Sleep Depravation #2

image borrowed from http://itllfeelbetterwhenitquitshurting.blogspot.com/2009/02/sleep-deprivation.html

I was out yesterday afternoon, originally planning to go take my daughter up to skating and leave her, and go do some drugstore shopping. My plans changed as my daughter had a friend call that was going to pick her up, and I was free.

I decided to go shopping anyway, as I needed a few things and was ready to go anyway.

I drove around listening to a mystery on my mp3 player, something I do continuously, if I’m in the car. I always listen to books, seldom to music unless I have others in the car. I always carry around 15-20 books oh my mp3 player, downloaded free from the Hamilton library.

After a visit to the drugstore, Winners (to look for bargain shoes) and another men’s clothing store, I drove home. I was carefully listening and wanted to hear more of the story as I pulled into the driveway. I stopped and decided to listen for a bit more.

My phone rang, as my wife was looking for me, and she woke me up! I was asleep in the driveway, only missing a bit of the story.

I think this sleep depravation thing is getting to me.

I write this after sleeping in front of the computer for the last tem minutes.

Antique Treasures

Many years ago the Maine Antiques Digest printed an obituary about a late Baltimore Antiques dealer, legendary in his field. One of the small things it mentioned was his shopping at the Goodwill Reject Store (a name I use, not them) in the early 60’s. I smiled, because he was not alone in his great “find”, I was there as well.

On Aliceanna Street in Baltimore, next to the stable where the A-rabbers (read “Home Delivery", Thursday, December 24) could rent carts and horses, sat the Goodwill’s Reject Store, the place where Goodwill products went if they could not be refurbished, retouched or refinished. The detritus of the donations landed there, as opposed to the trash. Bargains galore were there for collectors if they knew where to look.

I was the king of the cast iron sewing machine bottom! I bought as many as I could get for about 50 cents a piece and sold them to friends for $4. They were used as table bottoms by everyone. They charged you more if they were complete, and I had to remove and throw away the tops.

They had tons of pressed back oak chairs, all in singles. The sets must have been refinished and sold but the singles were throw aways. Generally they cost around $2, as I remember. I currently have a TV stand made of oak which is probably a chair bottom. I bought it there in 1963 for a dime! When I moved from our rented place to our first house in 1967, I put out 11 chairs for the garbage, as I had no need to move them and no one wanted them.

The strongest memory of that store was the heat system! In the dead of winter, a pot bellied stove was used as a furnace, and it was fed from a large table filled with scrap from the store. The most vivid memory I have is of employees feeding the stove with shovelfuls of broken baby dolls!

It was a highly stylized Dachau!

Wedding Day Blues

Many years ago I was in a wedding in New York. My wife and I stayed with her uncle and aunt in Kings Point, Long Island and drove in to the wedding in Queens. I have little remembrance of the ceremony and the reception, and the couple has long since divorced, but the ending was spectacular for me.

My tux was rented from a dealer in Baltimore, and was due back on Monday. I had plans to stay in New York for a day or two, and was to bring the tux home, probably a bit late.

The groom’s sister was going home the next day and offered, as we were leaving, to take back the tux. I was happy to be free of such details; however, she needed the tux then and there, as we were miles away from where she was staying.

Being that the wedding had ended, and that I had been drinking at the reception, it seemed like a great idea to get out of the tux and give it to her right there on a New York street.

I went to my vehicle, undressed, and my wife brought her the tux. We got into the car and drove off, up the Long Island Expressway, hoping I had no reason to get out of the car as all I was wearing was a t-shirt, underwear and socks, as I had rented shoes as well.

This could have been the end of the story but there was a sub-plot. When we arrived back at the house, we were hoping that no one was around, as I wanted to make it into the house without detection. Unknowingly, my wife’s cousin was in her room having sex with her boyfriend, for the first time (they have long since been married), and wanted no detection.

We all were there trying to hide from each other.

Sleep Depravation

image borrowed from The Simpsons

My sleeping patterns are really bad, and I haven’t slept through the night for many years. While this is supposed to be a bad thing, it has given me lots of TV time, and I often live in a twilight world.

I usually fall asleep way too early and wake up around ten. Then I go to sleep at about eleven or eleven thirty and sleep until one or two. I then wake, go downstairs an have a bowl of cereal and some grapes. This seems to do the trick and I usually fall asleep watching something on the TV and wake up between four and five and return to bed. I “wake up” at around six. This is my “normal” sleeping pattern.

I sought drugs to solve the problem, and what I was given does dope me up pretty good, and causes me to hold on top the stair rail very carefully when I descend into the family room. I groggily get the cereal, but it isn’t a great solution. I still wake up every one and a half to two hours. The next drug I received works about the same with less after effects. However, none of them shut me down.

Am I complaining, I guess so? I have gotten to see a lot more movies than before, and, I’ve seen lots of ghost shows like Paranormal State, Extreme Paranormal, Ghost Hunter and Celebrity Ghost Stories. I think these have all replaced wrestling as the new sport of insane folks. “Give ‘em something to believe in”.

Would I like to sleep the whole night, sure? It’s just become a way of life.

In Stephen King’s “Insomnia”, Widower Ralph Roberts has been having trouble sleeping. Each night he awakens a little earlier until he's barely sleeping at all. During his late night vigils and walks, he observes some strange things going on in Derry, Maine. He sees colored ribbons streaming from people's heads. He witnesses two strange little men wandering the city under cover of night. He begins to suspect that these visions are something more than hallucinations brought about by sleep deprivation. Ralph and his friend, Widow Lois Chasse, become enmeshed in events of cosmic significance.

Would that I had anything as exciting as this to look forward to? My cosmic intuition is no where near heightened by my lack of sleep. The only changes occurring are that I tend to fall asleep sitting on toilets!

Home Delivery #2

I said yesterday that at this point the only thing still delivered in the newspaper and pizza. The newspaper seems to be a dying thing sadly, and pizza and other food items are an obvious add on to the cost, not a built in expense.

I was reminded that in the old days, people would go downtown, shop and send the packages home, and return items not wanted or needed by calling the store and having a free pickup! Free pick up and delivery, those were the days.

I forgot yesterday about the mail; my error. The mail is still delivered, and as far as I know it will still be coming to our homes.

When I lived in Calgary it came to a group mailbox down the street, but it still was mail. I know this Christmas the mail numbers are off, and will continue to decline I am sure. But even with all the email, there is nothing as good as a mail delivery.

Just consider package delivery. I buy on line all the time, but it can’t be delivered on line. It has to get to us by carrier, either public or private, someone has to deliver. I know I spend too much time at a postal outlet picking up undelivered packages, but it’s OK, I still get a chance to guess what’s coming.

Home Delivery

There was so much of it in the day, and now it has all but disappeared from the scene. My old friend John Parks used to load milk trucks in the late 50’s and early 60’s and told the other guys that he would get “real job” when he got married, which he did. He went on to sell insurance; at least it was a real job! The other guys at the milk plant laughed at him because he was giving up a good job, which ended a few years later when milk delivery ended.

The milk man also delivered, if you wanted it, butter, ice cream or any milk product. He put it into a metal, insulated box on the porch, of course, and everyone had one. Gone is the egg man or lady, who brought fresh eggs every week, brown or white.

In Baltimore they had (or still have) street A-rabs. A meandering group of people who sell products purchased in the morning at the wholesale markets and sold throughout the alleys of Baltimore. It included vegetables, fruit and seafood!

The word arab in the sense of a peddler appears to derive from street arab, or, according to the unabridged Webster’s New International Dictionary, a “homeless vagabond in the streets of a city or esp. an outcast boy or girl era.
This association of wanderers with Arabs likely reflects the sense of the nomadic life historically led by the peoples on the Arabian Peninsula. By extension, the person wandering the streets has been transformed from a vagrant to a vendor. The term street arab has fallen largely into disuse over the past century.
the Baltimore street peddlers are to be referred to as A-rabs, not Arabs, is a means of differentiating the local patois from the ethnic term. Whatever stereotypes of Arabs may be current in American culture, the Baltimore terms, A-rab and Arabber, indicate a respect for people who work very hard to make a living, and also an affectionate respect for a local tradition.

My Grandmother waited patiently for the fish man who had an open truck with packed ice and fish on top so she could be assured of fresh fish. As well, many A-rabbers used rented horse and wagons to ply their wares.

We had a butcher, Mr. Pete who came once a week to our house in Pikesville, MD, with great products and a chopping block etc. for special needs. We had a group of women who would come to our house to meet up with him as he had no extra stops left on his route. Mr. Pete, a kid’s favorite, was a neighborhood phenomenon.

At this point the only thing still delivered in the newspaper and pizza. The newspaper seems to be a dying thing sadly, and pizza and other food items are an obvious add on to the cost, not a built in expense.

I was reminded about this today when I had noticed that our morning newspaper has been put very carefully in the mailbox paper holder, (where it belongs) for the past two weeks, along with a Christmas card from the carrier. Today, it’s back on the driveway!

The Christmas Trip

My daughter came home from Montreal on Saturday, after her last exam. We scheduled a train trip, although costing much more than the bus, it would be more assured of making it home in case of inclement weather. We had decided this was well worth it for us all.

On Saturday morning after a bit of a trial by transportation, she arrived safely at the train station only to have a delay due to engine trouble. Forty-five minutes later they were off, and it looked like smooth sailing.

There was some more mechanical trouble along the way and we would be off by about an hour and a half.

We planned that she would get off in Toronto at Union Station and get a GO train to Burlington where we could easily get her and avoid, if there was any, a Saturday before Christmas rush.

The wall plugs were not working on the train so her computer battery ran down and that communication died. The Wi-Fi was out as well. Her phone battery was on its way out and there was no way to rejuvenate that either. We used text to communicate at this point so we knew what was going on.

My wife had been ill and had ear infections and decided to take a nap before we had to go. We had a few hours left before we would have to leave.

I went to use the computer, having just reinstalled it into our partially restored home office when the phone rang. My daughter was calling. The train stopped in Oshawa, Ontario and could go no more as there was a fatality on the tracks! Basically, that was the end of the line for at minimum, two hours! It may continue after that but there was no assurance.

I woke my wife up, who had been sleeping for ten minutes, and told her we were going to Oshawa, even though I had no idea where it was or how far. My other daughter did a MapQuest while I went to get gas. We took the GPS and left.

It’s about 75 miles and the traffic was about what one could expect driving around Toronto on a Christmas Saturday, just awful! However, we never stopped for a minute! We were there in an hour and a half, about 15 minutes after the train left for Union Station!

A brief stop at Burger King and we were off to home, It was another hour and a half without incident, but our planned Chanukah dinner (belated) was put off yet another day.

It was an unforgettable journey to surely make for a more well rounded Christmas.

Hunter Gatherer Spirit continues....

On November 8, 2009 I wrote:

At Winner’s yesterday, I found a nice shoe. I have no need for shoes, as they are lying around on shelves in my closet and in the garage etc., and many seldom, if ever, get worn. Unfortunately, that’s a problem I have developed, much to the relief of Value Village, as I am always taking bags of clothing and shoes to charity drops. Winner’s has four pairs of the same leather boots in size 14M, a size I can wear. (R.J.Colt leather Chukka Boots) They are reasonably priced, but I have no need for them. However, there are only so many people who can wear such a ridiculous size, so I will wait. I may miss buying them, of course, as its Christmas and Bigfoot’s Mom may be shopping, but if I don’t, I may wait until they get to clearance and wait a while as they go down in price. Within a month I’ll know if I will buy them or not.

Today is Sunday, December 20, and I decided to go to Winners at about 3:00 p.m. to see if the shoes made it. I had checked a few weeks ago and three pairs were there in the regular isle at the discounted rate of $69.99. I had decided that I would need somewhere around 50% of that to make it a worthwhile buy. Today I approached the regular isle and they were gone! My breath quickened, do you suppose they made it to clearance?

I looked and amazingly, one pair survived! Bigfoot’s relatives had been in and bought the others, but one pair remained! They were priced at $36.99, a reasonable price for these shoes.

They are currently sitting on a shelf in my garage.

Second Prize

Second Prize sounds OK, but not great. Wrong! In this case it was wonderful!

I received an email from the Shopping Channel about the Wolfgang Puck Recipe contest, in which there would be three prizes: first, and two runner up prizes. The prize would be for the best recipe (original, I imagine) using Wolfgang Puck appliances.
OK, I am a good cook, and both my wife and I have appeared in the paper many times with cooking sensations. We did it mostly in Calgary, where we have been included in a Published Cook Book (not a church fund raiser) and once here in the Hamilton Spectator. So, I had recipes and I could find out quickly about Wolfgang Puck appliances.

I know who Wolfgang Puck is. He is a very well know chef who has restaurants all over the world, and I had seen him cooking on the Shopping Channel, selling his appliances and his cookware.

I quickly put together my entry and easily forgot all about it. The phone call from the Shopping Channel reminded me quickly enough, as I was one of three winners in the country!

The first prize was an all expense paid trip for two, for two days, to the Shopping Channel’s headquarters and the opportunity to cook your dish on the web. Maybe, if you were lucky, you might do it on television and you might meet Wolfgang Puck. The headquarters for the Shopping Channel is in Mississauga, Ontario, a forty five minute drive from my house. I may have been given gas money!

The runners up prizes were a 26 piece set of Wolfgang Puck cookware, which came in a forty two pound box currently sitting in my garage waiting for us to open it officially on Christmas. It is big and beautiful!

The recipe is for Lion’s Head Meatballs, a gourmet Asian dish I had tasted once many years ago as it was made for me by a friend who was involved with gourmet cooking classes. I have seen it described in cookbooks twice, and put together my recipe, which I find wonderful.

When we did this in the paper, my daughters were attacking it with chopsticks, when my youngest was two years old. The photo was great but a bit fictitious as she could hardly do much with a fork at that time. Today, she is a wiz!

Enjoy the recipe!

LIONS HEAD MEATBALLS

1 pound Ground Pork or Ground Turkey

1/4 pound Cooked Shrimp

4 ounce (1/2 can) Water Chestnuts

2 Scallions

1/2-1 bunch Swiss Chard (trimmed of stems)

3 tbs Hoisin Sauce

1 1/2 cups Chicken Bouillon

1 teas Chopped Garlic

1 teas Ground or Minced Fresh Ginger

2 teas Soy Sauce

2 tbs Corn or Tapioca Starch

Salt and Pepper

2 tbs Cooking Oil

1/2 teas Sesame Oil

Combine shrimp, pork or turkey, scallions, water chestnuts, 1 tbs cornstarch, soy sauce, some salt and pepper and 1 1/2 tbs hoisin in a Wolfgang Puck Professional Series Food Processor with Flow Attachment and lightly blend. Shape into 8 large meatballs and dust with cornstarch.

Heat the oil in a large skillet. Add meatballs and brown on all sides and drain grease and oil. Add ginger root and garlic, bouillon, 1 1/2 tbs hoisin and some salt and pepper. Bring to boil and simmer meatballs for 5 minutes. Cover meatballs with as many Swiss chard leaves as possible, cover and simmer for 10-15 more minutes. Add remaining cornstarch, mixed in a little cold water to thicken the liquid.

Serve by placing cooked leaves on plate (Lions Mane) and cover with meatballs (Lions Head) and spoon on sauce. Serve four with rice made in our Wolfgang Puck 7 Cup Rice Cooker with Removable Lid.

The Florescent Light

A few years ago the florescent light in our downstairs office was going out so I changed the bulbs. I noticed it wasn’t in good shape when it fell from the ceiling and hit me in the forehead.

The DIY guy who built the downstairs rooms put the fixture into the wallboard ceiling with the little plastic screw holders used for solid wall mounting and it was basically held by nothing!

With a pain in my head and the fixture on my face I forced it into place and somehow managed to get it up into the ceiling with some expansion bolts that I had at hand.

It was in crooked due to head pain and the plastic cover had broken some time before and it is a mess. I was waiting until eventually I was forced to redo the room or replacing the bulbs again before deciding to fix the lighting situation.

I went to the Home Depot to get a new fixture, and they had tons of fixtures in the $20 price range which was less than I had paid for my new one I put into our upstairs closet. I brought this one home and removed the old fixture and somewhat struggled with the new one to get it into the ceiling. One of the two holes for screwing the fixture into the ceiling was covered with the internal ballast so I couldn’t get into it. Quite a design flaw!

I drilled a new hole near the end and on the side which made it lopsided but it would work. The end pieces, the four that hold the bulb, were very cheaply made plastic and one of them was hanging which I didn’t realize until it was already up in the ceiling. I had to remove the light fixture from the ceiling (I noticed it was a bit crooked as well) and return it to Home Depot.

The return specialist and I went through several before we found one that had all it’s pieces in order, and I took that one.

I came home and put the new one up and discovered it was crooked; so with my wife’s help, we got it straight and I finished the job.

Tired and angry at all the trouble, plus I had to paint the room after all this was over, I put on the light. It went on! I was happy.

Within a minute my wife started to scream. It seems my new fixture was on fire with smoke shooting out of the sides, and plastic melting!

The new fixture is now resident in the dumpster and the newer fixture, no longer the $20 model, is waiting in the garage to be installed tomorrow.

A Day At The Circus

This seems like a story I’ve already told but I can’t seem to find it here, so maybe I’ve just told it many times before.

In the early 90’s when I was in Massachusetts, I had an opportunity to fulfill a childhood dream, one I really never had thought about, but when presented with the opportunity, I couldn’t refuse.

I was the Vice President of the Beverly, MA Chamber of Commerce, and the Chamber sponsored a circus that was coming to Beverly. This traveling circus (a name that has been lost in time) was on the road close to 250 days a year, and put up and took down the big top every day or two. It was huge by our standards, and lots of fun.

The Head of the chamber was unable to participate on one of the days and asked the President, who could not be there, so they asked me to welcome the people to the circus. This sounds like a normal kind of thing, welcome the people, but not so in the circus. I had to go out with the ringmaster and welcome everyone from the center ring!

There I was, in my big boys clothes (coat and tie I think), standing with a man who was wearing a blue sequined suit, and he handed me the mike. Friends, my wife and daughter were iall n the audience, somewhere up in the stands, and I said, “Ladies and Gentleman and Children of all Ages, I am Arthur Greenblatt, Vice President of the Beverly Chamber of Commerce and I would like to welcome you to the circus!

I was surrounded by horses with ladies in exotic costumes and clowns; it was almost like art school!

It was one of my finest days!

Pinboys

My Cousin Gary wrote the other day to ask about pinboys! I was dumbfounded! I had forgotten. The memories come flooding back of my days wasting time hanging around the bowling alley, talking with my friends and playing pinball machines! What a time!

“After a game in a bowling alley that had pinboys, the bowlers would bowl coins down the alley for tips. After setting up the pins, the pinboys sat up on the ledge behind the pit with their legs on the divider between lanes and worked two lanes at once. Their money was made on the leagues, not on us kids.”

On September 9, 1895 at Beethoven Hall in New York City, the American Bowling Congress (ABC) was born. This would mean that the standardization of equipment and playing surfaces would be implemented. Soon after, Major National Championships could be held. Although the ABC was strictly a men's organization, the later half of the 19th Century would show that women were regular participants in the sport of bowling. So in 1917, the Women's International Bowling Congress (WIBC) was formed in St. Louis.

Bowling balls would suddenly take a giant step forward in 1905, when the Brunswick Corporation introduced it's first rubber ball called the Evertrue. Before then, bowling balls were made out of Lignum Vitae, a very hard wood. And in 1914, the Brunswick Corporation would successfully introduce the Mineralite, a bowling ball made using their mysterious rubber compound. Bowling continued to be played for years with the assistance of the pin-boy, someone who would manually set up bowling pins and return the ball to the bowler. But bowling would suddenly take a huge leap and the industry would explode with the invention of the Automatic Pinspotter.

The inventor, Fred Schmidt, enjoyed mechanics and tinkering with gadgets. He built his own backyard workshop and built the first automatic pinspotter. Morehead Patterson, a Vice-President of the American Machine Foundry (AMF), purchased the patents and designs to the pinspotter. Plans for production were delayed due to World War II, but at the completion of hostilities, AMF again pursued the invention. They made certain modifications and improvements and the pinspotter went on the market. The first commercial installation was made in Michigan, 1951. By late 1952, production models were being introduced. No longer did bowling centers have to rely on a pin-boy, as a few higher paid mechanics could keep several lanes functioning for many hours each day. In 1955, the Brunswick Corporation released its Automatic Pinsetter design.

But in the 50’s, in my world of the Forest Park Bowling Alley in Baltimore, MD, pinboys were in charge. They ran the show and collected the tips.

They were not white (African-Americans), they were not boys, but that far South all Black guys were called boys and they were a strange kind of underclass, or so it seemed.

My memories were about the use of pinboys for the collection of booze! What most of us wanted, in those days before pot was known in the suburban communities, was booze. All kinds of booze was desired and the more the merrier.

The world of the young white teenager and the older, African American man crossed at the liquor store. The idea was to find a guy who was old enough to buy booze for you and negotiate a commission deal. The pinboys were the first guys we could find. As we aged a bit, and had access to wheels, we could venture forth into marginal neighborhoods and make curbside deals with unsuspecting guys on street corners. Believe it or not, it all worked!

For a generous tip you could always find somebody to buy booze for you. And when we had wheels, we were able to score big boxes of half pints and sell them for outrageous amounts to other white teenagers without the wheels or the guts to move out into the world at large!

Automatic pinsetters stopped early alcoholism in many a young lad.

September 1960 -Trying to visit with Fidel Castro

My oldest daughter is in New York for a few days between exams in Montreal. She texted this morning that she had arrived at 5:00 a.m., and was at her friend’s apartment by 5:30. I was reminded that I was in New York at 18 as well, at about the same position in life as she is, but I was looking for Castro.

Fidel Castro arrived in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations. Castro's visit stirred indignation and admiration from various sectors of American society, and was climaxed by his speech to the United Nations on September 26.

By the time Castro arrived in New York City in September 1960, relations between the United States and Cuba were rapidly deteriorating. Since taking power in January 1959, Castro had infuriated the American government with his policies of nationalizing U.S. companies and investments in Cuba. Some American officials, such as Vice President Richard Nixon, believed that Castro was leaning perilously toward communism In March 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the CIA to begin training Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro's regime. When the United States suspended the import of Cuban sugar in 1960, Castro's government turned to the Soviet Union for economic assistance.

In September 1960, Castro led a delegation to New York City to address the United Nations General Assembly. Fidel Castro has found hotel accommodations at the Shelburne Hotel in midtown Manhattan. The Elysee Hotel cancelled his earlier reservation and they had been finding it difficult to book rooms. The delegation was not be allowed to travel outside New York City during its stay. United States and United Nations officials facilitated the Shelburne booking in an effort to avoid embarrassment. In Manhattan mass demonstrations were planned to protest Castro's visit.

At this point I was watching all this happen on TV, and called my friend Bob Poter to see if he wanted to go to New York and see what was going on. There were Russian ships in New York harbor, and I was excited. I knew this was big news and I wanted to be there.

Bob liked the idea, and I called my father who was working in New York at the time. He said if I would drive our car to New York, he would arrange (and pay) for a hotel for us, and we could drive him home on the weekend.

Castro and his entourage caused an immediate sensation by deciding to stay at the Theresa Hotel in Harlem. While there, Castro met with a number of African-American leaders, including Malcolm X from the Nation of Islam and the poet Langston Hughes. On September 26, Castro delivered a blistering attack on what he termed American "aggression" and "imperialism." For over four hours, Castro lambasted U.S. policy toward Cuba and other nations in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The United States, he declared, had "decreed the destruction" of his revolutionary government.

We had arrived and were settled in when we heard about the move to Harlem. We called Sheldon Rochlin, cinematographer, director, editor, producer, writer, actor and an old friend, who was, in those days, working at the Bleeker Street Cinema. Sheldon got in his Jeep, and picked us up so we could go to Harlem and see Castro.

We went by the harbor to see the Russian ship sitting in New York, and then off to the Theresa Hotel. Upon arriving and finding a parking space, I was immediately accosted by a man with a butcher knife. I was already scared to death, and this was unsettling. However, he wanted to sell the knife to me, and I wasn’t really interested in buying it, so he moved on.

We walked to the hotel, and as we were dressed in “normal” clothes for us, we seemed to blend right in with what we found. The common clothing for us was jeans and chambray shirts and various army surplus jackets. This was quite radical for 1960, so we blended in with hangers on, Cuban soldiers in green fatigues, reporters, diplomats, etc. We simply went under the orange tape and stood around talking and blending. Everything was lit up by strong lighting for the news people I guess, and we were happy. However, Sheldon had a better idea, he wanted to see Fidel! Fidel was in for the night; it was about 1:30 a.m. and wasn’t expected to come out again, so he figured we should go in.

Bob and I were reluctant to try it but Sheldon forged ahead. He went inside as we looked helplessly at each other. We waited a minute and went forward to see Sheldon carried out by his shirt collar and the back of his pants and unceremoniously chucked over the orange tape onto the street. The Secret Service people (we believe) gestured for us to leave as well, and we understood that there would be no discussion.

Castro's visit and lengthy public denunciation marked the final breaking point in relations between the U.S. and Cuba. In January 1961, the Eisenhower administration severed all diplomatic relations with Cuba. In April 1961, just a short time after taking office, President John F. Kennedy ordered the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the Cuban exile force, armed and trained by the CIA, landed in Cuba.

Thankfully we didn’t try and see Khrushchev!

“The State Department has asked the television networks to limit their coverage of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during his U.S. visit. The networks said they were already planning restricted viewing before they got the State Department advice. Face the Nation, on C.B.S., decided not to invite Khrushchev on its show, according to a report in the New York Times on this day in 1960. Meet the Press, on N.B.C., did invite Khrushchev to appear, "but it was not known whether the invitation had the sanction of N.B.C. officials in New York. 'I'm afraid that what we did voluntarily will now be defined as knuckling under to the State Department,'" one network official told the paper. An article that appears under the headline, "K-Day in the Propaganda War; On Tuesday Mr. Khrushchev will attempt to establish a new beachhead in the battle of words," in the New York Times Magazine on this day in 1960 says the Soviet premier has made Manhattan "the center of the global propaganda struggle" for the duration of his stay in the city, proving himself "a master of publicity”. from : This Day in the 1960’s

The Girl Next Door

This started like a fantasy, and maybe, in some small way, it was.

I was single, living in downtown Birmingham, MI, in a house scheduled for demolition. I had just moved out of my family house and found a very temporary place. It was a great little duplex, with my having one side and this fun filled, former drug dealer living next door, who I really liked.

The owner was an architect who had a four unit housing project planned for our corner (eventually built) and needed some limited income while he waited for zoning,

and I needed a no-strings deal for a while, until I knew what I was going to do.

I had taken a computer home from work to use. This was 1984, and I had an Apple 2 with no internet, I may not have even heard of the internet at that time, but I had some games. This was set up in my living/dining area on my makeshift table, a door with saw horses.

OK, it sounds pathetic, but I was working on living in a new situation.

It was a beautiful warm spring/summer day and I was sitting home on a Saturday morning playing computer games. (This really is pathetic!)

A knock sounded on my door, and I went to see who it could be.

There was a lovely young lady on my porch asking if I would mind if she sun bathed on my lawn! It seems the old neighbor used to let her do this before he went to jail for trying to kill his estranged wife with a bomb! (Yes, there is another story here as well!)

So here was this lovely woman in short shorts and a short top asking if it was OK. "OK", I said, "it sounds wonderful". She then said she needed to go home (she lived in a large, older apartment building next door) and slip into something for sunbathing! She wasn’t wearing much already but sure, it was OK with me.

“Would I like to join her?” (By now I’m looking for the Candid Camera because this can’t be true.) “Sure” I said. “I’ll be right back” she said.

Stunned, I sat there and tried to fathom my next move when the phone rang. My friend called to see if I wanted to go to Grosse Pointe and go out in his boat. “Can I bring a date?”, I asked. “Who’re you bringing?” he said, “I don’t know her name”, I said.

She returned in very little, kind of a bikini as I remember, and I asked her to go with me and she went.

The rest is history.

I fell down the stairs today...

I’ve fallen down our steps twice. Once, when we first moved in, I was running down the stairs, and five years later I slipped in the early morning hours, my bare feet on the carpeting and rolled downward into the wooden chest at the bottom of the stairs. I was not badly hurt either time, but that was ten and five years ago and I do not get any younger.

After my father-in-law fell a few years ago, he went flying off of a step and flew into a wall, I believe I learned my lesson. He broke his shoulder, his head was cut open and he began a downward spiral from which he has never retreated.

Early this morning, about 6:30 a.m. I slowly went down the stairs and held on. I slipped three steps from the top, and I fell a few steps. I was holding on the railing with my left hand and because of that, I help on like a high wire performer holds on to the wooden dowel he needs to stand.

What can I say? I avoided the inevitable and my left arm is now three inches longer than my right.

The Last Camping Trip

It was a long camping trip in the end of the 90’s, and we had been out on the road for several weeks. Some of it was in hotels and with friends and relatives and some was camping. It was mostly a fun vacation, coming from Calgary, Alberta, east and south into the US, around Minneapolis and Chicago making our way to Lake Chautauqua to the family cottage, up to Niagara Falls and back to Calgary.

We had some fun camping experiences in our tent and some disasters, including a mosquito filled evening where my oldest daughter and I ended up very bitten.

On the way home however, we stopped one night in Sauk Center, Minnesota, a lovely town celebrating it’s Sinclair Lewis Festival.

Sauk Centre is a city in Stearns County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 3,930 at the 2000 census. It is the birthplace of Sinclair Lewis, a novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and Sauk Centre served as the inspiration for Gopher Prairie, the fictional setting of Lewis's 1920 novel Main Street.

We pulled into the city operated camp ground and were surprised to find a beautiful camping spot by the water with no one in it. We were so pleased, and set up right away. The weather was beautiful but the weather report warned of heavy rainfall. We figured we could weather any storm, had dinner and went to bed.

At about 10:30 I began to float. My sleeping bag was up to the top with water, and the only thing we could manage to do was get up, get on some dry clothing, grab the girls and run for the car leaving everything else sitting in the deluge.

We ran for our lives! We drove into town, and looked at the motels, all with no vacancy signs. The Festival draws a big crowd and everything was full. Downtown there was a newly opened, classic old hotel, from the turn of the century. They had been opened a very short time, and I ran in and got in line and booked the very last room in the plcae. They had a double bed, a cot and my youngest daughter slept on the floor with some sheets, blankets and pillows.

The next morning we made our way back to the campground where everyone else was doing fine. Some neighbors explained that the camp site we had, known to locals, always flooded in a rain storm and no one used it if it looked like rain! You think someone could have said something?

That was the last night we ever camped as a family. I had to promise my wife and my daughters that we would never again get into a tent!

Now, years later, my oldest daughter uses our tent to go camping with her friends!

Go figure.

The Evans

The Evans somehow became the name for the Evans Family. They were a very nice group of people, a family including a mother and father and some kids, near to my kids age, and I think one of the kids was a girl. They are nondescript and generic in my memory, but they were always there.

We met them while camping at Cape Henlopen State Park in Lewes Delaware, sometimes in the early 70’s. They camped near us and had a bunch of kiss as did we. We were all tent campers and as such, there was camaraderie. We were people who were willing to get hot, cold and uncomfortable because it was fun and cheap!

I know we sent Christmas cards back and forth with them for a number of years. I believe we onkly camped together once or twice but the legend of the Evans lives on.
The only story I remember, although my sons may have stiff to add, was called “The Evans and the Bonfire”.

The Evans talked about having a bonfire. and it seemed like a good idea. After all, we were camping and a campfire was a good thing so you could wind down, toast marshmallows and have some fun time sticking sticks into the fire and trying to get them lit and chasing your brothers with the burning tip.

They asked us to follow them down to a secluded beach because there was more wood from an abandoned Army installation. We piled into our cars and followed for a mile or so to the new place. This was, in hindsight, like a scene from the X Files movie.
We drove to a beach and there was an abandoned building. We had some shovels and we dug a pit, about the size of the pit that was dug in “The Thing”, big enough for a space vehicle. We took a building corner, just a corner and two walls about the size of a house, tied it to a big truck and dragged it ti the pit. We got some newspaper, some gasoline and a match and torched the building on the beach. The fire was big enough that people sitting on the beach on Mars were probably saying, “Oh, they must have a fire on Earth tonight!”

This fire may still be burning.

Baker...he will finally be remembered

It’s sometimes hard to formulate my thoughts around a story, as sometimes they were so long ago, and pieces come into view and germinate for a while. This is one of those stories, made harder still by writing it on my net book, which I love, but it has an 80% size keyboard and I have 110% hands! My desktop is put away while we redo the office in the basement.

When I was a kid we lived with my grandparents. I lived there from 1947 until 1962, and most of my childhood memories from a warm, family environment, in a multi lingual, loving home, surrounded by family. My Aunt and Uncle and their children lived three blocks away, and it was a big, warm and loving place to grow up. I have been so far from a family environment for so many years that it seems, I am sure, better than it ever was. But hindsight is always 20/20.

We lived in a large, very early 20th century row house, today it would be known as a town house, only it was solid. We shared this house with my grandparents, and for most of the time it was actually shared except we had a kitchen on each floor. Later we added a full bath and changed the dining room into a bedroom so we really had two apartments eventually, without separate entrances. We live close!

On either side, we had close neighbors. They were not close as friends, although we were always cordial, they just were close as town homes tend to be. In those days there was no air conditioning except in the movies, so we shared adjoin porches, and in Baltimore, in the summer, we were all outside together.

On one side was Mrs. Weinberg, an elderly (when I knew her) widow with a Yiddish accent and a nasty little Pekinese dog. She had two grown daughters, Fan and Ann, and they owned a beauty salon somewhere, called of course, Fan and Ann’s. I have only vauge memories of these people, and I know Mrs. Weinberg passed away after I was gone from the house. I remember her daughters used to visit and I think they had families but I can’t remember and it has nothing to do with any of this.

Mrs. Weinberg had this large house for herself, and as it was sort of explained to me, it was a lot for an elderly woman to take care of, so she had help! In that lies the story.
The help was Baker, an old guy (I suppose) as he had white hair. He was tall and this and he lived in Mrs. Weinberg’s basement! He took care of the nasty little dog who wanted to eat me, and he mowed the lawn which was about 10’ x 10’ in front and shoveled the driveway and did stuff! Who knew? I was a kid when he was alive and I had no prurient interests so I never imagined anything else, or, I am sure, did Mrs. Weinberg. However, the story goes on, Baker was a drunk! In my neighborhood there were no such things! But here he was. He would get paid by Mrs. Weinberg (I was told all this) on Friday night and spend that evening and/or the next day drinking. We would find him sometimes, laid out in our alley, passed out on Saturday morning! It was just part of the fabric of our lives. Mrs. Weinberg, who was always congenial to all of my family, would shout at him incessantly, “Baker do this and Baker do that!” No wonder he drank!

I guess one day Baker died and it all ended. I will never know if he had a first name or a real job or maybe he was a wounded vet from WW1. While there are so many good stories brewing in my head about those old days, Baker stands out. I wish I had thought to take a picture of Baker. Maybe no one ever did.

The Sharecroppers

Sharecropping is a system of agriculture or agricultural production in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land (e.g., 50 percent of the crop). This should not be confused with a crop fixed rent contract, in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a fixed amount of crop per unit of land (e.g., 1 ton per hectare). Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range of different situations and types of agreements that have encompassed the system.

In the 70’s, for a time, I lived in Sudbrook Park, a part of Pikesville, MD. This is an old community designed by Fredrick Law Olmstead before the turn of the last century. Sudbrook Park is beautiful and historic and was a great place to live and raise children.

Two of my friends lived in Pikesville, but in different situations than I did. Joe lived in a beautiful home on land that was basically rock with a thin covering of dirt. Jack lived in an apartment. All of the older Sudbrook Park houses had a minimum of 1 ½ acres of land. These guys wanted to be farmers and I didn’t! This made a great difference.

I was an artist and teacher living in this giant old house that needed lots of TLC, and they were Doctors, an Ophthalmologist and a Veterinarian, who wanted to work with their hands in an outdoor kind of way. This was a perfect match!

They came to me with a proposal. They could work the land and I could help to reap the harvest! Such a deal!

Joe and Jack brought over a rotary tiller (no mules were involved in the making of this story) and we agreed upon a plot size. My memory tells me it was 40’x40’. It was pretty big, I know that.

They provided the labor, I provided cokes, I think, and we proceeded. They also provided the plants and the seeds required for growth, and would come over and tend the garden all summer long. We had, although my memory may be a bit dim, but I think we had tomatoes, zucchini, lettuce, carrots and about all the other veggies I can think of and we had an abundance of them. My memory also tells me that my family would go on vacation each year in the week the vegetables would cone in and I always got to pick last. If I lose my innocence for a moment, this may have been planned by them as I never did anything much to help this venture.

Since we’re all still around, I will check with them today and see if this was a trick, planned to get the best stuff!

In any case, it was a symbiotic relationship that worked just fine until we left, leaving them without a garden plot.

I do hope they found another.

Editors note: Jack just wrote to me and commented, " Best one (story) yet . If my memory serves me we did NOT plan harvest to coincide with your vacations. We had no control over nature. Unfortunately we didn’t find another plot after you moved. Our veggies have not been the same since- nothing like home grown!!!!

Editors note #2: Joe wrote to me and commented, "The story of the garden actually is richer than the one you told in the blog. You were on a sabbatical and would not return to Baltimore until July. So Jack and I volunteered to put in a garden foryou. Linda (my first wife) told us what she wanted us to plant, and insisted that it be organic.Well, it was almost organic. I borrowed a tiller from my neighbor, and we tilled about half your yard. I got a sack of dehydrated cow manure, but then saw that the analysis was 1,1,1. Basically sterile cow shit with very little in the wayof nutrients. So we tilled in the bag of cow manure, and then added about 100 lbs of 10,10,10 fertilizer. After we set the plants, we put down black plastic and then mulch to keep the weeds to a minimum.As you mentioned, the garden produced a fabulous crop.

Linda was suspicious that maybe we fudged a bit on the "organic"part, but I was a chemist before I went to medical school, and I believed the chemicals were good for the plants. I did tell her what we did, and I guess she forgave me because the veggies were so good."

Arthur and Family go to the White Castle

My older children and their families, their mother and grandparents were in Detroit last week, and we were invited to come down and join them on Saturday. We used to do this annually, but last year their grandparents were staying in Florida and some of the kids went.

I was surprised that plans had changed and wasn't informed about it until very late which caused us to have to redo lots of plans. However, it’s always worth it to see all the kids. Plus, the added bonus was my newest grandchild, number 7, was to be present and I’d never seen her in person. So, I was to have all seven grandchildren, all three boys, all three daughters in law and my first wife and her parents together for a lunch, it was too good to miss.

My daughter, who is still in high school, wanted to go and see all the family, so we were driven. My daughter’s main motivation, if the truth be known, was to go to White Castle! There is an unseen force in my family; the draw to White Castle is enormous. When I lived near one, I went once in a while, but when we have none nearby, the draw is magnetic!

We dropped Max the wonder dog off at the kennel on Saturday morning about 8:15 a.m. and headed down the road. We made the border by 11:00 a.m. and were at my former wife’s house by noon.

A wonderful afternoon was had be all, with a great traditional (for us) deli lunch and great deserts provided by them and us, and some gift giving for the kids. We were off before 5:00 p.m.

We went to Wal-Mart for some sale Max Factor cosmetics which seem to be leaving the U.S. for Europe, and then to Target for a big shopping for all. Even though the shopping craze was winding down by Saturday evening, we were able to find some great bargains. I was very pleased with my sweaters that I bought for $10 each. A bit poorer we were off to 23 Mile Road/New Baltimore to get to Whitey’s.

Six double cheese, three single cheese, chicken rings, a sack of fries, a sack of onion chips, a package of sweet potato fries and a box of 16 frozen single hamburgers and three drinks made us feel really good!

We had achieved our true purpose!

The border was quiet and easy.

The three hours back were long and tiresome. I gave up driving duties before we reached London, ON. I was just too tired.

We returned home at midnight.