airbags and art

My son Aaron and his spouse Lauren, earn their living as professional artists. They live in Portland Maine and Aaron’s sculptures are in and around many public places in that state. He even has one that greets travelers at the gateway into the US from Canada.
A short time ago, Aaron made a proposal in Cleveland to install a large sculpture. Because of airline restrictions on packages, he shipped a model of his sculpture and some presentation materials to us instead of checking them as baggage. He flew into Buffalo, rented a car, stopped at our house, and assembled the scale model of his project. Emmy and I helped him put together the presentation materials before he drove on to Cleveland, Tuesday evening. The roads weren’t very good but he made it there and back to our house by Wednesday night without much trouble.
On Thursday Emmy, I, Aaron and his Grandmother, went out to dinner. The subject of vehicle air bags came up. Grandma said something to the effect that air bags in older cars could lose the compressed air in them as they got older. I said that there was no compressed air involved, but that the bags relied upon powdered chemicals reacting like a small explosion to inflate them.
My statement was met with silence, my mother in law nodded in her non-committal way, as she often does when I speak, my son and wife didn’t say much either. I had the feeling that were it just Emmy and I in the car she would have called me a liar. I felt they all thought mine a nutty idea; as usual Terry was making stuff up.
On Friday morning Aaron was to fly out. East Coast snow storms were causing flights to be delayed and canceled. I was playing with my laptop computer while observing the news on TV. It was near the time of the anniversary of the flight 3407 crash and there was to be a ‘walk’ in memory of the victims and to further the cause for changes in airline training policies. I personally dislike flying because I feel like one in a herd of cattle. I expect flight attendants to use an electric cattle prod at any time.
I had a queasy feeling in my gut as my eyes flicked from the TV to the laptop; Aaron’s flight was on the same airline and same De Havilland prop plane that had crashed the year before in Clarence, NY. He was going to ride it twice the same day with a layover in Newark. I know there is no reason for feeling jittery, if anything, the pilots, mechanics, all involved must want to be at their best.
I insisted that Aaron call me when he reached Portland. Both flights and his wait in Newark had been uneventful. He had landed safely in Maine. My uneasiness was relieved when I heard his voice.
The next morning Aaron called again to tell me that minutes after we spoke the evening before, he and his wife were broadsided at an intersection by a woman who ran a red light. His first new vehicle, a small pickup truck just six weeks off the dealer’s lot, was totaled. Everyone involved was examined by medical personal, one woman taken to the hospital. They all escaped with minor injuries.
Word of the crash was of course scary to me, but when I saw an emailed photo of his mangled and twisted truck I felt a shudder go down my spine.
A few minutes later, Aaron called back to add a comment about our Thursday conversation concerning airbags. After the accident, he and Lauren both were perplexed by a bad taste in their mouths. The EMT told them the taste was due to the chemicals that blew up the airbags.
I told Aaron it was nice that I was right, but I wished they hadn’t gone to all that trouble just to prove my point about the chemicals in those bags.
It was a hard lesson for Aaron and Lauren but, next time my family should believe me when I make up stuff..
Comments: Changinglanesterry@gmail.com

Procrastination

I was having difficulty writing about my bad habits. I strolled down to Emmy Lou’s workspace. It’s a remodeled root cellar we call ‘the dungeon’ I asked, “How’s it going? What are you working on?”
“What are you stuck on?” She has an annoying habit of responding to a question with a question.
“What makes you think I am stuck on something? Can’t I just show interest in your work?”
“You don’t usually visit me unless you’re avoiding something.” She said.
I was offended. Questioning my motives! Whenever I procrastinate she feels the need to point it out.
Soon, a plethora of people will show their proclivity for procrastination. They are the ones you will see standing in line at the post office, April 15th. They had months to prepare and send their taxes, but instead, they waited. That used to be me.
In 2008 I filed an income tax ‘extension’ and sent less of an estimated tax payment than the IRS figured I should. I then failed to file on time, at the end of the extension. This really irritated the IRS. Who knew they were so touchy? I received nasty letters, then fees and fines. Now I pay my taxes on time and instead of discarding IRS correspondence I read it soon after it arrives. If punished enough, even the most ardent procrastinator can change.
Last year, that second week in April, I smugly smiled when Emmy came back from the Post Office. She had to wait a long time in line to mail a package; it was so crowded with last minute tax filers. I however, was a model citizen; our taxes had been filed early in March.
I began looking for other ways to break my nasty habit. Online I found, “Procrastination refers to the counterproductive deferment of actions or tasks to a later time.” “Physiologists often cite such behavior as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision.”
The definition included three criteria for a behavior to be classified as procrastination: it must be counterproductive, needless, and delaying.
No one else performs counterproductive, needless and delaying actions as well as, or as often as I do. Mine was a far more serious problem than I previously thought.
I needed additional research. The internet is an enabler, a wonderful, horrible thing. I searched ‘time wasters’ and stumbled onto ‘times of gestation’ for various animals. I found myself looking at a photo of a wombat, a very odd looking marsupial. I don’t remember ever seeing one before. Its gestation period is 20 to 26 days- then up to 10 months in the pouch. I read on, lost in details.
For a burrowing animal they are huge; over three feet long and close to 80 lbs. Dirt doesn’t get in their pouch cause it’s mounted upside down. The most fascinating (and hard to believe part), they have square poop!
On Wikipedia, they call it cubic feces. I Googled ‘cubic feces’, later, as though coming out of a trance, I found myself on a website which explained how to remove and grind the valves on a 283-(cubic)-inch Chevy engine.
While Emmy and I were dating years ago, I had two different Chevys, one a convertible, the other a sedan. I had to replace the engine in one of them, but only pulled the heads and ground the valves on the other. I couldn’t remember which was which, Emmy would know. Changing an engine is more spectacular to bystanders, or those waiting for a ride than those performing the task.
In the ‘dungeon’, I asked, “Do you recall if I changed the engine in the Chevy sedan, or just grind the valves?”
“You changed the whole engine of the convertible in a barn.” She said, then added “What are you stuck on?”
I am making progress; at least she answered my question.
Changinglanesterry@gmail.com

I Heart You

Terry Stephan


I asked my wife the other day for some good ideas for a column about bad gifts I have given her for Valentines’ day. I wondered if her list of bad gifts would be the same as mine. I am amazed at how awful some men are at gift giving.
I have tried to be romantic but Emmy is generally a practical person. In the dawning years of our marriage I would buy her a nice heart shaped box of chocolates and maybe some roses, or wine.
She likes flowers but thinks roses are too expensive and last for too short a time. She would rather have a cheap bunch of carnations. Her practicality extends to a lot of areas and I have learned through trial and error what not to get, I am still learning.
She said she doesn’t want expensive jewelry, so diamonds are out. I once bought her a new Volkswagen Rabbit as a surprise, even though we didn’t have money for it. She told me in loud plain English, she doesn’t want me to do that again.
She doesn’t like living, furry things for presents either. I once surprised her with Ginger, a gorgeous purebred Red Setter. The puppy was beautiful, but every brain had been bred from her head. Ginger was friendly but afraid of her own shadow and she ate marbles. I was reminded for the life of the dog that dumb animals are not a good gift for my wife.
I bought Emmy a socket set one year and training books on small engine repair, I thought it a practical gift and for a while she did too. She tried for a couple of months to understand the mechanics of an internal combustion engine but gave up after a while. The socket set sits in my tool box. I got her a small chain-saw one year and she didn’t like that either. She has tried to show appreciation but I can tell, she has been disappointed on occasion.
Our practicality-over-romance in gifts has gotten so broad through the years that we usually give each other things we need. We bought each other office chairs and then a GPS for business trips. Appliances are too practical. We could use a new dryer but I am certain it wouldn’t be received as a good gift for Valentines’ Day.
One year I gave her sexy lingerie, which I thought would be as much for me as for Emmy. It had a lot of white feminine see-through mesh stuff and bright red hearts all over the place. She put it on in the other room and called out upon entering the bedroom saying, “I don’t think you are going to like this”.
It looked so much better in my imagination. Emmy is a good looking woman but the negligee looked like a skimpy clown outfit. All she needed was white face and a red rubber ball for a nose - we both laughed hysterically.
Our talk about bad and/or practical gifts continued.
Emmy said, “I think it is so silly to fall for advertising that makes a man feel guilty about not buying a six thousand dollar diamond bracelet for Valentines’ day.”
Half scheming in the back of my mind, looking for a good idea for a V day gift, I asked Emmy what a good gift would be. She paused, thought a moment and being the true romantic she is, she replied, “I’d like my toilet fixed.”
“Fixing her toilet”, would be a great disguise as a euphemism for something sexy, but she really has been unhappy with the flushing abilities of our toilet. I have again and again adjusted the float valve, announced it repaired only to have it malfunction two days later, not completely emptying every time when flushed.
Romance is so different after multi-decades of marriage. It’s sad when, “How about fixing my toilet” seems like a romantic come-on to me.
Maybe I should try a puppy again..
Comments? Changinglanesterry@gmail.com

Carkers Are Not Acceptable in All Circles

Terry Stephan


We left home for a long weekend a while ago. The afternoon we came back, I walked into the dining room and thought I saw a small animal about the size of a teenaged chipmunk, run through the corner of the room.
I was sure it was one of those things we, who use lined bifocal glasses, see in our peripheral vision. Ephemeral blobs of shadows speed across the outer edges of your vision when the ‘near’ line on your eyeglasses intersects with the edge of a doorframe, the corner of an interior wall, or even a straight line on a tile floor.
My cousin, who is my age, claims to have seen these shadowy splotches passing around the edge of her vision long before she knew about bifocals. She called them ‘carkers’. In an essay in sixth grade, she described them as biting, vicious animals. School officials made her take a series of psychiatric evaluations after that. I digress, that’s a story for another time. However, I claim the noun “carker” and use it as my own, and chose to believe my carkers are docile.
After you wear lined bifocals for a while, you become complacent about the carkers in your life. They flit like small animals here and there and you pay them no mind.
Emmy Lou is not so complacent. A bat got into our house years ago and flew into her hair while we were sleeping. She is usually a heavy sleeper and I realize it woke her up, but then she woke me up loudly exclaiming that bats in the house are unacceptable. I thought she could have explained about the bat in the morning.
I told her to leave it alone, they are more afraid of us than we are of them. She didn’t buy it. She has added all other small, wild creatures to her ‘unacceptable’ list.
An hour after I had dismissed my first sighting as just a shadowy carker, I walked into the living room and the creature launched itself out of the big fruit bowl we keep on our coffee table. It hit the floor six or so feet from the bowl moving at an incredible rate of speed. The light was dim in the room, but I saw it in profile. It was black and had a long bushy tail and front paws like a cat.
The torso was straight like a ferret but I couldn’t see well enough to distinguish the head from the rest of its body. It ran through the dining room and into the kitchen. Emmy Lou didn’t see it but heard the ruckus I made and the skittering sound of claws on the hardwood floor. It had chewed-away drywall around a pipe to get in.
I got a better look at it this time and couldn’t identify it, I still had no idea the kind of animal it was. I wanted to see it closer. Emmy didn’t, I imagined her as a timid little creature herself, popping her head in, peering around before entering a room. She seemed to be developing a facial tick; she wasn’t curious about its origin and did not want the slightest glimpse of the animal.
An article I read came to mind. The author pointed out that people like me probably shot or trapped the last of many species of animals just for a better look. I know it isn’t likely but what if this was the last of some species. What kind of an animal the size of a little chipmunk eats from a fruit bowl and is black with paws the size of a cat?
I posed the idea to Emmy, “What if that animal was the last one of a species? You wouldn’t want to hurt it.”
Her left eye twitched ominously, she said, “Kill it.”
It has been a month now; we haven’t seen the creature since the fruit bowl incident. That is a good thing.
I told Emmy I was probably right, it was more afraid of us than we were of it.
Emmys’ facial tick seems a little less pronounced. That is good too.
Changinglanesterry@gmail.com or

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.”
Comments: ChanginglanesTerry@gmail.com

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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