I Yam what I Yam

People my age are often told to make serious plans for their final arrangements, which is the kind way of saying, "Figure out what kind of box you want us to shovel you into, old man." 

I will leave that to future generations. I plan to live to be a ripe old age, so I'm only 3/4 of the way through.

What I plan to so is settle just how I'll shuffle off to Buffalo, and that is going to be a long, slow shuffle. I used to tell our doctor, while he was listening to my staccato heartbeat or probing you-know-where, that I thought it would be fun to die of rickets, or scurvy, if I couldn't find somewhere to catch a case of rickets. He told me to cut down on limes.

Tell you one thing for sure - I won't go the way that American frontiersman Daniel Boone  <<<  is supposed to have gone. One legend (thoroughly disputed) says that ole Dan'l died from eating too many sweet potatoes in 1820. That will not be my undoing. I can't stand sweet potatoes, so they won't get me unless someone throws a bag of them right at my head.

Again, though, I have a long way to go before I settle my bills. I always like to leave people with a smile on their face, so let me think about it. 

Buy him some peanuts and Cracker Jack!

Watching the Orioles in Detroit last night also offered a little nature study along with the old ballgame.

In the middle innings, a black squirrel appeared on the field, offering to be a pinch runner or whatever. 

Later in the game, fearing an attack on a player resulting in rabies or whatever, home plate umpire Bill Miller got the grounds crew and several of the Orioles outfielders to do a big roundup and chase the varmint back to the bullpen area where he lives. If you sent out to a Hollywood casting director and asked for a typical baseball umpire type, what you would get would look exactly like Bill Miller: benignly gray, barrel-chested, and loud of voice, which is what he used to address the crowd and ask them to give a hand for the crew that sent Squirrely Joe off to his domicile. Nice touch!

The black squirrels are outnumbered by the common gray, or fox, squirrels by about 10,000 to one. And they are not a separate species or anything, not at all. They are just regular old squirrels born with a genetic trait known as melanism, which gives their fur more dark pigmentation.

They do appear frequently in cold northern area such as Ontario and Michigan, where that dark fur absorbs and retains heat in the winter.  And you have never seen a black squirrel wearing a down vest, so there you go.

I've never seen one in my part of the world here in Baltimore County, but we were up at Mariner Point Park in Joppatowne, Harford County, and we saw a slew of them running around. 

I hope this little guy comes back out for the next two games up in MoTown. The Orioles won because a squirrel put the hex on the Tigers!

Up In My Memories

 This one is just for fans of really old movies, or The Andy Griffith Show, or really sweet secrets.

I think that covers most of us.

Let's work backwards. Episode 9 of season 4 of the Andy Griffith Show aired on December 2, 1963 -  some 10 days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It was entitled "Up In Barney's Room," and was the episode where we got to see Deputy Barney Fife's living arrangements with Mrs Mendelbright, who rented him a room in her boarding house. The plot goes that Mrs Mendelbright kicked Barney out of the house for cooking chili in his room, but the real reason was that she had fallen under the spell of the old charmer J. Pat O'Malley, who was only trying to rip her off. She wanted Barney gone so she could move Oscar Fields (O'Malley) in. Big surprise: everything worked out in the end.

Bigger surprise: Enid Markey, who played Mrs M, was one of the original stars of silent movies, having played Jane in the first two Tarzan movies fifty years earlier. She also performed in vaudeville and in stage productions, and after being injured making a movie, she decided she really wanted to learn to act by appearing on Broadway shows. She was to do 29 shows on the Great White Way all together, beginning in 1919 with a play called...."Up In Mabel's Room."

The writers of that Griffith episode, James Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum, wanted to salute one of the grand ladies of American theatre, so they swapped in Barney's name and wrote a nice tribute that way.

Life is full of little treats like this!

Here's Enid Markey as Mrs Mendelbright and Don Knotts as Barney Fife, as the landlady catches the deputy using a 75-watt bulb, against her rule requiring bulbs no brighter than 40 watts. She also accused him of being afraid of the dark.

Sunday rerun: When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie

 Not that this will keep the Baltimore Orioles top management awake at night, but I am not a huge fan of the Oriole Park at Camden Yards. I know it's the Taj Mahal of baseball, a magnificent edifice constructed on a great idea that former club officials Janet Marie Smith and the late Larry Lucchino had. The state of Maryland had acquired the property at the old Camden railroad warehouse. Smith and Lucchino said, instead of tearing down the warehouse (the longest building on the east coast) let's build right up to it. And they did, and it's a great park. 

But it's downtown, and I'm not. I'm about the most sub-urban boy you'll ever meet. I see plenty of people packing the ballyard these days, since we have a winning team, and that is all good.

Please permit me to wish they had kept the old mid-town Memorial Stadium around so they could play a few games there every year, just for the hell of it. Sure, that place was decrepit and had no swank about it, but there was a certain basebally-ness to it that the new place lacks. I see fans at the games now with crucial moments in the game in front of them, and they are looking at their phones or jawjacking with the people behind them. At the old stadium, you had to pay attention, in case a ball or bat (or fan!) came flying your way.

At the old stadium, for some reason, I enjoyed the smell of some cheap cheroot cigar being smoked, and I never smoked stogies in my life. It just seemed like part of the atmosphere, like the aroma of popcorn and the sound of kids running around stomping on old soda cups. They don't do that anymore, either.

One thing I believe the new park is trying is growing tomatoes. Yes. Tomatoes. This all started back in the 1970s when Earl Weaver, the manager back then, challenged groundskeeper Pasquale “Pat” Santarone to a tomato growing contest. Santarone carved out a little dirt triangle down where the left field foul line met the stands, and Earl planted his Better Boy tomatoes in his back yard garden not too far from where we live now! I'll be glad to drive you past the historic site someday.

Earl and Pat even went into business together as they argued about the size and quality of their respective fruits. They marketed a tomato fertilizer and I'm sure a lot of people around here have enjoyed homemade pasta sauce and salads much more because they had used the Earl 'n' Pat secret 'mater food!

I have heard that the current club has tomato plants growing out by the bullpen, but it's not the same.

You can travel all around, and you are not going to see things in other cities like you see here!

Pat (l) and Earl

The Saturday Picture Show, July 25, 2025

A welder made a rear bumper step-up and got something that people will notice as he drives along merrily.

The sun says, hold the electricity, I'll light up this lantern for now!

The company that does the road striping on Eutaw Street in downtown Baltimore has a whimsical bent that helps to zip things up nicely!

I imagine a lot of people would look at this and wonder if this giraffe is wearing false eyelashes. 

Be careful where you park on your first day at Toronto Fire Station 143!

It's only fitting that Pennsylvania, a state named for "(William) Penn's Sylvania," would be the home of this lush greenery. 

Note to backyard gardeners: keep on eye on the vines, or the squash will try to sneak out through the fence!

Someone took a freeze-frame of a Monopoly game and the table on which it was being played and covered the whole thing in a half inch of Epoxy and now it's forever.

Down in Ocean City, a shark obligingly poses for a photo as a Beach Dad works on his relocation. And now, you've got that Baby Shark song going on in your head!

 You have to wonder what happened here - why not give every apartment a balcony? I don't know; something about this whole building gives me the willies something fierce.

Hooking Up

 Being an old geezer retiree, I am able to keep up with the world because of my finely-honed computer skills, the most notable of which is being able to ask young people how to do computer stuff.

But I have a computer, scanner, cell phone, tablet, all the things that help me stay up on things, if you will.

I worked for Baltimore County, and every month since my golden retirement day of 3/1/12 I have received, via US Mail, a pay stub of sorts covering my pension check and the deductions, etc. That has been handy for Peggy to keep up with the financials around here.

But they don't do that anymore; as of this month retirees have to go online to a county portal and print out their "advice" (as they call that monthly printout.) It's no problem for me, but what about those who don't have a computer to keep their records straight? 

It's like this creeping disappearance of shows that used to be on regular tv, but now you need cable. I guess it won't be long before all the NFL games are on cable only, along with the playoffs and Super Bowl.

We invented and developed and created ourselves right into a hole. What once was so simple ain't so much anymore.

Here's the wrong way to get connected...

Just the tip, just for a second

With the Whirled Cup in our rearview, and real football still about a month away, the talk on the sosh media this week has been all about "do I need to tip at a carry-out place?"

I'll say this. If the person at the counter gives exceptional service (helps you out the door, tosses in some extra hot sauce packets, etc) sure, that's worth a little something.

But people are saying that they go to the counter at Pete Sirria's to grab the xtra-lge pepperoni they ordered online, and when they go to pay, the screen lights up with "Do you wish to tip?"

Tip whom? The computer that took the order? 

Now some people are saying that it's nice to tip the counter person, and one would hope that they would divvy it up with the people who made the pizza. But you can't know if that will happen.

In a restaurant setting, where a server brings you the menu, answers questions, makes suggestions, brings water, appetizers, entrees, sides, coffee, dessert, and another fork after Uncle Nutzy drops his, that's where tipping is appropriate.

How about tipping the person in a clothing store who helps you find just the right tie? How about the cashier at Try'N'Save who rings up your order, shares the local gossip, and tells you the joke about the traveling preacher from Keokuk? The guy in the money booth at the gas pumps with a sign about you must be born before this date in 2005 to purchase tobacco? 

The 911 operator who takes your call about the brush fire down the street? The firefighters who extinguish same? The teacher who taught little Abercrombie how to solve quadratic equations? Your life insurance salesman? Your favorite actor? the president of your community association?  The guy who writes a blog you have read more or less daily since 2007?

Just ideas, you understand.