

"In Europe, they realize they better put out a damn good paper."In North America ,newspapers instead worry about: "How can we get more news for less money?

"So it's bye-bye, Michael said."Unless some of you move to the Internet."

I love to read the paper, not on line, although I do it, but I love to sit and peruse the morning paper. For a while I took the Hamilton Spectator as well as the Globe and Mail. For my American readers, the Globe and Mail is the more liberal national newspaper. For many years it was the only one and it seemed a bit conservative until the National Post came along.

I found that I couldn’t read the two papers, even though I really enjoyed them, but I couldn’t read both and work for a living. I just didn’t have the time. I seldom if ever get to read the paper in the evening, and I hated old news so I didn’t save them up until the end of the week to read. My wife loved them both as well, and the cost seemed a bit much but they were fun.

When I lived in Calgary for a while I read the local paper and the New York Times, but I ended up not knowing what was happening in Calgary and knew a lot about Brooklyn!

In the end, we decided on getting the Saturday Globe and Mail, and I usually saved the reading of it for Sunday, and used the Spectator on Saturday.

I complained once to Dana Robbins, the publisher of the Spectator, that I couldn’t read two papers a day, and he told me he read five! I guess I should have kept my mouth shut!

On Friday I received a letter from the Globe and Mail. They told me that since I was a Saturday only subscriber, they were giving me, free of cost or obligation, six weeks of the daily paper for me to try.

Oh, no, here we go again!

Computer Virus

I hate to be ripped off! I hate to fall victim to a scam! I hate to be fooled technologically!

I hate all this and it happened to me!

I know it’s not the “right” thing to do but I wanted a copy of Microsoft Word for my netbook and I didn’t want to pay for it. I have an older version but it’s on a CD and the netbook has no disk drive. I am probably going to get one but it seemed stupid at this point. So the answer was to get an illegal download of Microsoft Word.

I downloaded a torrent with the program on it, tested the file with my free virus protection software and moved it from my desktop at home to my netbook. I opened the file and all hell broke loose!

Virus party time occurred! Things started to happen and it was out of control. My Windows virus protection window opened and requested that I purchase a two year subscription to this service immediately! I was panicked (not a usual state for me) and I agreed. I continued on line and worked the program and paid about $75 US for the subscription. It cleaned up some of the mess, I thought, and I was sort of able to work.

In a day or so our ISP contacted me in all of my computers telling me we were helping a spam network and I needed to fix the computers or they were taking us off line! They wanted me to run the software cleanup from their website and fix the mess.

I ran the program on the other computers and it found a few pieces of spyware, about three on each. On the netbook it found 335 problems and worked on them. It instructed me to find and download another fix for a VIRUT program which I did. However, it never quite worked itself out. There was some residual junk in there and the new virus protection program which “looked” a lot like Microsoft didn’t ever get it fixed. I kept finding the same 14 problems and fixing them.

Yesterday I took the netbook into the computer repair place and he said, “You didn’t send them money, did you?” Now I know how to feel stupid!

This is a scam. Put a virus in your computer and a fake Microsoft looking fix comes up. I am sure tons of folks have fallen for this one, and I was not exempt.

I called the credit card company yesterday and have disputed the charge. It has not been paid yet, I believe, so they were happy to accept my complaint and told me this is not the first time this has happened. The company appears now to be in Poland, but they tell me they move around a lot!

It's a pizza story and it's a family story.

This photograph is me with my family, my parents and maternal grandparents in 1957. My grandmother is featured in todays post.

I know I’ve been on a food kick lately, but there are so many food stories to do.

Today I wanted to talk about pizza.

When I was a kid, I’d never heard of pizza. There were not pizza places on every corner, and pizza was usually found in Italian restaurants, and there were none in my neighborhood! I had never heard of it.

And then, the word went out both far and wide that there was a bar, the Borman Café, somewhere (probably the corner of Borman Ave. and Reisterstown Road) in Baltimore that had great pizza! Having no idea what it was, any pizza was going to be great!

My friend Jerry Rubin had a married sister who went to the Borman Café, and one evening brought a pizza in a carryout box for us to try. I was in love!

As we were then about 14 or 15, we slowly developed friends with cars and began to go to Little Italy and find “real pizza”. I raved about it at home.

My grandmother, who I lived with (along with my mother, father and grandfather), heard me rave and decided quietly that she would experience this treasure.

So, the next time she went to the market, she came home with a frozen pizza. I was on my way home from school, and before I arrived she tried it.

When I came in the door, she called me into the kitchen and explained that she couldn’t imagine how I could eat this stuff!

My grandmother had arrived from Russia some 50 year before and still retained some of the old ways. Some of the modern concepts had eluded her.

My grandmother was standing there eating a big piece of frozen pizza!

Nan Kin

When I was a kid I used to go to the neighborhood Chinese Restaurant, Nan Kin. It was across the street from the bowling alley in our Forest Park neighborhood, and was always a wondrous place, full of great and exotic food.

Now, granted, this was in the days before we ever heard of Szechwan cooking or Sushi or Vietnamese cuisine.

They had dishes with pork and shrimp and lobster, these were things that little Jewish boys only heard about, because they wouldn’t have been seen in our house. It’s not like we were kosher, it’s really just that these foods were foreign to us at the time.

My father would not eat Chinese food, so this became a special place for my mother and I to eat lunch on special Saturdays or Sundays. We would get Chow Mein and Fried Rice and all those exotic Cantonese dishes.

As a teenager, I returned there with friends. My friend Ted Fisher and I would go there often very late at night and get combination platters, a great bargain. The pork chow mien and fried rice with an egg roll and soup was about $1.10 and the shrimp egg foo young and fried rice and an egg roll with soup was about $1.25. These came with dessert of course, peppermint ice cream!
I know this place closed many years ago, as well we moved on to the Lotus Inn when we were mobile, a more upscale (slightly) place a mile or so uptown. When I was older, we were turned away from the Cantonese places by the more exotic ones, but my memories of sitting there with warm china containers with chrome lids full of wonderful food and pots of tea still remains.

Much like my story about the Pimlico Hotel, I have a Nan Kin story. No, I didn’t steal from these lovely people, but an opportunity came up a few years ago on eBay to acquire four tea cups from the restaurant.

I hold the cups in my hand and it takes me back to a kinder, gentler time……

Pimlico Hotel Story

When I was a teenager, the most “upscale” place one could go was Nate’s and Leon’s Pimlico Hotel. A large, deli based restaurant in a predominately Jewish neighborhood, near the Pimlico Race Track in Baltimore, with a Chinese menu added a little later in the restaurants life.

It was a great eatery with wonderful food, and full of adults. The only time you went there by yourself was after a prom or some big date event. It was, for me, a special place to go.

It was, as I remember, very expensive. You had great service and food, but as a kid you might have been a bit upset with the prices. So, one night with a date, I had ordered an iced tea instead of a plain coke, and then I wanted another one. I believe it came in a tall, frosted glass with a very long spoon toped with a red ball end that sort of looked like a cherry and was really good. I ordered another and sort of figured it was all you could consume. I was at a table full of friends, and the bill was long and complex, but clearly I had to pay for two iced teas, at about $1 a piece! I was upset and did the only thing I could think of to get “my money’s worth”, I took the spoon! I slipped it into my hand and up the sleeve of my sport coat (I was, after all, on a date).

I was home the next day and my mother asked me about the spoon. I told her what happened and she chastised me for stealing anything, even this special spoon. I had envisioned myself having iced tea at home, for free, with my new long spoon! It was not to be.

My mother took the spoon away from me never to be seen again!

After my mother passed away in 1997, as we were cleaning out her apartment, there was the spoon! It had survived 40 years in my mother’s kitchen drawer, and I had never seen it! As soon as I saw it I was flooded with the memory of this story.

The funny thing is, the spoon survived the restaurant!

It sounds like Home Alone to me....

On Wednesday last week, three mothers decided to take their six kids on a field trip after their art class, at noon.

They had two cars, and all came down to pick up the kids. They signed the kids out of school for the day.

Twenty minutes later one of the mom’s came back to pick up the child they left behind…….

They needed to do a head count!

(We had her in the office, a bit upset about being left out)

"but music was his life it was not his livelihood..."

I love music. It has made a real difference in my life.

The chorus in Harry Chapin’s Mr. Tanner goes:

“but music was his life, it was not his livelihood,and it made him feel so happy and it made him feel so good.And he sang from his heart and he sang from his soul.He did not know how well he sang; It just made him whole”

When my boys were little, we sang all the time. I started playing the guitar when I was about 13 or 14, after some ukulele experimentation, and I liked it! I played and sang most of my life, and during high school and some of college, I had friends to play with.

I know I never was very good, but it has been a great way to amuse myself, and have fun with friends. It has been a great avocation. Often people have said, “He does such a nice job playing with him self!” (OK, this dour theme is allowed to have a joke or two!)

Since then, my oldest son has gone on to be a musician, at least as a part time career move (when he’s not being a lawyer) playing guitar and singing with one of Washington’s best cover bands, the Dial Tones. Both of my other boys continued, at least for a while, to play the guitar.

My oldest daughter is majoring in music and my youngest plays the piano. The problem, however, lies with my daughters.

My musical career started with my mother’s desire to get me out of being a shy kid, and offering singing lessons to me as a way out of my shyness. It worked! My enjoyment for music, all forms, continues to this day and I still sing and play and go to concerts and musical events. In the past year we’ve seen Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen and the Who, plus tons of other musical events.

My daughters are embarrassed by my singing, even if it’s just along with the radio. They hate it if I sing and screw up the words, and they hate it if I know the words. They are always embarrassed by my actions anyway, and most of the time I laugh with them although it does bother me,

I know I am not a great singer, but I’m always a showman! I can do bits, make great and funny songs up, and for years entertained my son’s friends. I used to get requests just for some fun things long beyond their high school years. The girls get angry if I dance around, keep a beat with my hands or my feet and scornfully look at me if I acknowledge and musical activity by moving in any way possible.

I basically hate it! I don’t mind if they don’t like my choice in music, I allow them the right of the radio control in the cars; I just need to be a happy camper in musicville once in a while.

As I quoted at the beginning:

“but music was his life, it was not his livelihood,and it made him feel so happy and it made him feel so good.And he sang from his heart and he sang from his soul.He did not know how well he sang; It just made him whole”

In May I wrote:

My wife, whose name can not be mentioned in these pages, as my regular readers must know, has a thing about replacing bathroom items. Not soap and stuff, because of course we replace those, but toilet seats and shower curtains.

Now we have replaced more than our share of toilet seats, and I will not speak out about those because it’s a bit crazy. However, the shower curtain thing does relate to mould (the belief that there is mould everywhere) and rust on the little metal grommets that hold the curtain on. I know you mostly will think this is strange as well, but I decided to accept my fate and go with these things as they’re no big deal.

My wife was away on a trip and saw in the hotel the curved metal bars with fancy special curtains that give you a bigger feel in the shower. This means the shower feels larger, not you!

She wants me to order them, and I worked with the company and got a price and measurements to do this, and send it to Canada, but want to avoid it as much as possible because it means a bigger, pricier thing and more work for me installing this stuff. It will eventually be done, by me or my successor.

In the meantime, she decided we should get rid of our current shower curtain and liner because of rust (I never even noticed it, of course). She went out to the dollar store and happily replaced the two items for $2.00. You get what you pay for!

It is very pretty, in fact, with a lovely green liner showing through a white print curtain. It is made from 1 or 2 mill plastic, and if you turn on the shower you have to work on it not sticking to your body. Larger folks like me get claustrophobic taking a shower in there now.

I went out to the store and purchased a new , normal shower curtain and liner that are beautiful and go well with our décor. My wife admits this but we are now waiting until my sister-in-law and her husband and kids arrive in June to put it up.

My sister-in-law and her family don’t like our small quarters anyway, but do, I believe, like us. I like them. I recently told my sister-in-law that I love her. That’s another, way too complicated story that has no sexual tension, just nonsense.

However, my wife is concerned that we only have one tub/shower in our house. That’s the way God built it, I figured.

In my life I have had older homes with bigger bathrooms and more of them, but that was then and this is now. We have two half baths as well and we’ll just have to survive. There is no easy way to add a shower in a convenient place.

In one of my old homes, I had a shower in an odd place; it was originally divided into apartments so there was a downstairs bathroom shower in the living room. This was fine but if you took a shower you had to have your clothing with you as you had to go through the living room, the grand entrance hall and up an open staircase in order to get to the second floor and relative safety.

We lived in modern homes in Calgary with extra bathrooms and it was convenient. But now, alas, we will have to suffer through with just one shower/tub combination. With my oldest daughter (who can not be named) leaving for university in Montreal in the fall, there will even be less of a need for an extra shower.

My sister-in-law and her family will get the new shower curtain and will not even appreciate it unless she reads this, and we will probably have to get this new curved pole and special curtain eventually.

As I said, it will eventually be done by me, or my successor.

Now for the update. My Sister-in-Law came and went but no shower curtain. We spent a week in a hotel with a curved shower rod and it was OK, not a big deal, but it took a normal shower curtain so I liked it much better, but have said little or nothing about it as I like the current rod just fine.

However, on September 1, the new shower curtain went up! It is beautiful! The liner is thick and solid! The look is big and graphic! It slightly darkens your inside the shower view because of color and thickness but the whole thing is great. I will not bring up the shower curtain again. I will sit and wait….

editorial note: this is not our bathroom. we have a horizontal striped curtain which I've tried to illustrate, but this is not ours, but I like it.

The Shower Head

My wife and my youngest daughter went to New York and New Jersey for a week or so a while back. They left me, our oldest daughter and our dog at home to live our lives in ways we saw fit.

While at home, my daughter and I were amazed by a product on the Shopping Channel. Now I know you may not have a lot of respect for the Shopping Channel, but every once and a while I see something I like. In this case it was the Oxygenics Intellishower Head

Self-pressurizing technology, increased water velocity + air induction = more pressure
Patented technology uses 20-70% less water compared to industry leading brands
Internal components increase durability and eliminate clogging, mineral build-up and corrosion
Manufacturer lifetime warranty

This was great, fancy, simple technology that saved water by letting you use just a minimal stream of water and gaining maximum velocity with that small stream. It was amazing! They were selling thousands of them while we watched, and we decided to go forward with our own request and get one while the getting was good!

We put in the order, and sometime right after the family returned, it came in the mail.

I excitedly put it on and tried it out and it was amazing! So powerful! I only have to turn the water pressure on a little bit and an amazing water stream comes forth.

My youngest daughter went up that evening to take a shower and I tried to explain the change to her to no avail! She never needs any direction for anything! She is a teenager and knows everything!

After her shower she quietly came down the stairs with a towel wrapped around her, and a question about the shower head, as blood came rolling down her forehead!

The lesson about how little water to use had been learned the hard way!

Let the grill begin!

After a number of years using our old grill, it needed new parts. I figured it would be about $100 for parts and I’d have a newly fixed up, old grill. So, let the games begin!

It’s the beginning of September and grills should all be on sale. I looked at Zellers and the grills were bad and the sales were worse, with very little off. I looked at Wal-Mart and the only two models were little and very big, but the very big one seemed cheap. I went to the local big grocery store and they had a great one for sale but I kept waiting for further reductions, and they sold out! I went to Home Depot and the $1,200 one was on sale for $1,099, not a sale by my standards.

I finally went to Canadian Tire and they should have had them all on sale but no way was that happening when I look, but they had one I liked on sale at 33% off, my kind of numbers. I was hoping for a 50% day, but beggars should not be choosy!

Canadian Tire charges $20 to put the grill together, so I was delighted! No problems with large boxes and little screws, just pay it and forget it. I checked and it was double that four or five years ago when I bought my last grill. I paid my money, used the Canadian Tire money on my card (for more discount) and went back yesterday to pick up my grill after work.

It came rolling out, big, black and beautiful! I was so happy! It was a winner!

The store personnel helped me get it to the car and then we were stopped cold!

I had just paid $20 to put it together, and here I was standing in the parking lot with two very nice employees, taking the grill apart! It didn’t fit in my Explorer!

I came home with my tail between my legs. I removed it from the car and rebuilt it in my driveway!

Editors’ note: I went to use the grill last night for the first time and could not get the igniter to ignite. After numerous tries, I realized the button was soft, or not there. I was considering the job of taking the grill apart, and bringing the whole thing back to Canadian Tire just to fix a little igniter!

I went into the house and found the English version of the directions, because since I didn’t put it together completely, there may have been something missed by my builders. Lo and behold, I have an electronic igniter (it makes little clicks like a newer gas oven does) and it requires a AA battery!

Ya’ think a builder person would give me a 30 cent battery or at least suggest I get one!

Editors not #2

I put out the old grill at 5:00 p.m. yesterday (the day before garbage day, the day the city suggests if you want to get rid of something) and it was gone (along with the free grill sign) by 6:00 p.m.

This one all starts out with Linda, my friend from DVSA, our Business Manager. She was going to be late this morning as she slept in a bit too long. This is forgivable, and she called me just to let me know.

She started eo leave and got to the car, decided to put two things from the car into the recycling, and as she left the running car, she hit the button, locked the doors and locked herself out!

She got on the phone in her house and called CAA, the Canadian Automobile Association. She didn’t have the number handy as it was on her card and the card was in her purse and the purse was in the car.

Information told her they had no number for the Canadian Automobile Association but they did have a number for CAA. Duh!!!!!!!

She called CAA and asked for help with the lock on her car as it was running and she was locked out. They asked her for her account number but, as she explained again, the car was running and she was locked out and her purse was in the car.

After some dickering, she was sent a guy to unlock the door so she could go to work and try and explain this all to me.

This reminds me of Cogeco, our ISP. Their phone tech support message tells you to go to their website for the answer to your problem. If I could get to their website, I’d have no problem! Duh!!!!

I think I see a pattern here.