Times

    Wrote this a couple of years ago on FB.  Thought it worth repeating


      When I was seventeen and kind of a little turd, I would drive by the Drive In's and see all of the old station wagons with little kids hanging out of them and the Dad in the driver's seat and I would think "Hell on Earth". Twenty years later in the same spot, I thought" How cool is this". But then I would drive by a Trailer Park full of OLD folk and I would think " Waitin to Die". Now after walking darn near seventy five yards to a little trailer after a couple of hours of fishing on the bay watching ships go by I whip up a Martini and sit back and think "How cool is this". Hell yeah I'm up for Pinochle. Times they are a changin.

Just a very sad week

        A very pronounced phenomena one notices getting older is a much deeper, pass on  the word "involvement",  more like immersion in the world around us on a daily basis. Subjectivity, what's good, what's bad POV du jour.  Been like that forever.  Early morning coffee gatherings consisting of "older folk" like myself, swapping lies and opinions.  Now hyper driven by nonstop twenty four hour bombardment of every little detail and nuance of each disaster.

    My ready made opinions and easy fixes have just dried up. Tragedies occur such as Orlando a few weeks back and the one in Dallas a couple of days ago, five dead police officers , twelve shot overall. And more incredibly stupid police executions and a sniper not unlike the Clock Tower Sniper tragedy in Austin several decades ago.  This time cops targeted while assigned to a peaceful BLM protest.  A point of ugly irony is that in a city touted for it's progressive policies, Officers, if the media has it right, talking and joking with protesters. A responsible law enforcement response that should have been the model Ferguson emulated and sounds completely unlike Baton Rouge.

 But force tends to be met with force, violence with violence.  For these cops, probably rightly perceived as good duty.  Extra OT cash and since Dallas habitually responded in this manner, low stress interactions with the community.  Many left their ballistic vests at home.

    Speaking from experience most officers enjoy this kind of interaction.  Lisa as a County Deputy many years ago wandered her jurisdiction and counted the nights by successful coffee dates with locals. Filling me in the next morning about conversations and new ideas about how law enforcement could improve her community.  She was doing community policing long before it became a buzz word. Fit right in with being Scout Leader and other community involvements she used to have.  We'd go to 4th of July parades and be bombarded by greetings from well wishers.

       In my youth and later in college, myself and my friends discussed our interactions with law dogs ( our word not theirs) while growing up. Made for great stories.  Being on the business end of those interactions wasn't always pleasant then either, but certainly a rite of passage.  We knew our local officers by name.  Some we liked some we didn't.  Dependent much upon who'd made us pour our beer individually, one by one on the side of the road.  Or the ones that carted us down to the police station to have our parents pick us up at 2 AM despite all our protests that we were really headed there right now.  A punishment that got one's parents involved.  But we respected the badge and the purpose.

  This was in the day when nearly any responsible father on the block was grandfathered the duty to kick your ass if the need arose. Indeed encouraged.  Just boys of course.   We weren't Angels, nobody really is.  Unlawfulness at that age within reason is really an important stage of development. Irresponsible behavior is far less embarrassing at fifteen than say thirty, the age some from more restricted families decided to finally bloom.  But this tended to be understood by both us and the police.  Consequently their response was always measured, usually appropriate to the offense but almost always involving a bit more pain and humiliation than paperwork  My friend got whacked on the back of the head, grabbed by the shirt collar and given a good old fashioned shake, told to get his ass home and his father was going to hear about it.  It may even have included a kick in the butt.  Like one might see in a Cowboy flick. Or maybe the kick to the butt happened to me in another episode.   Hell I'm  old OK?  Did he get manhandled, hell yeah, but appropriate to the crime of scaring some elderly women sitting in their car while he was jumping up and down on the bumper  in the parking lot following a  baseball game. A nonsensical for the most part harmless impulsive act.  The back of his head smarted a bit, his ego was bruised.  Good old fashioned Corporal punishment.  The elderly ladies I'm sure were satisfied, probably a bit smug with this outcome as well as the officer. The miscreant sent on his way.  No paperwork, no Court and no testimony and more importantly no record.  TCO  My friend, he had a ways to go to get through that phase of life but to the best of my knowledge nothing ever resembled terrorizing elderly ladies by bouncing on their bumper again.  Now I won't mention my friend's name because he and my other cohorts have as many similar unflattering stories about me as well.   But I will mention the Officer.  The former Sgt. Mildon, a guy known as much for the number of jobs he worked raising his family, (Police pay sucked back then) You'd be as likely to see him wearing a clerks apron at SAFEWAY as much as the policeman's uniforms.   He knew my by name because I ran with his little brother umm, who tended to also dabble in mischief.  So that probably wasn't the best thing.

  But myself and hundreds of others seemed to muddle our way through those years in that small town.  Move into adulthood and mostly unfettered choose our path in life.   Those side of the road reprimands became stories providing valuable street cred in later years while trying to jostle ourselves into our place in the world.  So no matter how intimidating Sgt Mildon seemed at the time   when he died from natural causes many years later, a college gymnasium could not house all the people who came to honor him.   Jim wasn't perfect, there exist some who feel they weren't treated fairly by him.    But I suspect proven by the fact I worked a nearly thirty year career the few unpleasant "Corrections" I received from Jim and others until now have been unrecorded anywhere but in the minds of those present.

       What happened? I'm not sure.  But I do know that there are some who do know.  We need our Police and need the security in the knowledge that "Protect and Serve" is not just what's painted on a Car door.

      So I wrote this a few weeks ago.  Much more has happened since but the words I decided worth merit.

     

State Dem Convention

     

On the 16th Lisa and I packed up and headed to San Antonio for the Texas State Democratic Convention.   Lisa became a Delegate a couple of months ago and so reservations were made more than a month ago at the Holiday Inn near the River Walk in the downtown area.  And we were less than a mile from the Alamo Dome.

       Hard lessons learned.  Even though I have regularly walked a couple of hard treadmill miles several times a week at the little AC gym in Rockport, This proved to be little preparation for the heat.  Thursday night we covered a couple of miles downtown to attend a "pre convention" meeting.  The Motel provided free shuttle service to the downtown area but that ended early in the evening.   So we decided to walk back.  The temperature hovered around a hundred the entire day and into the night with the indice up around 110.  Recently turning 62 reminded me all to well my days of being invincible are long over.  My wife who rarely walks for the exercise benefit had to stand by as I just couldn't hack more than a few blocks at a time without stopping to rest.  But then she is a  freak of nature when it comes to the heat.  I've nicknamed her "Demon" given that she also complains of the cold when it sits around 85.     I was completely undone when we got back from that walk and I took the next day off.  


Photoshopped Bernie
  

   Several people made the walk each day in a beautiful park like setting lining the sidewalk for most of the way.  Were the temps more around the seventies, it might have been a little thing I'd have enjoyed immensely.  As it were, I didn't dare and marveled at people in suits, complete with jackets making that walk in the heat. So I'm pretty convinced all Texans are "Demons"  Unbelievable.

    Second lesson, if one has never witnessed politics, doing so at a state convention is an eye opening experience.  From the initial meeting at the Grand Hyatt crammed in a less than accommodating room with a couple of thousand people in order to be schooled on resisting insider tactics.    An example of this is compared to say you buy a Volkswagon.  Now that you are the proud owner of a Volkswagon, seems like almost everyone else is too.  It's the same thing.  Being schooled on a couple of insider tricks.  Like rodents, they turn up everywhere and often.  

       The Amazing thing is:  Texas, like a lot of other Conservative states passed some highly progressive recommendations for the DNC that is occurring in Philly in July.  I'm not giving it up but this link probably answers most questions.  Speaks well for Bernie's folks who stayed and fought back hard.  Hard not to notice that the hardline mainstream weren't getting a bit irked.

      Six hundred bucks for Auto Insurance and that's the cheapest we can find for one old Bronco with two hundred thousand miles on it and a modest 2002 Silverado 2500.  And that's with no wrecks, tickets or underage Drivers.  Oh and that includes a 90's era RV that I also just had to drop 800 bucks on for a new AC.  The little portable we bought to sustain us the Winter couldn't even bring it down to 90 when the temps started rising.  Plus another 450 or so into tires for the tired old Bronco that just keeps huffing away.   Jesus' Kristo how does anyone make it on ten bucks an hour.   Fifteen is going to be hard enough.

     The joke of this is I recall my buddy floated the stupid idea that I might want to work in the private sector of Corrections.  I'd already been laid off my planned second career Airline job so I checked out some job descriptions.  Yeah, for thirteen fitty they wanted a four year degree and five years experience.  That's thirteen fitty an hour folks for a sad sad business that makes their CEO's some high rollers.   No wonder there are a lot of pissed off folks in the world.  As one guy put it "The pitchforks are coming".  I don't think literally but meh....it may be.

  And so with replacing the refrigerator a couple of months ago and the AC this month, I've pretty much come full circle in the little trailer.  I used to sweat what would happen if some of those expensive items went out.  Now I got my answer.  Get the best damn deal you can for a used reefer because y'know damn good and well they don't make them in the dimensions you need and haven't for quite some time.  They want you to buy a new one every two three years.  Then take out the door, knock a couple of holes on either side of it and somehow with the help of Crisco and spit, man and woman noover that sumbitch inside.  And that turned out to be the easy part.  Buuuuut it's been humming away pretty good the last several months.  The AC, buy the sumbitch and hire a guy to stick it in.

   So, yeah done here.  Be talking from the road next month....

Bubba Trump

        Been goin to the Gym three times a week trying to get the BP down.  But every time I'm there on that treadmill pumping my little  legs, right in front of me is a 60" big screen TV.  And for the forty five minutes to an hour I'm on there, I have to digest whatever the channel that it is always set to feeds me. And it's Fox News.  Always Fox News.  So I thought I'd share the nonstop knowledge I've learned from many, many hours planted right in front of ...Fox News.

     There's boiled Trump, Saute'd Trump, BBQ'd Trump.  There's deep fried, stir fried and just plain fried Trump.  You can broil it and bake it.  You can have Trump Kebob, Trump Creole, Trump Gumbo.  There's Pineapple Trump, Coconut Trump, Lemon Trump, Pepper Trump.  You can have Trump Stew, Trump Salad and Trump Soup.   And you get the idea.  Everything is Trump.

    Unless it's Wednesday.   That's what I've learned from Fox News.  Oh, and HRC, she lies, she lies she lies.

     So I might change gyms.  Election coverage, "Trumps" everything else news and I'm a little tired of it.

   Got nearly a foot of rain here.  And we have a permanent lake.  Also Skeeters the size of Hawks.  

    On FB couple of guys I've known since High school got married, by the Supreme Court Administrative Judge. Gave them a congratulations.  There's hope for Idaho yet.

     Noises have been made for months, but it just never came together.  Until yesterday,  Lloyd and I made a date to go fishing in the Bay in his rather awesome boat.   Weather was beautiful and Hard hard heads were plentiful.  Even caught a few crabs dangling in the air refusing to let go getting every little chomp on that piece of mullet they could get.  Creepy feeling what happens to people lost at sea.  It ain't the sharks, it's the crabs.  

     The Harbor has some intricacies to navigate which I appreciated Lloyd's explanations for.  The biggest risk is watching the Tides.  Some areas are only inches deep.  For that matter none of it gets more than a few feet deep.  Deep enough for a couple of eight foot Bull sharks Lloyd said he's seen out there.  One was caught.   But navigating the several small islands in the bay I was impressed how pretty the water and the small beaches are.  He promised if we can catch a decent day, he's confident we can do some some offshore fishing.  Lloyd said he's been out about ten miles before.

     Couple of boys here are slowly acclimating to life.  Speaking for myself.  Even it the heat, on a good day a drive to wherever is usually along the bay.  An extremely pleasant experience with the smell of salt water, gentle Ocean breeze and sparse traffic.  Maybe take a ferry ride where there's always Dolphins to watch along the way.  A huge Tanker might cruise by reminding me how small I am compared to the things man builds . I wish I'd settled roots here thirty or so years ago as I suspect they will.  

    Reservations made for the Democratic Convention in San Antonio on the 16th.  Should be fun.  Lisa is a little stressed about the details.  With one candidate about to drop  out, I'm curious how this will all turn out.

     It's going to be a beautiful albeit hot, steamy and skeetery day.  Orvwah.
  

Just add ten more degrees

    
  
     Whatever the temperature is outside, factor the humidity and add ten more degrees.  So 87 becomes 97 and so on and so on.  But this isn't even June yet and when it becomes August, I don't think that my fingers and toes kind of math will be remotely able to determine the "Hade's" like temperatures that await.   Might have to get an Abacus or something.  Better yet, make Lisa hold still long enough and with our combined forces, (fingers and toes) we should be able to ball park it.

    Did I forget to say she's back from her three week vacation (thank god). Cooking for myself I have zero imagination.  Plus the place was beginning to smell like something.  That's right me.  And I can take that only so long.

   Awakened rather terrifyingly this morning.  Sometime in the middle of the night I heard her mumble, "my body feels like it's morning" and then felt her crawl over me to get to the bathroom.    Her on the inside me on the outside because she hasn't reached that prime of life where unlike myself, she's required to get up and pee six or eight times nightly.  She's a bit of an early riser so this isn't unusual.  So a bit later after drifting off again, a disturbance woke me.  And my first sight in the dim early morning light was Lisa, advancing towards the bed with murderous intent (understand my mind was filling in the blanks here) by her sinister expression and in her hands held as if she were about to strangle someone, me?   I saw a weapon.......a giant can of bug spray.  And before I could scream NO LISA NO she was on the bed moving towards my head but strangely enough looking at a large spot on the ceiling.   A large spot moving very quickly that would be directly over my face in a second or two.   My survival instincts kicked in.....  I said my survival instincts kicked in......kicked in.   And I started to move......really I started to move, gathering momentum now.  "Damn" everything hurts in the morning.  Anyway, she was just chasing one of the giant Cockroaches that sneaks in every now and again.  Together we are a force to be reckoned and that little bugger headed off to bugger heaven.   She said "sorry" and sat back down in front of her computer.

     So I forgave her.  With conditions of course.

     And then in a somber, morose,  melancholic sad little girl voice said "Cody needs to find another job" as she showed me his last FB posting

View post on imgur.com

     Yep, Boy needs to find another job.


      Got my new Passport.  Looks just like my last one only just not the same quality pic.  I always get my Passport pics at Costco.   This one made me look fatter somehow.  Oh well, you get what you pay for.




Took a drive along the beach to cool off.  A couple of cell phone pics.  Turned around when the waves started washing to close.  A fairly decent stretch I was by myself as you can tell by the front and rear view mirror pics.

      In closing thought I'd include an excerpt from a short story I've been working on lord knows how long.  Input appreciated.

      Three months later Trip’s mother passed from the myriad reasons pervading the life of poverty. Her last days spent in a hospital bed.  Organ failure, a bad way to go.  Trip was at her bed when it happened.  Looking down at her peaceful face now so swollen by the drugs they'd given her.  Seeking to find his own resolution.  The dissimilarity of the life of his mother to those of others.  It had been rough but he was grateful for these last couple of years.  That she had experienced the closest to happy he guessed since his father died.   Nevertheless It was heartbreaking. But Loyal was steadfast and rock solid.  Standing next to him at her funeral his comforting hand on his shoulder.   Unaware he would also  lose his best friend. 

    Thought to be a heart attack ICARUS plunged nose first into the ground at near supersonic speed less than a year later. Trip sensed Loyal had been troubled and distant for a while now. Loyal always preached he never believed in Suicide, but also never believed in dying in bed neither.  So having done his level best to die in some other fashion, and lord knows he’d tried, seems he’d finally made a choice taking the lesser of his two personal demons. Trip was by then sixteen. 

 
"Encourage and support your kids because children are apt to live up to what you believe in them."

                                                                         Lady Bird Johnson

   My kids just don't get it.  Where they think I'm being judgmental and authoritative, I'm just trying to offer a bit of input about things I've encountered time and time again in my life and handled in a manner, well that I thought acceptable. Something about the past I suspect. But I've long since accepted them as adults and completely empowered with the capabilities of coming to their own conclusions.  I guess the biggest obstacle I have to deal with is that what I believed is acceptable, often doesn't meet their standards.  And there exist some things they just need to find out for themselves. And their fear of my disapproval is overstated.  But I guess my little "nudges" are expected and even appreciated once in a great while.  But what they never, ever need to worry about is to be disavowed, ever.  Cause when I'm in public or private, with or without them, somebody asks, Hell yeah I made them.  Aren't they fucking spectacular?


  I decided to tackle the long forgotten interior of the back side under the kitchen counter.  Specifically I was wont to get the Cast Iron stuff from back there, We've got a couple skillets and Dutch Ovens.  And it's been some time since I got all up into that  kind of cooking. Couple of years ago in Arkansas I just killed it with the Cinnamon Rolls. Lisa is going to be gone at least another week and a half so, Ok, let's make some messes.
   
    But...... it was bad, real bad. Cloverfield movie bad, or that one movie Tom Green made while married to Drew Barrymore bad.   An undiscovered leaking faucet had been dripping into the two stacked Cast Iron skillets.  It wasn't a yuuuge leak, just a drip, over the course of about a year.  No real damage to the cabinet, but the skillets, wow.  Most folks probably throw em out they're so rusted out.  Nah, It's a project.   I spent the afternoon with a drill and wire brush and made some great headway.  Next I'm going to sand down the bottom.  Ain't retirement great?

     Driving home from Wally World with my brand new RV faucet I just bought for two fitty, I'm listening to NPR.  Yessir, they got NPR even in Texas.  And a retired NYPD guy by the name of Osborne.  A writer and some kind of actor.  I couldn't really make that part out .  But his book is about the many experiences a NYPD cop has over the course of a twenty or so year career.  And during the interview the guy, a natural born storyteller, related a lot of experiences, that guys like me instantly relate to.  The way I see it, big city or little city, the difference tends to be frequency, but not intensity.  Twenty four years as a parole officer has gifted myself and my retired peers (Ellery) many many war stories that could easily rival those I was listening to.  Not to disparage his stories in any manner because frankly they were pretty good.

   But there was a point in the interview the guy just knocked it out of the park.  See,  it's not a great time for law enforcement.  They've picked up a bad name, all account of some bad apples.  The South Carolina incident, the Mesa, Baltimore and Chicago incidents just blow my mind.   Myself and my peers all dealt out force of some kind.  Some involved in shoots, most not. I personally never fired my weapon.  I don't believe I ever witnessed any force inflicted excessively, nor thankfully ever heard of a shoot situation used only as a last resort.. But we've all had those close calls.

   The interviewer, post war stories asked Osborne had he ever fired his weapon.  Finger squeezing the trigger, but at the last second always some other option was found rather than killing the guy he said.  It was close a couple of times.  He said most were disappointed upon hearing that but that he was elated he'd never had to kill anybody. Then she asked his opinion about the controversial shoots that had recently surfaced. He said, "listen I'm not going to defend those people".  " I just don;t know what they were thinking". " We don't shoot fleeing felons and those other incidents I don't understand either"'  "You go to work with the intent of coming home safely". "But you also don't want to have to kill anybody either".  "Make no mistake, there were a hundred times I would have been justified and I could and would in the right situation, but that was the last resort and I always chose something else". "Those guys are still walking around right now and have me to thank". "My friends still working can't say anything in public, but it just makes the job harder they say".  Finally he said "it takes balls to be a cop".  

    I've refrained from saying anything because it's construed as anti cop.  The last thing in the world I want to do.  99.99999 of those folks are awesome. So many of them are trying to turn things around and doing the right thing every day.  But in my day, those bad apples eventually were accounted for.  It's not a training deal.  We all got the same training.  It's an accountability thing.  So Osborne, Thank you. .Boom  ( Que the mike drop)  

     So I'll end here listening to some Isaac Hayes and other awesome fifties sixties and seventies stuff I haven't heard since I was a kid.   

                      
   

 

Damn, Lisa went to Reno and left me.alone. Craaap

               Death twitches my ear.  "Live" he says, I am coming.                                                              

                                                    Virgil


       I find myself falling into a bit of a rut.   I have a restlessness that needs to be assuaged.  Normally going somewhere fixes it.  But that's not so much in the cards for me right about now.  I didn't so much notice it until Lisa took off yesterday to fly to Reno to see the girls

     When she's around she's such pleasant company that time slips by.  We fall into the usual morning til night routines that are so wonderfully comfortable.  But god, when she leaves, even if it's just for a little while like now, brother those same activities just don't fit the bill and I sense the walls begin to close in on me.

   So I dust off all those things I've been trying to accomplish.  I'm gloriously ADD so I add things usually weekly.  Acquire books that need to be read.  Do something with the four short stories that I have spent so many hours writing and well, still suck as a harmonica player. An activity that I've spent far more hours than writing.  But once in a while, a long time between whiles, that little tinny sound comes out just right.  Enough to float hope anyways.

    Have we lost any weight, I don't think so.  Have we completely revamped out eating.  Wonderfully so.  And over the course of a month my gosh the changes in the way I feel, marvelous.

    So tonight, I'm setting back, making a Martini.  Oh I'll still read all the political stuff that tends to fill some pocket of me.  But I'm going to listen to some good music and later, talk with my girls.  Yep, and that's plenty good enough. 



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