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 |   Tales from real life |
| Well, if they're not true, they oughta be! |
My wife woke me just after midnight on a Tuesday. No, it was actually Wednesday morning. My brain is always a bit foggy on one hour of sleep. "There's something going on in the yard!" "Wait, what?" I was half asleep, but I had a vague sense of a low, rumbling roar jumbled up with some high-pitched beeps. Was that real or just fragments of a dream? The bright light seeping in around the blackout shade on our bedroom window was real enough. That window provides a pleasant view of a small hillside greenbelt. There shouldn't be a light out there. What the hell? Where is that light coming from? Is this an alien abduction?! Two weeks earlier: The TV weather guys called our big Tuesday night storm a bomb cyclone. A huge, spinning vortex that flanked the usual weather pattern and made a sneak attack from the east. Our trees are all braced to resist the prevailing westerlies. They were taken by surprise from behind and four of them fell victim to the slashing wind and driving rain. One took out a power pole as it crashed through the front yard and into the street. On Wednesday morning, our yard really did look like a bomb had exploded. The power pole took our cable TV and internet connection with it when it fell. The main wire was still attached to the pole, and even though it was lying in the street, our neighbors were still online. I tried to report an outage using the Xfinity app on my cellphone, but the app didn't believe me. It assured me that there was no outage in my area and suggested that I restart my router. I doubted that turning the router off and on would fix the problem, but their app wouldn't let me explain that the real issue was a broken wire. Eventually, I gave up and put some more wood in the fireplace. Staying warm was more important and I could still get internet on my phone. I knew that our cable wouldn't be repaired until the power company replaced their pole, so I waited a few days before calling the local Xfinity store. I navigated the phone menu to a real person and described the situation outside. The representative was friendly enough, but her script didn't include a wire on the ground. She suggested that I restart my router, but I declined. It took thirty-five minutes to confirm my identity, assign a ticket number and schedule a service appointment. And I had to understand that the storm had impacted service in my area so the tech wouldn't get there until next week. While I waited, Xfinity sent several helpful texts to inform me that service had been restored in my area, and I should try restarting my router. Yeah, thanks for that. An Xfinity van made its way up the street the following Tuesday. It drove over their wire and pulled into our driveway. The power was back on by then, so the tech rang the doorbell and introduced himself. He gave me an apologetic smile and told me that the real problem was that the wire to my house was broken. I had to agree that he'd nailed the diagnosis. He went on to say that a different crew would have to come out to rehang the cable line on the power pole. I wasn't surprised. The tech did, however, run an orange wire to temporarily connect our house to the cable line that was still lying in the street. I thanked him with genuine gratitude, and he went on his way. And, of course, once the cable line was reconnected to the house, the router restarted by itself. Back to the present: Fully awake, my mind cleared a bit, and I nervously raised the bedroom shade to check out our back yard. It was fully illuminated in brilliant white light. The rumbling roar of an engine was still clearly audible. That hadn't been a dream at all. The reverberating noise and the angle of the shadows in the yard made it obvious that the light was actually coming from the front of the house. I made my way to a front window and cautiously peeked through the curtain. There was an Xfinity boom truck backed up to the power pole and they had a zillion-watt work light mounted above the guy in the bucket. It was more than high enough to shine over our roof and into the back yard. For a moment, this 'working in the dark of night' scene looked like an X-Files episode. Then it all became clear. The rumbling truck engine was running to provide power to the boom and the work light. And the beeps that had penetrated my dream were from the truck backing up to the pole. I don't why they chose to rehang the cable line at midnight with no warning for us homeowners. I was just glad that it wasn't a UFO. After my experience with Xfinity, I was in no mood to be probed. Again. Author's note: ▼ |
| If you're not abusing power, then you don't really have any. - The Gospel of Trump Actions speak louder than words. Joe Biden’s pardon of his son is a more eloquent concession speech than any losing candidate has ever made. Yes, Kamala Harris lost the battle, but Joe Biden lost the war. The choice in the 2024 election was clearly between the down-home appeal of Joe Biden and the elitism of Donald Trump. Joe Biden is the faithful husband and loving father that Donald Trump has never been. Biden is the competent and accomplished politician that Donald Trump will never be. Joe has been a model of decency and public service for his entire life, concepts that 'The Donald’ can’t even comprehend. Kamala Harris offered a vision of hard work and self-sacrifice, asking that all Americans join together to make our nation good again. Donald Trump offered the big lie, a me-first vision of greatness declared rather than earned. Now, the election is over. The people have spoken. America has gone all-in on corruption and the abuse of power. On January 25th, 2025, the most prolific liar in American history will be sworn in for a second term as U. S. President. He will stand up in front of dozens of cameras and publicly perjure himself by taking an oath that he has promised to break on his first day in office. You can vote a dictator in, but you can't vote him out. - The Gospel of Trump The American people have made their choice. They've given Donald Trump a mandate to dismantle democracy and roll back civil rights. And, for greater emphasis, they put his MAGA co-conspirators in charge of both the house and the senate. America rejected Harris's challenge to love their neighbor and work together for the greater good. They’ve endorsed the big lie, government corruption, and the abuse of presidential power. There will be mid-term elections in 2026, but the results may not matter. If the voters don't 'choose' correctly, then their candidates may simply be 'repealed and replaced' with more reliable legislators. And there is no legal recourse. The Trump majority on the supreme court is ready and willing to rule in his favor. There is no longer any check on his unbalanced power. Everyone who voted for Donald Trump should be cheering the pardon of Hunter Biden. And they should take great pleasure in the fact that Joe broke his promise about not granting it. There could be no more definitive acknowledgment that we're now living in Donald Trump’s America. Joe’s action doesn’t need to be explained or excused. The will of the people is that neither law nor ethics apply to the presidency. Trump’s base fought hard to be ruled by dictatorial whim, and Hunter's pardon is a first small taste. Instead of criticizing, MAGA nation should be celebrating. And beyond that, every MAGA voter should be sending Joe Biden flowers and thanking him for sparing Donald Trump’s life. Joe is the sitting president until January 25th. The Trump legal team argued before the supreme court that a sitting president may 'officially' execute his political enemies. The Trump majority agreed and issued a ruling that President Trump has immunity from prosecution for any and all crimes committed while in office. So, for the next two months, Donald Trump lives or dies at Joe Biden’s pleasure. I’m not calling for Joe to go all ‘Dirty Harry’ on Trump. I’m merely pointing out that he can. And Joe has that power because our soon-to-be dictator rigged the court. It would be poetic justice if Donald Trump became a tragic victim of his own scam. |
A friend and I were lamenting the decline and fall of Sears Roebuck the other day. We agreed that they were once a mainstay of the middle-class lifestyle. I suggested that they were the Amazon of the 20th century. My wife and I shopped regularly at the big Sears in the Overlake Shopping Center in Redmond, Washington. You could get your 10,000 steps in just one circuit of that huge, two-story department store. They had everything from appliances to underwear. And though you might not find a really unusual item in stock, you could order almost anything from their catalog and get it delivered in a week or two. It's a shame that their management couldn't understand and adapt to internet shopping. They already had the warehouses, a huge catalog, and a good reputation for customer service. My friend wistfully recalled the Craftsman brand hand tools and their iron-clad guarantee. And that reminded me of a story. When I was in high school, my then brother-in-law, Greg Conner, bought a 1950 Ford F5 truck with a dump bed. He got it from a guy who lived near my family in Round Butte. Greg and my sister Linda were living in Camas Prairie at the time, about thirty miles away. Greg was a hard-working logger who didn't like to sit still. For him, The 20 year-old truck was a fun side project that occupied his weekends for a few months. The running gear was mostly sound, but the interior was worn, and the paint was peeling. Greg tuned up the engine and spruced up the exterior. He never got around to the upholstery, but the outside looked pretty good when he was done. Then he realized that he didn't really need a big truck. My dad didn't need a big truck either, but Greg's impulse buy soon became dad's impulse buy. And the 1.5-ton dump capacity came in handy on our small ranch. Dad joked that he'd brought the truck back 'home' to Round Butte, so we named it Homer. Homer had a flathead V8 that made only 100 HP, but the transmission had a compound low gear that would allow us to pull stumps if we could get enough traction. A friend of a friend once talked my dad into using it to move a small house early one Sunday morning. We didn't have permits or flashing lights, just a pace car with a red rag on a stick waving out the side window. The 700 square-foot building had been jacked up and put on axles the previous day so that we could start at first light. I rode in the cab with Dad, and it took about four hours to make the 25-mile trip over gravel roads. A few early risers were justifiably annoyed by having the road blocked, but nobody called the cops and the house arrived safely at its new location. Homer pulled that house along without complaint, and we were home in time for lunch. Homer didn't get a lot of road miles, so his tires tended to age out rather than wear out. Either way, a flat is a flat, and one afternoon dad had to deal with a flat on the right rear. And those big dual wheels had split rims that could make tire changing dangerous. Dad had experience as an auto mechanic, so he knew better than to work on a split rim with hand tools. Instead, he decided to take the whole wheel off and have a garage change the flat tire for him. But Homer's wheels hadn't been removed for many years and the giant lug nuts were rusted solidly in place. Dad had a 3/4-inch drive flex handle attached to a 2-inch socket but couldn't get enough leverage to break the nut loose. So, he grabbed a 3-foot length of steel pipe from the junk pile and slid it onto the end of the flex handle. But even with a 'cheater', the lug nut wouldn't budge. At the end, Dad was hanging off the sidewall of the dump bed, swearing and bouncing his full weight up and down on the cheater. Oddly enough, the flex handle broke off at the pivot point behind the socket. That derailed our plan to get the flat tire fixed, so we went to town to look for a new flex handle. But remember what I said earlier about the Craftsman guarantee? Dad took that broken tool into our local Sears store and showed it to the clerk. The guy didn't bat an eye, he just handed Dad a brand-new flex handle. On the way home, Dad laughed and told me that he'd actually bought the 3/4-inch socket set at a second-hand store. Sears replaced the broken tool with a new one and didn't even ask to see a receipt. Now that was service! p.s. Dad could be very resourceful when brute strength failed. He used a propane torch to get that lug nut smoking hot. And once it had expanded a bit, it popped loose easily. |
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