Lifestyles in the 40s and 50s-About the times...

There's no question that life in the 40s and 50s was vastly different from today.

In most neighborhoods then community life pretty much revolved around the church as it did with Dinah's family and mine.

We both remember the "drugs" of that day-being drug to Sunday School and church. My grandmother, for example, was a faithful member of First Baptist Church and there was seldom a Sunday when I wasn't drug to "Mama" McClatchey's Sunday School class and the church services afterward.

In those days, black people and other minorities certainly didn't the rights that they have today and, except for Babe Zaharias, no one would dream of having a woman compete with men on the golf course as Anika Sorenstam did recently.

Advances in medicine have pretty much wiped out deaths from diseases like the pneumonia that killed my mother in her early 30's and there's no doubt that even the poorest among us enjoy luxuries that only the privileged few could even dream of having in those days.

All those are good changes in our society for sure.

The value of many other changes wrought in the 60's and 70's however, in the name of ideals like total equality, "enlightenment ", freedom from the involvement of religion in civic affairs, conversion to a multicultural society and the extension of civil rights to children at the expense of the rights of their parents are a lot more questionable, however, to say the least.

Without further moralizing, I'll just try to lay out a few of the most obvious and well documented comparisons of today's society with the one I grew up in.

..There were lots of rifles, and even firing ranges, in our high schools but no one would dream of using them to slaughter their teachers and their classmates.

..Teachers then dealt with problems like whispering in class, throwing spit balls and talking back.

Today they cope with drugged out students who have guns and knives in their backpacks, gang rape,drive-by shootings, violence on the playground and death threats.

But they also have to stay on the alert lest some child mumble "under God" in the pledge of allegiance,draw a sketch of Jesus in kindergarten or try to present them with a Christmas card.

..Our biggest kid thrills then were movies like Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man, radio shows like Inner Sanctum and trying to sneak under the Fairgrounds tent to see Sally Rand do her fan dance.

Nothing much seems to thrill kids these days since they're exposed on a daily basis to vulgar language,raw violence and sex in their video games, at movies, on television and the internet.

Marijuana, teen aged pregnancy and teen age suicides are no big deal, and doing heroin and cocaine are as common as smoking "rabbit tobacco" or a corn shuck cigarette was back then.

..The only war demonstrations I saw during World War II were Memorial Day parades, Easter Sunrise services closing with " God Bless America" and the large grassy area in the middle of the Broad Street parkway where people gathered to throw their pots, pans and used tires into a large roped-off area surrounding a World War I cannon to be recycled in support of the war effort.

Try something like that today and donors would have to step over moonbats puking out all over the median and half the tires would be stolen.

Compare this kind of demonstration with San Franciscans throwing up all over the streets on "Sick Out Day", students all over the country jamming traffic by sprawling out on freeways, burning and shredding the American flag, vandalizing war memorials and hurling threats and insults at the wives and children of our service men and women.

..The most despised individuals then were people like Adolph Hitler, Hirohito and Benito Mussolini.

Students and most Hollywood celebrities today target our own leaders, George Bush, Richard Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

.. Our icons were Franklin Roosevelt, George Patton, Colin Campbell, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Bob Hope, Betty Grable, Deanna Durbin, Superman, Captain Marvel, Spy Smasher, The Green Hornet and Sheena;Queen of the Jungle.

Today's kids dote on Pokemon, Eminem, Brittney Spears, "Jackass" movies, MTV, rock bands, Ozzie Osbourne, Puff Daddy, Madonna and Sista Soldier

...Popular 40's songs...."The Old Lamplighter", "I'll Be Seeing You", "My Blue Heaven", "The White Cliffs of Dover", "Pennies from Heaven", "Smiling Through", Kate Smith's "God Bless America"..

Bands...Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Wayne King, Count Basie, Louie Prima....

..Today's favorites: " I Shot my ho'", "Eat me Alive" and God knows what else since I don't listen to that kind of garbage.

Bands...Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Great White and hundreds of other assorted drug-driven distortions of the basic concept of "music"

...Our sports heros; people like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bobby Jones, Joe Louis, Stan Musial, Jessie Owens, Frankie Sinkwich, sometimes got into trouble by doing things like using an occasional cuss word in public or smoking cigars around children.

Many of today's millionaire superstars resemble the Saturday night lineup at the local police precinct with their spiked parrot hair and their drug, burglary, child rape and spouse abuse charges.

But of course, opponents like the ACLU and other civil liberties groups will claim that the 1940's represented a very dark chapter in this country's history with our government trampling on human rights, stifling free expression and pushing us headlong toward a church-state.

I do have to admit that my own grandmother, my teachers and my scout master trampled on my human rights and stifled my freedom of expression too many times to recount.

Where were the ACLU and today's liberal courts when my grandmother was brutalizing me with those green switches on my bare legs and making me dance around like some crazed Indian screaming "Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama"!!

And when she forced me to drink cod liver oil mixed with orange juice because I told her I was too sick to go to school?

And when she dragged me off to Sunday School when my foot was hurting like everything!

Where were they when Mrs. Rigsby smacked me on the back of my hand with a ruler about 14 feet long and studded with cut glass?

And when Pop Schaffer led the entire 11th Street school student body in singing God Bless America whether they wanted to or not?

And when Mr. Patterson made me and his son James sit in a dark closet until I suffered permanent trauma and screaming nightmares and practically suffocated to death-just because we dribbled apple juice on the Scout troop off the church balcony and made everybody think we were peeing on them?

Where were the ACLU, the plaintiff lawyers and all those crusading, dragon slaying, sign waving civil libertarians then?!!!.

And to be completely honest-at least from the perspective of an " old zealot"; surveying in his twilight years all the mindless damage these people have done to this country and it's founding principles -why in God's name are they still around now.......??!!

Lifestyles in the 30's Part 11

Bait Farm Operator

My uncle Clarence set a great example for me in the enterprise area.He had his mother's attitude about work and, as I learned later, he was severely traumatized by the fire that burned their house down when he was a youngster. So much so that he took a job as a fireman right after graduation from high school.

Clarence eventually became Chief of our city's Fire Department and retired in that position.

Motivation and work ethics in the raw.

Clarence always had a second job in his off duty hours and the two I remember most were building and selling rabbit pens and raising crickets and earthworms for fish bait.

We had a small walled area behind the house that my uncle made over into a mini fish bait farm. It had a concrete pool for minnows, large manure and top soil rich sunken boxes where we grew earthworms and lighted cricket breeding houses-made over rabbit pens-that we kept filled with crickets of all sizes.

Uncle Clarence basically did all the construction, planning and maintenance. I'd clean out the pool, work coffee grounds into the worm boxes, replace the light bulbs and clean out the cricket house and so forth. But my main job was to sit on the wall on weekends, legs dangling over the edge; whistling and pointing to our home made "Fish Bait Here" sign and hopping down to sell worm boxes, fill minnow buckets and cricket cages and collect from the fishermen that stopped by.

It wasn't a tough job by any means but the hours weren't the best either. Fishermen get started, as Clarence used to say, "Soon in the morning". So on weekends, I had to be on the wall around 4 a.m. if we were going to do any business at all. Usually I could knock off about 8 a.m. and rely on the little push bell Clarence had installed to alert me to any new business.

My room overlooked the bait area and sometimes I would stay inside if it was raining or if I was really tired, dashing out to catch a potential customer before he could leave.

There weren't any large bait retailers like Walmart back then so our little enterprise did very well and lasted a couple of years until Clarence got his promotion and didn't have the time to see after it.

Western Union Messenger

I started with Western Union as a "flyer boy". The crew manager would pile us all into cars and trucks and we'd hit neighborhoods distributing printed flyers for florists, grocery stores, everything under the sun. It was all on foot and not a lot of fun since you couldn't stuff the flyers in a mailbox. You had to go all the way up to the porch or stick them through the door handle. That is if you didn't dump them in a gully as some of the kids did.Before the days of FedX, faxes and emails, it was THE way to get a message or money to someone overnight.

Like taxi drivers, we weren't paid for the time we spent killing time on the wooden benches waiting for something to deliver. We were paid a flat amount per delivery, based on the distance we'd have to travel. So there was no point to killing time on the way. The sooner you got back, the sooner you'd be in line for the next one.

The dispatcher would call your name, hand you the telegram, check to be sure you knew where it was going and you'd be off to make the delivery. Sometimes it would be all the way across town or even to a town across the river since they weren't town enough to have a Western Union office in those days.

Those river town deliveries got me in trouble, though.

Sometimes I would stop at one of the gambling joints on the way; places with names like "The Shamrock" and "Leon's Place" to play the horse racing machines. It cost me in more ways than one since I was losing time getting back to the dispatch line as well as the quarters I fed into the machines.

I wasn't hooked or anything; never losing over a couple of dollars, but it was fun and exciting. I remember hitting a bona fide jackpot once and receiving a token saying "Good for $10 in merchandise".

I really didn't think I could eat $10 worth of chili dogs and potato chips so I sold it to one of the regulars for $5.00 cash. I caught on too late when I saw him hand it to the cashier in exchange for a $10 bill.

Singing telegrams were a real novelty in those days and I finally got a chance to deliver one on a Valentine's Day. As it happened, the local newspaper wanted to do a Valentine's Day feature on singing telegrams. So when I went to the house to deliver it, I had a photographer in tow. I was nervous enough without all the press attention but when the photographer poised himself to catch the moment when the lucky recipient opened the door, the kid sweat really started pouring.

I remember squeaking out a few falsetto " I love yous" and a squealing teen ager asking me to do it again for her parents. An absolutely terrible day. But it got even worse when the photograph that appeared in the newspaper the next day bore a caption that identified me as "Rudof Comet". I've still got that clipping. Somewhere.....

Bus Boy

I was around 13 or 14 when I took a job at the old Colonnade Restaurant on the triangle corner of 13th St. and 13th Ave. Bus boy jobs haven't changed much since those days. I worked in the evenings, from around 6 to 10 p.m. cleaning off the tables, placing silverware and getting everything neat for the next customers.We had a lot of soldiers from Ft. Benning and their dates, particularly on Saturday nights, and I usually found them spirited but friendly and generous. Mixed drinks weren't allowed then but there was a package store conveniently located next door(and under the same ownership). So I was frequently shagging brown bagged pints of liquor and getting some very nice tips in the process.

Bus boys weren't allowed to pick up any tips from the table. Those belonged to the waitresses. But the waitresses always put part of their tips into a big glass jar near the kitchen to be divided among the bus boys at the end of the shift.

One of my worst recollections from the Colonnade is that I lost my very first pay envelope somewhere between the restaurant and my house. A major loss since I had put in a lot of hours and I had big plans for the money. I remember riding back and forth across the viaduct between home and the restaurant until nearly midnight looking for it. I never found it and it bothered me for weeks.

Bat Boy

I was a freshman in high school when I landed the job as bat boy for the Columbus Cardinals-a dream job that I had lusted after for months. Cecil Darby, who later become sports editor of the local newspaper was bat boy when I first started going to the games. Later a boy named Frank Roberts replaced him. I knew Frank in school and got him to take me into the clubhouse several times to hang around the players.

I remember thinking that if Frank Roberts, who threw the ball like a sissy, could hold this job, then I might have a chance. When Frank told me he was going to quit, I went to the front office and asked the general manager, a gentleman named Spec Richardson, if I could have the job. He said it was all right with him but I needed to talk to the manager, Kemp Wicker.

I was in awe of Kemp Wicker but I got Frank to introduce me and I remember stammering out my request for the job. He asked me a couple of questions, handed me a permission slip for my grandmother to sign and I was in!

While Frank was working his notice, I worked as bat boy for the visiting teams. The uniform was the really dull gray road outfit and I couldn't wait to get over to the other side of the field and into the spiffy white home team uniform with the big red Cardinal on it.

A few players I remember being around in the dugout...... Ted Kluszewski, outfielder for the Savannah Reds, Hoyt Wilhelm, pitcher for the Augusta Tigers, "Chief" Bender, manager of the Jacksonville Tars.

The ball players were a fun loving lot and they often had their fun at the poor old bat boy's expense.

I remember a catcher who was taking warm up pitches from one of the hottest pitchers in the league, Dick Starr, asking me if I wanted to catch a few balls from him. Wow!-Would I?!!.

The only problem was that the catcher took his sponge pad with him when he handed me the glove. Nothing was left but a thin, hollowed out piece of limp and cracked leather.

After a few 90 mile plus fast balls I was really wincing on every pitch and the players were having a great time. Starr let up after several pitches and threw me a few soft curves. Then he walked over and put his arm around my shoulders and asked me if I was okay.

By this time, I had added a "Whizzer" motor to my bicycle which really helped on the long ride to Golden Park. I remember that Tom Poholsky, an upcoming pitcher, and Eddie Kazak the starting second baseman borrowed it from me one afternoon to use shagging flies in the outfield. They would try to drive under the ball and catch it in my newspaper bag. That is until Wicker made them quit.

Another team joker was an outfielder named Bobby Epps. Pre game practice for outfielders involved catching and throwing back very high fly balls hit off a "fungo" bat by one of the managers.

I was sometimes called on to handle their throw-ins and toss them to the batter to recycle back to the outfielders.

One afternoon when Kemp Wicker was hitting the fungos he turned to me for another ball and I didn't have any to give him. It turned out that Bobby wasn't throwing his balls back in but was stuffing every ball hit to him into his pants instead.

Wicker took a look at him with all those baseballs rolling around in his pant legs like miniature bowling balls and screamed "Epps! Get in here!"

A Wicker chewing was something to behold and I decided not to stick around.

One afternoon during a rain delay, several of the players decided to play hockey on the dressing room floor with baseball bats and a ball. Their cleats were slipping all over the concrete floor and some didn't even have their uniforms on. There were a lot of banged up shins and bruised knees in the process and when Wicker caught them at it he had a genuine blue faced fit.

"Damned bunch of adolescents,@#%^%^%%$!!! your #$%$%$# clothes on and $^%^$%^$343 your $^^$%^ out to the dugout!!

One sad memory I have is when one of the players I really liked, an infielder named Tom O'Laughlin was sent down to the B Leagues. He took it pretty hard and eventually decided to quit baseball entirely instead of going down.

He gave me his glove and his entire uniform, shoes and all, put a noogie on my shoulder, told me to hold it in the road, waved over his shoulder and left. It really teared me up and I've always wondered what became of him.

I can't leave this part without talking a bit about THE day-the day the St. Louis Cardinals came to town to play the home team at the close of spring training. It was the only time I ever envied the bat boy for the visiting team. He got to mix with people like Stan Musial, Johnny Mize, Enos Slaughter, Marty Marion and many other names you'd remember from the Cardinals teams of the 40's.

My favorite memory of that day was watching Stan Musial hit a towering home run over the Schwobilt sign which was strategically placed in the deepest part of the ball park-on top of the right corner of the center field fence.

I say strategic because the sign offered a new Schwobilt suit to anyone who put a ball over it. It was the first and only one I ever saw hit that far in two seasons of bat boying.

My son has a nice letter written by Stan Musial's wife in response to the fan letter I sent him many years later recounting my memories of the event .

Short Order Cook

I kind of fell into this job. The Small Fry Grill was located in a small mini-building on 12th Street between 5th and 6th Ave. It was a very tiny building and I suppose that's why they named it the "Small Fry".

Since it was right across the street, I applied for a job as kitchen helper, dishwasher, whatever might be available.

The manager hired me to come in for a few nights to help out. And later, when the cook quit without notice, he decided to offer me the job until he could hire another one.

The Small Fry offered simple fare, for the most part. There were only about 4 booths and a counter that seated maybe 10 people. And since it was mostly a neighborhood drop in, there was seldom more than 2 or 3 customers at one time. The cooking usually involved hamburgers, hot dogs, fries, milk shakes, salads, eggs, waffles, coffee and the like.

I could usually handle it without problems except on those nights where it seemed that every man-jack that was mobile to any degree at all decided to stop in. Then I was usually in a dead run trying to get everybody served and keep the dishes from piling up too high.

It took the owner a couple of weeks to hire a replacement cook and he told me that one of the reasons it took so long was that I was doing a great job and he was hoping I could go full time. That really made me feel good but there was no way I could do that since I was still in school and since I had also fallen way behind in my homework and other responsibilities around the house.

Still it felt good. And it sounded good."Chef Randolph"-specializing in gourmet pancakes and hash brown potatoes done to perfection.

One of my most vivid recollections involved the music that was playing on the juke box. There were many others but the ones I remember being played most were by Carmen Cavallaro, a pop pianist who was really hot at the time. " Near You" and "Beg your Pardon" because I heard them over and over for many weeks were the main ones that stayed with me.

To be continued...

Life styles and work ethics in 30's...

Writing long pieces for this blog is kind of like wetting your pants in a blue serge suit.

It gives you a nice warm feeling and nobody really notices.

This one is highly personal and pretty long so I wouldn't blame you if you have better things to do. But maybe some of the geezers who drop in will be able to relate.

I've searching my memory banks-which are "banked" pretty high over 74 plus years-for some comparisons in life styles and work ethics in those days before all the changes wrought over the past 30-40 years by our changing cultural climate and the welter of liberal organizations like the ACLU started making things "all better" for everybody.

I'd better start by saying that this piece is not meant to imply that there's anything very special about me or my growing up years. Lots of kids in the thirties and forties grew up pretty much as I did, working at odd jobs, part or full time, to earn their spending money.

I think youngsters went to work a lot earlier in life back then and they developed better work ethics as a result.

Maybe it's because they didn't have as much handed to them as today's generation or perhaps their parents were more strict about making them earn their own way for spending money. I'm not sure, but I do know that you seldom see 10-12 year olds with paper routes or delivering groceries any more, except in small town Americana.

So this is to draw some kind of comparison with today's average kid life.

Do many kids do this kind of stuff anymore? Was it better or worse then?

As background, after my mother's death from pneumonia when I was five years old and with my father at sea in the Merchant Marines most of the time, I was brought up by my grandmother, a real study in enterprise and work ethics.

My grandmother's husband ran off with another woman when their children,including my mother Virginia were very small. To make matters worse, shortly after he left for parts unknown the rental house they were living in and all their earthly possessions burned to the ground.

She was left with, essentially--nothing.

With the help of the church, they at least had food and a place to live until she could find a job.

There wasn't much in the way of welfare or unemployment compensation back then and my grandmother had to tough it out on her own. Not so easy, since she never learned to read or write. Nor did she ever learn to drive a car and couldn't even do basic arithmetic.

The one skill she possessed-and it was her saving grace-was her ability to sew.

After many attempts to find some work, she finally packed up her sewing samples and took a bus to talk to the people at a local department store.

She knew the store sold a lot of the higher priced fabrics that affluent residents used to decorate their homes. But at the time they were farming their slip cover and drapery work out to an out of town company and, as it turned out, weren't really happy with the quality of the work they were receiving.

After talking to a few people, she was introduced to the store owner and she persuaded him to hire her to do the work inside the store for less money and better quality.

You can imagine how much my grandmother was paid for this kind of piece work in the 30's but at least it was a job and she had pretty much written the job description herself.

Because of her abilities, her high standards and the fine work she turned out, she became a favorite among the home decorators and the affluent clients the store dealt with.

Eventually two of the decorators talked her into setting up her own shop to do both the store's work and theirs and even offered to loan her some money to get started.

They helped her rent a house and to buy a couple of sewing machines. I remember it as a large, but somewhat dilapidated house.

Like most people in those times, my grandmother had little tolerance for being in debt and once she was on her feet, she made a generous donation to the church that had fed and sheltered her family. She also did everything she could to pay back the note she had signed as quickly as possible.

She hired a helper in the sewing room and started renting out all the rooms in the house except her own, the children's rooms, the living and dining room and the kitchen. This left her two single rooms and one small apartment that she could look to for income, along with her sewing work.

Her business grew steadily as word of talents got around and, with help from the rental income, she was able to pay back the debt in a couple of years and plan a move to an even larger place with more rooms to rent and expand her shop.

She eventually moved to a very large house that she rented from a local lawyer who had built a grand home in one of the ritzier sections of town. Again she converted most of the rooms to rental units and within a few years she was able to make the necessary down payment and begin to pay off the house.

This was the house that I spent most of my growing up years in; for the first few years in a small bedroom that adjoined the work shop.

I remember many nights going to sleep with the hum of my grandmother's sewing machine in the background. It seemed to me that she never really stopped working since she was usually back at her sewing machine when I got up the next morning.

Along with her sewing ability, my grandmother had a very strong work ethic and a fierce pride in the work she turned out.

I remember one night in particular when I woke up after midnight to the sound of sobbing in the work room behind me. When I opened the door, I found my grandmother standing in the middle of several pairs of draperies that had been done that day by her helpers . She was ripping out all the seams and crying as she did it because she knew she would be up for the rest of the night, redoing most of the work that was turned out that day.

On another night I heard her crying in pain, running water and opening and shutting cabinets in the small bathroom nearby. She had run a sewing machine needle all the way through her finger and was trying to remove it without wanting to bother anybody to ask anyone for help.

My wife, who worked with my grandmother in the shop for a while, will tell you that she couldn't tolerate a crooked seam or a slipcover or set of draperies that was off by as much as a quarter inch.

When she died she had paid off her own large and immaculately kept home in a very nice section of town, a large workroom that employed 7 or 8 workers, a fully furnished garage apartment and the kind of fine furniture and accessories sold by the tonier furniture places.

Because my grandmother could neither read nor write, during her entire working career she had to rely on a trusted member of her Sunday School class to do all her bookkeeping and her written correspondence.

Curiously, even through my grandmother couldn't do the simplest arithmetic, she could calculate precisely how a bolt of cloth had to be cut to keep the waste to a minimum, and the slipcovers she fashioned fit the furniture like a glove.

I've come to believe that the key to financial success in this country is as basic as just 3 qualities--

1. The ability to do something (anything) well 2. A strong work ethic and 3. High standards.

My grandmother possessed them all in abundance along with those extra qualities that define true entrepreneurs- initiative, risk taking and a strong drive for independence.

With that kind of mind set, I'm sure you would know that, other than a small weekly allowance, she never indulged me the way most parents do nowadays. If I wanted more money, the solution was simple.

Go out and earn it......

I still haven' t quite figured out how I managed to persuade Dinah to marry me. She was one of most popular teen agers in our community, has a singing voice with a range, a quality and a volume that will send chills up your spine, attended college on a voice scholarship, won our city's beauty/talent contest and placed in the "Miss Georgia" contest. Beyond that she's one of the most loving, caring people I've ever known.

Dinah's father and mother were both wonderful people-the real salt of the earth kind that made this country great.

Bill was a WW11 veteran and American Legion post commander, a railroad engineer and part owner of a automobile electrical repair shop. He was handy with just about every tool Decker ever made and did much of a total remodeling job on their house himself with some help from his friends.

He was Jeff Chandler handsome, had a keen sense of humor and a gentle, loving way about him. I remember him helping me out so many times in the early years of our marriage-once by rebuilding the engine on my old second hand 1964 Buick when Dinah and I couldn't afford to have it done.

Any picture of Mable will tell you where Dinah got her "Miss Georgia" looks.

Mable was a strong Christian and a very loving, but no nonsense mother. With Mable as the primary driving force, the entire Fuller family were faithful members of Faith Baptist Church, attending church regularly-once or twice on Sundays and again at Wednesday night prayer meeting.

While doing all the things good mothers have to do to raise 3 kids the right way, Mable also worked as a seamstress in the local hosiery mill.

As a sign of the times Mable managed it without using a child care center or having any of them end up doing drugs or holding wild house parties while she was away.

Bill was a deacon in the church and took up any possible slack Mable may have left in getting the kids dressed and on the way to services. As head of the table he also enforced the Fuller family rule - no one starts eating until the food is blessed.

Mable also wrote the handbook on thrift. I remember that when she was living with us,I'd often find little Tupperware jars with perhaps one serving( or less) of English peas in them; a single piece of leftover bread, carefully wrapped and placed back in the breadbox. "Little tads" as she said, add up.

In her last years, when Mable had to have help balancing her checkbook, I knew I had danged well better reconcile it to the last penny or she would literally lose sleep over it. I also have a touching memory of her fretting over whether her payment for the water bill would get there on time since it wasn't mailed when she planned.

I tried to reassure her by saying "Mable I just know the manager of the Water Works is sitting up nights right now, wondering whether Mable Fuller's check is on the way or not". She didn't think it was very funny and I eventually had to call them and assure her that it got there on time.

In her own growing up years,Dinah worked a part time job at Silver's 10 cent store,even had her own radio show " Dinah Sings" -sponsored by Stewart's Drive In, as I remember. Her brothers worked summers for their uncle Earl in the local cotton mill.

Although I earned some occasional spending money by raking the yard, running errands and such much earlier in life, my own first "real job"was at about age 9 or 10.

About "going out and earning it".....

Peanut Vendor

I don't think I was all that eager to work at the time. I just knew that the quarter a week allowance that I got from my grandmother didn't stretch very far. A couple of milk shakes and poof!..nothing left for Baby Ruths, Brick Bats or anything else.

My first boss was on old black gentleman known as "Monk". His peanut sales crew would gather on the courthouse lawn early on Saturday mornings to pick up their peach baskets filled with small brown bags of parched peanuts.

Monk didn't have use of his legs and his family would unload him from the car and place him on a small wagon bed with wheels, low enough for him to get around by pushing on the sidewalk with his hands. I remember that he wore a long black leather apron and he piled all his money in his lap.

He would sit for hours shuffling his change around, fondling it, picking it up in batches and letting it pour through his fingers, over and over; sometimes rolling his head around and chanting in some strange dialect that no one understood.

Monk sold his peanuts to passersby for a dime a bag. Our deal, as distributors, was that we paid only a nickel a bag but we couldn't sell them anywhere in a one block radius of the main store-meaning Monk.

All transactions were cash on the barrel head so I had to save my allowance for a couple of weeks to get up enough money to buy my first lot-a peach basket filled with 20 to 25 bags of peanuts that cost over a dollar and was worth $2.00 to $2.50 retail.

I walked to the courthouse from home early every Saturday morning, sometimes bare footed by choice, about a six block walk. I remember that on my first day, I hung around the movie house entrance across the street a bit too long for Monk since I was encroaching on his territory. I was only able to sell a bag or two before he started yelling and waving me on.

I stuck mainly to the downtown area so I wouldn't have to walk too far for a refill if I sold out. Most of my sales came on the street but I'd also duck into the 10 cent stores, hotel lobbys, and other buildings where sales were usually pretty good until the manager usually ran me out.

I'd usually be back at Monk's for my second basket before noon. By mid afternoon, I would be sold out again or down to only a bag or two and it would be time to close out the books, pocket my profits and head home.

My average profit nearly always ended up at around 6-7 cents a bag. Sometimes I'd get a nickel or dime tip but I also sold a few bags to friends at "cost".

$2.50 to $3 profit for a 6-8 hour day's work doesn't sound like much now but it would buy a lot of milk shakes, cap guns and wax lips in 1942.

Two main recollections......

When sales were slow downtown, sometimes I'd head to the railroad yards under the viaduct that crossed over them for several blocks. If I caught it at break time, the train men would be outside playing their own version of horse shoes--tossing large washers that slid in the dirt toward cups buried in the ground. I could usually sell out then and head home early.

But the big sales bonanzas would come when I could catch a troop train stopping at the station on 6th Ave. When that happened I would not only sell out of peanuts, some times the soldiers would hang out of the window and throw money to me to run down to Doc's Pharmacy, about a block away, for ice cream-small cups with a cardboard lid packaged by the local dairy.

I remember that one time I got back to the station too late and the train was pulling out.So I was stuck :+) with about a dozen cups of ice cream.

Magazine salesman

Around the same time I took a job selling GRIT newspapers and Liberty Magazine in the neighborhood.

I remember that everybody would gather on the lawn of somebody's house where card tables had been laid out with all kinds of sales paraphernalia, Dixie cups filled with Kool-Aid, jelly beans and cookies. Colorful balloons floated over the tables.

Armed with my canned story about working my way for a vacation trip to Panama City I knocked on doors, sold subscriptions and some of the single copies I was carrying around. We always had a little party after the selling was over and the sales manager paid everyone in cash-usually a dollar or two-but I never did figure out what I had to do to get the vacation.

Newspaper Route

When I finally turned 12 I was old enough to have a newspaper route-AND a bicycle!-that I helped pay for with my peanut and magazine money. I remember that it was chestnut red with the large white letters SCHWINN in script on the sides of it. And it was absolutely gorgeous!

Since I wanted my afternoons off after school, I chose to take a morning route and delivered newspaper over about a 20 block radius.

I would ride my Schwinn to the newspaper's loading dock about 5:00 a.m. and would usually be finished by 6:30 or 7:00, in plenty of time to stop off for a couple of Krystal hamburgers before school. That is, if the papers weren't late.

The Krystal was one of my favorite stops. It was a small, hole in the wall kind of place but it was always sparkling clean, done in black and white tiles and the aroma of sizzling hamburgers would hit you at the door. The hamburgers were a nickel for years and I remember complaining when they went up to 7 cents. I've been a Krystal fan all my life and seek them out wherever Dinah and I go but, honestly, they just don't taste the same anymore.

I still remember my district sales manager,a red-haired gentleman named Mr. Dudley and the unforgettable smell of the stereotype mats he would pass out to cover our newspapers if it was raining. Mr. Dudley would always have some kind of deal going for selling new subscribers. Tickets to the movies, stamps worth a dime apiece that you'd keep in little books until you got enough to turn in for a War bond. And sometimes even bubble gum.

Bubble gum was really scarce in the war years and that was a real turn-on. I remember getting word once that a popular local restaurant had gotten in a supply of Orbit gum and I peddled about 2 miles early one Saturday morning to stand in line for a pack.

For most of the year, it would still be dark when I finished my paper route but I never worried about being kidnapped or mugged or anything-EXCEPT!-when I delivered to one of the toughest neighborhoods in town literally "on the wrong side of the tracks" and hugging the river banks.

The houses were mostly shacks and I remember that often lights were on and people would be arguing and carrying on and I'd sometimes ride past a drunk passed out near the dirt path that connected the houses. Boarding houses were another scary area when I'd have to go inside and up the stairs to leave the paper in front of a particular door. You know- old houses, creaking boards, eerie silence, all the scary visions that a 12 year old mind could conjure up.

Sometimes, when I had spooked myself into a real scare, I'd tell myself that I would be all right when I reached the corner of Broad and 9th St.

Why? Because, as the sign clearly stated, the building housed the offices of the Equitable Life Assurance Co. And Equitable Life Assurance Co. was the sponsor of one of my favorite radio programs "This is your FBI!" that came on every Sunday night.

So Equitable Life Assurance Co. and the FBI were sort of one and the same to me. And it was easy to imagine that the whole building was teeming with FBI agents that would help me out if I just knocked on the glass doors.

Saturday was collection day, the day I got the money I'd earned by collecting enough to pay my bill and pocket the profits. I made pretty good money but I also learned some hard business lessons along the way-dealing with people who thought nothing of beating a 12 year old kid out the money they owed him; others that I would have to return to time after time, before or after school, to try and catch at home so I could collect.

I can't tell you how many times I heard the words "He ain't here", whether "he" was there or not. In that regard, I just loved those people I never had to dun-the monthlies and annuals that just mailed their check to the newspaper on time and I got credit on my bill. Sometimes I'd see them in the yard when I passed by on Saturdays and I always slowed down and waved. God bless 'em!

When my route continued to grow, I made my first hire, recruiting a friend to help me collect and fill in a few mornings for me.

Bobby was a great helper but, in the heat of the hiring process, I made the mistake of telling him I'd also furnish him chocolate milks on collection day. That alone set me back 30 or 40 cents every Saturday since I never told him there was any kind of chocolate milk limit.

Grocery Delivery Boy

I worked a couple of afternoons a week part time for Wilson's Grocery on lower 5th Ave. and sometimes for B&A grocery a few blocks away. It wasn't a hard job and involved mostly standing around until they got a call for delivery.As best I remember I was paid something like 10 cents an hour plus a quarter for anything I delivered. The main thing I didn't like about the job was that I had to put a wire basket on my bike. It really messed up the smooth, streamlined look.

I also didn't like the fact that sometimes the same order took two or three trips but I still only got the quarter. I usually got tips, though, particularly after a two or three tripper. So I guess it evened out.

To be continued......

50's Scallops-Dang they were good!!

Unless you live in a coastal area, I doubt you can get scallops the way I used to love them; fresh caught out of Panacea Bay; wading, picking and scrambling, in a few feet of water, sometimes late at night with flashlights or even at 2:00 a.m. depending on the tides.

Panacea, of course, means "remedy" or "cure all" and that's exactly what this tiny Gulf shore community was for us in the 50's. Uncrowded, mostly sandy dirt roads, palmettos and scrub oaks, the ubiquitous pungent odor of brackish salt water, Leroy Crum's gas station and general store, George Metcalf's fish house, oyster shells piled up off the docks, mostly Jim Walter homes on large inexpensive lots. No McDonalds, Arby's and other such cookie-cutter food dispensaries.

You knew you were closing in on it when you turned off the main highway about 30 miles south of Tallahassee for the final 20 mile stretch of road bounded by the pines and marsh grasses of St. Mark's Refuge and unscarred by billboards and condominiums.

I remember that our arrival was usually late evening or at night and Dinah and I would play "rabbidize!" during this final stretch; searching for the glowing coals of rabbit, coon, fox, even bobcat eyes picked up by the headlights and trying to shout "rabbidize!!" first when we spotted them.

Our friends Gladys and Philip "Hunkie" Wald were wonderful hosts and always had one of Gladys' great seafood or wild game dinners waiting-fresh caught speckled trout, fried scallops and oysters, hushpuppies, slaw, iced tea. In winter, the meals were often Canada goose in wild blueberry sauce, broiled or fried sheepshead or snapper.

At The Oaks motel, grocery, fishing supplies and veterinary at the corner of the Panacea bridge you could order the "shrimp boat", about two dozen boiled shrimp plated in a boat-like container with cocktail sauce at one end and garlic butter at the other, served at the counter about as quickly and inexpensively as a "Big deal" "MacRib" or other chain food scam today.

The deliciously pure taste of those dishes, fresh and untampered with, is a joy now reserved for shore dwellers since the overly processed sea food available in super markets today is a feeble imitation.

Unfortunately, for most of us the fresh, original scallop flavor is gone forever; washed away by a tide of modern day sickipoos who have this obsessive desire to control every aspect of life as we know it in their hypochondriacal attempts to live forever which-if they will just check their genealogy and the medical history of mankind-they'll discover is impossible.

When you remind them of this fact, though, they say "I know, I know. But I want to try anyway...."!

Fine for them. But in seeking legislative remedy for their paranoia , the "poos" have spawned a legion of Federal agencies whose rules require that scallops, oysters and other mollusks undergo more chemical baths than nuclear waste material and be run over several times by garden tractors before they are finally blanched, scalded, rubbed, scrubbed, dubbed, siped, galvanized, flash frozen and delivered to the consumer as flaccid, colorless, tasteless,odorless and otherwise mangled misrepresentations of their former delectable little selves.

So unless you're a lot luckier than I am, this is where you have to start.

Tip #1. Buy the bay scallops, the large ones, for this dish. More scallop, flat sides for browning, easier to keep from overcooking.

Tip #2. Your scallops have likely been frozen, even if they are thawed when you buy them. This means that they will be loaded with water along with all the damned processing chemicals.

Forget about losing "the juices"; they are long gone anyway. So press them down with a plate or your palms until they are almost, but not quite, dry. Otherwise the liquid will spoil any chance you might have of getting a crusty pan browned surface on them.

I like to work with two pans; one for the scallops, the other for the onions, peppers, etc., that I want to have with them.

First get the vegetables going--olive oil and butter, a few red pepper flakes and garlic as a sizzling and spicy base. Then saute the onions, green peppers, mushrooms and other vegetable choices until they are almost done but still a little crisp. I like to scatter the diced up tops of scallions and some parsley as I take them off the burner.

Preheat the other pan until the olive oil sizzles, then turn the heat down slightly and put each salt and peppered scallop in place for cooking about two-three minutes on each side. Make sure the heat is not too high at this point or you'll blacken the surface without cooking it inside.

Turn one to see that the bottom is a nice, darkening brown before turning them all and working toward the same color on the other side.

In the final stage, a minute or so before they're done, dump in your vegetables, mix everything up and give it all a few squirts of lemon juice, scatter some parsley and onion tops ( I like to add parmesan cheese)--and step back to admire your handiwork before plating it up.

About as good as any store bought scallops can possibly be in today's sickiepoo, plaintiff driven Wal Mart world........

Only a mad dog or a fool would try to cook a Rutabaga

Some things were never meant to be cooked in the first place, let alone eaten by human beings. Lava rock, steel girders, ship's hulls, Bradley tanks, rutabagas.

I swear to you here and now. If I ever, in my remaining time on this earth, attempt to cook another damned rutabaga, you have my permission-no my earnest plea-to call the local white coats and put me away forever. I would deserve it.

I now know why growers put 3 inch thick coats of wax on the things. Rutabagas are required to survive for a full five to ten years on the supermarket produce shelves before some unwitting fool who has suffered brain damage sufficient to lead them to conclude that he could conceivably be able to cook one of them might happen by!

There are more than six hundred lunatics confined to triple padded cells in mental institutions in this country right now-doomed to spend their final days reflecting on what they might have otherwise done with their lives-only because they unwittingly stumbled into the fool's game of trying to cook a rutabaga. The suicide rate in Forest Grove Oregon is TEN TIMES that of the national average. Why? Forest Grove Oregon is the rutabaga capital of the world!

If I'd had the common sense to look up the world "rutabaga" in the dictionary, I would never have even come near one of the damned things, let alone try to cook it! It's defined as a Swedish turnip or "Swede" and get this! -according to the Advanced Rutabaga Studies Institute, the Swedish people feed the things to cattle! Never use the term "Dumb Swede" in my presence-ever again!

I started trying to cook a rutabaga at 8:30 this morning. I finally finished cooking a rutabaga at 4:15 this afternoon.

In the interim I boiled it for a full three hours before I finally managed to make a microscopic dent in it's Kevlar coating with a brasion bit, sliced open my middle index finger and shattered a 4 inch thick cutting board trying to create a slit wide enough to wedge in a tempered steel chisel with a ball peen hammer.

My only decent off day for a full month was totally devoted to trying to cook a rutabaga. I missed two NCAA tournament games, 3 phone calls from clients, an Easter greeting from a friend that I hadn't heard from in more than a decade and my afternoon nap. All because I was fool enough to try and cook something that was never, ever, on God's green earth intended to be cooked or eaten in the first place-a damned rutabaga.

Alexander the Great conquered the known universe; Pericles led Greece into the golden age, Isaac Newton discovered gravity, Columbus the new world, Einstein the theory of the universe. Brilliant people, wonderful leaders and thinkers, icons for the rest of us to pattern our lives after. And I'm willing to bet my last busted chisel and skinned knuckle that not a single one of these people was ever suicidally depressed to the point that they would even consider attempting to cook a rutabaga. If historians or archaeologists ever uncovered sufficient evidence to prove that, at some time in their lives, they had even entertained such an insane notion they would be laughed out any possible sympathetic recognition of their deeds, no matter the matter the magnitude of their contributions to the recorded history of the world.

Would it surprise you to learn that the only Egyptian, Greek and Roman temples still standing were constructed by replacing sand stone and mortar with rutabagas? Not me brother!

Fools, knaves, lunatics and blithering idiots try to cook to rutabagas. Try to name one single person worth half way favorable reference in the annals of recorded time who has ever once owned up to trying to cook a rutabaga. You can't because it never happened!

So how did it taste you ask?

There simply was no taste-none whatever. The leathery residue that was bonded to the bottom of the pan after hours of boiling, broiling, baking, frying, steaming, braising and microwaving resembled congealed orange sterno that had been standing open since the Depression. Put salt on it and you taste salt. Add sugar and you taste salt and sugar.

I could have saved a full day's hard labor and might have possibly even salvaged a reasonable degree of my sanity if I'd simply spent the time, as the Swedes learned centuries ago, picking through a herd of Holsteins to try and locate one with mad cow disease that had advanced to the point that it might conceivably attempt to eat the damned thing...

"It is the act of a madman to pursue impossibilities."
Marcus Aurelius

The Moonbats missed fruit cup-Again!!

You might remember the scene from "High Anxiety" when Harvey Corman rushes to the breakfast table, swashes his napkin like a matador's cape, hoists his spoon for the culinary assault, then discovers to his horror that there's NO FRUIT CUP! in it's familiar place on the plate. Cloris Leachman's nurse Diesel acidly explains-"those who are TaaaRRRRdy don't get fruit cup!!" LGF has used the comment several times.

It's heartening, sometimes comical-but sad really; this rapidly accelerating meltdown of the Democratic Party (the toes are in their final convulsive rollup and slowly disappearing beneath the house).

I say heartening because I'm convinced that the current leadership, its acolytes and icons will need to be thoroughly exorcised if the party is ever going to return to its roots as even a minimally acceptable representative of heartland thought, values and policy in the country.

In short, my liberal friends-dump the Moonbats now if you ever hope to get fruit cup again!

Just what IS the leadership of the Democratic Party today anyway?

Albert Gore, Jimmy Carter, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Dick Gephardt and Joe Lieberman have all been pushed or voted to the sidelines-some for better reasons than others. Terry McAuliffe is thankfully gone-riding his faithful donkey "Ludicrous Hyperbole" off into the Democrats' crimson stained and rapidly sinking political sunset.

Chronic losers and memed-out word jockeys like Bob Shrum, Mary Beth Cahill, Paul Begala and James Carville are standing in the hook up line to be parachuted to political oblivion as well.

People like Michael Moore, Dennis Kucinich, Whoopi Goldberg ,Barbra Streisand and George Soros have been so thoroughly repudiated that even the moonbats don't bother to listen to them any more( No, fine, Babs-your money's really appreciated. Just, er, meet me under the bridge-OK?).

In their place(I'm sorry you'll have to excuse me for a minute while I cachinnate at the thought)Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi?!! When coupled with their Eyore brethren Ted Kennedy and John Kerry
this chronically sullen group makes the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse look like little Mary Sunshines.

The only creditable presidential aspirants at this point appear to be Hillary Clinton and perhaps Wesley "Argyle" Clark unless the Democrats see something in Evan Bayh, Al Sharpton and Barbara Boxer that not a single other soul in the country does( which means of course that the moonbats undoubtedly do).

Dean will breathe some life and perhaps even some common and political sense into the party's voter outreach program. And if he's successful in 2006 he'll likely use that success as a springboard to
a candidacy of his own. In that case, and assuming that the newly rennovated Hillary does indeed run, it could be an interesting primary to say the least.

Dean's baggage of course is his up-east liberal persona and his tourettes-like, loose cannon mouth. He's a veritable sound bite gatling gun and the media types love him for it.

On the other hand, I'm sure you've noticed Hillary carefully wriggling into her brand new store bought centrist jeans . She seems to be the only Democrat that has actually begun to "get it"--the heart beat of the country and some reasonably solid political advice, that is.

On the Republican side of things Bush's audacious new initiative on Social Security could easily result in a new genre of budding capitalists withdrawn from the normally reliable Democrat bank of minorities, teachers, check out clerks and union members. People who watch their stock portfolios and Lou Dobbs more closely than feckless follies such as Michael Moore's execrable crank outs tend to vote Republican.

Finally, I'm not sure just how the Democrats plan to salve the wounds of the ethic groups they continue to offend with their venomous and silly personal attacks on respected minorities such as Condoleeza Rice and Alberto Gonzales. Clearly Barack Obama won't be ready for a vice presidential bid in 2008. And just as clearly, Condoleeza Rice will. Can the Democrats really afford to lose another 10% of the black vote?

All in all 2008 looks like yet another "fruit cupless" election year for the Democrats.

Go easy on the hash browns, buddy...

Moonbat Cannibalism...

"Moonbats, behold thy leaders.

Nancy, Harry, Ted, John-behold thy followers"

"Jesus" Bush: John 19:26

Sorry about that, but it's timely really-particularly given the "Jesus" Bush references on the left wing blogs.

It appears that moonbats are beginning to take a less than sanguine view of their leadership as they confront political reality in the back wash of a crimson tide that threatens to convert their subterranean grottoes into the 2008 version of Atlantis.

The moonbats turned on their own today-cannibalizing their offspring and hysterically tossing their leaders into the same meme spiked iron maiden that is normally reserved for Americans endowed with reason,common sense and at least a passing knowledge of the qualities and principles that made this country the greatest in the free world in the first place.

The rest of us are enjoying the carnage from the side lines and hanging on every sound bite.

Pass the popcorn, Babe...

If you want a fair and honest evaluation of the power and the connection with the American people in George Bush's state of the union speech, for once you needn't limit your news sources to Brit Hume, Bill O'Reilly or Shaun Hannity. Today the moonbats' normally reliable pablum feeders ; the main stream media, NPR, the Daily Kos-even David Corn, The Nation's court jester to moonbat queen Katrina vanden Heuvel's court-seems to have gotten the message from the heartland.

The MSM has been busy pissing off the moonbats all day by generally confining itself to the truth. Some hysterics are starting to call NPR the National PLUTOCRAT Radio;The Daily Kos is sputtering and clanking like a cold patched boiler that's about to explode from the pressure and the resulting rumble is sending out Richter scale 9s all over the moonbat universe.

For example, here's David Corn-over his shoulder comment while making his way to the higher ground...

.."Last Election Day offered plenty of reasons for Democrats to worry. This speech provides additional cause for them to fret.

Which brings us to the Democratic response. It was middling at best, perhaps awful.

Senator Harry Reid, the minority leader, tried mightily hard to adopt the language of values. He took the folksy route, reminding viewers he had grown up in a small town in Nevada among hard-rock miners. He referred to a ten-year-old boy who recently told Reid that when he grows up he wants to be a senator. This, Reid noted, was evidence that no one has to tell the children of America to dream big dreams. Reid covered all the bases, critiquing Bush's economic policies and pointing out the flaws and dangers of partially privatizing Social Security.

But he was not much of a match for a president riding the wave of self-proclaimed victory in Iraq.

Still, Reid fared better than House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. She proved that she can read a TelePrompTer without blinking or changing her facial expression. Reid went for the down-home approach. Pelosi was a Stepford Democrat. She expressed no emotion. She did not modulate her speech.

She looked like she was reading words written by someone else, not sharing convictions that burn in her soul. Handling the national security portion of the Democratic response, she served up all the usual--and correct--criticisms of Bush. But she scored no points. In this arena, delivery counts as much as--no, make that more than--substance.

On Iraq, she repeated the Kerry plan: accelerate training of Iraqi security forces, rev up the reconstruction, and intensify regional diplomacy. The goal, she said, is a "much smaller American presence" by the next election, which is scheduled for the end of the year. But it was hard to imagine her swaying anyone who wasn't already a Bush-basher.

Pelosi looked like she had to be there. Bush looked like he was relishing the moment.

Such a difference matters much.."

Really?

Red staters figured that out years ago, sport...

Why we're in Iraq: The Real Story

Pretend that you're responsible for, say, a jock strap manufacturing company in Ipswich Connecticut.

Your headquarters building along with several distribution outlets in Nebraska, Florida, New York and Mississippi, have been fire bombed and are out of operation. Your survival as the world's leading jock strap producer is at stake since a host of other producers are unscathed and are ready and more than willing to do business with the clients you're unable to serve.

You're confronted with a formidable dilemma. If you're to maintain your market share, it's essential that you prevent another such attack in order to gain the time you need to rebuild your manufacturing, sales and distribution network.

Since this circumstances is unique in the history of jock strap making, you have decided to call on your supervisory staff and key employes for their input.

Hiram?:

Sir, I think it's pretty obvious that the anti jock strap coalition-people like Al Keider, Madame Husane, Kim Jong Duck Doo and others are responsible. Everybody knows they hate our guts, if you'll pardon my French. I don't know why we don't just go ahead and pop em.!

Thank you, Hiram. It's hard to argue with that kind of reasoning. But you have to remember that,as the world's leading jock strap producer, we have a very heavy corporate responsibility, an extremely vocal union and an often hostile customer base to consider before we take any kind of action like that.

Charles?

Well, sir, I don't think there's any question that they need to be popped. But we ought to get some consensus and support from the rest of the industry before we go off half cocked and get everybody all upset with us.

Steve?

I don't see any sense at all in that. Why do we need these guys? We're the ones that got smacked and most of them are laughing up their sleeve about it. You expect them to help us out when they're the ones who are getting our business while we're down?

I mean companies like Jacque's Jocks are getting a lot of business from Madame Husane, Al Keider and the rest. Vlad's Pads and Schroeder's Snoods certainly couldn't care less about our problems since they've never liked us very much anyway.

It's a waste of time.

Shirley?

Well, I think we could count on Tony's Trusses for--support,shall we say?

All right, Shirley.....

So you and Charles think we ought to take our case to the association.

How about you Bruce?

Well, they ought to be popped for sure. But everybody's going to call us an arrogant bully, even our own union members- you can just count on it. Particularly if we pick on a sweet old lady like Madame Husane.

So I'm with Charles and Shirley-it's worth a shot. But if they don't approve, I think we should pop her anyway.

Wayne?

Well you keep stressing that Madame Husane poses a serious threat to the jock strap industry.But nobody has told me what that threat is.

At your press conference on July 30, for example, you used the word "threat" over and over, even as you acknowledged that no weapons of jock strap destruction have been found.

And in a speech on July 24, your assistant asked "How could any responsible leader ignore the Madame Husane threat?"

But, again, what threat? The vision of one that you and your minions have manufactured from grossly exaggerated, distorted or downright false intelligence reports?

So you guys want to go to war! Your problem, of course, is that not a word of it is true. There are no weapons of jock strap destruction. Even the program Madame Husane once had to develop jock strap destruction weapons is inactive.

She certainly had such weapons years ago and doubtless retained some capability -- the know-how, the laboratories etc. -- to manufacture them again. But a capability does not equate to having weapons ready to use.

O.K....

Hold your thought for a minute there Wayne.

Hiram?

Well, first of all, I think Wayne is forgetting that we lost 3,000 employes in those attacks. So this is about a lot more than jock strap destruction.

And he's trying real hard to make us the bad guys in all this.

But all I hear him saying is "well, she had the weapons but now she doesn't- she knows how but she's quit doing it-she's perfectly capable but wouldn't dream of it".

What kind of bullcrap is that?!!

Everybody knows she gassed more than 300,000 of her own people. What makes Wayne think she'd bat an eyelash over 3,000-or even 3 million-Americans?

And of course, Al Keider would like nothing better than to crawl in the sack with her.

I vote we pop her. And I see Bruce, Steve and Shirley nodding their heads.

All right, Hiram. Let's allow Wayne to finish his thoughts.....

Well, as I've tried to point out, "popping Madame Hussein", as you put it, would be a distraction from what should be our principal task, the war against Al Keider.

Would we be more secure is we pop her? Absolutely not!

Madame Husane is a bitch, a vampire and a wanton hussy, yes. But she poses no real threat to the security of our operations. Why would we waste time and money and risk irritating our partners in the industry, our union members and even our customers by taking her out?

It's just a ridiculous, extremely risky, mindless act of destruction. And you're going to be held accountable!!!

All right, Wayne, thanks so much for sharing that with us...

Why are you laughing, Shirley?

Well, if Madame Husane has friends like Wayne, she certainly doesn't need any enemies.

He makes her sound exactly like the kind of person that needs popping.

Really bad......

Agreed.

Charles?  Pop her      Steve?  Let's get it on      Hiram?  I think you know where I stand

Bruce?  If you're waiting for me, you're backing up.

Ok, guys, let's roll!

Wayne, please turn in the keys to your company camel on the way out.....

An incident at Valdosta

My brother in law is a retired english professor and about as ultra liberal as they come. Working in concert with my childhood friend , a retired television journalist, they dish out about as much liberal poowaddle as I can take sometimes.

My brother in law mainly enjoys: being liberal, growing vegetables, reading bad poetry and making mayhaw jelly, fig preserves and sugar cane syrup. And the cane syrup he makes is the best you're going to find anywhere.

I can't tell you the name of it because it incorporates his last name. But "Professor's Gold"is a good substitute.

I sent him this a while back-when he declared, after too many glasses of Blackberry wine- that he was thinking about going to Iraq.

As a human shield..........

An Incident at Valdosta

The shattered remnants of the Valdosta Greyhound station were still smouldering in the steamy August dusk, hours after the explosion. Splintered benches, crushed storage lockers, one way tickets to Waycross were strewn like confetti over the heat warped vinyl floor.

Here and there a twisted Budweiser can, a baggage tag reading "Jacksonville or Bust", an imploded Heinz catsup cannister, a half eaten Payday, a shredded Cheetos wrapper.

"I just can't understand it", mused Theron Cromwiddle, Valdosta's fire chief.

"Of all the places in the world for a suicide bomber to try and set up his eternal meeting with 70 virgins. Hell, we hardly ever get 7 people in here at one time-let alone 70 virgins!

Just doesn't figure."

Who do I think did it? Well, we're not sure because what few body parts we could locate were covered in fig preserve residue and the only DNA we could identify traced back to a mayhaw tree on the Flint river.

But everything we see right now points to a local retired Valdosta State history professor.

Neighbors are telling us that this gentleman usually dressed in a croaker sack and covered his face with a Handi-Wipe, even when he was pulling crab grass in his back yard.

We also found several Yasser Arafat commemorative glasses in his wine cabinet and an autographed picture of Sean Penn hanging on his tractor windshield.

I'm not saying there's anything conclusive in that, of course. But his friends tell us he didn't show up for yesterday's blueberry mulching and we found several poems by WB Yeats that he apparently hadn't had time to read since they lacked his usual " You tell 'em WB!" scribbles on the margins.

Sad, really. Here's a man who spent his younger years in normal endeavors-grappling for catfish on the Chattahooche River, squirming through the Sunday sermon at Liberty Baptist Church , walking barefoot to the Royal Theater to see Tex Ritter, saving Capitola tokens for popcorn at The Bradley, bugging his grandma for extra helpings of collards and butter beans.

His relatives say he made good grades in school, never had a problem with things like saying the Pledge of Allegience with the words "under God" in it or singing "God Bless America", enlisted in the Marine Corps when the Korean War broke out and just all around made his folks real proud.

The local speculation is that he went and got himself all "educated".

Yep, most folks think he just decided that all the values he grew up with were the product of ignorant, old fashioned thinking by his parents, his grandparents, his teachers and classmates.

So the poor soul figured that the years he spent with all them books would be totally wasted if he didn't come out thinking a whole lot different than he went in.

And he sure as Ned managed that.

Anyhow, the old guy made a helluva cane syrup.

If you act right, I'll split this bottle I found in his car with you.....

Pascal's Wager...

Our blogger friend jack* has a post titled "Pascal's wager" in which he sets up an argument that is just too damned complicated for my limited mental faculties to grasp in it's entirety.

It concerns the theories of a 17th Century French mathematician, Blaise Pascal, and the ways in which they relate to the Bush administration's rationales for such matters as waging war and ignoring global warming warnings are rooted in those theories and essentially pose the question "which is the greater danger"?

I urge you to go to jack*'s post if you want to dig further into the subject; it really is an interesting one. But be warned that it's going to require a large ration of your remaining time- for the day at least-and a reliable supply stream of mental stimulants if you expect to survive the exercise with your mental acuity in tact. 3 or 4 White Horses might do it. (*http://jackasterisk.typepad.com/j_a_c_k_/)

"Pascal's wager....."

Pascal argues that since reason cannot decide the matter we should look at the trade offs.  Christianity (specifically Catholicism) offers eternal happiness for believers and eternal misery for non-believers, while atheism offers only the satisfaction of being rational and free time on Sunday mornings.  Since Christ promises a better payout, we should play His game.  "Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is," Pascal instructs us. "If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is...."

jack*'s post brought to mind my encounter with a person who had essentially based his entire life on Pascal's wager although I didn't know what to call it at the time.

It's really not very pleasant to recall the incident since I was definitely committed to my questioning, probing, challenging "smartass" position concerning religion at the time.

One of the people I admired and respected greatly in my home town was a gentleman named Bob Herlong, a highly successful businessman and, as I learned that day, a committed Christian.

Everyone in our little luncheon group knew that Bob was dying of leukemia and only had a year or so to live. Everyone, that is, but me.

I'd never thought of Bob as sickly. He was energetic, almost effervescent, with a permanent smile and a quick grin. He was also highly intelligent and I guess this fact this had something to do with my little smart assed statement to him that day as he spoke quietly to me of his commitment to Christ.

I said something like, "Bob, you're an intelligent man, a lot smarter than me-how can you possibly believe some of the things you read in the Bible"? I had no idea that I might be undermining the faith of a dying man and it bothers me every time I think about it.

But I needn't have worried. Bob smiled and said "John we all have choices to make in life. And one of them is whether or not to believe in God and the personal redemption of Christ.

Whether I'm right or wrong, my belief has given me peace of mind and my life and my family's life have been the better for it.

It's going to be leukemia that kills me, John-not ulcers."

Were those the words the result of some kind of battlefield conversion in the face of death?

I found out later that Bob's father had been a Methodist minister and that Bob himself had been a leader in his own church for many years.

Almost as long as I'd been a smart ass...............