Smartass

Several days ago it was my turn to cook the weekly dinner while visiting my old junk mail friend, Bobby. During that process he gave me a couple of plain metal covers to use for keeping things hot in bowls. They were of slightly different sizes and fit the bowls within a hair.

Donnie: "Boy these are handy covers. Just the right size."

Bobby: "They have them at Walmart. They're called 'universal covers.'"

I looked at those covers for a good five seconds before I said, "You asshole." They were *obviously* pot covers, but he had me for about two seconds.

That two seconds was enough for him and he fell apart, laughing one of those "I'm so pleased with myself" laughs.

Unconnected Random Memories

• Thinking about the names of people I have known, four curious cases have popped into my mind:
  1. Deosa Choles and Courtney Eversole, who have names I consider delightful.
  2. Justin Case, whom I met while working at IBM. On our introduction I thought *immediately* "There is nothing I can say that he hasn't heard already," and I simply expressed my pleasure at meeting him.
  3. Seymour Samuels III, a second lieutenant when I met him in Grafenwoehr, Germany. The civilian woman who did the officers' payrolls had a little routine whenever she typed his name. As she typed she would say aloud "Seymour Samuels one two three," the last three words in synch with the keystrokes for the individual I's.

• Returning to my apartment in Falls Church, Virginia, after work, I found myself in an elevator which stalled between a couple of floors, perhaps the sixth and seventh. There were a half dozen of us, roughly evenly divided between men and women. One of the men, thirtyish, said aloud, "Wouldn't you know this would happen to me."

  Can you imagine? Six of us trapped but it was only happening to him!

  Without pause for thought, I said, "That's exactly what I was thinking. Wouldn't you know this would happen to you."

  There were smiles from several others, but only a glare from him.

• Geek Humor:
  1. There are 10 kinds of people: those who understand binary and those who don't.
  2. The Y1K problem caused the Dark Ages.
  3. "Beta" is Greek for "I wonder if it works yet."

• A few years ago a friend called and asked if I would help her brother sell his NASCAR memorabilia collection on eBay. I visited with him and brought home a trunk and back seat full of stuff, mostly race car replicas.

  I did some research, then called him. "Do you have the boxes these cars came in? They'll sell much better with the original boxes."

  "Naw, you don't need the boxes. Just ask my wife."

What's Important

In a junk mail company I once worked for there was a young woman who was a joy to know, simply because she generally bubbled over with enthusiasm for whatever the subject happened to be.

Most of the friends I had in that company were fifteen or twenty years younger than I, mainly because that was true of the company's general population. Some would from time to time visit my office, close the door, and ask for advice on one personal problem or another, or just vent about a problem and wait for advice. Pet (we'll call her) fell into that category.

One morning she arrived at work a couple of hours late, and instead of going to her desk came straight to my office. As soon as she sat down the tears started, although not in a flood - from the looks of her these tears were the aftermath, and the flood had already occurred.

She explained that she and another young woman had agreed to rent an apartment together. Pet had put down the non-refundable deposit, about $800 if memory serves, and this was the day they were to move in. But the night before - can you *imagine*? - the other person had called and said she had changed her mind.

Pet was devastated. She couldn't afford the apartment alone, she couldn't afford to just lose the $800, and she had given notice to her current landlord and today was the last day she could live in her current apartment.

There was much more discussion about the situation, but at the end her eyes lit up and she said, "But I feel better now. I had a Frosty on the way here."

This was a person to whom all things were equally important.

Vietnam and Games

There were a couple of places that GI's gathered in the early evening, one being the Day Room and another being the Mess Hall. With many tables, the latter was the choice of most of those who would play games.

Dominoes

I had seen dominoes but never played any of the various domino games. However, during the evenings there were frequently two or three tables of domino players in the Mess Hall, all playing a game called Muggins. I kibitzed a bit and learned that they were playing for five cents a point. Now I am nothing if not competitive when it comes to games and I decided that I just *had* to learn to play this game.

One evening, when a game broke up, I stopped one of the players and asked if he would teach me the game. I said "I'll even play for the five cents a point while I learn."

"Nooooo, *ten* cents a point."

Well. What're you gonna do?

When it comes to games I am fairly good at strategy, very good at tactics, and top notch at simple calculations. I figured I'd get my money back before long. I signed on, so to speak, and learned the game.

Before long I was a regular in the domino games and winning more than my share of the nickles. I bought a domino set of my own and made regular appearances in the mess hall, and one night, as I entered, I heard someone halfway across the Mess Hall say, "Here comes Hendricks and his Goddamn dominoes."

Scrabble

One evening in the Day Room, Buddy approached me and said "Let's play something."

Donnie: "OK. Coon Can? Rummy? Dominoes? What?"

Buddy: "Let's play Scrabble."

Donnie: "OK. How about five cents a point?"

Buddy: "Nooooo. Fifty cents a point."

Donnie: "Let's go."

We drew tiles and I won the right to go first. With an excellent draw, I plunked down the seven letter word "saintly," dropping the four point "y" on a Double Letter square. With the fifty point bonus for using all seven letters, I got 78 points, or $39.00, for this.

He fell further behind during the game and I won perhaps $60.00. Word gets around and it was the only game of Scrabble I played in Vietnam.

Speeding Tickets

Now that I'm closing in on a hundred, I am a more careful driver, but there was a period of a few years when you might easily catch me driving too fast, roughly in my twenties and early thirties.

• In 1964 a Texas state trooper lit me up for doing 85 in a 75 zone, on the way from Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio to the Texas State Fair in Dallas. He gave me a ticket on which he identified the offense and showed me a series of items on the ticket, a checklist from which I could choose several options. I was to check one and submit the ticket by mail.
  
  One of the items was to pay the fine and end the matter. I could send the ticket and check to Waco County Justice of the Peace Joe N. Brown. Making payment being by far the simplest option, I searched the ticket for the amount I should pay and found . . . nothing.
  
  I wrote to Mr. Brown explaining the situation and promised that if he would only tell me what the amount of the fine was for doing 85 in a 75 zone I would send him a check.
  
  After a period of silence, I assumed that the mills of the Texas justice system must grind very slowly and that eventually someone would let me know. Ha!
  
  Several months later I got a call from the Orderly Room (company headquarters) informing me that there was a state trooper there with a warrant for my arrest and ordering me to report immediately. By then the ticket had disappeared from my thoughts and I had no idea what this was all about.
  
  Well, the state had issued the warrant, and it was for non-payment of the ticket. I was flabbergasted. I explained to the trooper that the ticket had no amount information and I had written to the JP, yada yada yada. He laughed and said "This happens all the time. The JP's do not get any postage money from the state and when they get a letter like yours they just pitch it." (A first class stamp was five cents in 1964. However, with Texas declining to provide ticket amounts, I can imagine that JP's might have received a *lot* of letters like mine.)
  
  On my promise to mail payment immediately, the trooper informed me of the amount, tucked the warrant in his pocket, and departed.
  
  
• In 1967, on returning from Vietnam, I drove from Corpus Christi, Texas, to New England for a 30 day leave. With me was my bridge playing friend Dolly, and we took her car. I had to drop her off in the D.C. area, and we drove across the bottom of the country and then up the east coast.
  
  In South Carolina a state trooper jumped right out of my trunk and stopped me for doing 80 in a 70 zone. Really, I have no idea where he came from I didn't see him as we approached wherever he was and I didn't see him get on the highway behind me. He was just *there*, suddenly.
  
  He asked for my license and the car's registration, which I provided. He frowned, looked at me, and asked, "What's this 'APO' in the address area?"
  
  I explained that it stood for "Army Post Office," that I had returned from Vietnam a couple of days earlier, and that I would change it in about a month, when I got to my next post, in Arizona.
  
  But *this* trooper wasn't saluting any flags, and as he handed me my ticket he said, "Mr. Hendricks, you were safer in Vietnam than you are out here doing 80 miles per hour on our highways."
  
  
• In 1975 I got a break from a state trooper, not in the form of forgiveness, but in the form of breaking procedure. Driving north at night on I-95 in South Carolina (again!) I was stopped for speeding. I have no idea now what the limit was or what my speed was. The trooper told me to follow him and we drove to the home of a Justice of the Peace.
  
  We pulled up to the house, the trooper walked up to the front door, and I waited in my car. After a minute the trooper approached me and said, "He's not home. Now what I'm *supposed* to do is drive you to the jail and keep you until the JP gets home. But if you'll tell me that you will pay this fine then I'll give you a ticket and you can mail it in."
  
  I did, he did, and I did, you betchum, Red Ryder.
  
  
• Several years later - I can't place it exactly - I got the only speeding ticket I didn't pay. I was driving south on I-95 in Maryland, on the way to visit my brother, when I got pulled over for speeding. I don't remember the numbers but my offense was not particularly egregious, as I was not in the passing lane and was just doing whatever the traffic was doing.
  
  Parked at the side of the road was a string of cars and several cruisers. All the cars had plates from states other than Maryland. I'd been caught in a speed trap set for out of state drivers only, and those with Maryland plates were allowed to drive at speeds for which we were stopped and ticketed.
  
  I accepted the ticket silently and held on to it for a week or so, until I had returned to Massachusetts. At that point I just tore it up.

I Wish I'd Said That

The advent of the internet, with blogs and such sites as Google and Wikipedia, has been destructive regarding the historical record, nowhere more so than in the realm of reported quotes. Some people apparently feel that *they* can make a quote better, snappier, funnier, whatever, if they modify it juuuuuust a bit. Usually, the result provided by the vandal is not as good, not as snappy, not as funny. Always, the quote becomes historically inaccurate.

So . . . I've researched the quotes that follow, but they may not be precisely accurate, not word for word matches with the original spoken versions. The versions I chose were those that I first heard closest in time to their being said, or those that I found at sites I consider more likely to be reliable than others. In any event, it is the flavor that counts here.

• Just prior to the US assault on Baghdad, a news reporter asked Marine Major General John F. Kelly whether he had contemplated defeat. You may recall that those opposed to the war had predicted dire consequences - door-to-door fighting and very high casualty rates.
  
  "We are Marines. The Marines took Iwo Jima. Baghdad ain't shit."
  
  
• William F. Buckley Jr., during a debate at Harvard University: "I would sooner be governed by the first hundred names in the Boston telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard."
  
  
• This crossed my mind when Nancy Pelosi told reporters that the health care bill had to be passed so we could find out what's in it.
  
  H. L. Mencken: "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats."
  
  
• In 2006, a bail skipper was pulled over for speeding by a Polk County (Florida) deputy. The driver ran into the woods, was followed by the deputy and a backup deputy and police dog. The driver shot the dog and the second deputy, wounding him six times. He then approached the deputy and finished him off with two bullets to the head. He subsequently wounded the first deputy, who called for help.
  
  A SWAT team was called in and located the murderer the next morning, hiding under a fallen tree. He raised a hand containing a gun, the SWAT team opened fire, and he was hit and killed by 68 bullets.
  
  Asked why the killer was shot 68 times, the Sheriff replied, "That's all the bullets we had."
  
  
• Attributed to various generals: ""When you men get home and face an anti-war protester, look him in the eyes and shake his hand. Then, wink at his girlfriend, because she knows she's dating a pussy."
  
  
• Josef Stalin, prior to WWII, disussing the usefulness of acquiring Pope Pius XI as an ally: "The Pope? How many divisions does he have?" When he heard of this later, the Pope said, "Tell my son Josef that he will meet my divisions in eternity."

Choose Your Audience Carefully

My father once told me about watching a garage mechanic deal with a dent in a bumper. Dad had taken his car to Bunnell's Garage (in Nottingham, New Hampshire) because the car had begun to have a little shimmy.

Bunnell: "It sounds like you need your wheels aligned."

Dad: "Well, I had them aligned several months ago at (here he named a national chain)."

Bunnell: "Ha! All that means is that when you stop for a red light your front wheels won't fall off."

Bunnell was holding a rubber mallet and told Dad, "I'll be with you in just a minute."

He walked over to a car with a dent in the rear bumper. This was in the early 1960's when bumpers were made of sterner stuff.

The dent was about a third of the way in from one end, and Dad watched as Bunnell bent down and looked at the dent, put his hand behind the bumper at the dent's location and felt around, walked to one end of the bumper, walked to the other end of the bumper, and then gave that end a thump with the mallet. The dent popped right out. Bunnell looked up at my father and said, "That is the principle of lever and fid."

He and Dad had known each other for years, and Dad told him, "It happens that I know what a fid is, you old fraud."