But Then Again I Could Be Wrong: The Book of Rants
Jim Rising
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2009 Jim Rising
All I
wanted to do was fill the
car up with overpriced gas.
Why can’t all the gas pumps be consistent when it comes to paying? Some say prepay, and some don’t. In this day and age of petrol being as valuable as plutonium I understand that the temptation to pump and jump is greater then ever. So I understand that the service stations who suffer from this kind of theft sometimes want the cash in front. I have dealt with many transactions in my life that were cash in front and I have no big problem with that. The problem was that I did not know that I had to pay cash in front.
At 5 a.m. I was at the pump and even though that’s pretty early I was alert enough to be able to read. So I did. I looked the pump over high and low and saw no sign that I was to pay first and pump later. To me that was sort of like a gift. Instead of walking in and handing over my cash and then walking back and pumping the gas and then walking back to get my change I could complete the transaction in one trip. But no. As soon as I squeezed the pump nozzle a harsh voice came out of some hidden speaker. “You have to prepay,” it shouted. So I went in and gave the man my money.
Now I am sure the labor pool that gas stations have to draw upon for midnight to 6 a.m. workers is pretty shallow. But this guy looked like Festus from Gunsmoke. Only older. I remarked that there was no sign on the pump indicating prepay for cash. He said to me in the same voice that he used on the hidden speaker. “You have to prepay.”
“I understand that,” I said. “But you could put a sign on the
pump and save us both time.” “You have to prepay” was his
response.
At this point if my long suffering wife had been there with me she would have said, “Let it go.” She wasn’t and I couldn’t. “I understand that you have to prepay,” I said very slowly. “But why don’t you put a sign on the pump that says that?”
“You have to prepay, too many drive-offs” was all I got this time.
So I gave Festus a $20 bill knowing it wouldn’t fill my car but would get me away from there. Only it was not to be so simple. I put the nozzle on automatic and then went to try and scrape dead bugs off the windshield. When I heard the pump click off I heard those words again. “You have to prepay!”
Sure enough I checked the pump and for the first time in my lifetime the auto shut-off had failed. I owed 45 cents more. A lesser man might have cut and run. I went in with my dollar and paid up. And took one more run at it. “You really should put a sign up that says prepay,” I said. Festus just looked at me and said….well you know what he said. Or then again I could be wrong.
Although
my physique doesn’t show it I have spent
much of my adult life
in one gym or another.
It’s funny because as a kid in high school there was nothing I hated with a passion more than going to gym class. Every part of it was misery to me. It wasn’t just that I hated physical exertion although that was a big part of it. I am not gifted in any way for any sport. To say that I throw a ball like a girl is demeaning to girls everywhere. I can’t catch a ball to save my life or the many pairs of glasses that I have had broken trying to avoid being hit in the face. Hit a ball with a bat? It’s to laugh. Run? Is there such an event as the 20 foot sprint? Because after 20 feet I am ready for the showers.
And that brings us to the next part of gym class I hated. The communal shower. Being out of shape all my life standing with all the other teen boys in the locker room was sheer hell. I admit that I have man breasts and if I didn’t admit it the tough guys in the shower with me were certainly glad to point it out. Over and over again.
But as I grew up and became an even bigger adult I started working out in gyms. Working out is not like gym class in that it’s mostly not competitive. It’s also pretty safe for clumsy me as it’s mostly machines that make it hard for me to drop things on my foot or someone else’s.
And generally the locker rooms are equipped with private showers so the amount of time I have to show my shortcomings is thankfully brief. I say generally the showers are private but when I worked in Scranton there was this one gym where it was just like high school. Now this was a pretty upper crust gym. Why they let me in I have no idea but I was there sweating and straining with lawyers, judges and high powered businessmen. And we all paraded around each other lathered up in the little communal shower.
It was a little weird and I remember one time it got very weird. No, not that way, you pervert, but you aren’t far off. I am in the shower when one other guy joins me. Of course guy etiquette in these circumstances dictates you don’t look and don’t talk. But as we rub and scrub I keep hearing this sound. It’s metal on tile and it’s coming from his side of the shower room.
Then I see it. I didn’t want to but there it was. This guy had a not- so-small barbell in his special purpose. A piercing like through the top part, if you get my drift. Now I am a man of the world but I had never seen that before. I glanced at it and couldn’t help it. I said “ow.”
He looked at me and smiled (alright this is already weird enough so stop with those thoughts) and said – and this is exactly what he said – “Yeah, it hurt at first but it was worth it. The ladies like it.”
Yikes, I thought and then I said and this is exactly what I said “Oh.” I think I changed gyms after shortly after that. Or then again I could be wrong.
And so I did it again.
As my long suffering wife will readily admit, and she will tell almost anyone this, Mr. Home Handyman I am not. She also is ok with letting people know that I am not a fast learner. In fact it seems I don’t really learn at all.
Last year in one of my early spring adventures in lawn care I got the Big Lawn Tractor stuck. It was a muddy place and I buried it up to the axles and got a small tree caught between the back wheel and the mowing deck. It was a two hour project to get the Big Lawn Tractor out that time and we were sure I could never be so stupid again. As usual we underestimated my stupid capacity.
Different place in the yard. No tree this time but the lawn tractor was acting like a pig in mud wallow. This time we are not so lucky. It is still there as I write this. It’s been sinking further and further into the mud since Saturday. I really don’t know how we will get it out this time.
I have tried shoveling a path for it but because it’s sideways on a steep hillside it’s not really working. Boards of all sorts of types, sizes and descriptions have been pushed under the rear tires in an effort to gain traction but no joy. I have completely disassembled the grass catcher to give better access to pushing but that didn’t help and now the area around the mower looks like a yard sale with parts, shovels and boards scattered around the poor stuck beast. If it was a horse we might have shot it by now.
Suggested removal methods have included towing it out with a car or another mower. I don’t have another mower (why would I?) and you can’t get a car or truck into the area where I made my latest mistake. At a flea market at the Circle Drive-In, I looked at a hand powered winch, the kind my Dad would have called a come-a-long. I could clearly see myself attaching it to the mower, ratcheting the mechanism a few times and then deftly pulling the back end off the mower. Like I said, Mr. Home Handyman I am not. Even in my dreams.
Later on today my long suffering wife tells me we will get the Big Lawn Tractor out of its muddy prison. I hope she is right but I have my doubts. And I know the next step if we fail is to enlist the aid of my brother-in-law. I can hear him laughing already. Or then again I could be wrong.
Apparently
my back yard is some sort of
party central at night
and I wasn’t invited.
Recently more than a foot of snow fell on our neck of the woods here at the Rising Ranch and it’s more than a white nuisance to be plowed and shoveled out of our way. It’s a detective tool that betrays the secret life of the woodsy creatures that I share this property with.
As I sit at my kitchen table writing this I can smell the stink of the Bengay I have rubbed into my sore muscles. Usually the long suffering wife does all the shoveling for me but since this storm fell on a weekend, I was handed my coat and gloves and shoved out the door. My back and my shoulders are in deep complaint over this.
But this morning in the bright new dawn, as I gaze out with less than pleasant thoughts about the nature of winter, I notice the surface of the snow has been disturbed by not a few but dozens of tracks. These weren’t there yesterday as I slogged through the Arctic wasteland that is my domain.
Great circles and spirals across what would be in warmer months my lawn. “Deer,” my long suffering wife says. But of course I need to go out and take a closer look. Sure enough she is right, mostly. The deer apparently were holding a square dance last night. What other explanation could there be for the random profusion and amazing number of the tracks. The explanation could be they were being chased by the neighbor’s pesky Jack Russell terrors but the snow is too deep for that and in any case the only other tracks are not dog tracks.
But what a number and variety of tracks there are. These look like cat paws. Those over there must be squirrels and the tiny ones? Could they be mice? Or are they birds? Are those rabbit tracks?
While I had a long winter’s nap warm and snug in my electric blanketed bed, the wildlife were having a wild time of it. I am sure that this probably happens all the time, but usually without the mantle of snow there is no incriminating evidence and the nocturnal culprits get away with it, scott free.
It’s reassuring in a way that in spite of the below freezing temperatures and the unwelcome late March snow, life in these Pennsylvanian woods goes on. But still, might I be forgiven if I mutter under my breath, “Hurry spring.” I know the weather guys say spring sprung last night. I don’t think so. But then again I might be wrong.
As a
younger man I never ever even
glanced at the obituary page in a
newspaper.
Of course when you are young your concept of mortality is much less refined than it is when you are on the downward slope to the dirt nap. Now I check the notices of people who have died very carefully in case my name pops up. It would be just like me to die and not know about it. But so far, so good.
The other day I was looking at two recently departed and I couldn’t help but wonder about the juxtaposition. The top obit was of a young girl who died before she reached her first birthday. The story told of a serious heart disease that claimed the infant before a transplant could be found.
Directly underneath this sadness was the story of a priest who lived to the ripe old age of ninety. No reason for his death was given and considering his advanced age, I guess none was needed.
What caught my eye were the photos of the two. The smile of the little girl is something to see. It seems to involve her whole face and I bet it wasn’t the only smile she beamed out to the world in her short life. The priest also has a bright smile in the photo but the words written about his nearly fifty years of service as a priest were mostly just lists. They don’t really give you a feel for his long life in service of others. But you can tell by looking at his face that he had seen many joyful things and many sad things as well, but they hadn’t left him bitter or cynical.
Maybe it’s a lot to infer from two grainy black and white pictures in a newspaper obituary. The two probably never met each other. The tiny girl seemed to have spent most of her life in hospitals, mainly in Philadelphia. The priest was born in Nanticoke and died at his home in Mountain Top. But in spite of the fact that the two never crossed paths during the living years they are right next to each other in death on the page put together by some anonymous copy editor. I am willing to bet that the pairing was an accident, that no one else gave it a thought.
But there they are. A girl who didn’t quite make it to six months and a priest who lived through two World Wars. Together forever on the page of a newspaper and if we are to believe the teachings of the old priest, together forever in another place as well. Or then again I could be wrong.
As I write
this I am sitting at my kitchen
table looking out at my back
yard.
Actually I can’t see my back yard at all as it covered with at least two feet of snow. It’s cold outside, well under freezing. The wind is blowing pretty hard so the wind chill must be very low, probably as low as my spirits are.
It’s not that I don’t understand the fact that we live in northeast Pennsylvania. It snows here and gets cold. But for much of this past winter we dodged the white stuff and the bone chilling cold. And now it seems all the worse for the time we spent in short sleeves earlier this winter. There was much talk about global warming and its effects on the climate when it was 50 degrees out in January. I don’t hear a lot of that talk now. What I hear are the sounds of snowplows scraping by on the road and the muted roar of my furnace burning dollar bills.
My preference when I am at my leisure at my house is to wear t-shirts. Today I have one on. It’s under the sweater and the flannel shirt. My hands are not as cold as they were yesterday when I tried to scrape the frozen crap off my car windshield but it’s not what I would call tropical here in the Rising Ranch.
Because we went from having no snow to Arctic-like cold for the first year in the 25 years we have lived in this house, the water pipes froze. You haven’t lived until you have tried to unthaw the pipes using a small electric heater. It’s just short of futile but no way is the call to the plumber going to be made on my watch. And now that I have the water running again we are leaving the kitchen sink run a few drips all the time. That’s not too annoying.
I won’t even mention the day the garage door froze shut. And the day the man who plows the driveway got half of it done and then just gave up. “Too much snow,” he said.
And so I look for signs, any sort of omen that spring will soon be here. I grasp at any positive news and I have a little to share. It must be near the end of winter and the beginning of spring if Jones Potato Pancakes stand on Harvey’s Lake is open. And they are. Just on the weekends, mind you. But Friday, Saturday and Sunday you can have a little taste of summer. Call 570-639-5243 to order ahead. It’s just a small sign, but hopeful nonetheless. Or then again I could be wrong.
It’s been a long time since I have bounced a check.
But in my lifetime of banking fun, I have had more than one or two of mine go all flubber and act like they were on little financial trampolines. I used to wonder how banks made so much money but after a few insufficient funds fees I know for sure. But evidently it’s worse than you or I even knew.
The check bouncing business is big business for your local friendly banker and they have even found a way to maximize their profits. It’s something called high to low check processing and it works like this.
Say you have $100 in your account. You write checks for $25, $50, $17 and $95. The bank will cash the $95 one first. If they had gone in the order you wrote the checks you would have still occurred a bounced check fee but only one instead of three. Fair? Of course not. But that’s the way the check bounces.
The banks of course smugly say that they are looking out for the customer’s best interest in cashing the big checks first. Their contention is that you would rather bounce a few checks and pay more in fees than bounce the mortgage check. My contention is that Scrooge is alive and well and laughing all the way to the bank.
When those bounced checks fees start to pile up and you are trying to explain to Guido, the enforcer, why your car payment went all rubber, it’s not too much comfort to know that your six dollar check to the beer store was cashed ok.
A while ago an acquaintance of mine who lives down south told me he had been locked up for bouncing a check. The thing was the check was over two years old. The cops barged into his office, put him in cuffs and slapped him behind bars with no warning or chance to clear the check. He ended up in court and after paying a lawyer more than the check was worth he was let off with a hefty fine and a permanent stiff neck from watching his back.
And don’t get me started on the lag time between making a deposit and the money actually showing up in your account. You can deposit a check written from an account held by the bank you are doing business with and still wait three days for it to show up in your account. Meanwhile, good old Guido is knocking on your door with brass knuckles. The old saying goes something like “The rich get richer.” And then again I could be wrong.
Can we unlatch ourselves from a goal driven life?
Why is it that we always seem to be working for more stuff? A better car, bigger house, a vacation home? Are we just wired that way, or is it something we have learned and having learned it, can we unlearn it?
I have seen this in my own life quite often. I will really want something, let’s say a sports car. I will work and save and beat down the objections of my long suffering wife and finally I get the thing. Now I don’t want to say for even minute that I don’t love and cherish my little car. But it somehow seems that the wanting was a much stronger emotion than the having. It’s sort of like, now what? The answer is in there somewhere.
The happiness of the little sports car was in the pursuit. I spent literally years seeking out the perfect-forme car. I logged countless hours on the computer, learning about the type of car I wanted. I searched eBay and other sites trying to find the perfect one in my price range. I must have looked at fifty or more of these cars in the area and even while on vacation. “Wait honey, pull over- there’s one in that farmer’s field. It might run. Is that a tree growing out of the hood?”
So if a material achievement leaves you happy for only a short while, why do we keep going after the next goal? Lately I have found myself looking at other sports cars. Wouldn’t it be great if I had a Corvette? My long suffering wife just shakes her head and sighs.
Sometimes it seems like this is a sort of like being on a treadmill. I always wanted a house. I got a house. Now I want a bigger house. Or I want a house by a lake. But taking care of the house I have and making my mortgage payments makes the dream of that other house a real stretch. But maybe if we work and save and do without and make ourselves miserable in the process, maybe we can find that bigger house. But when we get there, will the same thing happen again? The best advice I have heard is choose your treadmills with care. You will be on them for a long time. Or then again I could be wrong.
I don’t spend too much time in greeting card stores.
Like most men I have only a few occasions that I must get cards for – birthday, anniversary, Christmas….I think that’s about it. Oh, Valentine’s Day.
I was in the card store for the anniversary reason the other day. It’s clear to me that card stores are designed by and for members of the fairer sex. The reason I am so confident in this fact is that I have never seen another guy in a card store other than Valentine’s Day or around Christmas. Just not a place we men hang out.
Other clues are everywhere. Not to be sexist but the style and sentiments of most cards are not exactly dripping with testosterone. Not too many cards with pictures of tanks and machine guns, if you get my drift.
The other thing I noticed about card stores is the truly disturbing variety of events you can find a card for. Not only can you find sympathy cards for the loss of a beloved pet, you can find cards for specific types of pets. Dog? Cat? Horse? Monkey? It’s all there in the card store. There are cards for people coming out of rehab. Cards for people going into rehab. I think I saw a card for a person who needs to go to rehab. Cards for graduation (and most of these have a handy pocket for cash) for every grade from pre-school to grad school.
And the dead giveaway to me that card stores are female orientated? Cards for no good reason at all. It even says so on the card rack thingy. Cards, just because. I know that there is not a man in the northeastern Pennsylvania area that has ever sent a card for no reason at all. There’s always a motive for a guy to send a card, and it’s usually centered around…well I don’t need to spell it out, right?
Card stores designed by and for men would be somewhat different. First of all they would have only cards for the big occasions I mentioned before, anniversary, birthday, Christmas and …what was the other one….? Oh, Valentine’s Day. The cards would be in racks where the price would be displayed clearly and would relate only to the size of the card. In a guy’s card store the bigger the card, the better. Guys don’t buy small cards. Big card good. And finally all the sentiments would be exactly the same. Happy____________fill in the blank. I love you. Now can we go to bed? I think I am on to something. Gotta come up with a catchy name for the guy’s card store. Maybe combine two stores. That’s it. Beer and cards. Beercardo? Or then again I could be wrong.
It’s a
rare motorist in Northeast Pennsylvania
who hasn’t
had an encounter with a deer.
If you haven’t actually had the misfortune of plowing into one of the four legged critters then someone close to you has. I know people who have hit deer on the way to the body shop to get damage caused by hitting a deer fixed. I am beginning to believe that the body shop owners of northeast Pennsylvania have a deal with the deer. What else can explain the deer’s single- minded mission to wait until the last possible moment to cross the road? I don’t know what the guys who bend fenders for a living have over the deer but it must be some powerful voodoo to make them jump happily in front of big SUVs.
In past years I lived in New England, rural Vermont for God’s sake and never hit a deer, nor did I know anyone who did. According to various insurance companies we here in northeast Pennsylvania hit more deer than any other state. We’re number one! And this is the time of year where we rack (no pun intended) up most of the kills. The deer are in the mating season and so have more on their little minds then looking both ways before they cross.
I have had the experience of deer meeting bumper only once. It was on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and I may have been exceeding posted speed limits. But this deer literally appeared out of nowhere.
The area I was traveling through was bordered on one side by a wide open field. The other side had steep rocky cliffs. Now I know that the deer didn’t come from the field side. I am sure I would have seen it and been able to make evasive maneuvers. What must have happened is the animal fell off the cliff into the path of my car. In any case it happened so fast it was like a magic trick.
I was driving along digging the tunes on my radio and next thing I knew, bang there was a deer head on my hood. The impact must have cut the critter in a few parts and the head landed first on the hood and then slammed with great force onto my windshield. It was more than the wipers could handle that’s for sure.
In the words of the body shop guy, “You were lucky you didn’t get that head in your lap.”
I didn’t exactly feel lucky and the total bill to repair my car definitely didn’t make me feel like going right out and renting the movie Bambi. Or then again I could be wrong.
You’ve probably seen the
ads.
Recently the Department of Transportation has been playing an $11 million campaign on TV and the internet in an effort to curb drunk driving. Drunk driving. Over the limit. Under arrest.
The campaign shows cops pulling over guys in cars filled with beer, wine and liquor. Not bottles. Cars filled to the windows with booze. It’s pretty startling to see and it makes the point pretty clear. The tag line is “Make no mistake: You will get caught, you will be arrested.”
Nationwide deaths from drunk driving make this problem seem like a mini holocaust. In 2005, nearly 17,000 lost their lives at the hands of some drunk fool behind the wheel of a car. That’s roughly the amount of people that would attend two sold-out shows at Wachovia Arena.
By the way, in terms of national ranking Pennsylvania tips the bar at number four with 636 deaths in 2005, actually up from 616 in 2004. The only states with more booze-induced fatalities are California, Texas and Florida so obviously we are doing something wrong. Even New York State which you would figure to have a high number throws away about 100 fewer lives each year.
How could we lower the number of gravestones planted in honor of over consumption? I think we could take a page from the old mining towns. If you ask an old timer what life was like when coal was king here, you’ll get a lot of answers. One that always foams to the top is the fact that every block had a church, a corpse house and two or three beer gardens. You would never drive to any of the watering holes back then. After your shift in the mines, you would cut the dust and then some at the neighborhood beer garden and then stagger home under your own power.