Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
Driving a Motorhome Without a License.
One of the first stories I read online in the New York Times this morning, after finishing off a noggin of spinach juice sprinkled with brick dust and crushed dilithium crystals as a digestif, had this compelling lead paragraph:
ALBANY — The New York State Senate approved a bill on Monday to grant driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, a deeply polarizing issue that had splintered Democrats and stirred a backlash among Republicans in New York and beyond, who have already vowed to highlight it during next year’s elections.
"Good for them" I said out loud to a nearby box of Kleenex; "they deserve a break."
Falling back into my recliner (or what I thought was my recliner; it was actually the laundry hamper -- rather damp and malodorous, but comfy all the same), I descended into a warm hazy reverie about my early attempts at becoming a licensed motorist back when you could still shoot a megacerops for sport.
As a child our family had one car, and that one car belonged to dad -- otherwise affectionately known as the Old So-and-So. He did not suffer passengers gladly. I walked a block to grade school, a half mile to high school, and when I wanted to go see a movie with my friends downtown he generously flipped me a quarter for bus fare. Under such spartan conditions you'd think I would want to learn to drive and get my own jalopy asap -- but that was not the case. I enjoyed walking and even took an interest in the bizarre bus patrons I rubbed clavicles with -- I recall a wizened crone who sat next to me with a paper bag overflowing with green crab apples; she munched them contentedly as we sped down East Hennepin Avenue (always pronounced "Ees Tennapin" by the locals.) I sampled one at her invitation, nearly swallowing my lips at its astringency.
So when the time came to take Driver's Ed as a sophomore in high school I spurned the offer in favor of a course in Mandarin Chinese calligraphy -- much more useful, to my way of thinking, than learning how to whiz around like Barney Oldfield. (If you're not getting these references, it's okay -- I picked up a lifetime supply of 'em while watching Mack Sennett films at the Minneapolis Film Society and reading an omnibus of S.J. Perelman, and they have only grown more obscure as time goes by and my brain ossifies.)
Fast forward 7 years to a mellow fall day at my parent's house, where I was cadging room and board while I hunted up some scarce moolah to finance my upcoming LDS mission. I was giving mouth to mouth resuscitation to my bank book when the phone rang. It was my old circus pal Steve Smith -- we had clowned together with Ringling and then gone down to Mexico to study pantomime for a season before parting ways. He had a job offer from Ringling to do the advance clowning and he wanted me along as his partner. I told him that was mighty white of him (we were both whiteface clowns -- so don't have a conniption fit) and asked what the salary was. With prudent saving for a year, it was enough to set me up for two years of proselyting on my own, so I jumped at the offer.
"We start in November" he told me. "And the show is giving us a motorhome to live in for free! You can drive now, can't you?"
"Um, of course I drive -- just got back from a road trip to Bemidji. I drive like a manioc -- uh, I mean maniac . . . hee hee hee" I ended the sentence with a high pitched giggle reminiscent of Peter Lorre's chuckle when wrapping his fingers around Fay Wray's throat.
Of course I didn't drive -- but if I told that to Smith it might mess up this sweet deal. I could learn by the time we had to go out on the road. It was just a harmless fib, n'est ce pas?
Well, long story short -- I didn't learn to drive by November, but I dasn't tell Smith that. So when it came time to pull out of Winter Quarters in Venice, Florida, in our 32 foot behemoth, I gallantly told Smith he could do the honors. We drove up towards Jacksonville, and I figured that Smith, who was a Type A Alpha Male all the way, might just decide he would do all the driving himself -- so I would be off the hook.
But the backstabbing little squirt pulled over at a rest stop, yawned prodigiously, and told me he was going in the back for a snooze and that I should proceed to take us into Jacksonville. I gamely engaged the gears and eased us out into traffic, where I weaved erratically from lane to lane at an exhilarating 25 mph for several minutes until a state trooper flashed me to the side of the road and promptly read both Smith and I the riot act. Smith had the presence of mind to offer the trooper a sheaf of Annie Oakleys -- free circus tickets -- and he let us off with a severe dressing down.
Then I caught h-e-double toothpick from Smith for my egregious deception -- but we managed to patch things up when I promised to do all the cooking for the two of us, thus saving us both a fortune.
"Okay, Tork" he said grudgingly. "I'll drive us to the nearest Publix and we can get the fixings for fried chicken and mashed potatoes tonight. You can handle that, right?"
"You betcha!" I replied enthusiastically. And, as it turned out, a trifle too optimistically.
But I'll continue with that particular story another day.
Facebook Reveals Cryptocurrency Libra as an Alternative to Bitcoin
Facebook Inc. formally announced plans to launch a cryptocurrency called Libra, promising a secure blockchain-based payment system backed by hard assets and designed for mainstream users.
WSJ
Libra, Libra, burning bright,
let's hope Facebook has been right
framing thy stability
on a stormy cyber sea.
In what distant banks and vaults
will they keep the smelling salts
if thy wings are clipped anon
and our dough becomes all gone.
And what fiscal cunning art
will keep hackers far apart
with their dreadful hand and feet
from an awful uber-cheat.
What the hammer and blockchain
that will forge it all in vain;
who will smile in furnace blast
if this money trend don't last?
Libra, Libra, are you sure
you are really so secure?
William Blake wrote poetry;
I'll invest in him, not thee.
Four Years Ago President Trump Was Seen as a Sideshow. Now He Is the Show.
Four years later, as President Trump kicks off his campaign for a second term on Tuesday with an eardrum-pounding, packed-to-the-rafters rally in Florida, no one doubts that he is the dominant force in the arena today, the one defining the national conversation as no president has done in generations.
Peter Baker, NYT.
When in the course of human affairs
the President puts on astonishing airs
it behooves citizens to reconsider --
is he a scoundrel, a fool, or a quitter?
To some he's a hero defending our land;
to others a poseur who loves to grandstand.
History someday will settle his hash;
but right now he typifies ev'rything brash.
He's leading us captive, of that I am sure.
But is it to glory or just a detour?
He's seeking to guide us for one more last term.
I wish that the thought did not cause me to squirm . . .
O remember, remember that these things are true
Mosiah 2:41
Why is it hard to remember the truth,
when the sly years come replacing my youth?
Of blessings abundant and feelings of joy
that came to me often when I was a boy.
So often the Gospel has given me hope,
yet nowadays I like to sit and to mope.
Recalling the dark times, retailing sad news,
is not a reality I wish to choose.
Help me to testify, Lord, for all time,
of sunshine, not shadow -- of virtue, not grime!
Monday, June 17, 2019
Tanner Ainge: Utah County Commissioner
Tanner Ainge. Utah County Commissioner.
In a recent press release, it was stated that Tanner Ainge was "born inside a bottle of Log Cabin Syrup." Naturally enough, this is not true. What his then press secretary (who now sells freeze dried chives on street corners for a living) meant was that Ainge, a true-blue back of beyond denizen of the forest and mountains, saw the light of day in a log cabin. Whether or not he was raised on flapjacks doused in the Log Cabin brand of syrup is something that he has chosen not to reveal to the public at this time. And which he may never reveal; there are some things so soi-disant in government circles that their discussion is moot (or perhaps hoot -- I get the two words mixed up all the time; as a child I used to draw crayon renditions of 'moot' owls, which my parents taped onto the refrigerator door -- not their own fridge, but that of people they were feuding with.)
Be that as it may, Ainge can drop a marmoset at fifty paces with a black powder blunderbuss and skin an elk in less time than it takes to whistle Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Skilled in applying corncob jelly to superficial flesh wounds, he is in great demand as both an herbalist and bladder wort imitator. He's just a riot at quinceanera parties.
His stellar work as a Utah County Commissioner has been noticed in such faraway places as Quintana Roo and along the Kra Isthmus. His recent bill to tax hummingbirds caused the Parliament of Great Britain to declare a national holiday.
His hobbies include refurbishing used breath mints and reading between the lines.
"Your Comment on Trump Wants to Neutralize Democrats on Health Care. Republicans Say Let It Go has posted in the New York Times"
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Hope can be contagious
Neal A. Maxwell
Hope can be contagious if you are infected right;
symptoms are a peaceful joy and walking in the light.
The devil will inoculate you with a dose of sin,
turning hope into despair -- replacing gold with tin.
I want to be a carrier of hope consistently;
Oh Lord, make me thine vessel of the true expectancy!
Sunday, June 16, 2019
The Mortgage Lingers On
"Home is where you hang your head" is the memorable phrase coined by James Thurber. I wish I could have spent more time hanging the old noggin in a shanty of my own. But now it's too late -- I've grown lax and prodigal in my old age -- my current apartment has the advantage of being both rent-subsidized and easy for my daughters to clean and fumigate once a year when I offer to take them and their kids out to Chick-fil-A.
Although I spent a goodly portion of my productive working life on an extended sawdust wanderjahr, I have always had a soft spot for hearth and home. Whenever I hear John Howard Payne's paean to domesticity, "Home Sweet Home," my lachrymose instincts kick in and I mewl like a sucking babe deprived of its mother's bazoombas.
I basically grew up in just one home. My parents did not believe in mobility of any kind -- upward or sideways or any other way you want to slice it. 900 -19th Avenue Southeast, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was the only abode I ever knew. My parents moved us there in 1954 and my widowed mother did not leave the place until 1996.
Alas, my own perambulating star led me to drag my family from pillar to post for fifteen years -- and so we spent most of our lives together in rented digs.
But I did manage to briefly acquire mortgages on three different homes during our married outing.
Our first home was in Bottineau, North Dakota, in the midst of the rather disingenuously named Turtle Mountains -- rolling pine covered hills in the center of the state near the Canadian border. We were renting a ramshackle hovel that was in the chill shadow of grain elevators for most of the day, and that was slowly being consumed by black fungus. We had already closed off the main bedroom and were unhappily preparing to evacuate the living room when a lucky stroke put us in touch with a local FHA official who needed to unload a small house on a large lot just outside of town. It only had one bedroom, but a huge attic, so we snapped it up for a song -- which turned out to be "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" as I vainly tried to patch up the cistern in the basement. Each time it rained the cistern would fill a few inches and then let the water seep out onto the basement floor -- creating a disturbing damp and decayed odor akin to used gym socks unearthed from an ancient Egyptian tomb after millennia.
But it was a happy house, for the most part. The mortgage payment, if I remember aright, was a mere $125.00 a month -- and that included the mandatory home owners insurance and escrow for property taxes. And our first daughter Madeleine was born while we lived there.
I have no regrets, no apologies to make, for leaving that rustic idyll to go work as a clown at Circus World, in Haines City, Florida, just a few months later. It was an opportunity of a lifetime -- just not MY lifetime. For reasons that need not concern us here I was shortly ejected from the park and took my family on a sightseeing trip to several fascinating trailer parks across the United States.
We ended up back in North Dakota, living with Amy's parents, when I was offered the position of Ronald McDonald for the state of Kansas. The salary was generous and the hours required were few and far between. So Amy and I spent many hours looking for a home of our own on those windswept plains. After a few months in a Wichita apartment building that featured an outdoor swimming pool filled with man-eating algae and a colorful assortment of hungover teenagers rehearsing to be derelicts, we found a cozy three-bedroom place next to the railroad yard. With money from a sitcom script I sold to an actor friend in Chicago (who promptly frosted the manuscript with concrete and sunk it in Lake Michigan) we made a down payment and moved in on a mild spring day -- only to be cowering in the bathtub a few hours later when the entire town came under a tornado alert. The house, you see, lacked a basement. We spent many pleasant evenings huddled in the bathtub like sardines while the Kansas zephyrs howled around us like banshees.
When I lost THAT job a year later (an undocumented payaso took the job away from me, de verdad!) we rented out the house and went back to North Dakota so Amy could pursue a Masters in Special Education at Minot State University. Our tenants had an allergic reaction to all the copper plumbing in the house, ripping it out and prudently selling it for seed money to start a meth lab. By the time the police had frog-marched them off to the hoosegow our home was a gutted shell, not worth the peel of an onion. We let it go for back taxes.
I vowed to never again be lulled into a financial debacle by dreams of home ownership. But Dame Fortune, that cunning termagant, placed us back in my birthplace, Minneapolis, for a telemarketing job with Fingerhut (during a hiatus from the circus, due to an unfounded rumor that I had once described cotton candy as 'pink kapok' in a magazine article -- what I actually wrote was that cotton candy was a 'dentists' delight,' a huge difference: am I right?)
And wouldn't you know it, there was a home for sale directly across the street from my old stomping grounds, Van Cleve Park. We went to look at the house one Sunday after church -- merely to pass the time until our slow cooker tripe and trotters had cooled off. There was a stained glass window illuminating the staircase and regal oak wainscotting in the parlor -- but I remained adamant that we were better off in our current rented townhouse, even if our next door neighbors liked to turn their living room into a bowling alley after midnight.
The realtor, a direct descendent of Machiavelli, cornered me, and, with a devious smile worthy of Old Scratch himself, mentioned in an off-hand manner that the place could be had with absolutely no money down -- to a family with more than three children; the city council had started an initiative to bring more families into the inner city, and they were willing to fund all down payment expenses if the right phylum could be found. Panting like the hart after the waterbrooks, I signed on the dotted line, testifying that Amy and I were the proud and harried possessors of rugrats galore. We moved in two weeks later.
And discovered a tribe of squirrels in the attic, who apparently had squatter's rights dating back to the Spanish-American War. A month after we moved in the bathtub upstairs emitted a gentle sigh and gave up the sudsy ghost, sending a slurry of Mr. Bubble into the floor joists just above the dining room. The wooden garage was infested with so many carpenter ants that the only thing holding it up was a coat of paint.
I could go on, but why bother? That haunted house sucked up money as fast as I could make it. And so we decided to pull up stakes (before the carpenter ants got 'em) and move out to Utah, where a shining opportunity awaited me as a writer . . .
And THAT particular literary Waterloo will be fully explicated in future episodes of this folie a deux -- for now, suffice it to say that never again did we own our own home -- nor did I own my own home when I was cast adrift and went back, first to the circus, and then to Thailand. And then back to the circus . . .
No siree bob -- owning property is just not my cup of Pero. Today I'm a happy man, with no mortgage hanging over my head. Only cobwebs.
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