Rerun Saturday Picture Show from 2021

 

Merry Christmas from our hearth to yours! 

Freshly roasted on a open fire...tell Jack Frost to come on in and nip at my nose!

How the library improvised a tree!

If you don't have a tree handy, just easel your way on down the Christmas road...

Christmas tins once held cookies! Tasty treats you can't forget...But don't reach in for a snickerdoodle, and come away with Mabel's sewing set!

More than just a pickup, this is a parade float!

If your inlaws and outlaws are dragging you, claiming that your house just ain't posh enough, feel free to send them this picture and ask them if they think you might have overdone it this year...

To a cat, a Christmas tree is more than just a beautiful decoration: it's a challenge!

This apartment combines the best of classic old days and new.

Baltimore's Washington Monument predates the obelisk in Washington. And it gets decorated every year!

 

Rerun: Complaint Dept.

  I'm not extremely fond of the NextDoor app; I see it as the whine aisle of the internet. Now, if you want to have your neighbors keep an eye out for your missing feline or Ferrari, it's great, and if you lost that recipe for Chex Mix* that Jack's first wife told you about, it's the place to go.

But...even though Joe Citizen speaking his mind while standing on a soap box is a fundamental part of our society, it's not good for society when Joe spreads misinformation, or just pure dumb stuff, as with the person I saw howling because her daughter got a $45 parking ticket just because she parked in the fire lane at a townhouse complex while attending an overnight sleepover.

She was mad as a hornet, probably because there were no fires that night. Maybe Irate Mom should have thought about what would have happened had someone knocked over a Yankee Candle during the evening, causing a fire.

It happens.  We wish it didn't, but it does, and when it does, we want firefighters and their apparatus to have unfettered access to the house.

And if they can't get there, well, just go on NextDoor and talk about it. 

* chex mix recipe 

Ingredients

• 3 cups Corn Chex™ cereal
• 3 cups Rice Chex™ cereal
• 3 cups Wheat Chex™ cereal
• 1 cup mixed nuts
• 1 cup bite-size pretzels
• 1 cup garlic-flavor bite-size bagel chips or regular-size bagel chips, broken into 1-inch pieces
• 6 tablespoons butter or margarine
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 1/2 teaspoons seasoned salt
• 3/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder

Preparation

1. In large microwavable bowl, mix cereals, nuts, pretzels and bagel chips; set aside. In small microwavable bowl, microwave butter uncovered on High about 40 seconds or until melted. Stir in seasonings. Pour over cereal mixture; stir until evenly coated.
2. Microwave uncovered on High 5 to 6 minutes, thoroughly stirring every 2 minutes. Spread on paper towels to cool. Store in airtight container.

 

Perhaps you'll have a few minutes to spend in a happy memory on this Christmas. This is the text of Truman Capote's short story "A Christmas Memory," and it always takes me to a happy place to read it, so I thought I'd share it with you. If you're too busy today, save the link to read it later, and Merry Christmas to you!

 https://www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/a-christmas-memory-by-truman-capote-short-story

 

 

Wednesday reruns: All About That Song

 Rerun Week saunters on...this one is from 2009...

 It's Guest Editor day - because I got this information about one of my favorite carols from a friend online, so I thought I'd pass it along...while you read what Pat sent to me, click on this link and you can see/hear the 12 Days of Christmas on YouTube!

There is one Christmas Carol that has always baffled me.

What in the world do leaping lords, French hens,

swimming swans, and especially the partridge who won't come out of the pear tree have to do with Christmas?

This week, I found out.

From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were

not permitted to practice their faith openly. Someone

during that era wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics.

It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning

plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their church. Each element in the carol has a code word for a religious reality which the children could remember.

-The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus Christ.

-Two turtle doves were the Old and New Testaments.

-Three French hens stood for faith, hope and love.

-The four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John.

-The five golden rings recalled the Torah or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.

-The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation.

-Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit--Prophesy, Serving, Teaching, Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy.

-The eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes.

-Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit--Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.

-The ten lords a-leaping were the ten commandments.

-The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples.

-The twelve drummers drumming symbolized the twelve points of belief in the Apostles' Creed.

Again, this is all new to me - hope you liked it!

Tuesday Rerun: Longtime mystery solved

I've been a fan of "A Christmas Carol" since I was a tiny little tim myself (and that's been a while). But I have always wondered about something...something at the very end of the story, where now-giddy Scrooge is running around his bedroom and hollers out at a little boy passing by in the snow.

He asks the boy if he knows the poulterer's shop around the corner with the big prize turkey hanging in the window, and when the lad says he should hope he did, Scrooge tells him to go buy it.

In the original story:

“It’s hanging there now,” replied the boy.

“Is it?” said Scrooge. “Go and buy it.”

“Walk-ER!” exclaimed the boy. 

I've wondered ever since what "Walk-ER!" meant. I used the closed captioning on the tv when I watch the 1951 version of the story, and that says the kid says "What cor?" and on my second-favorite version, "Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol," the closed captioner typed "Wha cur?" and none of that makes sense. The dictionary says a cur is a poorly-behaved mongrel, and up until that Christmas morning, Scrooge was too cheap to keep a pet around, so that wasn't it.

The little turkey-fetcher, from the movie

Recently, though, someone invented Google, and it finally dawned on me to look it up! And the Oxford English Dictionary, a walloping hearty meatloaf of a book if ever there was such a thing, defines it for us:

"WALKER" "More fully, Hookey Walker.  An exclamation expressive of incredulity,  as in 'That is all Walker.'

and then Eric Partridge, in his book "A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949) p 403, says "Hooky Walker! A phrase signifying that something either is not true or will not occur."

Digging into the matter more deeply (what else do I have to do all day?) it turns out that "John Walker" was the name of an untrustworthy spy in literature of the 1830s, a bad guy with a hooked nose. So, saying "Hooky Walker!" became a way to damn something as untrue, and that was shortened to just using "Walker!"

Now, with that mystery out of the way, I can spend some time figuring out why people will spend money for coffee at BigBucks when they can make it at home better, for less.

RERUN: Santa Jimi

  

In December, 1969, Jimi Hendrix continued to defy other guitarists, who to this day are unable to duplicate what he could do on an electric guitar, and spelling purists who insisted his name was "Jimmy.".  He accomplished the latter by naming his new band, which was to replace The Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Band of Gypsys.  The more conventional spelling would be Gypsies, of course, but then, Jimi never did anything the conventional way.

He had hired veteran drummer Buddy Miles to slam the skins, and Billy Cox (not to be confused with the old Dodger third baseman) to play bass. Cox and Jimi had become friends while serving in the US Army together in 1961 at Fort Campbell, KY.

Jimi and the band were booked for the holidays of '69-'70 at the Fillmore East, the legendary rock concert hall in New York.  There were new songs ready for the band - most notably "Machine Gun" - but Jimi wanted to do something special. 

While rehearsing for the shows at Baggy's Studios in Manhattan, the band wove together the melodies (melodys?) of The Little Drummer Boy, Silent Night, and Auld Lang Syne.  Someone wisely hit the "record" button, and we are left with these holiday treasures to enjoy, 43 years later.  At the concerts on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, The Little Drummer Boy and Auld Lang Syne wound up as parts of medleys with other songs.

If you'd like to hear this tripartite medley, YouTube is standing by.  Just go here and enjoy! 

The album of the concerts was released in March of 1970, the last to come out during Hendrix's life, which ended that September.  


We don't have any way to know which direction his career might have taken, but it's good to hear his music again.

Sunday rerun: The Sound of a Fury

 The past few Septembers have been dotted with a non-specific sort of agitation, as if something somewhere were missing in my life.  I took inventory of my emotions (confusion, mild rage, skepticism, scorn, delight, joy, happiness and pure bliss) and found them all intact, and then it hit me.

September used to mean new TV shows and new cars.  And not any more, for the most part.

Man, I'm telling you, the time was that TV networks would show promos for new shows coming on right after Labor Day and excitement reigned.  "They're making a 'Dennis The Menace' situation comedy," people screamed! "How many more days must I survive until the premiere of 'CPO Sharkey,' starring Don Rickles?" pondered many.  "I can't wait until that new 'Maury' show comes on!" cried many.  And then it came on, and many more cried.

Now, instead of three networks with new shows that no one wishes to watch, there are 237 networks, and the only shows that people are looking at feature poorly-educated, un-shaven-and-shorn rustics.  We revere televised individuals from whom we would move away, were they to sit next to us in a diner.

And, even worse, do you remember the tiny thrill you got when the new cars came out!  "The new Plymouths have tail fins the size of half a cow!"  "Dad wants to go down to Rustee Ford to look over the new Galaxie 500 XL!" "Is it a Falcon or is it a pickup?"  All these huzzahs rang out every September, in a country not that far away, not that long ago.

Today, the Toyota Camry changes the door on the gas cap every couple of years, and that's about it.  The NASCAR cars all look like the same non-NASCAR cars.  And can you tell me three differences between a Corolla and a Civic?  What in the devil is a Passat, a Tiguan or a Touareg?

Every kid could tell you the difference between the Chevies..the el cheapo Biscayne, the moderately-priced BelAir, the top of the line Impala, and the top of the Impala line, the Impala Super Sport.  Ford, Mercury, Plymouth, Dodge, and the rest of the GM line (Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Cadillac) of cars all had major changes from year to year, and the new models all came out every September, while Liberace never did.

The Saturday Picture Show, December 20, 2025

 

"As the twig is bent, so grows the tree." Unless you think that one Christmas ornament is enough to cause that bough to bow...

Now this is what I'm talking about when I talk about Christmas lights. Put eight or nine strands of these colorful dudes around the house, and bedeck the tree with almost that many of these, only in white, and you have the sort of house where Bing Crosby would come and tap dance with Danny F. Kaye!

This might be Dasher or Dancer checking out the neighborhood lights.

We were so lucky around here to have a night pre-Christmas snow last weekend. first time in forever, it seemed. Not enough to snarl the roads or keep the Amazon trucks from the swift completion of their appointed rounds, just enough to make everything Christmas-pretty!

Someone needs to write a song about how pretty outdoor Christmas light decorations are when snow-covered.

Used to see these on house after house, front doors with giant Santa heads, all pink-cheeked and merry. I always wondered where people stored these Brobdingnagian faces. I guess the attic?

Just before returning home from a really long with, ole Santa stops for a dozen honeydips to share with the Mrs.

Do you have your special Christmas glasses and mugs and plates and dishes all set?

I must be the last person on earth to see this. You don't really need ribbon anymore to decorate your packages. Grab that wide Sharpie!

And is this not the cutest thing you've seen today, a homemade Stocking!? 

Whaddya think?

The great American wit Will Rogers is quoted as having said, "Everyone is ignorant, only on different subjects."

To me, he made a great point, and you can look at it upside down and say everyone knows something no one else knows. Take a room and fill it with, I don't know, 500 people chosen randomly. Out of that group, you would probably find at least one person who could tell you how to re-tile your bathroom, cook a gourmet meal, or drive a race car. It's often surprising to find you're talking to someone who set out to sea as a cabin boy at 12, and now runs a chain of seafood restaurants.

However, this expertise is limited. You won't find a score of people who run chains of fish eateries.  And that brings up this point.

As you may know, The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, a 1.6 mile bridge that crossed the lower Patapsco River and outer Baltimore Harbor/Port, connecting southeastern Baltimore County to Anne Arundel County, was knocked down in 2024 by a container vessel. The bridge was built in the 1970s and opened in 1977 to relieve the congestion in the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel.

The collapse. Horribly, six men who were working on re-paving the bridge surface were killed in the accident.

That congestion didn't just go away when the Bridge did, and the process of rebuilding is just getting underway. Initial estimates said the replacement bridge could open in 2028, but that does not seem possible now. The latest estimate is for sometime in 2030, and at a much higher price than initial estimates forecast.

I'm not counting on getting to AA County quickly anytime soon. But, here's what interests me. TV stations like to have these poll questions going on, like "How do you think the Orioles will do this year?" and people text in their answers and feel like they are part of the story, I don't know.

But today, I heard one of the stations asking the public "When do you think the new Key Bridge will be finished?"  And even if you're an expert on bridge building, and on governmental appropriations for funding these jumbo projects, there are so many variables at work here, one can only reply, "How the hell do I know?"

But I will say, if you are a bridge-building expert with a deep knowledge of how to turn on the fiscal sluice gates, please get in touch with our Governor Moore. He needs your help!

 

It Did Happen To Him

Welcome back to all my friends who love the movie "It Could Happen To You" with Nicolas Cage and where-have-you-gone Bridget Fonda. Here's a story sort of close, but with a Maryland twist. 

A guy from down in Silver Spring did a favor for a relative. (Yes, it happens!) He had been lending a hand to his kin, and when the relative pulled off for gas, he decided to treat the guy right...

"I was on the phone with him when he pulled into a gas station," the man recalled. "He told me that, while he was there, he would buy me a scratch ticket as a 'thank you' for the help I'd been to him."

It was a $10 Double Your Money scratcher. The helpful guy told the relation to go ahead and peel back the numbers.

At first the guy said it looked like a $100 winner, but then he said he might have looked at it wrong, so he would go home and check it out. Yes. Please don't try to read your lottos while driving away from the Exxon on Viers Mill Rd.

Well. great gosh a-mighty and praise Nicolas Cage: the ticket was a $100,000 winner.

"It was impossible to believe. I never win anything," the winner said.

Well, first time for errthang, and go find that movie online. It has Isaac Hayes and that spells movie magic!

 

Spitting Image

It's not just in the US of A that people have to deal with overly zealous officials. 

Take Roy Marsh. Roy is 86 over there in Lincolnshire, England. I once considered that age to be entirely too old, but now, it seems like he's just hitting his stride.

Anyway, there was Roy, out in the fresh Lincolnshire air, and a leaf blew into his mouth. 

Let him tell it: "As I was sitting there, a gale blew a big reed into my mouth," he recalled to the BBC, referring to the plant part of the grass family. "I spat it out, and just as I got up to walk away, two [enforcement officers] came up to me."

You with us so far? A piece of grass flies into his mouth, he loogs it out, and two environmental enforcers show up. They told him they saw him spitting, and he called the enforcer a "silly boy."

"It was all unnecessary and all out of proportion," Marsh told the BBC.

He was taken to court and fined $334.50, although he was able to appeal it down to $200.70. 

Roy Marsh, dangerous criminal

Enter Adrian Findley, a county councillor who works as a representative for Reform on Lincolnshire County Council. He told the BBC he had heard of other complaints from the area.

"[Enforcement officers] are taking it too far. ... There needs to be discretion about how they [enforcement officers] issue fines," he told the news.  "If it looks like a genuine accident, then give people the opportunity to apologize and pick it up."

East Lindsey District Council (ELDC) told the BBC, however, that enforcement officers would "only approach individuals who have been seen committing environmental crime offenses."

They went on to say that the keep a close eye on their enforcement people. and that patrols are not targeted at any specific demographic.

In other words, "We'll issue citations to anyone for any silly thing."

I hope to hear from English friends that this is an aberration, and that if an old man accidentally inhales a piece of leaf, he is not headed for the Ironbar Hilton. If so, cancel my plans for lunch with Charlie and Camilla!

Easy as ABC

Down in Virginia, you have to buy hard liquor at a "state" store, called ABC.  I don't mean to imply that one HAS to buy liquor, just that if you're of a mind to indulge in spirits, you can't get it anywhere else but at a store meant to enrich the state from your consumption of Old Grandad.

As you might have heard, a raccoon gained entry to one of these stores in Ashland, VA, and helped himself to a good deal of hooch from the broken bottles it knocked to the floor.

And the next day, Rocky was found drunk as a lemur, in the men's room.

 

Virginia ABC, always looking to sell more firewater to all, whether they be two-legged or four, is now promoting three new cocktails in honor of the crapulous critter.

It took no time at all for the ABC people to come up with

•  Rye Rascal Sour 
•  Trash Panda Old Fashioned 
•  and Midnight Gin Fizz

Special recipes are published on the VA ABC website, along with fanciful pictures of a raccoon sampling each tipple.

I feel bad for the raccoon, although I figure he's over his hangover now and back to eating whatever the local trash cans yield. He did not deserve this embarrassment. 

Dinner and a show

I can't stand people who are lousy tippers, and the way they contort themselves into knots to justify their parsimony is revolting. If you can't afford to leave a decent (20%) tip, then go to Checker's and take your dinner home in a bag. Dining in a restaurant means you will be served, and for that privilege, one pays the server. 

So don't break my back with "well, in Europe they don't tip!" or "I would have left a tip, but you should see the way she handed me the menu - upside down! Whatzat s'posed to mean, huh?"

Just do the right thing and leave a kind tip and help keep Jordyn Hale out of the clink, because this was not her fault, sort of.

The scene is the Steel City Smokehouse in Pittsburgh, where 27-year-old Jordyn has been slinging steaks and ribs, until the night last month when a party of four ran her a hard way to go at dinner.

This is right out of the non-tipper playbook, to drive a server crazy with 118 demands and then say, "Well, look, she didn't bring me hot sauce right away, so, no tip! The line must be drawn somewhere!"

This party was no party. Twice, they sent their ribs back for being "too rib-like." They wanted drink refills...eight times. They made Jordan recite the specials again and again "with more enthusiasm." And they whined that the barbecue sauce "wasn't spiritually resonating."

You get the picture. These cheap bastardos were looking for trouble, and they found it right after Jordyn dropped off the check for $168 and they put down $168 and not a penny more. They wrote on the check, "You didn't uplift our dining experience."

(You want uplifting? That's in foundation garments, third floor.)

Jordyn's mug shot

Jordyn responded to this insult with a nod, and then she walked back to the cupboard where the restaurant's cleaning equipment was stored.

She returned holding a leaf blower.

As the four deadbeats stared in disbelief, she plugged in the blower, pointed it at them, and yelled, "GET UPLIFTED, THEN!" And the she turned the thing on, full blast.

The mighty wind sent napkins, menus, and those little cups that hold non-resonating sauce up in a vortex of rage. The group, aghast, shrieked, and one man had to grab his airborne toupee in midair.  One of the women saw her scarf take flight, and light in the next booth over.

Someone yelled, “SHE’S AIR-FRYING THE CUSTOMERS!”

And Jordyn said, "THIS IS WHAT UNDERAPPRECIATION FEELS LIKE — HIGH VELOCITY!”

She even had enough power cord to herd the crowd like a pack of sheep toward the exit. This must have been the funniest night ever at Steel City Smokehouse.

And then the cops showed up. Jordyn took a pinch for harassment and creating a hazard.

And as they led her to their car to be taken down for booking, Jordyn shrieked, "YOU WANT UPLIFTING? TIP NEXT TIME!"

I don't suppose she will get to keep her job, and who knows where she's going to work next. But I will tell you this: if I had been there, I would have been her backup.

I can't stand people who are lousy tippers.

Sunday Rerun: Feliz Navidad

 I know a lot of people who will relate to this. Meditation, calming down exercises, soothing ethereal music, chai lattes, and on-duty stress counselors can only go so far. Some people just have an unquenchable need to slug someone.

In Peru, they have Takanakuy. It sounds like fun, but what it is, is a fighting festival in the small town of Santo Tomas.  

It takes place on Christmas every year.

People of all ages, including children, have the chance to settle grudges, close out on old differences, and basically clean each other's clocks before getting on with the holiday hi-jinx.

Takanakuy means "to hit each other," so there's no effort made to pretty this thing up. It's an old-fashioned slugfest for all!

Before the festival, there is lots of drinking and dancing in traditional Andean horse-riding costumes.  That's just the warmup.  On Christmas morning, everybody who's been mad at anybody since last Christmas parades on down to the local bullfighting ring and starts the smacking. 

According to tradition, most people are inebriated, not to mention drunk. Custom means they hug warmly and then start punching their opponents in the face. There is a referee, who walks around with a whip, lashing out when a fight becomes one-sided. This also serves as a deterrent, lest spectators decide to leave the seating area and join the melee.

They say that this brutality helps to steel the residents for their struggles, living in extreme conditions.  

For one thing, they live above 8000 feet altitude, and that can induce a lot of sickness. Santo Tomas is actually way up there at 12,000 feet. The local diet consists of potatoes and whatever animals wander onto the jagged slope of their town.  Santo Tomas is the capital of Chumbivilcas, one of the poorest states in Peru. They are all but cut off from civilization and government services, With only three officers on the entire Chumbivilcas police force, and the nearest courthouse 12 hours away by car, it's easy to see why Law & Order is carried out on a more personal level. Someone steals your goat, don't call the cops, smack him around on Christmas Day!

With no formal legal system in place, these people have allowed hand-to-hand pugilism to replace police, and the fighting allows for the settlement of wrongs.

"The average villager in this region has basically no access to lawyers or courts, and even if they travel to a place where they do, odds are the ultimate judgment will not be in their favor," according to a law student from Lima who came to observe the goings-on.  "Using violence as a means of solving disputes may seem barbaric to people in the cities, but as you can see, the fighting here is all carefully controlled and the people involved get an immediate and cathartic result."

And when the fights are over, they all have a drink and go on their merry way.

Don't laugh too quickly. Ask any police about how many family gatherings around the holidays here start to look like the final scene of "Rocky" after the egg nog runs out.

The Saturday Picture Show, December 13, 2025

This is the most non-committal look yet on a gingerbread man. Maybe it was the first one of the batch...

The gecko is on vacation in some tropical paradise, but he didn't drive to get there!

Here stands the majestic nuthatch displays his autumn plumage. Of all the birds we can see hanging around the backyard feeders, nuthatches are known to be the most ardent fans of country music, owing to their large heads, short tails and powerful bills and feet, and their tendency to advertise their territory using loud, simple songs.

This is the kind of corn on the cob that saves calories. You only use half as much butter because it's only half the size of regular corn.

This is the very definition of what Simon and Garfunkel meant by "a hazy shade of winter." My favorite scenery all year long!

They must be doing some sort of construction down the street. They were bringing in some cranes the other day.

They don't make pennies any more, and here are some wheat pennies. They haven't made these since Hector was a pup.

Should we even ask what Santa is so happy about?

It's hard to describe snow to people who have never seen it, and they have a hard time, after seeing lovely pictures of freshly fallen "silent shrouds" of it, believing that after a couple of days, snow gets dirty and grungy!

Oh wait! Here's the construction crane, all red and green and wishing Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Would you like to take a walk?

Over the years, I have often noticed that a lot of people are deeply concerned about my health and physical well-being.

I know this because of the frequency with which they tell me to go on a long, long walk.

But here's a guy in England - name of Karl Bushby - who was in a bar one night and bet his friends that he could walk all the way home.  

All the way home, that is, from the southernmost point in South America back to Merrie Olde England.

He was in his 20s, the prime time for men to make foolish wagers (the only foolish wagers women ever make is when they bet their man will start acting right), but when he sat down and noodled it out, he soon saw it as "doable."

So there he was a few years later at the water's edge in Punta Arenas, Chile, and he started hot-footin' it home.

That was 1998 when he headed for his town of Hull, 31,000 miles away. He figured on 12 years.

It's been 27 years, Bushby is now 56, and he's still walking, all the while thinking,  "The plan was to do something pretty extraordinary.” 

He has two feet at the other end of his body from his brain, and they have strutted through Patagonia, the Andes, Central America, Mexico, the length of the United States, Russia, Mongolia and some of Asia...deserts, jungles, war zones, cities, countrysides, he's been everywhere man, sticking to his two inviolate rules: “I can’t use transport to advance, and I can’t go home until I arrive on foot. If I get stuck somewhere, I have to figure it out.

Of course, money issues, travel bans, COVID-19, political turmoil and the occasional shortage of Dr Scholl's products have all combined to slow his pace, but never his determination.

You have to say, it looks like fun.

The new plan is to walk triumphantly into Hull next September.

When he started, he regularly clocked 19 miles on the average day, but these days, he's happy to go 15.

He appreciates the people who have come along and provided help, support, financial aid, whatever he came up needing.

"It has just continued through every culture in every country,” he said. “The overwhelming kindness of strangers was a shocker for me.”

The article I read did not mention if there was a significant other waiting for him to get back home. If there is, he is really going to have a great story or two for them!

Waymo trouble than it's worth

Waymo, the self-driving car, claims that riding in a car with no driver is an experience "second to none." Other experiences "second to none" include open heart surgery, being in traction for six weeks due to orthopedic injuries, and root canals without the benefit of anesthesia.

The funny thing is, Olivia Rodrigo and I were both excited about getting a Driver's License and now I drive alone past your street because you're letting some AI robot drive you to Aldi. We couldn't WAIT to get our licenses so that we could go and vote and help shelve books at the library and pick up groceries for the elderly. Now they tell me, kids are not even eager to get their licenses and don't mind being hauled around by Uber. Hey, at least there's a person driving that thing, and he's a good solid citizen, with no criminal background or propensity to commit violent acts.  As far as you know.

Not that long ago, I was at a county training session down at Dundalk Community College, which has a very steep slope to its main building parking lot, and as we sat and we trained, along came an icy rain, and the next thing you know, cars and trucks were sliding sideways on the ice, innocent of any traction on the slick surface, and that marked my introduction to driverless cars. I still had my 4WD pickup at the time, and it wisely refused to get in on the scrum, staying put a safe distance away from the crunching.

Now Baltimore is next in line to get Waymo taxis, and I would have to say I would rather walk those mean streets than to get into a car with no driver. In other parts of the country, driverless vehicles are driving right past barricades and right into the middle of police incidents (of which Baltimore City has more than its share) and there are reports of Waymos zooming right past stopped school buses with their hazard arms deployed and their flashers a-flashing. The people at Waymo say this is an operational bug and needs to be addressed by computer people. If a child gets off a bus and gets run over by a driverless car, that is a situation that will need to be addressed by mortuary personnel.

I hope the people who run things around here wake up and realize the Jetsons were far more advanced than we are. Driverless cars are antithetical to safety.

And what I am saying is, this is a dumb idea, no matter how many times you call me a Luddite. Just don't call me a Waymo. I ain't going.

Lost on this day

The great country singer Faron Young was 64 on this day in 1996 when he passed away from suicide. He had a fine career, charting country hits from the 1950s on, and then, when he grew depressed because country music had changed and turned into something like the musical version of left-over omelets reheated, he grew angry over the loss of his fan base and record sales and concert attractions, so he ended it all.

He trained himself to sing on his family's dairy farm in Shreveport, Louisiana. It was his daily chore to milk the cows before going to school, and he used those cows as his first audience, singing to them the popular hits of the day. Not until he finished school and began looking for work as a singer did Faron turn to country music, and that happened because he was offered far more money to sing country than pop. He was a country singer when he got drafted, riding the crest of his first hit record "Goin' Steady" when the US Army drafted him in 1952. He soon became a singer with the US Army Band, replacing Eddie Fisher. 

Mustering out and back into civilian life, Faron began a long string of country hits which you have heard if you ever rode in my truck or car. The shift of country music to something so unpalatable shook him deeply in the 1980s, well after his final #1 hit "It's Four In The Morning" (1972) was no longer being played on the radio because it was so much more important for people to hear the Lukes and Clints and what-have-you. Faron could have done other things. He had a business mind and was the founder and publisher of the "Music City News" paper, which told the story of country music. He could have retired from singing as a businessman, but it hurt him so deeply that people no longer wanted to hear him sing that he decided to step off the stage, literally and figuratively.

I wish he could have gotten the help he needed. Suicide is the last thing I would ever do.

Lazy Hazy

 I was talking to someone about our summer birthdays; hers is in mid-July and mine is at the end of June. You know what we were both still sore about?

Classroom birthday parties in elementary school! We didn't have them, since school was over for the year by the time our calendars flipped.

I understand things are much different now. We didn't have peanut allergies then, fortunately. I know that is a serious thing, and allergies have to be taken into consideration in all places at all times.

Back in the golden days of school days, your mother would send in enough cupcakes on your birthday for the entire class and the teacher and the custodian and the PE teacher. Birthday boy or girl would get serenaded after lunch, everyone shoved a cupcake down their neck, and then it was back to reading about "The Golden Hind" (snicker) or solving a stacked-up addition problem. Not a huge big deal, but at least no one was saying "Billy doesn't like chocolate icing" or "My mother said I'm not supposed to have between-meal treats." If they had, the answer would have been, "Give it to Eddie; he'll eat anything."

The Golden Hind was Sir Francis Drake's ship, on which he not only circumnavigated the world, but also sailed completely around it!

I wonder how Eddie is doing these days.

Things get complicated because we allow them to.  A few years ago, someone came up with the idea of having "half birthdays," so your February 15th birthday would be accompanied by more ballyhoo on August 15, some six months later. Why make little Ernest feel special just ONE day a year, when we can give him TWO birthdays? I'm not hearing so much about half birthdays anymore anyway, and that's ok. One should be enough. If you've had as many of them as I have, you know what I mean! 

27,349,920 minutes

455,832 hours, or 18,993 days have passed since Peggy and I jumped into the raging waters of the Matrimonial Sea on this day in 1973. 

There was no "Big Bang Theory" on TV then, so there was no Sheldon Cooper in the pop culture for Peggy to use to explain me to friends and her family and co-workers. They just learned to figure me out, somehow. And that wasn't always easy! It was to be many years before Peggy finally convinced me to stop answering questions honestly when it came to how did I like the food and what do I think of dancing The Hustle.

On the other hand, Peggy takes no getting used to, which is why I fell deeply for her the first time I met her, and I never got over the feeling of falling in love. 

So it was on this day in 1973 that I and my rented tuxedo married the love of my life. We have had our fun and our laughter and the house is often filled with the sound of music. I don't reckon that any couple has laughed as much as we have over 52 years of love and hilarity. 

Oh, listen, there have been sad days and there have been deaths and sadness and losses and disappointments. But you know what got us through, was knowing that it wouldn't be long before we were laughing again. 

Thank you, Peggy, for all this goodness. Let's go for another 52 years, on earth and then in Heaven.