Just call me Steve

My first name is Terry, but I’m often called Gary, Barry, Larry or, when I was a kid by mean (possibly homophobic) classmates, Mary or Fairy.
Persons of authority, teachers, or anyone with dyslexic tendencies sometimes use my last name as a first name. The variety of ways in which people screw up the name ‘Stephan’ (stef-an) as a first name is amazing. Usually it is shortened to the familiar ‘Steve’, or ‘Steven’, sometimes it has even been pronounced ‘Stif-fon’.
Before I married Emmy, she was dating a young man named Jerry. He served in the Navy, as did Emmy’s father, Fred who spent WWII in the Navy.
Fred had six women in his life, his wife and five un-married daughters. He probably saw Jerry as a good prospect, as not only a future son-in-law but also an ally and comrade-in-arms for a man with so many females in his life.
Then I came along, no military involvement; Navy or otherwise-and my hair was too long.
I don’t think it was a slip of the tongue when Fred called me ‘Jerry’ every so often for the first decade or two of my marriage to his daughter.
Mispronouncing or purposefully using the wrong name never bothered me. I have always felt there are too many serious wrongs in the world to worry about small stuff like that. When I was a kid, I heard the adage, ‘call me anything, but don’t call me late for dinner’. I like the phrase, and the large waist of my pants shows that I have gone overboard in adhering to its fundamental message.
I’m not offended when people call me Gary, but I am perturbed if I miss a meal.
Because I care little about people using my correct name, I tend to play fast and loose with friends, political leaders or even names for whole sections of the populace.
My cousin, who is my age, went by ‘Becky’ or her given name ‘Rebecca’ for forty years. Then she changed it to ‘Becca’. Becca is a fine name but she gets upset when I call her Becky.
I think altering her name at the age of forty falls under the category of changing the rules in the middle of a game. This is similar to how the shifting sands of political correctness have changed over the past thirty years.
Somewhere back there in the 70’s or 80’s there began real debate about PC. I was all for it at the time because it looked as though we were going to simplify things. It became politically correct to call a “person of color” simply, “Black”.
My uncle was “visually impaired”. He is gone now but he single handedly ran a small business his entire adult life. A realist, he would have scoffed at someone calling him anything other than ‘blind’, a word considered offensive by some these days.
This brings me to our departing governor. I knew little about David Patterson when he was Elliot Spitzer’s sidekick but after a few public appearances, he seemed to be a man of substance. At least he was humorous, eloquent, and gave a good speech.
Shortly into his term, we discovered he was sexually overactive, outside of marriage. This only complicates his PC title a bit more.
He became our “African American, Visually Impaired, Oversexed, and Fidelity Disadvantaged Person with Governorship Responsibilities”.
If this is the wrong title, I apologize and hope to find someone with a Master’s degree in Political Science or Geography or Genealogy or maybe all three to straighten it out.
I suppose we could just call him ‘the recent Governor’.
Call me Ishmael if you like, just don’t call me late for supper..
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Norm Nason Remembered

Terry Stephan


Norm Nason hired me and was my boss for much of the thirty years I worked at Nason’s Delivery. He passed away recently. When someone dies, I have a tendency to rewind the years and remember them at their most active.
Despite the crushing responsibility of overseeing dozens of employees, and dispatching as many trucks, Norm Nason maintained his good humor and patience most of the time. All told, the equipment and drivers he and his brother Paul directed, logged thousands of miles each day.
Moving freight is a labor intensive, 24 hour a day industry. Trucks have to be emptied and reloaded overnight. I was part of that overnight process for the first half-dozen years I worked at Nason’s. On busy nights, moving freight from ‘inbound’ to ‘outbound’ trucks seemed an overwhelming task. On not-so-busy nights; I and the rest of the dock crew would be walking out the door as Norm was walking in. He started his mornings in a good mood. In passing, he would give us a friendly if not jolly, “go home, get some rest, you guys deserve it”.
Norm smoked a pipe back then; it was a crucial part of his persona. He didn’t smoke in the office, but during lulls in activity at his desk, he could be found in the adjoining ‘driver’s room’. It was a twelve-foot-square room, with a counter top on which drivers could complete their paperwork at the beginning and end of each day.
On easy days, Norm would stand behind the counter, waiting to receive drivers’ paperwork. While he waited, he would be lost in contemplation. He cupped his pipe in hand, tween’ forefinger and thumb, the tobacco barely lit. A small slip of smoke denied that the pipe was merely a prop over which his thoughts were allowed to roam.
If it had been a bad day of setbacks, missed deliveries or breakdowns, Norm would be drawing on the pipe often. The driver’s room would be cloudy with smoke.
The dock was 100 or so feet long, the office door at one end. When Norm arrived in the morning, He would walk down the long dock, an occasional puff on the pipe, glancing into the half-loaded trucks, taking note of how long we had yet to go.
When it looked as though we would be finished soon, Norm’s mood wasn’t dampened much. He simply went into the office and performed his morning routine.
If we had a long way to go, Norm’s walking pace would increase a bit as he traversed the dock, the puffs on his pipe becoming more intense. By the time he returned to the office door, like an old locomotive, clouds of smoke trailed him.
On the dock, at the entrance to the office, there stood a galvanized garbage can. If we were really behind, Norm would kick that garbage can, as he returned to the office. He didn’t stop, it was a fluid movement. The crew would be at various locations up and down the dock, but we could all hear how upset he was by the oomph he put behind that kick.
I don’t remember him verbally chastising the dock crew. He knew our job wasn’t an easy one, but kicking the garbage can was an impromptu message - he wasn’t happy.
We tried to be done in the mornings so Norm wouldn’t kick the garbage can. If we knew we would be late, we emptied the big trash can before he got there. That way he wouldn’t hurt his foot (he had a history of gout) when he kicked the can and we wouldn’t have to pick up the trash, if he kicked it hard enough to knock it over.
Norm was quick to anger but he was just as quick to forgive. A while later, when the trucks were all loaded and the drivers on the road, Norm would call out, “go home, get some rest, you guys deserve it”.
He was a vibrant and good man, he will be missed.
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two choppers too much

As we walked out of the party, we overheard the man behind us say to his wife, “I just can’t talk Dave out of buying that second helicopter”.
Every avenue taken in life leads to something new and different. When I retired from truck driving I knew I would need to work at least part time to supplement my income. I thought I would probably end up with a nice cushy job, maybe computer work from home, maybe I would look good in one of those handsome red vests at Lowes. I figured on a part time job, less than 20 hours a week, ten minutes from my house.
Emmy altered my plans by producing high quality bead embroidered jewelry. Instead of a nice cushy job, close to home, I assist her in selling her wares. We travel the country in our truck camper from one arts and crafts festival to another. The traveling is sometimes nice, sometimes a drag, a two-day show usually includes three consecutive-twelve hour days of hectic activity. It has brought us in contact with a very diverse group of people.
Not long ago we participated in the “Fall for the Arts” show at Lake Gaston near Littleton, NC. The show takes place at four or five beautiful homes near the lake.
It isn’t your average art festival. The Gaston Lake area includes two states and five counties. Because of the diverse geography and multiple municipalities, many residents feel overlooked by local agencies for financial support. This was only the 3rd year for the show. The group producing the show is called O’Sail, (the Organization to Support the Arts, Infrastructure and Learning).
O’Sail aspires to raise money for local causes, support artists, and among other things produce high quality arts’ shows. Money raised at previous events has been given as grants to local fire departments for computer and life saving equipment and training to perform rescue and recovery operations. Other organizations in need received grants from O’Sail for safety and education programs.
Emmy and I have never dined as well as we did for this show. The group provided a great chicken barbecue after “set-up” on Friday night, with an open bar beforehand. There were hors d’oeuvres served during the show for artists and patrons alike and a wonderful (typically southern) boxed lunch including sweet tea served in a Mason jar. The weather was beautiful. Our space location was on the front porch of a guest house, a few hundred well-manicured feet from a beautiful mini-mansion main house.
The home owners at our location were not only gracious and welcoming, but hunting enthusiasts as well. We shared our porch with a small stuffed bear who became Emmy’s assistant, holding a few necklaces displayed in his outstretched front paws.
Most of the shows we attend are either free for customers or have a small entrance fee, from five to eight dollars. The Gaston Lake show had a $35 dollar fee for those wishing to view the artworks. I think the high fee produced patrons who were serious art enthusiasts and/or supporters of the O’Sail cause.
Monetarily, for us it was an average show, but a typical show would have up to several thousand people a day pass by our booth. At Lake Gaston there were around two or three hundred. It was a relaxed and friendly atmosphere.
At the home of our Friday night reception, where we heard the “helicopter” remark, I had just said to Emmy that the basement room with the bar we were in probably cost more than our whole house in Cattaraugus County.
I hate to admit it, but I sometimes lament that we are not as financially secure now as I had hoped to be. We are very fortunate though; we have a roof over our heads and always have food on the table.
However, just once I would like to overhear someone worried about my dilemma- “Boy, that Terry really shouldn’t be buying another helicopter.”
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criminal history

I have not had a lot of involvement in the phenomena that is Facebook. I joined because my grandchildren’s photos were posted there. Some old friends have contacted me and I them. We have exchanged a few notes, caught up on our lives but after a while go back to ignoring each other as we have for the past couple of decades. I came to the realization there is a reason I don’t keep in touch with this person or that one.
Early in his career, one of my cousins, I’ll call Bill, robbed a service station. He broke in through high rear windows. Inside, a mountain of used tires piled against the wall slowed his descent to the floor.
Billy found his way through the dark building to the front office and emptied the cash register. It was just loose coins. He filled his pants and jacket pockets.
Making his escape, Bill discovered that climbing the ‘tire mountain’ was hard work, and work was what he was avoiding when he went into the “criminal” business. The weight of the change in his pockets made it a daunting task.
Bill sat down to rest on the tires. In the morning, the owner followed a trail of coins from the office and found Billy gently snoring on the tires. As bad as he was at it, Bill continued his career as a criminal, whenever he wasn’t in jail.
Several years later, when he was fresh out of lockup, he moved in with his grandmother, who lived next door to me. Bill stayed with her while, “getting back on his feet”. One evening he asked to borrow my car to run to the store. Having more faith in the face value of what people said back then I gave him a chance to prove himself to be a trustworthy, upstanding citizen. Bill said he would have my car back in 15 minutes.
He staggered home the next morning on foot, didn’t know where my car was. Later in the week, the police found it on the side of the road in a popular late night racing spot, its distributor cap broken from the efforts of a person trying to advance the spark to use my car for drag racing.
Bill swore he never knew what happened to the car, and had no explanation as to when or where he lost possession of it. He didn’t assume much responsibility for the loss, and didn’t say so but seemed to think, like everyone else, I should have known better than to lend it to him in the first place.
In the decades since that incident I’ve never spoken to Bill nor actually seem him again, it’s been an easy thing to do; he’s been in jail most of those years and doesn’t seek my companionship when he is released. I have been aware, through the family grapevine, of when he gets out and they usually greet his homecoming with some sort of small celebration as though he were a returning hero. I never attend.
I keep up with a lot of what is going on with my relatives quietly from a distance, on Facebook.
My cousin Billy is out of his most recent confinement, and gotten his hands on a computer. He joined Facebook. Relatives post things like ‘good to see you Billy’, or ‘welcome to Facebook’. Closer friends and relatives post pictures of themselves and Billy in photos much like those we used to see in ‘arcade’ type photo booths.
Even though it’s been decades since Billy stole my car, I have no urge to be his friend on Facebook or otherwise.
I don’t think Bill would ask to be my friend, but if he did, what would I post on his Facebook page anyway? “Glad to see you back in society”, (I’m not), “hope you don’t steal my car again”. When are you going back to jail?
I know this all sounds kind of harsh but, it’s a flaw in my nature I’ll have to live with.

long time quiet

I applogize for my lack of input- I have been trapped in a bog of 'taking care of business' tho not very well, otherwise would have posted. I will commit to making a longer post within the next couple of days..

Don’t hunt like me..

When I was a younger man I worked nights, usually twelve or fourteen hours at a stretch. If I was lucky I got home in time to see my kids before they caught the school bus in the morning. I resent the time we lost.
In autumn, I felt doubly cheated as hunting season rolled around. I needed sleep, but I needed that walk in the woods, I needed to sit and soak up the outdoors. I used hunting as an excuse to spend time there.
Some mornings, I would get home to see my boys for a half hour before the bus came, then grab my gun and spend a couple hours in the woods. It was very calming. On those days, I crawled into bed feeling right with the world.
Other times, I would sit under a tree, and doze off, not necessarily a good habit while hunting. One beautiful day, I found a cozy spot under a large thorny bush at the edge of a clearing. I squatted very still, my twelve-gauge resting across my lap. When I woke, there were a dozen chickadees within arm’s reach, one of which was on the bill of my hat, another stuttering his chick-a-dee-dee song, clutching the forward site of my shotgun.
I tried to get up, disturbing my little friends. It took a while, my legs were asleep. Any deer that showed up at that moment would have had to wait a while for me to shoot. I didn’t know how big a problem that really could be.
A week later, I was in a thick grove of evergreens. They had grown very close together, lower green bows made a canopy four or five feet off the ground. I couldn’t stand, so I squatted on the ball of my left foot and on the knee and toe of my right leg and foot. It was a good stance from which to fire a gun, or so I thought. The tree behind me was at a handy height to lean against, I soon slept.
I dreamed, memories from one of my first jobs, I groomed horses and mucked out stalls for a paycheck. A horse snorted and stomped his hoof in the packed earth of the stable floor… Wait- I wasn’t in a barn; there was another snort and a thump. I opened my eyes a crack, a huge deer 15 feet away blocked out just about everything else.
It looked like you couldn’t have passed a hula hoop over the massive rack on his head. He stomped again. I don’t know how long he had been kicking and snorting. I didn’t want to move, but my heart was beating so loudly by now, I was sure it would cause him to jolt at any moment.
When I tried to move, he snorted again, nostrils larger than any I ever noticed on a deer. He tilted his head forward, the massive antlers parallel to the ground. He flew. Rack first, all strength and speed and shine through the low trees. He was a graceful high-speed piece of muscular performance art.
Meantime I was performing slapstick. I tried to stand up; my legs were dormant from squatting, inoperable. I fell forward landing on my elbows, managing to keep the muzzle of the gun out of the dirt.
I floundered again; still no feeling in my lower extremities. I fell, onto my right side and shoulder.
The buck was still in range, but had turned from a full broadside target to a retreating backside. The way I landed, the two fixed shotgun sights were about in line with my right eye. I pulled the butt of the gun to my shoulder, lined my sites on the retreating animal.
There were milliseconds in which to make a decision, I was in a prone position, but not a great stance. From where I lay, there was a chance I would only wound him. The thought came to mind that I didn’t hunt for trophies. Most years Emmy reminded me that was good, because I never brought home anything resembling a trophy buck…
My kids are grown. I have more time these days; I don’t need an excuse to be in the woods. If I stop to reflect under a tree, I still keep one eye open for that buck.
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Did Oliver Hardy use a Flowbee?

Terry Stephan


I was looking in the mirror saying, “Here's another nice mess you've gotten me into.”
You may remember Oliver Hardy saying that to Stan Laurel. Laurel and Hardy were making films in the 1920’s and 30’s. I watched those movies and short films decades later, in my formative years, along with Rocky and Bullwinkle when I got home from school in the afternoons.
The ‘nice mess’ phrase usually comes to my mind over simple problems, like trying to cut my own hair and getting results I don’t expect. Operating a pair of scissors in the mirror, for me, is a physically dyslexic challenge. When I’m done, my hair in disarray, I envision Oliver nervously twiddling his tie atop his big belly, admonishing Stan Laurel. “This is another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.”
I have a long, sadly comical history with haircuts. I avoid the barber shop like the plague. The cost has nothing to do with it, I don’t mind paying for a haircut; it really isn’t a lot of money when you consider the amount of time it takes, the space and tools needed.
I do resent that extra thing on my list of ‘to dos’ on a trip into town. I go with the intention of getting a haircut, wedged between shopping and the drug store. I become impatient after being in line at a couple of stores and end up driving home with all the hair I came to town with.
I’ve considered other possibilities, never getting my hair cut, for instance. I did that in the seventies. After a while the warm weather gets to me. Washing all that hair is a tough job as well.
I thought of the “Mr. Clean” look, just shaving my head. I already spend an inordinate amount of time shaving; I can’t manage to get all the whiskers off my face at one time. I think my skin head look would be a constant state of stubble. My knobby skull would scare people.
When I was a kid my mother blamed the bad haircuts she gave me on the bowl she was using. Her attempts at barbering my hair (and my three brothers’ hair) abruptly ended when she cut a chunk out of my ear with her scissors and I bled profusely all over myself, the table and kitchen floor. I was only 8 or 9. It scared the wits out of her.
My barber nowadays is a spicy woman I’ve known for years. We have a sort of an understanding, I think. A week after she cuts my hair I begin to trim it myself, just a little at a time. I think it looks pretty good for a while and then one day, in the mirror, I realize it is very long, well; it’s long in several places.
I steadfastly soldier on, trying a few more times to make the sides match, hoping no one comes to the door. When I get to the point where it looks like I was raised by a pack of wolves who just chew their hair off, I pull a hat over my head and go see my spicy barber friend. She fixes my hair, no questions asked, and with a straight face.
Then, my wife bought a “Flowbee” at a garage sale. It is a hair cutting device that you hook to your vacuum cleaner. It sucks your hair out straight through a tube and then cuts it off. It has varying lengths of tubes to cut different areas of your head. The cutting head is the size of a small toaster mounted at the end of a vacuum cleaner hose which in turn is a attached to a “brick” wall power unit and then to my shop vac.
I put the whole thing together, turned on the loud, rattling clipper unit, switched on the louder, jet engine sounding shop-vac and looked in the mirror.
The vacuum hose was around my neck and I held the toaster-like clippers to my head. Through the cacophony, I did my best Oliver Hardy, “This is another nice mess you’ve gotten me into”. I may have to visit the spicy barber girl again, very soon.
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My Old Tractor

This is my beautiful tractor with front bucket and wood splitter on the back. The paint is kind of faded and worn twenty five years after the rebuild.


Last week my old tractor sprang a leak in the wood-splitter hydraulics. I am determined to sell it.
I bought it more than 25 years ago and it was old and beat up then. It has four-wheel drive, a 45 horse-power engine and a brand name few people recognize. It had been used for logging. Massive wrinkles and dents in the hood and fenders matched the shape of tree trunks dropped on the poor machine by reckless chainsaw operators.
The front tires were sliced and bald. The front-end loader, manufactured by International, is of high quality, but was so mismatched to this tractor; it wobbled side to side even while driving on a smooth surface.
Because the front-end loader was mounted so poorly, to attain your position on the operator’s seat, you had to climb up and over the three point hitch controls and framework in the back, or use a stepladder from the side.
The engine and transmission performed well enough so I could drive the tractor into a heavy duty straight truck in which to bring it home. Once there, I unloaded it by driving off onto a hill of dirt, made for that purpose.
If you wonder why I bought such a wreck, it was cheap (and should have been). I had more time and energy than money, and I loved a mechanical challenge. These days, I have no time, energy, or money. I can easily let a mechanical challenge slip past me, unanswered.
I removed the front-loader, torched it apart, built a new bucket for it, refurbished and welded it back together so it no longer wobbled and I could climb aboard simply, from the side. I repaired the power steering, the front drive shafts, and the brakes. New tires were added, and I rebuilt, cleaned and painted the rest of the tractor and fabricated the wood splitter. It was all hard dirty work; the machine is made of heavy stuff, iron and steel, and runs on diesel fuel, grease and dirt.
It was one of the early, mass-imported tractors built in the early 70’s in what was then, Yugoslavia. The same drive train was imported by half a dozen major agriculture manufacturers in the states. They used it as a basis for models of Oliver and Allis Chalmers tractors to name a few.
American corporations bought the chassis cheaply, by the many thousands. They shipped them to the US, and then finished them up, each adding their own individual company’s sheet metal, tires, and other bolt-on pieces. Most of the components from these other brands fit my tractor so I have always been able to get parts easily.
A favorite saying among mechanics back then was that the Yugoslavians used yardsticks instead of micrometers. My tractor still runs smoothly after all these years so someone measured pretty well with their yardstick.
As I worked on my tractor last week, I sprayed myself in the face with hydraulic oil (nasty stuff) got a ragged steel sliver in my finger and dropped a brand new hydraulic cylinder on my ankle and foot, causing a great deal of pain.
While I was thinking up fresh expletives to describe the cylinder and its forbearers, I swore I would sell the tractor as soon as I got it back together again.
Since my original rebuild, the tractor has required very little maintenance. I’ve performed grease and oil changes annually and installed a new battery every half dozen years. To save money when I rebuilt it, I reused old hoses, fittings and cylinders. It springs a hydraulic leak every decade.
The tractor is back together now and working fine. I got the sliver out of my finger and washed the hydraulic fluid out of my hair. My foot doesn’t hurt too much but is black and blue (coincidently the same colors I painted the tractor). I am still going to sell it. I guess I’ll just hold off another six or ten years..
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The Little People and Ma

The Photo is of my mother during WWII she is about 17 years old here. One of the luckier war brides, she spent several of her first married years alone but her husband came home.. She sent him the photo of her and my eldest brother. You can see how important the photo was to him - he encased it in the heavy plexiglass.



Each time I peruse my file cabinet for whatever reason, it is my intention to throw out at least one obsolete folder. If I did that, it would make room enough so I could find other files I really need. Many of them should go in the garbage, including one I stumble upon often, a thick file of my mother’s papers. She passed away in 1991, so I always wonder how long I should keep them.
There are cancelled checks, important a long time ago, cards and letters which were significant to her, as well as her death certificate and other “official” papers. I thumb through the file three or four times a year, and consider it a candidate to toss.
Her file is usually a pleasant surprise though, a few moments of reflection, bringing her back to life for a short time, often in the middle of a busy day.
There are pay stubs in the file; for a while she worked at Fisher Price Toys. My mother used to call me a couple of times a week to talk about the “little people”. No, she wasn’t talking as a ‘royal’ or a BP executive speaking about Gulf Coast residents; she was talking about Fisher Price Toys’ “little people”.
As the little people passed her on a round-table assembly line, she would have to stamp eyes on their little faces or put a little head on a little body or hair on the little head. Some of the little people had faults, cock-eyed hats or maybe eyes on the back of their heads. Employees could take home the mistakes; they called them “misfits”.
My mother watched over the misfits in her apartment. They sat tucked here and there on shelves or end tables.
Some evenings when she phoned, she would be quite agitated about her job. The round table seemed to go too fast and she didn’t think she could keep up, or on other days workers on the line didn’t put the heads or eyes on properly, too many little people turned into misfits.
Thinking back on it now, I wasn’t always polite to my mother. I picked up the phone, and as she told in detail of her latest quandary concerning the little people, I would sink back in a chair, and massage my temples. I began to get headaches from little people stories.
Here was a woman who went through the depression as a child, in a family that was dirt poor. As a young bride with a baby she survived separation from my father for much of WWII. She was widowed at age 36, raised four boys on her own, and had a turbulent second marriage that ended in divorce. She was an intelligent well-read woman with a great sense of humor and now her primary subject of conversation boiled down to Fisher Price ‘little people’.
She didn’t miss the absurdity in the fact that her life revolved around the little people, we laughed about it often, especially when she started giving them human attributes.
She loved her work, and the real (big) people there, but I told her I didn’t want to hear about them anymore, her life had to be about more than just little people. She called several days later and we spoke about my brother for a minute, then she launched into a little people anecdote.
We reached an agreement. I would listen to twenty minutes of little people talk, no more than twice a week. She would have a chance to vent and make jokes about them, but then we moved on. If we didn’t have another subject to chat about, we would talk another day.
I imagine her hanging up the phone from our twenty minute talk and saying to the nearest little person with its crooked hat and lopsided smile, “He just doesn’t care about you misfits the way I do”.
She would chuckle at herself.
I still can’t toss her file out.
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Ozone Rangers Float Again

Emmy and I went on a Buffalo Harbor boat cruise August 21. This isn’t your ordinary boat cruise; it was the second annual Ozone Rangers cruise. The band kept us entertained, for three hours and a number of nautical miles. I had forgotten how good the group and its lead guitarist/vocalist Bob Muhlbauer are.
Muhlbauer, a local Western New York luminary, started the Ozone Rangers over three decades ago. He is well known around town and has become a fixture at Springville Griffith Institute. He is the audio-visual technician for the school, and its six buildings including the district offices and bus garage.
Bob Muhlbauer tried for a number of years to make music his only profession. In the past decade and a half there have been numerous changes in the way people enjoy themselves. The legal drinking age has increased and drinking and driving laws have been stiffened. For years the Ozone Rangers worked most nights of every week. There are unintended consequences for all actions good or bad, new laws hurt music venues where legal beverages are served.
“From 1981 to about 1995 that is all I did, we used to play five nights a week. Then the bar scene just quieted right down. You are lucky now to get people coming out at all on weekends,” said Muhlbauer.

During those years, the group cut an album entitled “Long Way to Rock and Roll” and played gigs from Fort Lauderdale to Quebec.
The members of the band have changed through the years; it may be a figment of my imagination but I think more than one of them had a ZZ Top-type long white beard as Muhlbauer still sports these days. Other people remember the Ozone Rangers in the same way, and think of them as a ZZ Top tribute band.
Long time fans have said “I remember when all you played was ZZ Top.”
Muhlbauer indicated that a lot of people think that, but the group has always had a diverse playlist, much as it is today.
Their song list can be found at ozonerangers.com. They do perform a healthy amount of ZZ Top hits but have always played a variety of classic rock and roll, from Beatles and Steely Dan to Foghat and Queen.
On our cruise the other afternoon, when Miss Buffalo departed the dock, Bob Muhlbauer, and bass guitarist Xeno had a hard time getting their sea legs, even the seated drummer/vocalist Brendan Komenda seemed close to losing the beat, or possibly an entire drum. Unlike a normal stage, the Miss Buffalo bucked and rocked under their feet. It took them only minutes to become accustomed to the movement. Soundman extraordinaire, Howard "Dude" Wallace, with the expectations of some rough seas tied his speakers to the overhead canopy before the performance.
The four man combination performed well, Brendan Komenda, from the Buffalo based band, Sky, has a great voice which compliments Muhlbauer’s. Recently added bassist and vocalist, Xeno, from the Buffalo area band C.T. Ryder rounded out the band with backup vocals. Soundman Howard Wallace makes sure the sound levels are right and no one looses an eardrum.
Muhlbauer said of ‘Soundman’ Wallace, “We trust Howard- we will always sound the best we are able, with him out there.”
There were folks from all over Western New York at this years’ Ozone Ranger’s cruise, but plenty of room for more. It was a great afternoon for classic rock and roll. Dates for next year’s cruise, other upcoming shows and interesting commentary can be found at ozonerangers.com

tap or die

Terry Stephan


The news recently reported on an Atlanta woman who got out of a terrible situation by typing a “help” message on her computer with her toes. A young man with a gun broke into her house around midnight.
The victim, Amy Windom, wasn’t going to be taken advantage of easily and put up a fight. In the struggle, the robber whacked her in the head with the gun.
She began to cooperate. He led her around the house, she identified what and where her valuables were. He then tied her to her bed by her wrists. He stayed another 40 minutes or so, coming back to her bedroom occasionally, asking for pin numbers and other information about her possessions. He then left with her car.
It must have been a terrifying incident, but the woman kept her wits about her. When it came time to take her laptop, she told the thief it was a company laptop and could be traced. He left it at the foot of her mattress.
She remained tied to her bed for hours, occasionally shouting for help. The shoelaces binding her were cutting into her wrists. She flipped her legs over her head to shut off the bedside radio. She wanted to hear if anyone was passing by and possibly get their attention.
She knew the computer was there, but thought the robber would have cut the phone lines, so she would have no internet service. She unlocked the laptop by hitting the control, alt and delete keys all at once, with her toes and was surprised and pleased to see she had wireless internet.
She operated the mouse pad and clicked on the mouse buttons with the big toe of her right foot. With her left foot she typed with the stiff end of the laptop’s power cord held between two toes, instant messaging her boyfriend to call 911, shortly after five in the morning.
Their communication went something like this;
Amy WINDOM: U THERE
BOYFRIEND: Yea? Your’e up?
WINDOM: HELP.
BOYFRIEND: I was going to ping you before but- Sure
WINDOM: HELP RE3AD EMAIL
BOYFRIEND: What email?
A few more keystrokes and scant seconds later, Windom’s boyfriend John, dialed the police.
If it happened to me, my case would have ended differently. I’ve stretched my foot out to grasp an errant slipper between my big and second toe and gotten a foot cramp so bad I couldn’t stand up for an hour. Pressing control, alt and delete all at the same time with my toes is probably out of the question; with my fingers I can just manage to pick out and hit those three keys all at once.
I use a cordless mouse but, it isn’t tied directly to my computer with a wire so sometimes it wanders away all by itself. Operating the curser with a mouse pad or anything other than a hand held mouse usually brings out my latent feelings of discontent towards micro engineered electronic equipment. This forces me to express myself with language unbecoming a gentleman.
I digress. My point is, if I got that far, and sent an “IM” to Emmy, her response would have been very different from that of Amy Windom’s boyfriend.
ME: ‘HELPCALL 911’
Emmy: “What? You write everything with your ‘caps lock’ on now?”, “Are we animals?”
ME: RE3AD EMAIL
EMMY: “What email? We’re instant messaging; did you take one of your happy pills? Have you gotten enough sleep? You do know ‘read’ doesn’t have a ‘3’ in it, right?”
ME: Call the police.
I don’t think she would have taken me seriously at this point; she may have come back with something about being busy and not having time to fool around.
Either way, the cramp from typing would be causing excruciating pain; I would have to remain tied up for at least another hour.
XKMNMNJJKKRE4ADHTSEIMMNRRTOP7849FQSTQ34
Just practicing…
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Photos

I received a complimentary comment on my most recent post, "Speed Shopping", also with the suggestion that I post more photos with my writing. I appreciate the suggestion. I have included few photos in my past posts, finding it difficult to put them where I wanted them, and having the forethought to take the photos in the first place. I am learning all the time and will work on inserting more photos in future submissions ..

Speed Shopping and Stan

Often, when I don’t really have time to shop, but need to pick up a dozen or fewer items I ‘speed shop’ at our local grocery store. I don’t pay much attention to prices or quantity but push the cart through the store at a good pace; the objective is getting the job done quickly.
This may include skipping an aisle where I could be lured into conversation by an acquaintance. When I encounter someone I know, I try to get away with a nod. I feel as though I am being rude but many times I am not the only one who wants to get in and out of the store quickly.
When I’m not in a hurry, a phenomenon occurs which happens all over small town America, probably all over the world. You see a friend in the first aisle of the store and exchange greetings. You concentrate on your shopping for a bit, then look up to see the same person in the next aisle, you exchange a few sentences. You may skip an aisle but then run into them again, by the time you both roll up to the checkout counter; you’ve caught up on most local events and are talked out. You could probably call this experience, ‘social shopping’.
Recently my friend Stanley saw an old ally in that first aisle. He had not seen the woman in a number of years and he couldn’t remember her name but seeing her filled him with a surge of familiarity.
They worked together on several volunteer projects two decades earlier. They became comrades. She was particularly easy to work with, and would take on a project with vigor and see it through with a smile on her face. He was ashamed that he couldn’t remember her name.
She was concentrating on ‘specials’ in the first aisle, pasta sauce in hand, examining the nutrition label. Stanly came up beside her and said, “Hello, how have you been?”
The woman responded with a sort of double take, and then a big smile, “Fine, how are you?”
Her big friendly smile pleased Stan, she remembered him fondly, as he had her. She didn’t say his name - so maybe she was in the same quandary as he. The name would come back to him he just needed to ruminate a bit more.
He left her to read labels and pushed onward, certain that not only would her name come to mind, but also they would have a chance to “catch up” in aisles to come. He slowly collected items from second row shelves, trying to remember. Was it something with an ‘R’, “Robin” maybe?
She rounded the end of his aisle. The carts very close now, her name came to him. “Ruth” he said, “I have to tell you what happened to ….”
He filled her in about one of their co-workers on the project which had seemed so important back then. As they both assumed would happen, the co-worker and his wife did get a divorce.
In the fourth and fifth aisle he told her about his kids and grandkids, all doing well.
She seemed reluctant to talk about her own children; she had two girls, around the same age as his boys. Ruth and Stanley had things in common, their kids were the subject of many a discussion all those years ago. Maybe she just wasn’t happy with the way her offspring had turned out.
He ended up in line right behind her at the checkout, as she was paying her bill. He felt uneasy because he had dominated their conversation.
Stan said, “Ruth, you haven’t told me how your kids are doing, did your oldest girl ever…?”
Her face flushed and she looked almost belligerent as she interrupted his sentence saying, “I’m sorry, I’m not your friend Ruth.” She turned and quickly pushed her cart, full of bagged groceries, out of the store.
Now Stanley understood why she had been so quite.
He would be better off ‘speed shopping’ more often.
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Paradise lost

This is a column from just a few weeks ago when the news seemed much bleaker from the Gulf of Mexico..

Paradise can be more than just a place, sometimes it refers to a place and a time, maybe more. I can name only a few trips Emmy and I have taken where things were near perfect and we referred to that place (and time) as ‘paradise’; one was a paddle/portage trip in Killarney Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada.
We stumbled upon some sort of Twilight Zone or time continuum slot between the black fly and mosquito seasons, our insect repellent went unused! It was 14 days of perfect weather. We swam and studied wildlife and did nothing resembling our day to day grind in the ‘real’ world.
Our other “paradise” was in and around the Gulf of Mexico. Emmy and I have fond memories of our time spent there. A few months before Katrina, we explored beaches and marshes in Texas and Louisiana. We had a fantastic time on the beach, reading and dozing and wading into water just slightly cooler than air temperature. We saw alligators and armadillos and a huge sea turtle. We saw exotic birds, so colorful I thought they must have escaped from a zoo.
Emmy Lou is far more adventurous than I when it comes to water sports. I found this out just a few days after we were married and still on our honey moon. In the middle of Tupper Lake, she stood up in our canoe and dived into the water and swam away. I thought maybe it was something I said.
As she swam away, I hollered after her that she was on her own; I wouldn’t be able to do anything to save her should she start drowning or meet another calamitous fate. My definition of swimming was well put by Paul Stookey; to me, ‘swimming is, staying alive while I am in the water.’
Through the years I have cautioned Emmy to stay near shore or near the boat- she doesn’t listen.
In the Gulf, the water was waist deep for what seemed like miles. I saw no need to wade further than fifty feet or so from shore. As I sat enjoying the shade from our camper’s awning, Emmy Lou waded out so far she was barely a spec in the flat water. I saw a dorsal fin slicing its way past in the shallow water, not seventy five feet from where I sat. With my knowledge of sea life, it could have been a great white shark or a beagle fish. Emmy was too far away to hear any warning from me, so I said nothing. Someday that girl will be consumed by something higher up on the food chain than she, all I will be able to do is say wistfully, ‘Told you so’.
At dusk, as we lay on a blanket, watching the water and the light of day fade, we noticed specs of light popping out in the sky. After the first night, we realized that not all of the dots were stars. Low on the horizon, some were the lights on oil rigs, their iron work not visible in the brightness of day.
In my ignorance, I could never imagine that just one of those far off specs on the horizon could be the cause of so much damage to the shore we enjoyed, or that vast body of water. I guess BP didn’t think of that either. The difference is; I never drilled an oil well, British Petroleum has drilled more than a few and should know better.
After making the mess, adding insult to injury, BP followed the practices of many highly successful insurance companies by ‘slow-walking’ business owners and others through claims, saving money when the process overcame the claimants and they gave up and walked away.
Each day there is more news of oil spreading, damaging another business, or destroying another beach or marsh or killing another type of animal. We are losing the Gulf a little at a time.
I can’t help but wonder how much of paradise will be left when BP proclaims “Mission Accomplished”...

Jason on Jeopardy

Sorry I haven't submitted in a while, busy summer. The following is a colomn from earlier this year...


A relative of mine was on Jeopardy recently. Jason won a bunch of money in less than a week. His mother Kathy and I share grandparents and half a century of friendly camaraderie and light spirited conversation. Kathy is clever and funny and she, Emmy, and I have made each other think and laugh through the good and bad years. It is no surprise that all three of her kids are super smart. Jason’s father is no slouch when it comes to mental dexterity either.
I suppose it is a bad habit, but I comment or talk to my TV, usually but not always in a derogatory manner. From my living room chair, I talked at Jason while he was on Jeopardy, trying to be helpful. In the beginning, he didn’t seem to be pushing the button to answer the questions. I mostly yelled, “Push the button” then louder, “PUSH THE BUTTON”. It didn’t seem to have any effect on whether or not he pushed the button, no matter how loud I yelled.
I always knew Jason was a smart young man, but as I watched the show, I couldn’t believe just how smart and fast he is.
In any conversation that turns adversarial, or in any argument, my snappy retorts make less and less sense along the lines of, “so is your mother” or “up your nose with a rubber hose.” Sometimes I just slip into overused repetitive profanities. If given the chance to sleep and regroup my thoughts, muttering to myself overnight, I can come up with a great reply. They don’t give you that much time on Jeopardy.
As I watched the show, I knew few of the answers. When I did know answers, the contestants had pressed their button and replied (in the form of a question), long before the answer made it from the ‘I know that’ stage in my brain to actually verbalizing the words with my mouthparts.
Early on, I was pretty happy with myself and a bit disappointed with Jason because I knew the answer to a question having to do with the planting of our flag on Iwo Jima and an old Johnny Cash song. The song is about superior achievements of persons from which the rest of society would not expect that much. The answer was “Ira Hayes”, more appropriately, “Who was Ira Hays.” It was one of the few questions to which Jason didn’t have an answer.
A line from the song in a time when political correctness was a bit less correct than it is today is, “…call him drunken Ira Hays, he won’t answer any more, not the whiskey drinkin’ Indian, or the marine that went to war.”
That turned out to be the only answer I knew well enough to have pushed the button first and placed in the form of a question.
After that, the questions got harder. Jason won Jeopardy money knowing the names of various Norse characters, some of which I thought he made up. He knew lines from George Washington’s inaugural speech and sports terms I never heard of. He also showed a wealth of knowledge from movies, the serious to the amazingly frivolous. In the TV department, he knew three stooges trivia and daytime soap opera characters. He knew the answers to questions when I didn’t even understand the question.
Jason’s education has been and still is, his own hunger for knowledge. On Jeopardy, most of the competitors Jason knocked out were well-educated, degree holding professional types. He won over $150,000, not bad for an engine assembler from right here in Western New York.
I always wanted to be on a show like Jeopardy, maybe I could do well if they limited the questions to old Johnny Cash lyrics..
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Grandaughters, Wives, and Computers

Emmy and I have been chatting online lately. For my fellow computer illiterates ‘chatting’, on the internet is a kind of fast form of email. If you don’t know what email is, you’ve just woken from a long comma, congratulations!
In a two-person chat, both people are on line at the same time, and have a written (typed) conversation. In the old days, you dialed up a person to chat, their phone rang, and they answered. Now both people find themselves online at the same time. In my love/hate relationship with computers and the internet, one thing I love is the communication. I think something almost mystical is at work.
You could be minding your business, doing something important on the internet, like finding out how many people recorded specific rock and roll and blues hits from three decades ago on You-tube. A little balloon window will pop up in the corner of your computers’ screen and tell you someone you are acquainted with is online and ‘available’.
Knowing that someone is willing and waiting for a chat interferes with my concentration. It forces me to put some thought into a talk with a person I may not have been interested in chatting with in the first place. If I ignore the little window, I begin to feel guilty. After all, how many different video versions of Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” can I possibly enjoy? (The number is vast)
If the ‘chat’ person went on line for some companionship and I sit like a bump on a log will they feel rejected? Maybe no one will talk to them. Maybe they are having a bad day- personal crisis; maybe they need to talk to someone.
I try to think up something intelligent to say, I type in, “What’s up, dude?”
A little balloon pops up claiming the person is no longer available. I wonder if the person is ‘not available’ because I am the one who responded, maybe I should feel rejected. What I really feel is relief– I don’t have to think up any more great lines like, ‘What’s up, dude?’
If my granddaughter is the individual on line, ready and available, we are always happy to chat with her.
Our son Jon sets up the chat session from their home, and Paige continues chatting as she pleases.
We travel for business, in our little truck camper. The last trip we took was six weeks. The chats with Paige lift our spirits, bringing a third person, a favorite one at that, into our small space. We use Emmy’s computer and she types in my comments as well as her own.
We have a lot of patience for our granddaughter; at six years of age, Paige doesn’t have a long attention span nor is she a fast typist. She sometimes wanders off in the middle of a chat, only to return minutes later. There is a lot of hang-on time between sentences.
In the camper, on our end of the conversation, Emmy spends the wait-time sewing beads onto fabric and leather; I read and write and watch videos.
Though not speedy, our granddaughter most often replies in full sentences with perfect spelling and grammar. She already has a sense of humor and often makes some very adult observations. At one point we were chatting and there was a longer than usual wait.
Emmy typed, “Are you there, Paige?”
Paige wrote, “No.”
I told Paige, I wished I had a mail delivery owl like those in the Harry Potter novels, a nice, fluffy solid white one.
Paige said, “Grandpa, you do know that is only fiction don’t you?”
She was so serious, I couldn’t answer.
Even if she doubts my knowledge or my sanity, Paige will always be welcome in any chat of mine.
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I love MMB-- recycled column

Meredith Baxter Bernie (MBB) announced a few weeks ago that she is a lesbian. Many people last knew her as the wholesome Mrs. Keaton from the classic sit-com “Family-Ties”. I’m sure the declaration upset a multitude of people concerned with other’s sexual preferences.
On the show, she portrayed an ex hippie type mom, opposite her radical-right-wing-Nixon-admiring son, Michael J Fox. As the Mom, the voice of reason, she doled out advice and consolation to her family. In real life, she married three times, but did not realize until lately the pool in which she was fishing contained the wrong gender. If common sense could have carried over to her real life, maybe she would have stopped marrying men. She could have at least given it some thought between weddings.
I was head over heels infatuated with her back when ‘Family-Ties’ was popular. I liked her almost as much as Emmy hankered after Willy Nelson.
Somehow, in my fantasy I saw Mrs. Keaton and me, running off. We would consummate our relationship on some tropical island beach, living in a grass hut, existing on sushi and margaritas, happily ever after. Being a fantasy and my chances of success so small, I didn’t mull over details such as, what would become of my spouse and kids. Maybe Tiger Woods should have put a little thought into that.
I know my chances were not good with Mrs. Keaton but I have a vivid imagination.
One year, while the Family-Ties sit-com was still in production, Emmy, our two boys, and I were on vacation in Washington DC. I saw Michael Gross, the Dad on the Family-Ties series, at a table near ours in a Bennigans.
Under the guise of getting his autograph for my kids, (not for me, of course) I went over to his table with a pen and piece of paper. I am fully aware that actors on TV are most often not married to, or related to the people they perform with on sit-coms, but I remember studying the people he was sitting with to see if the woman I adored was in attendance. I didn’t even care if the wildly popular Michael J Fox was there. It turned out Mr. Keaton was with regular people, most likely his own family. How boring is that?
I felt bad that I disturbed him; I was committing an unwelcome act. He got up from his chair and walked me back to my table, explaining that he didn’t believe in giving autographs unless he was at a publicity event. He was friendly and courteous then shook my hand and went back to sit with his family. Though I felt like a lout for bothering him, I thought if I were he, I would probably just tell someone like myself to go away or conversely, just sign the piece of paper and be done with it.
I was in a funk about Meredith Baxter, coming out of the closet. Married women tire of their spouses, opening up the possibility for good-looking blond stars to run away with fat old men like me. I can fantasize that they would love to spend their lives in abject poverty on a beach in Samoa. However, when women realize they are batting for the other team they seldom start back with the original line up.
Emmy Lou has been well aware of my fixation for MBB; I’m pretty much an open book. When she came home from shopping I glumly told her I found out Mom Keaton was no longer interested in men. I said I guess that is one more fantasy I’m was going to have to leave behind.
Emmy told me I didn’t have to give up the dream, pointing out that Mrs. Keaton is just as likely to run off with me now, as before she discovered her new sexual orientation. “The odds of it happening haven’t changed a bit.” She said.
As often happens, Emmy’s keen observation brightened my day.

Allentown

Travels with Emmy...
Our show this past weekend was at the Allentown Art Festival. Allentown is a party/artsy section of Buffalo NY. The weather report for both days included passing showers, of which we got few to none. Crowds on Saturday were sparse but we enjoyed a just-below-average monetary intake. There was heavier traffic on Sunday, but they didn’t spend much, at least not at our booth..
My wife is the artist, she builds beautiful bead embroidered jewelry, I am a retired truck driver. I get to do all things that are not actually artistic. We travel to the shows with our pickup truck camper and display trailer. It far easier for us to walk a few minutes to the camper and stay overnight even if the location isn’t ideal, than to drive the hour or so home and back in the morning.
This year’s overnight stays in Allentown were the quietest to date. Two years ago a security alarm started to ring loudly around 2PM during the first day of the show from the building whose parking lot we were taking advantage of. It rang for over 30 hours. I was surprised nearby residents weren’t alarmed and up in arms themselves. The police came shortly after the noise started but could not locate the owners to access the building and shut the alarm off.
The ringing bell wasn’t so bad, it helped to cover the noise of the college-aged drunken kids singing and arguing loudly as they roamed the streets from bar to bar. It has been pointed out to me that these are suburban children, not locals. I believe that to be true, when I was an inexperienced drinker I was one of those noisy young people. I lived in Hamburg, a suburb of Buffalo; I came to Allentown to enjoy the night life, noisily roaming the streets and frequenting the bars in that section of town.
I am always amazed at the patience the locals have for these arts and crafts festivals. I live in rural Western NY and when I have to wait for a car at a stop sign on the end of my road where there usually is no traffic I can be slightly perturbed.
Residents, who live where these shows take place, often have to park blocks away from their homes. Before and after ‘show hours’, while we are tying up loose ends or opening for the days show, neighborhood folks walk by with their dogs or hoof it to the market. They always have a cheerful “good morning” or “hello”.
‘Twere it I, it would probably be a growl… I’m just saying.

Machine whisperer recycled column

I am not the only one; there is an army of bewildered backyard mechanics with average abilities out there. We did the simple things. We adjusted carburetors, changed spark plugs, replaced oil and filters, brake shoes, mufflers and shocks.
We always expected a Ford or a Chevy, even an old Volvo, to last a decade or two with a few repairs and some routine maintenance. You’d have to open the hood or crawl under and get your hands dirty, but in the end, you could make it run.
Then there is the above average mechanic. I have a neighbor and friend whom I’ll call Bob. He has a machinist’s mindset and mechanical character. Bob has been retired twenty years and is having a particularly hard time giving up his old ways. He has built machines from the ground up, creating them a piece at a time, on a lathe or a horizontal mill from brass and iron. I think of him as the ‘machine whisperer’.
I’ve seen Bob, walk up to a dead car or dismantled engine. He’ll scratch the side of his head; maybe shake it ever so slightly from side to side. He will then roll up his sleeves and work it like a puzzle, “is the engine getting air? Is there spark? How about fuel?” When the puzzle comes together and the pieces function like the well-tuned machine it was meant to be, Bob would be satisfied, but no one was surprised, because he is the machine whisperer.
Bob recently bought a brand new computer and had high-speed internet installed in his home. He unhappily carried his old PC to his shop and spread it out on a flat-topped cart, where many of his mechanical projects begin. The big old CRT monitor, tower, printer, external modem, speakers and the connecting cables covered the three by five foot surface.
The old computer had let him down. Even though Bob performed routine maintenance on it- defragging, blowing the dust out of it, the aged PC failed him. He didn’t even get a decade out of it.
He is a fan of several on-line forums, reading posts from other motor-head types. Discussions are of machines, their care, and construction. As we all know though, it is a high-speed world. The motor-head forums became harder for Bob to view with dial-up internet service and his old PC’s super-slow processor. Other motor-heads sent pictures to him, and though he is a patient man, the long wait for a single old tractor photo to upload was disturbing. Video links were out of the question, click on one and it would choke the life out of the ancient PC.
It’s winter now, and it takes a lot to heat Bobs’ shop. He won’t work out there much until spring. The old computer still sits on the flatbed cart. The machine whisperer walks out to his shop occasionally and sees the parts arranged on the cart. He walks around it, viewing it from different angles. He scratches his cranium, shakes his head imperceptibly side to side, he can’t fit the pieces of the puzzle together, he can’t bring it back to life.
No amount of thinking or shrugging of shoulders or nodding his head will bring this puppy back to life. It is as obsolete as a blunderbuss.
It is good the cold makes his shop unusable for now. Though defeat is inevitable, Bob has time to accept it. He realizes there is no resale value for the junk computer. At least a car would bring him money for parts. He will chuck it in the spring.
He’ll spread the parts of an ailing, but real machine, made of steel and aluminum on the cart. He will have it running, smooth in no time, clicking or humming or thumping the way it was meant to- for he is the machine whisperer.
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Internet Sales

Terry Stephan

Changing Lanes:internetsales
According to the flyer a friend gave me, I would receive an MP3 player and lunch, just to sit in on a FREE 90-minute “2009 Internet Marketing Conference”. The leaflet included testimonials - people had already made bazillions of dollars following the advice given at these conferences.
I knew it was a sales pitch, probably software. The leaflet added, “join us at this fun, relaxed, informative 90-minute Conference that is guaranteed to give you a new way to think about making money like never before.”
I hoped to glean some internet savvy by attending. The invitation insisted on ‘business casual’ attire. The ironic thing is, people I talk to list working in their pajamas as the number one benefit of working on the internet at home.
I have attended sales seminars with “free” giveaways in the past and found them to be time consuming and irritating, the giveaways junk – I decided to go anyway.
As people showed up for the meeting, one and two at a time, staff ushered them to specific seats. I couldn’t help but notice the younger people were placed up front. They would be more enthusiastic and, had less shyster-exposure. As I write this, I think it likely there were one or more ‘plants’ in the front row. I have nothing to back that claim, other than the fact that those up front had an unrealistically enthusiastic passion for the sales pitch.
The further from the front, the greyer the hair was.
The speaker began by claiming to be a former FBI special agent and asked if there were any law enforcement people in the room. Negative responses assured him there were no police in the audience. That and the notice requesting no one record the event, made it so there was no need to stay within the confines of the law in this assembly.
The presentation started late and lasted far longer than the originally stated 90 minutes. The speaker was friendly and funny. He pitched software and a support system to build a website. You could vend whatever products you choose to, on line. There were stiff monthly fees and internet tool packages, some costing upwards of $3200.00.
The sales group passed around “business order forms”. The forms asked for your credit card information, needed so you could attend another conference in Erie Pa, to be held in several weeks. It would only cost $48. There, you would sit through a second push so these wonderful people could gain access to a larger portion of your bank account.
Our friendly speaker said we could eat lunch as soon as we filled out our order forms. The whole pitch had boiled down to this, after two hours of camaraderie, jokes and an impassioned plea for this software it would be an embarrassment not to fill out the form for this superb company. I did not feel friendly or pliable; I never do when backed into a corner.
As I stood to leave, I noticed the people in the front rows, bent over their forms, eagerly filling in the demanded information. I turned; most of those seated behind me, hair just a bit more grey than mine, had their arms stubbornly crossed in front of them, no pens in hand, no credit card info entered on their forms, they were ready for a fight. They wanted their “free” MP3 player and lunch.
It was nearing 2PM and I was hungry and extremely perturbed. I had not ‘gleaned’ a single useful fact.
Including drive time, I had invested four hours. I figured the lunch and MP3 player were at least half hour away, possibly longer, depending on how the standoff between the grey-hairs and the ‘friendly’ staff ended.
I cut my losses and walked out the door. Half an hour later after a nice lunch for which I gladly paid, I savored coffee and something I remembered.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
I’m not sure about free MP3 players.
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Blackberry Blues

I’ve always wondered what a Blackberry was and why President Obama was having such a hard time parting with his. I’ve had one for a while now. I have a slight headache, a stiff neck and sore thumbs from operating the clever little device. I’ve become very attached to it.
There was a time I kept every phone number of acquaintances, my employers and most addresses I considered necessary, in my head. I could also remember the list of a half dozen items I needed to get when I walked the aisles of my local super market. Back then, if I ambled to the living room from the kitchen with a purpose, I could recall what that purpose was. Now I wait for it to come to me or walk back empty handed. Somewhere along the line, my brain has turned to oatmeal.
Several years ago, I purchased a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) smart-phone. A long time before that, it had been cutting-edge technology, ridiculously overpriced. After years of production, (read ‘after it became much cheaper’) I bought one.
The smart-phone performed a plethora of important functions. It stored my appointments, my calendar, and address book. It contained my ‘to-do’ and grocery lists. Once a week I attached it to my computer with a cable and ‘synced’ all of the above. If I changed or added something on either the PDA or the computer, the two would talk it over during ‘sync-time’ and exchange the information. It even was a good calculator.
I loved the touch screen at first, but became less fond of that later. The PDA did many things wonderfully, but it wasn’t a good cell phone. It was a step backward in that area. When talking to someone, it felt as though I was holding a brick to the side of my head. Not a regular brick either. It was more like one of those heavy, dense Olean paving bricks. Some part of my face would hit the touch screen and end the call early or start a conference call, or play loud music. During the call, my ear would sometimes touch the screen in an inappropriate place and it would activate an unwanted application.
The volume settings were unruly, refusing to adjust the way I wanted. It would inexplicably convert to speakerphone between calls. After leaving scar tissue on my eardrums a few times, I knew to answer the phone carefully.
My two-year contract with Verizon wireless ended a year or so ago. Because I didn’t attempt to sign up for another service contract or get a new phone, Verizon began pestering me, sending me special “deals”, almost on a weekly basis. The longer I did not sign, the phones offered for “free”, got better and more elaborate. Competition in the wireless market is fierce and I was one guppy they didn’t want to lose. Verizon seemed frantic to win me back.
Following my brain’s example, my PDA smart-phones’ thinking became cloudy. When I entered information on the touch-screen, the wrong numbers and letters came up, I would hit a “t” on the virtual keyboard and an “r” would register on the screen. I had to ‘realign’ on a daily basis.
I finally accepted one of Verizon’s offers. My new Blackberry does all the things my old smart phone did, only faster and without prompting. I don’t turn on my computer many days because email comes to the Blackberry. I can get CNN news, the weather, and Google anything, anywhere, anytime. It reminds me to take my medications and to take out the garbage. I can download audio books from the library or listen to music from any number of sources and, it’s a great calculator.
Technology has come a long way. As evidence, when used as a phone, the Blackberry feels like a much smaller brick than the old PDA did. Oh well, you can’t have everything.
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Timonium

By Terry Stephan
Blog…
I am ashamed of the amount of time I have not posted on this blog. I have a lot of reasons or excuses why I haven’t, but I should try harder. Betty and I have been on a ‘road trip’ selling her jewelry in Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland.
I didn’t want to advertise that my house was sitting empty most of the time except when my cousin Spike and his pit bulls were watching the place.
We are now a week from home and Spike has informed me he will be released from the county holding center today and will be in residence this afternoon and will pick up his pups Killer and Softy tomorrow.
Our show trip has had little in the line of spectacular results, our revenues in most cases were a little less than last year’s, except for Greensboro. We took in about a third of what we did last year there. The area has a 12.7% unemployment rate. The powers that be chose to close a major downtown highway, the weekend of our show.
That was last week, I write this from Timonium, at the Maryland State Fair Grounds. People have referred to this place as “The Cow Palace”. It wasn’t until we got here that we found out that really is the name of the place. For verification, I drove around the building and out back were several huge steaming piles of manure..
Betty received some good ‘hype’ from the promoters on their website for this show, so we are hoping for some decent sales.

Terry Stephan

Changing Lanes: ode to Susie
The conversation turned to Susie a while ago. She had been toasted multiple times. Thoroughly warmed to his subject and thoroughly warmed by the wine, Susie’s long time companion Matt continued, “I’ve slept with Susie under the stars more times than all the other women I’ve known, including my ex wife.”
“Here’s to Susie,” said a dozen voices in unison.
We were at a party, the original reason for which has long been forgotten, but it could have been for Susie or Matt or for the both of them.
I just met Matt and took an instant liking to him. I’d only heard about him from his sister Doris. She is a good friend of mine and Emmy’s. I had heard her speak of him often. He was in the Coast Guard, he admired and wanted to be a cowboy, and he lived in Montana; he seemed to have chosen that state as home after having drifted around for a number of years. Most of those years, he traveled with Susie, but he was a man who generally had bad luck with women.
Matt had come home to see his family and visit his Susie.
“Susie is the kindest friend a man could have,” said Matt
The chorus saluted, “Here’s to Susie.”
With a tender softness in his voice, Matt said, “I got my first glimpse of her when I was stationed in Michigan. I was in the Coast Guard. We traveled around together, but then I had to leave Susie stateside...”
“Here’s to Susie,” at the mention of the celebrated Susie, the partiers interrupted Matt’s train of thought.
With a slightly annoyed glance at no one in particular Matt started over, “I had to leave… her, with my parents when I went to Puerto Rico.”
When Matt came back to the states, he picked up where he had left off with Susie. He drove his old F 150 pickup that pulled the horse trailer in which his friend and companion Susie, the sweet red roan mare, traveled.
When it was time to settle for the night he would chose an out of the way pull-off, park the trailer and take Susie for a walk. He’d make a small rope paddock for her, roll out his sleeping bag, and he and Susie would spend the night under the stars beside the truck and trailer.
He eventually left the Coast Guard. Their travels brought them to Montana. Matt loved the state, he loved ranches and he loved the life of a cowboy. He worked as a jack of all trades. He had training as a forester, and a mechanic. He could weld and he knew horses, all assets to any ranch at which he took up residence. They were as glad to have him as he was to be there.
Matt dealt with severe migraine headaches and a multitude of other medical symptoms for many years. He was recently diagnosed with adult onset encephalitis, a form of brain swelling, the cause for which could be any number of things.
He was married for a while but never did get along with women as well as he does with horses, it didn’t work out. Their last argument ended when he turned to leave and his wife hit him in the back of the head hard enough to knock him out. She walked out and left him for dead. He was in some bar fights as a young man and did get knocked around a bit as well. Any of these things, or something else entirely could be the cause of his medical condition.
Before he was diagnosed, Matt knew something was wrong. His headaches were so bad he passed out on occasion, but he also drank on occasion, maybe he blamed some of his symptoms on that.
While he and his friends were hunting way up in the mountains, Matt had a ‘spell’ of some sort and passed out. His friends couldn’t revive him and in their efforts to get him to a hospital quickly, Susie was tied to a tree and left to fend for herself.
She was there for three days- the odds weren’t necessarily in favor of Susie’s survival; horses are lower in the food chain than grizzly bears and mountain lions. Matt’s hunting buddies called a ranch in the vicinity of where they had tied Susie and ranch hands from there rescued her and kept her for three months until Matt was back on his feet and could come to get her.
Matt would say, ‘they help each other out in the great state of Montana.’
Matt’s fortunes went downhill from there. His migraines became debilitating and he had other associated medical problems.
When Matt thought he was not taking care of Susie as well as he should, he decided to find her a good home. His sister Doris suggested he bring her back to Western New York, after all, Susie had been around so long Doris felt she was a member of the family. She and husband Jay, built her a nice little barn
Matt lives on a ranch in Montana now. He goes on cattle drives when he is able and copes with his illness as best he can. He tells stories to anyone who will listen about his travels and the best horse he ever knew.
Susie is 29 years old now, her traveling days are done. She lives with a chestnut mare named Velvet in the cozy little barn that Doris and Jay built. The two horses get along well with acres to exercise in and they have their own barn cat named Possum. In Possum’s perspective, he has two large horses. When the mares get close enough, the cat swats at their hooves and legs through the wooden slats in the stall. If things are slow in the barn the cat will climb up one of the horse’s tails and run across their backs and escape by jumping to the nearest timber in the barn.
Anyone who has worked with horses knows each one has their own personality and their own list of ‘tricks’. Susie is known as a gentle animal and an easy ride but she isn’t real talented. However she will give you a big smile after you give her a treat.
I took my five-year-old granddaughter Paige to see Susie. Paige gave her a carrot and Susie took it from Paige with her big hairy lips then gave her a big toothy goofy smile, which in turn gave Paige a giggle and a grin.
Here’s to Susie…
The party to toast Susie was a few years ago. Matt calls periodically to catch up with family and of course to see how Susie is doing. He hasn’t been back “East” for a while though. I can’t wait for Susie’s next party.
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Money and Quicken

Terry Stephan

Changing Lanes:dancingwithnumbers:
For years, I’ve used ‘Microsoft Money’ to send out bills, balance my checking account and keep track of finances.
From the first week I started using a computer, I wanted a good money management program. I began using a free version of ‘Quicken’ a dozen years ago. Then my bank, no longer satisfied just giving away toasters, gave away Microsoft’s ‘Money’.
That first software version of ‘Money’ lasted six years. Then Microsoft pushed me to update the program - at a price. They threatened that if I did not upgrade, I would no longer be able to send payments electronically. They hinted of other unknown dire consequences.
I took the threats seriously, grumbled, but paid the thirty or so dollars to keep using the program. There were more upgrades through the years. I objected but I paid. Even though the new software offered more features each time, I felt strong-armed.
I could have gone back to paper and pencil, the old way of taking care of finances, but I wanted the advantages of the series of tubes and wires that mystically bring the internets and their information into my house.
As you can tell from my savvy electronic speak, my knowledge over the years has grown a great deal in the field of computers.
Ms Money has a budget feature; I decided to put into use months ago. I needed a budget, or to specify, one in black and white, recorded and adhered-to, not just the tally I keep in my head.
I began spending long hours filling in figures and moving ‘categories’ around so that it would reflect our spending more accurately. I needed to see where we were going astray. After a week of concentrated work, I had the budget all laid out.
Then I received an email from Microsoft, they were discontinuing the Money software. For years, after the initial setup, I’d spent little time using the software. On a week-to-week basis, it doesn’t require a lot. Then I invested a large amount of effort on my budget and in a Murphy’s Law manner, they took the program away.
I began looking for different software to replace MS Money. I found a trial version of something called YNAB (You Need a Budget), a ‘zero balance’ Excel based budgeting program. I dove in with vigor and spent another week of spare time, filling in numbers and categories, producing another, different budget masterpiece.
Several weeks of juggling figures has caused numbers and categories to dance in my head. In bed at night, nagging questions keep me awake, (Does that expenditure go in the category “Insurance: homeowners,” or “Household expenses: insurance?”).
As I was familiarizing myself with YNAB, I came to realize, it is very simple. You can’t do a lot of the things with YNAB software that you can with MS Money or Quicken, but simplicity can be attractive. I like it; it’s like buying a car with no options, not much to break down.
However, there is something to be said for power windows, AC and a great stereo. I’ve started to look at Quicken again, a full featured product with all the bells and whistles.
Here I am, mired in charts and graphs, columns and numbers. MS Money is leaving. Should I go it alone, pencil in hand? Should I slow dance with YNAB? She has mousy hair and a slightly crooked nose but she is uncomplicated and functions well in her own way.
Or, should I boogie with the ‘Quicken’ girl I brought to the party a decade ago? She’s back, dressed up, experienced with lots of extra equipment. I’m open to suggestions.
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recycled column on Traveling Animals

Terry Stephan

Changing Lanes:TravelingCircus,
I’m always surprised at the number of people who take their pets with them on vacation. They make sure their animals see the sites and have a good time. We’ve had a menagerie of house pets and goats, pigs, rabbits and chickens over the years. Finding someone to care of so many animals often made vacationing a luxury we couldn’t afford.
Later, when we reduced our stock to just dogs and cats, we arranged to have them kenneled and cared for when we traveled. I always felt Emmy and I needed a vacation from our pets as well as other day-to-day rigors. The animals probably didn’t mind a vacation from us as well.
We most often travel in a small pickup camper. The limited space in our little RV tends to make us covet what little room we have. A litter box or a dog taking even a small percentage of floor space isn’t something we’d consider no matter how much we liked our dog or cat.
There are definite advantages to taking a large dog on the road. If I traveled alone, I would take one for company, possibly protection (Emmy’s job now). I also talk to myself a lot. If I traveled with a dog, I could pretend I was talking to it and strangers wouldn’t know just how deranged I really am.
Even without animals, our own ‘excess baggage’ slows our forward progress. I have a two-nap-a-day habit and, while I am driving, I feel the sirens’ call of a comfortable bed just over my head in the camper. When I pullover for a quick snooze, Emmy not only doesn’t object, she is happy about it. She enjoys traveling in theory, but likes stopping better. She loves to do beadwork, which she can’t do while moving - when the truck stops, she starts beading.
If Emmy had her druthers, we would never hit a four-lane highway. Moving at an average speed of 20 or 30mph in slow-and-go traffic is enjoyable to her. With all the foibles between the two of us, we sometimes lose sight of the concept that we have to keep moving to get somewhere. We travel so leisurely, we often take three days to make the 6 hour drive to Boston Mass. We have fun anyway.
While I am sure pets on the move aren’t right for Emmy and I, a vast variety and number of them travel with their owners. At a trailhead or other tourist attraction, more than once I’ve noticed a couple pushing a baby buggy, only to find a dog in there, sometimes leashed in, so it couldn’t actually get out and walk.
I’ve seen people carry large, thick, snakes around their neck and shoulders, and a few years back you saw as many pet ferrets in public places, as you did teacup-sized dogs.
At the trial head/parking lot for Malign Lake in Jasper National park, we saw a young couple adjusting what we thought was a carrier for a baby, worn on the chest, similar to a “baby Bjorn.” It was obviously hard to fine-tune, to figure where the straps went on the young woman. The openings at the top, where you might install the baby, and the front where the legs of a child might come out were covered with screen and zippers.
They fetched their ‘baby’ out of some sort of strapped-in safety seat in the rear of the car. Out came a big green and yellow parrot. They dropped the bird in the zippered top. The bird hung on fiercely to a perch several inches from the bottom as they hiked down the rough trail. The parrot was out front and had a perfect forward view.
Maybe the young couple was making a statement about rights for birds, or maybe they were practicing child rearing for future offspring. Possibly the two loved the bird so much they could not leave home without it.
In any case, I just couldn’t stop thinking of all the poor ferrets and toy terriers sitting at home twiddling their thumbs, nothing to look forward to, just wishing they could be as well loved and traveled as a parrot.
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Terry and the Pirates

Terry Stephan

Changing Lanes:muchograndkids
My earliest memories include adults asking me if I was ‘Terry’ of “Terry and the pirates”. That cartoon strip apparently had a huge surge in popularity back then, but I was disappointed anyone would think it was the inspiration for my name. To me, pirates were not interesting. An eye patch, a hook instead of a hand, big deal, Dick Tracy had a wristwatch video and audio communication device. I even liked Beetle Bailey better with his cartoon jeeps, army fatigues, and goofy observations.
Over the years, the ‘pirate’ moniker has popped up less and less, but occasionally, someone will greet me with something like, “Hi you old pirate, how ya’ doing?”
Flashing forward, Emmy and I went to visit our kids and grandkids near Boston Massachusetts a few weeks ago.
My grandson Tate is three and it has been decades since I spent any time with a three-year-old. It brought back to mind my own boys at that age. It all came back to me; the most charming thing about a three-year-old is that they act like a three-year old. The most annoying thing about a three-year-old is - THEY ACT LIKE A THREE-YEAR-OLD.
Our visit allowed me to spend hours with Tate, several days in a row. At the start of our visit, his jabber seemed that of a miniature drunken adult, just rambling, but the content soon became a bit disturbing to me.
Tate told me he has an imaginary Grandpa and Grandma. He referred to them as his ‘evil grandpa and grandma,’ “Fire rocks” and “Nancy.” Tate’s sister, our sweet six-year-old granddaughter and Tate’s number one interpreter, matter-of-factly confirmed my understanding of what he said. I found it troubling he referred to any grandparent as ‘evil’, especially Emmy or I. “Fire Rocks” was just weird.
On our previous visit, when he was only two, Tate couldn’t understand that his grandparents were different entities. He called both of us ‘grandma’, kind of disconcerting for me. When I did get him to call me ‘grandpa,’ he referred to Emmy as grandpa also.
Even though he is hard to understand, I realized he was saying that the evil grandpa and grandma were neither Emmy nor me.
When asked who his real Grandmother was, he indicated Emmy. Pointing to myself, I asked him if I was Grandpa Fire Rocks and he said ‘no’ and he asked, “What’s?”
I said “Grandpa Terry”.
Tate looked as though the name made no sense, I was in a hurry to replace ‘evil grandpa’. Still pointing to my chest, I said “Terry ...like Terry and the Pirates”.
His face lit up, he said “Terry and Pirates Grandpa?”
He then added, with a big grin, “King of Pirates.”
I thought that was the end of it. That evening we watched a movie our grandkids had not seen all the way through called “Coraline”.
It is a ‘stop motion’ animated movie. I only watch animated movies with my grandchildren, but this movie was fascinating. The plot includes Coraline, a young girl who dreams of an alternate family and neighborhood. The alternate parents are perfect at first but in the end they, and most of their alternate universe turn evil. Yup, it is a terror movie for the young’uns.
At one point, a character in the movie who is a neighbor and trapeze artist in Coralines’ evil alternate universe appeared. Tate jumped up, pointing to the screen excitedly saying “Grandpa Fire Rocks”. He was as happy to reveal the “evil grandpa” mystery, as I was to have him show it to me.
Now I’m “King of Pirates Terry”, or “Pirates Grandpa”. How could I object to that? So much for “Terry and the Pirates” being a dull comic strip.
Next visit, we will try to unravel the mystery of “evil Grandma Nancy.” Emmy might like some answers.
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bad or good day?

My sweetie had an accident today. My computer crashed and I had a screaming telephone fight with Dell who wanted me to pay them to unlock my two day old computer.
Betty totaled the car but she was unhurt. I guess it was a good day.

Missing Grandkids

Terry Stephan

Changing Lanes:computervision
Emmy and I have been chatting online lately. For my fellow computer illiterates ‘chatting’, on the internet is a kind of fast form of email. If you don’t know what email is, you’ve just woken from a long comma, congratulations!
In a two-person chat, both people are on line at the same time, and have a written (typed) conversation. In the old days, you dialed up a person to chat, their phone rang, and they answered. Now both people find themselves online at the same time. In my love/hate relationship with computers and the internet, one thing I love is the communication. I think something almost mystical is at work.
You could be minding your business, doing something important on the internet, like finding out how many people recorded specific rock and roll and blues hits from three decades ago on You-tube. A little balloon window will pop up in the corner of your computers’ screen and tell you someone you are acquainted with is online and ‘available’.
Knowing that someone is willing and waiting for a chat interferes with my concentration. It forces me to put some thought into a talk with a person I may not have been interested in chatting with in the first place. If I ignore the little window, I begin to feel guilty. After all, how many different video versions of Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” can I possibly enjoy? (The number is vast)
If the ‘chat’ person went on line for some companionship and I sit like a bump on a log will they feel rejected? Maybe no one will talk to them. Maybe they are having a bad day- personal crisis; maybe they need to talk to someone.
I try to think up something intelligent to say, I type in, “What’s up, dude?”
A little balloon pops up claiming the person is no longer available. I wonder if the person is ‘not available’ because I am the one who responded, maybe I should feel rejected. What I really feel is relief– I don’t have to think up any more great lines like, ‘What’s up, dude?’
If my granddaughter is the individual on line, ready and available, we are always happy to chat with her.
Our son Jon sets up the chat session from their home, and Paige continues chatting as she pleases.
We travel for business, in our little truck camper. The last trip we took was six weeks. The chats with Paige lift our spirits, bringing a third person, a favorite one at that, into our small space. We use Emmy’s computer and she types in my comments as well as her own.
We have a lot of patience for our granddaughter; at six years of age, Paige doesn’t have a long attention span nor is she a fast typist. She sometimes wanders off in the middle of a chat, only to return minutes later. There is a lot of hang-on time between sentences.
In the camper, on our end of the conversation, Emmy spends the wait-time sewing beads onto fabric and leather; I read and write and watch videos.
Though not speedy, our granddaughter most often replies in full sentences with perfect spelling and grammar. She already has a sense of humor and often makes some very adult observations. At one point we were chatting and there was a longer than usual wait.
Emmy typed, “Are you there, Paige?”
Paige wrote, “No.”
I told Paige, I wished I had a mail delivery owl like those in the Harry Potter novels, a nice, fluffy solid white one.
Paige said, “Grandpa, you do know that is only fiction don’t you?”
She was so serious, I couldn’t answer.
Even if she doubts my knowledge or my sanity, Paige will always be welcome in any chat of mine.
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Recent column

My cousin was recently on the show Jeopardy he tried to get on for the past twenty plus years- when he finally was succesful he was very much so..

Terry Stephan

Changing Lanes:Jeopardy
A relative of mine was on Jeopardy recently. Jason won a bunch of money in less than a week. His mother Kathy and I share grandparents and half a century of friendly camaraderie and light spirited conversation. Kathy is clever and funny and she, Emmy, and I have made each other think and laugh through the good and bad years. It is no surprise that all three of her kids are super smart. Jason’s father is no slouch when it comes to mental dexterity either.
I suppose it is a bad habit, but I comment or talk to my TV, usually but not always in a derogatory manner. From my living room chair, I talked at Jason while he was on Jeopardy, trying to be helpful. In the beginning, he didn’t seem to be pushing the button to answer the questions. I mostly yelled, “Push the button” then louder, “PUSH THE BUTTON”. It didn’t seem to have any effect on whether or not he pushed the button, no matter how loud I yelled.
I always knew Jason was a smart young man, but as I watched the show, I couldn’t believe just how smart and fast he is.
In any conversation that turns adversarial, or in any argument, my snappy retorts make less and less sense along the lines of, “so is your mother” or “up your nose with a rubber hose.” Sometimes I just slip into overused repetitive profanities. If given the chance to sleep and regroup my thoughts, muttering to myself overnight, I can come up with a great reply. They don’t give you that much time on Jeopardy.
As I watched the show, I knew few of the answers. When I did know answers, the contestants had pressed their button and replied (in the form of a question), long before the answer made it from the ‘I know that’ stage in my brain to actually verbalizing the words with my mouthparts.
Early on, I was pretty happy with myself and a bit disappointed with Jason because I knew the answer to a question having to do with the planting of our flag on Iwo Jima and an old Johnny Cash song. The song is about superior achievements of persons from which the rest of society would not expect that much. The answer was “Ira Hayes”, more appropriately, “Who was Ira Hays.” It was one of the few questions to which Jason didn’t have an answer.
A line from the song in a time when political correctness was a bit less correct than it is today is, “…call him drunken Ira Hays, he won’t answer any more, not the whiskey drinkin’ Indian, or the marine that went to war.”
That turned out to be the only answer I knew well enough to have pushed the button first and placed in the form of a question.
After that, the questions got harder. Jason won Jeopardy money knowing the names of various Norse characters, some of which I thought he made up. He knew lines from George Washington’s inaugural speech and sports terms I never heard of. He also showed a wealth of knowledge from movies, the serious to the amazingly frivolous. In the TV department, he knew three stooges trivia and daytime soap opera characters. He knew the answers to questions when I didn’t even understand the question.
Jason’s education has been and still is, his own hunger for knowledge. On Jeopardy, most of the competitors Jason knocked out were well-educated, degree holding professional types. He won over $150,000, not bad for an engine assembler from right here in Western New York.
I always wanted to be on a show like Jeopardy, maybe I could do well if they limited the questions to old Johnny Cash lyrics..
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