When I was a little boy, there were only two or three other homes anywhere in sight. One of them was where Ben lived. His house was diagonally located from us, about two stone-throws away, on the other side of an alley that ran between his avenue and ours. Ben was about the age of my older brothers Lewis and Howe, I think somewhere in between them. My brothers and I spent a lot time at Ben’s, one reason being that he had a TV set. We watched stuff like “I Married Joan”, “The Life of Riley”, and “Dragnet”. Ben’s parents were very friendly. Sometimes I took care of their dog when they were away. Ben’s mom helped me get through the first grade on time, and Ben’s dad often kidded me one way or another in a friendly way. Ben, however, sometimes took shameful advantage of our age difference.
For example, one afternoon when I went over to Ben’s, he greeted me by asking me how my tallywacker was. I had no idea what that meant. I was just an ignorant little kid, and I had never heard the word tallywacker before. Ben told me that asking someone about his tallywacker was just a friendly way of greeting him, kind of like asking how things were going for him. Well, that seemed like a good explanation, so with Ben’s encouragement, I practiced asking him how his tallywacker was for the next hour or so, until I had to go on home for supper.
Now, Sunday midday dinner was always a big thing to the Whitmans. If it was summertime, we often would go to Radium Springs for a picnic and swimming. Otherwise, we would likely have a fried chicken dinner or roast beef dinner at home. Just outside and off to one side of our dining room window, there was a big Mimosa tree that we climbed on a lot. It was perfect for climbing, but that’s another story. Sometimes, Ben would come over to see us while we were still eating dinner, and when that happened, he would just sit outside in the tree until we were done and could come out and play. To get to the tree from Ben’s house, you had to walk right by the dining room window. On this particular day that I’m telling you about, maybe a couple of weeks after my visit at Ben’s that I just described, Ben came walking by the dining room window while we were at Sunday dinner. He waved at us and continued on toward the Mimosa tree, and I hollered out the open window to him, “Hey Ben, How’s your tallywacker?” My mom and dad instantly swiveled to focus di-rect!ly on Ben, and he looked like a deer caught in the headlights. You reap what you sow.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
A Splendid Weekend
On Thursday night, June 2nd, 2011, my little sister Marilyn and her man, a fellow named Ted, arrived at Hobby airport for a visit with us. I had not seen Marilyn for almost ten years, and I had never met Ted. I had already checked out all kinds of stuff the previous several days for places to take them while they were here. Unfortunately, there were not going to be any home baseball games or other sporting events or entertainment events of any particular interest, and I was kind of anxious about what we would do or talk about. Marilyn said don’t worry about that kind of stuff, that all they wanted to do was hang around with us for a few days.
Well, we talked kind of late the night they arrived, and they were tired from their trip, so we got started a little bit late on Friday. We ate a Mexican lunch at a nearby Lupe' Tortilla’s restaurant and lazed around the house that afternoon. On Saturday morning, we decided to go see the Water Wall in the Galleria area. It is a romantic location where many couples get engaged and like to get their pictures taken. I realized that although I have lived in Houston for more than a quarter of a century, I had never been to the Water Wall before. It is pretty impressive.
Afterward, Ted was admiring the nice landscaping with all the young live oak trees.
I suggested that since he liked live oak trees, we ought to go to Beck's Prime restaurant on Westheimer and have hamburgers for lunch under The Tree (as I know it). I hold it in awe, because it is over 400 years old. We did just that. The weather was perfect for it, and our burgers were great.
After lunch we drove through Memorial Park, which Ted really admired, especially noting that among all the other stuff -- golf course, baseball fields, volley ball courts, swimming pool, hiking trails, jogging trails, bike trails, soccer fields, tennis courts, picnic areas, arboretum, etc. -- they even had a croquet court. That seemed to really impress him. There were lots of joggers out.
Then we went to the Beer Can House, a very weird place indeed. Some crazy old fart spent a good part of his life creating something so enormously tacky that it has become a favorite tourist attraction.
Upon leaving the Beer Can House, we proceeded to a little park northwest of downtown, where Ted got some really good pictures of the downtown Houston skyline.
Next, we rode the Main Street train from one middle to the other and back. It was way too crowded at the north end of the line near Minute Maid Park and Discovery Green to get on the train there. There was some kind of festival going on. Instead, we got on at the middle of the line and rode south to the end of the line, where we got off and got a good view of the Astrodome, an engineering marvel -- forlorn, ignored, and forgotten though it is these days.
We got back on the train and rode it all the way north to Minute Maid Park and south again to where we had parked. Throughout the whole time we kept wondering why nobody was collecting tickets. When we had first got on, Ted bought four tickets for $1.00 apiece. We observed that we could just as well not have bought them, since nobody ever asked for them, and, besides, how in the world did the City expect to make money on the rail line if nobody ever checked for tickets? Well, Elaine and I had lunch with some old friends of ours a few days after Marilyn and Ted left, and I brought up the question. My friend Barbara explained it this way: "The way they do it is, they randomly check people getting off, and if your ticket time has expired, they fine you $200." I said, "Oh… I see …" I hadn’t even noticed that our tickets were good for a limited period of time.
On Sunday morning, Ted and I went back to Memorial Park to play croquet. There was one little problem. Although there was a gate at the croquet court right near a parking area, it was locked. Now, from east to west, there is an office or clubhouse, several tennis courts, and on the far west end is the croquet court. We had to walk through the clubhouse and out back and then down past all the tennis courts before we could get into the croquet court through a back gate. To me, it seemed like about 9,756 feet, and by the time we got to the court, I was already done in. Oh, by the way, did I mention that the temperature was 100 oF, and I was using a cane? Ted and I played one-half of one game before I collapsed from the heat. I sat down for awhile, but eventually I made it back to the car, with Ted’s help all the way, of course.
We rescued the day by all four of us playing Budweiser Croquet after lunch inside the house. Marilyn won. Budweiser Croquet is where you use two cans of Budweiser beer for a wicket and one can for a stake, and you lay a course through your house or some part of it. I invented the game many years ago. Of course, you don’t have to use Budweiser, but that’s what I used the first time I ever played the game, so I call it Budweiser Croquet. You need large rooms and a carpeted floor to play it. I am fortunate in that I have a huge carpeted living room.
Marilyn and Ted left on Monday, June 6th, and we were sad to see them go. I couldn’t recall many weekends in my life that were nearly as much fun as the one we had just spent with them. Ted is a good person, fun to be around, and I was pleased to see my little sister happy with him. I sure hope it’s not another ten years before I see her again.
Well, we talked kind of late the night they arrived, and they were tired from their trip, so we got started a little bit late on Friday. We ate a Mexican lunch at a nearby Lupe' Tortilla’s restaurant and lazed around the house that afternoon. On Saturday morning, we decided to go see the Water Wall in the Galleria area. It is a romantic location where many couples get engaged and like to get their pictures taken. I realized that although I have lived in Houston for more than a quarter of a century, I had never been to the Water Wall before. It is pretty impressive.
Afterward, Ted was admiring the nice landscaping with all the young live oak trees.
I suggested that since he liked live oak trees, we ought to go to Beck's Prime restaurant on Westheimer and have hamburgers for lunch under The Tree (as I know it). I hold it in awe, because it is over 400 years old. We did just that. The weather was perfect for it, and our burgers were great.
After lunch we drove through Memorial Park, which Ted really admired, especially noting that among all the other stuff -- golf course, baseball fields, volley ball courts, swimming pool, hiking trails, jogging trails, bike trails, soccer fields, tennis courts, picnic areas, arboretum, etc. -- they even had a croquet court. That seemed to really impress him. There were lots of joggers out.
Then we went to the Beer Can House, a very weird place indeed. Some crazy old fart spent a good part of his life creating something so enormously tacky that it has become a favorite tourist attraction.
Upon leaving the Beer Can House, we proceeded to a little park northwest of downtown, where Ted got some really good pictures of the downtown Houston skyline.
Next, we rode the Main Street train from one middle to the other and back. It was way too crowded at the north end of the line near Minute Maid Park and Discovery Green to get on the train there. There was some kind of festival going on. Instead, we got on at the middle of the line and rode south to the end of the line, where we got off and got a good view of the Astrodome, an engineering marvel -- forlorn, ignored, and forgotten though it is these days.
We got back on the train and rode it all the way north to Minute Maid Park and south again to where we had parked. Throughout the whole time we kept wondering why nobody was collecting tickets. When we had first got on, Ted bought four tickets for $1.00 apiece. We observed that we could just as well not have bought them, since nobody ever asked for them, and, besides, how in the world did the City expect to make money on the rail line if nobody ever checked for tickets? Well, Elaine and I had lunch with some old friends of ours a few days after Marilyn and Ted left, and I brought up the question. My friend Barbara explained it this way: "The way they do it is, they randomly check people getting off, and if your ticket time has expired, they fine you $200." I said, "Oh… I see …" I hadn’t even noticed that our tickets were good for a limited period of time.
On Sunday morning, Ted and I went back to Memorial Park to play croquet. There was one little problem. Although there was a gate at the croquet court right near a parking area, it was locked. Now, from east to west, there is an office or clubhouse, several tennis courts, and on the far west end is the croquet court. We had to walk through the clubhouse and out back and then down past all the tennis courts before we could get into the croquet court through a back gate. To me, it seemed like about 9,756 feet, and by the time we got to the court, I was already done in. Oh, by the way, did I mention that the temperature was 100 oF, and I was using a cane? Ted and I played one-half of one game before I collapsed from the heat. I sat down for awhile, but eventually I made it back to the car, with Ted’s help all the way, of course.
We rescued the day by all four of us playing Budweiser Croquet after lunch inside the house. Marilyn won. Budweiser Croquet is where you use two cans of Budweiser beer for a wicket and one can for a stake, and you lay a course through your house or some part of it. I invented the game many years ago. Of course, you don’t have to use Budweiser, but that’s what I used the first time I ever played the game, so I call it Budweiser Croquet. You need large rooms and a carpeted floor to play it. I am fortunate in that I have a huge carpeted living room.
Marilyn and Ted left on Monday, June 6th, and we were sad to see them go. I couldn’t recall many weekends in my life that were nearly as much fun as the one we had just spent with them. Ted is a good person, fun to be around, and I was pleased to see my little sister happy with him. I sure hope it’s not another ten years before I see her again.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Nice Guy
There was this guy who got his overalls real greasy working on his car, so he put them into a bucket and soaked them with gasoline to loosen the grease. Later on, his wife retrieved the overalls from the bucket and threw them into the washing machine, as she was going to wash a load of darks. The warm water came on and made the gasoline vaporize, and when the timer switch switched to rinse, a spark ignited the vapor. The explosion killed the man’s wife, and it destroyed the utility room, the bathroom, and the kitchen. The widower sued his dead wife’s mom and dad, because they were the ones who gave the washing machine to them as an anniversary present.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Dr. Dan and the Baghouse
Dan was my best friend and favorite coworker for several years in the 1990’s. We ate lunch together three or four times a week. I sometimes called him Dr. Dan, and for some reason he often called me Main Man.
Dan has a Ph. D. in Geography. He was once a Professor at Columbia University. He is from Long Island, and he is from a family of commercial fishermen. His brothers are commercial fishermen. Dan is the first person in his family ever to get a college degree. He was also the first person in our company to become a Certified Industrial Hygienist, no small feat. Dan is a really smart guy, and he is kind of professorial in his demeanor, if you know what I mean.
Dan got a job assignment that pertained to a lead foundry in Mexico. The foundry baghouse had burned down, and Dan was involved because of the resulting lead contamination. Environmental work was what Dan mostly did. He came to me wanting to know all about baghouses.
I explained that a baghouse was a contraption that cleaned the air by capturing airborne particulates such as coal dust, lead dust, or sawdust. It is essentially a container of giant tube socks, or bags, which are hanging upside down; that is to say, hanging with the open ends at the bottom. Some baghouses are shaped like vertical cylinders; others are box-like. Airborne emissions that contain particulates are blown upward through the socks. The socks catch the particulates but let the air escape through to the atmosphere. In fact, the only way the air can escape to the atmosphere is through the socks.
Every so often a motor turns on and shakes the socks to knock the particulates loose, by rotating a cam geared to the sock assembly. Alternatively, a sudden puff of air is blown through the socks in the downward direction. The loosened particulates fall to the bottom of the baghouse. They are physically removed from there and disposed of. Baghouses are used in places like foundries, lumber mills, water treatment plants, and etcetera. We found pictures, diagrams, and illustrations of baghouses, but Dan wanted to see one up close in person.
Well, I knew of a place with a baghouse. My father-in-law, a very smart man called L. W., owned a lumber yard. Indeed, he had founded it and nurtured it and grown it into a very successful operation over the years. I asked him, could we please come out and see his baghouse? Of course, we could. When we got out there, we saw that it was of the cylinder variety. We discovered that the door to get inside of it was on the cylinder wall about thirty feet up. It was accessible from a little platform that you could get to by a ladder welded onto the outer wall of the cylinder. The bottom rung of the ladder, however, was about fifteen feet up. That was no problem for L.W.. He got one of his employees to bring over a fork lift, and I stood on a pallet lifted by the tongs. When I was up high enough to get on the ladder, I started climbing. Eventually I got to the door. I tried to turn the knob one way and then the other, to no avail, and I shook it and rattled it and did all the things you do with a door knob before you conclude that it is really locked. Well, it was really locked, and while L.W. was trying to remember where the key to it was, a swarm of angry wasps came after me from their nest under the guardrail.
I never descended a ladder so fast in my life, but I got stung nonetheless, a couple of times at least. Dan and L.W. were laughing too hard to be of any help. Finally, I managed to find a smoker on the premises, and I bummed a couple of cigarettes from him. I got the tobacco out of the cigarette papers and spit on it and applied the moistened tobacco to the places where I had been stung. After a little while the hurting began to subside, because, you know, the tobacco leaches the poison out. The wasp incident pretty much ended our day. Dan did not get to see inside the baghouse, and that was a big disappointment.
A few months passed. One Saturday morning I got a telephone call at home. It was Dan. He was in Sulphur, Louisiana, at a water treatment plant there. The plant used quicklime in the treatment process. The quicklime was stored in dry form, as a very fine, white powder, or dust. It turns out that while the plant’s quicklime storage tank was being refilled, there was an explosion. The roof of the tank was blown out and peeled back just like the lid on a can of peas when you open it. Quicklime was blown all over the neighborhood, up to a mile away. Dan said it looked like there had been a snow storm. Dan had been called in to assess the environmental damage and devise a remediation plan. After he got there, though, the plant manager asked him if he would also be able to determine the cause of the explosion. Dan said, oh no, sir, that he didn’t do anything at all like that. Dan told him that he would need to get me over there to figure that out.
I drove over to Sulphur, and when I got there, I had never seen anything like it. Everything was white! The quicklime tank was elevated maybe twenty feet off the ground and had a funnel-shaped bottom draw-off. The quicklime supply man stated that he had hooked the loose end of his truck hose into the tank bottom draw-off and turned on his blower. That’s how they refilled their quicklime tanks; they blew the quicklime in from the supply trucks. They had been doing it this way for years.
I always do a lot of walking around and looking when I investigate explosions. And I do a lot of thinking about how the process works. Now, it goes without saying that if you fill a tank with dry quicklime by blowing it into the tank, you have to let the air escape or you’ll blow the roof off. Which is what happened here. Therefore, the tank venting system had to have been blocked, and the air couldn’t escape. It also goes without saying that you can’t just let the air blow through the tank without capturing the quicklime, or you’ll just wind up blowing all the quicklime from the supply truck into the atmosphere. And what do you need to capture the quicklime? Yes, a baghouse. I reasoned that there had to have been a baghouse, which would have likely been on the roof of the tank. It must have been plugged up, and it must have been blown off the roof.
So, I knew what I was looking for, but I did not know exactly what this one looked like. In my walking around, I spotted what looked like an outhouse or one of those portable potties you see around construction sites, but it was a good bit larger. It was about fifty yards from the tank, and it looked suspiciously out of place for some reason I couldn’t put my finger on. I began to get that tingle I sometimes get when I know I have figured something out and am about to prove it.
Sure enough, when I walked over to the “outhouse” and opened the door, I saw that it was a baghouse. As I expected, all the socks were so jammed packed with quicklime that no air could possibly get through them. They looked like giant, white sausages about to burst out of their skins. I concluded that the motor that shakes the socks out every so often must have failed. After that happened, the socks gradually filled up completely. And then when the supply man hooked up his hose and started his blower, he blew the tank roof off, along with the baghouse that was installed on it. It looked to me like quicklime had gotten inside the motor and clogged it up, causing it to fail. I could check that later.
I was excited, and I couldn’t wait to show Dan, but I closed the baghouse door and maintained a calm demeanor. “Dr. Dan” I called across the plant yard. “Can you come here just a minute? I want to ask you something.” Dan walked over. I was barely able to stifle my excitement as I opened the baghouse door and asked him, “Do you know what this is?” Dan stood there for a minute looking without seeing. Then the scales fell from his eyes; he was suddenly stunned, and he couldn’t even speak for a few seconds. Then all he could do was gasp, “A BAGHOUSE! A BAGHOUSE!” You found a BAGHOUSE!” Dr. Dan had finally gotten to see a baghouse. He was thrilled, and so was I.
Dan has a Ph. D. in Geography. He was once a Professor at Columbia University. He is from Long Island, and he is from a family of commercial fishermen. His brothers are commercial fishermen. Dan is the first person in his family ever to get a college degree. He was also the first person in our company to become a Certified Industrial Hygienist, no small feat. Dan is a really smart guy, and he is kind of professorial in his demeanor, if you know what I mean.
Dan got a job assignment that pertained to a lead foundry in Mexico. The foundry baghouse had burned down, and Dan was involved because of the resulting lead contamination. Environmental work was what Dan mostly did. He came to me wanting to know all about baghouses.
I explained that a baghouse was a contraption that cleaned the air by capturing airborne particulates such as coal dust, lead dust, or sawdust. It is essentially a container of giant tube socks, or bags, which are hanging upside down; that is to say, hanging with the open ends at the bottom. Some baghouses are shaped like vertical cylinders; others are box-like. Airborne emissions that contain particulates are blown upward through the socks. The socks catch the particulates but let the air escape through to the atmosphere. In fact, the only way the air can escape to the atmosphere is through the socks.
Every so often a motor turns on and shakes the socks to knock the particulates loose, by rotating a cam geared to the sock assembly. Alternatively, a sudden puff of air is blown through the socks in the downward direction. The loosened particulates fall to the bottom of the baghouse. They are physically removed from there and disposed of. Baghouses are used in places like foundries, lumber mills, water treatment plants, and etcetera. We found pictures, diagrams, and illustrations of baghouses, but Dan wanted to see one up close in person.
Well, I knew of a place with a baghouse. My father-in-law, a very smart man called L. W., owned a lumber yard. Indeed, he had founded it and nurtured it and grown it into a very successful operation over the years. I asked him, could we please come out and see his baghouse? Of course, we could. When we got out there, we saw that it was of the cylinder variety. We discovered that the door to get inside of it was on the cylinder wall about thirty feet up. It was accessible from a little platform that you could get to by a ladder welded onto the outer wall of the cylinder. The bottom rung of the ladder, however, was about fifteen feet up. That was no problem for L.W.. He got one of his employees to bring over a fork lift, and I stood on a pallet lifted by the tongs. When I was up high enough to get on the ladder, I started climbing. Eventually I got to the door. I tried to turn the knob one way and then the other, to no avail, and I shook it and rattled it and did all the things you do with a door knob before you conclude that it is really locked. Well, it was really locked, and while L.W. was trying to remember where the key to it was, a swarm of angry wasps came after me from their nest under the guardrail.
I never descended a ladder so fast in my life, but I got stung nonetheless, a couple of times at least. Dan and L.W. were laughing too hard to be of any help. Finally, I managed to find a smoker on the premises, and I bummed a couple of cigarettes from him. I got the tobacco out of the cigarette papers and spit on it and applied the moistened tobacco to the places where I had been stung. After a little while the hurting began to subside, because, you know, the tobacco leaches the poison out. The wasp incident pretty much ended our day. Dan did not get to see inside the baghouse, and that was a big disappointment.
A few months passed. One Saturday morning I got a telephone call at home. It was Dan. He was in Sulphur, Louisiana, at a water treatment plant there. The plant used quicklime in the treatment process. The quicklime was stored in dry form, as a very fine, white powder, or dust. It turns out that while the plant’s quicklime storage tank was being refilled, there was an explosion. The roof of the tank was blown out and peeled back just like the lid on a can of peas when you open it. Quicklime was blown all over the neighborhood, up to a mile away. Dan said it looked like there had been a snow storm. Dan had been called in to assess the environmental damage and devise a remediation plan. After he got there, though, the plant manager asked him if he would also be able to determine the cause of the explosion. Dan said, oh no, sir, that he didn’t do anything at all like that. Dan told him that he would need to get me over there to figure that out.
I drove over to Sulphur, and when I got there, I had never seen anything like it. Everything was white! The quicklime tank was elevated maybe twenty feet off the ground and had a funnel-shaped bottom draw-off. The quicklime supply man stated that he had hooked the loose end of his truck hose into the tank bottom draw-off and turned on his blower. That’s how they refilled their quicklime tanks; they blew the quicklime in from the supply trucks. They had been doing it this way for years.
I always do a lot of walking around and looking when I investigate explosions. And I do a lot of thinking about how the process works. Now, it goes without saying that if you fill a tank with dry quicklime by blowing it into the tank, you have to let the air escape or you’ll blow the roof off. Which is what happened here. Therefore, the tank venting system had to have been blocked, and the air couldn’t escape. It also goes without saying that you can’t just let the air blow through the tank without capturing the quicklime, or you’ll just wind up blowing all the quicklime from the supply truck into the atmosphere. And what do you need to capture the quicklime? Yes, a baghouse. I reasoned that there had to have been a baghouse, which would have likely been on the roof of the tank. It must have been plugged up, and it must have been blown off the roof.
So, I knew what I was looking for, but I did not know exactly what this one looked like. In my walking around, I spotted what looked like an outhouse or one of those portable potties you see around construction sites, but it was a good bit larger. It was about fifty yards from the tank, and it looked suspiciously out of place for some reason I couldn’t put my finger on. I began to get that tingle I sometimes get when I know I have figured something out and am about to prove it.
Sure enough, when I walked over to the “outhouse” and opened the door, I saw that it was a baghouse. As I expected, all the socks were so jammed packed with quicklime that no air could possibly get through them. They looked like giant, white sausages about to burst out of their skins. I concluded that the motor that shakes the socks out every so often must have failed. After that happened, the socks gradually filled up completely. And then when the supply man hooked up his hose and started his blower, he blew the tank roof off, along with the baghouse that was installed on it. It looked to me like quicklime had gotten inside the motor and clogged it up, causing it to fail. I could check that later.
I was excited, and I couldn’t wait to show Dan, but I closed the baghouse door and maintained a calm demeanor. “Dr. Dan” I called across the plant yard. “Can you come here just a minute? I want to ask you something.” Dan walked over. I was barely able to stifle my excitement as I opened the baghouse door and asked him, “Do you know what this is?” Dan stood there for a minute looking without seeing. Then the scales fell from his eyes; he was suddenly stunned, and he couldn’t even speak for a few seconds. Then all he could do was gasp, “A BAGHOUSE! A BAGHOUSE!” You found a BAGHOUSE!” Dr. Dan had finally gotten to see a baghouse. He was thrilled, and so was I.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
A Crazy Job
It was a crazy job from the get-go, and the only one I’ve ever done that had to be coordinated with the phases of the moon. Barbara had gotten this assignment to reconstruct a highway accident and videotape it on the accident site. She had data on the vehicles involved, speeds and distances, and so on, from the police report and depositions and whatnot. Here’s how it all happened to the best of my recollection.
A man was attempting to change a left tire, on the narrow shoulder of a two-lane blacktop at night, and he had his butt hanging out into the road. He was at the bottom of a hill. It was a clear night, but there was no moon at the time. An eighteen-wheeler came over the hill on the same side of the road and clipped him.
The man who was hit was from a road-service outfit. He had driven a two-ton flatbed truck to the site and parked off the road in front of the guy with the flat tire. That guy was driving a gray, 1974 International Harvester Scout and was hauling a two-wheel dolly behind him, with a red, 1966 Mustang on top of it. The left tire on the dolly developed a flat, and the man called the road-service outfit for help.
I first got involved in this job by calculating some stuff for Barbara. Then she asked me to go find a ’66 Mustang somewhere, and do it in a hurry. She also asked for help with the logistics of getting everything on the accident site at the right time. In less than two weeks, she had to have everything – a flatbed truck and driver, a ‘74 Scout, a two-wheeled dolly, a ’66 Mustang, an eighteen-wheeler and driver, plus a video crew – on some road up somewhere up in the tri-state area. This whole re-creation of the accident had to be timed so there was no moon when we did it. Scott had earlier spotted a ’74 Scout in the same parking garage we used, and he promised to locate the owner and try to make some kind of deal with him. I went to Bob, our CEO, and asked him for $5,000 from petty cash. I told him that if I was lucky enough to find a ’66 Mustang, I would likely have to offer cash on the spot to get it, and I figured I’d have to pay $4,000 to $5,000 for it. He grumbled at me, but he saw my point, and I got the $5,000.
Then I enlisted Dan to help me. He got a lot of car ads and a city map, and I drove. We were in my almost brand new bright red, 1992, five-on-the-floor Camaro, with a five-liter engine. I really liked that car. We nearly covered the city looking for a ’66 Mustang, and it was getting late on the second or third day when we finally came up on this old boy’s house somewhere in the far east part of Houston . He had almost finished restoring a ’66 Mustang. The interior panels for the doors still needed to be installed, but other than that, it was pretty cool. It ran really well, and he had painted it a nice looking metallic gold.
I asked him what he would sell it for, and he said $4,500. With no hesitation at all, I whipped out a stack of $100 bills and peeled off 45 of them, one by one, counting them off out loud as I placed each one into his open hand. He looked kind of dumbfounded but handed over the car title and registration, and we had our ’66 Mustang. We drove it directly to an Earl Scheib paint shop and instructed them to give the car a new red paint job as soon as possible. It was still tacky the next morning, but we deemed it good enough to go. We were in a hurry.
Meanwhile, throughout all this we had to keep calling around talking to truck rental outfits for a two-wheeled dolly, a flatbed truck and driver, and an eighteen-wheeler and driver. We didn’t have cell phones back then, or the Internet. Scott had managed to reach the Scout owner and had bought it from him. It had to be repainted too, so back to Earl Scheib. Then, Scott, who was the video man for Barbara, said the new coats of paint were too shiny, and made the painters do another coat and dust them up while they were still tacky. Boy, those guys hated to have to do that, especially to the Mustang.
Anyway, we finally got everything flanged up just in time. I had arranged for a flatbed truck and driver to come to the Earl Scheib paint shop. The Mustang and the Scout would be loaded onto the flatbed (it had a ramp). The flatbed driver was hauling a two-wheeled dolly. He would drive up to the site, a two-day drive, and we would fly up there and drive out to meet him. Barbara had arranged to have all the video equipment transported to the site. Meanwhile, I had arranged for an eighteen-wheeler and driver to meet us there too. We had just got the Scout and the Mustang onto the flatbed, and I was filling out papers with the driver, when an Earl Scheib employee stepped outside and yelled, was one of us Philip? It seems I had a phone call. Or maybe it was Scott who got the call, whatever. It was from Barbara. She told us the case had just settled, and the client wanted us to stop work. The timing was perfect, because we were all ready to head home for supper.
A man was attempting to change a left tire, on the narrow shoulder of a two-lane blacktop at night, and he had his butt hanging out into the road. He was at the bottom of a hill. It was a clear night, but there was no moon at the time. An eighteen-wheeler came over the hill on the same side of the road and clipped him.
The man who was hit was from a road-service outfit. He had driven a two-ton flatbed truck to the site and parked off the road in front of the guy with the flat tire. That guy was driving a gray, 1974 International Harvester Scout and was hauling a two-wheel dolly behind him, with a red, 1966 Mustang on top of it. The left tire on the dolly developed a flat, and the man called the road-service outfit for help.
I first got involved in this job by calculating some stuff for Barbara. Then she asked me to go find a ’66 Mustang somewhere, and do it in a hurry. She also asked for help with the logistics of getting everything on the accident site at the right time. In less than two weeks, she had to have everything – a flatbed truck and driver, a ‘74 Scout, a two-wheeled dolly, a ’66 Mustang, an eighteen-wheeler and driver, plus a video crew – on some road up somewhere up in the tri-state area. This whole re-creation of the accident had to be timed so there was no moon when we did it. Scott had earlier spotted a ’74 Scout in the same parking garage we used, and he promised to locate the owner and try to make some kind of deal with him. I went to Bob, our CEO, and asked him for $5,000 from petty cash. I told him that if I was lucky enough to find a ’66 Mustang, I would likely have to offer cash on the spot to get it, and I figured I’d have to pay $4,000 to $5,000 for it. He grumbled at me, but he saw my point, and I got the $5,000.
Then I enlisted Dan to help me. He got a lot of car ads and a city map, and I drove. We were in my almost brand new bright red, 1992, five-on-the-floor Camaro, with a five-liter engine. I really liked that car. We nearly covered the city looking for a ’66 Mustang, and it was getting late on the second or third day when we finally came up on this old boy’s house somewhere in the far east part of Houston . He had almost finished restoring a ’66 Mustang. The interior panels for the doors still needed to be installed, but other than that, it was pretty cool. It ran really well, and he had painted it a nice looking metallic gold.
I asked him what he would sell it for, and he said $4,500. With no hesitation at all, I whipped out a stack of $100 bills and peeled off 45 of them, one by one, counting them off out loud as I placed each one into his open hand. He looked kind of dumbfounded but handed over the car title and registration, and we had our ’66 Mustang. We drove it directly to an Earl Scheib paint shop and instructed them to give the car a new red paint job as soon as possible. It was still tacky the next morning, but we deemed it good enough to go. We were in a hurry.
Meanwhile, throughout all this we had to keep calling around talking to truck rental outfits for a two-wheeled dolly, a flatbed truck and driver, and an eighteen-wheeler and driver. We didn’t have cell phones back then, or the Internet. Scott had managed to reach the Scout owner and had bought it from him. It had to be repainted too, so back to Earl Scheib. Then, Scott, who was the video man for Barbara, said the new coats of paint were too shiny, and made the painters do another coat and dust them up while they were still tacky. Boy, those guys hated to have to do that, especially to the Mustang.
Anyway, we finally got everything flanged up just in time. I had arranged for a flatbed truck and driver to come to the Earl Scheib paint shop. The Mustang and the Scout would be loaded onto the flatbed (it had a ramp). The flatbed driver was hauling a two-wheeled dolly. He would drive up to the site, a two-day drive, and we would fly up there and drive out to meet him. Barbara had arranged to have all the video equipment transported to the site. Meanwhile, I had arranged for an eighteen-wheeler and driver to meet us there too. We had just got the Scout and the Mustang onto the flatbed, and I was filling out papers with the driver, when an Earl Scheib employee stepped outside and yelled, was one of us Philip? It seems I had a phone call. Or maybe it was Scott who got the call, whatever. It was from Barbara. She told us the case had just settled, and the client wanted us to stop work. The timing was perfect, because we were all ready to head home for supper.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Ethanol in Gasoline Sucks.
Right now, members of our United States Congress are debating ways to reduce spending. Well, one way is to stop spending our tax money on stupid things. For example, a huge amount of our tax money is spent on corporate welfare to large agribusiness corporations to raise corn, for the purpose of making ethanol to put into our gasoline. By law, ethanol must be blended with gasoline in many areas of the country (e.g., Houston, where I live). As a result, the use of ethanol in gasoline has increased substantially over the past decade, while the cost of food has also increased as a direct result of ethanol consuming ever more of the corn crop.
Making ethanol from corn to put in your gasoline is truly one of the dumbest ideas to come down the pike in generations, and the purpose of this posting is to urge you to write your United States Senators and Representative(s) and tell them to stop wasting our money on such an insane policy.
Currently, the federal government imposes a 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on ethanol imports and provides a 45-cents-per-gallon subsidy for blending it into gasoline. Naturally, the tariff discourages (essentially eliminates) importing ethanol from Brazil, where they make ethanol from sugar cane, which is cheaper than making it from corn. And the subsidy encourages the otherwise uneconomical production of ethanol from domestically grown corn.
The tariff and the subsidy were both extended through 2011 by means of H.R. 4853. President Obama signed the bill into law on December 17, 2010. The items in it that are related to spurring ethanol production from corn to put into our gasoline need to be repealed, and now is the time to do it.
Former Vice president Al Gore, that Nobel-Prize winning, “green energy” activist, has admitted that his support for corn-based ethanol subsidies, while serving as Vice President, had more to do with getting votes in the 2000 Presidential Election than with saving the environment. He also admitted that corn-based ethanol subsidies are not good policy.
At a green energy conference in Athens, Greece, Gore said, “One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for President."
He also stated "It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol. He also said that the energy conversion ratios -- how much energy is produced in the process -- "are at best very small." (As stated below, I believe they are negative.)
Consider the following:
• A gallon of ethanol has only about 2/3 the energy as a gallon of gasoline; hence, your miles per gallon will decrease if you use gasoline containing ethanol.
• Corn is food, after all, so making corn into ethanol for our cars is tantamount to burning up our food, and it is driving up the cost of the remaining food that we have available to eat. Corn is a staple food for cattle, hogs, sheep, and chickens, so the cost of meat and poultry are going up, along with the cost of corn itself. Just a couple of years ago, I could get an ear of corn for ten cents an ear in season, and now the price is about 33 cents. There has also been about a substantial increase in the in the price of Jack Daniels.
• Ethanol loves water and soaks it up from its environment, so it can’t be shipped in long-distance pipelines with gasoline, because the water will corrode the piping and pumping machinery. The ethanol will also dry out the seals at the compressor stations. Consequently, it has to be transported in tank trucks or railroad tank cars, at a higher cost than transporting it by pipeline, and it must be mixed with the gasoline near the market place.
• Corn requires immense amounts of fertilizer, more than any other crop, and the runoff goes into the Mississippi River and runs down to the Gulf of Mexico, where it creates a dead zone the size of New Jersey or larger.
• It takes more energy to make ethanol from corn than you get from the ethanol. This assertion has been disputed by certain studies that have been made, but when you think about all the energy that goes into plowing the land and planting the corn, weeding and watering and spraying the crop while its growing, harvesting the corn, shucking it, stripping the kernels from the cobs, crushing them, distilling the mash, transporting the ethanol, etc., it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine the possibility that you’re putting more into it than you’re getting out of it. I have carefully reviewed several of the studies that have been done out there over the past several years, and in my view, the most thorough and logical studies support my claim that it takes more energy to make ethanol from corn than you get from the ethanol.
• The only good reason for making corn into ethanol is for whiskey.
Making ethanol from corn to put in your gasoline is truly one of the dumbest ideas to come down the pike in generations, and the purpose of this posting is to urge you to write your United States Senators and Representative(s) and tell them to stop wasting our money on such an insane policy.
Currently, the federal government imposes a 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on ethanol imports and provides a 45-cents-per-gallon subsidy for blending it into gasoline. Naturally, the tariff discourages (essentially eliminates) importing ethanol from Brazil, where they make ethanol from sugar cane, which is cheaper than making it from corn. And the subsidy encourages the otherwise uneconomical production of ethanol from domestically grown corn.
The tariff and the subsidy were both extended through 2011 by means of H.R. 4853. President Obama signed the bill into law on December 17, 2010. The items in it that are related to spurring ethanol production from corn to put into our gasoline need to be repealed, and now is the time to do it.
Former Vice president Al Gore, that Nobel-Prize winning, “green energy” activist, has admitted that his support for corn-based ethanol subsidies, while serving as Vice President, had more to do with getting votes in the 2000 Presidential Election than with saving the environment. He also admitted that corn-based ethanol subsidies are not good policy.
At a green energy conference in Athens, Greece, Gore said, “One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for President."
He also stated "It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol. He also said that the energy conversion ratios -- how much energy is produced in the process -- "are at best very small." (As stated below, I believe they are negative.)
Consider the following:
• A gallon of ethanol has only about 2/3 the energy as a gallon of gasoline; hence, your miles per gallon will decrease if you use gasoline containing ethanol.
• Corn is food, after all, so making corn into ethanol for our cars is tantamount to burning up our food, and it is driving up the cost of the remaining food that we have available to eat. Corn is a staple food for cattle, hogs, sheep, and chickens, so the cost of meat and poultry are going up, along with the cost of corn itself. Just a couple of years ago, I could get an ear of corn for ten cents an ear in season, and now the price is about 33 cents. There has also been about a substantial increase in the in the price of Jack Daniels.
• Ethanol loves water and soaks it up from its environment, so it can’t be shipped in long-distance pipelines with gasoline, because the water will corrode the piping and pumping machinery. The ethanol will also dry out the seals at the compressor stations. Consequently, it has to be transported in tank trucks or railroad tank cars, at a higher cost than transporting it by pipeline, and it must be mixed with the gasoline near the market place.
• Corn requires immense amounts of fertilizer, more than any other crop, and the runoff goes into the Mississippi River and runs down to the Gulf of Mexico, where it creates a dead zone the size of New Jersey or larger.
• It takes more energy to make ethanol from corn than you get from the ethanol. This assertion has been disputed by certain studies that have been made, but when you think about all the energy that goes into plowing the land and planting the corn, weeding and watering and spraying the crop while its growing, harvesting the corn, shucking it, stripping the kernels from the cobs, crushing them, distilling the mash, transporting the ethanol, etc., it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine the possibility that you’re putting more into it than you’re getting out of it. I have carefully reviewed several of the studies that have been done out there over the past several years, and in my view, the most thorough and logical studies support my claim that it takes more energy to make ethanol from corn than you get from the ethanol.
• The only good reason for making corn into ethanol is for whiskey.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
My Visit to Sierra Blanca
It was the summer of 1982, and we were going on a road trip to a family reunion in Wimberley, Texas, some 560 miles east of our home in El Paso. Our family car at the time was a 1966 Chevelle Malibu Sports Coupe. Elaine’s dad had given it to us as a wedding present. It was a great car, with a standard shift and a V-8 engine, and it ran like a scalded cat, but after 16 years we really did need a new car.
We decided to buy a Mercury Grand Marquis. At the time, we figured it might be the only new car we would see for many years to come, so we splurged and ordered it with some extras – for example, wing vents (remember those?), a towing package, and a premium sound system that even played audio cassette tapes.
For some reason I never understood, the car was to be delivered in Fort Stockton, and I would have to drive over there to get it. Since Fort Stockton was some 250 miles east of El Paso, I thought that arrangement sucked big time (although at the time I probably had not heard that expression). Worse yet, it wouldn’t be delivered in time for us to drive it on the trip to Wimberley. I worried over that some but soon quit thinking about it as the day approached for us to leave.
Neal and Glen were thirteen and ten at the time and Ellen was only one. The Chevelle was crowded with all of us in it, but worse yet; the AC crapped out about half way to Wimberley. Ellen overheated easily; besides being that it was a typical Texas summer, hot as hell, so you didn’t need to be a baby to suffer from the heat. We were all miserably hot, and then things got downright scary when Ellen got sick from it and started throwing up, and her body got all hot to the touch. We got really worried, and when we got to Wimberley we gave a huge sigh of relief.
When the reunion was over, we drove another 180 miles eastward to Houston to visit Elaine’s parents, with the AC still not working. We worried all the way about Ellen and kept wiping her forehead with a wet rag. We decided that after a day or two in Houston, Elaine would fly back to El Paso with Neal and Glen and Ellen, whereas I would drive back myself in the Chevelle. And so it came to pass.
Somewhere on the western edge of San Antonio, I spotted a hitch-hiker down the road. Now, I was a hitch-hiker from way back, and despite having read In Cold Blood, I still had a hard time passing a hitch-hiker by without experiencing a tinge of guilt, given the thousands of miles that other folks had hauled me back in the day. So, I slowed down and looked at him closely. He looked to be about halfway between a hippie and an oil-patch roughneck. I decided I might give him a ride. I rolled to a stop next to him and let down my window some. Asked him who he was and where he was going and so on. Asked him was he carrying any weapons. He said not unless you counted his pocket knife.
He told me his name was Clive (or maybe it was Carl), and that he was headed to Oregon to get a logging job. Said he knew somebody who knew somebody who could get him on with a logging crew. This was a good thing, since he had just lost his job in Louisiana. After a few minutes I decided, what the hell, and told him to get in. Off we went, and after awhile we got to talking, and after a couple hours of that we had become pretty good friends. Then I had one of those great ideas on which fate turns. I told him I had a new car waiting for me in Fort Stockton (it had been delivered to the dealer while we were in Wimberley). I asked him if I picked up the Grand Marquis when we got to Fort Stockton, would he be willing to follow me in the Chevelle from there to El Paso. He said, oh yeah, sure, so the deal was struck, and we continued on down the road.
Now at that period in time, the entire nation suffered under a speed limit of 55 miles per hour, which was imposed during the Nixon administration, ostensibly to save gasoline. I always said that every Congressman who voted for the 55-mph limit should be required to drive at 55 mph from Houston to El Paso. Anybody who’s ever driven over that stretch knows how nearly impossible that is. Me, I think I’m congenitally incapable of driving only 55 mph on stretches like that. What I am trying to say is, that Clive and I were haulin’ ass across the desert at about 85 miles an hour, me in front in the Grand Marquis and Clive behind me in the Chevelle. Oh, by the way, did I say I was really enjoying my new car?
Eventually, we approached Sierra Blanca, a little bitty place in the Guadalupe Mountains about 88 miles east of El Paso. By that time we were fairly flying across the desert; we were on the home stretch. That’s when the Sierra Blanca Sheriff caught me in a speed trap. (Later on, my friends would say things like, “Wow! You didn’t know Sierra Blanca was a notorious speed trap?!” And “Oh yeah, that’s the speed trap from hell!” But had any one of them ever mentioned a word to me about this before I got caught? Not on your life! Forget about it! No way, Jose’!) Anyway, Clive stopped too, about 100 feet behind me.
The Sheriff checked my license and proof of insurance and wrote me a speeding ticket, and then he wanted to know why “that guy in the Chevelle” was sitting back there. I told him how Clive was doing me a favor by following me in my old car so I could drive my new one home, and he promptly walked back there and asked Clive for his driver’s license and proof of insurance. That’s when we learned that Clive’s Louisiana license had expired two weeks before.
Well, the Sheriff arrested Clive and hauled him off to jail, and he (the Sheriff, not Clive) confiscated my Chevelle. After awhile, I followed them over to the jailhouse in the Grand Marquis. It was getting dark now. I started knocking on the door to the jailhouse and hollering questions like, when could I get my car back, and when could I get Clive out, and eventually a big, mean looking sheriff’s deputy came outside with a big gun. He told me I would have to pay my fine and Clive’s fine and a car impoundment fee, which in total naturally amounted to some outrageous amount of money. Then he said if I didn’t have the money on me, I’d better get my butt off the property, or he would lock me up alongside my friend.
Nowadays, ATM machines are commonplace. You can get your hands on some cash in a hurry if you need to. But back in 1982 I had never even seen an ATM machine, and if I had seen one, it certainly wouldn’t have been in Sierra Blanca. Consequently, having no other alternative, I drove the Grand Marquis on home to El Paso. I told the whole story to Elaine, and I said that we would have to go to the bank the next day and get enough cash to get Clive out of jail and get the Chevelle back, and then we would have to drive back to Sierra Blanca and do that.
I knew that if I had not asked Clive to drive the Chevelle, or if I had not been driving 90 miles an hour, he wouldn’t be in jail, so I felt like the right thing to do was to get him out. Besides, I wanted my car back. However, the mean looking deputy with the big gun had scared me a little. So, we left Neal and Glen and Ellen home, and when we got to Sierra Blanca, Elaine parked about 300 yards away, and I walked on up there alone. We had agreed that if I didn’t reappear within an hour, she would drive back home without me and call our lawyer.
The precaution turned out to be unnecessary. I paid the money and got Clive out of jail and got my car back. Clive and I took the Chevelle back to El Paso, with me driving it, and Elaine following us in the Grand Marquis. Clive spent the night with us, and the next day I took him to a big truck stop on IH-10 West, not too far from where we lived. We got a call from him a few weeks later. Said he had gotten to Oregon okay and that he had gotten the logging job and found a place to live. We have not heard from Clive since that day, but I hope he has stayed well and prospered. And I have never returned to Sierra Blanca.
We decided to buy a Mercury Grand Marquis. At the time, we figured it might be the only new car we would see for many years to come, so we splurged and ordered it with some extras – for example, wing vents (remember those?), a towing package, and a premium sound system that even played audio cassette tapes.
For some reason I never understood, the car was to be delivered in Fort Stockton, and I would have to drive over there to get it. Since Fort Stockton was some 250 miles east of El Paso, I thought that arrangement sucked big time (although at the time I probably had not heard that expression). Worse yet, it wouldn’t be delivered in time for us to drive it on the trip to Wimberley. I worried over that some but soon quit thinking about it as the day approached for us to leave.
Neal and Glen were thirteen and ten at the time and Ellen was only one. The Chevelle was crowded with all of us in it, but worse yet; the AC crapped out about half way to Wimberley. Ellen overheated easily; besides being that it was a typical Texas summer, hot as hell, so you didn’t need to be a baby to suffer from the heat. We were all miserably hot, and then things got downright scary when Ellen got sick from it and started throwing up, and her body got all hot to the touch. We got really worried, and when we got to Wimberley we gave a huge sigh of relief.
When the reunion was over, we drove another 180 miles eastward to Houston to visit Elaine’s parents, with the AC still not working. We worried all the way about Ellen and kept wiping her forehead with a wet rag. We decided that after a day or two in Houston, Elaine would fly back to El Paso with Neal and Glen and Ellen, whereas I would drive back myself in the Chevelle. And so it came to pass.
Somewhere on the western edge of San Antonio, I spotted a hitch-hiker down the road. Now, I was a hitch-hiker from way back, and despite having read In Cold Blood, I still had a hard time passing a hitch-hiker by without experiencing a tinge of guilt, given the thousands of miles that other folks had hauled me back in the day. So, I slowed down and looked at him closely. He looked to be about halfway between a hippie and an oil-patch roughneck. I decided I might give him a ride. I rolled to a stop next to him and let down my window some. Asked him who he was and where he was going and so on. Asked him was he carrying any weapons. He said not unless you counted his pocket knife.
He told me his name was Clive (or maybe it was Carl), and that he was headed to Oregon to get a logging job. Said he knew somebody who knew somebody who could get him on with a logging crew. This was a good thing, since he had just lost his job in Louisiana. After a few minutes I decided, what the hell, and told him to get in. Off we went, and after awhile we got to talking, and after a couple hours of that we had become pretty good friends. Then I had one of those great ideas on which fate turns. I told him I had a new car waiting for me in Fort Stockton (it had been delivered to the dealer while we were in Wimberley). I asked him if I picked up the Grand Marquis when we got to Fort Stockton, would he be willing to follow me in the Chevelle from there to El Paso. He said, oh yeah, sure, so the deal was struck, and we continued on down the road.
Now at that period in time, the entire nation suffered under a speed limit of 55 miles per hour, which was imposed during the Nixon administration, ostensibly to save gasoline. I always said that every Congressman who voted for the 55-mph limit should be required to drive at 55 mph from Houston to El Paso. Anybody who’s ever driven over that stretch knows how nearly impossible that is. Me, I think I’m congenitally incapable of driving only 55 mph on stretches like that. What I am trying to say is, that Clive and I were haulin’ ass across the desert at about 85 miles an hour, me in front in the Grand Marquis and Clive behind me in the Chevelle. Oh, by the way, did I say I was really enjoying my new car?
Eventually, we approached Sierra Blanca, a little bitty place in the Guadalupe Mountains about 88 miles east of El Paso. By that time we were fairly flying across the desert; we were on the home stretch. That’s when the Sierra Blanca Sheriff caught me in a speed trap. (Later on, my friends would say things like, “Wow! You didn’t know Sierra Blanca was a notorious speed trap?!” And “Oh yeah, that’s the speed trap from hell!” But had any one of them ever mentioned a word to me about this before I got caught? Not on your life! Forget about it! No way, Jose’!) Anyway, Clive stopped too, about 100 feet behind me.
The Sheriff checked my license and proof of insurance and wrote me a speeding ticket, and then he wanted to know why “that guy in the Chevelle” was sitting back there. I told him how Clive was doing me a favor by following me in my old car so I could drive my new one home, and he promptly walked back there and asked Clive for his driver’s license and proof of insurance. That’s when we learned that Clive’s Louisiana license had expired two weeks before.
Well, the Sheriff arrested Clive and hauled him off to jail, and he (the Sheriff, not Clive) confiscated my Chevelle. After awhile, I followed them over to the jailhouse in the Grand Marquis. It was getting dark now. I started knocking on the door to the jailhouse and hollering questions like, when could I get my car back, and when could I get Clive out, and eventually a big, mean looking sheriff’s deputy came outside with a big gun. He told me I would have to pay my fine and Clive’s fine and a car impoundment fee, which in total naturally amounted to some outrageous amount of money. Then he said if I didn’t have the money on me, I’d better get my butt off the property, or he would lock me up alongside my friend.
Nowadays, ATM machines are commonplace. You can get your hands on some cash in a hurry if you need to. But back in 1982 I had never even seen an ATM machine, and if I had seen one, it certainly wouldn’t have been in Sierra Blanca. Consequently, having no other alternative, I drove the Grand Marquis on home to El Paso. I told the whole story to Elaine, and I said that we would have to go to the bank the next day and get enough cash to get Clive out of jail and get the Chevelle back, and then we would have to drive back to Sierra Blanca and do that.
I knew that if I had not asked Clive to drive the Chevelle, or if I had not been driving 90 miles an hour, he wouldn’t be in jail, so I felt like the right thing to do was to get him out. Besides, I wanted my car back. However, the mean looking deputy with the big gun had scared me a little. So, we left Neal and Glen and Ellen home, and when we got to Sierra Blanca, Elaine parked about 300 yards away, and I walked on up there alone. We had agreed that if I didn’t reappear within an hour, she would drive back home without me and call our lawyer.
The precaution turned out to be unnecessary. I paid the money and got Clive out of jail and got my car back. Clive and I took the Chevelle back to El Paso, with me driving it, and Elaine following us in the Grand Marquis. Clive spent the night with us, and the next day I took him to a big truck stop on IH-10 West, not too far from where we lived. We got a call from him a few weeks later. Said he had gotten to Oregon okay and that he had gotten the logging job and found a place to live. We have not heard from Clive since that day, but I hope he has stayed well and prospered. And I have never returned to Sierra Blanca.
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