After thoroughly enjoying my day-off and cruising around the area with my better-half it was once again back to work. It seems that we’re finally free of the frost for this year so we I began planting the next group of plants which included black beans, green beans, wax beans and snap peas. Any or all of these are delicious to eat fresh from the garden but they also can be canned without losing their flavor. Normally we use them as part of the vegetable mixes we make for use through the Winter in stir-fry’s.
The vegetable mixes are usually the last thing we do before closing down the garden. The mix can contain any number of veggies that are left over at summers end. We try to make a number of different assortments as you can see by the photo’s.
The better-half has been trying unsuccessfully for years to grow gourds. She gives them a great start in the house under glass as you can see. Then they are moved to the cold frames before final planting. We decided this year to move some of the gourds out of the garden to a spot closer to the house where they can get sun and be better protected from the weather. We’ll cross our fingers and hope for the best one more time. In my opinion it’ll take a minor miracle to get them to grow large enough to produce anything useful. She’s forever the optimistic and is certain it’ll work this year. Half full is her manta in all things.
I wanted to plant the jalapeños and cayenne peppers but stopped myself. As a rule peppers do best when they have warm nights so I decided to wait another week or two. I’ll be able then to put the cucumbers, zucchini, and squash in and finally be done with the garden planting. So for now they remain in the cold frame.
My winemaking efforts continue and that red wine I mentioned in an earlier post has completed it’s hard fermentation and moved into glass jugs and sealed with air locks. It’s now just a wait of a few months for the jugs to clear. Eventually gravity will cause all of the yeast to drop to the bottom of the jugs and I can siphon off the clear and finished wine. I have to say I love the smell of yeast and wine when it’s fermenting. I wish some company could bottle that smell because I’d make sure my man-cave was always filled with that fragrance.
While I was cleaning and organizing my man-cave I was pleasantly surprised to find this bottle of wine.
This is a bottle of blackberry wine that I made back in 1986. I’ve recorked it a few times over the years and each time I’ve taken a small taste. It’s pretty potent after all those years but I think I’ll put it back in storage for a few more years before I try it again.
A day-off was really becoming necessary after the last few hectic weeks of gardening and lawn clean-up. Today was the day. The better-half was also on a day-off so we slept in a little, loaded up on coffee and breakfast, and then jumped into the car and took off. It was a semi-beautiful day but the cloudiness was going to make taking pictures a challenge.
We drove east towards the shore and the traffic was light. In two more weeks the tourists will arrive in force and make traveling a little more interesting in these beach areas. We drove up the coast for a few miles and stopped briefly in a small cove used primarily by local lobstermen. I snapped of a few photo’s of them at work and a few of the birds covering the nearby rocks. Neither seemed too happy about my picture taking but I persevered.
It was breezy as hell and the temperature had dropped just low enough to require a hoodie if you planned on walking around. We returned to the car, turned on the heater, and warmed up a little. As we proceeded north it was great to see everything struggling to become green again and the sun finally decided to make an appearance. We stopped briefly at the Portland Head Light which is one of the most visited and photographed lighthouses in Maine. It guards the entrance to Portland harbor.
As you can see it’s just a place made for photographers. It’s almost impossible to take a bad picture there. Normally this place is mobbed with tourists but we were lucky to get here before the Memorial Day madness.
Our trip continued north as we entered the city of Portland. If you you’ve never visited Portland your missing something special. It’s a small city with a small town feel. It has a colorful waterfront as you can see and if you like the ocean the aroma of low tide here will enchant you.
My better-half has a overwhelming desire for beer at almost any time so I decided to make a quick stop at Three Dollar Dewey’s, a local ale house and restaurant. It’s located on Commercial Street in Portland, adjacent to the harbor. It’s a charming area with fish markets, micro breweries, and some serious parking issues if you visit in season. We try to stop at Dewey’s whenever we’re in the area for a quick cold one and a large order of fries. They are just what the doctor ordered.
We finished our fries and drinks and then walked around town for a few minutes of people watching. Everyone was out in large numbers enjoying the sunshine and warm weather. Check out this little project someone created along the street. Snap a padlock of some sort on the fence and write your name on it. I though it was pretty cool so take a look.
It was mid-afternoon and time for us to depart. We enjoyed this relaxing break from our normal lives and were ready to head home. Tomorrow is another day.
I really seem to be getting readjusted to this warm Spring weather. Yesterday was in the low seventies for the first time in almost seven months and I was loving it. I actually wore a pair shorts for the first time and got a little tan on my legs and they were loving that. I’m still working on the garden but the yard work took precedence this week. Being the dedicated and well trained slave that I am, I was able to make short work of the grass cutting.
Once that was finished I took on the semi-unpleasant task of organizing my compost pile. Some of you have little or no idea what I’m referring to so let me explain. It’s a gigantic pile of decomposing organic material collected by me over the last few years from yard clean-ups and grass clippings. It’s smelly and disgusting but it’s what makes the garden grow as well as it does. Each Fall I cover the garden with it and then plow it under. That gives most of the nutrients time to leech into the soil and reinvigorate it before Spring. Each summer’s garden uses up a great deal of the existing soil nutrients and they must be replaced.
It’s also very important to never plant the same plants in the same area two years in a row. You’ve got to switch it up a little because individual plants requires different sets of nutrients to thrive. In my experience that doesn’t always apply to herbs. They seem to grow well in just about any soil and require little of no fertilizer. The only issue I’ve had with herbs is that some do poorly if planted near certain others. Also, if you plant mints such as oregano, catnip, or spearmint too close together they cross pollinate and their specific scents become diluted.
Once the mowing and composting was completed I decided to do something I really enjoy which is set up my first batch of wine for 2014. I decided to make a nice semi-sweet red wine out of Concord grapes. I mixed the grape concentrate, acid blend, yeast nutrient, yeast energizer, and four and a half pounds of sugar into three and a half gallons of filtered water and set it aside. I then set up what’s called a yeast starter. It’s two packets of brewers yeast dissolved in luke-warm water with one cup of sugar. I let the yeast activate for a couple of hours before mixing it into the the fermenter with the grape concentrate.
Now it’s sit back for a week to let the yeast eat up all that good sugar and create the proper level of alcohol for the wine. Sometime in early August if all goes well I should have approximately sixteen bottles of a beautiful ruby red grape wine.
I normally prefer making fruit wines because getting the ingredients is much easier that coming up with a quantity of grapes. Grapes are expensive and the processing of them into a usable form is time consuming and annoying. Using a simple grape concentrate is much more affordable and makes a better quality wine (in my opinion). This batch will end up costing me approximately $2.00 a bottle including the cost of the bottle and cork. Not too bad for a small amount of work and a month or two of monitoring and tweaking the batch. I’m already planning a second batch for this year if I can find someone nearby with a Mountain Ash tree. The orange berries from that tree make a smooth and tasty white wine that is to die for. I’ll keep you posted.
“Spring Has Definitely Arrived”
Yesterday was one of those days I look forward to every year. My better-half and I both love this time of the year regardless of the work involved. It was a day spent traveling around southern Maine visiting nurseries and buying the plants needed to complete this year’s garden. We like making a day of it and we visit as many nurseries as necessary to find the plants we’ve decided to grow.
For many years now we’ve shopped at a small nursery or what once was a small nursery along the border of Maine and New Hampshire. In the intervening years that nurseries reputation has spread and it’s no longer considered little. Healthy plants should be the goal of any nurseryman or woman and these people are the best. We tend to find their plants healthier and produce better than those purchased elsewhere. We spent at least an hour roaming through their greenhouses and making our selections. We picked up a few jalapeño and cayenne pepper plants and a selection of herbs to replace many of the ones that didn’t survive the winter.
We found some beautiful cherry tomato plants that should keep us in salad tomatoes until Fall. Those kind of tomatoes are also added to our vegetable mixes and canned. There’s nothing like having a selection of tasty garden veggies in the middle of a cold and snow covered February.
“The Rhubarb is Up”
We purchased a number of pickling cucumber plants that should deliver many dozens of cukes for making our Bread & Butter and Dill pickles as well as sweet and hot relishes. If this year’s production is as good as last year we’ll be very busy come September.
One of the items my better-half desired was a licorice herb. It’s leaves have a heavy licorice scent when heated. I personally like fennel or star anise for that flavor but I’m keeping an open mind for now. It would be a nice surprise if this new plant were easier to grow than the others and tasted better. We found the plant at our fourth nursery we visited and were very pleased. That plant can be difficult to find but certain nurseries are known for carrying the more unusual plants and we know them all.
“The Sprinkler’s are Installed”
It made for a really pleasant day and we returned home tired but happy to have found everything we were looking for. We should also have an excellent selection of herbs to harvest and dry this year to fill our requirements for the winter. Another week should get us past the danger of frost for this year and all of the new plants will be planted and left on their own to flourish for a month or two.
Our last purchase next week will be a large number of really fragrant marigold plants. We’ve learned over the years to plant them in and around the gardens to keep the critters away. Apparently small animals and even deer have a real aversion to those flower and their strong odor. If that doesn’t work then I may be forced to go the high-tech route. I have a neighbor who installed a system last year that has a motion activated sprinkler. If visited in the middle of the night by deer or other animals the sensors detect the animal and shoot a blast of water at the trespassers to scare them off. It sounds too good to be true but I’ll keep an open mind. We’ll just have to wait and see.
This morning is rainy and gray but the plants need the water and I need some time to loaf. We’ll be back at it soon enough. A few hours on the X-Box today should clear my head nicely.
Needless to say the Spring garden work and yard cleanup continues apace. The only part of my body that’s not sore or aching is the tip of my nose. Everything else is shot to hell and letting me know about it every time I move the least little bit. Fortunately all of the hard work is finally paying off which is rather satisfying for so early in the year. The better-half who is in charge of the flower gardens is already seeing amazing results as you can see by these pictures.
It occurs to me that the plants in Maine understand what a short growing season we have and make the most out of every minute with whatever rain and warmth they can find. The grass can look like a field of dirty dead plants one day and within a week it turns into a lush green carpet that very quickly needs to be cut. I added the first mowing of 2014 this week along with all of the other chores I had on my To-do list.
The herb garden suffered a little more from the winter weather than I first thought. The neighborhood cats will be highly upset when they discover the huge catnip plant has passed away. Our garden was a regular stop in their travels where they could roll around in and eat some catnip. It was like the town’s feline opium den. I suppose I’ll be replanting it once again even though my cat Stormy is unaffected by it’s influences. I made enough room in the herb garden so that a larger than normal patch of parsley can be planted. We use a great deal of parsley through the winter and we ran a little short this Spring.
“Asparagus”
The asparagus roots have been planted and hopefully within the next two years we’ll have a thriving patch to harvest from. I love it with my meals but it takes such a long time to establish before we can use it. It’s recommended that we don’t harvest from this planting until early in 2016. Patience for this I just don’t have.
The lettuces were planted yesterday as well. I’ve put in three varieties this year along with spinach and two varieties of kale. The kale is freezable and my better-half tells me that kale chips are in my future. They don’t sound all that appetizing but I’ll withhold final judgment for now.
“Spinach/Lettuce”
I’ll be waiting at least another week or two before putting in any plants that could be killed by a frost. I’ve gotten ahead of myself in past years and been burned when a late frost wiped out a large number of my plants. I guess gardening is a great way to learn patience but it’s not something I’m known for.
This garden is much smaller than most people think when they see the results each Fall. The excellent level of production takes good planning, crop rotation, great compost, and plenty of good old sunshine and water.
I consider this a modern version of the old WW II Victory Garden. It takes a little hard work and investment of time but growing and eating your own crops makes sense to me. I know what I’m eating without fear of spoiled plants or diseases and it’s fresh and tasty. It hasn’t been sitting somewhere in the back of a truck or warehouse for weeks before the store displays it for sale. Enough of my preaching, it’s time for me to climb down off my soap box and go accomplish something.
Another week of this and I’ll be all out of a gardener’s best friend, Ben-gay. I should start buying it by the case every Spring based entirely on how my butt and legs feel this morning.
Over the years I’ve become addicted to coffee in all of it’s forms. From expresso to roasted coffee beans covered in chocolate, I love it all. It started when I was in the Army and accelerated once I left the service and became a police officer. I like it hot and strong and always desire just one more steaming cup. With all of the activity taking place this Spring it really helps me to stay focused and offers that boast of energy I absolutely require.
One of the better purchases I’ve made in recent months was a K-Kup coffee maker. I now can change the type and flavor of coffee at a moments notice and I maintain a nice assortment of coffees and teas for my enjoyment. I’m in a caffeine heaven.
As a change today rather than offering a journal entry I thought I’d pass along a little coffee trivia I’ve collected. It’s way more interesting than you might think. Enjoy the following with a nice mug of your favorite brew.
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The United States is the world’s largest consumer of coffee, importing 16 to 20 million bags annually (2.5 million pounds), representing one-third of all coffee exported. More than half of the United States population consumes coffee. The typical coffee drinker has 3.4 cups of coffee per day. That translates into more than 450,000,000 cups of coffee daily.
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Legend has it a 9th-century Ethiopian goat herder discovered coffee by accident when he noticed how crazy the beans were making his goats.
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New Yorkers drink almost 7 times more coffee than other cities in the US.
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The lethal dose of caffeine is roughly 100 cups of coffee.5. A French doctor in the 1600s suggested Cafe Au Laits for patients, inspiring people to begin adding milk to coffee.
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Espresso is regulated by the Italian government because it is considered an essential part of their daily life
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In the 1600s there was a controversy over whether or not Catholics could drink coffee, luckily Pope Clement VIII said it was okay.
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After the decaffeinating process, processing companies no longer throw the caffeine away; they sell it to pharmaceutical companies.
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Coffee is the most popular beverage worldwide with over 400 billion cups consumed each year.
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Coffee lends its popularity to the fact that just about all flavors mix well with it.
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Here is a recipe from: ‘Kitchen Directory and American Housewife’ (1844)
"Use a tablespoonful ground to a pint of boiling water [less than a quarter of what we would use today]. Boil in tin pot twenty to twenty-five minutes. If boiled longer it will not taste fresh and lively. Let stand four or five minutes to settle, pour off grounds into a coffee pot or urn. Put fish skin or isinglass size of a nine-pence in pot when put on to boil or else the white and shell of half an egg to a couple of quarts of coffee."
“My New Best Friend”
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The United States is the world’s largest consumer of coffee, importing 16 to 20 million bags annually (2.5 million pounds), representing one-third of all coffee exported. More than half of the United States population consumes coffee. The typical coffee drinker has 3.4 cups of coffee per day. That translates into more than 450,000,000 cups of coffee daily.
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LESS caffeine than medium roasts. The longer a coffee is roasted, the more caffeine burns off during the process.
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During the American Civil War the Union soldiers were issued eight pounds of ground roasted coffee as part of their personal ration of one hundred pounds of food. And they had another choice: ten pounds of green coffee beans.
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During World War II the U.S. government used 260 million pounds of instant coffee.
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If you like your espresso coffee sweet, you should use granulated sugar, which dissolves more quickly, rather than sugar cubes; white sugar rather than brown sugar or candy; and real sugar rather than sweeteners which alter the taste of the coffee.
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In 1727, as a result of seedlings smuggled from Paris, coffee plants first were cultivated in Brazil. Brazil is presently by far the world’s largest producer of coffee.
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In the 14th century, the Arabs started to cultivate coffee plants. The first commercially grown and harvested coffee originated in the Arabian Peninsula near the port of Mocha.
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In the 16th century, Turkish women could divorce their husbands if the man failed to keep his family’s pot filled with coffee.
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In the year 1790, there were two firsts in the United States; the first wholesale coffee roasting company, and the first newspaper advertisement featuring coffee.
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Jamaica Blue Mountain is often regarded as the best coffee in the world.
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Lloyd’s of London began as Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse.
“Decaf is like masturbating with an oven mitt!” ~Robin Williams
“The First Flower on the Deck for 2014”
I just opened my eyes, rolled over and checked the clock. It was 6:30am and I was awake, it was morning, and the only thing on my body that wasn’t sore or stiff was my eye balls as I looked around the bedroom.
Without a doubt I love Spring time but OMG the work involved. The last week has been nuts and the weather has been just warm enough to make me crazy. As always I tend to overdo at this time of the year in my lame attempt to make the warm weather get her just a little sooner. I’ve been "garden" involved almost one hundred percent these last few weeks. I’m trying to get as much of the preparation done as I can before I take my trip to Texas over Memorial Day. I’ll be returning from there just after the holiday and I need the garden ready for planting when I get back.
My main project for the last week was the rebuilding and repairing of the raised beds that I initially built five years ago out of non-pressure treated lumber. They were slowly rotting away and were filled with bugs and other unwelcome guests. It was easy enough to just tear the wood out of the ground but getting the required replacement lumber to the house without paying Lowe’s huge delivery fee was a bit more difficult. I have no immediate access to a pickup truck so I had to improvise. I drive a small and cute PT Cruiser that is my all time favorite vehicle. I was forced to turn her into a workhorse for two days as I made numerous trips from Lowe’s to my house with 12 foot long pressure treated boards sticking out the passenger side window at least four feet. It was the only way I could get them in the car and close the rear tailgate door. It made for a very interesting drive home. I accomplished it without killing any pedestrians who happened to be standing along the edge of the road and I also dodged hundreds of mailboxes that I came within inches of as I sped past.
Everything was delivered to the house with minimal damage to the car, to me, or any innocent bystanders. It’s not something I ever want to try again. Lugging all those heavy boards around has accounted for most of my sore muscles and general overall feeling of "death warmed over".
The pictures will show the new and improved beds and the other work that was done. The gardens have been cultivated, composted, and the fabric put in place covering the soil.
This week I’ll be planting the cold weather crops such as lettuce, kale, and spinach. I visited a nearby nursery yesterday and made a few preliminary purchases to place temporarily into the cold frames. While chatting with the owner I was able to pick up some valuable information on upcoming weather patterns and all of the problems with specific plants lost or damaged due to the rough winter.
I’m now in the process of preparing the hoses and sprinklers for installation. They should be up and operational in a day or two and then I can relax for a week or so before my trip.
My better-half is suffering from a raging Spring Fever that has taken complete control of her life. We have a wrap-around deck that partially circles the second floor of our house. This deck becomes our second home during the Spring, Summer, and Fall. As you can see she has moved many and assorted pots to the deck to begin planting her container garden. She’ll have pots full of a grand assortment of flowers and certain selected vegetables making it like a jungle out there in just a few weeks time.
Once I return from Texas I’ll be back to my good old Maine gardening ways doing all of the things I enjoy most. Fortunately for us both all of the really hard work will have been completed by then allowing us to enjoy the garden and deck time well into September. Then the canning, herb drying, and wine bottling can commence once again.
I was cleaning out some old boxes of papers a few days ago attempting to rid my home of old junk and a host of bad memories. These boxes contained books, papers, and other assorted BS from one of the worst employment experiences of my life. It was two years of hell on earth for me and went a long way to making me the confirmed cynical SOB I’ve become. Even after all the time that’s past it still pisses me off as much as ever.
Most people don’t like to name names when talking about their past bad experiences but I have no qualms at all. Some of you’ve never heard of the Hechinger Corporation and I’m happy to let you know that it no longer exists. It was a small family run hardware business that grew into many hundreds of stores across the country. The company’s philosophy, as directed by the Hechinger family, seemed to be more interested in liberal causes and making political contributions than actually making money or being successful.
I then worked for a big-box home improvement company called HQ (Home Quarters Warehouse). It was a small, dynamic, and a fun place to work. It was expanding slowly and steadily across the US and everything was coming up roses. That was until the failing Hechinger company made a hostile stock buyout in an attempt to keep their company afloat. Instead of absorbing everything good from HQ and eliminating the bad from their own company they decided to go the PC route. That decision was the beginning of the end for both HQ and Hechinger. Hechinger began attempting to change the way in which HQ did their business, eliminated many of HQ’s talented upper level management members which began the slow and painful process of killing a vibrant and successful company. At the same time they acquired Builder’s Square Company and proceeded to destroy them as well.
I’m getting off my main point which is this. Political Correctness has always been in my cross-hairs since the day I started blogging. Experiencing it first-hand is not fun and not something I’d wish on my worst enemy (well maybe on my worst enemy). It’s a dangerous tool when used by people who care more about being PC than caring about people. I was one of the unlucky few who survived the slaughter and the Hechinger brainwashing machine kicked in almost immediately. I was forced to attend a steady stream of team building seminars, personality testing, and spent hundreds of hours getting my head filled with their liberal PC BS.
For over a year they attempted to change my approach to my job and how I did business. I wasn’t about to change because I’d been very successful for years at what I did and they had not. They kept the pressure on me with all of their PC crap until I simply lost it. While getting my first annual evaluation from my new bosses, I stood up from the table, told them I thought they didn’t know what the hell they were doing, and begged them to just fire me. Being the PC idiot’s that they were, they spent the next hour trying to convince me that I should calm down and relax. I ranted and raved for most of that time and again begged them to fire me. They wouldn’t do it and abruptly ended the session.
I think they felt they could save my non-PC soul, convert me to their way of thinking, and lead me to the promised land. The next day I was given a better than average evaluation, a decent raise, and sent on my way. Any good businessman will tell you that if an employee begs you to fire them and you have just cause, JUST DO IT.
Anyway that’s why I continuously bitch and complain about PC issues. If the minor issues are ignored by intelligent thinking people more will follow.
“All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
So as I’m delivering these books and papers to the trash what falls at my feet but a book I hoped never to see again. “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Steven Covey. He was god almighty to the Hechinger Company and they beat me over the head for more than a year with his books. If I never hear the term “paradigm” again it will be too damn soon.
YOU’VE BEEN WARNED Once AGAIN
I mention my better-half in this blog often. With Mother’s Day approaching I thought a salute to her would be appropriate. She’s raised her three children, seen them graduate from college, and watched as they moved on with their lives. She is and should be proud of such a major accomplishment. Now since her nest has emptied it was time for the next stage of her life with me to begin. It was time for both of us to readjust to a new and different style of living.
As I’ve gotten older I find myself looking back and reminiscing at odd times. I have many wonderful memories that I reflect on occasionally and that was always part of my master plan. Growing up I decided early on to build an archive of memories that I could enjoy after I was too old to create new ones. I always pictured myself sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch of my home looking back at all the fun I’d had in my life. I looked forward to the day I could mentally relove any number of women and remember them as being even better than they actually were.
My normal approach to living was if something looked interesting I just jumped right in and tried to experience it. Why not? I was slowly filling up my mental filing cabinet for use after my retirement. It made for a pretty cool life all in all but there were many bumps in the road as well. That was to be expected and those not-so-great memories also made their way into my mental “vault”, to lamely quote from a few Seinfeld episodes.
As a young and middle aged man I saw life in my sixties as something totally different from what it actually turned into. When I was thirty I felt twenty, in my forties I felt twenty-five, and in my fifties I felt thirty-five. It was in my mid-fifties when I first met my better-half. I’d heard the term “better-half” used for years by others but I just thought it was something people said to convince themselves they’d found that elusive soulmate we all search so diligently for. Little did I know that I would all of a sudden become a real believer. One can never know when that thunderbolt will hit but OMG when it does, it really hits hard. Things haven’t been the same since we met and I’m all the luckier for it. I felt like I was sixteen again both mentally and physically which was more than just a little scary at first. But I adjusted.
I was forced into retirement much earlier than I ever thought possible thanks to the downsizing of the state government here in Maine. I was afraid my master plan had been seriously compromised. Now I’m sitting on that famous porch of mine with my better-half, my cat, her grandson, his parents, and all of the new memories we’ve been creating over the last decade. The vault is full to overflowing, I’m happier than I’ve ever been, and I see many more terrific years ahead of us.
Of course, I’m writing this to brag a little but also to let all of you know that life can be good regardless of your age. My fantasy now is to sit on that infamous porch when I’m In my nineties and hopefully remember the things I’m experiencing today, tomorrow, next week, and next year. I imagine I’ll be feeling like a man in my sixties then which should be a weird and amazing turn of events. It’s incredible how our minds work to help us to adjust to these constant life changes.
It will happen to you too . . . . . . . Wait for it!
AND A HUGE HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TO MY BETTER-HALF.
People are strange. The things they do are strange, puzzling, amazing, and sometimes truly stupid. Today is just a day of musings and questions. There doesn’t seem to be logical answers for some of the things I see and hear every day.
I was shopping recently and discovered something odd and surprising. I found a rack of "duct tape" for sale in many and varied colors and patterns. There was some with tiger stripes and another covered with green shamrocks. Cool right? What’s the effing point?
My first reaction was why fancy duct tape?, and is it really "duct tape" or it is just "duck tape". I was always sure it was "duct tape" until I saw a recent TV commercial selling "Duck Tape". It looked the same as the good old standby stuff but it had a flashy and cool cartoon duck as it’s logo. So what do I ask for at Home Deport? Where do I find the Duck Tape? I’m then forced to deal with that stupid blank stare you get when one of their employees has no clue. Most people love duct tape and use it for damn near everything. But why? That leads me into my next unanswered question.
Have you ever skydived? Everyone knows that it’s one of those things that’s just so damn exciting and dangerous that everyone says they’d like to try it. I thought that at one time years ago and set out to try it myself. I spent a portion part of a day being trained on how to jump out of a plane. Stand in the door, look down, pee your pants , and jump . . . asshole. It wasn’t a college course but it was required by our local politicians and insurance companies before you do something stupid. That way everyone is protected if and when you hit the ground at full speed. I went up, jumped, came back down and rode an adrenaline high for hours. Just guess what the two things my memory has retained about that entire experience. The first thing was something I noticed as I climbed into one of the worst looking aircraft on earth. The entire interior surface of the plane was covered in duct tape (not duck tape). It looked like the pilot preferred using duct tape instead of doing regular maintenance. I thought at the time this was done specifically to help motivate idiots like me to jump out of that freaking death trap. It was apparently done so you didn’t snag anything like your chute as you moved to the open door to jump. Silly me.
The second thing that stuck with me was the young blond Scandinavian women with the tight purple skydiving outfit who was hanging around the airfield that day. After my extensive two hours of training she approached me with a business proposition. She offered to skydive with me wearing a camera helmet and to tape my entire jump from start to finish for only $150.00. She was extremely hot and I wanted to appear courageous so I signed up and gave her the cash. She slithered into the plane with us and sat across from me all smiles and moist hotness. During the flight to 14,0000 feet I fantasized about first doing the jump, surviving, and then possibly jumping her later. I knew I’d need help to drain away all of that excess adrenaline and she could certainly take care of that. That fantasy ended rather quickly when she cut the loudest and most disgusting fart I’ve ever heard, looked at me and smiled. Even the pilot of the little two seater turned around to see what all the noise was about. It took a few hours to get that stench out of my nostrils and it was just the additional motivation I needed to get the hell out that plane. She took a pretty good video of me on the way down and strutted away from the landing never to be seen again. Those are my two main memories of that day, duct tape (not duck tape) and blond bombshell farts. What a life.
My last inquiry into people calls into question their ability to recognize and identify when someone is feeding them a line of BS. As I’ve mentioned in the past, in another lifetime I was a state police officer in Pennsylvania. One of the downsides to being a rookie cop is being stuck with all of the crap traffic details the more senior officers don’t want to do. There’s a state park called Moraine Lake near Butler, Pennsylvania that is a huge tourist draw during the summer months. Unfortunately the only entrance and exit to the public beaches is from a nearby interstate highway. It became so congested at times on Saturdays that the backed up traffic would become a public hazard. This required a few of us rookies to spend our day standing in the hot sun telling citizens to keep moving because the beaches were full and there was no place to park. This required them to drive five additional miles to the next exit just so they could turn around and drive back for another try. There weren’t many happy folks after that and on a normal Saturday the station would receive hundreds of complaint calls from pissed off beach goers.
On one specific Saturday I was sent out to the park in mid afternoon after traffic had already been rerouted for hours. There was a veteran cop there which was unusual and he seemed to be in charge. I found out later he was there on a punishment detail for some infraction he’d committed a few days before. For the first time in history there were almost no complaint calls being received at the station. I found out why just after my arrival at the park. That veteran officer was telling each and every car that came by that "there were sharks found in the lake and the beaches were closed, keep moving please." Not one person questioned him or called the station to verify his story. The funniest thing was the rumor about lake sharks being mentioned in a local newspaper the next day. I was amazed then and still am.
That’s it….I just had to ask these question and I honestly never expected a reasonable answer to any of them.
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