In 1972, Elaine and I bought our very first house, in Rodeo, California. That’s across the bay from San Francisco. It was a small house, but it was a pretty house, and it was well built by the architect from whom we bought it. At the time, it was less than six months old, and the architect who built in it was living in it when he sold it to us. Elaine and I planned to live there for the next several years, so we bought gardening and landscaping books and spent hours and hours planning and reading. We planted decorative trees in front; for example, a flowering crabapple tree. We dedicated the large back yard to fruit trees. We planted trees for apples, peaches, plums, pears, nectarines, apricots, lemons and oranges, figs, cumquats, and I don’t know what all; I think even avocados. We also planted a vegetable garden, squash and tomatoes mainly.
I also designed and built, with the help of a friend of mine named Delbert, an elaborate multi-circuit sprinkler system that worked on timers. Next, Elaine and I planted the whole yard with Dichondra seeds and then pulled weeds by the thousands for months after they germinated. The end result was very satisfying, though. After we had lived there for about two years, things were beginning to look pretty nice, and we were feeling good about the result of our thousands of hours of hard work. But then late in 1974, I took a new job in El Paso, and we had to sell the house and move.
Eventually, after moving from El Paso to Washington, D. C. and then back to El Paso again, we wound up in Houston in 1985, and we have remained here ever since. For the last twenty years of my career, I was a private consultant, and on occasion I had to testify in court. In 1999, I had to go to San Francisco to testify in a trial. After the trial was over, I had the whole afternoon left before I had to return to Houston. I thought about driving out to see our first home, which I had not seen for twenty-five years, a quarter of a century. Then I thought again, and I said to myself that, given some of my past experiences in this sort of thing, no doubt the person who owned the house now, or maybe some owner before him, had long since uprooted or chopped down all the fruit trees that Elaine and I had planted with tender loving care so long ago. By going out there, all I would be doing is setting myself up for a major disappointment.
But I really did want to see the first house we had ever owned, and I eventually succumbed to my curiosity and drove out to Rodeo, while at the same time I was preparing myself for a bitter disappointment. When I got to the neighborhood, however, I immediately perked up when I saw that the flowering crabapple tree was still out there in front of the house. That was a good sign, the way I saw it. I drove up and down the street and around the neighborhood, before I finally got up the nerve to park the car at the street curb and go up and knock on the door.
A middle-aged man came to the door. I judged him to be probably my age plus or minus a few years. I said hello and told him my name and said that I was the original owner of his house, or well, almost the original owner. I said, for example, that I knew that the kitchen and dining rooms were on my left, the living room was right behind him, and the master bedroom was on the far right end at the back of the house. I told him he had a fireplace that opened out to the dining room on one side and the living-room on the other, which was unusual. I also told him that I knew he had a sundeck outside the master bedroom and a concrete patio running along the rest of the back of the house, and that the master bedroom, the living room, and the dining room all three opened out onto the sundeck or the patio through sliding glass doors. And, finally, I told him, unless some previous owner had cut them all down, he had an orchard of fruit trees in his back yard that my wife and I had planted a quarter of a century ago.
He grinned and stated that I had convinced him, and he asked me if I would like to see the back yard. Well, sure, of course! I said. I thought you’d never ask! I said. He invited me into the house, and nothing much that I could see had been changed in the kitchen, dining, and living room areas. Then he took me through one of the glass doors onto his patio and into the back yard. I was astonished. Indeed, I was surprised and delighted. No grass grew anywhere. That’s because all the fruit trees provided such dense shade. Most of them were bearing fruit, and the owner got a grocery bag and started picking plums and lemons and oranges and so on, and putting them in the bag, which he gave to me. I thanked the man for his kindness and took the bag home, where Elaine and I, at long last, got a taste of the fruits of our labors long-past.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
The Tree House and the Sky-Ride
We lived in El Paso during two different time periods. During the first period, from roughly 1975 to 1979, we lived in an area that was called the Upper Valley, located outside the city limits. We lived on an acre of land that had previously been planted in cotton and alfalfa, and therefore was devoid of any trees or grass until we planted some. Our house was about six months old when we moved in. We bought it from another company employee who was quitting or being transferred to another location, I forget which.
Anyway, I should have said when I moved in, not when we moved in. You see, I moved to El Paso about two months before Elaine and Neal and Glen did, because although we had a buyer for our home in Rodeo, California, the sale had not yet gone through closing. I thought I got a pretty good deal on the Upper Valley house, but Elaine never particularly liked it. Let this be a lesson to all husbands: Do not ever, ever buy a house to live in, without first letting your wife inspect it.
Being young and active at that time, I was always involved in one project or another. In addition to my work for pay, that is. There was a huge cottonwood tree on the edge of our property adjacent to a county road that passed by. I decided that that tree desperately needed a well-built tree-house in it. The trunk of the tree divided into three main limbs about 15 feet off the ground. I designed a tree house with a cantilevered support for the fourth corner of the tree house floor, using two 4” X 6” X 15’ beams that I hauled up into the tree using ropes and pulleys, since I had nobody to help me, and that I secured to the tree with 60-penny nails.
Sixty-penny nails are six inches long and almost a quarter of an inch in diameter; technically, they are spikes. I got really good at driving nails. I learned how to hold the hammer near the end of the handle, and haul back like a major league baseball pitcher and let ‘r go, and I got to where I could drive a 60-penny nail in with two strokes, three maximum, the first to set the nail and the second, or third, sometimes, to drive it home. Before I got that good however, I smashed the you-know-what out of the end joint of my left little finger. Ever since then, it has been a little bit flattened-out and about half again as large as the end of my right little finger. Moreover, in the last few years I have developed a big ugly knot on the end joint of the left one.
I built the tree house floor out of Douglas fir, tongue-in-groove, 2” X 6” X 10’ planks. I got the wood from a retired and dismantled railroad caboose at a wrecking yard in Canutillo, New Mexico, located approximately 20 miles from where we lived. The tree house had one hundred square feet of floor space, ten feet by ten feet. I built side guardrails and benches around the inside, put up a roof, and also I built a window facing a telephone pole that stood out at the back end of my property, about 75 to 100 yards away, in slightly diagonal direction.
Then I built a sky-ride, as I called it then, but known as a zip-line nowadays, so I have been informed by my now-grownup children. I got enough ¼” steel cable to reach from the tree to the telephone pole. I attached one end of the cable to the tree, at a point about ten feet higher than the floor of the tree house. I attached the other end of the cable to the telephone pole, about six or eight feet off the ground.
Elaine’s sister, Jane, and my brother-in-law, Ricky, happened to be visiting on a weekend that I had planned to be working on the sky-ride, so I took Ricky with me to a local wrecking yard to look for some kind of wheel contraption suitable to install on the cable that would allow you to ride it down to the ground. After a couple of hours of searching, we found a slaughterhouse hook with a ball-bearing-swivel-pulley-wheel assembly, which henceforth I’ll just call the pulley. It was perfect. I immediately bought it and took it home and installed it on the cable.
Next, I attached a horizontal piece of pipe to the pulley to serve as a trapeze bar, and I made a string pull-back system, so that after you rode the cable down to the end, the next person in the tree house could pull the trapeze back up. Finally, I roto-tilled the ground near the telephone pole, from the pole back to about 20 feet up the line, so that when you rode the line down, you would have a soft landing. The more that you weighed, the farther out from the pole you touched down.
Neal and Glen really liked playing in the tree house and riding on the sky-ride. Neal would sometimes turn upside down and swivel round and round on the way down. Here he is in this picture.
Glen was not heavy enough or tall enough at that time to touch down on the dirt with his feet at the end of the line before he slammed into the telephone pole, so some of us in the neighborhood would stand a few feet in front of the pole and catch him, more-or-less softly, before he hit it.
I must have worked at least five hundred hours to build that tree house and sky-ride, and I was really glad they were such a success. I was so happy that my children liked it. I had put my heart and soul (and little bit of my left little finger) into building them, and I was very proud of the result. To tell the honest truth, I myself thoroughly enjoyed sitting in the tree house of an evening and riding the sky-ride down from time to time.
Neighborhood kids liked the sky-ride so much that I had to lock it up when I wasn’t around. In about 1977, I met a French engineer named Herve (pronounced kind of like Airvay), with whom I worked for a couple of years. Herve had three daughters, all under the age of ten or twelve I think. One weekend afternoon, Herve and his family came out to visit and have a cookout or something like that. Herve’s daughters immediately started lobbying him to let them ride the sky-ride. After awhile he agreed to it, and his girls and my boys proceeded to have a blast! I can’t recall if Herve himself rode the sky-ride, but I know I did.
In August of 1977, one of my nephews, Howe, and his mom, Vicki, one of my sisters-in-law, came out from Georgia to visit us. Naturally, we did some fun and touristy things. For example, we went to Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands, New Mexico, and we went to a bull fight in Juarez, Mexico. However, whenever we were at home – da dum – we rode the sky-ride!
Here is a picture of Howe about to jump out of the tree house window.
And, here he is going down:
Sometimes, Neal and Howe would both ride the sky-ride down together, as they are about to do in this photograph.
I think about that summer visit from time to time, and I wonder if Neal and Howe and Glen remember it the way I do. In early 1979, we had to move to Washington, D. C., and we had to sell the house (and the tree house!). By that time, Elaine and I had done a substantial amount of landscaping, and we had a slatted roof built over the patio that ran the whole length of the back of the house. This was the second time we had busted our butts for two or three years to landscape a home, only to have to move out right after we got it done. It kind of bummed us out, but at the time I believed that my career potential would improve significantly if I accepted the D. C. assignment. Having to leave the tree house behind especially stuck in my craw, though.
We lived in D. C. (actually, McLean, Virginia) for about three years, but after about two years there, I had to go back to El Paso on a business trip. When I got there, I couldn’t resist driving out to the Upper Valley for another look at the marvelous tree house and sky-ride that I had built and that the kids had universally loved. But when I drove by, I was stunned. I was so grossed out I almost ran off the road, because I saw that the people living there now had torn it all down! I was depressed and disappointed all the way home.
Anyway, I should have said when I moved in, not when we moved in. You see, I moved to El Paso about two months before Elaine and Neal and Glen did, because although we had a buyer for our home in Rodeo, California, the sale had not yet gone through closing. I thought I got a pretty good deal on the Upper Valley house, but Elaine never particularly liked it. Let this be a lesson to all husbands: Do not ever, ever buy a house to live in, without first letting your wife inspect it.
Being young and active at that time, I was always involved in one project or another. In addition to my work for pay, that is. There was a huge cottonwood tree on the edge of our property adjacent to a county road that passed by. I decided that that tree desperately needed a well-built tree-house in it. The trunk of the tree divided into three main limbs about 15 feet off the ground. I designed a tree house with a cantilevered support for the fourth corner of the tree house floor, using two 4” X 6” X 15’ beams that I hauled up into the tree using ropes and pulleys, since I had nobody to help me, and that I secured to the tree with 60-penny nails.
Sixty-penny nails are six inches long and almost a quarter of an inch in diameter; technically, they are spikes. I got really good at driving nails. I learned how to hold the hammer near the end of the handle, and haul back like a major league baseball pitcher and let ‘r go, and I got to where I could drive a 60-penny nail in with two strokes, three maximum, the first to set the nail and the second, or third, sometimes, to drive it home. Before I got that good however, I smashed the you-know-what out of the end joint of my left little finger. Ever since then, it has been a little bit flattened-out and about half again as large as the end of my right little finger. Moreover, in the last few years I have developed a big ugly knot on the end joint of the left one.
I built the tree house floor out of Douglas fir, tongue-in-groove, 2” X 6” X 10’ planks. I got the wood from a retired and dismantled railroad caboose at a wrecking yard in Canutillo, New Mexico, located approximately 20 miles from where we lived. The tree house had one hundred square feet of floor space, ten feet by ten feet. I built side guardrails and benches around the inside, put up a roof, and also I built a window facing a telephone pole that stood out at the back end of my property, about 75 to 100 yards away, in slightly diagonal direction.
Then I built a sky-ride, as I called it then, but known as a zip-line nowadays, so I have been informed by my now-grownup children. I got enough ¼” steel cable to reach from the tree to the telephone pole. I attached one end of the cable to the tree, at a point about ten feet higher than the floor of the tree house. I attached the other end of the cable to the telephone pole, about six or eight feet off the ground.
Elaine’s sister, Jane, and my brother-in-law, Ricky, happened to be visiting on a weekend that I had planned to be working on the sky-ride, so I took Ricky with me to a local wrecking yard to look for some kind of wheel contraption suitable to install on the cable that would allow you to ride it down to the ground. After a couple of hours of searching, we found a slaughterhouse hook with a ball-bearing-swivel-pulley-wheel assembly, which henceforth I’ll just call the pulley. It was perfect. I immediately bought it and took it home and installed it on the cable.
Next, I attached a horizontal piece of pipe to the pulley to serve as a trapeze bar, and I made a string pull-back system, so that after you rode the cable down to the end, the next person in the tree house could pull the trapeze back up. Finally, I roto-tilled the ground near the telephone pole, from the pole back to about 20 feet up the line, so that when you rode the line down, you would have a soft landing. The more that you weighed, the farther out from the pole you touched down.
Neal and Glen really liked playing in the tree house and riding on the sky-ride. Neal would sometimes turn upside down and swivel round and round on the way down. Here he is in this picture.
Glen was not heavy enough or tall enough at that time to touch down on the dirt with his feet at the end of the line before he slammed into the telephone pole, so some of us in the neighborhood would stand a few feet in front of the pole and catch him, more-or-less softly, before he hit it.
I must have worked at least five hundred hours to build that tree house and sky-ride, and I was really glad they were such a success. I was so happy that my children liked it. I had put my heart and soul (and little bit of my left little finger) into building them, and I was very proud of the result. To tell the honest truth, I myself thoroughly enjoyed sitting in the tree house of an evening and riding the sky-ride down from time to time.
Neighborhood kids liked the sky-ride so much that I had to lock it up when I wasn’t around. In about 1977, I met a French engineer named Herve (pronounced kind of like Airvay), with whom I worked for a couple of years. Herve had three daughters, all under the age of ten or twelve I think. One weekend afternoon, Herve and his family came out to visit and have a cookout or something like that. Herve’s daughters immediately started lobbying him to let them ride the sky-ride. After awhile he agreed to it, and his girls and my boys proceeded to have a blast! I can’t recall if Herve himself rode the sky-ride, but I know I did.
In August of 1977, one of my nephews, Howe, and his mom, Vicki, one of my sisters-in-law, came out from Georgia to visit us. Naturally, we did some fun and touristy things. For example, we went to Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands, New Mexico, and we went to a bull fight in Juarez, Mexico. However, whenever we were at home – da dum – we rode the sky-ride!
Here is a picture of Howe about to jump out of the tree house window.
And, here he is going down:
Sometimes, Neal and Howe would both ride the sky-ride down together, as they are about to do in this photograph.
I think about that summer visit from time to time, and I wonder if Neal and Howe and Glen remember it the way I do. In early 1979, we had to move to Washington, D. C., and we had to sell the house (and the tree house!). By that time, Elaine and I had done a substantial amount of landscaping, and we had a slatted roof built over the patio that ran the whole length of the back of the house. This was the second time we had busted our butts for two or three years to landscape a home, only to have to move out right after we got it done. It kind of bummed us out, but at the time I believed that my career potential would improve significantly if I accepted the D. C. assignment. Having to leave the tree house behind especially stuck in my craw, though.
We lived in D. C. (actually, McLean, Virginia) for about three years, but after about two years there, I had to go back to El Paso on a business trip. When I got there, I couldn’t resist driving out to the Upper Valley for another look at the marvelous tree house and sky-ride that I had built and that the kids had universally loved. But when I drove by, I was stunned. I was so grossed out I almost ran off the road, because I saw that the people living there now had torn it all down! I was depressed and disappointed all the way home.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Parking Lot Ethics
When I arrived on campus to begin my freshman year at college, I desperately needed money. I was almost penniless. I had a scholarship that would pay for my tuition and dorm fees, but it wouldn’t provide anything for food and books and other stuff. I decided to go see the campus athletic director, to see if he might have a job for me. I don’t recall what inspired me to do this, but it turned out to be a brilliant idea. It just so happened – so the athletic director said – that he did have a little job for me if I wanted it. It was not a full-time job (which I didn’t want anyway), and it was not a permanent job, but I could have it until he said otherwise. The job was selling parking tickets for the home football games.
He gave me a roll of 100 tickets for the first game, and he took me out to see a parking lot. It was a good lot, close to the stadium entrance. It was fenced off by itself, separate and apart from the main stadium parking lot, which was a whole heap bigger than this lot. I was supposed to arrive one hour prior to kickoff time and open the lot. Each ticket was to cost $1.00. He told me if I brought him back $100.00 and 100 ticket stubs on the Monday afternoon following the Saturday night game, he would pay me $5.00. I thought Wow! I can buy four or five meals with that! I thanked him sincerely and took the roll of tickets back to the dorm.
Well, I got to the football stadium on Saturday night of the opening home game, an hour ahead of the scheduled kickoff time. I opened the parking lot and started selling the tickets. Now, you know, when you go somewhere like a movie, you typically buy a ticket at a ticket booth, and then you continue on into the theater and give your ticket to some gate-keeper, who tears the ticket up and gives you the stub. If you think that you might have to leave the movie in the middle and go out past the gate-keeper, then you had better keep the stub, or you won’t be able to get back in. At some places, they won’t let you back in period; for example, most live theaters, but that’s beside the point. In this particular operation, there was only me, and not a one of these hometown fans was likely to leave during the game. Consequently, most of the people driving through just dropped their ticket stubs on the ground within a couple of feet of me.
Now, it might sound easy selling parking lot tickets, but there was more to it than I had previously given much thought to. I kept the roll of tickets in the left hip pocket of my sports coat. I kept the cash in my right pants pocket and my ticket stubs from people I had sold tickets to in the right hip pocket of my sports coat. After I had sold a number of tickets, I started picking up the ticket stubs that people had tossed, and I stuffed them in my left pants pocket. I don’t recall exactly what possessed me to do this, but it turned out to be an unwitting inspiration.
After I had sold all the tickets on the roll, I was still looking at a long line of people who wanted to park, and there was still a lot of vacant space left in the lot. So, I started selling the prior patrons’ ticket stubs from my left pants pocket, and putting the cash into the left breast pocket of my sports coat. (Well, what the hell would you have done?) I kept selling the stubs over and over again like that, until a cop who was covering the lot walked over and told me it was all full now, which it was, and that the kickoff had already occurred (as if I cared!). I had sold something close to 500 tickets, and I was holding the first $100 in my right pants pocket and the remaining $400 or thereabouts in the left breast pocket of my sports coat. I was euphoric. $400 in little more than an hour’s work! (Little did I know at the time that that was the highest hourly rate I would ever make during my entire lifetime!) When I got to my seat in the stadium that my roommate was holding for me, along with our dates, he immediately sensed that something was up, but I gave him the mum’s-the-word sign, and I told him about it later on back at the dorm.
On the following Monday afternoon, I reported to the athletic director as instructed, and I gave him his $100 and the 100 ticket stubs that I had kept in the right pocket of my sports coat. He said good job young fella, and gave me $5.00. He also gave me another roll of 100 tickets for the next game, with the same instructions as before. Well, I continued that gig for three or four home games, until one black Monday afternoon he told me he was sorry, but that one of his football players needed a job and he had to give preference to him. By that time I had made more than $1000 from that job, and my only regret was that it wouldn’t be more.
Back at the dorm, my parking-lot caper became the subject of seemingly endless philosophical debates about the ethics of what I had done. Several of my dorm mates argued that it was highly unethical. I told them they were just envious. I said that if I had not resold the ticket stubs, all those people who had bought them would have had to find other parking places that would have been much farther from the stadium entrance and would have cost more besides.
I also pointed out that most, if not all, of the people I sold tickets to, were avid hometown fans who had probably been parking there for years, so they no doubt knew how big the lot was. If I had closed the gate after selling only 100 tickets, they might have gotten angry; they might have even threatened me physically.
Moreover, I had kept my bargain with the athletic director to a tee. His instructions had been quite specific. Each ticket was to cost $1.00. I was to bring him back $100.00 and 100 ticket stubs, and he would pay me $5.00. That’s exactly what happened.
The athletic director had been there for a long time, and he must surely have known how many cars the lot would hold. Therefore, I figured that the way I “played the game”, so to speak, was the way it was apparently intended to be played. Nobody was cheated out of any money. Nobody paid for anything he didn’t get. I made some money on the deal, and if I could do it again, I would do it again.
He gave me a roll of 100 tickets for the first game, and he took me out to see a parking lot. It was a good lot, close to the stadium entrance. It was fenced off by itself, separate and apart from the main stadium parking lot, which was a whole heap bigger than this lot. I was supposed to arrive one hour prior to kickoff time and open the lot. Each ticket was to cost $1.00. He told me if I brought him back $100.00 and 100 ticket stubs on the Monday afternoon following the Saturday night game, he would pay me $5.00. I thought Wow! I can buy four or five meals with that! I thanked him sincerely and took the roll of tickets back to the dorm.
Well, I got to the football stadium on Saturday night of the opening home game, an hour ahead of the scheduled kickoff time. I opened the parking lot and started selling the tickets. Now, you know, when you go somewhere like a movie, you typically buy a ticket at a ticket booth, and then you continue on into the theater and give your ticket to some gate-keeper, who tears the ticket up and gives you the stub. If you think that you might have to leave the movie in the middle and go out past the gate-keeper, then you had better keep the stub, or you won’t be able to get back in. At some places, they won’t let you back in period; for example, most live theaters, but that’s beside the point. In this particular operation, there was only me, and not a one of these hometown fans was likely to leave during the game. Consequently, most of the people driving through just dropped their ticket stubs on the ground within a couple of feet of me.
Now, it might sound easy selling parking lot tickets, but there was more to it than I had previously given much thought to. I kept the roll of tickets in the left hip pocket of my sports coat. I kept the cash in my right pants pocket and my ticket stubs from people I had sold tickets to in the right hip pocket of my sports coat. After I had sold a number of tickets, I started picking up the ticket stubs that people had tossed, and I stuffed them in my left pants pocket. I don’t recall exactly what possessed me to do this, but it turned out to be an unwitting inspiration.
After I had sold all the tickets on the roll, I was still looking at a long line of people who wanted to park, and there was still a lot of vacant space left in the lot. So, I started selling the prior patrons’ ticket stubs from my left pants pocket, and putting the cash into the left breast pocket of my sports coat. (Well, what the hell would you have done?) I kept selling the stubs over and over again like that, until a cop who was covering the lot walked over and told me it was all full now, which it was, and that the kickoff had already occurred (as if I cared!). I had sold something close to 500 tickets, and I was holding the first $100 in my right pants pocket and the remaining $400 or thereabouts in the left breast pocket of my sports coat. I was euphoric. $400 in little more than an hour’s work! (Little did I know at the time that that was the highest hourly rate I would ever make during my entire lifetime!) When I got to my seat in the stadium that my roommate was holding for me, along with our dates, he immediately sensed that something was up, but I gave him the mum’s-the-word sign, and I told him about it later on back at the dorm.
On the following Monday afternoon, I reported to the athletic director as instructed, and I gave him his $100 and the 100 ticket stubs that I had kept in the right pocket of my sports coat. He said good job young fella, and gave me $5.00. He also gave me another roll of 100 tickets for the next game, with the same instructions as before. Well, I continued that gig for three or four home games, until one black Monday afternoon he told me he was sorry, but that one of his football players needed a job and he had to give preference to him. By that time I had made more than $1000 from that job, and my only regret was that it wouldn’t be more.
Back at the dorm, my parking-lot caper became the subject of seemingly endless philosophical debates about the ethics of what I had done. Several of my dorm mates argued that it was highly unethical. I told them they were just envious. I said that if I had not resold the ticket stubs, all those people who had bought them would have had to find other parking places that would have been much farther from the stadium entrance and would have cost more besides.
I also pointed out that most, if not all, of the people I sold tickets to, were avid hometown fans who had probably been parking there for years, so they no doubt knew how big the lot was. If I had closed the gate after selling only 100 tickets, they might have gotten angry; they might have even threatened me physically.
Moreover, I had kept my bargain with the athletic director to a tee. His instructions had been quite specific. Each ticket was to cost $1.00. I was to bring him back $100.00 and 100 ticket stubs, and he would pay me $5.00. That’s exactly what happened.
The athletic director had been there for a long time, and he must surely have known how many cars the lot would hold. Therefore, I figured that the way I “played the game”, so to speak, was the way it was apparently intended to be played. Nobody was cheated out of any money. Nobody paid for anything he didn’t get. I made some money on the deal, and if I could do it again, I would do it again.
Monday, September 19, 2011
How's Your Tallywacker?
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.
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.
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.
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