Gentlemen, Check Your Engines

My vehicle, like most on the road these days, has an array of lights and symbols that tell me something’s wrong or about to go wrong. The old lights that tell me the oil pressure’s too low or that the engine is heating up to the melting point are still there but I also have lights that tell me I didn’t close a door or the hatch all the way. The vehicle assumes that I, and apparently anyone else, can’t decipher the intricacies of the gas gauge so it tells me when I’m low on fuel. It also tells me when the anti-lock brakes aren’t working, when the turn signals are fritzed and when I’m low on window washer bug juice. There are a couple of lights that are trying to tell me something’s wrong but I don’t know what they mean and it really hasn’t seemed to matter. All of these lights come on with an electronic ‘ding’ sound to ensure I take my eyes off the road, ignore traffic and get blood pressure up. Good things to do in 60 mph rush hour.

The most annoying light is the one that says ‘Check Engine.’ The first time this one came on I pulled over, popped the hood and looked. The engine was still there, still running, still sounding normal. It turns out I wasn’t the one who was supposed to check the engine. When the light comes on I’m supposed to take the van to a garage and pay the mechanic about a hundred dollars to hook my vehicle’s computer up to his computer and tell me every thing’s fine, the sensor just has to be reset. For $100 I could have reset the sensor myself with a hefty wrench.

The vehicle has a computer. It doesn’t seem that it would take much to put a scrolling display in (my telephone and fax machine have that) to tell me specifically what’s wrong with the engine. The vehicle already knows. It could say things like ‘Your Fuel Injector is about ready to crap out’ or 'Piston #3 is slapping around like a Rumba Band’ or ‘The last curb you drove over ripped off your oil pan and you’ve got about a hundred yards to go before the engine seizes up.’ For the cost of a vehicle these days, it doesn’t seem too much to ask. Until then I’m keeping a hefty wrench handy. I may have to re-set a sensor.

A Little Debbie Rescue

Chris was over a while ago, stayed for supper and conversation and we talked for a while. Quite a while, actually. It was getting close to midnight and he was getting ready to leave when he remembered he had a picnic-type thing at one of his jobs the next day. He was supposed to bring a desert. He groaned when he thought the only solution was to stop at one of the all night grocery stores, pick up a box of brownies and spend the next couple of hours making it. I told him there was an easier way.

“Stop at the store,” I told him, “and pick up a couple of boxes of Little Debbie brownies. When you get home take them out of their cellophane packages, cut them apart and put them on a paper plate then wrap the plate and brownies with plastic wrap. They’ll look home made.”

Chris prides himself on his cooking ability and I got such a look as he shook his head and left for the store. When I saw him the next day I asked him how the picnic went. He said it was okay. I asked how late he was up making brownies and he shuddered a little bit.

“You know,” he said, “I was so tired by the time I got to the store I just went ahead with your idea.”

“How did that go?” I asked.

He shuddered again and said, “Three people asked me for the recipe.”

Hot Buns

A friend of mine came by the other day with his new car. It was a used car but new to him and he was excited about it and insisted I go for a ride. As a new car it was a luxury model but even used it still had all the bells and whistles. I got the tour of all the knobs, levers and lights as we drove down the street. We got to the end of the tour and he pointed at the last lever. It had an on/off switch above it and a lever that slid back and forth with lights that went on as he pushed it to the right. “This is my favorite one,” he said. “Do you feel it? Heated seats!”

I felt a warmth coming from below. It felt good. A little unusual but good and I squirmed to take advantage of it. During winter in Minnesota we’ll take warmth wherever we find it.

“You know,’ my friend said, “I’ve always liked a warm seat but the only way I could get it before now was to pass gas.”

I am so thankful some automotive engineer some where had the idea to run high resistant coated electrical wires through this car’s seat cushions. It was -7 degrees that day and I had the feeling my friend would have tried his alternative method. At -7 there was no way I wanted to be hanging my head out the window like a dog. I would have. I just wouldn’t have wanted to.

My Best Holiday

We just passed my favorite holiday – Ground Hog Day. To me it ranks up there with Christmas, the Fourth of July, New Years Day, Thanksgiving and all the rest of them. Ground Hog Day is special. It’s a no pressure, no stress holiday. There are no presents to buy, no huge meals to prepare, overeating is optional, no stress in making resolutions I know I’ll break before the month is out, no relatives I feel an obligation to entertain. The only anxiety in the day is wondering if the rodent will see his shadow and either way it doesn’t matter. I live in Minnesota. We could tarp the ground hog’s hole to keep it dark or flood it with sun lamps. It’s going to be winter for at least six weeks no matter what we, or the weather, do.

The point is, I’ve found Ground Hog Day to be the perfect holiday because the activity options are wide open. Sleep in or get up early, have friends and relatives over or don’t, the type and quantity of meals is open and if you want to shop, no store is going to be crowded because of the holiday. It’s a guilt free, anti-stress holiday. I love it.

Saving Up

A few weeks ago I was in another part of town and watched a guy carry a car bumper down an alley. It was one of those old heavier metal bumpers with dinged up chrome and I could see it was an effort for him to haul. As he got closer I kidded him saying, “I’ve heard of people saving up for a car but I’ve never quite seen it done that way.”

He chuckled and we talked a bit. It turned out he actually was saving up for a car. He already had two fenders and a couple of tires. By next summer he expects to have enough of a car assembled to sit behind a steering wheel and make engine noises.

I suppose there is always another way to do things.

A Ticket Excuse

I was working at a house in a seedier part of town yesterday when a car whipped around the corner at what you could call a higher than usual speed. A police car with its lights on was right behind. As luck would have it a tow truck was blocking the street and the car’s driver was in what was essentially a dead end. He pulled over. The two policemen got out of their car and had the driver get out of his, leaving his passenger in place. The driver didn’t have a driver’s license with him so the police ran the car’s plate.

I think anyone who’s been pulled over has tried in one way or another to avoid the ticket: be nice, be sexy (harder for guys), be chummy, belligerent (usually the fall-back since it’s hard to intimidate a cop), empathetic, play stupid (for some folks this is being natural), or the whole Dale Carnegie thing. Sometimes it works. Usually it doesn’t. The driver of this car tried a tact I’ve never even heard of.

“Are you James Bodin?” the cop asked.

“Yeah,” the guy said.

“Do you have anything to prove that?” The guy fished around in his pocket for a paper and handed it to the cop. It passed the proof test and the cop said,”Our records show your license has been revoked”

“No it hasn’t,” James said.

“Yeah . . .” the cop started.

“No,” James said, “I’ve never had one so how could they revoke it? They can’t revoke something I’ve never had.”

The exchange went on for a bit with James stating and re-stating that he couldn’t possibly be driving with a revoked license since he never bothered to get one in the first place.

It worked. The cops did not give him a ticket. The downside was that he had to leave the car parked by the curb and walk to wherever he was going. His passenger, who also didn’t have a license, had to walk too. It was cold that day and the policemen went back to their car to do paperwork while James and his passenger trudged up the street. In a few minutes James and his passenger were out of sight and the police had finished up and left.

Twenty minutes later James came back with his passenger. They got into the car, made a bootlegger U-turn and charged down the street. They only made it a few blocks when a police car with its lights on turned the corner. Same policemen, same police car.

I don’t know what tact James used this time but I don’t think it worked. At the end of this stop James got to ride in the back of the warm police car. His passenger still had to walk.

Just trying to play my song

Pat said my snoring last night was terrible. I tried to explain to her it was because I wasn’t getting enough practice – like a musician who doesn’t play his instrument for a while. I told her that with more sleep time I could become very good, maybe work my way up to a concerto. She wasn’t impressed.

A Rose by any other . . .

I’ve been doing a little reading about surnames, what we commonly call last names or family names. From what I’ve read, we’ve only been using them on a regular basis for about 900 years. Up until then villages were small enough that people could get by with a nickname attached to their first name and everyone would know who someone was talking about: Little John, Eric the Red, Bernie the Blowhard, etc. You get the idea. When folks decided to start going with permanent last names there were some choices. People could name themselves after the work they did: the barrel maker could choose the name Cooper or the guy who ground wheat to flour could be Miller, etc. Another major choice could be a geographical feature of where someone lived, i.e. Dale, Glen, Forest, Fairbanks, etc.

There were other variables but a third major choice was to use a prominent personal physical feature: Red evolved to become Reed and other colors involving hair shade or skin tone became prominent: Brown, Black and White being the most widely chosen. Size, shape and other physical features also came in to play: Short, Pierce, Palm, Faint and Fairchild are some of the names I found easily in the telephone book.

All of this brings me to the questions I’ve been asking myself since I first saw it. As you look at the photo below what do you think was the prominent physical feature of the patriarch of this family and why on earth do the decendants feel compelled to display it on the side of a building? I also wonder why the immigrant ancestor didn’t change it when he came to America but nope, there it is.

Driving is so sleet

It snowed again the other day. Driving wasn’t too much of a problem because of the new snow. .The problem was the couple of inches of sleet that fell first and got covered up by the snow. Driving on snow covered sleet tends to make most of us more focused as we’re going from one place to another. Most of us with two wheel drive vehicles tend to slow down but I’ve noticed many of the four wheel drive people don’t. They have better traction and tend to plow through things. What most of them haven’t figured out is that they can’t stop any faster than anyone else. Pat, my wife, has come up with a system for telling where the really slick spots are: she looks for Jeeps and SUV’s in the ditch. It’s a good system. It works just about every time.

I did manage to slide on a nearby street for a while, though – there weren’t any SUV’s to warn me –and came to a new conclusion: Going sideways down a street gives a guy the opportunity to look at familiar things from a new and unique perspective. It also can get your cardiovascular system up without the drudgery of exercise. It’s the Up North way to shed those holiday pounds. I’m going to test it a few more times and then see if I can get an infomercial going. I’ll call it ‘The Slick and Easy Way to Shed Weight.’

Leprechauns and Rainbows

I was driving with my son, Chris, on one of those crisp days when the weather couldn’t decide what it wanted to do. We would drive in sunshine for a while then it would cloud and rain. Once in a while we’d see some snow flakes and the process would start all over again. When the sun came out there would be rainbows all around us – many were cloud to ground, more than a few were ground to ground. It was a gorgeous day.

I thought I’d take the opportunity to teach Chris a little of his Irish heritage. I am not Irish. My wife, Pat, is. Her grandparents immigrated. The closest I come is having ancestors who stopped off in the Ulster section for a while on their way from Scotland to the American colonies. I’m a bit far off the boat for true lore but Celtic enough to dabble. Pat grew up listening to her grandfather’s stories of leprechauns and fairies and mermaids and we’ve been married long enough that some of it has rubbed off. I’ve also been known to enhance a story. As long as you can throw in enough facts a story can sound real. Sometimes.

“Chris,” I said as we watched rainbows in the distance, “do you remember that thing about there being a pot of Leprechaun’s gold at the end of a rainbow? It’s true, you know.”

Chris looked at me.

“The problem most people have had with it is that they don’t have a true bearing on where the rainbow touches the ground. And if they can keep the bearing right while they’re wandering around trees and over fences and up and down hills then they don’t have a clue as to how far away the end of the rain bow is.”

Chris glanced at me and back at the rainbows with some interest but more than a little skepticism.

“What you need on a day like this,” I continued, “ is several teams so you can triangulate the position. Leprechauns don’t leave the gold out for very long so you’d need to move fast to the right spot to have a chance to get it.”

Chris turned from the rainbows to me and said, “That’s not true.”

“It is, too,” I said, feigning as much indignation as I could. “When the rainbows go from cloud to ground the leprechauns are making a withdrawal. And when you see the ones that are ground to ground do you know what that is?”

“No,” he said.

“They’re changing banks.”

Chris looked at the rainbows for a few moments then turned back to me. “You know,” he said, “sometimes you’re really hard to talk to.”

I suppose sometimes I am.