More Sinner Than Saint

Family "Characters"

2012-01-19T09:34:00.000-08:00

My parents divorced when I was in the sixth grade and a year or two later my father married a woman who had an adopted son and was caring for an infant girl, also not born to her. My father adopted the boy, Ryan, and he and his new wife, Pru, adopted the girl, Kat.

Kat was the first (and only) girl for my father, and he set about making her an idiot. At meal times she would be in her high chair and he would clown around with her, hunching his shoulders, rolling his eyes, making faces and strange noises, etc. She, of course, responded, and the two of them had a grand old time amusing each other.

Pru expressed a little concern about this, saying "You know, she's going to do all this when she's older." Dad was otherwise convinced and continued the march.

As Kat's very first day at school ended, Pru got a call from the teacher.

Teacher: "What is wrong with this child?"

Pru: "What do you mean?"

Teacher: "She squirms at her desk, she rolls her eyes, she laughs at inappropriate places, she falls out of her chair . . . ."

Pru: "I don't know. You'll have to ask her father."

Even today, Kat loves to laugh more than anyone else in the family. She is also odd in various ways. For example, she can't stand the sight of her own blood. If she cuts a finger she holds it with the other hand and walks with a limp.

On the plus side, she does a very convincing imitation of an ostrich.

*****
Pru had her own quirks. When the kids were in high school she and my father stayed together for them, I think, in a marriage more of convenience and accommodation than anything else.

Pru was involved in local activities - 4-H, that kind of thing - and Dad worked during the day and moonlighted a couple of nights a week playing an electric organ in a restaurant lounge, so they mostly went their own separate ways.

They lived in the boondocks in New Hampshire, in an area where newspapers were not delivered and people picked up their mail at a local Post Office branch in a general store.

One Sunday morning Dad got up ahead of Pru, put the coffee on and left the house for a quick drive to the store for the Sunday newspaper. When Pru got up he asked her "What happened to your truck?"

Pru: "What do you mean?"

Dad: "There are parallel scratches all along the hood and the top of the cab, and the windshield has so many cracks you can't see through it. I'm surprised it hasn't fallen out."

Pru: "I don't know. Someone must have backed into me in the parking lot."

And there the matter rested, but *that* line is a family classic.

Pru didn't drink at all, so family speculation is that she nodded off driving home and drifted off the road into the woods, acquiring the scratches from tree branches. But she must have driven the rest of the way home with her head out the window, because the windshield was absolutely opaque.

One New Year's Eve

2012-01-01T23:00:00.000-08:00

A couple of minor incidents from around 1977 or 1978 have popped into my mind because of the holidays.

I had just moved to Revere, Massachusetts and spent a small fortune completely furnishing an apartment. Dee Dee and I were on the outs and I had no plans for New Year's Eve, so I decided to host a small family gathering.

Brother Billy was in the Navy and had returned to duty after Christmas, so the party consisted of my father and Carla, sister Kat and husband Peter, brother Ryan and wife Denise, and yours truly with Liz, a WAVE from the Portsmouth (NH) Navy Yard.

Everyone there smoked grass occasionally, so along with a fully stocked bar we were in the midst of a ton of snacks and a bag of grass, with rolling papers, a pipe, and a bong.

We had several hours of sitting around chatting, listening to music, having drinks, and having the occasional toke.

As midnight approached, someone suggested that we watch the Times Square ball being dropped and that *everyone* had to be stoned for that.

I turned the TV on and found the program, turned out the lights and lit some candles, and we passed the grass around. I had turned my father on the year before. To his dying day he insisted that marijuana had no effect on him. He probably believed it, but no one who had seen him smoke believed it. This night he agreed to try again, "Just to be sociable. It really doesn't do anything for me." Soon, however, he got his tang all tongueled up and was backing talkwards.

As the countdown at Times Square began, I ostentatiously looked at my watch and said "Now let's see if they're right."

Post-midnight everyone had the munchies again. WAVE Liz had baked and brought some oatmeal butterscotch cookies, and at some point brother Ryan bit into one.

Ryan: "Who made these?"

Liz: "I did. They're oatmeal butterscotch. Aren't they good?"

Ryan: "Gosh. Things with butterscotch sure are hard, aren't they?"

And Liz threw one at him.

*****
The "let's see if they're right" line above is one of the approaches I sometimes use to tease people, and I am reminded now that it is possible to overdo that.

Somewhere around that time my Assistant at work, David, and I went to Jacksonville, Florida on business. We stayed at the Hilton and met for breakfast. There were sugar shakers on the table and when coffee arrived I poured some sugar into mine. Setting the shaker down I said "Exactly two teaspoons."

David went berserk. "You don't know that! "You can't possibly know that that was exactly two teaspoons!"

Donnie: "David, I know that I can't be that precise. And I know that you know it. Why are you so upset that I said that?"

David: "It's not that you said that. It's the cumulative effect of all the things you have said before."

A Voice from the Past

2011-12-09T16:11:00.000-08:00

Well, not everyone I have known is busy dying. A friend and co-worker from the late nineties in Virginia - we'll call him Vic - has tracked me down some thirteen years after I left there.

We worked in a small company that provided data processing services for ~~junk mailers~~ direct marketers, nearly all of it on the fund raising side (charitable, political, etc.). Interesting stuff, although not as interesting as the catalog side of the industry.

We talked for some time, perhaps a half hour or so, I don't really know, on the phone and have exchanged a number of emails. Vic was in his late twenties when I knew him, single and hard partying, sometimes burning the candle at both ends, which is more easily done at that age.

Now he's a little north of forty, married, kids, dogs, the whole nine yards. I haven't said this to him (although he'll be reading this, I think), but he has matured greatly. I suppose we all do but it is not as noticeable with people one sees frequently as it is with someone out of touch for more than a decade, and the difference between someone in his twenties and that same person in his forties is dramatic.

We've been sharing memories and updating each other on what we know about friends and acquaintances. He's had to contribute more of that than I have, as over those thirteen years I've seen only two people we have in common.

We had another employee about Vic's age at the office, of Philippine extraction, whom Vic occasionally called "Secret Asian Man." For any youngsters reading this, that's a reference to the song Secret Agent Man, the theme song for a 1960's TV program, Secret Agent. Secret Asian Man is also married now.

Sharing memories is fun stuff.

Ineptitude at the Post Office

2011-11-22T10:48:00.000-08:00

No, not at the *local* Post Office, but at the national level among those whose job it is to provide a "help" function.

One of the categories in which I do a lot of online selling is school yearbooks, generally high school yearbooks.

Now the United States Postal Service has a shipping category - you know, Parcel Post, Priority, etc. - called Media Mail. It is the slowest, but also the least expensive way to ship anything by mail. Eligible are various media items - "books, sound recordings, recorded video tapes, printed music, recorded computer-readable media (such as CDs and DVDs)."

There is some confusion at my local Post Office about whether school yearbooks fall in the "books" category.

I'm not exactly sure why such confusion should exist. Read my lips:

Year.

Book.

But exist it does.

I thought I might settle the matter and after doing all the research I could at usps.com, which is entirely silent on the matter, I exercised the USPS help function. One option is to email your questions to the USPS and await the promised answer, which I did.

I specifically mentioned the local Post Office's confusion on the matter and specifically asked whether yearbooks could be shipped via Media Mail.

I also asked a second question. Prohibited from Media Mail are books containing advertising (except incidental book advertising). I asked whether fifty year old or hundred year old advertising was OK, since at this point it really is memorabilia, not advertising.

Today I received my email response, in which "Donna" played back to me exactly the material at usps.com, informing me of the materials considered eligible for Media Mail: books, sound recordings, recorded video tapes, printed music, recorded computer-readable media (such as CDs and DVDs).

Not forgetting my second question, she also informed me that advertising material was prohibited (except incidental book advertising).

You will have noted the glaring absence of answers to my questions.

And then, and *then* she provided me with a telephone number for further information, the telephone number of my local Post Office, which I had informed her was the one confused on the issue of yearbooks.

Why waste the electrons?

The Early Days of Mainframe Computers

2011-11-21T11:47:00.000-08:00

A couple of posts ago there was a discussion of IBM green cards. My memory is now directed to the mid-1960's and one of the more entertaining pastimes of those we referred to as "system programmers." They were the real bit pickers, the ones who got right down inside the bowels of the system code, including the code that managed the hardware.

In those days disk drives were great big clunky old things. Look at the picture of the 2311 here (the fourth picture on the right).

The console was perhaps waist high. If you needed a different disk you opened the hinged top of the console, lifted the disk out, stored it wherever it belonged, and replaced it with the drive that contained the data you needed. Then you had a little over 7MB of different data.

The drives' cables ran under the raised flooring, and were of course longer than necessary for the consoles' current positions in case physical reallocation of space for the various devices became desirable.

The bit pickers, those who wrote their own channel control words and channel control commands, realized right away the potential for fun.

Those disks were heavy and slow, with mechanically directed physical read/write heads. It was possible to read *backwards*. You could, with the right channel control, cause the drive to stop spinning and start spinning the other way.

Now normally there would be a built in (the software) pause to allow the drive to wind down and come to a stop before rotating in the opposite direction, but some fun loving programmers wrote their own software to manage the drives, and by dint of causing a sooner-than-intended reversal of spin they could make the entire console jerk, physically moving it along the floor.

When the cats were away the mice would play, and console races were born. Two programmers would each take a drive, write their own input/output software, and race their drives across the floor. Disks would stop and reverse direction much faster than they were intended to, jerking the consoles a little, perhaps an inch or less, causing the consoles to make forward progress.

Naturally, IBM experienced a much higher than anticipated failure rate with drives. I don't know when they figured it out - or found out - but it drove them crazy for a while.

Time Flies When You're Having Fun

2011-11-16T18:43:00.000-08:00

A friend who is younger than I ~~but no spring chicken herself~~ has poked a stick at me with a comment on the preceding post. She has provided the following link, which you should check out before reading the rest of this post:

Getting into the spirit of it, I confess that with regard to most items listed, I am even older than *that*.

Rotary Dial Telephone: When I was in grammar school rotary dials had not yet made their appearance. You picked up the receiver and the operator came on the line. You told her what number you wanted and she took care of it for you.
Manual Typewriter: I had one, a Royal Portable given to me for my fifteenth birthday. I learned to type on it, picking up a bad habit along the way. When I was composing and typing I often had to stop and think of what to type next, and would lightly drum my fingers on the keys. When the IBM Selectric came out in the 1960's it had no sense of humor at all about that, and a half dozen characters would be typed before I managed to stop my fingers.
Coffee Percolator: It's electric. Ho hum. My mother had one that was *not* electric. You put the coffee in, added water, put the top back on, turned on the gas, and waited until it had perked a couple of minutes.
Flash Cube: I actually owned a box camera, a Brownie. No flash of any kind. If you wanted a picture you waited until the daytime.
TV Channel Selector: That was how it was with us. Get up, walk to the TV, manually set the selector to channel 4, 5, or 7.
Record Changer: The earliest couple of record players I remember us having did not have the capability. When a record ended the needle skipped back and forth in a silent area near the center hole. You had to lift the arm manually and put it back on the arm rest. Later, we had a console record player. It not only had a record changer but it had four speeds: 78, 45, 33 1/3, and 16 2/3 rpm.
Gas Station Driveway Bell: Yup, and a boy would come running. He'd pump your gas, clean your windshield, and offer to check your oil. Sometimes he'd just check it without asking.
TV Station Sign Off: I remember them. I didn't see them very often because I was young and they occurred after my bedtime. I think the stations went off the air at 10:00 PM and started up again around 10:00 AM.
Cash Register: To tell you the truth, I never paid much attention to them and have no clue regarding what they looked like when I was young.
Film Projector: Yes, I remember those, particularly from grammar school days when the entire school would be summoned to the auditorium to watch The Night Before Christmas or something similar.
Broken Record: Yup. Sometimes the needle would hop back and forth from one groove to another, over and over again. Another potential hazard was the "skip," when the needle would jump a groove and some small period of music or words would not be played.

Some Terminology Never Dies

2011-11-15T22:13:00.000-08:00

I imagine that most occupations and pastimes of any age have not only unique descriptive terms, but terms that in fact misdescribe, because whatever they once described has evolved.

This is an IBM green card that I was using when I wrote programs for mainframes in the 1990's.

What?

Yes. Yes it is.

OK, then, here's what the original (1960's) green card looked like.

(If that link goes dead, someone please mention it in the comments and I'll replace it.)

The original was basically a two-sided piece of heavy stock with information useful to some programmers, particularly assembler programmers. It contained instruction names, the hexadecimal codes for the instructions, instruction mnemonics, that sort of thing. You carried it in your shirt pocket, you carried it in your back pocket, or you left it on your desk, in which case it went missing. Being carried around in pockets accounts for the disreputable appearance of the green card in the above picture.

Over the years the card was from time to time reprinted, having been expanded to provide more information and/or tailored to meet the requirements for use with more modern and different systems. The version shown above is also of heavy stock, but unfolds to eight pages with two sides.

These later versions made their appearance in different colors - blue, pink, yellow, whatever, but no veteran assembler programmer was going to ask to borrow someone's "pink card" or "blue card." Programmers who did so and were heard by veterans faced death by derision. Green card it was and green card it would remain.

When my programming career ended (2001) the green card was in fact neither green nor a card. It was a booklet of roughly (perhaps even exactly) the same width and height of the original green card, but containing dozens of pages of information.

For your amusement, I shall mention that I first got into electronic data processing a few years after its commercial inception, not at the very beginning. The mainframe was at a Boston newspaper and required its own room, climate control, raised flooring, etc.

It was an IBM 360-20, with 24K of memory. Of that 24K the first 1A40 (that's 6720 for fingers and toes people) bytes were reserved for the system. Thus, for application programmers the first byte available was 1A41 and the last byte available - "high core" - was 5FFF (24575).

That 24K is what my first home computer (as they were called at the time), an Apple II+, came with. You could buy an additional 24K, but that was it. That is laughable today, as your desktops and laptops have so much more.

Mainframe computers are known by old timers as "the big iron," and are in much wider use than many people imagine. Why? Power. If you need to process ten or fifteen thousand transactions per second, then you still need the big iron.

Keep on Keepin' on

2011-11-11T21:09:00.000-08:00

I have mentioned Rob, mentor and close friend, in earlier posts. Rob was about ten years older than I, personable, funny, knowledgeable to some extent about nearly everything. I met Rob in 1971, I think, in Boston. When I worked at Blue Cross there he was my vice-president. He took a senior vice-pesidency at Blue Cross in Chicago in 1979 and surprised me by offering me a vice-presidency there, which I accepted.

We ran together off and on throughout the years in Boston, then non-stop from 1979 to 1983 in Chicago. At that point I left Blue Cross and we saw each other less frequently but kept in touch.

A year or two later he left Chicago, got divorced and married again, and ultimately settled in Georgia. It's the state he was from, but that was a coincidence.

By then, "keeping in touch" pretty much meant a phone call every three or four years, but the conversations were always long and full of laughs.

He fell prey to Alzheimer's Disease, and in the early stages his wife had to separate him from the internet, as he was sending emails containing some lurid stories which he presented as fact, which was highly unlikely.

About six months ago I asked a mutual friend (and former girlfriend of Rob), Maryellen, what she'd heard from or about Rob. She was horrified to learn that I didn't know that he had died "quite a while ago." I googled him and found his obit, and he had been gone for three years.

Although we hadn't seen each other for perhaps twenty-five years, for me the world is emptier now.

This has been a strange year in that regard. My best friend in Vietnam (1966) was Fred. It is quite normal, you might even say routine, for Army friends to lose track of each other, and when we left Vietnam for different assignments that was the last I saw of him.

I never forgot him, and when the internet came along I began searching for him. He had a slightly unusual name, and I found only one person with that name, a resident of McMinnville, Tennessee. I called and it was the wrong Fred.

Around 1997 or so I left a message on a site that was designed to help Vietnam veterans contact each other. I just said I wanted to know that he was out there somewhere and left my email address.

I kept looking and a few years ago found that he had been promoted and gone back to Vietnam around 1970, but that was all I ever found.

Several months ago I got an email from a woman who said "I think you are looking for my grandfather." This wasn't going to end well. If he was alive she'd have let *him* know, not me.

I sent her the details I had about knowing him in Corpus Christi, Texas and in Vietnam, and found the two pictures of him that I knew I had somewhere, scanned them, and sent them to her.

She is Fred's granddaughter, although they never met. Fred took his own life in 1972, shortly before she was born, leaving no information as to why.

It does seem strange that I was still looking for him thirty-nine years after he died, but many things that happened before the advent of the internet haven't made it there yet.

I guess I'm thinking of him today because of Veterans Day, and because a couple of days ago his granddaughter emailed me. She checks on me every three or four weeks.

I hope Rob and Fred are the only two I find out about this year.

Keep on keepin' on, y'hear?

Never Give Up

2011-10-18T21:05:00.000-07:00

When I returned to Illinois from Virginia, I signed on with a consulting group. My first assignment was to be at Allstate, which required a ten person contingent: a project leader, a technical leader, and eight assembler programmers. I was to be the technical leader.

The project leader and I got there a couple of weeks ahead of the rest - in fact not all "the rest" had been found and hired. I wound up interviewing a couple of them myself. After a couple of weeks everyone was present and *that* is when I learned that Allstate didn't need ten techies. What they needed was a group of people to document some systems written in assembler, and they had decided that should be done by assembler programmers. Our group *might* write a dozen lines of code a week among us.

I called my employers and told them they had to get me out of there, and a week or two later they arranged an interview at IBM for a programming job working (as a contractor, not an employee) with an assembler programming department. I was interviewed by the manager and a couple of days later he introduced me to the others in the department, six in number, and informed me that I would be working with (read "for") Rick.

Rick was in some ways old school IBM: all business, not one whit more sociable than he had to be. I, on the other hand, tend to be somewhat gregarious around people with whom I work. Within a couple of weeks I had made several friends in the department, but no progress in that area with the Great Stone Face, Rick. Nearly every minute of the work day you could walk by his cubicle and see him either staring at programming code on his monitor or making modifications to it, oblivious to his surroundings. In fact, and I *swear* to you this is true, one day an employee in another department had a heart attack, paramedics raced by Rick's cubicle with a gurney and then returned, wheeling the patient past Rick, and when I mentioned it later he was completely unaware of the incident. He was a dedicated worker, no doubt about *that*.

He gave me assignments, pointed me to the programs and libraries I would need, and basically ignored me until I went to him and said I was done. I *tried* to break him down, but that was a very slow process. I would go into his cube, park my butt on his credenza, and wait until he was forced to look at me. He, on the other hand, would ignore me for a bit, then take a deep breath to let me know that this was an imposition, turn to me, and give me the phoniest smile in creation while saying "Yes?"

But *this* Yankee is made of stern stuff, and after a couple of months I could actually get a few minutes of non-work conversation out of him. At some point he began calling me "Fred," which was most assuredly not my name. However, I would have dipped my arm in boiling oil before asking him why, at least until I had *some* information about it.

That came one day when he decided he wanted to talk about a problem he was having with a program. He just *couldn't* find the problem and thought that perhaps talking it out with me would help. I looked over his shoulder as he discussed the program routines and found that he had inserted some testing code to provide him with interim information to help the debugging. Interestingly, he had named the testing routine "Fred." Aha!

I asked him "Why 'Fred?'" He said he had once had a boss that named such routines Fred and he had picked up the habit. Good enough for me, and soon we were *both* calling each other Fred, a practice which persists to this day. (My greatest triumph came one day when the two of us had lunch and I presented him with a bottle of wine from Lynfred Winery, the label of which proclaimed it to be "Fred's Red.")

The Great Stone Face cracked one day. The breakthrough came as the result of some work he had given me. When I said I was done he tested the program. Soon his voice wafted across the corridor: "Hey, Fred. It doesn't work." I, of course, denied that this could be true in a four dimensional universe, and learned something about how the department worked. When you made a modification to the program you owned the *entire* program, not just the code you wrote, not just the functions the code affected. He had found something in the program that didn't work. It wasn't related to my coding and in fact it was obvious that it had *never* worked properly. I pointed that out and he gave me an Ownership 101 lecture. Go back and fix this one, and in the future when I fixed something, test *every* function in the program. It didn't matter if it had never worked, if it didn't work *now* it was my responsibility.

The breakthrough? I said "You should be in Quality Control," and he replied "You should be pumping gas."

That's one of the funniest things anyone's ever said to me, and I have known a lot of people over the years who would have paid mucho dinero for front row seats to it. I once related the story during a telephone conversation with Debbie (you'll just have to read older posts if you want to know about her) and it was several minutes before she could breathe properly.

Rick and I slowly became good friends, and the final proof was that one hot summer afternoon I got him to steal out of the building with me and make a quick run to Dairy Queen.

I left IBM nearly ten years ago, but several of the department members, including Rick and me, still have lunch once a month, and every couple of months Rick and I get together for a movie and dinner.

Stuck in the Sixties, Musically

2011-10-08T21:58:00.000-07:00

I imagine that the great majority of pop music fans favor inordinately the music of their youth, the major exception being (perhaps) those who were young musicians and were always impatiently finding fault with the music of the day.

My own experience was that with the arrival of heavy metal I "dropped out" when it came to keeping up with contemporary music. It's not as if I've *never* listened to or liked newer artists, only that at one time I was on top of things, so to speak, and since then my exposure to new artists and new music has been pretty much accidental.

Thus, this post, devoted to pop music related trivia, will focus pretty much on the fifties and sixties. Here are some tidbits for you:

The Animals: The original members were a tax collector, a ship's instrument maker, a postman, an illustrator, and a salesman.
Seven different artists reached the top forty with Mack the Knife, aka Theme from the Three Penny Opera.
The Ronettes, The Crystals, and The Chiffons were all sixties girl groups. In the 1986 remake of Little Shop of Horrors, three black women are occasionally seen and heard in musical numbers and in the credits are identified as Ronette, Crystal, and Chiffon.
The Bobbettes: If you're old enough, you may recall their only hit, Mr. Lee.

One, two, three,
Look at Mr. Lee.
Three, four, five,
Look at him jive.

Well, the truth is that the Bobettes were aged 11 to 13, Mr. Lee was their fifth grade teacher, and they didn't like him at all. The above lyrics are the cleaned up version of their original recording, I Shot Mr. Lee, which began

One, two, three,
I shot Mr. Lee.
Three, four, five,
I got tired of his jive.
Pat Boone and Roy Orbison were classmates at North Texas State University.
Sky Pilot was slang for a military chaplain. When Eric Burdon & the Animals released their song of that name in 1968 it went to number one among the troops in Vietnam and stayed there for six months.
Johnny Cash had a big hit with A Boy Named Sue, written by Shel Silverstein. You may recall the verse in which Sue finally finds his father and they get into a fight, Kickin' and a-gougin' in the mud and the blood and the beer.

Silverstein later wrote and recorded Father of a Boy Named Sue. In this version, told by the Sue's father, Sue is gay and when they meet and fight, they do so Kickin' and a gougin' in the mud and the blood and the creme de menthe.

And yes, that Shel Silverstein - A Light in the Attic and other children's books.
With a Little Help From My Friends, it was reported, was Vice President Spiro Agnew's favorite pop song until someone told him that the friends were drugs.
Fats Domino, with eighteen Billboard Top 20 hits, never made it to number one. The closest he came was with Blueberry Hill, which reached #2.
Tommy Edwards reached #18 in 1951 and #1 in 1958 with It's All in the Game, written as Melody in A Major in 1911 by Charles Dawes, who was elected Vice President in 1912.

Doowop. Really.

2011-10-02T18:42:00.000-07:00

But first an afterthought related to the previous post. (No, honest, we'll get to doowop.)

Georgia Gibbs, whom I called "The Queen of Cover Artists," covered so many LaVern Baker songs that it really angered Baker. Whether it's true or not, there was at the time a widely reported story that Baker took out a flight insurance policy naming Gibbs as the beneficiary, so that if anything happened to Baker then Gibbs wouldn't go broke.

OK, doowop. For some reason So Fine, a song by The Fiestas, popped into my mind the other day. Close behind it came the memory that the flip side was a doowop song, Last Night I Dreamed. Now this is one of those songs that people tend to love or hate. I recall a young woman telling me that in places it sounded like "a bunch of castrated pups."

Sooo . . . I went to YouTube to search for it and was *quite* surprised to find it. I haven't heard it for roughly fifty years. So Fine charted in 1959, while I was in Germany, and although I've heard that any number of times, I had never heard Last Night I Dreamed anywhere but on the jukeboxes in German bars.

I snagged it from YouTube and then, well you know how you watch a video on YouTube and then get presented with the option to watch any number of videos that YouTube thinks might be related to what you just watched. I don't really have a point to make in this post, and am just gonna ramble a little about where those choices took me and the memories they stirred, all fifty or more years old. If old folks bore you, go away.

One of the choices was Daddy's Home, which reached #2 in 1961, by Shep & the Limelites. The mildly interesting thing about this song is that it's a sequel (generally known as an "answer song") to You're a Thousand Miles Away (1956, didn't make the pop charts) by the Heartbeats. James Shepherd had been the lead singer of that group at the time, so he recorded the original song with one group and the sequel with another. He tried to milk it to death by releasing Three Steps to the Altar and Our Anniversary, but they tanked. Enough was enough.

YouTube then took me to one of the truly great doowop songs, In the Still of the Night, by The Five Satins. Recorded in a church basement, this was Voted 100th best song of the 20th century by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.

From there I went to My Girl by the Temptations. Arguably the best song to come out of Motown, it was written by Smokey Robinson and was the RIA/NEA pick for the 20th century's 45th best song.

And then . . . and then . . . don't do this, I'm warning you. I clicked on something described as "Most Requested Oldies Medley." Have you ever been doing something and wished you were having a root canal instead?

OK, we'll wrap this up with two items: 1) Since you're dying to know what song the RIA/NEA chose for the 20th century's best: It was Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Judy Garland; and 2) a short list of doowop tecommendations (in addition to those mentioned above).

I Only Have Eyes For You by The Flamingos
Money Honey by Clyde McPhatter & the Drifters
The Tracks of My Tears by The Miracles
Stay by Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs
At My Front Door by the El Dorados
Over the Mountain by Johnnie & Joe
Sixty Minute Man by The Dominoes

As with the numbers mentioned in the preceding post, these can all be found on YouTube.

Doo Wop. Umm, Maybe Next Time

2011-09-30T13:45:00.000-07:00

I grew up in New England, which was largely what you might call a white bread area. In the sixth grade (Portsmouth, New Hampshire) I met a black person for the first time, a classmate named Harry. That's pretty much how life went for me until I joined the Army.

In my teens (Beverly, Massachusetts) my friends and I listened to rock and roll on the radio and began to be exposed to music by black artists. At first the Boston area stations played almost entirely songs by white artists. When blacks had hits on the R&B charts the songs were covered by white artists such as Pat Boone and Georgia Gibbs, whom I consider the King and Queen of Cover Artists, based entirely on the number of black artists' songs they jumped on.

In 1955 the flood gates opened when the Platters became the first black artists to reach number one on the pop charts, which they accomplished with The Great Pretender.

As a result, some popular R&B singers such as Big Joe Turner, Clyde McPhatter, and Ivory Joe Hunter began to be heard on stations that were previously devoted pretty much to whites, the exceptions being singers of ballads and blues, such as Nat King Cole, and suddenly the charts really showed a mixture of black and white. Fats Domino, Little Richard, The Coasters, The Platters, and others often reached the top of the pop charts, not only with rock and roll but with slower music as well, and we white teenagers not only liked it, we liked it a *lot* more than white cover versions.

Here it must be noted that things were very different on the music charts in those days. It was not unusual for there to be two or three versions of the same song in the top twenty. Occasionally this was simply due to several white artists or groups recording the same songs, but often it was a matter of white artists covering tunes by black artists.

I think the reason we preferred the the black artists is that the white artists didn't know what the Hell they were singing about. If you'd like to hear a classic example, listen to Long Tall Sally by Little Richard and then listen to it by Pat Boone. Another? Listen to Shake, Rattle and Roll by Big Joe Turner and then by Bill Haley & His Comets.

There's no getting around it: the white versions fail in two respects. First there's the style of the playing and singing, with black artists displaying emotion and excitement. Second there's the bowdlerization of the lyrics. Consider, for example, Little Richard's

Long tall Sally, she's built sweet.
She got everything that Uncle John needs.

And now Pat Boone's

Long tall Sally's got a lot on the ball
And nobody cares if she's long and tall.

Similarly, there is Big Joe Turner's

Way you wear those dresses, the sun comes shinin' through.
Way you wear those dresses, the sun comes shinin' through.
I can't believe my eyes, all that mess belongs to you.

And Bill Haley's

Wearin' those dresses your hair done up so nice;
Wearin' those dresses your hair done up so nice;
You look so warm but your heart is cold as ice.

My absolute favorite comment on a "cover" situation involved the song Earth Angel, recorded by both The Penguins (black) and The Crew Cuts (white). I'd love to attribute the quote, but I don't remember who wrote it and I can't find it on google. It went something like this:

On the pop charts the Crew Cuts version reached number three and the Penguins version reached number eight. On the R&B charts the Penguins reached number one and the Crew Cuts were nowhere in sight.

I didn't want to clutter up this post with images of videos, or even with links, so I'll leave it to those of you who are interested to search YouTube for the songs and artists. You'll find everything mentioned here.

Well, I intended to write about doowop, but you can see what happened. Doowop will be next up.

Everything's Easy When You Know How

2011-09-06T08:41:00.000-07:00

I take it as a given that the thing humans do least well is communicate. Nowhere is this more evident than when one person who knows how to do something but is not an expert wants to explain, without props, to someone who is a complete novice how to do it.

My first piece of advice to the novice is if the teacher says - nay, insists - "It's easy," then you must say immediately that your mother is dying, your manslaughter trial begins in twenty minutes, or that you have recently contracted a loathsome social disease. Say anything that will allow you to make your escape.

Throughout my adult life, the topic regarding which I have been most frequently - that is to say, always - victimized is cooking. Not one peson has ever tried to explain to me how to make a particular dish without saying "It's easy."

Unhappily, they clandestinely share a dictionary with uncommon definitions for common words, and once they begin their cooking explanations it becomes obvious that their version of "easy" means "So complex that several days into the preparation of this dish you will eat the raw ingredients with your bare hands in order to stave off starvation."

One evening each week, or as close to that schedule as we can manage, I visit my old junk mail friend, Bobby, previously mentioned in this blog. Our arrangement is that we alternate cooking responsibilities. Bobby can cook. I, on the other hand, . . . .

Given my limitations, the variety of meals that I cook for us is limited, and it recently occurred to me that it *is* the twenty-first century after all and perhaps Google really is my friend. I began a search for "easy meals."

This is the absolute truth: I clicked on the first results link and at that site I clicked on a "100 Easy Dinners" link. I then clicked on the link to the first dinner title that caught my interest: Chicken Marsala.

Keep in mind that to me, "easy" means "Start a stove burner and dump everything on top of it." I'd even include putting the food into a pot or a pan first. OK? Now, forget the process, just look at the list of ingredients:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon Essence, recipe follows
2 (6 to 8-ounce) boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut in halves and pounded thin
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 tablespoons butter
3 cups sliced mushrooms (cremini, oyster, shiitake)
3/4 cup Marsala
1 cup chicken stock
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Chopped chives, for garnish

Recipe for "Essence" (required above)

2 1/2 tablespoons paprika
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon dried leaf oregano
1 tablespoon dried thyme

Now here is a list of the above ingredients which I do *not* have on hand:

all-purpose flour
boneless, skinless chicken breasts
olive oil
sliced mushrooms
Marsala
chicken stock
freshly ground black pepper
chopped chives
paprika
garlic powder
onion powder
dried leaf oregano
dried thyme

And a list of the ingredients that I *do* have on hand is:

butter
salt
black pepper
cayenne pepper

Now one *expects* to have to buy the chicken, and perhaps one or two ingredients, but you see what I mean, right?

Perhaps I should mention that I *do* have a tablespoon too. No, don't be so cynical. I also have a measuring cup.

Which of you will volunteer to contact the usage panels of the various Webster's dictionaries, the American Heritage dictionaries, the Oxford English Dictionary, and numerous others, in order to inform them that they omitted a definition of the word "easy?"

I threw the word "bachelors" into my search and things look more promising. One conclusion reached in short order, however, is that if credit is given for a recipe and that credit goes to a woman, I'll just move along, thank you very much, 'preciate it, my mother is dying, I gotta go. When it comes to "easy" we don't speak the same language.

As an aside, the *best* single instruction regarding a recipe that I ever heard was at a back yard party in Maryland. The hostess and another woman, both thirtyish, were talking about the recipe for something the hostess had prepared. The latter was reciting ingredients and when she got to vanilla extract, the guest asked "How much?"

"Oh, 'bout a mouthful."

How Things Get Done . . .

2011-08-31T21:35:00.000-07:00

. . . or at least how things are occasionally done.

These events occurred in the early 1980's, and the main characters were: Bill, a former mentor mentioned previously in this blog; Bryce, once moderately prominent in health care during the Carter administration, and at the time dealt with here a senior vice-president with Blue Cross Association/National Association of Blue Shield Plans (BCA/NABSP), an organization that was half supportive, half management of the individual Blue plans throughout the country; Otis, a director reporting to Bryce; and yours truly.

I was a vice-president at the Chicago Blue plan when I was asked to have lunch with Bryce, whom I knew of but had never met. I accepted, of course, although I had no idea what he might want. He, Otis, and I met at Le Perroquet in downtown Chicago. The amenities lasted through perhaps the first half of the meal, at which point Bryce spoke of what was on his mind.

Prior to moving to Chicago, I had acquired a good reputation in the field of federal procurement, and had provided services to Blue plans involved in such efforts - the Jacksonville, Little Rock, Seattle, Kansas City, and Chicago plans. Several years prior to this lunch Otis had sought my advice when BCA/NABSP decided to set up a department to provide those same services to Blue plans, which advice I gave him only to see it ignored, whether by Otis or his superiors I don't know. I suspect the latter.

The Blue plans weren't very enthusiastic about the new department and continued to use the consulting services of the division I had left in Boston rather than those of BCA/NABSP.

Bryce was looking for a way to enhance the popularity of his group. He was in the process of forming a steering committee comprising executives from some of the individual plans. He invited me to join the committee, which would oversee and advise the department.

I saw immediately what was up. It must be confessed that I was a little rough around the edges and I replied that "If the steering committee is actually going to be involved, actually do something, I'd be happy to be part of it, but if all you want is the use of my name in order to say that I recommend it, I wouldn't be interested."

The rest of the lunch was cordial, we exchanged "Glad to meetcha's," and I never heard any more about it.

Flash forward several years. I had left the Blues, was making six figures working at my first love, mainframe assembler programming, and had found a fascinating industry in which to work: junk mail. No, really.

Out of a clear Blue sky there came a phone call from Bill, my former mentor, still Executive Vice-President at Blue Shield of Massachusetts. He told me that "the Blues" - BCA/NABSP - were going to form a company to deal with federal procurements on behalf of Blue plans and to provide data processing services to plans that won contracts.

He thought *eye* would be perfect in the role of president of that company, reporting to a Board of Directors consisting of Blue plan presidents, and he wanted me to call Bryce, who would either make the decision or influence the decision substantially.

Well.

I would have dipped my arm in boiling oil before leaving what I was doing and going back to the Blues, but I couldn't just say that to Bill. He had been a mentor to me and very helpful over the years. I agreed to call Bryce.

I did so, his secretary put him on the line, and the conversation went exactly like this:

Donnie: "Bill has called me regarding the company you are forming to deal with federal procurements and subsequent processing. He wants me to be president of that company. Now I don't want to be president of that company and you don't want me to be president of that company, but we have to do something to keep Bill happy, so how about this: I'll call Bill and tell him that we talked and that if there's any movement in that direction you will call me."

Bryce: "Fine."

Donnie: "Thank you."

And that script was followed. Not long thereafter Bill died of a heart attack - he was only fiftyish - and I don't know to this day whether that company was ever formed.

South Boston Misses Whitey Bulger

2011-08-29T19:50:00.000-07:00

This is my third post about Southie. I really don't mean to pick on its residents, but what can I do? They make it a) almost mandatory, and b) irresistible for someone with as little self-restraint as I have.

It is reported here that a prospective bank robber has failed his apprenticeship. Readers of this blog will recall Broadway, the main drag in Southie, as the street onto which one of the local young men would wander when he'd had a few drinks and desired to go mano a mano with a moving automobile. He had no wins and two losses when last we saw him.

Our latest hero entered a bank on Broadway, walked up to a teller, and handed her a note reading, "Give me all your money." The teller declined, saying that her window was closed.

He then cut into the front of the line at the next window, where he was told by the teller and a customer that he had to get in line and wait his turn. On being told to remove his hoodie, he simply left the bank and was last seen headed toward F Street on his getaway feet.

Whitey would have had him spanked.

Really, They're All Undesirable

2011-08-09T17:36:00.000-07:00

Around the end of 1999 I found myself driving from Chicago to New Mexico. My employer had told me I had to use nine vacation days by the end of the year or lose them. On a whim I settled on visiting Anne, a woman I knew only from an eBay chat board, to "take her to dinner."

She was an eBay seller (which I had not yet become), mostly of books, and her house and garage were jam packed with books and other merchandise she was listing for sale online.

I spent several days in Alamogordo and had a great time, then headed home.

Soon thereafter she complained on the chat board that she had a lot of chores she needed to do but just kept putting them off. The conversation turned briefly to husbands and wives and job jars. A thought popped into my mind and I emailed Anne, offering to send her a job jar program. She could just install it on her hard drive and enter a list of chores. She could then run the program daily and it would randomly select one of the jobs, conceptually similar to pulling a slip of paper with a written task out of a jar.

She was quite enthusiastic about it, sure that this would get her off the dime. I wrote a simple program in BASIC and emailed her, attaching a BASIC compiler, the program I had written, and instructions regarding installing the program and entering the list of chores.

She had no problem with the installation, and the next day she ran the program for the first time. Up popped "Clean the garage."

She decided the program hated her and never used it again.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished - (1) Amy Persich and (2) Sam

2011-06-22T22:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess I'm not really that much of a cynic, but there are ingrates in the world and here are a couple of examples of the types of things that caused the sentiment to gain popularity.

Amy Persich

If you've read earlier entries in this blog, you know that I sell various things online. One thing I sell a lot of is high school yearbooks.

Amy Persich attended Pelham High School in Pelham, Alabama, in the early 1990's. At some point I acquired all four of her high school yearbooks and a seniors' "Memories" book.

I had the yearbooks listed on a particular site for $39.99 apiece and she tripped over them one day. She contacted me through the site and asked me how much I would charge for all four of them.

Now you might not know that some sellers, and I confess to being one, are enthusiastic about their items going "where they belong." I informed her that I also had her "Memories" book and that I would send the whole lot along for $75 plus $10 for shipping. I know you've done the math and realize that $75 was a little less than half price for the yearbooks, but let me add that I also knew that $10 was an inadequate amount for shipping. In for a penny, in for a pound.

After a couple of false starts she finally did send a check for $85.00.

Now I have sold several thousand items online, have always accepted personal checks as a form of payment, and have always shipped on receipt of the check rather than waiting ten days or so to be certain that the check cleared. Guess who was the very first person to burn me.

Ms. Persich now has her yearbooks and "Memories" book, I now have a Post Office receipt for shipping and a $20 fee assessed by my bank for the bounced ("Not Suffiient Funds") check. And apparently she is not interested in having an email conversation about the bounced check or making good on the payment.

I'll keep you posted if there are further developments, but in the meantime, for those of you in the Kimberly, Alabama area, if you have her over for dinner, count your spoons before she leaves.
Sam

At a small business, a friend and colleague, Brian, told me confidentially that another employee, Sam, was about to be let go. The impression I got was that I was to pass the information along to Sam without revealing my source, and this I did when I saw him the next day.

Donnie: "I have heard that they are about to let you go."

Sam: "Who told you that?"

Donnie: "Let's just say that it's probably true."

Now Sam knew that Brian and I were friends and made the not very difficult leap to the conclusion that my source was probably Brian. The next day, when he ran into Brian and I wasn't around, he said "Donnie says you told him I'm going to be let go."

Now that is the behavior of a swine - putting my relationship with Brian at risk for the sake of satisfying his own curiosity about my source of information. He was in fact let go soon after and it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Dug in and Not Budging

2011-02-24T14:58:00.000-08:00

For some reason a bit of junk mail history has popped into my mind. It's not very interesting except in that it illustrates how people can get out on a limb with an obviously bogus position and cling to it for dear life.

At a company I worked for in Virginia in the 1990's, a client had sent us a master file of records on magnetic tape. The records comprised a history of donors to political organizations and had been copied from a disk file elsewhere.

The record format included dates and amounts of the most recent ten donations, with a YYMMDD format for the date and a seven digit field for donations, cents implied. Perhaps the last 25 or 30 records on the tape consisted of (presumably) genuine names and addresses, but each date was 222222 and each amount was 2222222. In addition, there were twos in the fields for identifying the political organizations that received the money and in the two-digit codes associated with the donations.

We'd had the file a couple of days, had run a conversion on it and examined the results, corrected a few things after looking at the output, and run a second conversion, when the owner of the client company called for me.

Client: "How's the conversion going?"

World's Greatest Programmer: "The conversion is complete. It all looks pretty good except that we had to drop a few records at the end that contained garbage data."

Client: "WHAT? Those represent money. You can't drop any records."

WGP: "Well, once you get by the name and address on the input, the rest of each record is filled with twos."

Client: "That's money! You can't drop records! I can't believe you dropped those records!"

WGP, losing patience and counting to one: "Ohhhh, I'll bet you'll believe that before you'll believe that on the 22nd day of the 22nd month of 1922 each of those people made ten donations of $22,222.22."

Silence, followed by

Client: "Let me speak to Walter."

Walter was my boss and the owner of the company. I put the client on hold, walked over to Walter's office, and explained the situation. Walter picked up the phone and I hung around just long enough to learn that he was going to have exactly the same conversation with the client that I had just had. Well, with a little more tact on our end, perhaps.

We had our wicked way in the end, of course. Garbage is garbage and there's not much to be done with it. For you mainframe techies, the twos came from unused index records on the disk originally containing the file.

Once in a while it can be productive to get out on a limb about something, and sometimes it can be fun, even if the limb gets sawed off behind you. Stubbornness for the sake of sheer stubbornness is something else. I can't imagine what the client thought about the origin of donations made in the 22nd month of a year six decades before the existence of his company.

Early Rock and Roll

2011-01-02T23:47:00.000-08:00

Many polls and surveys have been taken in attempts to determine the "first" rock and roll song. Fairly predictably, they have reached a number of different conclusions. One poll resulted in a song from the 1920's.

Safe to say, however, is that rock and roll took off with the 1955 success of "(We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets. They had released it a year or so earlier and it had gone nowhere. Then it was used as the theme song for a movie about an inner city school, "Blackboard Jungle," and whoosh! Over the years it has sold more than 25 million copies.

Rock and roll was on its way, and soon there were road shows - "concerts" today - made up of a few different artists and groups. Traveling by bus, they hit all the major cities. When I was 15, one arrived in Boston.

Mechanics Hall, razed several years later, was then a 75 year old building that might today be called a "convention center." It was host to conventions, shows, exhibitions, and gatherings of all kinds. It was, however, on its last
legs.

A friend, I no longer remember which one, learned that a rock and roll show was coming to Boston and Mechanics Hall. We lived about 18 miles north of Boston, and one Saturday afternoon five of us, all boys, took the train into Boston. We haggled with a cab driver, who agreed to take us from North Station to Mechanics Hall for a flat fee a little less than his meter would run, and sure enough he had to turn the meter off a couple of blocks from the hall.

On the card were Fats Domino, Bill Haley and His Comets, Chuck Berry, Shirley and Lee, and the G-Clefs. Tickets were $5.00 apiece. At a guess, most of you over 40 have heard of the first three, and possibly the fouth.

The G-Clefs were a local group (Roxbury, a suburb of Boston) ranging in age from one to five years older than the five of us, at that time enjoying the success of the first of their two top 40 hits, an upbeat number called "Ka-Ding Dong." (On the recording, Freddy Cannon played lead guitar.) The song ultimately reached #24 on the pop charts.

(If this link goes bad - it would probably be from the video being removed from YouTube - please post a comment about that. The comment will trigger an email to me and I'll replace the video.)

Ka-Ding Dong

At the beginning of the show the MC mentioned the age of the building and asked that our enthusiasm be limited to clapping and cheering lest we bring the roof and walls down on our heads.

I no longer recall the order in which the artists performed. We thought they were all great, and I recall being much taken with Shirley of Shirley and Lee. But the G-Clefs stole the show, of course.

Not only did they have the advantage of being a home town group, but they were the *first* artists from the Boston area to have a rock and roll hit. When they left the stage everyone wanted an encore. We cheered and clapped and whistled to no avail. Then we remembered the MC's warning and began stamping our feet, roof and walls be damned. The MC came out in a panic and claimed that the G-Clefs had left the building. We'll never know whether that was true, but we calmed down and eventually made it home alive.

Groggy

2010-12-17T11:45:00.000-08:00

In the mid-1970's four of us - three from Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Boston and one EDSF employee who serviced our account - spent three months in Dallas working on a joint proposal to the state of Massachusetts regarding the processing of Medicaid claims.

It was fairly intense and became moreso as our deadline approached, but it was made easier by the first class facilities provided by EDS for the team.

The additional EDS employees provided were more than competent and were both professional and friendly.

The Boston four became fast friends. We stayed at a hotel on the North Central Expressway, met for breakfast before going to work, met for dinner after work, and occasionally went out for a drink or two together. Once in a while one or two people would fly back to Boston for a weekend, work shedule permitting. We rented a car for the entire three months, and whoever was staying in Dallas would drive the travelers to the airport on Friday nights and pick them up on their return Sunday evenings.

It was hard work, often involving long hours, but one of the more enjoyable long term work efforts I've experienced. In spite of that, nerves frayed and tension mounted as the deadline approached.

We were becoming punch drunk, and with a week or so to go two of the project team got a little too intense. One of the Boston Blues people and one of the Dallas EDS employees were working on a section of the proposal together, and in a large room with perhaps six or eight other people present their voices began to rise as they disagreed over whether a sentence segment should end in a colon or a semi-colon.

I was the leader of the Boston contingent, and I contemplated telling them to flip a coin, rewrite the sentence, or duke it out elsewhere, but for some reason reached for the dictionary instead. I swear, this was not planned but just came tumbling out of my mouth.

I cleared my throat loudly, loudly enough in fact to cause everyone in the room to stop whatever they were doing and look at me. Turning to "semi-colon" in the dictionary, I read the definition - used to distinguish between items in a list, yada yada yada. A whispered exchange took place between the two disputants: "See?" "Wait."

Beginning to turn the pages in my search for "colon," I said "Whereas . . . ." turning, turning, stalling, "a colon . . . ," turning, turning, got it! "is a part of the large intestine."

Everyone in the room cracked up and I wondered whether some EDS exec would open the door to see what the ruckus was (none did.) The tension was broken and there was no more debate on the issue. To this day I don't know how they settled it.
At the very end of the process two Blue vice-presidents and the Boston EDSF account manager flew down to Dallas to review and sign the proposals and to fly back to Boston with us. I believe we were all on a packed L-1011. We were slightly scattered but all seated within perhaps twenty feet of each other. The four of us who had spent the duration in Dallas were pretty much out of it.

There is ("was" - I just checked and the final race was run on September 18, 2009) in Revere, Massachusetts a dog track named Wonderland. The mechanical "rabbit" used to lead the racing dogs was named "Swifty."

As we were ready to land at Boston's Logan International Airport, I glanced out the window and saw Revere and Wonderland, and my mouth took off again.

"Uhh, ladies and gentlemen, we have made a terrible mistake. Somehow we have landed at Wonderland instead of Logan. I knew something was wrong when I heard the announcement from the control tower: "There goes Swifty!"

At this point my colleagues were turning around to verify that I was the "pilot" making the announcement, and a couple of them were collapsing in laughter.

I suppose you not only had to be there but you had to be in on the culmination of an exhausting effort. Certainly several *other* passengers were looking at me as if I were a two-headed duck.

"The good news is that we are an overwhelming favorite to win this race. The bad news is that we will only pay two ten."

That was about 35 years ago, and I imagine today you'd be at least a temporary guest of airport security if you tried something like that.

Wow!

2010-11-11T09:05:00.000-08:00

That didn't take long.

Amazon has removed the page for "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure."

God's in his Heaven, and if it is not quite true that "All's right with the world" it is at least true that one less thing is wrong with the world.

Amazon and Pedophilia

2010-11-10T18:19:00.000-08:00

My father once told me that I was "the biggest crusader since Eisenhower," and I guess there's some truth to that. The number of issues which have led me to crusade is small, but I have conducted the crusades wholeheartedly.

On occasion this has led to bigger and better things and on occasion my punishment has been severe and enduring, but we are who we are and if examination seems to show that change would be for the worse then I guess we're stuck with ourselves.

Most of you - not that there are hordes of you - have not known that among my various endeavors I sell books and other items on Amazon.

My first crusade since 1991 has arrived, and the message is this: boycott Amazon.com.

Why? Amazon is hosting the sale of a Kindle book, "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure," about which the author writes:

This is my attempt to make pedophile situations safer for those juveniles that find themselves involved in them, by establishing certian (sic) rules for these adults to follow. I hope to achieve this by appealing to the better nature of pedosexuals, with hope that their doing so will result in less hatred and perhaps liter (sic) sentences should they ever be caught.

Of all possible crimes, child molestation must be one of the lowest, and a site that assists in the propagation of "rules" for pedophilia and lobbying for lighter sentences for convicted pedophiles is not a site for me.

I have this evening contacted Amazon with the following written message:

On your site I am seller mostly-oldstuff. I am writing to inform you that I have changed my status to "on vacation" while I await your action regarding the Kindle book "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure."

My intention is to wait for some short period of time, certainly less than a month, and if I find that you are still making this book available then you and I will be quits. This applies to both selling and buying.

No response is required. If you feel compelled to respond then please do not insult me with "freedom of speech" claims. That concept is what allows the author to publish and sell his material but does not require any of us to sell or buy it.

Cordially,

To my readers I would say only the trite but appropriate "Let your conscience be your guide." Amazon has many competitors.

Solomon Burke, R.I.P.

2010-10-11T19:08:00.000-07:00

Solomon Burke died yesterday at the age of 70. Or 72. Or 74. He was not always forthcoming about his age. But for perhaps fifty years he was a gospel, soul, and R&B singer.

I first heard his voice in 1966 in Vietnam. It was habit in my outfit to leave (vinyl) albums in the Day Room for anyone to listen to, and one black soldier had left a Solomon Burke LP there. The only song I now remember from that album was a kick ass version of "Down in the Valley," sung much differently than it was sung in grammar school in the 1950's.

It has been mentioned elsewhere on this blog that my friend Jeff and I would head over to the local watering hole on Friday afternoons to warm it up for our friends who would appear after work. During one of these happy occasions, "Down in the Valley" popped into my mind, but I could not for the life of me remember Solomon Burke's name.

I asked Jeff if he'd heard a rock version of "Down in the Valley," but he had not. I set about describing the artist to him - black, tall, heavy set - and solicited his help in identifying him.

Well, we worked on that off and on for a couple of hours with no luck. At one point I said "I think his name begins with an "F." Jeff made several guesses, but . . . .

The crowd descended and we gave up for the time being. Late that night, as we were set to depart for our homes, Jeff pulled me aside and said, "I gotta know Monday. You gotta come up with this name."

"No problem, Jeff. I'll think of it."

Bright and early on Monday morning, Jeff popped into my office.

Jeff: "Well, did you think of it? I worried about it all weekend."

Donnie: "Jeff, if I tell you, I don't want to hear anything about it."

A brief pause.

Jeff: "OK, Donnie, I won't say nuthin'."

Donnie: "Solomon Burke."

After a long, hard look at me, Jeff departed. But an hour so later he stuck his head in the door and said "Donnie, Solomon Burke called. He said to tell you there's no fucking "F" in his name."

The Immaturity of Programming for the Internet

2010-08-28T10:50:00.000-07:00

Although we are a couple of decades into the age of the internet, some lessons still have not been learned by some programmers and their management. Some sites, even multi-million and multi-billion dollar sites, occasionally confront disaster when releasing a new version of something that has been working well.

Mainframe processors went through that a lot in the 1970's, a time when applications were getting larger and dealing with higher volumes, and when remote users began to have access to host systems.

The reasons then and now, I suspect, were twofold: an unwarranted confidence in an organization's ability to make system changes and a reluctance to spend money - quality control is expensive.

One way to divide the universe of a data processor's responsibilities to users is:

Systems currently in production and *large* systems being developed for production.
Smaller one-time jobs.

It is critical that those in the first category be vetted by someone independent of the development, and in fact independent of the data processing area itself. One organization I worked for had a quality control person who vetted every single change to software used by clients. All proposed releases went through this QC person, and if problems were found the data processing area was notified and the release rejected.

No one in the company had the authority to make him change his mind.

The problems had to be fixed and the release resubmitted to him.

Another company I worked with - not as an employee, but in tandem with - had one person who was paid six figures and whose sole responsibility was to tell the company when to change hardware and when to change operating systems. Under no other circumstances could anyone else in the company - throughout the world - replace a mainframe or an operating system.

Such precautions are expensive but like the mills of the gods they grind exceeding small. In all the years I knew them, neither of these companies ever had a major problem that their controls were designed to prevent.

Contrast that with one large auction site, for example, which several years ago put into production a new billing system. They "tested" it in production by picking half (I think) of their sellers, leaving the others alone. For *months* the site could not bill the half under the new system. What was the cost in lost revenue, lost interest, and perhaps even lost sellers?

Never should have happened.

Never should have happened.

Never should have happened.

Another large site, one that pays people to write articles, is currently approaching the death rattle stage. Whatever possessed management I don't know, but it was decided that the current software be replaced using a new software package. Worse yet, the new software package had not been released commercially. Worse than that, even, was that the package hadn't even been beta tested.

Now when writers try to post an article it comes out garbled. Paragraphs appear in random order, functions that are supposed to work fail miserably, and "hit counts," the basis on which writers are paid, are hopelessly muddled. And readers are staying away in droves. How many will never return, even after things are stabilized?

In addition to a complete lack of quality control, a reason for failure was something that mainframers learned the hard way too, about using new products: Never be first. Never be last.

I commend that to you regarding your PC, your Mac, your laptop, your internet service: Never be first. Never be last.

Now I must confess that when I was a mainframe assembler programmer there were times when I was a cowboy. I did my own testing on programs that I wrote and ultimately pronounced them fit. I must confess also that occasionally, I (and my employer) paid for it. But these were all category two items, one time jobs, quickly fixed, sometimes not even seen in their problem state by the client.

We learned, and they will too.

Parents Need Patience

2010-07-31T08:59:00.000-07:00

Parents Need Patience

I was perhaps five years old and riding in the back seat of our 1939 Chevy, Dad at the wheel.

Donnie: "Daddy, why is this called the twentieth century when it's the nineteen hundreds?"

Dad: "Well, from zero to one hundred was the first century. From 101 to 200 was the second century. From 201 to 300 was the third century . . . ." (At about the tenth century, he began rolling his eyes, groaning, taking exaggeratedly deep breaths, and mugging at me in the rear view mirror.) " . . . From 1801 to 1900 was the nineteenth century, and from 1901 to 2000 is the twentieth century."

Now these were the tail end of my pre-logic days, and I was half convinced that he had tricked me somehow. Also, I had greatly enjoyed the faces and groans he had used to spice up his little monologue.

Donnie: "Do it again."

Dad: "Jesus wept!"
In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, we lived in the third (from left to right) of four apartments in a row house. There was a cellar with coal bin and furnace, ground floor, and second floor. On the second floor there were three bedrooms. My parents had one, my brother and I had one, and the third was used as a playroom.

One night when I was around seven years old, my brother and I were playing with blocks in the playroom. The light bulb burned out. The light fixture was on the wall, too high for me to reach, so I passed the news to my parents and returned to the playroom and my brother.

A moment later my Dad appeared, light bulb in hand. He replaced the bulb and turned to us.

Dad: "Now you've been sitting in the dark and at first this is going to seem very bright to you. If you look directly at it, it will hurt your eyes. Don't look at the light when I turn it on."

My brother and I dutifully lowered our eyes to the floor, but I was skeptical about the "hurting the eyes" bit, and when Dad turned the light on I immediately looked at it.

Wow! Major squint time.

Dad: "Goddamn kid!"

And Then . . .

2010-07-13T14:25:00.000-07:00

This is the aftermath of the preceding post. BTW, the "My head hurts" comment at that post is from the Link Monster himself.

All that happened in the mid-eighties. In 1992 I moved to the east coast for six years, but came back to the Chicago area for a week every year to visit my friends.

It must have been around the 1996 or 1997 vacation that we had our nickel-dime poker game at the Link Monster's apartment. By then the local watering hole had been purchased, razed, and rebuilt as part of a different chain.

On entering the apartment I was shown *the bench* - the wrought iron bench that had provided so little comfort to Link. After the bar had closed for good, but before it was razed, Link and Jeff (R.I.P.) had stopped by one night and wrestled the bench into a vehicle, liberating it, if not from further abuse then at least from abuse by others.

Link's married and a father now, entering middle age and somewhat calmed down, and last I knew the bench had been delivered to his mother, safer with her than at any time I knew it.

Who's Your Daddy Now?

2010-07-09T16:21:00.000-07:00

One Friday night at the watering hole there were perhaps fifteen or twenty of us from the junk mail company. Sometime between eight and nine o'clock I became restless and decided to head for home.

Hearing me ask for my tab, the Link Monster got on my case about leaving so early, calling me all kinds of wimp, although in less delicate terms.

He was a beer drinker and I'd been drinking my usual, Bourbon Manhattans. This is high octane stuff. I eyed him for a moment, walked to an empty table, sat down, and motioned him over. He came and sat down opposite me.

Curious as to what was going on, a friend we'll call Bonch came over with his drink and sat down with us. Bonch and Link shared a house, so this was going to work out well. Link had a gleam in his eye, not knowing what was going to happen, but sure it would be fun.

The waitress came over and I ordered two Bourbon Manhattans, straight up. A moment later she brought them and as she set them down Link, who had never tasted one, looked at me and asked "Do we slam these or what?"

Perfecto! "Of course."

As the waitress turned to leave, I touched her arm and indicated that she should stay. Link and I slammed our drinks and I told the waitress "Two more."

She looked at me with some concern, and I reached into my pocket, pulled out the car keys, and gave them to Bonch. I looked expectantly at Link until he did the same. Satisfied, the waitress went to fetch two more. Bonch was grinning from ear to ear.

The drinks arrived, we slammed them, and I said "Two more." The waitress sighed and went off to order them.

While we waited, Link said "I have to go to the men's room." Up he got and off he went.

Bonch: "I think you've got him."

Donnie: "Why do you say that?"

Bonch: "Because he went like this." Bonch picked up a cocktail napkin and dabbed delicately at the corners of his mouth.

The drinks arrived, but there was no Link. After a few minutes Bonch and I got up to go check the men's room.

Empty.

We went out the front door and saw Link sitting on a wrought iron bench, head between his knees and a puddle of vomit between his feet.

Bonch: "You alright, Link?"

Link Monster: "Fuckin' Richards."

That finished the night, of course. I went in and finally got to pay my tab, and Bonch drove us home, taking my car, with Link passed out in the back seat. Bonch said he'd pick me up in the morning.

The next morning, at about the appropriate hour, there was no sign of Bonch and Link. I called, got their answering machine, and began shouting "GET UP! GET UP! GET UP!"

Bonch picked up the phone and said he was about to leave, but "I don't think Link is going to make it."

On the way to work he filled me in. He'd had to half carry Link into the house and up to his bed. Having accomplished that, he went downstairs to get a bucket or something for Link in case he had to upchuck, and while he was down there he heard a thump. When he got back upstairs, he found that Link had rolled off the bed.

He then had to go back out to the car and clean up the back seat, where Link had orally disposed of some beer and some bourbon.

Apparently, Link woke up around six P.M. thinking it was six A.M. and called his boss to leave a message. She answered and he told her "I don't think I'll be in today."

"No shit."

Billy Visits Chicago

2010-07-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

A year or two after I moved to Chicago, brother Billy came for a visit. I have mentioned that my area consisted of a large number of young women, many single, and a handful of men. When they found out Billy was coming, there was much enthusiasm for meeting him, and a Friday night out was scheduled. In the event, the party consisted of Billy, me, and perhaps ten of the women.

We began with drinks (and introductions) somewhere, then had dinner (in Old Town, I *think*), and moved on to a little dive that was a favorite of ours at the time, a joint with a jukebox full of sixties music, sawdust on the floor, and a bar and high tables with stools.

Billy had some adjusting to do, being absolutely surrounded by young women making a big deal of him. At one point he leaned across the table and in a low voice asked me "How do you stand it?"

At one point, Barry McGuire's Eve of Destruction was played, and Billy and I got into a minor disagreement over a sequel that had been released, a sappy thing called Dawn of Correction that had reached #36 on the pop charts (OK, I just looked it up). He had the title right but I, for some reason, was certain that it was Dawn of Construction. There being no way to settle the matter at the time, we just dropped the subject (or so I thought).

The main event lasted for perhaps six hours, at which point the married women had to head for home, and things slowed down. In conclusion, Billy, three of the women, and I headed back to Old Town to a family restaurant for a final cup of coffee. Billy insisted on paying, the women stepped outside, and I followed a moment later, to find them doing a can-can to improvised lyrics professing undying love for Billy. By any standard, the evening was a success.

Several months later, I hosted our area's Christmas party at the Lakeview Men's Club. There were fifty or sixty attendees, half employees and half spouses and other dates. About halfway through the evening, Nicki, whom you've met before, called for quiet and announced that she wanted to present me with something. There was some grinning and giggling, so apparently they were all in on this. Having achieved the desired quiet, she approached me with a small, gift wrapped item and informed me that it was a gift from all the employees and my brother Billy.

This could not end well for me.

I opened it to find a pristine 45 rpm record in a sleeve, Dawn of Correction, by The Spokesmen. I suppose I looked as if I'd been caught with my hand in the cookie jar, because there was much laughing and pointing. At me.

That's OK, though. As I have said here before, I don't mind going out on a limb, and I also don't mind the occasional times when it gets sawed off behind me.

Nicki was *quite* pleased with herself until . . . until . . . her date - and this was their first date - began to speak. Apparently when he called for Nicki she was still wrapping the record. She explained the situation to him and how much fun it was going to be:

That Donnie Richards. He thinks he's
so smart. Well, we got him this time.

Poor Nicki turned red, scowled at him, and dropped him like a hot potato after that night.

No More Google?

2010-04-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

Google has decided to rename itself. No more "Google," but "Topeka" instead.

The folks at ~~Google~~ Topeka are so full of themselves that they have actually created a page instructing us on what new verbs and spellings should replace "google".

Now we are to say "Topeka it" instead of "Google it."

Right. Ah ha ha ha ha ha.

"Topeka it" does not roll trippingly from the tongue, and I suspect that "Google it" will be around for a while yet. When it is replaced, common usage will be something less cumbersome than "Topeka it." Perhaps "Peke it" or something like that.

Studies have shown that the "oo" sound is attractive to the human ear, and I think Google has scrooed up.

As for our new marching orders, how can those people take themselves so seriously?

It is reminiscent of the press conference held a few years ago to announce that there would be no more "Kentucky Fried Chicken," only "KFC."

It's just fast food, guys, and nobody cared but you.

Update, a few minutes later: OK, they got me. It's April Fool's Day, and I'm one of the early fools. Ah ha ha ha ha ha.

Scavenger Hunts

2010-02-28T13:12:00.000-08:00

While I was in junk mail there was a period of perhaps five years during which I conducted an annual scavenger hunt.

The way this worked was:

I would make up a list of items to be gathered by the participants. The items were "weighted" - they had points assigned to them.
We would all gather at the local watering hole on a Saturday afternoon, and participants would draw lots to make up teams of three or four members, depending on how many people were involved. "Couples" could not be on the same team.
Copies of the list would be distributed, each participant getting one.
The teams would huddle separately, assigning various neighborhoods and items to individuals.
The scavengers would scatter, having three hours to earn points by returning to the watering hole, where I was dug in for the duration, and showing me the items, some of which they had to return to their owners.
I handed out the small trophies I'd purchased and had inscribed for the members of the winning team.
We adjourned to the post-hunt party at my house, where some interesting and amusing stories were told about the day's activities.

One young woman visited her grandmother, caught her in mid-sandwich, so to speak, and made her take her false teeth out of her mouth so they could be shown to me for credit.
One year my buddy Jeff (RIP) found himself on the same team as Karen, and gloated because the year before Karen had been on the winning team and many of the items had come from Karen's mom, When his team finished last, he complained it was because they had a "used mom."
One participant, Mo, came loaded for bear. The night before a hunt he loaded his trunk with things he thought might be on the list, and one actually was - a "wheat back" penny.

He also left his credit card with a liquor store as ransom for a real cash register. He was given thirty minutes to get it back to the store before his credit card was charged, and he arrived huffing and puffing, carrying it into the bar for credit, and *just* made it back to the liquor store in time. Those things are heavy.

Finally, one of the items was "an out of state license plate." He went to the company parking lot, saw a car with New York plates, swiped one (and left a note under a windshield wiper) got credit, and returned the plate. In the meantime, the car's owner had called the police about it. I never did find out how that ended.

One thing's for sure - he was in it to win.
One year the list included a real saddle. Two guys on one team drove out into the country, found a riding stable, and sweet talked their way into borrowing a saddle. One brought it to me for points and said he had left his partner as hostage for the return of the saddle. At the party, the partner complained "You didn't even ask them if they would take a credit card!"
One item was a first place trophy for any league sport. There were a few on display at the company, and the first scavengers to arrive there took one and hid the rest so no other team could use them for credit.

Similarly, several couples dirtbagged each other. Whichever one made it home first would take whatever was necessary and hide any extras so they could not be used by the opposition.
Another item was a pair of handcuffs. Two women headed for one's home while she called her husband and said "Take the handcuffs off the bed."
One year a Gideon's Bible caused one member to head for the local Holiday Inn, where the staff gave him one. On his way out, he jumped into line and kissed a new bride.
For "a real X-ray" one scavenger brought in an X-ray of a snake, which he acquired from a veterinarian friend. Full credit.
Just before a hunt, one friend, Jack, who lived with Karen (who had a first place trophy), told me "I gotta win. I gotta win." I asked him why and he said that every now and then she would pick up her trophy "And she gives me one of these" (twisting an imaginary trophy clockwise in his hand). "And then she gives me one of these" (twisting counter-clockwise).

Alas, Jack never did get a trophy.

When Is a Year a Leap Year?

2010-01-03T18:17:00.001-08:00

Triggered by the preceding post, an afterthought:

Do you know how to tell whether a year is a leap year? Or do you only *think* you know?

Here's how it goes: A year is a leap year if

It is evenly divisible by 4
- but not evenly divisible by 100
  - unless it is evenly divisible by 400
    - and not evenly divisible by 4000 (Gotcha!)

Y2K: A Dud?

2010-01-03T16:30:00.000-08:00

Well, we've finished with the decade beginning with the year 2000, and now there are a number of lists and videos making the rounds, representing the views of their creators on what were the best, most, biggest, worst, whatever, events, songs, videos, movies and so on, of the decade.

One item of agreement among several of the lists and videos seems to be that Y2K was a disappointment, a bust that didn't live up to its hype, and was therefore overinflated to begin with.

'Tain't so, it says here.

Home computers will be mentioned here only in passing, as my direct experience was elsewhere. However, I do want to say that Bill Gates got away with bloody murder in testimony before Congress. Asked when Microsoft began planning for Y2K, he replied "From day one." No one thought to ask him, "Well then, why the 1999 flurry of fixes and patches for all the versions of Windows?"

Y2K didn't live up to its hype because billions - quite literally, billions, of dollars were spent to ensure the outcome that in fact became reality.

I was an employee of a contracting firm and was farmed out to IBM during the last half of 1998 and all of 1999 (and beyond, but that's not relevant here), and I know that IBM paid my company more than a quarter of a million dollars for my Y2K related work. That's one person in one tiny corner of one corporation in one country. At a guess, more than three million dollars were spent on Y2K in the ten person department I was attached to.

Some of the software maintained by that department was used internally by IBM, and some in support of *huge* clients, multi-billion dollar corporations.

Why was all this necessary? How did it come about?

The problem existed at all levels of computers and programming, from the PC you used at home or at work to mainframes, the "big iron" used for decades by companies - think HAL from 2001 and smaller versions.

At the beginning, both memory and storage for computers were much more expensive than today, and bytes (think "characters") that did not absolutely have to be present were not, simply in order to save money. But even then there were special programming routines in many systems to deal with differences between centuries.

If a program needed to determine the age of an individual, that age was calculated. The date of birth was often carried in a YYMMDD format, so someone born on March 21, 1973 had a birth date of 730321. If a program running on February 23rd, 1994 needed to know that person's age, subtractions were done, 94 minus 73, 02 minus 03 (oops, a negative number, so subtract 1 from the "years" result and add 12 to the "months" result), and 23 minus 21. There were several other approaches, but they all accomplished the same thing - determining the age of the individual.

But what if the person had been born on March 21, 1897? Now the year subtraction routine running on February 23, 1994 dealt with "year data" that required subtracting 97 from 94 and a nonsense result was achieved, so 100 had to be added to the result.

Undetectable in many situations was the case where the person was born in 1893. The calculation - including 94 minus 93 - showed a 101 year old person to be 1 year old.

OK, so much for that. In the beginning, then, the elimination from data of these numbers that showed the century was perhaps necessary, perhaps only highly desirable, but in any case a common practice.

The first warnings that this would someday present a problem, at least the first warnings that I recall, came in the 1970's. Naturally, people in the 1960's knew of the potential, but 2000 was *so* far away. Surely the system would have been replaced by then, and the replacement would include the century.

Now this next is only *my* perspective. It is certainly true in many cases but equally certainly not true in at least some cases.

Businesses are universally reluctant to spend money if they can find a workable way around it, and reasonably so. Unfortunately, this can lead to unreasonable solutions. In the 1980's, more people began saying that there would be a year 2000 problem. But as existing systems became inadequate for other reasons - new products, higher volumes, whatever - companies consistently took the cheaper path and modified existing systems rather than spend the time and money to rewrite them. The systems that would "surely" be replaced were in fact hanging around.

By the early to mid-1990's, everyone knew there would be a problem. But in the late 1980's and early 1990's, many data processing managers - all the way up to the executive level - were reluctant to take the problem to their bosses and say "We have to spend hundreds of thousands (or in many cases millions) of dollars to fix this problem." In some cases they weren't going to be around in that arena and that company come the year 2000, and they simply left the problem to their successors.

Thus in the several years remaining there began a scramble to fix a problem whose existence had been known for more than three decades.

Many companies brought old programmers out of retirement, particularly old COBOL programmers because COBOL had been *very* commonly used. I don't know whether anyone has done a serious study of how much money was spent worldwide on Y2K between say, 1995 and a few days after January 1, 2000, but it is certainly hundreds of billions of dollars.

So yes, Y2K passed *mostly* uneventfully, but what would you expect with that kind of effort and investment.

BTW, birth dates and ages were not the only problem, not by a long shot. Many systems used dates for all kinds of things - payrolls, dates of file creations, elapsed times between iterative processes, navigation, health monitoring devices, etc.

At IBM on December 31 and January 1, we worked in shifts, watching hour by hour as each time zone around the world reached the critical hour, people in each zone ready to learn from and react to any problems that arose in time zones ahead of "us."

Some examples of things that *didn't* go well:

In a test of its Y2K changes, one California city's sewage system dumped tons of raw sewage into a public area.
Newspapers, public neon date and time displays, and other media showed the date as 19100, as did a "Y2K experts" firm's web site.
A video store began charging customers for returning videos 100 years after the due dates.
Some ATM's rejected credit cards, "thinking" they had expired more than 90 years earlier.
Australian Diner's club statements showed that January purchases occurred before December purchases.

Actually, the problem began earlier and some manual intervention was required in the late 1990's when inadequately tested "Y2K compliant" software went into production. Products with expiration dates that carried only two digits for the year were determined to have expired if the real expiration date was "00."

But these are mouse nuts compared to what could have happened.

You're welcome. Ah ha ha ha ha ha.

Learn to Take Care of Yourself

2009-10-04T22:09:00.000-07:00

Sometime in the early 1980's, Mandy (whom you have already met) and I visited her sister, brother-in-law, and nephew in a very small town in southern Illinois.

Nephew Jim was of junior high school age and his parents wanted to buy a home computer for him. They knew nothing at all about computers and had little to spend on them, and enlisted my help. By far the least expensive computer available at the time was a Commodore 64, on sale at a local K-Mart for $69. It was also about the worst around, but their budget just didn't stretch beyond a hundred dollars.

BIL and I headed for K-Mart on Saturday morning and made the purchase. That computer only accepted keyboard and cassette input, and we picked up a couple of cassettes containing games, at least one of which was an "adventure" game. We're talking about the early days here, and such games consisted of text and still pictures, a step up from the very earliest games, which were text only.

It took just a few minutes to get everything hooked up and Jim behind the keyboard. We popped the adventure game in and I explained the concept to Jim, who was hot to trot.

We all watched for a moment as he encountered the first danger, which was in the form of a snake guarding a door. In no time flat Jim had been bitten and died, and had to start the game again, a severe penalty as loading data from the cassette was slower than cold molasses.

We four adults adjourned to the kitchen for coffee and conversation, and every five minutes or so we would hear from the living room a frustrated "Dang!" or "Aw geez," or "WHAAAAT?"

But at last Jim's voice floated into the kitchen, amusing us with an exaggeratedly casual "Y'oughtta learn to take care of yourself, Snake."

Aging Erratically

2009-09-08T14:53:00.000-07:00

The subject of hoarding has come up on a chat board I frequent. Apparently there is a television show about it, and posters have aired anecdotes about friends, relatives and acquaintances, causing my Uncle Earl, my mother's brother, to pop into my mind.

After he retired, Earl lived in a nice one bedroom apartment by himself. He took a bus to anywhere he wanted to go, which did not include many places. He was not much of a hoarder, but one thing he would not be without was milk.

One Christmas period, when my brother Billy and I were home for the holidays, we visited Earl. As was our custom, we offered to see to any shopping he needed done, and he had several grocery items on a list. He added milk to the bottom of the list and Billy and I headed for the supermarket.

When we returned we began putting the newly acquired food away. Billy opened the refrigerator, stepped back while still holding the door open, and said "Earl, what's this?" I looked and there were already *three* two quart cartons of milk in there. As it turned out, they were older than Methuselah, and we disposed of them. That's the only hoarding Earl did - that we know of.

After getting all that out of the way, we noticed that an electric wall clock was sitting on the top of a stuffed chair, unplugged and leaning against the wall and directly below the nail it had been hanging on. We asked and learned that yes, it still worked, but there was no explanation regarding its removal from the wall.

I said "Well, I'll set the time," and picked up the clock. It was an old fashioned, round, white face and black hands clock. I chuckled and told Billy "This'll take a minute. Ten hours to go."

Billy: "Just wind it backward."

Donnie: "It would strip the gears, Billy."

Billy (one of the few people in life who is more stubborn than I am): "No it won't. Not today's clocks."

Sigh. I wound it back to the correct time then stood there holding it as the hands flopped down to 6:30, the gears having been stripped. I held it up facing Billy and turned it from side to side so he could see the hands flopping around - my own little Pyrrhic victory. Off we went to buy a replacement.

We actually found a replacement that was precisely identical to the paperweight with an electric cord back at Earl's, costing only ten or fifteen dollars. We took it back, I set the time (ostentatiously winding the hands forward), plugged it in, and hung it on the nail.

Donnie: "How's that look, Earl?"

Earl: "Well actually, if you don't mind, I'd just as soon have it on the back of the chair."

I'd say your guess is as good as mine, but I don't have one. In any event that was a done deal in a matter of seconds.

I am now reminded of my maternal grandmother. She spent her later years in a nursing home as the only relatives living in the area were Earl and my mother. The latter was in her sixties and had a bad leg, and neither of the two children could take care of my grandmother.

During our Christmas visits, Billy and I would visit her several times, and on Christmas day we would pick her up and take her to my mother's home for dinner and socializing with whatever relatives were able to make it back for a reunion.

One year I picked her up all by myself, Billy being occupied with hoonose what else. At this point she was 90ish and Alzheimer's had set in. I got her all bundled up - coat hat, scarf, mittens - and wheeled her to the front door, drove the car up, and got her into the front passenger seat. We had perhaps a ten minute drive.

After a couple of minutes . . .

Grandmother: "Who are you, dear?"

Donnie: "Well, you remember your daughter, Virginia?"

GM: "Yes."

Donnie: "I'm her older son and your oldest grandchild, Donnie."

GM: "Where are we going, dear?"

Donnie: "We're going to Virginia's for Christmas dinner. Your son Earl will be there, and Billy, your second grandchild and my brother, will be there too."

Silence for perhaps one minute.

GM: "Who are you, dear?"

I can't wait to see how all this works out for me. Perhaps I'll hoard grandmothers or something.

Aiming for Failure

2009-07-25T10:56:00.000-07:00

There are a handful of active local auctioneers, but for some reason one has crossed my mind who is now inactive. We'll call him Mel.

Auction houses are a good source for resellers, more reliable than garage sales, for example, and in a climate like Chicago's quite important during the colder months.

Very early in my eBay selling I tripped over Mel's auction house and paid it a visit. Such places range from low end up through medium and still further up to houses such as Sotheby's. Some specialize in certain fields - art, militaria, etc. - but most do not.

Mel's was at the lower end of the spectrum. He had many individual consignors who would present him with a lot or two for future auctions, but I think he got most of his goods from home owners (or their survivors) when houses needed to be emptied.

Mel was not a very good auctioneer, and my own opinion is that it was all due to his ego. He wasn't actually hostile, but many times it seemed as if "resentment" would describe his attitude. At least once an auction he would gripe about the fact that no one bid at whatever starting price he had set, but at some point would bid more than that. "You know the bidding is going to go higher than that, so why are you wasting time?"

But the fact is that some items didn't go as high as his proposed starting bid, and people saved money, getting the items for less. Then he'd whine about people saving fifty cents or whatever. But they weren't trying any harder to save that fifty cents than he was to get it, and if you can get an item for $4.50 instead of $5.00, then you've saved ten percent.

I noted that he consistently got less for items than other auction houses got. In fact, at least one of his regular customers was a woman who worked for another auction house. She would bid on items at Mel's, and when successful she would consign them to the auction house at which she worked. It wasn't unusual for her to pay three or four dollars, say, for a painting or other object, then sell it a week later for twenty-five or thirty dollars.

Although we were cordial, occasionally even friendly, we were not each other's favorite people. Beginning with a couple of conversations, he developed an attitude about me. Can you imagine? Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha.

The first was a conversation we had about unsold items. I offered to reach an arrangement with him. I would go through his unsold items after each auction, select some, then try to sell them on eBay. We would agree on some percentage split of the sales.

"What makes you think you can sell them if I can't?"

"Well, you have forty or fifty people in a room for an hour or two, and perhaps someone who would buy it isn't there. I'll have twenty million potential buyers for a week."

But I think that the thought that I might sell something he failed to sell rankled, and instead he threw the unsold items into a dumpster each week. Is that insane or what? For *no* work he would have received *some* money, but he trashed the goods instead.

The second conversation was over a cup of coffee during the preview period before an auction. He was boasting of having acquired several decades of art work by a now deceased Chicago newspaper staff member, and saying that he was trying to decide whether to sell it all at once or break it up into smaller lots.

"I think you should consider taking it to a place like Sotheby's or Christie's."

"Oh, I guess I can't play with the BIG boys, huh?"

"No, of course not. Those houses are generations old, and they can fill rooms with people who wouldn't blink at bidding millions of dollars. They might get you something in five figures for that material."

He got up and left the table. In the end he broke the stuff up into smaller lots. At a guess he got between eight hundred and a thousand dollars for all of it. Aim low. It always works.

Well, eventually his business folded. I miss it, as it was a good source of stuff for resale.

Where People Keep Their Word

2009-06-22T16:18:00.000-07:00

I'm really pretty easy going, but I have a strong personality which pushes back when pushed, and I have pushed back all my life. I must say that I've been lucky that I've "gotten away with it," so to speak, as I was consistent in that respect in the Army and in all my civilian jobs.

As you may recall, I was hired as a mainframe assembler programmer at Blue Cross of Massachusetts in 1972. My actual title was Senior Systems Designer, which was shorthand for "I need to pay this programmer more money than I pay some others." To be fair, the job description did have additional responsibilities defined, and one was expected to grow into them.

There was in production a kludge of a program, one that people had nicknamed "the cowcatcher" because when anything related to its function had to be automated people threw it into this program, and the program grew like Topsy.

Somehow I became responsible for the cowcatcher's maintenance and for adding any additional functions. "Somehow" is shorthand for "I was junior and sh*t flows downhill."

The program did a lot of things it was not initially designed to do, things that had been added by different programmers over time. As a result, any underlying structure to the program had long since disappeared and trying to follow the logic for some of the functions was a butt ugly process, although not as ugly a process as trying to add a new function to it.

It had reached the point where a simple change, one that "should" take a half day or so, took two or three days to make, and I began laying the groundwork for a rewrite.

I had other responsibilities as well, and the person who gave me the requirements for the cowcatcher was one of several Directors in the data processing area, Rick, who was not my boss. Over time I made him see that the rewrite had to be done. Not only was it taking too long to make changes, but I couldn't even give a time estimate on a change for a day or so after receiving the information on it.

Rick and I reached a point where we agreed that I would begin the rewrite on a certain date, and from that time until it was done there would be no more changes to the process, no programming changes to the cowcatcher. I had negotiated with my boss and obtained the time away from other efforts in order to do this rewrite.

Two or three days into the rewrite Rick came to me and said "I need a change made to the cowcatcher." I reminded him of our deal and pointed out that any time taken away from development of the new program put us at risk regarding its completion. I had negotiated two months for it, and had to meet that deadline.

Well, he "really" needed the change, it was "important," etc. I took a couple of days from the development schedule, and made the change.

A couple of weeks later he came to me again, "needing" another change to the cowcatcher.

Donnie: "Good luck."

Rick: "What do you mean, 'good luck?'"

Donnie: "I'm not going to make the change, Rick."

Rick: "What do you mean you're not going to make the change?"

(Cracking myself up internally, not showing it, I thought "Sheesh. There was only one two-syllable word in that sentence.")

Donnie: "We have an agreement and we can't keep breaking it. Soon the new program will be incomplete, the deadline will have passed, and we'll be stuck with the cowcatcher forever."

Rick: "You have to make the change. I'm *telling* you to make the change."

Donnie: "No."

I turned away from him and back to the work I was doing, and then heard:

Rick: "I can have you fired. What then?"

I turned back to face him again.

Donnie: "Then I'll get another job. If I get lucky I'll get a job at a company where people keep their word."

He stomped off and I heard no more about it that day.

The next day he came to me, this time hat in hand, pleading for the change and promising to stop any further attempts to change the cowcatcher. From this I inferred that he had gone to my boss (or perhaps even higher) in an attempt to have me fired and had been rebuffed. Also that he really *needed* the change.

Donnie: "OK, Rick."

Several days later I was a carbon copy recipient of a memo from Rick to all users of the cowcatcher, informing them that it was being rewritten and that there would be no further changes allowed to the existing one.

Just to be clear: I wasn't just defending some noble cause. My resistance was motivated partially by self-interest. It was frustrating and painful to have to figure out how to make changes or add functions to the cowcatcher, spending two or three days to accomplish what should have been a half day task.

********************
As a sort of post script, I can tell you that the new "program" was actually a small system, about eight programs I think, that (for you dinosaur techies) made use of an HDAM database. During its entire production life it never went down except deliberately, at which time it gave the operator a message and built a table of information in memory for anyone who needed to debug the problem.

And I documented the bloody Hell out of it - both in the code and externally, with flow charts at the function level and supporting typed text.

Several years later it was decided to switch from IBM to Honeywell, swapping out twin 158's for a pair of 6000's. I began the process of deserting the sinking ship, but before I got completely away I was assigned to a group to coordinate the transition with Honeywell's software people.

One day the subject of "my" system came up. I was no longer associated with it and the only other person in the room who knew I had written it was my boss, Drew. One of the Honeywell people said "By the way, this is the best documented application software we've ever seen at any site."

Drew, who was a great tease, sucked on his pipe a moment, then said "That can't be."

Thoughts That Popped into My Head - II

2009-06-04T18:45:00.000-07:00

Melanie, daughter of a black American and a Thai woman, worked for me at a junk mail company in Virginia. She was in her early twenties and still living at home, and invited me to a cookout hosted by her family one fourth of July.

Driving to her house at around noon on the appointed day, I saw a greenhouse that was open. On a whim I stopped in and picked up two roses, one for Melanie and one for her mom.

Good move. Mom adopted me on the spot, although I was at least her age and possibly a year or two older. But I *needed* a mother while I was there because excepting only Melanie, her father, and yours truly, *everyone* - about twenty-five or thirty people - was Thai, and that's what they spoke. Only the three of us, and to a small extent her mother, conversed with each other in English.

For all I knew they were plotting to overthrow the government, but my mind was soon set at ease in that regard when in the midst of unintelligible chatter I would hear something like "slot machine" or "jackpot."

I chatted with Melanie's dad for a while, and when Melanie told us that all the food was ready and laid out on the deck, we grabbed paper plates and headed that way. I stopped when Mom snatched the plate from my hand and signaled that *she* would fill the plate for me.

I'd had a few things at Thai restaurants, but really didn't know much about Thai food. Most of what I'd had was in any case an Americanized version.

Mom filled the plate with some of the most delicious home cooked food I've ever had.

Her dad was an interesting man, retired from the Army and retired from Civil Service, and working at a local school. But I write this anecdote just to tell the charming story of how he resolved unhappy situations with his wife. *He* never argued, although she would occasionally attempt to provoke him into it. He would sit down on a sofa and watch TV while she stood over him berating him for one thing or another, really just letting off steam. When he'd had enough, he would stand up, wrap his arms around her and give her a big hug, and go upstairs and turn on a different television set. She'd vented, he'd shrugged it off, and both were happy.
As you know, Debbie and I stayed in touch after we split. Although hundreds of miles apart we saw each other several times, sometimes called each other, and frequently emailed.

One day sometime around 2003 or 2004, seven or eight years after the last time I saw her, she began a curious line of conversation during a phone call. She asked me whether I thought her sister was attractive.

Umm, yeah, not spectacularly so, but certainly not actively repulsive.

Did I think her niece was attractive?

Umm, yeah, a little heavy, but nice looking.

Well, did I think a certain girlfriend she'd introduced me to was attractive?

I had no idea why she wanted this particular information, but I saw right away where it was headed.

Cutting to the chase, the most attractive woman you ever introduced me to was Paulette.

(Paulette was a long-time girlfriend of Debbie's, and married to Bobby. Both were strangers to me, but Debbie and I visited with them one Christmas vacation. They were friendly, and before long Bobby and I were upstairs doing one thing or another while Debbie and Paulette chatted in the kitchen. This was the *only* time I ever met either of them.)

Debbie and I finished our phone conversation and resumed emailing. Several months later we chatted again and at some point she said "I told Paulette what you said."

Oh? What did she say?

"She said 'I always did like Donnie.'"

Ever after, when Paulette's name came up in conversation, it was as "the lovely Paulette."

Thoughts That Popped into My Head

2009-04-25T19:05:00.000-07:00

When Ginny and I were in Denver on business for a month (the same trip during which I took her to see a stripper and to see the movie Carrie) we drove down to Las Vegas for a weekend. (No, no, separate rooms, you swine). Ginny had never been there and had never gambled. I promised to teach her to gamble at craps.

You need to know that Ginny was thrifty. She could pinch a penny until Old Abe begged for mercy.

I took her to a table somewhere where she could make two dollar bets, and taught her the basics. As chance would have it, the dice were very cold and soon she was down six or eight dollars. Now even though that was perhaps one meal on her expense report, she became very crabby over it.

"I don't like this. I don't feel good. My stomach hurts. I've got cramps."

Sigh.

"OK, let's go somewhere else."

We walked to another casino, and as I guided us to another craps table she asked grumpily "Craps again?"

I told her "I'll teach you a little system. Unless we get very unlucky, you'll win a few dollars."

Please understand that there are no betting systems which will win at casino craps over the long run. There are, however betting systems with different approaches and goals, which make profits at varying paces until disaster strikes. Knowing that Ginny was never gonna let enough money slip through her fingers to qualify as a disaster, I taught her a little system that might bring in a few dollars.

Fifteen minutes later she had recouped her losses, was perhaps ten dollars ahead, and was all smiles. "Oh, I like this, Donnie. Where are we going next?"
BTW, that was a *long* drive, and we left late one Friday afternoon. Ginny asked if she might drive the first leg (we had a rental car, courtesy of our employer) and she drove until perhaps 9:00 PM.

She made me crazy.

The details are hazy now, as this happened more than thirty years ago, but in my mind I see three or four lanes on our side of the Interstate, and virtually no traffic.

And Ginny driving at fifty miles an hour.

Unless we came up on another vehicle going even slower, in which case she would pull in behind it and go slower still, until I reached over and turned the steering wheel about five degrees to start getting her into the next lane on the left.

It was probably 8:30 or so, and pitch black in the Rockies. We were the only vehicle on either side of the Interstate. Doing fifty. This would be about a 750 mile drive and I was wondering whether we would get to Las Vegas in time for my funeral when Ginny saw headlights in her rear view mirror. Immediately she slowed down. Can you imagine?

The headlights closed rapidly, as they would have if they were being carried by a pedestrian. Soon enough Ginny said in a panic "It's a police car!"

He stayed behind us for a minute or two, then lit her up and she pulled over. A Colorado State Trooper walked up to the window and said "Good evening. Would you tell me why you're driving so slowly?"

My body jerked slightly as I fought to contain the laughter, and the trooper looked at me suspiciously.

Ginny, indignantly: "Well you made me NERVOUS, following me like that!"

Now there were two of us struggling to contain ourselves.

For the sake of the drill he asked a question or two - "Where are you going?" type questions, then smiled and said "You have a good time," and walked back to his vehicle.

He probably thinks we're still on the way to Las Vegas.

When You're Hot You're Hot

2009-04-15T20:57:00.000-07:00

It was going on quitting time on a Friday night somewhere around 1982 and I was still a vice-president at Blue Cross in Chicago. The staff was making getting-ready-to-leave noises and my secretary was away from her desk when the phone rang. I answered and it was Betty, a former girlfriend, calling for one of the women in our department.

I went looking, but she had already left. I asked Betty "What's going on?"

Betty: "Well, it's my birthday today."

Donnie: "Happy birthday. What are you doing to celebrate?"

Betty, in a deliberately long, drawn out, despondent voice: "Nuhthhhhhinnnn'."

Donnie, taking the hint: "Well, why don't you head this way? I'll round up a few people, we'll have drinks, then I'll take you to dinner."

Betty, instantly: "OK, I'll be there in about a half hour."

I notified everyone and headed for the ground level at Illinois Center to make my way to a jeweler's shop at the Hyatt. I bought a Calibri lighter for Betty, one of those butane jobs. This was before I knew they were worthless.

We had a couple of drinks with the group, then hit the sidewalk. I asked where she'd like to have dinner and she said "Anywhere, Donnie."

We walked to a fine dining restaurant called Artists & Writers. It's gone now, but my memory says it wasn't far from Water Tower Place. I think that several restaurants followed one another at that location, and one might have been Here's Johnny.

Drinks, dinner, champagne, some catching up, lotsa fun.

On the sidewalk again I spotted one of the horse-drawn carriages plying its trade and asked Betty if she was up for a carriage ride. Yes indeed.

We engaged one, and it was being managed by a trainer and a new driver, both young women. We hit Michigan Avenue for a couple of blocks, turned toward the lake, headed south, and circled around to our starting point. It was quite chilly by the lake, and we made use of a blanket that was stowed on the floor. This was much fun, and when we stopped I asked Betty if she wanted to go again.

She did, and added "Well Donnie, I think it would be nice if we had some more champagne."

I headed for a liquor store a block away, but it was after nine o'clock and the store was closed. I walked back to the carriage, told the driver to hang on, and headed for the elevator to the Ritz-Carlton. I believe their first floor at Water Tower Place is the eighteenth, but in any case I knew there was a small restaurant and an even smaller lounge there. I went to the bar, put a hundred dollar bill on it, and told the bartender "I need a bottle of champagne and four glasses."

He looked around quickly and in just a few seconds produced them. Now a bottle and four glasses with stems make an awkward combination to carry, particularly if you're trying to conceal them. I stuffed the glasses in pockets in my suit jacket and pants, put the bottle under my arm inside the jacket, and headed for the elevator. Halfway there - CRASH!

Back to the bar, another twenty, another glass. But this time I was intercepted on the way to the elevator by the tuxedoed maitre d' of the restaurant and lounge, who was quite insistent that I could not do this. He lectured me all the way to the elevator, telling me that the beverage must be consumed there or delivered to my room. I assured him I was taking it to my room, got on the elevator, and pressed the button for the lobby. The trickiest part was carrying the bottle under my arm inside the jacket, as I had taken the precaution of having the bartender open it.

All three women were happy to see me with a bottle and four glasses. I climbed back into the carriage, poured champagne for four, and off we went again.

I do believe I was at my best that night, and that might have been my peak.

P.S.

2009-03-08T12:05:00.000-07:00

The time stamps on my AOL email are still off by an hour.

I am not alone.

Spring Forward

2009-03-08T10:32:00.001-07:00

Today's the day, and if you read the January 11th post you will not be surprised to learn that the clock in my car is one hour closer to reality.

There is a clock here that I will reset, but the stove clock is flashing "12:00" and the microwave clock shows " : ", both due to a brief power outage a couple of weeks ago.

Vietnam Hijinks

2009-02-26T14:12:00.000-08:00

Random Bits About Vietnam

When our outfit arrived in Cam Ranh we were told that we should *not* eat in any of the village establishments, that they were not sanitary and the food was not safe.

What actually happened with most of us was that we waited to see which places our medics would eat in and then followed suit.
At the end of a pier at Cam Ranh Bay I was waiting for a J-Boat. It was late afternoon and just beginning to darken. I was alone, at least until I heard a sound behind me. I turned and perhaps 30 feet away was a rat, by far the largest rat I'd ever seen. It was the size of a small dog, a cocker spaniel perhaps.

My turning movement caught its eye and we looked at each other for a moment. I unbuttoned the flap on my .45's holster. That sucker isn't gonna get much closer to me if I have to blow the damn pier away.

But he wasn't interested in me unless I was a threat. He was just scrounging for food, bits of fish probably, and after a minute or so he headed toward the shore.
As you would expect, there was a lot of slang used between the troops and the locals. Any thing that was very good was "numbah one" and anything that was very bad was "numbah ten." There didn't seem to be anything between the two.
Cam Ranh itself was a secure area, at least in 1966. We had several hundred thousand troops there, and while it was known that certain villages were Viet Cong havens, they were simply placed off limits to us. The VC weren't really a threat there - they didn't want to stir anything up in the midst of such a massive concentration of US troops - and our command wanted peace in the area too.

One night two of our guys went to one of the off limits villages looking for adventure in the form of drinking and partying. They had fun for a while and then settled down with two Vietnamese women for the night. In the wee hours of the morning, perhaps two or three o'clock, they were awakened by kicks in the ribs. Looking up they saw two guys in black pajamas holding submachine guns.

The VC took their wallets, watches, and boots, and sent them on their way. I believe they sneaked back into the outfit successfully and the Company Commander never learned about it.
Prior to leaving for Vietnam we were given all kinds of shots. One which amused us greatly was for bubonic plague. What are the chances? *That* was a painful one, by the way.

As chance would have it, there actually was a small outbreak of the "black plague" in our area while we were there. Thanks to someone's forethought we were immunized and the affected villages were not placed off limits. Nevertheless, there wasn't much desire to visit them until the plague had passed.

Serendipity

2009-02-23T20:37:00.000-08:00

I've had flat tires and other minor annoyances, but the only time I've ever had a car just quit right out from under me offered Dame Fortune the opportunity to provide at least partial compensation, and provide she did.

It was around midnight and I was on I-90, headed for Rogers Park from Chicago's northwest suburbs. All of a sudden everything on my instrument panel started blinking, my headlights dimmed, and the power steering went. The car started slowing and I steered what felt like a tank over to the right shoulder.

All lights disappeared and all electrical functions vanished. This was not on a weekend, and there was virtually no traffic on the highway, but about a mile ahead was a service area. I grabbed my briefcase, locked the car, and started for the oasis ahead, wondering where the state would have my car bedded down when I woke up in the morning. If I can just get to a phone, call a tow truck, and get back to the car first . . . .

I swear, I hadn't taken ten steps when I heard a vehicle slowing behind me. I turned to look just as an empty Yellow Cab passed me and pulled over to the shoulder, stopping a few feet in front of me.

A couple of minutes later we pulled into the service area. The cab driver waited while with the help of the Yellow Pages I found a towing service that would haul my car to the Rogers Park dealer from whom I had bought the car. I got a dispatcher, asked if I could get the car towed to Rogers Park and a lift to my home, a few blocks past the dealership. Done deal.

The cabbie drove me back to my car, was paid and tipped handsomely, and resumed his original journey. Perhaps a half hour later I was in the tow truck's cab, yukking it up with the driver.

Sound Advice

2009-02-18T10:47:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you just gotta hit 'em over the head.

Twenty-five or so years ago, an area I managed had several people in positions based on a modified version of matrix management. These people were in place to coordinate and report on large projects within the corporation. The formal reports occurred monthly and were made to the president and senior staff. Those people comprised "steering committee" sorts of bodies and the senior staff members varied from project to project, signing off on plans and through these reports monitoring progress. I attended these reporting sessions.

To qualify for this process a project had to have a budget of a million dollars or more and had to cross vice-presidential lines.

It was the responsibility of my managers in this process to be lightning rods, among other things identifying slippage or new problems in projects to these governing bodies. One result of this responsibility was that they could not actually "manage" these projects, as they were to have no parochial interest in not reporting problems in any aspect of the effort. Another result was that they simply *had* to report honestly, fingering different areas with project performance problems. This was done as tactfully as possible, of course, but still the reporter was sometimes intensely disliked, at least briefly, for having done this.

All that is the long way, I suppose, of saying that they had very important responsibilities and reported to people who were very important, at least within the company.

One of the managers (who were all women, by the way) was Taylor, who was thirtyish, and who had responsibility for a twenty million dollar project, then the largest ongoing such effort in the company. She was more than competent - good at coordinating, good at mediating conflicts between areas, and good at reporting to the president and senior staff.

Until . . . overnight she acquired the bad habit of interjecting "ah" between sentences and even between phrases in her presentations. "So the . . . ah . . . this process was . . . ah . . . moved back a week to . . . ah . . . accommodate the new requirement."

Taylor's boss was a director, Kim, who reported to me, and after the first "ah" session I spoke with her and we agreed that she would talk to Taylor about it.

In her next report, Taylor did much better, but the report after that was a disaster. I kept count on a sheet of paper, and if my memory is correct there were something on the order of seventy "ahs" in an hour.

After the report I went back to my office to drop off some papers, and before I could head for Kim's office she entered mine. She said, "I know, I know. How do you feel about sending her to some kind of course on public speaking?"

We agreed on that and off went Taylor to a five day seminar. When she returned the "ahs" had disappeared completely.

For a few months.

One day they reappeared mysteriously, but were held to a reasonable minimum. I went to Kim's office and she wasn't there. A few minutes later she popped into my office and said "I've spoken to Taylor and she's calling the instructor of the course she attended. I'll keep you posted."

A few minutes later she returned and said, "I'm going to check in on Taylor and see what the instructor said. Want to come along?"

We went to Taylor's office. She had had to wait for a return call and was just beginning her conversation with the instructor. She waved us in and we sat down in front of her desk and listened to half the conversation.

Taylor: "Hi. This is Taylor and I attended your course on speaking several months ago."

Silence on our end.

Taylor: "Well, you may remember that I had the problem of saying 'ah' a lot. When I finished your course that had disappeared, but now it has started to happen again. What can I do about it?"

Longer silence.

Taylor: "I see. I'll keep that in mind. Thank you."

We subsequently got the other half from Taylor, and the whole thing went something like this:

Taylor: "Hi. This is Taylor and I attended your course on speaking several months ago."

Instructor: "I know who you are, Taylor."

Taylor: "Well, you may remember that I had the problem of saying 'ah' a lot. When I finished your course that had disappeared, but now it has started to happen again. What can I do about it?"

Here there was a pause of perhaps ten seconds, followed by

Instructor: "Well, Taylor, you just have to realize that it makes you sound like an asshole."

The instructor had read his student well and during my remaining time at the company, perhaps two years, she never said "ah" again.

The Day the Music Died

2009-02-03T11:08:00.000-08:00

Fifty years ago today in Iowa

It's a shame they couldn't spell "Ritchie" correctly.

Unhandy

2009-01-11T11:12:00.000-08:00

I have said here before that I am not handy. This surfaces in various ways, most recently with a kitchen stove timer. Last night and this morning, as a matter of fact.

Among other areas in which I am remarkably uninformed and untalented, we may include cooking. My father was a good cook, my brother Billy is a good cook, but if it weren't for technology I would dine on charcoal, E. coli, and salmonella.

Fortunately, the microwave bailed me out decades ago.

My current microwave is about ten years old, I think, and has seen more frozen meals than most of my friends' freezers combined. Several nights ago I nuked a frozen chicken pot pie. Five minutes on high, if you must know. When it was done, the microwave began piping its "All done, dummy" message, which for this oven is one long note, perhaps three seconds in duration.

Halfway through the note the volume dropped to barely audible. Oh oh, new microwave time. While devouring that meal I processed what little information I had, concluding only that it was at least possible that the only problem was with that volume, and that the cooking function might still be A-OK.

The next day I cranked up the stove oven as a backup and put another frozen meal into the microwave. Everything seemed to work normally - the internal light was on, there was much blowing of air, and the carousel turned, however reluctantly.

This time when the meal was cooked, the volume began at nearly subaudible instead of tapering off to that level, but this was no longer the issue. Cautiously, I tasted the middle of the meal and was gratified to learn that indeed the microwave's cooking function was in order.

Fifteen minutes later, finished with the meal and walking by the stove on the way to the kitchen sink, I detected an inordinate amount of heat. Sigh. I turned the oven off. Really, I don't know how I've survived this long. A few thousand years ago I'd have set the cave on fire.

Now those of you who actually cook might be surprised to learn that even in this day and age there are some frozen meals - aside from Thanksgiving turkeys - that cannot be nuked but must be cooked in a conventional oven, or even a broiler. Perhaps once a week I cook something in this fashion.

(Background: I moved into my current abode five and a half years ago. One item present, of course, was the stove. With no instructions. Now I suspect that the very worst of us would not need instructions to turn on the oven or the broiler, but what about setting the clock and setting the timer, hmmmm? I don't even set the clock in my car. Since I replaced a battery a couple of weeks ago, the car's clock is about three hours and forty-five minutes off. Whether slow or fast I don't remember.¹)

Since the microwave had a timer which could be used even when not cooking anything, I have always used that and never the stove timer, even when using the stove's oven. The microwave timer's call has always been loud enough to hear from several rooms away.

No more, alas.

Last night I threw something into the oven (450 degrees for 30 minutes) and set about figuring out the stove timer. I raced through increments of time and found that I could not set it for more than twelve minutes. What the Hell use is that?

I gave it up and decided to take on the responsibility of knowing when the thirty minutes was up, and it will delight and amaze you, I am sure, to learn that this little experiment was successful. And that I remembered to turn off the oven.

Fast forwarding to somewhere around six o'clock this morning, we find me sleeping comfortably until awakened by a ceaseless series of short, shrill, loud bursts of sound. From the stove's timer. Which will, it turns out, time up to twelve hours and not twelve minutes, as I had thought.

It remains to be seen whether I will give the stove timer another try, but my guess is that the most likely outcome is the purchase of a small kitchen timer.

¹ January 12, 2009 - It's slow.

"Honey Bunny" Revisited

2009-01-09T19:17:00.000-08:00

Read this first.

And now this.

It wasn't me, man. I was busy stalking Sarah Palin.

Eartha Kitt, R.I.P.

2008-12-25T17:49:00.000-08:00

January 17, 1927 - December 25, 2008

Younger readers might know her best as "Catwoman" in the 1960's TV series, Batman.

I first saw her in a 1950's movie, New Faces. She presented the image of a vamp, and let me tell you she could stir up a thirteen year old boy's hormones. In that movie she became widely known for singing Monotonous, but the song that got me was Uska Dara, a Turkish song:

You know the Madonna song, Santa Baby? Eartha recorded it as the
ultimate vamp's song in 1954:

By today's standards the video is hokey, but just close your eyes and listen to her sing.

Airports, Hotels, and Grass

2008-11-26T07:14:00.000-08:00

One Friday night Jeff and I took an unplanned trip to Las Vegas. I took a dugout with some grass, leaving the pipe behind so I didn't have to worry about metal detectors. We would get some rolling papers in Las Vegas.

In the event they were not difficult to locate and we were soon good to go. As mentioned earlier, I couldn't roll a joint to save my life, but Jeff could, so he carried and used the papers throughout the weekend.

We had an enjoyable weekend, and Sunday afternoon, after getting stoned one last time, we headed for the airport. Just as we were about to enter the terminal, Jeff said "Oh, shit. Wait a minute." He walked over to a sidewalk trash container, reached into a pocket, and threw something away.

"What was that?"

"The papers."

I guess we were supposed to be perfectly content to carry the illegal marijuana through security and back to Chicago, but were to take no chances with the legal rolling papers.
In the mid-1970's I had to make a business trip from Boston to somewhere, Jacksonville, I think. Airport security in the US was a much more casual matter then, and it was my habit to carry a baggie with small amount of marijuana in my briefcase, along with a small stone pipe.

Packing for this particular trip must have been done in a daydream. At the security checkpoint I put my briefcase on the conveyor belt, dumped my metallic objects into a small basket, and walked through. On the other side, a young woman approached me and asked if I would mind if she opened my briefcase. Some metallic object had caught her eye during the scan and she wanted to know what it was.

I gave the go ahead, and right there on top of everything else was the bag of marijuana. She sifted through the briefcase's contents and found whatever she was looking for, looked up at me, and in a positively frigid voice said "Thank you."

I just smiled in return and as I began to close the briefcase she dashed over to a middle aged, potbellied, gun carrying security guard. I couldn't hear what she said, but I saw him shake his head and say "No." Her voice rose and I heard her say "But I saw it." He shook his head more emphatically and walked away from her and I got my feet going too, heading for the gate before anyone changed his mind.

At a guess, airports and airlines wanted no ill will between themselves and the casual user. Presumably, anyone stupid enough to put a bag of grass on top of his briefcase contents was understood not to be a veteran dealer.
A planning associate, Ginny, and I sometimes had to make business trips together. It was our habit to fly out on Sunday afternoon and have dinner together that night.

On one trip to Chicago, she informed me after we were airborne that she had just finished a huge meal cooked by her boyfriend's mother and really didn't have much desire to go out to dinner. *Eye*, on the other hand, had eaten very lightly in anticipation of the forthcoming dinner. Somewhat disingenuously, I told her not to worry about it.

We checked in at the Ritz-Carlton (a major convention or two had booked all the rooms at other hotels. Life was tough.). I walked her to her door, entered with her, pulled out the grass, got her to roll a joint, and we got stoned. A few minutes later dinner seemed like a good idea to her.

I went to my room and unpacked, went back and collected her, and off to dinner we went. When we got back to the hotel I walked her to her door and then headed for mine. I had just closed the door behind me when the phone rang.

"Donnie, come quick. Come over here. You have to see this."

I went back to her room and she led me over to the table with the ashtray. She had left the roach in the ashtray and while we were at dinner a maid had entered the room cleaned the ashtray, and put the roach right back into it.

As with the airport incident, the Ritz-Carlton was not going to bust a customer for the unfinished half of a joint.

OK, everyone, This is the 128th post and I regret having to tell you that that's all there is for the moment. I'm sure that as time passes memories will pop into my head and I'll post them, but I'm out of material for Sunday and Wednesday posts.

I thank all of you who have followed the blog, and would like to remind anyone who might be interested that instead of having to check here for new entries you can use one of the "subscribe" links at the bottom of this page.

Blue Cross Women

2008-11-23T07:35:00.000-08:00

One of the young women in my area was Doris, German born, fluent in English, but not acquainted with the more obscure euphemisms, or at least not *all* of them.

Our building was at Illinois Center in Chicago, and below ground level it was possible to walk indoors to the Hyatt Regency hotel. Consequently, there was the occasional gathering for drinks at the Hyatt. One morning at work Doris told us abut the evening before.

She had gone to the Hyatt to meet a couple of girlfriends. While crossing the lobby she was stopped by a stranger, a man in a business suit, who asked her "Are you a working girl?"

Never having heard the expression, she interpreted the question literally and answered in the affirmative. To her astonishment, he handed her his room key, told her the room number, and said he'd be there in a few minutes.

Naturally, we, her audience the next day, wanted to know what she had done about it. He had simply walked away after giving her the key, leaving her to work out exactly what had just happened. Once she had done so, she walked over to the registration counter and gave the key to one of the employees, saying she had found it on the carpet.

It was several days before she could relate the story without a look of absolute horror.
Relatively new to our area, Nicki was in her early twenties and heartbreakingly cute. She was also shy and very proper, at least around her vice-president, yours truly.

Her desk was in an office with several other analysts and junior analysts, all older and a bit less retiring. The office was bordered on its sides by two hallways, and one day while walking through that office, I was stopped by one of the veterans and asked, "Donnie, will you do something about Nicki?"

Nicki and I looked at each other, and I asked "What's the problem with Nicki?"

"She has the hiccups and we've tried everything, but nothing works. She can't get rid of them."

Not knowing exactly what to do about it, I nevertheless walked over and stood at Nicki's side. She was seated at her desk and looked up at me. Talk about a deer in the headlights.

I thought for a moment and then unbuttoned my suit jacket, grabbed the zipper at the top of my fly, and pretended to unzip it. Nicki shrieked, threw up her hands, hurled herself away from me, and tumbled out of her chair onto the floor.

One seldom hears such laughter as filled that room, and I just continued on my way to wherever I had been going. A few minutes later, on my way back to my office, I stopped in and learned that Nicki's hiccups were indeed gone and the story of the cure was all over the suite of offices.

The next morning, at the beginning of office hours, Nicki stopped by my office (a first) and tapped lightly on the door frame. I looked up and she smiled and said "Oh, Donnie, I told my father what you did yesterday."

Visions of fathers and shotguns popped into my head, but she continued, "He thought it was very funny."

(1) Billy and (2) Big Red

2008-11-19T07:38:00.000-08:00

Another mish mash of unrelated items.

Toward the end of her life Mom lived with my brother Billy until she reached a point where she needed full time care and entered a nearby nursing home. Being seventy miles away, I saw her only on weekends, but Billy was a saint in this matter and visited her twice a day, seven days a week.

In southern Maryland the climate is moderate most of the year, and most days when we visited there was an elderly man with no legs sitting in a wheelchair just outside the entrance to the home. This man was known as "Chicken John" because there was an extensive wooded area around the nursing home and he and a wild chicken had befriended each other. At some point during each day the chicken would leave the woods and visit the patient, hopping up in his lap.

The chicken was not fond of other humans, but permitted John to hold him, pet him, and talk to him. This had gone on for several years and John had somehow acquired a small building, something like a doghouse, that was kept by the side of the entrance and was the exclusive domain of the chicken.

John and visitors would "hello" each other, and one day my brother had a thought.

Billy: "You know, I come here every day, and if there's something you would like me to bring for you I could do that."

Chicken John: "Well, actually I could use a little whiskey once in a while."

Billy, suspiciously: "Is there any medical reason why you shouldn't have whiskey?"

Chicken John: "Oh, no, I'm just here 'cause I'm old and I don't have any legs."

So the deal was done and my brother acquired the habit of presenting John with a pint of whiskey once a week. John would thank him and the pint would disappear under his lap warmer.

This went on for months and then one day John stopped appearing at his post. Billy made inquiries, and learned that Chicken John had died. He also learned that Chicken John had been a diabetic.

I suppose there are people who will be horrified by this story, but I've given it some thought and I'm in agreement with Billy - John knew the score and had a choice: he could play the odds and perhaps live a little longer or he could drink the pint a week, perhaps shortening his life a little but making it more endurable. He made his choice, and while those responsible for his medical care would have prohibited it, I think he had the right to make that choice.
My outfit in Vietnam had a unique assignment. I won't bore you with that except to say that it was the brainchild of a full colonel, a redhead known to the outfit as "Big Red." We went from Corpus Christi, Texas to Vietnam, and the colonel stayed behind, building another outfit to replace us in thirteen months. Naturally, there was some joking among the guys about this being his idea along with his not making the trip to Vietnam.

In fact, one GI who had brought his guitar wrote a song about it and in no time he and his guitar were a hit. Eventually, word of it reached our batallion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Davis (R.I.P.), and he summoned the GI to his office for a special performance.

Some lines from the song:

We had a old colonel they called Big Red.
I'll never forget the last words he said.
He said "This deal's too good for me.
I'll stay right here in old CC."
And I ain't seen him since.

Colonel Davis was delighted by the song, and a few months later, when Big Red visited us in Vietnam, the GI was summoned once again, this time for a performance before the subject of his song.

I do believe he'd rather have dipped his arm in boiling oil than sing that song in front of Big Red, but he did his duty and the colonel laughed and applauded through the performance.

As we wound up our tour we heard that Big Red had received his first star, and we were all happy about that.

Two Dee Dee Stories and a Mini-Rant

2008-11-16T07:00:00.000-08:00

As we wind down, I'll be combining unrelated subjects more frequently, simply in order to make posts of respectable sizes.

I have mentioned that Dee had a sweet tooth, and it was from her that I learned that M&M's *will* melt in your hand, given sufficient time. Dee also liked the occasional daydream or nap, and one day she combined her pleasures, grabbing a handful of M&M's and stretching out on the bed. She awoke several hours later with a handful of melted chocolate.
One day Dee was *quite* upset with me over something, I honestly don't recall what (but if she reminds me I'll post it here), and was unable to keep it from spilling over into the office.

Whatever led up to it, she came to the area where I worked and shrieked "I'm BUSY Saturday. And EVERY Saturday."

The rest of this I later heard from her. Soon it was quitting time, and she was at the elevator bank, crying. Several co-workers arrived and one asked, "What's the matter, Dee Dee?"

Dee, Having Her Cake and Eating It Too: "Oh, never mind. I don't want to get Donnie Richards in trouble."

What Constitutes "Art?"

Twenty years ago a colleague and I skirmished for a couple of days over the things that people call art, in particular "abstract art" and its cousins. Taking examples from real life, my position was that paintings created by dipping cows' tails in paints and having the cows swish their tails against canvas, and paintings by monkeys randomly throwing paint at canvas have been awarded first prizes in art contests, and this says to me that the so called judges simply couldn't distinguish between art and Art Garfunkel.

In the end he took the position that something was to be called art if whoever created it said it was art. My take on that was that the concept robbed the word "art" of all meaning.

My colleague is now among the departed, and if he ever changed his mind on the matter he did so without informing me. *Eye*, it will delight you to know, have not changed my position one iota, and a recent news item simply adds fuel to my fire.

The Tate Museum in London is "thought" to be displaying two paintings by the late Mark Rothko incorrectly. They currently hang horizontally, and it is said by some that he intended that they hang vertically. This argument is bolstered by the position of his signature on the back of the canvas.

Rothko donated the works to the Tate Museum before committing suicide, and one is left to hope that the proximate cause of the suicide was not the positioning of the paintings.

Rothko, by the way, has been described as "famous for his bold stripes and squares."

Here's one of the pictures in question, hanging at the Tate:

Couldn't you just look at that all day?

What? Let me see if I've got it:

If you paint stripes - nothing but a couple of stripes - on a canvas, you've created a work of art, a serious work of art, one worthy of hanging in the Tate Museum, even though no one can look at it and tell which end is up.

Try this thought experiment:

1. Find and isolate a dozen or so art critics who somehow have never seen or heard of Rothko or his paintings.

2. Make your own painting - nothing but a couple of stripes. Paint them vertically or horizontally - it doesn't matter.

3. Submit your painting and the painting pictured above to the critics for comparative judgments.

If such an experiment could be arranged I would bet the farm that the critics would be divided as to which was the better painting. And they would find reasons for their opinions, reasons regarding what each painting "says," reasons that never entered Rothko's mind or yours while the paintings were being created.

Despite the ~~risk~~ certainty of being categorized a Philistine by the effete, I say they're jackasses all - those who think it's art, those who argue about which end is up, and those who even give it a second thought.

Thoughts About Marijuana

2008-11-12T07:27:00.000-08:00

Marijuana Is Not Addictive
- How many times have you read about someone breaking into a house to steal marijuana money? Pulling a knife or a gun on someone to steal marijuana money? None, right?
- If you smoke it and you know others who do, then you know people who have quit. Sometimes they've just lost interest. Sometimes they have had to quit because of employment - random testing, etc. How many of them had any problem quitting? None, right?
- How many times have you run out of grass and been unable to get any for a while? We've all had it happen. How many times did it make you think about doing anything drastic? None, right?
- How many people do you know who had trouble sleeping because they had run out of pot? None, right?
- How many people do you know who have shown physical symptoms of marijuana withdrawal, such as weight loss or weight gain, runny nose, hyperactivity or lethargy? None, right?
- How many people do you know who have suffered from a lack of self-esteem due to smoking or not smoking grass? None, right?
Then by what definition is marijuana addictive?
But there are reasons people shouldn't smoke marijuana. Kids shouldn't smoke it for obvious physical reasons. And smoking anything isn't good for your lungs.

And there are behaviors that should not be indulged in when stoned, such as baby sitting or driving. My brother Billy says that "Alcohol makes you run red lights. Marijuana makes you stop at green lights." That's clever, funny, and true, but . . . stopping at green lights can be dangerous.

And for that matter, trying to stay stopped at red lights. When I was younger and more stupid, I used to drive after smoking a little grass. I remember driving stoned in Boston once, around midnight, and stopping at a red light. On the right hand corner across the street there was a neon display that alternated between time and temperature. It changed from one to the other and I proceeded to drive right through the red light. Fortunately, I was the only driver in the area, but with a little less luck I could have been T-boned.
Credibility Gap

The subject of marijuana is one that teaches children that their government, their schools, and adults in general will lie to them to get their way. Most kids know someone who smokes marijuana. It might be friends, older siblings, adult relatives, or anyone. And they know, absolutely, that they are being lied to about all the hobgoblins they are told accompany marijuana use. Why, then, should they trust these people on other matters?

The government in general and politicians in particular annoy me on this matter. Many of them know better, but will pretend that marijuana is addictive and is dangerous in ways that it is not. Two Presidents, Nixon and Bush the Elder, created apolitical commissions to look into and make recommendations about the subject. These groups comprised politicians and non-politicians, Democrats and Republicans, active and retired people. Both commissions recommended decriminilization and both Presidents buried the recommendations. They were afraid of what would happen to them in the polls and they just didn't have the ~~balls~~ courage to do the right thing.
Ramblings
- Two friends drove from Cape Cod to Boston on a Sunday night. It was after midnight and they were about ten minutes from the city proper when they spotted an open Howard Johnson's restaurant. They had begun the drive after smoking some grass, they still had the munchies, and they had run out of snacks, so they decided to stop and eat. As they entered the parking lot it began to resemble a law enforcement convention. There were a half dozen cars there bearing the markings of city police or state police.
  
  But these were desperate times and they resolved to go through with it. Promising each other that they would act "normally," they entered and sat at a booth. After looking at their menus, they both ordered steak and eggs and a hot fudge sundae.
- A friend, an Assistant Vice-President in a large corporation, was driving from Boston to Manchester, New Hampshire on a Sunday afternoon. He was a little stoned, alone in the car, and virtually alone on the road. He was doing about ten miles per hour more than the speed limit when he saw a state trooper coming from the other direction. He slowed down and they passed each other, and he was dismayed to see the trooper slow down and cross the median, reversing direction.
  
  He thought Might as well get it over with and pulled over to the side of the road and waited for the trooper. A few minutes later the trooper pulled in behind him, walked up to the window, and said, "Excuse me, sir. Would you mind telling me why you're stopped here?"
- Perhaps a dozen of us, guys and gals, had gathered at a friend's house to watch a heavyweight championship fight, or to watch those who were watching it. Pretty much everyone had smoked some grass, and one guy, Bobby, had grabbed a Trivial Pursuit game and was thumbing through the cards, asking the group at large questions he thought interesting or difficult.
  
  I disappeared into the bathroom for a couple of minutes and when I returned everyone was looking at me. Bobby looked at the card and asked me a question about the Watergate burglars. My answer was "G. Gordon Liddy," and Bobby turned to the others and said triumphantly, "See? I told you he'd know. J. Lordon Gibby."

Miscellaneous and Pointless

2008-11-09T07:02:00.000-08:00

Miss Wilson, Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Johnson, Miss Sewell, Miss Frazier, and Mrs. Kiley were my first through sixth grade teachers. Can you name yours? Half credit if you're under forty.
On a Friday night around 1980, Betty and I went to a restaurant on Diversey In Chicago, Lawrence of Oregano, one of a chain of Lettuce Entertain You restaurants in the Chicago area. There was a very small stage at the street window end of the bar and on Friday and Saturday nights there was music - two one hour sets each from folk singer Carolyn Ford and from former lead singer of Chicago's New Colony Six, Ronnie Rice.

Ronnie did pretty much all fifties and sixties songs, and while I was pushing forty, most of the audience was twenty-five or so, and it was amazing how many of these songs they were familiar with. The whole act was just Ronnie and his guitar and voice, and he would do a few seconds of a song and then segue into another, for four or five minutes at a time. He'd stop and schmooze with the audience, and perhaps once a set he would offer a free drink to the first person who could name the artist who did a particular song, usually songs around the bottom of the top twenty in their day.

My first night there, the one with Betty, Ronnie did the free drink thing, saying "Don't yell it out if you know it, just raise your hand." He began playing and I knew instantly what it was, so I raised my hand. He looked at me, looked around, played a few seconds more, and then stopped and looked around. There were no other hands in the air and he asked me for the artist. It was Nervous Norvous, singer of the novelty tune Ronnie had performed, "Transfusion."

So I won a drink and a friendly competition was born. A few of us *really* enjoyed Ronnie's performances and went occasionally on Fridays. Sometimes Ronnie would have *two* drink questions, one for the audience at large - excluding me - and one exclusively for me. The latter were always fairly obscure, but this was the music of my youth, and I was not easy to stump. I'd give the answer, he'd shake his head, and a drink would arrive.

But then . . . but then . . . .

One Friday I was there with a friend, Marlene. About halfway through his first set Ronnie began playing and singing another novelty tune from the 1960's, Mr. Custer.

I thought for a couple of seconds, then thought frantically for a couple of seconds, then said aloud, "Shit!"

Marlene: "What's wrong?"

Stumped Unohoo: "He's gonna ask me who did this song and I don't have a clue."

Marlene had never witnessed the Q&A thing between Ronnie and me, and she looked skeptical, but sure enough, he ended that string of songs, looked over at me, and asked "Do you know who did that?"

I smiled and shook my head no.

"But you know the song, right?"

I laugned and nodded yes.

He threw up his hands and yelled into the microphone, "Yayyyy. I win a drink" and the kids, some of whom had seen me win a dozen or more drinks over the course of a year, went crazy.

The artist was Larry Verne, a one hit wonder, and I'll never get caught short on that one again.

Momisms and Other Expressions

2008-11-05T17:31:00.000-08:00

Heard at Home During My Youth

"Don't get your water hot."
"What are you trying to do, heat the outdoors?"
"If I hear one more peep out of you . . . ."
(Followed by the inevitable "Peep")
"Firstname Middlename Lastname, you stop that this minute!"
"Think of all the starving kids in China who would love to have that."
"If you don't stop that I'm gonna knock you into the middle of next week."
"I hope that when you grow up you have kids that are just like you."
(The only curse universally recognized as effective.)
"Because I said so."
"A grasss in the snake" and "Don't put all your baskets in one chicken."
(Both from Dad)
"If I have to come up there . . . ."
"Be nice to your brother."
"I'm going to count to three."
"We'll see."
"Did you say 'Thank you?'"
"If Johnny jumped off the bridge would you jump off the bridge too?"
"What has gotten into you?"
"I'll give you something to cry about."
"If it was a snake it would bite you."
"You'd lose your head if it wasn't screwed on."
"Same thing, only different."
"We went to different schools together."

Random Memories II

2008-11-02T07:10:00.000-08:00

Two thirtyish women at work, one of them Betty, decided they needed to lose weight, and agreed to provide moral support to each other in "counting carbs."

First thing every work morning they would put their heads together and each would tell the other everything that had been consumed the preceding day, as well as why some things "didn't count."

One lunch hour I joined several women in the cafeteria, one of whom was Betty. A couple of minutes after finishing a small and healthy meal, she left us and returned a couple of minutes later with frosted carrot cake and a fork.

Silly me: "Betty, how many carbs in carrot cake?"

Betty: "None, Richards."
Not long after we started dating, Dee Dee decided to share an apartment with two girls. One evening when I arrived to pick her up, we somehow got into a brief conversation about Women's Lib. It was a hot topic, this being the early to mid-1970's, and I think she had just been discussing it with her roommates, who had disappeared into their bedrooms.

Dee lectured me on women and their rights and abilities for a moment, and my recollection is that her tone made it sound as if I had been out campaigning against women or something. In any case, I decided to have some fun and asked her "Well if we're so equal, why don't you pay for any of our dates? Why do I always pay for dinner, drinks, and everything?"

Dee shouted toward her roommates, "It's over."
My secretary at Blue Cross had been promoted (to become the secretary of my boss) and I had promoted a young woman, Kathy, to replace her.

She had only been my secretary for a short time and I didn't know a great deal about her life outside the office, but I did know that she had a Puerto Rican boyfriend.

On returning to work after a 4th of July weekend, I asked her "what did you do over the long weekend?"

"Went to a spicnic."

As these posts have become a little shorter, a little less connected internally, the more astute among you may have wondered whether we're about to wind things down, and the answer is yes.

Way back when, more than thirteen months ago, I committed to posting a couple of times a week for a year, and I am happy to say that I've met that goal. But I am running out of things to say, running out of stories about myself and my past that might prove interesting or amusing to other people. I'll continue posting on Wednesdays and Sundays for perhaps several more weeks, but that will be it.

No doubt memories will surface from time to time and I will write about them here, but there won't be any regularity to this. I am grateful to have learned that I have acquired a few dedicated readers, and in the event you would be interested in knowing when I have added a post here, you can fiddle with the "Subscribe to Posts" link at the bottom of the page, which will offer you a choice of ways to be notified of new posts, allowing you to avoid having to actually come to the blog to find out.

I have a political blog elsewhere which I will shut down soon due to lack of interest, both mine and readers at large. It has been suggested to me that I could post here about other matters, but I don't want to change the nature of the blog, which is and was intended to be entirely narcissistic.

It is possible that something will move me to start yet another blog of some kind, and if I do then I will post a link here.

We're not *quite* at the end here, but I want to say thank you to those who have enjoyed these posts.

Some Likes, Dislikes, and Trivia

2008-10-29T08:35:00.000-07:00

In no particular order . . .

When I was in grammar school, my father taught me how to watch boxing: what to look for, how to score fights, and so forth. There were Wednesday Night Fights on TV ("What'll you have? Pabst Blue Ribbon." "To look sharp . . . " from Gillette Razor Blades) and Saturday Night Fights.

I grew up watching Sugar Ray Robinson, Carmen Basilio, Rocky Marciano, Kid Gavilan, Joe Louis (past his prime) Willie Pep, Sandy Saddler, Jersey Joe Walcott, Ezzard Charles, and a host of others, but my boxing hero was Archie Moore, long time Light Heavyweight Champion. He was an early (and less spectacular) version of Muhammad Ali when it came to hype, and I remember that he returned from a trip to Australia saying that the aborigines had taught him a secret punch that would add "the weight of the world" to its power.

But I have grown tired of boxing now. It's always been a dirty game, and with the cable TV money it's only gotten dirtier. The beginning of the end for me was seeing Riddick Bowe get away with deliberately punching Buster Mathis, who was down on one knee. Referee Arthur Mercante ruled the fight "no contest" instead of disqualifying Bowe, which is what he should have done. The "no contest" ruling allowed Bowe to keep his title.

The best fights I ever saw? All on TV except the last:
- Roberto Duran vs. Sugar Ray Lampkin, lightweights
- All three Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier fights, heavyweights
- Salvador Sanchez vs. Azumah Nelson, featherweights
- The first Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Thomas "Hitman" Hearns fight, welterweights
- Marvelous Marvin Hagler vs. Thomas "Hitman" Hearns, middleweights
My first 45 RPM record purchase was Blue Suede Shoes by Carl Perkins (Sun Records). When I was a teenager our record player had four speeds: 78 RPM, 45 RPM, 33 1/3 RPM, and 16 2/3 RPM. My parents owned some single-sided 78's, pre-vinyl. I don't know what they were made of but they were heavy.
I was a picky eater. The only way I would eat eggs was soft boiled. When I joined the Army we would be double-timed to the mess hall for breakfast. There you ate what they cooked or you didn't eat, and the Army didn't much care which. In no time at all I was eating eggs any way I could get them.

We were a typical meat-and-potatoes New England family: fish and fairly bland foods such as hamburger, potatoes, string beans, etc. were standard fare. Before I joined the Army I had never tasted soured cream, Mexican food, any European foods, or any Asian foods other than what passes for "Chinese food" in the US.
I was a voracious reader and never got the TV habit. We got the second TV in our neighborhood, and along with the other kids I watched shows such as Howdy Doody and Pinhead and Foodini. I remember that the adults watched Perry Como and other shows immediately following the kids' late afternoon shows. This was at a time when shows were fifteen minutes long.

In later years, when others were watching TV I would usually be reading.

Today I watch little TV. Occasionally I'll watch some sports contest, or some educational show. I'm hooked on national elections and am up all night as the results come in. I have little patience with the pratfall shows, the bloopers and practical jokes shows. Pardon me, but those shows will turn your brain into puppy shit. And I have friends who are actually hooked on them.
When I went to Germany in 1959, American TV advertising already had some humor and some animated bits. John Cameron Swayze was dropping wristwatches into water, and things were slowly becoming more sophisticated.

Sponsor advertising for the first German TV show I saw consisted of a few minutes at the end of the show. When the main show ended, a man in a business suit walked out onto an empty stage and addressed the camera. Trusting the audience to fulfill its implied obligation to stay put and listen, with a sober face he simply told them why they should buy the product the sponsor was selling.

Random Memories

2008-10-26T06:56:00.000-07:00

It's Halloween, 1990. I'm living in a raised ranch in the suburbs and have set up shop at the garage door with two TV tray tables holding bowls of candy.

It's quite dark when along comes a father with two children: a boy about 6 and a girl about 4. Shouting "Trick or treat," they run up the driveway ahead of their dad. The boy is in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume and the girl is in a ballerina costume.

As they take their pick of the candy, I ask the boy "Who's your favorite Turtle?"

"Michelangelo."

"Ohhh, Mikey's my favorite too."

The ballerina is halfway across the lawn to the next house when Dad arrives at the garage, and she shouts over her shoulder, "He's my favorite too, Dude."

I crack up. Dad looks at me and shrugs helplessly, grabs Michelangelo, and hustles after Dudette.
In 1986 I bought my first new Cadillac.

I owned a seven year old Cadillac which was at the local dealer's for some kind of problem. They'd had it several days when GMAC announced 2.9% financing. Although you can get 0.0% today, this was a *big* deal at the time. I called the dealer and they hadn't even started on my problem yet. (This, by the way, was the result of what I consider a sensible policy: among all cars in for service, those which had been bought at that dealership took precedence over the rest.)

I told them not to do anything, that I was headed their way to look at new models. When I got there, there was a black and gold Sedan de Ville on the floor. I looked at several models in the showroom but kept returning to that one. About the fourth time I looked at it, I heard a quiet voice behind me: "I can have you behind the wheel and out of here in half an hour."

It took just about that amount of time to trade in the previous car and be on my way. Several miles into the return trip to work I stopped at a red light and the driver behind me stopped just in time to be too late. I picked up my first scratch on a car I had owned for perhaps ten minutes.
I have been an AOL user for about ten years. My experiences with AOL's customer support have been almost entirely productive. Almost.

AOL outsources some or all of this function, and I once wound up in contact with a male employee in India. My problem was minor, but annoying: an HTML process had changed overnight, and I wanted to know how to get it to work the way it had a day ago. The only thing that had changed in the interim was that I had updated AOL by downloading and installing a new version.

I explained my problem to the AOL techie, telling him that the sequence was:

1. The HTML process worked a certain way

2. I updated AOL

3. The HTML process worked a different way

Question: How can I restore the old HTML process?

CSR: "You have to contact the company that made your computer."

Semi-astonished Me: "I think I haven't been clear. Yesterday the process worked fine. Today I updated AOL and the process has changed. How can I restore the old process?"

CSR: "You have to contact the company that made your computer."

Sheesh. Just say you don't know, okay?

The Watering Hole

2008-10-22T07:01:00.000-07:00

AKA Grisanti's

There was a cute little waitress at Grisanti's, about twenty years old, serving drinks and breaking the young men's hearts.

At some point she disappeared for a week and then one night walked in wearing a short skirt and white leather boots. She sat down with a few of us junk mail regulars and filled us in. She had acquired the boots during a week long skiing vacation in Colorado. She and a male companion had had a very good time there and she was still quite excited about it all.

Several days later a few of us were sitting around a table next to the bar, playing Liar's Poker or Yahtzee or some game that provoked lots of laughs and groans. In came our waitress with a young man, and she brought him to our table and introduced him as her boyfriend.

Random Junk Mailer to Boyfriend: "So, you like skiing?"

Boyfriend: "No."

And while the rest of us were barely avoiding hernias due to the effort of not laughing . . .

RJM: "You should try it. It's a lot of fun."
Having set (and maintained, I am happy to say) standards, revised from time to time as I have aged, regarding the minimum age for any women with whom I might get involved, I acquired a few younger female friends at the junk mail company for which I worked. I don't know how they did it but they had somehow intuited that they were quite safe from me, and there were perhaps a half dozen on whom I could call if I was between girlfriends and needed a fourth (or even a second) for dinner or some circumstance. Later, Debbie acquired the habit of referring to them as "your harem" or "your concubines."

One of these was a young woman named Jennifer and one Friday at work I spotted her from a distance. She was wearing a short black dress and looked good. I didn't get a chance to talk to her and didn't see her again for the rest of the work day. That evening, however . . .

At Grisanti's the usual crowd from the company assembled, and at some point I saw Jennifer, who was *not* one of the regular crowd, standing at the bar and still wearing the black dress.

An older man and woman were seated at the bar and she was standing between them and chatting with them. I grabbed my drink and walked over. I arrived just as the three of them finished some conversation.

Donnie: "Jennifer, the next time I see you wearing that dress I'm going to bite you on the thigh."

Jennifer: "Donnie, have you met my Mom and Dad?"

In no time at all it was all over the bar: "Did you hear what Richards did?"

Billy and Male Chauvinism

2008-10-19T07:04:00.000-07:00

Although he denies it when confronted, my brother Billy resents having to share the world with women, or at least with women as theoretical equals, and he condescends at every opportunity.

This was ice-cold-confirmed one night when I was visiting him and he had a few male friends over, all strangers to me. This was roughly around the time of the flap about admitting women to The Citadel.

At some point one of the wives arrived. She went to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of . . . beer, Coke, I dunno what. She walked over to one of the guys and asked "Will you open this for me?"

Now my sense of humor requires me to take shots at anything, and I murmured "Another candidate for The Citadel."

One of my brother's friends looked at another and said, "He's a Richards alright."

Q.E.D.

The Dragon Slayer

But the main anecdote for this post involves Billy on his own. He had moved to an apartment in a row house in the boondocks. It was only after the move that he found that there was no cable TV available. This was serious stuff as he was in the habit of getting home from work, lighting a joint, and veging out in front of the TV.

He did a little research, determined who the carrier was for his area, and made the telephone call. He reached a young woman and asked whether there were any plans for cable to extend as far as his address.

Young Woman: "Not at the moment, Mr. Richards. There isn't a very large population in that area and most of those who are there are not interested in getting cable."

Billy: "How do you know?"

YW: "Well, we've taken surveys."

Billy: "How long ago was the last one?"

YW: "About a year ago."

Billy: "Well, would you consider taking another one."

YW: "Alright, Mr. Richards."

After what he judged to be more than ample time for such a survey, Billy called again and reached the same young woman.

Billy: "This is Billy Richards. I called you a while ago about cable access."

YW: "Yes, I know who you are, Mr. Richards."

Billy: "Well, did you take take the survey?"

YW: "Yes we did. I'm afraid not much has changed. Perhaps as the population grows . . . ."

Billy: Look, Dear, I'm an adult. I can take it. When are we going to have cable out here?"

YW: "Not in your lifetime."

Some Favorite Lines

2008-10-15T06:47:00.000-07:00

(Some because they're so good and some because they're so bad)

Television:
- I've seen variations of this credited to FSU Head Coach Bobby Bowden, so perhaps what I heard wasn't original. In the late 1970s or early 1980s, I was watching a college football game, and on one play a running back was faced with several defensive linemen roughly the size of Mack trucks. He lowered his head and plowed into them.
  
  Announcer #1: "Wow! He doesn't know the meaning of the word 'fear.'"
  
  Announcer #2: "Yeah, well I've seen his grade point average and he doesn't know the meaning of a lot of words."
- I couldn't stand Howard Cosell, and watched him only on programs I "just had" to see. In my humble opinion he was phony as a three dollar bill, but I have to give him credit for this one.
  
  In the late 1960s or early 1970s, a USC football game was on TV and Cosell was in the broadcast booth. In running down the rosters before the game, he came to O. J. Simpson and said, "This is a young man with a serious character defect."
  
  I believe the reference was to the reputation Simpson had acquired for beating up girlfriends, a habit that police reports would lead one to believe he has not shed.
- On being asked his opinion of the singing act, Joe Frazier and the Knockouts: "Joe Frazier can't sing, but who's gonna tell him?" - Muhammad Ali
- Chris Schenkel, covering a golf tournament: "Joyce Kilmer must have had this in mind when she wrote Trees."
Books:
- "Shut up he explained." - The Young Immigrants, Ring Lardner
- ". . . the spiritual home of Russia, where one of the three surviving seminaries continues the hapless production of a dozen priests per year, like eyedropping holy water into Hell." Inveighing We Will Go - William F. Buckley Jr (the quote refers to visiting Zagorsk during the time of the Soviet Union)
Movies:
- The Outlaw Josey Wales
  "I didn't surrender either but they got my horse and made him surrender. They got him pulling a plow up in Kansas, I bet." - Lone Watie (Chief Dan George)
- Young Frankenstein
  "What hump?" - Igor (Marty Feldman)
- The Lion in Winter
  "Give me a little peace." - Henry II (Peter O'Toole)
  "A little? Why so modest? How about eternal peace? Now there's a thought." - Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn)
- The Princess Bride
  "Have fun storming the castle." - Miracle Max (Billy Crystal)
  (Added October 18, 2008)
- Becket
  "Sheathe your sword, Morville, before you impale your soul upon it." - Thomas à Becket (Richard Burton)
  (Added March 16, 2009)
Songs:
- "When rain has hung the leaves with tears"
  Catch the Wind, Donovan
- "Once I said I wanted you, I don't remember why"
  How Do You Do? Mouth and MacNeal
- "Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies and everyone goes"
  Brother Love's Travelin' Salvation Show, Neil Diamond
- "Your friends, Baby, they treat you like a guest"
  Somebody to Love, Jefferson Airplane
- "You're my pride and joy et cet'ra"
  Elenore, The Turtles
- "You got yer dead skunk in the middle of the road, stinkin' to high Heaven"
  Dead Skunk (In the Middle of the Road), Loudon Wainwright III
- "Floating face down in that dirty old river"
  Patches, Dickey Lee
- "Who'll take the lady with the skinny legs?"
  Skinny Legs and All, Joe Tex
- "And no one heard at all, not even the chair"
  I Am . . . I Said, Neil Diamond
- "Pain in my head, there's bugs in my bed, my pants are so old that they shine"
  Bottle of Wine, The Fireballs
- "Sometimes all I need is the air that I breathe and to love you"
  The Air That I Breathe, The Hollies

I'll Do It, But . . .

2008-10-12T07:37:00.000-07:00

When I made Staff Sergeant, the Sergeant First Class who had been in charge of the enlisted men in the office was sent to the black hole referred to in the previous post, and I took his place.

My immediate problem was that the Finance Office had become a dumping ground. When a payroll clerk got out of the Army or was transferred to some other post, it sometimes happened that no qualified finance clerk was sent by the Army to replace him. The Finance Officer would then call the headquarters of one of the companies affected and ask for a body to fill in. First Sergeants often saw this as an opportunity to hide a screw-up, and we would get him. An untrained screw-up. Later, the companies would complain that their men were not being paid correctly. Gee, I wonder why that is.

I set about getting these people some training and help, and started using the calculations unit to double check the vouchers that came from these clerks, instead of just doing calculations for whatever benefits were entered. Things improved some. And then . . .

Around early June, the former NCOIC, the one I had replaced, informed me that for the last two weeks of the year I was to keep all enlisted men for several hours overtime every night. This would last until the end of June. I asked him what this was about, and he told me.

It was the end of the Army's fiscal year, and the office was in the habit of giving the civilians lots of paid overtime in June, justified by all the year end "work" that had to be done. But they felt that they couldn't justify keeping the civilians if they didn't also keep the military personnel, even though there was no work for them to do. It just didn't look good. This was a nice racket for the civilians, but the military personnel didn't get paid, didn't get comp time, didn't get anything for thirty or forty hours of unnecessary overtime.

I informed him that I was not going to keep the military personnel past normal work hours, that they were not only ahead of schedule for June but had made skeleton vouchers for July. There was absolutely nothing productive for them to do.

The next day he came back to me. "The Colonel says you will keep the enlisted men here."

"If the Colonel is ordering me to do it, I'll do it, but my next stop will be the Inspector General's office."

I heard no more about it, the enlisted men knocked off at their usual time, the civilians got their overtime work, and life went on.

But . . . I got out of the Army the following May, and was in Phoenix until sometime in June. I kept in touch with a couple of people and learned that the old practice had kicked in again, and the enlisted men were kept for several hours a night during the last couple weeks of June.

I also learned that I could not get an employment recommendation from the Finance Officer.

Oh, well, there are some things you just gotta be a man about.

Fiscal Year End, Army Style

2008-10-08T07:25:00.000-07:00

I guess I have to toot my own horn a little to set this story up, but that's OK, we're friends, right?

On my return from Vietnam I was assigned to the post Finance Office at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. I was a Specialist Fifth Class (SP5, E-5) and basically just a drone there, with several companies to pay, but I was *good* at it.

Elsewhere in the office there was a calculations unit consisting of three lower ranking enlisted men and one civilian woman, Miriam. Morale was at rock bottom in that unit, which was run by a Staff Sergeant who knew nothing at all about managing people. The unit was behind in its work, and several months in a row he kept everone there at night for a few days at the end of the month in order to get the work done in time to meet payroll. Each month they got deeper in the hole and the overtime started a little earlier than it had the month before.

I don't know exactly what triggered his removal, but I can well imagine that there were fears by "the management" that the month would come when we would not be in a position to pay all the troops because of unfinished work. In any case, he was removed and put on the "staff" (a black hole for non-performing NCOs) of the Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the Finance Office.

At the beginning of my third or fourth month there I was asked to take charge of the calculations unit.

I knew everyone there just well enough to say hello to, so the first thing I did was get us all together in an isolated area, ask them a few questions about themselves, and tell them my plan:

"I don't know why you're behind, and I don't want to know. I do know that there are more than enough people here to accomplish the work, so here's the deal: There will be no more overtime. Also, starting this week and continuing on a weekly basis, one of you will get a half day off. You can work it out among yourselves who it will be each week and what half day it will be, but I need to know the schedule when you've settled on it. This will continue as long as we make progress on the backlog, and when we have caught up it will continue as long as we don't fall behind again."

This was well received and perhaps ten days prior to month's end there was no backlog and never a moment when there was any doubt about the work being done. In fact, when a clerk from another area was out for any reason, I was able to send one of my people to that area to take up the slack.

It is human nature that people generally resent this - doing other people's work - so I never let them spend more than half a day at one of these positions, and during those times I checked on them frequently to see how they were doing and to answer questions. I also explained to my people that if we didn't do this we'd have a different kind of problem: people sitting around doing nothing and getting a half day a month off as a reward, stirring up resentment in the rest of the office. Eventually we'd have to end the half days off.

Things went swimmingly for two months, and then I had a cup of coffee with the supervisor of the office's civilian employees, and he took that opportunity to tell me that someone - some civilian - had complained about Miriam getting half days off. Sheesh. I had to explain to her that I could no longer give her that time, and she understood and took it very well.

Presumably on the strength of this performance, I was sent before a batallion promotion board and made Staff Sergeant (SSG, E-6). That set up the conditions for a major problem.

NEXT: I'll Do It, But . . .

Mondegreens and Their Cousins

2008-10-05T07:01:00.000-07:00

For those who've never heard this, a misheard lyric or phrase is sometimes called a "mondegreen." Here are a couple of real life examples: when

'Scuse me while I kiss the sky
is heard as
'Scuse me while I kiss this guy
then the latter is a mondegreen. And when

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life
is heard as

Surely Good Mrs. Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life
then the latter is a mondegreen.

The charming story behind the label "mondegreen" is that as a girl, Sylvia Wright (an American author) misheard the lyrics to a 17th century ballad, The Bonnie Earl O' Murray. The first stanza ends with

They hae slain the Earl O' Murray
And laid him on the green.

But the young Sylvia heard it as

They hae slain the Earl Amurray
And Lady Mondegreen.

In general, to qualify as a mondegreen the replacement must be as good as or better in some sense than the original.

(I am absolutely wild about Gladly the Cross I'd Bear/Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear.)

OK, that's a long introduction for an otherwise short post regarding misheard (and obviously misunderstood) quotations I've encountered. They are not quite mondegreens.

With an educational background that ended with a high school diploma, a friend and mentor (R.I.P.) had attained the executive vice-presidency of a large corporation and that corporation paid the tuition and expenses he incurred in subsequently acquiring a Bachelor of Arts degree through one accelerated program or another.

He returned from this program with his degree and a head full of information new to him, including a couple of mangled quotes:

O tempores amores for O tempora! O mores! (This one went out in a memo sent to EVP's at other companies.)
Separate the wheat from the shaft for Separate the wheat from the chaff (confined, as far as I know, to meetings in his office.)

Only tangentially related (because not misheard), when my father pointed out a trait I had inherited from him (we both on occasion talked to other people as if they were idiots), I quoted Deuteronomy: "The sins of the father are visited unto the son."

The next time we found ourselves in a similar situation, he informed me that "The sins of the father are twice the hypotenuse."

My Union Experiences

2008-10-01T07:04:00.000-07:00

I have belonged to only one union, and that for less than four years, so am no expert regarding unions and union matters. Still, it would be not much of an exaggeration to say that the experiences I *did* have were uniformly bad, at least from my perspective.

All that follows occurred during the period June 1968 to February 1972, and at what was then the Record-American, a Hearst Corporation tabloid in Boston, the result of a merger beteen the Record and the American, two of what had once been seven daily newspapers in Boston. In 1968 there were still three: the Record-American, hereinafter the "Record," the Herald-Traveler, and the Globe.

Fresh from the Army and years of working in Army finance, I got a job as a payroll clerk at the Record, automatically becoming a member of the American Newspaper Guild. Dues were very small and for quite a while the Guild had no visible effect or influence on me or my situation.

In 1971 (I think) the Record acquired its first computer, an IBM System 360-20, a mainframe computer with 24k of memory and requiring its own room and environment - raised floor with the cables running beneath, air conditioning, and humidity control. Input was in the form of 80 column punched cards and output in the form of magnetic tapes and printouts. No CRT's, nothing interactive.

The Hearst Corporation sent a data processing manager and two programmers to oversee the installation and to write and put into production the first systems pertaining to the Record's business.

A few months later the company set about acquiring its own programming staff, with the intention of that staff replacing the Hearst programmers. All employees were given the opportunity to take an aptitude test and two would be selected for transfer and training.

The selections, of course, were not based on aptitude or merit, but simply on seniority within the list of those who had taken the test and not failed egregiously. I had scored highest among the applicants, but based on seniority there was little chance I would become a Record programmer in this lifetime.

But uneverno. One of the two selected, Gerry, disliked the work and did not do well at it. Eventually he requested and got a transfer back to the accounting work he had been doing. The company and the union went back to the list of applicants, their results, and their seniority.

By this time, the company had a pretty good investment in Gerry, what with off-site training courses, on the job training, and little in the way of results, and naturally they wanted to avoid a repeat of this experience. They negotiated some kind of deal with the union that allowed them to ignore seniority, and I was suddenly a programmer in training.

I don't know what deal they negotiated, but it couldn't have been much or the union would have gloated and all of us would have known about it. I wouldn't be surprised if the "deal" turned out to be nothing more than a statement along the lines of "We're not going through this again. Either you let us pick the highest applicant or we'll simply keep using the Hearst Corporation programmers as consultants and you'll have fewer union members."

After a one week course at the IBM center in Hartford, Connecticut, I was given responsibility for maintaining and enhancing some of the existing production programs. By any standard, the Record was not yet making much use of the computer. It was in use only from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM. My own shift was from nine to five. I learned how to IPL (start) the machine and how to operate it, and how to shut it down, but there was little opportunity to apply this knowledge. Moreover, testing time for any code I wrote was limited because production was run during the day and the computer could run only one program at a time.

Now - the union.

Regarding the Hartford experience: I was put up in a nice hotel, and meals and transportation expenses were to be paid for. I returned to work on Monday morning and was immediately approached by a union representative who told me to be sure to include in my expense report any time outside the classroom during which I had worked on homework assignments. The union would see that I was paid overtime. This seemed excessive to me, but I did as I was told.

That afternoon the Personnel Manager called me into his office, a little distressed by my expense report's claim for overtime. He said that the company simply would not train anyone else if this stood. I explained that it had never occurred to me to make that claim, that the union had instructed me to do so, and that I would not be the least bit distressed to receive only the lodging, food, and transportation expenses.

Somehow it got worked out between the Record and the Guild, and neither payment nor further conversation about overtime occurred.
I now knew how to operate the machine and was a little frustrated by the small number of opportunities for testing. I did a deal with the DP manager which allowed me to come in a couple of hours early and leave a couple of hours early, thus having the machine all to myself from seven o'clock to nine o'clock. For several weeks things went swimmingly. I was learning more every day and more of my programming was getting into production - good for me and good for the company.

And then . . . I was approached by a union rep who asked about the specifics of the deal and how the deal came into existence (I had proposed it to the DP manager). In short order the union filed a complaint with the company, taking the position that by beginning at seven o'clock I was starting during "night shift" hours and would have to be paid the ten percent differential.

Immediately on hearing this I went to our chapter head to try to talk him into withdrawing this claim. I explained that it was good for *me*, a union member, but it was like talking to a brick wall. Eventually the deal was cancelled and I was back to nine to five. Thanks, guys.
Somehow I wound up on the Guild's negotiating team as our contract expiration approached. I don't know how this happened, exactly, but I am absolutely the wrong person to put in a situation like that, as it is my inclination to see both sides of a matter while everyone else is seeing only whatever interests they serve.

In any case, the Herald had recently completed some union negotiations, making what were considered by newspaper people to be scandalous concessions, most particularly in wages.

Our rep began trying to negotiate for those same rates for the Guild employees at the Record, and was told that those rates were "off the table." Our guy wanted to know why the Herald management had been so "reasonable" and the Record management was being so "unreasonable." He was told "If the Herald lives to pay those contracts then we will renegotiate."

The Herald did not live to pay the contracts, and the Hearst Corporation bought the paper, did away with the Record, moved into the Herald's facilities, and began publishing the Herald-American. This all occurred shortly after I left the paper, and the surviving paper, which has changed hands a couple more times, is now called the Boston Herald.
A thought, not directly related to union membership: During these negotiations I incurred the wrath of a Hearst Corporation jerk who was sent in to participate with the Record management in these negotiations and to meddle in other matters. I would gladly give you his name - so you would know who he was and how incompetent he was - but it has escaped me.¹

In any case, a few months later I accepted an offer to take a position at Blue Cross. The offer was made by Drew, then an acquaintance from the Board Room (bar) and later both my superior and a friend. Perhaps a month after I started at Blue Cross, Drew and I were having a drink at the Board Room and he said "You know, we almost didn't get to hire you."

I learned that it was Blue Cross policy to solicit a recommendation from the current employer of anyone proposing to join Blue Cross. Spitefully, the Hearst jerk had directed the Record's Personnel Manager to answer "No" to the question "Would you rehire this individual?"

And so the Personnel Manager did, but he was wiser than that. He knew that I had been praised in writing for my performance and added a handwritten note: "It is company policy to answer 'no' to this question but I would rehire this man."

But for that, the Record would have been wide open to a law suit.

¹ February 11, 2009: It just popped into my mind - Bill Klouda

Moving Experiences

2008-09-28T07:20:00.000-07:00

A couple of years after Debbie and I split I decided to move from one apartment in Falls Church to another. Not entirely coincidentally, the new one was perhaps fifty feet from the building in which I worked.

One of the arrangements I had to make was for the continuation of telephone service. I called the phone company and got a person who sounded like a middle-aged woman. I gave her the old and new addresses, which weren't much more than a quarter of a mile apart.

CS Rep: "Would you like to have a new number or do you want to keep the current one?"

Donnie: "Well, I've only had this one for three years, so either way I'm gonna have to memorize one."

CSR, laughing: "I'm sure you're very busy."

Donnie: "You're very kind."
While packing for the move, I came across a long rectangular box that weighed perhaps twenty pounds. It was still sealed with tape, unopened since the move from Illinois four years previous. The only marking on it was the unhelpful "Computer Room Closet."

I looked at it for perhaps three or four minutes. If I haven't opened this for four years, then no matter what's in it I don't need it.

For safety's sake I ran through a short list of important items - birth certificate, Army discharge, etc., and decided I knew where all those things were and none were in this box.

I took it down to the trash bin, unopened.

Several years later, back in Illinois, I told Debbie about it during one of our telephone conversations. She was absolutely beside herself over it, saying several times "I can't believe you did that."

I threw that box away in 1996 and haven't spent one minute worrying about it, but you know how things go. Several months ago it popped into my mind that I knew what the box had contained.

When I moved to Chicago in 1979, my boss sent me to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for a week long seminar on Matrix Management, and the box contained manuals, reference materials, completed assignments, and a graduation certificate. So Debbie, if you should trip over this blog, now you know.

Friends and Colleagues

2008-09-24T07:07:00.000-07:00

One day Joey, a colleague at a a junk mail company in Virginia, told me about a brief conversation with his seven year old son.

Seven Year Old: "Girls are different from boys."

Joey: "Really? How's that?"

Seven Year Old: "Boys got muscles. Girls got legs."

Joey: "Umm. Yeah. Let's not share that with your mother just yet."
One morning Joey spent the first couple of hours at work with a very amused smile on his face. After a while I asked him what was so funny.

He told me that his wife had told him that he had been tossing, turning, and mumbling in his sleep and at some point she shook his shoulder and said his name, with no effect. She tried again, harder and louder, and he sat up in bed, scowled at her, and said, "Where have you been and what are you doing with that fire hydrant?"
At the weekly bridge session at Sambo's in Sierra Vista, Arizona, there was a mixture of civilians, military, military wifes, retired military, and so on. Very occasionally a few of us would visit the lounge after bridge, have a drink and chat about nothing in particular.

One night a Mrs. Moore, wife of a non-bridge playing colonel, joined us. She warned us that she had a very low tolerance for alcohol, and sure enough, about halfway through one drink she was flying.

At some point, out of a clear blue sky, she looked across the table at me and asked "Who's your favorite poet, Donnie?"

I decided to have some fun with her, thought quickly, and said "Ogden Nash."

"OGDEN NASH?! He's a shitass."

This brought down the house, of course, and I confessed fondness for Kipling and Coleridge, both of whom I consider underrated. I hasten to add, however, that I am no poetry expert.

Several days later I ran into one of the players downtown, the wife of a captain, who told me Mrs. Moore sent her apologies for the outburst, and I asked her to tell Mrs. Moore that she had been provoked.

South Boston: Not Even a Nice Place to Visit

2008-09-21T06:57:00.000-07:00

A while back I advised against outsiders moving to South Boston, and here are a couple of the things that made me do that. I know nothing about how South Boston is now. I do know that it got worse, much worse, after I left, but whether that has changed is something you should learn if you ever actually contemplate living there.

These episodes occurred during the one year I lived in Southie, which was around 1973.

I lived on G Street, on the third floor of a small apartment house which had its own parking lot containing perhaps fifty parking spaces.

One work day morning I walked out to the car, which was . . . gone. This sort of turns your world upside down for a minute, until you adjust to it. I took that moment, shrugged, and walked down to the police station to file a report.

A policeman at the desk asked me a few questions and gave me a form to fill out. I did so and returned the form. He scanned it, looked through some other documents of some kind, and assured me that when and if they found my car I would be the first to know.

(For your amusement: I borrowed an old station wagon from my stepfather, who used it to haul various carpentry work and tools around. Three or four days later that too was stolen, this time from a downtown parking lot.)

Perhaps ten days passed. One evening I got a phone call from a woman who wanted some information about my car and its theft. I asked her who she was and she told me "I'm the owner of the car that your car hit when it rolled down the hill."

Well.

She was one half of a young couple who had just bought their first new car. Some young Southie thugs stole my car, drove it three or four blocks, put it in neutral, and turned it loose at the top of a hill. She was able to find me by going to the South Boston Police Station, and getting the info from my stolen car report. In the meantime, Southie's finest, who knew nothing about the incident when *eye* talked to them had in fact had the car in their posession the whole time, or more precisely, had called a garage and had it towed.

Some annoyed, I went to the police station, was greeted by the same officer behind the counter, and contemplated asking him if he knew where his butt was, but decided against it on the grounds that it could do a stranger in Southie no good at all to antagonize the local fuzz.

With some prodding I got him to look through various files and confess that yes, they had been in possession of the car all that time, and in fact had added my car to the national stolen car registry.

After a bad repair job I got my car back (speakers missing from the doors) and took it to my hometown for a good repair job. Some battles you just aren't going to win.

Two or three years later I bought a new car and gave the old one to my sister in New Hampshire. A week or two after she registered it, a New Hampshire State Trooper showed up with paperwork showing that the car was still on the national stolen car list. Well done, Southie Blue.
On Broadway, the main drag in Southie, there was a bar named "The Elite." Locally, this was pronounced "E-light," with the accent on the first syllable. One Saturday evening, with the house mobbed, two men argued over something. One left and returned a few minutes later carrying a shotgun. He walked over to a booth and ignoring the other people sitting in that very same booth blew his antagonist away.

The customers filed out and the bartender turned out the lights and locked up.

The Sunday Record-American carried a short story which mentioned that police were searching for Joe Blow, the bartender. A day later they found him and it was reported to me that in answer to their questions he told them "There weren't any bodies there when I left."

I imagine that the murder is still "unsolved," as people in Southie never ratted each other out. Whether the perpetrator is still alive might be another story, depending on the victim's friends.
On another Saturday night, I was driving down Broadway (which is very busy on Saturday nights). There were cars parked along the curbs as far as the eye could see, and just as I came alongside the Elite there was a double-parked tow truck. I was doing the prescribed 25 miles per hour, or whatever the limit was, as I was in the middle of a line of traffic trying to go somewhere else. Just seconds before my car passed the tow truck, a young man walked out from in front of it. I actually got my foot on the brake and the car to begin braking before I hit him, but there was never any chance of stopping short of him.

He went ass over teakettle and was hit in midair by an oncoming car. This car, by the way, did not bother to stop.

He wasn't exactly unconscious, but was thrashing around a little on the road. I prevented other people from moving him, put a blanket from my trunk under his head, and waited for the police and an ambulance.

A lot of people knew who he was, so I got his name, and from one of the policemen I learned what hospital he would be taken to. The next day I went to the hospital, got a visitor's pass, and went to his room. He was awake, alert, and chipper, and his hand was being held by his girlfriend.

I introduced myself as the driver of the first car that hit him, and he was a little surprised to learn that a second car had hit him. He told me that he was fine, just had some bruises, that he had been dead drunk when it happened, and "You know, this is the second time this has happened to me."

Mandy Stories

2008-09-17T06:55:00.000-07:00

My mother taught me certain modes of behavior, also known as "manners." Times change, but habits acquired when you are a child are difficult to shed. I am not the least bit unhappy that most of what Mom taught me I still practice, although not everyone feels that way, and occasionally someone is downright unhappy.

The force that caused more discarding of these habits than any other was of course the women's liberation movement.

"Ladies" has been replaced by the somewhat pedestrian "women" except in the case of the occasional "ladies and gentlemen." This is regrettable primarily because there is a distinct difference between the two terms even if it is not discernible by certain ~~ladies~~ women.

It was in the 1980's and I was past forty when I finally was able to walk on the inside (without being aware of it every second) when with a female companion.

I almost never stand these days when a woman enters a room or rises from her chair. (After all, who knows whether she's a lady?)

I still hold a door for a woman, but plead innocent of any wrongdoing on the grounds that I still hold a door for a ~~gentleman~~ man too.

Oh yes, Mandy. Well, one of the funniest comments on my ~~sexist~~ outmoded behavior was made by Mandy. One lunch hour in Chicago a few of us, all women except yours truly, went to Hamburger Hamlet for lunch. When we exited we had a busy street to cross, and stepping off the curb triggered its Pavlovian corollary: I took the arm of the nearest female, a young woman named Nicki.

Now Nicki was, I think, twenty-three or twenty-four years old and much amused but not the least bit offended by this. As we reached the other side, she turned to me, smiled, and asked "Why did you take my arm?"

Mandy, perhaps six feet away, supplied an answer: "In case you felt the urge to hurl yourself in front of the nearest oncoming car."
One Saturday or Sunday at my house Mandy said "Come on, Donnie, let's play a game of Trivial Pursuit."

At some point I was looking across the table at her and she was reading the question she was about to ask and was smiling gleefully. Things went roughly like this:

Mandy: "If you were in Europe and saw a car with a sticker that read "HE" what country would the sticker be from?"

Donnie: "Oh, jeez, I don't know, Mandy. I don't know anything about those stickers."

Mandy, eyes aglitter: "Go ahead, Donnie, give it a shot."

Well, a challenge is a challenge. I went into a huddle, perhaps even a trance. Somehow I found myself thinking about my childhood stamp collecting days and instead of no answer I had two alternatives:

· Swiss stamps often (always?) bore the word "Helvetia," the old Roman name for a large portion of what is now Switzerland

· Similarly with Greek stamps and "Hellas," basically Greek for Greece
Throwing a mental dart I hit the former and answered "Switzerland."

Mandy's eyes got big and her jaw dropped.

"What . . . .? How . . . .?"

I cracked up. Real Trivial Pursuit players know that when your opponents want to give up you should let them. (Also, when in doubt say "Paris.")
Mandy and I split and several days later she called me. "The tickets for the concert arrived but if you don't want to go I will understand."

We had promised her daughter, Beth, who was perhaps eight years old, that when Whitney Houston appeared at Poplar Creek, a local outdoor theater, we would take her to the show.

I said, "No, that's OK, we promised to take her, let's do it."

Came the day and I picked the two of them up a little early, and we went somewhere to get something light to eat before the show. Whitney gave a great performance, and the three of us were happy as I drove them home. Sayonara.

About a week later I received a letter from Mandy comparing me unfavorably to pond scum.

Your guess is as good as mine.

A Couple of Dee Dee Stories

2008-09-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

During the previously blogged Quebec City trip, I noticed a number of "Aigle d'Or" gas stations. This was a brand I'd never encountered, and I mentioned the large number of such stations that we had passed.

Dee Dee immediately opined that there were more Irving gas stations than Aigle d'Or. Naturally, this became a competitive situation.

On Monday, I did the driving for the return trip, and we kept a running count of the stations with the two brands. Carla and my dad were in the back seat, the counts remained pretty close, and after a while things settled down. After perhaps a half hour of relative quiet I heard Dad say, "Oh, Donnie! Look to your left!"

This was followed instantly by "I HATE YOU! You're supposed to be sleeping," from Dee Dee.

I looked to the left, saw perhaps fifteen or twenty *huge* Aigle d'Or gasoline storage tanks, and made my claim: "I get a thousand points." If not accepted, exactly, the claim was not contested.

Perhaps a dozen years later Dad and I encountered an Irving station in New Hampshire, and nothing would do but that we pull over and take pictures of it to mail to Dee Dee, who by this time was married. When next we talked on the phone, her reaction was identical to her responses over more than a decade: "He's so cute."
Dee Dee and my great-aunt Bertha became great friends, and from time to time the two of us would visit her in Brockton and take her to a local chain steak house, possibly Bonanza, which was Bertha's favorite place.

One such night was during the winter, and it was freezing cold and slippery. The plan was for me to pull up and let Dee Dee and Bertha enter the restaurant while I parked the car somewhere. Bertha was nothing if not adventurous, and the instant the car stopped she was out the door, not giving Dee Dee time to help her.

Now it happened that the car was at the crest of a short - perhaps five foot - incline, which was iced over, and just as Dee Dee got to Bertha and grabbed her arm, the two of them started gliding down this incline.

My heart was in my mouth as I watched Dee Dee and this eighty-odd year old woman slide to the bottom, but they reached it safely and with Bertha whooping and laughing.

We had a great time over dinner and when it was time to go Bertha jumped up and took off by herself again. She was awaiting cataract removal surgery and was half blind, and with a right turn she made a beeline for what she thought was the exit door handle. She had a death grip on a gooseneck lamp which she was trying to pull off the wall when I reached her.

Debbie - Part VIII

2008-09-10T06:53:00.000-07:00

aka, Part the last

A few months after the move to Falls Church, Debbie and I split, this time permanently. My father began referring to her as "my former future daughter-in-law," or "former future" for short. But she and I remained friends, as did she and my dad. They wrote each other and once in a blue moon visited with each other. She and I wrote, telephoned, and later emailed, and she even returned to Falls Church for a couple of visits.
On her first visit I told her that she was to do absolutely nothing regarding the state of the apartment - no moving things, no cleaning, no nothing. After a couple of days, as she prepared to leave, she said, "You know, there's something to be said for not emptying an ashtray every time it has one cigarette in it."

The evening that she arrived I took her to a restaurant that was new to her, and on the way I had her smoke a little grass, something she hadn't done for several months. It really got to her.

We arrived at the restaurant and found that it was mobbed. I gave my name to the hostess and Debbie and I went into the bar, miraculously finding an empty booth. She grabbed it and I went to the bar to get drinks. Returning, I sat opposite her and we contentedly sipped away.

I began chattering about something and she finally said "Don't talk to me." OK, she's stoned. I can live with that.

But I couldn't. The problem was that I was now stoned too and I kept forgetting that I wasn't supposed to talk. Finally, she leaned across the table toward me and said "Look into my eyes."

I leaned forward and looked into her eyes and she said "There's nobody *in* there."
Her final visit came about because I insisted that she go with me to see John Fogerty perform in Manassas, Virginia. For the first time in many years he was going to do the old stuff, the Creedence Clearwater Revival stuff.

Fogerty put on a wonderful show for a very appreciative audience, an audience ranging in age from perhaps eight years old to octogenarians. But as good as Fogerty was, the drummer, Kenny Aronoff, nearly stole the show and at the end had to take several bows to standing ovations. If you ever get a chance to see him, grab it.
Eventually I moved back to Illinois. Debbie and I stayed in touch, both by email and telephone. From one of our very last phone conversations, circa 2001:

Donnie: "When I look at you I see you as you were in 1969."

Debbie, after a brief pause: "I'll be right out."
Debbie remarried and for a while our emails continued, but at some point she and her husband moved to Maine, she changed her ISP, and my emails apparently started falling into a black hole somewhere. Wherever she is, I wish her well.

Debbie - Part VII

2008-09-07T07:43:00.000-07:00

Still More Vignettes

I guess I'm posting a lot of Debbie stories, but you acquire a lot when you actually live with someone for several years.

We moved to Maryland and stayed there a few months. Debbie got out there ahead of me and looked for a place to live, settling on a nine room house (!) in Upper Marlboro. I think the movers got there a day after I did, and the unloading was accomplished without incident. The unpacking, however, . . .

Debbie was positively driven to get everything unpacked and in its proper place no later than yesterday. I tried and tried to get her to calm down and slow down once we had the essentials unpacked, but we had some kind of left brain - right brain experience going or something. She actually exhausted herself and it did put a strain on our relationship. We got through it and in the next several months even had guests for weekends, Jeff and Cassie from Illinois one weekend, Debbie's daughter and her boyfriend on another, and my Dad on yet a third.

A few months after arriving we both found jobs in Falls Church, Virginia and soon moved there. We needed to save as much as we could on the moving. The company for which I worked had a vacant office and I acquired a key to it. Every morning I'd throw several boxes of stuff into the car and store it in that office, and the day we moved there was little other than furniture to deal with. There were about sixty boxes in the office, however.

Sadder and wiser this time around, I laid down the law along the following lines: "Every day I'll bring three boxes home from the office. You may tell me what the boxes of the day are to be and I will find them. Saturdays and Sundays are 'off days.' No boxes."

I do believe there was some reservation visible in Debbie's eyes, but she bought in without a murmur. Every work day she gave me a written description of the three boxes she desired, and I borrowed one of the company's two hand trucks to haul the boxes from the company to the car and from the car to our thirteenth floor apartment. It took a month to get unpacked, but seldom in life has a plan worked so well and with such an obvious payoff. There was no stress at all, not even for Debbie.

In hindsight, I speculate that the first move's stress for Debbie was not due to any sort of compulsion concerning the contents of the unpacked boxes, but simply the fact that there were unpacked boxes in the house.

As for leaving Illinois, Debbie commented that our friends were the "best group of people" she had ever known, a sentiment I second.
Did you know that Coca-Cola is not subject to the laws of physics?

For the first couple of days in Falls Church, every spare minute of Debbie's time was spent cleaning our new apartment. It looked sterile to me, but not to her. She spent a whole day on the kitchen alone, a kitchen not much bigger than a shoebox.

A day or two later, our three boxes unpacked, dinner eaten, dishes washed and put away, we were amusing ourselves with some game or other on the PC when a thirst for a cold Coke hit me. I asked her if she would like anything from the kitchen (nope) and headed for the refrigerator. Taking a can of Coke from the refrigerator door, I somehow lost my grip on it. It fell about two and a half feet, popped open, and sprayed everything on the eastern seaboard. If in the fall of 1992 it rained Coca-Cola in your neighborhood, it may interest you to know that the center of the storm was in Falls Church. Cross that off your list of unexplained mysteries.

I grabbed the paper towels and began cleaning frantically. By my estimate I was about two thirds done when her voice drifted down the hall: "What are you doing?"

I was six years old again, doing something I shouldn't be doing, and my parents wanted to know what I was doing.

"Nothing."

A piece of advice for younger adults: That didn't work when you were six and it's not going to work when you're fifty-one either.

Hearing her push her chair back, I spent the next few seconds vainly hoping for an earthquake, or perhaps a lightning strike. No luck.

She took it all in with one glance. I said, "Go back to the PC. I'm almost finished and I'll be right there."

Now came the real surprise. She knew about this and I didn't.

Without saying a word, she opened one of the cabinet doors. Now this door was behind me, six feet up, and off to the side of Coke Explosion Central. Nevertheless, the inside of that door was dripping Coke.

Still silent, she opened the oven door. The inside of that door was dripping Coke.

More doors. More Coke. She opened the silverware drawer and there was Coke in there.

Do scientists know about this? I swear, there was more Coke inside these things than outside. There was more Coke dripping in various places than was contained in the damn six pack we had bought, and we still had five cans left.

How does it *do* that? How did it get inside these areas?

She wanted to finish cleaning it herself, but I couldn't have lived with that. We cleaned it up and returned to the PC, but for her the pleasure had gone out of the evening.

On Not Turning Pro

2008-09-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

I must admit that I am competitive by nature, and that when I have been attracted to some new game that interested me it has been my practice to learn all I can about it, to gamble at it, and especially to gamble at it with better players. If you can find such stituations in lower stakes games, this is the best way to learn. If you become only fairly good and confine your playing to games in which you are one of the favorites, you soon stop learning. In backgammon, for example, I was able to find a club where I could play with stronger players for a dollar a point or two dollars a point. I soon lost several hundred dollars, but the games tended to have a mix of stronger and weaker players, my losses tapered off, and I became one of the more or less consistent winners.

The club slowly died and I moved on to another, this one featuring five and ten dollar games. It's been a long time since I played, but I am certainly ahead some number of dollars in the lower five figures. However, you shouldn't be too impressed. That only makes me a slightly larger than small fish in a very large pond.

(By the way, I have found that in all such situations taking a break and playing only with weaker players for any significant amount of time weakened my game. My wallet would get fatter, but when I returned to games that included some better players I often got my clock cleaned.)

Interestingly, I have been approached by professionals in two different games with advice by one and an offer by the other. They thought I should lose my "honest" job and become a professional. These approaches occurred many years ago:

In the 1960s, when I was active in duplicate bridge, I came (by a bizarre road) to the attention of a bridge pro whom we'll call Taylor. He is still active today (thanks, Google).

I was partnered at a regional tournament with an elderly woman (Fairfax Nesbitt, R.I.P.) and the movement called for two boards (hands) to be played each round. At one table we bid and made two grand slams. It happened that I was declarer both times. When Taylor saw the traveling score slip he alerted the tournament director that something might be wrong - more precisely, that cheating might be taking place - as neither hand was makeable at the grand slam level. At one point in a subsequent round a middle-aged gentleman in a suit watched our bidding and play, then left. I later learned that this was the tournament director.

We got tops on both hands, but what actually happened during the play of the two hands was:
1. Based on the bidding, the opening leader came up with a "brilliant" lead which was in fact the only lead that allowed me to make the contract. This was followed by:
2. A hand with a revoke by a defender. I led a trump, she had one, she inadvertently played a card of another suit, and the penalty was two tricks, giving us the grand slam.
Taylor had been informed by the tournament director that he observed nothing unusual. Taylor kept his eye on the score slips and found that our results were otherwise consistently normal. Between two rounds he hastened over to me, introduced himself, and asked how I had made the two grand slams. I explained and he laughed and confessed that he had put the tournament director onto us. He returned to his partner and we played our next several sets of opponents.

When the session was over he appeared again and we chatted about some of the hands. He was, I think, testing me to decide how good or bad a player I might be. In the end he tried to convince me that I should become a bridge pro.
In the 1970s I played a lot of backgammon, initially at one club and with perhaps twenty more or less regular members, several of whom were strong players and the rest middle or weak players. As mentioned above, I lost an initial investment of several hundred dollars and learned a great deal. There were two players who made a living gambling at backgammon (with bridge a second source of income for one) and several very strong amateurs who simply supplemented their incomes there.

I would say that I had about reached the level of the very strong amateurs when the backgammon and bridge pro approached me. He wanted me to turn pro and travel the country with him, occasionally being his partner in matches. He was in his mid-twenties and I was in my early thirties.

These approaches were flattering, but I rejected them both. The first advice was given when I still had several years to serve in the Army. When I went to Vietnam I was necessarily deprived of opportunities to play duplicate bridge, and this caused me to realize that I had been spending most of my life, at least most of my life outside my Army duties, with people who were ten to fifty years older than I (I was 25 when I went to Vietham), and that this was not healthy. And frankly, I still had a lot to learn about bridge and the pro life didn't seem all that attractive to me.

The bridge/backgammon offer was made when I was in my thirties, which is a bit late to switch from a more or less normal life to one of constant travel and gambling. I had been around the world and I was tired of traveling, and once again the pro gambler life didn't look all that attractive.

Whether for the right or wrong reasons, I think I made the right decisions. Today, it seems to me that such lives are shallow, or at least would be for me. Now I'm not shooting at anyone in particular here, or even at any group of people. It may be just a matter of temperament and a matter of when (at what age) you start.

I look, for example, at the international stars in poker who play for a great deal of money. They've all become millionaires that way, and I'm sure they're happy about that. However, correctly or incorrectly, I divide them into two groups: those who balance their lives to some extent, have other things that are important to them, sometimes even more important to them, and those who simply live the life of traveling and gambling (and yes, I'm aware of the perks), constantly competing.

As I have said (or will say) elsewhere in this blog, I overdo things. I suspect that had I turned pro and been successful I'd have fallen into the latter group. I think that I have lived my life in a more interesting if less lucrative way.

Saved!

Musicmatch Customer Service

2008-08-31T06:34:00.000-07:00

A Rant: Part II

For me, the most annoying aspect of the MMJB growth was what seemed to me to be complete disregard for the customer in making changes to the software. I'm sure it was all well intentioned, but it is clear that nobody who was involved in the design and decision making was more than a casual user of the jukebox. For a while the changes were harmless enough, and although I was not particularly interested in them the upgrades were free and I thought I should keep up with them. And then, and then . . . .

One of the capabilities of the mp3 format and the MMJB is that you can add "notes" to a song, not musical notes but informational notes, and they become part of the mp3 file itself. And you can set MMJB to display these notes when the songs are playing. For example, the notes that I added to the song "The Jolly Green Giant" by The Kingsmen originally looked like this:

(Text version 1)

Cultural differences surfaced within the company that
marketed Green Giant frozen vegetables: the west coast
headquarters made giant posters for the group to use at
its gigs, and the east coast headquarters sued them.

I downloaded an "upgrade" only to learn that MMJB had reduced the width of the MMJB area which contained text notes. Now my notes looked like this:

(Text version 2)

Cultural differences surfaced within the
company that
marketed Green Giant frozen vegetables:
the west coast
headquarters made giant posters for the
group to use at
its gigs, and the east coast headquarters
sued them.

Ugly, no?

I emailed customer service with my complaint. At that time I had about 500 songs on my jukebox, and I said so, pointing out what a PITA it was going to be to edit them all to clean them up. I was asked to send them a screenshot of an example of the problem, and did so.

While I waited for a response, I began cleaning up the notes. Within the reduced space, a cleaned up version looked like this:

(Text version 3)

Cultural differences surfaced within the
company that marketed Green Giant frozen
vegetables: the west coast headquarters
made giant posters for the group to use at
its gigs, and the east coast headquarters
sued them.

Ahhh, much better.

I got about halfway through my 500 songs and received a response to my email. MMJB regretted causing the problem, but the good news was that the next upgrade would re-expand the text notes area.

Cool. I took my backup CDs (you didn't think I was keeping all this work on a PC with no backup, did you?) and restored the songs I had "fixed." Soon the new "upgrade" came out. I installed it and learned that sure enough, they had expanded the text notes area, but not quite enough to return to the original size. Now my notes looked like this:

(Text version 4)

Cultural differences surfaced within the company
that
marketed Green Giant frozen vegetables: the west
coast
headquarters made giant posters for the group to
use at
its gigs, and the east coast headquarters sued
them.

What the Hell were they thinking?

I wrote, complaining about everything from their lack of forethought to the temperature, and again received an apology, this time accompanied by a promise that the text area would never change size again. It was stabilized. (It wasn't.)

Well, I am made of stern stuff, and I made two resolutions:

1. I would clean up the whole song collection, and
2. I would never upgrade MMJB again.

I kept resolution 1, a task that took days to complete. I continued to add songs, secure in the knowledge that they could never ambush me again. Ah, but the best laid plans . . . .

I suppose I should have foreseen this, but even if I had there was nothing I could have done about it. At about the time I reached 1,700 songs, I had to replace a dying and outmoded PC with a new one. I backed everything up and bit the bullet.

After getting the new PC up and running, I learned that my backup of the MMJB software install was useless. I couldn't just copy it to my PC and install the jukebox software. I visited the MMJB site, entered my key, and got my free replacement jukebox. I took my music backup CDs and put them on my hard drive, then imported them into the jukebox. Yup. You know what's coming, right?

They had changed the size of the text window yet again. Now the 500 I had cleaned up and the 1,200 more that I had added were all screwed up. Thanks, guys.

I've thought and thought about this, but I can't find a way around this problem. There will always be times when I have to put the jukebox on a new PC and I will always be vulnerable to the MMJB insensitivity to the user. I speculate that the only thing I could do would be to go back to plan number one, which is to learn enough so that I can write my own jukebox. But man, that's gonna be a lot of work.

It will delight you, I am sure, to learn that I have all but nineteen of the songs that made up my original objective. I also have several hundred songs on the jukebox that are outside the original parameters, just because I like them. Sooo . . . I have 2,707 songs on the JB at the moment. I am not about to go through them one by one, cleaning up the text, just so MMJB can tunnel me again.

OK, wait. The above was written long before this posting. This is an update. MMJB has been acquired by Yahoo. Whether this is good or bad for the users cannot be predicted, or at least it cannot be predicted by me. We all know what Yahoo's prediction would be. But I would dip my arm in boiling oil before betting that the text area will ever be stabilized permanently.

MusicMatch Customer Service

2008-08-27T04:07:00.000-07:00

A Rant: Part I

Sometime in the 1980s I decided that when the technology was available I would take up (as a hobby) the task of acquiring every song that hit the top twenty during the years 1955 to 1969. This was the music of my youth (roughly, anyway, as I was 14 to 28 years old during that period). I would get all the music and somehow - depending on what the technology looked like - string it all together so that any of it could be found by artist or by song title and then played.

Well, the mp3 format came along and I learned about it in 1998. My first step was to list what I needed, and for this I used the then current issue of The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits by Joel Whitburn. Over the years I have worn out several copies and acquired new ones. I believe the book is updated annually to include all top 40 songs from 1955 to the year before the edition in question. It is a marvelous source and I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.

The list creation resulted in something over 2,400 songs which I had to acquire either already in the mp3 format or on CD, from which I could convert them to mp3. At that time, vinyl and cassette were not good sources because the PC line in capability usually resulted in line feed hissing. Or at least the capability that *eye* had did.

So, list creation accomplished, I pondered the problem of organizing them in such a fashion that I could access them as described above, that is by artist or by song title. I speculated that I would have to learn enough about the PC to write my own software, and was ecstatic when I discovered a software product called "MusicMatch Jukebox." It was only $19.99 or $19.95 or something like that, and I would be able to access them by those two characteristics, and by slightly misusing the software's capabilites I could access them by the years they reached their peak positions, the highest chart positions they reached, and other characteristics. I'll take one, please.

MMJB was still a small company and its customer service was the best I have ever experienced, on or off the internet, even though it was all by email. I had need of it several times and never waited more than a few hours for a response. The responses were prompt, coherent, and helpful. On a couple of occasions a woman in Tennessee emailed me after midnight and I happened to be still awake and using my PC. We exchanged both technical information and social pleasantries. I recall fondly that on the first such occasion I asked her what she was doing answering my email at that hour and that she told me she was home and unwinding with a glass of wine. We asked each other about wine preferences. She was drinking "Spanish Red." I liked Merlot. She informed me that "Merlot is for wimps." Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha. Perhaps she was right.

In any case she solved my problems and how could it get any better?

On another occasion I emailed customer service during the day. I think there was a glitch in the MMJB software. I received a response almost immediately, from a male this time, outlining the steps I would have to take to fix it. As I began those steps my phone rang. It was the customer service rep, calling to walk me through the steps to make sure I had no problem. Can you believe that?

Alas, things deteriorated, slowly at first and then more rapidly, as MMJB grew in size. I suppose this is inevitable as companies grow, but it is in any case lamentable.

NEXT: MusicMatch Customer Service: The Decline

Debbie: Part VI

2008-08-24T07:03:00.000-07:00

More Vignettes:

The second year that we went back to New England for Christmas, Debbie was tapped for the role of sainthood, which she filled admirably. My mother had spent some time in the hospital after a fall, and Billy drove up from Maryland to pick her up on release. She got into the car and found that they were headed back to Maryland, which would be her new home. This left all her belongings, except for a few things Billy had picked up, at her apartment, and Debbie and I were to empty her place and finish our Christmas vacation by driving to Maryland for a visit and to deliver Mom's items.

We started in the morning and Debbie was a dynamo, selecting, packing, and discarding things. I was wounded by a time bomb my brother had left - I reached up for a paper bag on a closet shelf, lifted it, and felt my back go out. It contained a three ton film projector. For the rest of the morniing I was not a whole lot of help to Debbie, and as chance would have it I had to leave her there and go into Boston to meet Dee Dee for lunch. Driving was OK, but I actually had to lean on Dee Dee to walk.

When I got back we somehow got everything down to the car or into the trash, and left the apartment behind. Debbie didn't say much, but we both knew that I owed her big time.

Now it was Debbie that I had to lean on to walk. I made light of it and she was clearly more worried than I was. She also had some understandable resentment about the way the day had gone.

We stayed at a motel in Hampton, New Hampshire. When we got into bed she rolled over so that her back was to me. We both read for a while, then she rolled over, faced me, and said "Don't look at me."
Due to the pigs being at the trough I quit my job and incorporated myself (second time for that). Having no regular income, I naturally decided that the thing to do was to buy a new Cadillac. Debbie shopped with me and we settled on a 1989 Sedan de Ville, dark blue with gold trim. The floor model had a special set of wheels on it which I would not have given a dime for, but Debbie liked them. I was going to pass on them, but Debbie really liked them. $4,000.00. Sigh.

Jumping ahead a bit, a couple of years later I wanted to leave Illinois and head west, tentatively Seattle. Debbie thought we should move to the other coast, where we would at least be within driving distance of our families. We did that, and a few months later we split and she moved back to New Hampshire.

The suspension on this Cadillac was giving me fits. Any time I put anyone in the back seat the wheel wells rubbed against the back tires. I took it to a Cadillac dealer in Falls Church. Well, you know how some of these dealerships are. I reported the problem to the representative who checked the car in, showed him the abrasions on the rear tires, and told him "All I want is to fix this problem. I do not want a list of other things I "should" have done to the car."

That afternoon he called me with a list of other things I should have done to the car. When he was done I said "I didn't hear anything about the suspension, the problem for which I gave you the car."

Service Rep: "Oh we checked that. There's nothing wrong."

Donnie: "Did I show you the abrasions on the rear tires?"

Silence.

Donnie: "Well?"

Service rep: "Yes."

Donnie: "Did I pay extra for that when I bought the car or is that standard with Cadillac?"

Silence.

Donnie: "Look. Put a couple guys in the back seat and drive the car around your lot. You'll feel the problem."

It turned out that the wheels were too wide for the damn car. So . . . there I was, alone in Virginia, three thousand miles away from where I had intended to be. Debbie was in New Hampshire and I had $4,000 worth of problem wheels that she had really liked.

The Phoenix Interlude

2008-08-20T07:15:00.000-07:00

Having finished with the Army in 1968, it was my wish to remain in Arizona, specifically Phoenix. Alas, the timing was very bad indeed. It was May and the colleges and universities were graduating students left and right, many of whom were searching for work in Phoenix. I had just left the Army, was from the northeast (and therefore a "snowbird"), and was low on the totem pole.

I began to run out of money. I found a family-owned diner where I could get a burger and fries for twenty-five cents. "Just water, thank you." The only serious job offer I got was a good one, from a chain called "Fed Mart" (I think). They would start me at $700 a month and put me into a training course to learn to manage one of their outlets. But . . . they wanted my word that I would remain with them for a full year after the course, and I couldn't give it to them.

One day while searching the employment ads I noticed one for a job that paid $6.25 (before taxes) each day for delivering circulars. That was a lot of burgers and gas, and I thought "Why not?"

Now there are some things which I just should not get into, one category being fairly described as "Anything that requires common sense." This job demonstrated that to me once again.

I showed up at the given address the next morning. The only shoes I owned were my Army dress shoes and a pair of loafers. I wore the latter. Four or five old men, unkempt, smelling of cheap wine, were also waiting there. They and I were taken on and the deal was explained. We would all ride in the back of a pickup truck containing bundles of circulars. The driver would take us on his regular route, we would each grab a bundle of circulars and deliver them door to door on blocks the driver assigned to us. Then we would get back on the truck and be off for the next segment of blocks.

June in Phoenix. The temperature climbed to over a hundred degrees. At noon I was still doing fine. We took a "lunch" break, which for me consisted of waiting for the break to end.

When we resumed, I rang the bell at the first house. A maid answered and was kind enough to give me the glass of water I requested. I began feeling the results of all the walking but wasn't in any real trouble except . . . blisters began forming on my stoopid feet which were dressed in stoopid black cotton socks and stoopid leather loafers.

By two o'clock it was actually painful for me to walk. The winos who were my companions were fresh as daisies - or at least as close to daisies as they were likely to get, but I was wilting. I assume they did this several times a week to earn their wine money. At two thirty, back on the truck, I noticed a couple of them giving me anxious looks. One actually asked, "Are you OK?"

I thanked him and assured him I was. When the truck stopped I grabbed a bundle of circulars and got down off the truck. Things were much worse than they had been only ten minutes earlier. The blisters on my feet were very painful indeed. For those of you old enough to remember The Carol Burnett Show, think back to Tim Conway's walk when he was playing an old man. That's what I looked like.

I finished this segment more slowly than any previous segment, and when I returned to the truck everyone was waiting. I climbed in and sat down, and one of my companions said "One more route." I nodded and tried to smile.

The truck stopped, I stood up, and sat right back down. My feet were on fire. All but one of the rest got off the truck. The remaining one looked at me and said, "If you don't deliver this bundle they won't pay you anything."

I said, "I'll do it," stood up, and sat right back down again. "I just need a minute."

He looked at me, then grabbed his bundle and mine, jumped off the truck, and took off running. He was last to return to the truck, having done both of our routes, but not last by much. To this day I am some impressed, both by his stamina and his kindness.

The pay came to about six dollars after taxes (mostly Social Security). I drove back, took a bath and got into bed. The next day I couldn't walk for the blisters. Barefoot, I managed a three or four minute hobble to the bathroom a couple of times, but it was the evening of the second day before I could put shoes on and go get my twenty-five cent burger and fries.

Afterword: A year later, when I was settled in civilian life and no longer in such dire straits, I found myself in Phoenix for a day or two, and for my own amusement I went back to that family diner for lunch. As I entered the diner, the teenage girl who was (and had been) the cashier looked up and said "You've put on some weight."

Debbie - Part V

2008-08-17T06:26:00.000-07:00

Vignettes:

A discussion about some subject on which we disagreed:

Debbie: "87 percent of yada yada yada . . . ."

Donnie: "And your source for that is?"

Debbie: "What? What do you mean?"

Donnie: "That 87 percent. Where did you get that?"

Debbie, indignantly: "I made it up. It's the number I always use."
At a Friday night gathering at the water hole:

Donnie: "Does anyone know anything about saying 'Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit?'"

Link Monster: "I do." Illustrating . . . "On the first day of a month you pinch someone on the arm and punch them on the arm and say 'Pinch, punch, first of the month, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.' This has to be the first thing you say that day. Then you're supposed to have good luck and the other person bad luck all month."

Debbie, to yours truly: "If you ever do that to me I'll never speak to you again."

(One couple present, Jack and Karen, immediately became competitive about this, each promising to be the first to "get" the other. The rest of us knew that there was no chance that Jack could win. Karen could be relentless.

Month after month she nailed him, and on one such occasion he came into work in a grumpy mood. The night before, after Jack was asleep, Karen nudged him at one minute after midnight. She kept nudging until he woke up and then said "Pinch, punch . . . ." He filed a protest with the group, saying it was a foul, but the protest was widely disallowed. Karen positively radiated smugness all day.)
Debbie at work:
- At some point she got bored with being home and went back to work. She was ~~a headhunter~~ an employment counselor and went to work at an employment agency.
  
  Her English pronunciation was still pure Boston/New England, and her midwestern colleagues enjoyed both hearing it and teasing her about it. She dropped the letter "r" at every opportunity and tacked it on elsewhere. She once reported to me that at a work brainstorming session one employee asked with great glee if she had any "idears."
- One windy and bitterly cold night she called me at about the time I would have expected her to arrive home. She said "My cah won't staht." We agreed that I would pick her up and in the meantime she would call the nearest Oldsmobile dealer and have it towed.
  
  I picked her up and we went out to dinner as a little consolation for her.
  
  The next night she had the Olds and drove herself home. She said that the dealership had called, laughing and saying that the car was just out of gas. I said something along the line of "Well, we've all done that at one time or another, or come close to it." She said "I knew it," and only then told me that her colleagues, nearly all women, had expressed unanimously the opinion that she should make something up rather than tell me the truth.
  
  (Are men really such ogres?)
- The two of us had gone to a nice restaurant and Debbie was in a vile mood, a mood aimed at me if I remember correctly. I tried to lighten things a little and said "I have a great knock knock joke for you. Say 'Knock knock.'"
  
  She wasn't really up for this but finally looked at me and said "Knock knock."
  
  I said "Who's there?"
  
  Immediately, I could see the look in her eyes which said, "How did this moron get me into this position? But she decided it was funny, and couldn't wait to try it on a co-worker, a nice person but not necessarily the sharpest knife in the drawer. The next night . . .
  
  Donnie: "Did you try the knock knock joke?"
  
  Debbie, disgustedly: "Yes. And when I said 'Who's there?' she said 'I don't know. Nobody's there.' Now I feel like two of you got me with the same joke."

Debbie - Part IV

2008-08-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

Settling In

So here we are, a month and a half after the "weekend visit," living together. We arrived with Debbie's car loaded to the roof with her clothing and other things.

The house was a raised ranch and had an attic with a drop-down ladder, and three bedrooms, one in use as a guest room and one as a combination library and computer room. As we unloaded her car I told her "Put anything anywhere you like. Move things out of closets or into different closets, whatever makes the most sense to you. Just tell me what you've done so I'll have a shot at finding things."

I did get to keep nearly half the master bedroom closet, which was perhaps more than fair, given the quantity of clothing each of us owned.

Several times during the first couple of weeks she asked "Is it OK if I . . . " and I told her it was the same deal. It was her home and she could rearrange anything at all. I had boxes and bags full of things that had not been opened for a couple of years and told her she could poke around in those, examine anything she chose to. She did, and from time to time I would hear "I didn't know about this" and "Tell me about this."

One of Debbie's practices in life was to stay on top of *everything* regarding neatness, organization, and cleanliness in the home. Cigarette in the ashtray? Time to empty it. Chair a quarter of an inch away from its station? Fix that now. My own tendency, to borrow the concept from the comedienne Rita Rudner, was to live like "a bear with furniture." But this caused no tension between us. I had a job and for the first few weeks she stayed home. She did decide to get a job when she got bored, but even then I had a maid coming in periodically, a substantial housekeeping relief.

The first few times I lit up, I offered her marijuana, but she declined. She had only smoked it once and had not enjoyed it. She told me about the experience and I suggested to her that she had smoked way too much for the first time and if she ever tried it again she should just do a little. Eventually she smoked it with me and we found we had a common trait - one little hit and we were gone. After that she would smoke with me perhaps half the time.

Incidents from the first few months of living together:

We sometimes took walks around the neighborhood in the early evening. On one such occasion we passed a tree that had good solid limbs beginning perhaps two feet above the ground. I pointed to it and said "That's a good climbing tree." A moment later, perhaps wishing to continue that happy line, she pointed to a tree and said "That's a good climbing tree too."

Now that tree's lowest limb of any consequence was perhaps five and a half feet above the ground. I laughed and said, "No it isn't." "It is too." "Well, let's see you climb it then."

She was perhaps five foot two, max, and she jumped up to get a grip. She swung her feet up and was now hanging there upside down, ankles crossed above the limb. She took a moment - I don't know, perhaps to ponder her next move - and I began laughing so hard it was difficult to keep standing. In that position she looked exactly like a sloth, bedded down for the night.

Eventually . . . "Get me down, you fool."

She'd been wearing shorts, sneakers, and a short-sleeved blouse, and carried the scrapes and bruises from that little experiment for the next week or so.
Debbie never minded telling stories on herself. One spring evening I arrived home and she told me about her curiosity regarding the rotating sprinkler at the end of the hose. What, exactly, powered it?

She decided to pick it up and hold it at eye level, then turn the water on but with very low power. She did, then watched it for a few seconds before experiencing the splash! splash! splash!
Before we picked up her car and brought it back, she would drive me to work, keep my car all day, and pick me up at night.

During one of her very early excursions on her own, she couldn't remember exactly where we lived. She eventually found the street, then drove up and down it, trying the garage door opener on likely candidates, oblivious to the fact that the address was on the registration in the glove box. It worked eventually, though.

Third Best in a Three Man Game

2008-08-10T07:44:00.000-07:00

During my nearly ten years in the Army, I served one tour in Vietnam, virtually all of it in 1966 - nothing heroic, a fairly safe tour. My outfit spent most of its time at Cam Ranh Bay, an area safe enough for Lyndon Johnson to visit while I was there and again the following year.

At the beginning of that tour there was a fair amount of pot limit poker played. However, three of us took so much money out of the game that wives began writing to company commanders that money wasn't being sent home, and the batallion commander banned poker.

The three of us went underground, so to speak, and continued to play, but now we were in a three man game. This figured to be the toughest poker game I had ever played in, and indeed it was. Just how tough, though, I didn't realize until perhaps the third or fourth session, when I learned that I was third best. Fortunately, I learned it from the sidelines.

I'm not going to bore you with the details, as much because you would think I made this whole thing up as for any other reason. Suffice it to say that a seven card stud hand was dealt, and after the fourth card I folded.

After seven cards had been dealt, it came down to four aces versus a jack high straight flush in diamonds, three of the aces being visible and three of the straight flush cards being visible.

The four aces bet fifty dollars (a nice bet, that), the straight flush raised fifty dollars (one of the most effective bets I've ever seen), the four aces raised two hundred dollars, and the straight flush raised, matching the pot, which was around eight hundred dollars. It took the holder of the four aces (who had dealt the hand, incidentally) perhaps fifteen minutes to fold.

In this game it was unprecedented, or nearly so, for any of us to show hole cards we didn't have to show, but this time it happened. The loser couldn't resist or chose not to resist showing us that he was skilled enough to fold four aces. The winner was simply kind enough to show his hand.

Lying in my bunk that night, I went over the bidding and the play. I concluded that I wasn't good enough to milk that hand for as much money as the winner had, and that I was too weak to fold the four aces. I could see the reasoning:

If he can raise three aces showing, he has to be able to beat aces full.
If he can beat aces full then he has four of a kind or a straight flush.
With no pair showing and three cards to a straight flush showing, I'm probably screwed.

But I could not for the life of me see myself mucking those four aces.

Well, if I'm not as good as one player and I'm not as good as the other player, then I don't belong in the game. That was the end of my poker in Vietnam.

I'd never be the best poker player in the world, but I was better off knowing it.

Army Burnouts

2008-08-06T06:33:00.000-07:00

In Vilseck, Germany, I knew two corporals, each with about eighteen years of service. Both had been busted some number of times, all due to incidents involving alcohol.

One, Corporal Enwright, had a twin brother in the Army. They had enlisted at the same time and served together for a while until reassignments split them up. Enwright had risen as high as Sergeant First Class (E-7) before acquiring his problem, and had been busted three times. When I knew him his brother was a First Sergeant (E-8) while he was an E-4.
In Grafenwoehr, Germany, I knew a Private (E-2) named Paine who had eighteen years in. I never saw him sober, morning, noon, or night. I don't know what the highest rank he had held was.

I recall one morning when the First Sergeant had the whole company in formation. There was to be a visit by the Inspector General and the First Sergeant wanted to make certain that everything was just so. Most of us would be at work when the IG arrived, but everything in the barracks and in the company area was to be perfect. He ran down a list of items and asked the company, "Any questions?"

Paine raised his hand.

First Sergeant: "What is it, Paine?"

Paine: "What time is it?"

Paine would soon have his twenty years in and would not be allowed to reenlist, and when I left Germany the company was making a valiant effort to straighten him out enough so that they could promote him to E-3 and then E-4 for his retirement.
In Corpus Christi, the payroll section in which I worked was nominally headed by a Specialist Fifth Class (E-5) named Kent, who was a burnout. I believe he had about sixteen years in, and he was just marking time. I don't know exactly what his problem was, but he was a nervous wreck, and he was terrified of being sent to Vietnam.

I say "nominally headed" because although I was a Specialist Fourth Class (E-4), the Personnel Officer had instructed me to run the department and Kent to do whatever I told him to do. Kent bought in without a murmur.

The payroll section consisted of four men - Kent, a draftee who had about six months remaining before discharge, a new man - a PFC (E-3), and me. Our outfit was a special project, and when the batallion went to Vietnam the finance records would remain in Corpus Christi. There would be one enlisted man from the finance section accompanying the batallion, to handle payroll matters on site and to communicate with the Corpus Christi Office. I talked to the Personnel Officer and we agreed that Kent would be inadequate for the job. That left unohoo.

Made E-5 a couple of months before we went, though.

The Name Game

2008-08-03T07:48:00.000-07:00

My real name is not uncommon, perhaps even more common than "Donnie Richards." (Yup. Just googled them both and there are more than fifty-two of the real me for every one of the fake me.) As a result, I get the occasional email or phone call sent to the "wrong" Donnie Richards.

At Fort Sam Houston, circa 1964:

"Richards! Phone call in the Orderly Room."

Several moments later: "Specialist Richards."

Young Female Caller: "Donnie, I need you to pick me up at the airport, flight yada yada yada, arriving yada yada yada. I can't *wait* to see you."

Alas, there were two of us. With the same middle initial, even. And this was his wife. (We used the same San Antonio bank and *twice* checks were charged to the wrong account.)
At a small junk mail company, circa 1984:

Receptionist: "Donnie, phone call for you at the front desk."

A moment later: "Donnie Richards."

Caller (an elderly woman): "You're not Donnie Richards."

Donnie: "I assure you that I am. But not, it appears, the Donnie Richards you wish to reach."

Click!
About two weeks later:

Receptionist: "Donnie, phone call for you at the front desk."

A moment later: "Donnie Richards."

Caller (the elderly woman): "You're not Donnie Richards."

Donnie: "Madam, you told me that a couple of weeks ago. Again, I assure you that I am. But if you persist long enough, you may convince me otherwise."

But she was a sprinter, not a long distance runner, and I never heard from her again.
At home, circa 1998:

An email arrived at my Hotmail address, inviting me to get together with the sender and several of her girlfriends. This was a forwarded version of the email that scheduled the gathering, and the festivities would be in the Portland, Oregon area, while I was in Chicago. Melody, a friend and former employee, was among the names on the distribution list. The sender professed nothing short of bliss at having met me the preceding week and a desire to see me again.

I replied, expressing regret and frustration that I could not attend, then informing her that I lived in Chicago and was probably not her intended recipient.

She replied, "Oh, sorry. But I know who you are. Your're the one Melody calls 'The Old Man.'"

I responded, wishing her a good time with her friends and asking her to pass my regards on to "The Brat."
At IBM, circa 2000:

There were *three* of us with the same name in the IBM email directory. In addition to getting the occasional misaddressed work-related email, I received:
- An invitation to join a group in barhopping after a wedding reception in San Francisco. This was from a charming young woman and I amused myself by lecturing her on the dangers of emailing strange men, informed her that I was old enough to be her father, and declined regretfully. She responded, saying she wished I *could* make it, as I was clearly more fun than the "other" Donnie Richards.
- A smutty joke from a woman in Colorado. There was a personal message as well, so I replied and informed her that she had reached someone other than the Donnie she intended. I told her to not to worry, that every Donnie Richards had a good sense of humor and this would be our little secret. She replied with a textual sigh of relief and a "thank you."

For Bridge Players Only

2008-07-30T07:33:00.000-07:00

If you don't play bridge, you might want to skip this, as I doubt that it will make much sense to you or be at all entertaining.

In the tournament bridge world there are many professionals who "play for pay." That is, weaker players pay the pros to be their partners, hoping to win club and tournament events. The payment is usually in money, but not always. Years ago the story went around that Oswald Jacoby (R.I.P.), for many years one of the top bridge players, was approached by a sweet young thing who simpered, "Oh, Mr. Jacoby, what does it take to get a good player like you to play with someone like me?" Ozzie is said to have replied, "Money or sex."

(As an aside, many such sweet (and not so sweet) young things wear low cut tops in order to distract male opponents, often succeeding. Jacoby is also supposed to have said that he had played many a hand cross-eyed.)

For those who pay in money, this can involve travel and expenses for the professional (and even for a family or companion) for the duration of a tournament.

One such weak player, a middle-aged/elderly oil widow, consistently paid an expert we'll call Benny to play with her, even at local club games. He had devised a bidding system designed to prevent her from playing no-trump and major suit contracts. She would bid suits other than her strong suits, but indicating those strong suits, so that he could bid those suits first. Thus, if their side played the contract, he would play the hand.

Sounds foolproof, and is almost foolproof. Unfortunately she had played bridge and learned some standard bidding concepts before learning the "new" system, and occasionally got the two sets of concepts mixed up.

Now here is my recollection of one mini-disaster which resulted from that confusion. If the bidding isn't precisely correct, at least the concept will be apparent.

During one session at a club she opend the bidding on a hand with "one diamond," indicating that she had strength in hearts. Benny dutifully bid "one heart" so that if they wound up playing hearts he would play the hand. She bid "three hearts" indicating that she had a very strong hand. Benny wound up declarer at four hearts, down one, while everyone else was playing two hearts, making. He had played it one trick better than the others, but the partnership had overbid by two tricks. When she put down her hand as dummy, he was surprised to see a hand with good hearts but of only ordinary strength.

After the hand he asked her if she didn't think her jump to three hearts was a bit much, and she replied, "Oh, Benny, I wouldn't have done it but when you bid hearts my hand went up so much in value."

Depending on your bridge knowledge, that might be a time joke.

She wasn't the best bridge player around, but she was a very nice person, and my emotions were mixed when I heard a few years later that he had dragged her into first place in the Mixed Pairs event at the Canadian Nationals, an astounding feat. I just feel that there's something not quite right about the weaker player gaining such a title in that fashion, but I confess that I was happy for her.

Debbie - Part III

2008-07-27T07:22:00.000-07:00

Debbie's arrival, introduction to many friends, and first dinner had all been rousing successes. The next day or two flew by and I no longer recall the exact sequence of events.

I believe I took her to Woodfield Mall, at the time the largest shopping mall in the country. I know we had dinner Saturday night with Jeff and Cassie, another dinner complemented by laughter and fun conversation. But I think the thing she was most hooked on was my PC, a 286 I think - this was 1988. I think she had never been exposed to one and I know that she had never owned one. Separately and together we played a few games on it, and when I awoke the next morning I heard her in the next room, pounding away at the keyboard.

We had a lot of fun, and as her departure time approached we decided that she should stay for several more days. I took a couple of days of vacation from work, and before we knew it we had decided she should stay, period. Now she and various parts of her family lived in Eastern Massachusetts, and some of mine lived there and in southeastern New Hampshire, so we decided that on Christmas we would fly out, visit the various family members together, load up her car, and drive back to Illinois in that.

I can't believe how hazy my memory is about this, but I believe she flew home for a day to get clothing and other items, and to work out various logistical things - paying her rent, tuition for her daughter's school, etc.

It all worked, and it all worked well. The toughest part was scheduling our Christmas visits. She had, I think, four different family households to visit and I had three. On my father's side it was customary to have Christmas dinner at my sister's house, with people arriving food in hand, typically surrounded by children. We agreed that on Christmas day we would do that and also visit whichever of her family members was hosting their Christmas dinner. Other than that, I needed only to visit my mother and my brother Billy, and he would be staying with her.

Debbie and I worked out a rough schedule, and I called Billy. I noted that Debbie was listening intently throughout the conversation. I explained to Billy that Debbie and I planned to be with Dad and that side of the family (Billy would be there too) on Christmas Day, and listed several time slots that we could be at Mom's for a visit so that he could pick the one that would be best for them. He picked Christmas Eve, and it was a done deal. We would also see them on our last day in New England, on the way out the door, so to speak.

When I hung up the phone, Debbie said "So that's how you do it." This was by way of introducing me to the fact that every year for many years she had spent the Christmas season agonizing over how to see everyone, how to fit everyone in with all the scheduling conflicts and with people pulling her this way and that. It had never occurred to her to tell people "This is when I can see you," and the idea appealed to her so much that she put it into practice immediately, scheduling our dates with her family (and one couple, old friends).

We flew into Boston and were picked up by her daughter, the budding RN, who was a perfect bitch kitty during the one hour drive home and for the next several days. She didn't know me, was worried about her mother and this stranger, and probably resented my "taking her away." But she did thaw out toward the end of the trip, and we became friends, as did her boyfriend and I. They later visited us for several days when we lived in Maryland, and it was a lot of fun.

There are going to be more Debbie posts, but I think it's time for a break, and a look at another subject or two. I'll wrap this one up by mentioning that my father began referring to Debbie as "my future daughter-in-law," and I began the practice of telling friends "She won't go home."

Debbie - Part II

2008-07-23T08:01:00.000-07:00

It was early Friday afternoon and I was to meet Debbie at O'Hare. Friday nights there was always a large contingent of my co-workers at the local watering hole, which at that time was Grisanti's. I had told a few who sometimes did not make it that I'd be there with Debbie, and many friends were looking forward to meeting her.

I met her at the gate, we got her luggage, and we headed for the car. Time had passed and circumstances had changed since last we saw each other. Twenty years earlier I has been just out of the Army and making $95 a week, and now she found herself climbing into a relatively new black and gold Cadillac Sedan de Ville. I think we were *both* pleased about that.

Luggage in the trunk, I drove to a restaurant and bar not too far from the Grisanti's we would head for later. We sat in the lounge, ordered drinks, and talked non-stop for several hours. She told me she had a return flight on . . . what? Sunday? Monday? I don't remember. I told her whatever was convenient for her was fine with me. Surprisingly, even after all those hours of conversation on the phone, we managed to find more old times to talk about - along with updates concerning current times.

A few minutes before five o'clock we hopped into the car and headed for Grisanti's, where a few of the regulars had already kicked things off. Debbie must have met thirty or so new people that night, and I was amazed to learn later that she remembered every name. Sometime during the first couple of hours another couple, Jack and Karen, claimed the right to have dinner with us that night at Victor's, a fine dining restaurant in Rolling Meadows, now defunct, alas. Another couple, Jeff and Cassie (see "Me and Cassie At a Ball)" reserved Saturday night for dinner at the Wellington in Arlington Heights (still there, I am happy to report).

Well, Debbie's introduction to the crowd at Grisanti's was a rousing success, and around eight or eight thirty four of us headed for Victor's. Dinner was as much fun, perhaps even more fun. Everyone got along and there were many funny stories told and much laughter to reward them.

I would guess it was around midnight when Debbie and I finally reached home. I retrieved her luggage and put it on the guest room bed, and gave her a tour of the house, emphasizing the locations of anything I could think of that she might want during the night (or in the morning, if she arose before I did).

I told her I was glad she had come, gave her a quick peck on the lips, and headed off to my bedroom. I took my shirt off and tossed it on the dresser and two seconds later her blouse landed on top of it. I turned and she was standing there unbuttoning her skirt and looking at me as if to say "You know I'm sleeping in here, right?"

Debbie - Part I

2008-07-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

I have mentioned that my father moonlighted in the 1960s and 1970s, playing the organ at a steak house and cocktail lounge. One evening in 1969 he called me and suggested I visit him there on a Friday, when there was a certain young woman waitressing in the lounge part time. "You've got to meet this one. She thinks she's a Goddamn queen."

I said I would, and did so the following Friday. I met the waitress, Debbie (see a preceding post, Gluttony in Las Vegas), who was in fact a "Goddamn queen." We were both interested immediately, but she was in the process of getting a divorce and was very cautious about being seen with anyone during that period, so it was a while before we met outside the lounge.

Her father, John, owned the restaurant, and during the course of my Friday visits his paternal radar picked up signals. Now he and I didn't like each other, dating back to well before I met Debbie, but we had been cordial, more for the sake of my father, I guess, than for any other reason.

In any case, a few weeks passed during which Debbie and I talked when we could. When she took a break we would sit together and chat. We exchanged a few books that we recommended to each other. During all this, John kept his eyes open, and whenever we sat together he would come over and sit with us, the lack of an invitation being no barrier to him. He didn't really pay much attention to us, seldom participating in any conversations. Mostly he just kept his eye on the lounge.

One week Debbie told me she was reading The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. I hadn't read it and she promised to bring it in when she was done with it. The following Friday I was sitting alone at a table near the organ, chatting with my father while he played. Debbie came over and sat down and a moment later so did John. After a bit . . .

Donnie: "So when do I get The Turn of the Screw?"

Debbie: "I'm sorry. I've been busy, but I'll finish it and bring it next week."

A good moment later, John started, turned to me, and left Debbie and me in hysterics by asking "What did you say?"

We dated for a few months, then drifted apart.

Twenty Years Later, in Chicago
Dad and I were having one of our fairly regular telephone conversations when he said "Oh. I ran into Debbie at a flea market in New Hampshire. I took her number and promised you'd call her."

Sigh.

I took the number and assured him that I would honor his promise.

That Sunday afternoon I called and caught her at home. We talked for perhaps three hours, and it was a lot of fun. We caught each other up on the preceding twenty years. Her daughter, an infant when I last saw her, was now in the process of becoming a Registered Nurse; I had just bought a house in an attempt to lead a "more normal" life, etc.

We exchanged addresses and agreed to talk again, and as we concluded the conversation I told her "Well, if you ever need to run away from home for a few days, you know where I live."

Two Sundays later, I decided to call her again. Just as I reached for the phone it rang. It was Debbie. (No, no, don't be skeptical. It's true.)

Another couple of hours of fun conversation, concluded by my repeating the offer. She said "Really?" Immediately I thought, "I wonder what flight she's booked on."

The following Friday I picked her up at O'Hare.

Newspaper Vignettes

2008-07-16T07:03:00.000-07:00

While I was working at my first post-Army job as a payroll clerk at a Boston newspaper, the Assistant Cashier had heart surgery and the hospital was looking for blood donors. Four of us from the various accounting departments went to the hospital together to give blood.

Two at a time, we were led into a room by a no-nonsense, middle-aged nurse. I was paired with Jimmy, a big Irishman whose sense of humor was not about to be blunted by someone else's no-nonsense attitude. We were situated side by side, and Jimmy was making jokes about whatever he could think of.

The nurse, with her back to us, studiously ignored him and was busy doing something on a counter. Jimmy began professing embarrassment that I was "bleeding faster" than he was, cracking himself (and me) up.

At one point he cried, "Nurse! Nurse! My feet are getting numb!"

She didn't even turn around. "Your shorts are too tight."
My boss was in his early forties. He was a personable guy and often joined whatever brief social discussions occurred during the work day. One year I pounded him with college football bets. I don't remember whether it was 1968 or 1969, but every week we bet a milkshake (actually, a frappe in Boston - milkshakes don't have ice cream in them) and I gave him Ohio State's opponent and forty points. Week after week he would shake his head on Monday morning as he shelled out the frappe money.
But my best frappe victory had to do with poetry. I heard him say, "Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do or die." I looked over and said, "You know it's 'do and die', right?" Well, he was dug in and insisted it was "do or die."

I decided to have some fun and said, "You better study your Kipling." He responded, "I know my Kipling and it's 'do or die.'" He was little amused when I pointed out that Tennyson, not Kipling, had written The Charge of the Light Brigade. We made another bet, this time on whether it was "do or die" or "do and die." It was Friday and I promised to bring in a poetry book on Monday.

I did, and Monday was another head shaker for him.
My favorite two bets I made while at the newspaper were with die-hard Red Sox fans. Each year I would bet them five dollars apiece that the Red Sox would finish more than six games out of first and each year they would gloat for the first half of the season and then the gloom would descend. Thus they were ripe for the plucking and I got one victim each for these propositions:
- In 1969 I offered odds of $50 to $20 that Dick Williams, the Red Sox manager, would be fired during the season. He lasted long enough to make the bet interesting, but fired he was.
- In 1971 I offered to bet $5 even money that the Baltimore Orioles would have four twenty game winners if my opponent would bet $5 that the Red Sox would have two twenty game winners. Truthfully, I didn't expect to come out ahead. I thought it would be a wash. I figured it was a long shot that the Orioles would have four twenty game winners, but I was confident that the Red Sox would not have two. In the event, the Red Sox had none, and on the last day of the season Mike Cuellar became the fourth Oriole pitcher to win twenty games.

Memories of My Father - III

2008-07-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

This would have been shortly before or shortly after I was born - somewhere, then, in the period 1940 to 1942.

Dad had applied for a civil service job at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, and was working as a cook at the Saugus Diner, on the rotary (traffic circle for you non-New Englanders) on Route 1 in Saugus, Massachusetts. (Is that still there?)

The diner was sold and the new owner closed it for a week, but brought in all employees to clean the diner from top to bottom. They scrubbed floors, walls, and ceiling, the stove, tables, counter top, everything, cleaned the windows and the entry stairs, did some touch-up painting, etc. for the whole week.

The owner wasn't there at week's end, so Monday morning the employees asked him about their pay for the preceding week. "Oh, no, you did that to keep your jobs."

Dad kept an eye on the amount of business, and at mid-morning he took off his apron, walked over to the cash register, opened it, and took an amount equal to his week's pay. He then told one of the waitresses, "Tell him I quit and I took my pay for last week out of the register."

When he got home the mail had arrived, and he had a letter saying that he had been accepted for the Navy Yard job.
I once asked my father what it was like to grow up during the depression. He told me that he was mostly unaware of it because the family had circled the wagons and he lived with six adults on one floor of a house in Brockton, Massachusetts - his parents, two uncles, and two aunts, all sharing the rent, utility, and food bills.

He said that he occasionally saw newspaper stories about people jumping out of windows and so forth, but nothing like that happened to any family he knew. For him, the biggest change was going to sleep at night in a bed and waking up in the morning on a couch.
A few weeks after my twelfth birthday, Dad woke me up at perhaps 9:30 or 10:00 PM, and said, "Come on, let's go downstairs. I want you to see something." The television was on and he plopped me down in front of it, saying "Someday you'll be glad you saw this. Does the name 'Josef Stalin' mean anything to you?"

It did. As I have mentioned, I began reading newspapers when I was in grammar school, and although I probably didn't know that his power stemmed from his position as Chairman of the Communist Party, I knew that he was a dictator, number one in Russia and the Soviet Union.

The program was covering the announcement of his death, and showing the most recent film footage available, which was very recent indeed. There was footage of him walking around and standing still, clearly in a daze, surrounded by obviously obsequious people. I do not know who was pictured in attendance, but the most likely candidates were Beria, Khrushchev, Malenkov, and Bulganin. The only name I would have recognized at the time was Beria. Although Stalin appeared clueless regarding his surroundings, his retinue looked skittish. Who knows what someone like Stalin will do when in such a state?

I have since read and watched a very great deal about Russia, the Soviet Union, Communism, and Stalin. I *am* glad I saw it. Thanks, Dad.