The Hunter Gatherer Spirit

I know most people believe that shopping is a feminine trait, or at least something that only women love to do. Yet, it has been a hobby or pastime of mine since I was first required to gather things on my own.

This was, in ancient times, the duty of the male (probably) who needed to go out and kill a tiger or something for dinner. The woman of the cave would process the kill and make food and clothing out of it while the man continued hunting.

Now I know you’ll think I’m just being a smart ass by bringing all this up, but I get concerned because I love to shop and I cherish my shopping memories in the same way as some people remembered the big hunt.

I usually don’t admit all this stuff for fear of being branded effeminate, but I have been known to go out and peruse the clearances for fun, just to see what’s there.

When I was first married and a father, I had responsibilities. This was probably the first time in my life that I felt responsible for other people. I wanted to get the best stuff I could. Being at first a married student, and then a teacher with an additional part-time job, I realized quite soon that there were better ways to buy what you needed than to purchase the first item that came along. (thus the axiom,” shmucks buy retail”.)

Some things in this world are fair-traded, sold for the same price no mater where you buy it. In the early 60’s there were more. Today, I can only think of Apple and Lulu Lemon products.

There have always been discounts, off-retail places; back doors only open on Saturdays at clothing factories etc. There is often a better way to shop.

An example I use, and not everyone would agree with me, was the tie. When I wore them every day, for most of my working life, I usually ended up at T.J.Maxx (Winner’s in Canada). I had acquired several hundred ties over the years, always (or mostly) bought on clearance, or final clearance, within a $1-$3 range. Not everyone wanted that many ties, and I gave away many as gifts. For one friend, on his fiftieth birthday, I gave him 50 ties!

Some people are happy with several “good” ties, just not me. I never bought bad ties, and in fact I’ve purchased many high quality name brand ties in my $1-$3 range, it’s just a matter of timing.

My boys never quite got the same disease I did, but my oldest son, once he had to buy his own for a few years, developed a great sense of buyer radar. My other sons have never gotten there, and all of them have made fun of some of my purchases.

I do admit to buying things I’ve never worn, and things that never fit, but the deal was just too good for me to pass up. Also, the boys did get a bit too many bargains for themselves from me.

I still own a Ralph Lauren toggle-buttoned duffle coat, a true “boola, boola rah rah” Ivy League winter coat, that sold at that time for $400, that I got for $35. I have only worn it three of four times maybe, but I still have it because it was such a good deal!

I can remember buying my wife a light blue, all wool, long, pleated skirt at a Sear’s Warehouse in Kansas City for $4, that she never wore, but I just couldn’t see returning.

There were an unusual amount of hand me downs for kids, although some of it was nice, I am never fond of used clothes. There were a large number of boy cousins, and one had a father in the clothing business. But these do not make a bargain.

My daughters are great shoppers and I admire their shopping sense. They also look for bargains but they still easily succumb to the need for something and it gets acquired at a full retail price. I do get disturbed but try and hold my tongue. The phrase I hate the most, from my wife and my daughters is, “It’s only …….” Whatever number comes next is usually too high for me!

Yesterday, I was thinking about this as I was out “looking”. This is a pre-buying time, where I can look over what is available and what will become available. Because I wear very large sizes, I am in a better position to look over goods.

People who wear very small or very large sizes have a better chance at clearances, because the “normal” stuff is gone by that time.

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. 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.

You see, it’s not the item itself that matters so much, it’s the sport of getting it. It is the hunter gatherer spirit that lives on through the generations.

The Warehouse Caper

Sometime in the 50’s, my father, the head of the warehouse operation for his company, received a call from a guy offering to sell him information about missing merchandise. The guy requested $200 and he would give him the goods so they could catch the crooks.

OK, at this point you say, “Is this a detective novel? Is there a beautiful blonde? Are there gumshoes involved?” The answer is no, but the story is true and was told to me at the time buy my father.

Not being able to commit the money himself (in the 50’s $200 was a lot more than it is today), he told the guy he’d call him back as soon as he was able to get the cash. Believe it or not, this guy was willing and gave him his actual phone number! He was not an experienced crook!

My father called the police and a detective came over and they schemed. My father called the guy back, by this time, having the number; the police knew who he was.

My father arranged the meet and described himself to the perp His description was that of the detective and the guy went to his doom! OK, maybe not doom, but he was forced to give up the information without compensation, except maybe a suspended sentence.

Some one in the place was throwing merchandise out the window to an accomplice on the street with a covered cart. My father hired an undercover cop to work in the factory warehouse for a week and they found the culprit.

How’s this for a great detective novel plot?

At least I remembered the story!

The $180 Portrait of my Car

What can I say, it’s self explanatory. I decided to have a portrait taken of my car, in color!

I don’t remember doing it, or ordering it, but I must have done it as you can see here.

It was a lovely day and they took several photos of me rolling through a red light!

What the hell is a red light camera? How come I knew nothing about this?

Is my mind playing tricks again? I don’t remember anyone saying this was a bad corner! Yet, here I was sailing through.

On top of that, the dead car of yesterdays post, died as I went through that same corner Wednesday night! (I wonder if those cameras work in the nighttime). My immediate thought was they have a secret electrical beam that shoots through my car after they nail me the first time, and disables it every time I go through! But, who’s paranoid?

It’s a memorable photo that will last me for years!

Out for the evening...

image is taken from : www.topspeed.com/cars/ford-explorer/ke342.html

On August 16, I wrote about big band jazz, and our venturing forth to a concert at Mohawk College to see the Darcy Hepner Jazz Orchestra and Sophia Perlman, singer, with some of our friends.

As of this fall, the band has been appearing at the Corktown Pub in Hamilton on Wednesday nights. So, after lots of phone calls and emails, we made arrangements to go last night. We had reservations and went for dinner and the music.

My wife made arrangement for me to drive most of the people, and it was a rainy evening, although not as bad as the photo!

As we drove over, about two thirds of the way, my car decided to die! The dash went out, followed by everything else, but it seemed to have about a third of the regular power and kept on moving. I nursed it up a hill and out of harms way and traffic and pulled up into a parking space on a quiet street.

I was very unhappy!

We called the Pub, moved our reservation forward an hour, called CAA (AAA for US readers), and called a cab for everyone but me. The cab came in five minutes and took them all to the pub and the tow truck came in fifteen minutes, flat bedded me to our regular neighborhood garage, and drove me home.

I got into my wife’s car, drove to the pub, ordered dinner and a beer (theirs hadn’t come yet and the first set was just getting started. As well, Sophia Perlman, their sometimes singer, appeared to sing with them last night and it was grand!

Dinner was great, and all is well except my car, which was waiting for a diagnoses or parts.

It turned out to be the alternator, as I figured, and my car has been repaired and returned.

All in all, except for the chest pains I got while waiting for the tow truck, it was a great evening.

My life is a drama or at least an adventure.

Lost in Calgary

In the early years we lived in Calgary we had gone out to dinner one evening with my in-laws. They were frequent visitors and we often went around the town looking for new places to go.

It was very cold, and we found the restaurant but there was no nearby parking. We drove around for a while in a new area of town for us, until we found a parking spot.

We walked the freezing blocks to the restaurant and had a lovely dinner. We drank and ate and had an enjoyable time.

My father in law happily came with me as we strolled back to the car.

I had never been in this neighborhood before that evening. My father in law has no sense of direction and I guess, neither do I. It was below way zero and basically we had no idea where we were going.

At some point I fell and banged my knee on the ice covered street. My father in law had on a sport coat and a raincoat and I was worried he would freeze before we found the car.

All in all it was an unforgettable night.

We found the car in about an hour and drove to the restaurant where we found my wife and my mother in law having negotiated a ride home with the restaurant owner.

Needless to say, they assumed we were dead or we were idiots.

They were correct!

The "Free Phone"

It started out with embezzlement, and comes around to larceny, or maybe just the “free phone”.

In the 70’s our institution’s President discovered some embezzlement going on. Perhaps it was only regular theft, but the other sounds so much more elegant. Also, as I have no knowledge beyond hearsay, it may have been a continuing problem indicating embezzlement.

Anyway, the idea was that the President was required to sign checks. He was presented these checks by the V.P. for Finance, a good guy. The checks were developed by his staff.

As the President was signing checks, he noticed a very large check to Sears. He bothered to look at the backup, usually attached, and go through the Sears bills attached. One of the items, a very expensive one, was a new lawn tractor. As an urban institution with no lawn, his curiosity was peaked. It seems an employee of the finance department needed a home lawn tractor.

This brief incident in my life taught me a great lesson, before signing a check always look at the backup. For sure, you may never be able to look at every one, but when you have no idea what it is or who the company is or what those charges are for, look! It never hurts to ask the question.

OK, so how does this get us to the free phone?

In Alberta we had lots of bills and lots of checks, but with many years experience, I looked pretty hard. With tons of employees, there were always large phone bills and I never bothered to look through them. It’s just phone, a part of doing business. Then, someone in the business office mentioned long international calls, like a very long call to Germany.

“Who called?” I asked, but no one knew. I looked at the bill and it then came out that there were often long world-wide calls on our bills. Calls made way beyond a normal admissions office call. Who made them? Whose phone was used?
I began to look at the bills.

It seems that there have been years of mysterious calls. Recently, long calls to the Bahamas. There were many of them over several months. I looked at the dates as the phones could not be traced to individuals. Most of these long Bahamas calls were made on the weekend when the office is usually closed!

I checked with the guards and no one unusual was in and no one had entered our offices. I checked with the student government office and they had only the usual suspects come in. It made no sense!

In desperation, and in order to obtain an answer, I sent out a memo asking for help. I promised if the culprit came forward we would not charge them with anything, but that we needed to end years of phone abuse, and solve an old problem just come to light! Who was in the building, on the phone and below our radar!

A week later a sheepish student with a boyfriend in the Bahamas appeared and admitted her guilt. It seems the student government lived in an office that used to be an administration office, and when the change over occurred, somewhere lost in time, a phone was left behind, unknown to us or the phone company. It was considered the”free phone” by the student government, because they were never charged for using it, and we never noticed the bill!

So, in the end, after years of abuse, the “free phone” was removed and thousands of dollars of unknown “free calls’ never happened again.

The "Heavy Duty" Clutch

In 1972 I bought a Dodge Van. This was a time before such a purchase was a popular item, before the mini-van was invented; it was a full size van.

I had decided to buy this vehicle preparing for a cross country camping trip. We had started camping as a family, and while I had a VW bus, I needed something sturdier and larger to get a family of five around the country.

I have had (and continue to have) a problem buying new cars. For some unknown reason, I can never get waited on in a car showroom. I have gone in jeans, and in suits, it still doesn’t matter, no one will ask me anything. Forget high pressure, I can’t get blood pressure!

In ’72 however, two things were going for me. The salesman who helped me was older, and this is always a good sign. Car salesmen seem to get better if they stay. An experienced salesman will actually ask customers if he can help. Secondly, I was driving my father in laws newly acquired Cadillac, and I realized someone would see me enter driving this vehicle which made it seem like this kid in jeans may actually have some money.

They had no vans in stock to speak of, at least not the stripped down model I was looking for, and so I decided to order it from the factory. I ordered a maroon regular length Sportsman van (the longer one was nice but I guess there was no reason to splurge), I included power steering and brakes, a radio and the large outside mirrors on both sides (an extra at that time) and in his list he read to me he had a “heavy duty” clutch. For $25, I figured why not? It had one additional bench seat and therefore it sat five with a big, empty back space for camping stuff and everything else one could think of hauling.

The Sportsman van was better for us than the Tradesman van, as it came with such extras as insulation in the doors and panels on the doors as well, windows all around and a rubber mat throughout the car instead of bare, painted metal. Such luxury!

It lasted a long time, and I kept it until 1980 when I purchased a 1980 Dodge van in Detroit, and it was orange! They brought it in from Windsor, ON. It was a V8, had air conditioning etc., and it had lots of luxuries, but unfortunately I purchased it right at the time of the gas crisis, and it was not the car to have! It became a short lived vehicle for us, as gas rose from $.39 a gallon to $.69 a gallon and I thought the world had ended!

The title of this epic is the “Heavy Duty” Clutch, and I don’t want to forget that. If you are offered anything in life where you have the choice of heavy duty or regular, of course you’ll get the heavy duty. It was only a $25 extra, and when you’re dealing with a truck with standard shift, you have to figure the clutch will get lots of wear. So, there was no choice.

Some years later, in 1978, the clutch went! It simply broke and had to be replaced. The garage gave me an estimate on costs, and when it was over, the actual cost came in at more than double! Why, they didn’t realize that it had the “heavy duty” clutch!

This clutch had seven springs instead of the usual four or five. In addition, I swear my left leg is now ½” shorter than my right because of six years of driving the “heavy duty” clutch!