Friday, July 20, 2012

The Battered Battery Syndrome

I have a Zen-like belief that if my car doesn’t want to take me someplace, maybe it’s better that I don't go. Today my car did not want to take me to the battery store. I wanted to go to the battery store because the car’s battery has been acting like a sullen teenager lately, only working part time and grudgingly at that. So I thought it needed replacing.

Sullen batteries are easier to replace than sullen teenagers. I know. I was a sullen teenager. There were times when my parents wished they could replace me with a battery. Unlike sullen teenagers, batteries don’t eat everything not frozen solid, don't  break curfew, and don't get other batteries pregnant with little batteries. Not that I got any batteries pregnant, you understand, but that was then and this was now, and now my Zen thinking was in conflict with my desire for automotive mobility. It was quite an internal crisis. For both the battery and for me.

Anyway, I thought I had charged the battery with a 100 mile drive last week, but when I tried to start the car today, the engine said “crick crick.” See, it’s a Japanese car, and Japanese cars don’t say “click click” when the battery is acting like a sullen teenager and refuses to start the car. They say…well…you get the picture.

But out of the mud may bloom the lotus. It’s possible that my sullen teenaged battery may have saved me from a gruesome wreck on the way to the battery store. I thought about being squashed into road kill by a speeding big rig whose driver was so hopped up on truck stop coffee that he thought my car was a speed bump. I puddled up at the thought my untimely demise. Poor Mike. Cut down in the prime of his senility. Then I wiped away my tears and blew my nose in a Handi Wipe or maybe on the nearest sleeve and tried to start the car again. “Crunk,” it said, and that was that.

Okay. I can take a hint. I called the Insurance Angel whose company provides roadside assistance. This was my third call this month. We’re getting to be old friends.

“You again,” she said. “What is it this time?”

I told her my car would not start. It sat there like a sullen teenager and muttered ’crunk’ the last time I turned the key.

She let out a sigh that crossed state lines. “Ooookay, Mister Brownie. I’ll call a tow company. Again. And stop buying cars that don’t speak English.”

As it happened, my car did not need a tow. Just a shot of battery Viagra from a more virile battery that worked out consistently and ate a lot of battery vitamins, which the tow company truck provided.

“You again,” the driver said. “Why don’t you get a battery with better manners?”


That’s just what I did when I finally got to the battery store.

“You again,” said the battery man, then he took the battery’s pulse and blood pressure. The prognosis was not good. “Your battery terminals are terminal,” he said, and got me another battery. This battery recently finished a stint in battery rehab, “but I can’t guarantee that it won’t relapse,” said the battery man.

Well, if this battery won’t start my car, maybe it’s my car’s karma. But it did, and me and the car were as happy as Buddha under a Bo tree.

Comments?


"Prime of your senility" Dang, you're younger than I am and I'm NOT senile. Always fun to read your stories. -- Carol M.
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You again?  By the way, I think our cars are related. -- Beatysr
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Ahaaaaa loved it -- Juli
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I enjoyed reading your column. I am delighted with my low tire pressure light that has kept me from having a flat tire on 3 occasions. -- Ken

Thanks, Ken. I dunno about having a car smarter than I am.


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I'll probably never look at little batteries the same, again -- Pirate
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Crick?  Pretty funny Mike -- Lynda
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Cutest one yet! -- Tab A
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Laughing so hard I ....well you know. That was one of the funniest ever. Good job! -- Mary Pat
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Entertaining as always.

You know, I had to chuckle. First, my AAA man knows me by my first name because for some reason I obstinately will not put a key box magnet on my car somewhere or keep an extra key in my really tiny purses. I simply get out of the car and leave the keys in the ignition enough times that when I call AAA, the man says "Hi, Zoey. How have you been...I mean, other than today when you locked your keys in your car again?"

So, I chuckled at your piece. We know something's going wrong but we just put it off a little longer. We make love to it with our voices as though it was a familiar lover with no intention of failing to make you come just like he always does. Well, perhaps a bad analogy, but that's where my head...uh...my mind was.

Anyway...thanks for the smile, Mike -- Zoey

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Funny, as usual. You're such a joy to read. -- Amanda
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You sure know how to turn a demi-tragedy into a good comedy -- Karen S.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

A Fun Read And A Funner Site

In case you missed it the first time around, I've linked a site kept by Ken Babbs, an author who wrote a novel entitled Who Shot The Water Buffalo, based on his experience as Marine helicopter pilot in Viet Nam. 

SKYPILOTCLUB HOME PAGE

Mr. Babbs was a  buddy and neighbor of the late Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest; Sometimes A Great Notion;  Kesey's Garage Sale; Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear, a children's book; Sailor Song; Last Go Around; and a collection of essays entitled Demon Box, which a friend borrowed five years ago and never returned. [Marcia: I want my book back.]

In 1964 Babbs and Kesey were the de facto leaders of a scruffy band of free spirits named The Merry Pranksters who made a cross country odyssey in a psychedelically painted ex-school bus they named "Furthur" with "Weird Load" painted on the back.

The driver was the late Neal Cassady, a natural speed freak and literary icon made famous as the character Dean Moriarity in Jack Kerouac's 1957 book, On The Road, and as the central character in his Visions Of Cody. 


Author Tom Wolfe wrote about the Merry Prankster journey in The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, published in 1968, and mandatory reading for every sophomore boy who wanted to run away from home to get loaded and laid in a tie-dyed heap of stoned hippie bodies. 
  
Mr. Babbs' site is sad and funny at the same time.  It has pictures of old hippies with bulging bellies and gray hair attending what looks like a counter-cultural VFW cookout, their free love, free dope and free chalmydia days long since cast aside for raising families, paying mortgages, and now babysitting grandchildren when their parents need a break.

I kinda wish I had joined those folks in 1968.  But I was a short-haired Navy vet, a registered Republican with two jobs and a full-time college student whose own mother thought he was too stuffy for his own good.  No exactly a candidate for the Woodstock Generation. 

As it was, I thought most of the patchouli reeking, draft dodging, furry headed hippies were spoiled refugees from the middle class playing at poverty with their gawdawful macrobiotic diets and glassy-eyed readings of Herman Hesse's books.  Oh, and The Hobbit was also big among the dopers who could read without moving their lips too much.  Jesus H. Christ. 

I did have a distant connection with that bunch many years later when I was drying out in the same VA hospital where Kesey had worked as an orderly, stealing LSD from the psych ward to share with his friends. At the time he was enrolled in Wallace Stegner's creative writing program at Stanford, along with Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove. Okay, enough with the name dropping.

My snarkiness about the 60s hippies aside, I sometimes wish I had been on that bus.

I'd post a picture of the bus, but this e-blogger service is being difficult.  Tech support is no help.  Neither is swearing, but it makes me feel better.

Comments?

I was married in 1962 and had babies in 1967 and 1970.  My husband was a crew-cutted chemical engineer and I was a grad student and T.A. at UMass, and then at Miami of Ohio.  I had no time or respect for hippie hijinks.  Having been born and raised in Colorado, I  could not BELIEVE the mess they created there, camping all over the place in the mountains (with no sanitary facilities), killing people's cows for food, lying stoned on sidewalks all over once-beautiful Boulder.  HOWEVER, I first read Lord of the Rings in 1966 and it has given me joy all my life. (The Hobbit is a children's story and I cannot understand how Peter Jackson is going to make a two-part epic of it, but I am withholding judgment.)  Don't shoot the dog;  keep me on your mailing list!  I enjoy your writings!   -- Eve

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I do enjoy a good read by someone else on occasion, and I especially enjoy your rather good hand at it. -- Zoey

Thanks, Zoey. Instead of sending you a Wal*Mart gift card in appreciation for your nice comment, I’ve entered your name in the Publishers Clearinghouse sweepstakes.
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I love your blog and envy your trip to Alaska!!!!! -- Cyn

Cyn is a former Alaskan who lived in Juneau.

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Fabulous read! -- Julisari

Juli: I’ve always respected your intelligence and judgment. Got any nude pix?

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Well ...at first I thought you were a teenager writing, then you seemed to grow into a 25 to 35 year old, then I realized you were an old geezer like me and your writing made a lot more sense and it was much funnier, since it wasn't coming from a wise ass teenager. -- PlaceboDomingo


Yup. Just another old fart with an advanced case of arrested development.
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Wow, you make it sound so wonderful. Everyone I know who has gone to Alaska has raved about it. I hope i see it one day. -- Angel G.

It will change you.
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Very nice, Mike. The only thing was that I was the only one to vote against the softball team [ being named] Liquor in the Valley, but I had agreed I would adhere to majority vote. Someone of my station (Indian princess) would NEVER come up with a name like that. -- Sandy

Who am I to argue? Arguing with an Indian princess is not a good career move.
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I found it interesting to read about you and the wheelchair treatment, followed by the blog about the cigarette tax. -- Brat Patrol

I know, I know.

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So, you DID enjoy the trip, events, family ties and the scenery? -- Kent

Immensely
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Friday, July 13, 2012

The Return Of The Native Tomato

Okay, so last month my cousin Sandy told me I will be visiting her and her family in Juneau, Alaska, in July. 

You see, Sandy and I are descended from a matrilineal tribe of Alaska injuns where women pretty much run the show. Tribal leaders are chosen from the female side of families in line of succession and arguing with Sandy is not a good career move.  She also teaches karate.  I tried to beg off in a weak ass way, saying I have emphysema (which I do), and was promptly informed that I could have emphysema in Juneau as easily as I could in Sacramento.  She cemented the deal with a round trip ticket on Alaska Airlines, including wheelchair service and an order not to put on a Mr. Macho act and refuse the courtesy.

I did put on that act when changing planes at the Seattle-Tacoma airport  --  and regretted it. The frapping airport passageway was 10 miles long and uphill in all directions, or so it seemed. Lesson learned. I ain’t no young tomato no mo and I requested wheelchair service for the Seattle to Juneau hop, knowing that me ‘n Alaska Airlines would catch triple Hell from Sandy if I showed up in Juneau wheezing along under my own power, such as it is.

I got back to the furnace heat of the Sacramento Valley last night after an altogether too brief stay of seven days amid the mountains of Southeastern Alaska, where forests of spruce, cedar and pine slope down to the dark emerald waters of the Inside Passage, where daytime temperatures hover in the 60 degree range and where formal evening wear consists of a reasonably clean Pendleton shirt.

Sandy and her husband, Keith, took me to a beach where flocks of eagles swoop for salmon and where tiny strawberries grow wild along the shore. The only sound was the hissing of waterfalls that had been centuries old glacier ice just hours before.

We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant, which I thought ironic for my first meal in Alaska, with Sandy, Keith, their 18-year-old son Kevin, and members of Keith’s family I was meeting for the first time. Sandy's reclusive Thoreauvian brother, another Mike, who lives on island instead of a pond, showed up too. Then we were off to a high school stadium where Keith and Sandy play on a softball team. Instead of parking me in the bleachers, Sandy got me a folding chair and a lap robe, which made me feel like the old fart I guess I’ve become. Their team is sponsored by a liquor store. Sandy’s idea of naming the team “The Juneau Lickers” was not met with wild approval, for some reason.

This trip was not my first rodeo, but it was one of the few times I did not want to come home.


Comments?

Glad you went and had fun! Alaska is the only state I have not visited and still hope to get there eventually. Why in the world would anyone not take advantage of a generous offer of a trip, etc., when it is offered in love? -- Eve

I hedged at first, as I did with a similar offer from relatives in Seattle last November, thinking of the cost of transportation, and not wanting to be burdensome on anyone’s finances, but was promptly put in my place. It now occurs to me that people who go out of their way not to be burdens can be the most burdensome of all when it comes to accepting the gift of grace; grace being defined in my Webster’s as “unconstrained and undeserved good will.” I am very, very fortunate to have the family I was given. Were it not for a state of grace, I would be writing them from prison with requests for cigarettes

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I do enjoy a good read by someone else on occasion, and I especially enjoy your rather good hand at it. -- Zoey

Thanks, Zoey. Instead of sending you a Wal*Mart gift card in appreciation for your nice comment, I’ve entered your name in the Publishers Clearinghouse sweepstakes.
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I love your blog and envy your trip to Alaska!!!!! -- Cyn

Cyn is a former Alaskan who lived in Juneau.

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Fabulous read! -- Julisari

Juli: I’ve always respected your intelligence and judgment. Got any nude pix?

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Well ...at first I thought you were a teenager writing, then you seemed to grow into a 25 to 35 year old, then I realized you were an old geezer like me and your writing made a lot more sense and it was much funnier, since it wasn't coming from a wise ass teenager. -- PlaceboDomingo

Yup. Just another old fart with an advanced case of arrested development.
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Wow, you make it sound so wonderful. Everyone I know who has gone to Alaska has raved about it. I hope i see it one day. -- Angel G.

It will change you.

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Very nice, Mike. The only thing was that I was the only one to vote against the softball team [ being named] Liquor in the Valley, but I had agreed I would adhere to majority vote. Someone of my station (Indian princess) would NEVER come up with a name like that. -- Sandy

Who am I to argue? Arguing with an Indian princess is not a good career move.
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Did you get to see the Northern Lights?  -- Carol

Nope.  The're not common at the latitude and time of year.

Well, Poop.  -- Carol

Carol is a southern Californian who once saw the northern lights and has been looking for them ever since.  The farthest south I've seen them was in Seattle in 1957, a sight so rare at that latitude that people set up lawn chairs outside to watch God's own light show, but I'm afraid if they appeared over Southern California, police switchboards would be jammed with panicked callers reporting UFO sightings.  Plus every nutcase evangelical preacher south of Barkersfield would see them as an indication of End Times and really make a killing collecting cash donations and tithes from frightened sinners, proving that solar flares, like clouds, have a silver lining.
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So, you DID enjoy the trip, events, family ties and the scenery? -- Kent

Immensely.