How Close To Death Were You?

The Quora website offers a bunch of interesting questions – and some fascinating answers.

Almost every one of us has had at least one time in their life when they narrowly escaped Death, unless they were raised like The Boy in the Bubble, or as a marshmallow, in a bag with other marshmallows – and even marshmallows are constantly under threat of being made into Rice Krispy Squares.

One would think that any brush with Death would be overt, obvious, noticeable, and memorable!  The big truck that ran the red light, and whistled by, inches from your car’s nose, instead of into your door, is unforgettable.  Certainly the time that my own cousin pushed me into eight feet of water before I could swim, as a joke, and then had to dive in and drag me out, has not been forgotten.  The time my brother put a hole in a wall, a foot from my head, with a shotgun, is still fresh in my memory.

The time that I was perhaps the closest to dying horrifically, while interesting, was so quiet and restrained that it was a long time after, before I realized just how close it had been.

When I first came to this burgh from my hometown for employment, half a century ago, I was only one of many.  Some of us quickly got jobs, and acquired cars.   Many of us didn’t.  If I wanted to go home for a weekend, I had a list of people that I could call.  One Sunday night, I got a ride back with two cousins, one who owned and drove an old car.

There were to be six of us in this sedan.  Already running late, the last was to be picked up in the next town to the south.  The East/West highway from there to our North/South route curved northward, around a bend in the river.  The other highway then curved back West, before turning south.  If we took a county road across the narrow bottom of a triangle, we could save five miles of driving, and five minutes of time.

Soon, we were humming along at 70/75 MPH.  Halfway across, there was an old cast-iron bridge over a narrow river tributary.  The Highway Department had decided that it needed replacing with a modern, concrete span.  They had bulldozed a gravel access road beside it, down the bank and across a pontoon bridge.

Our pilot  driver never even slowed down. He just cranked the steering wheel, and down we went.  Six passengers, each with some sort of luggage, this old vehicle was wallowing on its springs.

KA-THWUMP!

Up onto this floating monstrosity we went.  Before seatbelts, six heads made dents in the overhead roof-liner.  Annnndd….

KA-THWUMP!

Off we plunged.  And six sore tailbones were driven somewhere up near our shoulder blades!

A half a mile up the road, our chauffeur realized that he could watch the gas gauge unwind.  Something that we had smacked into, had punched a hole in our fuel tank, and we were spewing gasoline on the road behind us.  (Cue the exploding airplane scene from Diehard 2)

We were extremely lucky that whatever had poked the hole, had not also stuck a spark.  Even now, a hot exhaust pipe, or a cigarette, casually tossed from a passing car, could turn us into a hurtling mass of S’mores.  We continued at high speed back to his parents’ home, and got there with drops of fuel left.  He managed to borrow a car for a week, and we were all so glad that we would get back – late, but back – to the big city that night, that it was long after before I realized just how close our call had been.

Comment on your own adventure, or use this story as a prompt to write your own death-defying tale.  I’m going to put my asbestos underwear on, and check the fire extinguisher.  See you in a couple of days.  😳

Fibbing Friday From The Vault

Last week, Pensitivity101 explored her archives and found some questions set by Teresa Grabs.  Here is a selection of some more of her questions.

1. What was the first thing you saw when you looked out the window?

I was awakened by the screech of tires.  When I looked out the window, I saw a number of official-looking Cadillac Escalades delivering an alphabet to me.  On the sides were printed – FBI, CIA, NSA, TSA, EPA, CSI, KPD, FEMA, SPCA…. and I think there were a couple more, UPS, DHL, even a KFC.

2.  What is your favorite way to prepare hot dogs?

It’s a trick I learned, working with a friend one summer in a fast-food booth near the beach.  Customers who wanted a hot-dog, often also wanted French fries.  While I was crisping the fries, I would drop a wiener in the hot oil with them.  The wiener sinks to the bottom.  When it’s fully cooked, it rises to the surface.  It’s ready in under a minute.  Take it out.  Pop it in a bun.  It even has a nice, light, crispy skin.  Customers loved them.

3.  What is one thing you covet more than anything else?

Covet!!  It says Covet.  I thought it said cover.  I was going to tell you about the 1959 movie, Cast A Long Shadow.  It starred Audie Murphy, an actor who was so short that he cast a shadow about as long as a pencil stub.  I’m on a rotation diet.  Every time I turn around, I eat.  My shadow is not only long, it’s very W..I…D...E.  When I go out to pick up my mail, 5 or 6 neighbourhood kids can cool off in my shade.

4.  You see the wishing star…what is your wish?

I know that he’s wishing that all these crazy fellow-fans hadn’t recognized him at the airport but…. please, Keanu Reeves, could I have a selfie and an autograph??!

5.  You don’t want the leprechaun’s gold…what do you want?

I want that big cast-iron kettle/pot that he’s got it stored in.  (Has Marie Kondo not showed you how to save space and store it in dresser drawers?)  I could make a GIGANTIC batch of chili in it – maybe even enough to share with the rest of the family.  😉

6.  What is the first thing you order at a vegan diner?

A taxi to get me to some place that serves real food.  I didn’t fight my way to the top of the food chain to eat salads.  I eat things that eat salads.  When I saw the name Greenleaf, I thought it might be a poetry bar tribute to John Greenleaf Whittier, full of hippie-types.  Maybe I could even score some weed…. You know, green leaf.  😎

7. Where would you like to visit next?
   

I would like to re-visit a tiny little hamlet in East-Central Ohio, where an online friend and his wife live – no lie.  We managed to visit them for a few hours, ten years ago, and would gladly return for a day, a week, a month, but I’d soon need to return to civilization for the medical support.

It’s a (small) dot of nothing, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by Amish.  When I came to this city, almost 60 years ago, it advertised itself as The Biggest Small Town In Canada.  It was not unusual to hear German /Pennsylvania Dutch spoken on the streets and in the shops, and see Mennonites – Canadian Amish-lite – and horses and buggies/wagons.  Decades of hot air and job immigration infusion have ballooned it out for miles, driving many Mennonites away.  I miss the feel of the countryside.

Any such trip is going to have to wait until some amount of financial sanity is regained.  Available funds in retirement are thin enough.  Years ago, I went to Florida with my brother, when the Canadian dollar was worth 75 cents/US – four of mine, to spend three of theirs.  I thought that was about as bad as it could get.  Between Trump and Putin, the Canadian dollar is currently trading at $.7256/US.  👿

8.  What is actually in the Doomsday Seed Vault?

The seeds for the likes of kale, chard, watercress, radicchio, chia, and all the rest of the food plants that the Yuppity Vegans try to tell us are good for us, but are really out to kill us.

9.  Who killed J.R.?

The LGBTQ2+ cabal.  Either that, or the Alphabet Mafia who visited me this morning.  😳

10. What is yellow snow?

That’s an indication that I’ve got the cheapest, but most effective home security system.  If any potential burglar manages to break in, even if I’m not home, the neighbours will call the cops with a noise complaint, to stop all that damned barking.  I don’t know if my two Scottish Terriers are territorial enough to bite a stranger, but if you don’t know the steps of the dance they do, you could easily be tripped, and land on your klarn.  😳

Journey Into Hell

Retail Therapy – And How To Avoid It

I wrote three years ago, about driving almost two hours – one hour of it in some of Canada’s worst traffic – and the two-hour, mirror, return trip, to obtain a vintage IBM Selectric, golf-ball typewriter.  It did not work.

The wife was going to contact a repair shop in Hamilton, which claimed that they could repair it.  We bought a metal typing table for it, at an office-goods recycling shop.

We did not contact the repair shop.
The typing table takes up a bit of the rapidly dwindling free space in the garage.
I put it on a craft table, between two storage bins, by the window in the computer room.
The cats love it.  They use it as a stepping stone to bask in the sunlight.
I own a vintage paper weight.
Anybody want it??  Free to a good home.  “Good” defined as one that will take it.

Fibbing Friday – Ivy

Well, here we are sports fans, at the famed Non Sequitur Speedway.  Today’s race will be when we take the English language, which the Brits claim to have invented, and prove that many of them don’t speak or write it as well as most Americans…. and that’s a low bar

Where Happy Hour is from 6 to 7 PM.  All drinks half price.
Mimosas are free to any guy, man enough to order one.
You ask – We promise not to tell.   😉

After we give thanks for Pensitivity101 and her pit crew of collaborators, we’ll be off to the race for the Lies of the Century – or at least this afternoon.  The pole lineup for today is as follows….

1. What’s the difference between “going on holiday” and “taking a vacation”?
   What are you vacating when you go on a “Vacation?” As I said, your desk, your chair, your employer, your house, your municipality, and often your better judgment. And yet, especially with COVID, a vacation might be a staycation, while “going on holiday,” more strongly indicates a trip, but not with a “caravan,” which is a line of vehicles, not a pull-along, camper trailer.
2. What’s the difference between a “rubbish bin” and a “trash can”?
   
   Many English people talk rubbish, while Americans have raised trash talking to a performance art. Brits must talk considerable rubbish.  They require an entire bin to contain it, where Americans get their trash in a can.  There’s no mention of a dust-bin, which contains no dust.  I think it’s all garbage, anyway.
3. What’s the difference between the “boot” of a car and the “trunk” of a car?
   
   Two nations, separated by a common language – and by how the moldy upper crust treated the lower classes. When British Milord and Lady went on a carriage trip, they sat inside, protected from dust and weather.  At the rear of the carriage was a small shelf where a couple of servants, or Boots, gamely clung on, till they were needed.  Americans, being a tiny bit more egalitarian, forewent the dangling servants, and used the space for storage of necessary things that they packed in a steamer Trunk, and strapped to the back of these new horseless carriages.  Eventually, these automotive areas were enclosed, and they both became the same thing, only different.
4. What’s the difference between a “nappie” and a “diaper”?
   
   ‘Nappie’ is short for ‘napkin’, the thing that the usually persnickety Hercule Poirot uses to create an etiquette faux pas, by tucking in at his neck when he eats. A diaper is used to catch stain-causing food matter at the other end.  The word comes from the Greek di aspros – meaning pure white.  It’s called a diaper for short, but not for long.
5. What’s the difference between the “pavement” and a “sidewalk”? Pavement is the usually-black-stuff that covers roadways – tarmac, or Macadam – The stuff that a Scotsman invented so that the English moneyed class could smoothly, comfortably re-invade drive north to vacation – or holiday – however their wealth entitles them to describe it, in Scotland. Sidewalk is a place, often made of concrete, to ‘walk’, at the ‘side’ of the pavement portion where the cars drive.  No wonder Brits are confused by these terms.  They already drive, and probably walk, on the wrong side of the roads and the language.
6. What’s the difference between “chips” and “French fries”?
   Chips are what are confused for French fries, at chip wagons and fish and chips shops, especially British ones, and England has a plethora of them. They now shout, “We’re number 2!” because they’ve been supplanted by Curry in a Hurry.  England has yet to emerge into the 20^th century, and admit that ‘potato chips’ is the American development of the language.  They call them ‘crisps,’ which might well also be crisp Cheese Crunch-Its.  My brother visited a roadside restaurant on a trip to Yellowstone Park, and requested a hamburger, and an ‘order of chips.’  He was quite distressed when the server tore open a bag of Hostess “chips” and poured them on his plate.
7. What’s the difference between the “bonnet” of a car and the “hood” of a car?
   
   A bonnet would be on the front of a woman-owned car, or on the head of the woman who owns it. She’s probably named the car – something cutesy, like Peaches.  On the other hand, a Hood (sometimes) covers the turbo-charged power-plant of a manly-man’s performance car…. Which he isn’t using to compensate for anything.  😉
8. What’s the difference between a “rubber” and an “eraser”?
   If you use a rubber at every conceivable opportunity, you won’t require the services of an eraser, which are still illegal in many districts, especially Texas, and now, Florida, as well.
9. What’s the difference between a “flannel” and a “washcloth”?
   
   Flannel is what is used to make my Canadian formal shirts. My washcloths are made from soft, absorbent terry cotton.
10. What’s the difference between a “pram” and a “stroller”?
    
    Pushable child transporters with wheels were invented during the Golden Era, when everybody who was somebody (as long as he was a man), spoke much Latin, and a little Greek. The device was given the pretentious Latin name, perambulator ‘’ meaning ‘inspector, or surveyor,’ but coming to mean ‘ramble, or stroll’ and finally ‘to walk with.’
    

The common man – or more often, the common woman – had no time for all that, and it quickly shortened to pram.  The stroller – the person walking – soon added that name to the device being walked with.  Prams used to be more commonly lie-down carriers, while strollers tend to have the baby sitting upright.  My mother transported my brother in a baby buggy.  Being a bit older, she dragged me around with a travois.

WOW #71

Look at that bunch of cows.
Not bunch, herd.
Heard what?
Herd of cows.
Sure I’ve heard of cows.
No, I mean a cow herd.
What do I care what a cow heard?  I got no secrets from a cow!

Now that I’ve milked that pun for a few laughs, let’s consider this week’s word.

RANGALE

When referring to deer, herd seems a bit numerous, as does the word bunch.  While they can leap, they can’t fly, so they’re not a flock.  A small group of specifically Whitetail deer are a bevy, while a group of any kind of deer is properly known as a rangale.  Crows would murder for a cumulative title like that.

The term began with an old word that became range, in modern English.  It grew up in French as the word rengaille, which came to be known as the dregs of an army.  When the military had fought a battle, or won a war, and were drifting home, or back to base, in small, rag-tag, non-uniform-sized, unsupervised clots of clods, the small groups were rangales.

When William the Conqueror graciously visited the Enchanted Island, the term came to be applied to similar small groups of deer.  When we have journeyed into the United States on vacation trips, occasionally we have seen deer feeding beside the road, usually at dusk.  Actually, it happens more often to the wife than me.  Screaming down I-95 at 75MPH, trying to keep ahead of some semi that seems to want to park in my trunk, is not the time to go, “Oh, look at Bambi and his mom.”

If COVID dies before I do. I have hopes for more trips, and more deer-sightings.  If I am lucky, and successful at both, now I know what to call them.  Other than Rivergirl, who seems to live on a migration pathway, how many of you have been fortunate enough to see a group of deer in the wild?  😕

’21 A To Z Challenge – G

One day, when my Dad was in the retirement home, the nurses took him down to the common room, and put him in a big chair, so that he could watch television.  Just as they were walking out, he started to lean over to his left side.  One of them rushed back in, propped him up, and put a large pillow on his left side.

Just as she was leaving again, he started listing over to his right side.  She rushed back, straightened him up, and jammed a cushion on his right side.  When I arrived to visit him, I asked how he liked the place.  “Not very!” he said.  “They won’t even let me fart.”

I just had baked beans for supper, so I decided for the G Challenge, I would do a piece about The Rolling Stones song Jumpin’ Jack Flash.  I see some of you are looking more confused than usual.  Don’t you remember??!  It’s a

GAS, GAS, GAS!

I hope you had a chance to watch the 1987 movie of the same name, starring Whoopi Goldberg.  It makes about as much sense as any of the Pink Panther films, but is just as zany and funny.

I just watched a YouTube video of an old Dave Allen comedy sketch.  He said that he didn’t really like having to fly anywhere.  Medical studies indicate that the average person farts about 14 times in 8 hours.  Put 500 people in an enclosed jumbo jet, for an eight hour flight, and you get a total of 7000 farts by the time you arrive.

And people wonder why I drove all the way to Key West.  At least I can crack a window open a bit…. when the wife starts leaning to one side or another.

Posts that are a little more intellectual will be published later this month.  😉

I’ve Been There And Back

 

 

 

 

Lost in thought – and other places.

I recently read a post from a young Canadian female, about making a wrong turn at night, and driving into the United States.  She said that she had submitted the tale as a Creative Writing essay, and had received an ‘A’ for it.  I expected a teen-ish high schooler, or a college student.  While not bad, I mentally edited it for a few word-usage, spelling and punctuation errors.

She wrote that, as the driver, she and her boyfriend went out for a late-night McDonalds run.  They followed the border, and mistakenly turned south, into the US.  This could happen almost anywhere along the border, but I suspected British Columbia.  Then the story said that she inadvertently took the up-ramp to the bridge in Windsor, and wound up in Detroit.  But the bridge to Detroit doesn’t go ‘South.’  It faces North-West.

She managed to find the entrance to the tunnel to return to Canada, to the north(?), but it was closed for maintenance.  After some more driving and searching, she managed to get back on the bridge.  The Industrially-Polite Canadian Border guard listened to their story, and let them back in without passports.  The McDonalds was now directly in front of them, but they’d spent their burger-bucks on two bridge tolls.

When I viewed the post, I did so, on the WordPress reader.  When I commented, it took me to her actual site.  There I was met with a photo of a partially-clad, full-figured young female, and claims that she was a model, an actress, and an author (?), with 20,000 Facebook followers.  A sort of Canadian-Lite equivalent to the Kardashians – famous for being famous.

I can’t fault her for her little mishap.  Something very similar occurred to us.  Back before 9/11 and passports, the wife and I spent a weekend in Niagara Falls, Ontario.  After checking in Friday night, and eating dinner, we drove on down to the end of the big highway to Fort Erie, ON, and began looking for the terminus of the romantic Riverside Drive, which would take us back to our hotel.

Somehow, a wrong turn in the darkness took us into the one-way driveway to the Duty Free shop.  There is no bridge toll from Canada to the States – nowhere to stop – nowhere to turn around.  With no other exits, we were soon in Buffalo – almost.

As soon as I got off the bridge, I immediately slowed and pulled onto the road shoulder on the fast side.  I carefully dodged a few orange, nylon traffic cones, drove across the paved median, and butted into the line of Canada-bound cars.  There is a bridge toll to cross from the US to Canada, so I was soon confronted by an American Border guard.

I carefully explained what had just happened, and said that I just wanted to get back.  They might as well have robots doing the job.  Do not distract a public servant from his well-rehearsed spiel.  I had just related what had occurred.
“How long have you been in the United States?”
“Uh, going on ninety seconds now.”
“Did you purchase anything while you were in the country?”
(What…. from the trunk of your car, parked over there?)  “No!”
“Very well, away you go then.”

I was happy to pay a(n American) dollar to return to the land of socialized medicine.  We postponed any moonlight trips up the Riverside Drive, until we were sure that we’d found it in the daylight.  Over the years, we have been a number of places that we did not intend to be, but that was the only time that it was in a foreign country.  I’m back, and ain’tcha glad??!  😉

’19 A To Z Challenge – S

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The judge asked the accused in a paternity suit, “Have you ever slept with this woman?”
He replied, “Not a wink, Your Honor! Not a wink!”

Without even thinking about it (and that’s what causes problems) most people expect social conformity.

Despite my liking for archaic language, there are just some 19^th century insults that should not be brought back. Have you ever been called a

SLUGABED

a lazy person who stays in bed long after the usual time for arising

Neither have I. Not quite.

Late one Sunday night (by my calculations), about 4:30 AM, I walked down to the end of my driveway to pick up Monday’s newspaper. I arrived at the same time as my neighbor across the street, who was putting out Monday’s garbage.

Full of perk, and perhaps perked coffee, he brightly said, “Oh, I see that you’re up early too. I have to drive to Ottawa today (5/6 hours), so I thought I’d get an early start.”

I told him that I wasn’t getting up. I was about to go to bed at 5:00 AM, and would be back up at 1 PM. “You sleep in till 1 o’clock??! How in Hell do you get anything done?” I had just spent four quiet, productive hours – half a workday – on the computer. It was fine for him to modify and set his sleep hours, getting up at 4 AM, rather than at 7:00, to suit his needs, but he felt that I was wasting time by doing the same thing, to fit my schedule and my usual time.

There was no ASSUME here. The only ass was the one trapped in a car for hours, while I recharged my energy in a nice soft bed. He didn’t make me into one. 😯

Now that I’m awake again, feel free to comment.   😀

Flash Fiction #191

PHOTO PROMPT © Ceayr

AM I BLUE? NO!

Ah, to be a Canadian Snowbird in South Carolina, for a week in October. Not really Snowbirds – snow hasn’t actually fallen in Southern Ontario – yet. Warm like summer at home, but not yet crowded with boorish, Speedo-wearing Quebecois.

The beaches are delicious – tanning and soaking up sun. It’s easy to tell tourists from townies. Canadians are frolicking in the surf, while the natives are dressed in down-filled coats, like Canucks will be in a month, when they have to shovel that snow. They stare, wondering why we build sand-castles, and not igloos.

Nobody in Canada owns a powder blue villa. 😀

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

On The Ball

The wife and I are not ‘Retro,’ we’re just old fogies.

It’s not that we’re technophobic. Lord knows, we embrace technology to the limits of our non-Electronic Age brains. In our house, there are 2 PCs, a laptop, 2 tablets, 3 Kindles, 2 Kobos, 2 Smart Phones, and a Smart TV that’s smarter than both of us together. Still, sometimes we like to relive The Good Old Days, in The Good Old Ways.

The QWERTY keyboard was originally developed when early typists got faster than the rudimentary machines, and jammed letter strikers against the platen. It put the usual letters in unusual places, to slow typists down, and prevent jamming. It was touted by its proponents as, “More efficient,” a lie with a bit of truth in it.  It reduced the words per minute typed, but almost eliminated having to stop and unjam the machine, resulting in more total words typed at the end of the day.

The development of the electric typewriter smoothed out the jamming problem somewhat, and also eliminated the need to manually move the heavy carriage with the left hand/arm.

In 1961, IBM re-invented the wheel – actually, a ball. They produced the Selectric, a typewriter with no keys to jam. Instead, it had a little ball with all the characters on it. The smart machine rotated the ball – nicknamed a ‘Golf Ball’ – to the right position before smacking it against the paper. Different balls, with different fonts could be quickly snapped in and out.

Several models, with different features were developed, including one with a rudimentary 40-character memory. If a typist noticed a mistake while typing, (s)he could hit a special ‘Hold’ key, back up in the memory, change the error, and free the machine to continue.  There was no more heavy carriage to move back and forth. Instead, the ball and ribbon moved smoothly and quietly across the platen. This was the precursor to the computer word-processor.

Sadly, because of that, they didn’t last long, and soon became extinct – but not before over 2,000,000 of them were sold. The wife worked on one, in one of the offices where she was employed. She loved it. Recently, she had a couple of typing projects – recipe cards, and knitting patterns – where a computer and printer just didn’t work out well.

She found one offered for sale on Facebook Market. The woman wanted $40 for it. I asked where I had to go to pick it up. She’s had me drive 10/15 kilometers locally, for other items. This one, she said, was in Oshawa, the other side of Toronto. I told her that it would cost another $40 in gas, to drive there and back. Without any other offers on it, the price reduced to $35.

Driving completely across metro-Toronto, on Highway 401, is not the worst traffic in North America, but it’s definitely in the top 10. When I checked the location with a map program, the actual mileage (Canadian kilometrage) wasn’t all that high, but the program warned that, at the time that I checked, based on current traffic conditions, estimated trip time is 2 hours and 8 minutes.

We planned the trip for the middle of the morning, after the get-to-work onslaught, but before the lunch-time rush, and made the 160 Km/100 Miles in 1Hour/40Minutes. We waited till 2:00 o’clock to start back and, aside from some slowdown from the ‘memory of an accident’ we saw on the way there, we got home in 1Hour/40Minutes again. We immediately stopped at Costco, and put $45 of gas in the car.

The wife wanted some proof that the machine worked, but the woman getting rid of it was a young Real Estate agent, charged with disposing of an estate. She was so young that she’d never heard of or seen such a contraption. She plugged it in and turned it on. It hummed. She hit a couple of keys, and it clacked a couple of times.

Since she’d still not had any other offers for it, and since we were coming from so far away, she reduced the price to $20, which she may have quietly pocketed. When we got home, the wife plugged it in and turned it on. It hummed! She tapped a couple of keys…. but the little carriage didn’t move. She sat down and pored over the included owner’s manual – to no avail. A part may be broken/missing.

With the existence of so many Mennonites within a 50 kilometer radius, it is probably easier to locate a Ferrier (one who shoes horses), than to find a local typewriter repair shop. There was one, but the old gentleman who ran it was 83 in 2015, and the website is dormant. The wife has located one in the city of Hamilton. It’s not quite so far away, and in a different direction. It should only cost us $35 for gas – TWICE – once to drop it off, and again when we pick it up, plus the charge for Barney Rubble to fix it.

You may never get a hand-written letter from me – for which you should be thankful. With my essential tremor getting worse, the doctors’ scribbles that I mentioned in my Griffonage post, seem clear and legible, compared to my handwriting. I’ll tell you whether we are successful at this technology resuscitation project, and you may get a hand-typed letter to prove it.