Summer Reading

Well, it's the eve of another school year. Back in May, our upperclassmen were given their reading lists for the summer. I didn't get one, so my list will be of the books I DID read during my time off. The warm summer season is always the one during which I do most of my reading (really all of it).

So here is my list. Unlike some people, I won't attempt to write a review or synopsis of any kind.

The Amber Room - Steve Berry

The Bone Vault - Linda Fairstein

Franny & Zooey - J.D. Salinger

John McGraw - Charles C. Alexander

Murder List - Julie Garwood

Nine Stories - J.D. Salinger

Offer of Proof - Robert Heilbrun

Open and Shut - David Rosenfelt

Our First Revolution - Michael Barone

Raise High the Roof beam, Carpenters - J.D. Salinger

Stealing the General - Russell S. Bonds

Wisecracker - William J. Mann

Unanswered questions

During the past week, I saw my second dead cat on the side of a road in the past month. Deer, raccoons, and possum I understand, but dead cats I could never understand. I've always had dogs as pets so I can't begin to know the mentality of a person who owns a cat.

When a person adopts or buys a cat, does he or she say to themselves....

"I know this cat will go out on its own at night, prowling around the neighborhood. It may even come to the "big road". It will try and cross it for some reason. It may make it. Or maybe not. I accept the fact that my pet will not return alive."

Or when that pet does not return in a day or so, do the owners drive around looking for it expecting the worst? Or do they just sit back and hope it returns someday?

And when the police or dead-animal-picker-uppers remove the dead from the roads, do they go around notifying the neighborhood of the newly found dead?

Just some questions I've wondered about.

Greenhouse?? If not, what?

I mentioned in a previous entry in this blog that I never water my lawn. And how it is always green, just as green as my neighbors' lawns which are watered constantly throughout the summer. My dad had a great philosophy regarding lawns which I wholeheartedly subscribe to: "as long as the lawn is green, it doesn't matter if it's weeds or grass."
And usually after a hot summer (especially a hot August), the grass tends to grow slower and take on a shade of brown. But today when I cut the back lawn, it was high, lush, and green, just like it is in late April or early May. Not sure what's going on.

Matewan it's not, but it's close

Sunday morning in the hill country. Blue skies, bright sun, pleasant temps. A good day as any to go work up in Mine Shaft #19. I walked off down towards Clem's house and he was sitting on his front porch with his dog, Blue. "Clem," I said. "Ready to head up to the mine?"

"Yep," replied Clem. "Be with you in a sec." He disappeared into the house and came back out with a big smile on his face.

"Let's go! Had to kiss the wife g'bye."

We trudged up the long winding dirt road that led to Ol' 19. We finally arrived at about 11. This was the last mine that we owned. We used to have two open mines over in Old Bridge County. We did a lot of open strip mining on those two, but we had to sell the land last year. Now all that's left is #19.

The big black door that barred the front of the mine had shifted over the years and some of the contents were leaking out. Clem and I got the door away from the front and saw the rich contents of the mine.

"Gotta be careful this year," I said to Clem. "You're right. We lost two guys when we were up here two years ago."

That tragedy was caused by the ever dangerous cave-in. This year though I had a plan. We started excavating the black gold from the front of the mine. After we had gone about a fourth of the way into the mine, I got a large piece of plywood. We shoved it in at the height of the opening. With large rubber mallets, the wood was shoved all the way to the back of the mine. As we dug deeper into the mine we supported the wood ceiling with beams of wood.

"This will hold it up real good," said Clem. I nodded back to my partner.

We finally reached the back of the mine but I wanted more. More black gold.

At the bottom of the mine was a grid of wooden planks that served as sort of a sieve floor. Not sure why this was installed in this mine, but the wood had rotted over the years. We managed to get all the rotten wood out, and then excavated even more down to the original floor.

All total, we excavated about 7 or 8 pails full of black gold. We then replaced the old floor with a new one of bricks.

Now came the tricky part. We had to get the beams and the partial ceiling out and avoid the eventual cave in. We had to be quick and fast.

"Fire in the hole," I yelled.

Clem and I grabbed all the wood and ran. The top of the mine thundered down where we had just been. Some of the contents of the mine fell out, but we shoveled it back in and replaced the front door. To fasten the door more securely, we roped it up good and tight.

"Well, lunch at the tavern, Clem?"

"Yup"

And off we went to quaff our thirsts after a hard day's work.

(For the gullible, this is a story of how I made a withdrawal from my compost maker. And it's pronounced "Mait-wan")

Real life re-boot

I went to sleep last night to the pleasant rumblings of an oncoming thunderstorm. I woke up in the middle of the night and I realized something was different. I didn't need to visit my favorite watering hole; rather I noticed that my ceiling fan was not turning and the room was quite warm. I strained my eyes to try and see what the comforting red digits on my alarm clock read. But all I saw was black. Had I gone blind? No the power was off. So I moved down stairs to the sofa where the room was quite cool due to the aforementioned rain storm. Around 8, I arose and the power was still off. So I decided to kill some time and went out for a paper and breakfast. Upon returning home I realized that the status had not changed. I knew this because I saw quite a few people sitting out on there porches. I guess they were forced out of their AC'd sealed-up cocoons which were now quite warm. Haaah, flushed out of their little holes like a hose down a chipmunk's lair.

But no difference here except for the absence of any working fans. So to kill more time, I decided to tackle some more tasks which required either muscles, a hose, or both. Speaking of using a hose, I'd like to make a comment in response to a posting that appeared on my N-I-L's blog. She mentioned the need for going green and one of the ways is not to run the water during the brushing of one's teeth. Well, that's nothing compared to some of the knuckleheads on my block. It amazes me as to when they water their lawns. The weather man could be saying that there is a 50% chance of rain at night but they're watering their lawns in the early evening. I guess I could give them some slack on that since we're talking about percents and probability, but the ice-hole three houses down takes the cake. After a night of heavy downpours, he had his sprinkler going full blast this morning. Unbelievable. And I don't know why people water their lawns so much. I have not watered my lawn ONCE this summer and it is just as green as anyone else's on the block. Oh, well. Thanks to my venting, I now have a posting for August.

Well, around 1 PM, the power finally came back on and except for missing a few hours of the Louis Armstrong Birthday Broadcast, it wasn't such a hardship after all.

It pays to be a safe driver

Next Wednesday, August 8th, marks the two year anniversary of the purchase of my Toyota Corolla. Yesterday, I needed to retrieve some information from the registration for said car. As I pulled the card from my wallet I was shocked at what I found. The registration card in my wallet was for my previously owned Mazda Protege. Where was the card for my Toyota? Had I been driving for two years without the proper registration on my person? Had I been so fortunate not to ever have been pulled over?

A search of my glove compartment (which does not contain any of my gloves) and my house failed to turn up the missing card. I figured one of two things had happened. One, the DMV never sent me a card after I bought the new Toyota. If they had, I most certainly would have replaced the old one in my wallet with the new one. Or two, as I do with a lot of mail, I discard junk mail without even opening it. But I'm pretty sure that DMV envelopes are clearly marked.

So today, I made a trip to my favorite DMV agency. I've made the one in Wayne my favorite because I feel very comfortable with it. Car Inspections are one of those activities that you have to play the game if you want to get out of there quickly and with minimum aggravation. Mechanics are another. Maybe it has something to do with cars. But you don't want to argue or complain to a mechanic or a car inspector. And I've had mostly good luck with the Wayne location.

I dread having to go to the DMV building for two reasons. One, it could be very crowded and you could spend a good part of the day there. Two, I always fear getting in a wrong line and spending wasted time when I am supposed to be in another line.

This was to be my second visit to the Wayne building since the State out-sourced the control of the Motor Vehicle Agency. Five years ago I needed to get a photo licence to serve as a photo ID for a job search at the time. I had to do this since the county had stopped issuing plain photo IDs. From what I remember, the process of getting the photo license was quite painless.

So today around 10 AM I entered the building as if I was going to the dentist (which I will be doing this Friday). I noticed right away that the room was not crowded at all. I immediately got onto a line that I noticed several people who entered the building ahead of me had gotten onto. But then I noticed that the sign on the line said it was for everything but registrations. Oh oh. Fear was setting in. But then I noticed a girl walking along the line talking to everyone to make sure that they were in the right place. Ahhhh. She asked me what I needed, I replied a replacement registration, she handed me a small form to fill out, and then pointed to a line on the other side of the room. Ahhhh. The form was filled out, and then after a short wait on the new line, I had my new registration in hand. Some pleasantries with the clerk surely made the process go quicker. I didn't even have to wait for the card to be printed up at another location--she had it right there for me. Beautiful. I walked out the door after only twenty minutes, which would have been even shorter if I didn't have to walk out to the car to find out what my licence plate number was!!!

And now with a valid registration in my possession, I didn't have to drive like an altar boy anymore. On the way home, I drove 50 MPH thru the suburban side roads of North Caldwell honking my horn at every pedestrian!!! Kidding.

Sorry, Wrong Number

No, not the Burt Lancaster-Barbara Stanwyck film. Rather the reference in a comment below to 45s. Oliver and Django recorded on 78s (10 inch).

Another productive day

Coming up with posts during the summer is probably going to be hard since all I mostly do is just sit around, relax, read, and watch my grass grow. But today was a beautiful day: partly cloudy, not that hot, and low humidity. So I decided to tackle some more home projects. The north side of the house had accumulated a good amount of mold on it over the years. So I decided to give it a good cleaning. I anticipated that it was going to be a %$*# of a chore, but I quickly discovered that with a good brush and one of Santa's reindeer, the green mold came off in a jiffy. The terrible chore was going to be easy but time consuming since there was a lot of it on the side of the house and it went quite high. So there was going to be lots of ladder climbing. I was fortunate that most of the mold was at the bottom. But I still tried to get as most of the side cleaned as was possible. I was able to get as high as 2 or 3 above the second floor window (see picture) and anything above that was very faint and really can't be seen from the ground. Cleaning from a ladder isn't really so bad except for when you're at the top and right up against the house. Don't look down!! I'll probably wait a long time before I clean it again since it will be easier to note where I've just cleaned and since it takes sooooo long to get done with all of the ladder climbing.

I noticed that the south side had a little bit of mold too. It's all at the ground level and that will get done later on this summer. But I always thought that mold only appeared on the north side of objects.

Since I was in a house cleaning mode, I also cleaned the dirty sides on each side of the front door that my older brother pointed out to me the last time he visited. :-)

Hope my next post is more entertaining!!! LOL

Norm and Tommy would be proud of me

Screen door (pre-2002) and Woody

Now that I have successfully posted my first entry, albeit a tribute rather than a personal related experience, I can move on and do the latter. In October 2002, my employment was severed with the Prudential Company. The reason and the story will not given here but maybe it will be contained in a future posting. For the next eleven months I searched for a job, not knowing where or with what company I would work for. One thing I did know--for the past 19 years I had worked at three Prudential offices and the combined commute (one way) was 11 miles!! So I knew that those days of short commutes might certainly be over. And if I did have to travel, there would be issues regarding my dog. Working so close to home allowed me to either come home at lunch or not stay late and get home on time so dear old Woody could rush outside to do the required "duties". So the vision of a long stay inside of the house for him forced me to act. And so I ordered a "doggie-door" (large size). Once it was installed, I realized that the screen door would either have to be held open or removed from the back door. I opted for the latter. And for the past 4 2/3 years, the screen door was stored away.

Now, it is time to put it back up. The reason why I can put the screen door back (you can probably figure it out) will definitely be the subject of a future post. When I took the screen door off in November 2002, I placed it against the side fence. And there it sat for the entire winter. The next summer I put it in the garage, but I noticed that some damage had already been done. The joints of the door were badly rotted. So I just roped it together and stored it away.

Fast forward to this week. I have put together a whole list of summer projects and posted them on my kitchen door to motivate myself to complete them. One of the projects was to fix and re-install the screen door.

So I took it out of storage and started to examine the damage. I noticed that the rotted joints were all joined by "dowel pegs". Many were rotted or broken. If Norm and Tommy were here, it would have gone like this:

Tommy: This door is really rotted away.

Norm: What can be done about it?

Tommy: Well, Norm, the best thing to do is simply build a new door.

Norm: I agree with you, Tommy, but the homeowner is on a tight budget for this renovation.

Tommy: Then an alternate plan would be to replace the dowels and salvage the door.

Norm: How would we do that?

Tommy: You like wine, Norm?

Norm: What does that have to do with fixing the door?

Tommy: Just watch. I take a normal bit, drill a hole in the broken dowel that is stuck in the door. I then put a screw into the hole. Then with a pair of pliers, I simply pull out the trapped dowel like pulling a cork out of a bottle of wine.

Well, Tommy's tip worked for about four dowels. Then came one that would not come out. At first I thought maybe the screw was expanding the dowel so much that it wouldn't come out. But then I realized that some, not all, of the dowels were glued in. What now?

Well, Tommy and Norm had gone to lunch, so I had to figure out how to salvage this project on my own. I thought that maybe I could drill out the entire dowel. The dowels were 1/2 inch in diameter so that was the size of drill bit I would need. I knew I had some large drill bits laying around so I looked for the one I needed. I found the 1 inch and the 3/8 inch, but no 1/2 . I may have had one for all I knew, but in my cluttered garage it would stay hidden. That could be another project to add to my list: "Clean and organize my garage so that it resembles Norm's workshop".

Since I needed dowels and wood glue, it was now time to make a run to the Home Depot with the new drill bit added to the shopping list. All three items were procured without any problems. I usually have problems with finding things or getting the right ones when I venture out to shop.

Upon returning home I realized that to drill out the embedded dowels I would have to drill exactly straight down in a perpendicular direction. No fancy drill presses here, my old eyes would have to do the trick. The first one went well and the others followed and I always tried to see if I could pull them out first. All the dowels were finally out, and new ones were cut to replace the broken ones.

Norm: Before the final assembly, we want to put the door together in a dry run to ensure that everything fits.

Easier said than done, Norm. As I put things together, other joints began to split and other dowels broke. It's a good thing I got an extra length of dowel. So after more drilling and more cutting, I was ready for the final glue assembly. It wasn't easy but I was surprised that everything fit so well. I didn't have any clamps large enough for a door, but since it took so much hammering to get the dowels in, I knew those joints weren't going anywhere. I left it in the garage and went about other fun tasks for the rest of the day.

Today, after my morning routine, I went to the garage to examine the door. It appeard to be pretty solid. Next, the screen door. It went in like a hand in a glove. Next, installation. Six new screws and it was back in it's original location. It stuck a little on one end but a little sanding cured that.

And now I can cross that project off from my list. Just like Toby from "West Wing", I LOVE to cross things off the many lists I have.

And the screen door is back for the rest of the summer. Screen doors are good for two things. To keep the flies out while letting a nice cool breeze into the house. The other? Well, as Bruce sang, "The screen door slams"!!

Tommy: I'm Tom Silva

Norm: I'm Norm Abram

Me: And I'm the author of this blog. See you next time.

So Long, Charles

It's no skin off my nose. I'm just your little rent collector. But you can't laugh off this Bailey Park anymore. Look at it. Fifteen years ago, a half-dozen houses stuck here and there. There's the old cemetery, squirrels, buttercups, daisies. I used to hunt rabbits there myself. Look at it today. Dozens of the prettiest little homes you ever saw. Ninety per cent owned by suckers who used to pay rent to you! Your Potter's Field, my dear Mr. Employer, is becoming just that. And are the local yokels making with those David and Goliath wisecracks.

Film buffs should recognize this quote from the Capra classic "It's A Wonderful Life" and the speaker as long time character actor Charles Lane. Mr. Lane passed away on Tuesday, July 10 at the age of 102. He appeared in more than 200 films and many television shows as well. Outside of the four Bailey children, Lane, who played Mr. Potter's rent collector, was probably the last surviving member of this Christmas classic. Rest in Peace, Charles.