The City Focus

Periodically, my city government sends out a very thin pamphlet to its citizens. It’s called the City Focus. It has 3 pages stapled together down the center and then folded to make 6 pages. And if you count the front and back covers as numbered pages, then it has 12 numbered pages. If you remove the staples, you’re back to 3 pieces of paper.

I received the most recent City Focus in the mail today. I flipped through it and noticed the city wants us to vote. In fact, the city has notified its Democratic voters, by means of the City Focus, that the deadline for registering to vote in the primary next Tuesday is February 10. Today is February 27th. If I wanted to vote in the Democratic primary, the only way I could register is by using a time machine. I don’t have a time machine but obviously the city thinks I do. Small wonder my personal property tax bill is so large.

(Now maybe I’m being overly suspicious, but I wonder, do you think the Republicans running city government intentionally waited until the registration date had passed before sending out a reminder to register?)

There’s more good news. Voters can vote in the Democratic primary with an absentee ballot. The only catch is that voters must apply online, or by fax or mail, by February 25th. That was the day before yesterday. I’m starting to sense a trend.

The city has a website. On their website, there is a form that allows you to ask the city a question. I’ve used it to ask questions but I’ve never received a reply. Imagine the money the city saves by pretending to offer services it doesn’t really offer. In fact, the city saved so much money that it was able to build a new courthouse it didn’t really need.

However, if you’re ever late paying your water bill, see how long it takes the city to shut off your water. Suddenly, you’re the city’s focus.

Walmart Again

I couldn’t sleep, so after a couple hours I got up, dressed, and drove to Walmart. I arrived at 11 PM. (There’s not a lot open at 11 PM in my little burg.) First, before I entered the store, I put away some shopping carts that had been abandoned in the parking lot lane I was driving in. What is wrong with people?! Then I went into the store and picked up a few items. Some of it was real food. Cereal and unsweetened almond milk, pre-made salads, an Italian sub, 2-liter bottles of soda, and an 8 ounce bag of chips—or as I call it, a single-serving bag. And because the reason I was at Walmart was insomnia, I picked up a bottle of wine—Cabernet Sauvignon—thinking a couple of glasses might bring on slumber. By 11:15 PM I was ready to checkout.

Problem: there were only two checkout lines and both of them had shoppers backed up all the way into an adjacent clothing department. All of the self-pay registers were closed. “Why do I shop at Walmart?” I keep asking myself and I never have a good answer. Oh wait, now I remember: There’s not a lot open at 11 PM.

By 11:55 PM (after waiting in the checkout line for 40 minutes) I was finally at a checkout register. During my 40 minutes in line I kept wondering if I would reach the register before midnight, at which time my bottle of wine would turn into an unsellable pumpkin. But I squeaked in under the wire.

I drove home and watched news and whatnot for an hour or so, while consuming the better part of my bag of chips. Now it’s 2:00 AM and I’m drinking my first glass of wine. I figure I’ll have two glasses, then hit the rack. Maybe I’ll sleep, maybe I won’t. The house is quiet, the wine is good, my little electric space heater is blowing warm air at my bare legs, lulling me into Sleepytown. And when I say Sleepytown, I’m not referring to the album by Tex-Mex musician Flaco Jiménez. But I digress. It’s how my brain works at 2 AM.

The Debate

I tried to watch the recent presidential debate. I wanted to learn the views of the various candidates on how they would handle future relations with North Korea and Iran, what they could do to bring affordable healthcare to America, and how they would help the homeless find jobs and contribute to the economy. I wanted to hear them speak about gun policy, and taxes, and the extreme inequality of income and wealth in this country.

But right off the bat, the candidates seemed to take control away from the moderators, who couldn’t seem to moderate their way out of a paper bag. In fairness, I’ve never seen a moderator on a TV debate who appeared able to moderate a kindergarten class. I feel qualified to say that because part of my engineering training was learning how to moderate a debate. And in fact, I have been a debate moderator…in front of an audience…in front of a camera.

I’ve spoken at engineering symposia. I’ve presented slide shows, beginning with doing the research, outlining the speech, creating the slides, and finally making my case in front of a very large room filled with engineers. I think the presidential debaters should be allowed to present a slide show. There is something about presenting charts and numbers that clarifies the thought process—and sometimes reveals that there hasn’t been any thought process. As for the moderators, let’s get some of those people who run Toastmasters meetings. If they can’t control a debate, nobody can.

Durward and Charles – Goodbye

(continued from previous Durward and Charles episodes)

I’m a blood relative of Charles. He was my uncle, my father’s brother. But a woman who is related to him only by law—Betty, his daughter-in-law—told me my writings about Charles were distressing her and that I was, in her words,  “making fun of the mentally ill.” I never considered Charles to be mentally ill. He was a lot of things. He had an outsize personality; he was fearless; he was a doer. He was fun to be around (when he was sober—and many times when he wasn’t). He could be mean. His actions could be amoral or immoral, if not illegal. But that has nothing to do with mental health.

Charles knew right from wrong, and if he behaved wrongly, it was because he chose to do it, and he chose it because he enjoyed it. When Charles wasn’t drinking heavily, he was a successful businessman. But he had a weakness for alcohol, and he often overindulged. Alcohol was his downfall, as it is with many people. Alcohol is a drug, but drug addiction is not a mental illness.

Far from intending to make fun of him, I wrote about Charles because I considered him a once-in-a-lifetime character, the likes of which I’ll never meet again. However, if writing about him, even when I’m describing true events, brings distress to other family members, then I won’t continue doing it. It’s not worth it. After all, for me there is no gain for writing about him, and therefore no loss for not writing about him. I’ll always have Durward and Charles in my memories. As long as I live, they’ll be alive, in a sense, if only to me.

Durward and Charles – The Chiropractic Cop

(continued from previous Durward and Charles episodes)

If Charles had a weakness—other than liquor, drugs, women, money, temper, and the tendency to immediately act out whatever impulse came into his head—it was his lower back. Charles had what is commonly called a bad back. His brother Durward had a bad back, and for a long time Durward wore a back brace. I inherited Durward’s bad back, and for a time I wore a back brace, too. I underwent chiropractic treatment. I underwent Rolfing. There was a year and a half period during which I couldn’t stand up straight, causing me to stand and walk bent over. There was a two to three week period (after a chiropractor hurt my back) during which I could not get out of bed. If I tried, the pain was extreme. I could not even crawl to the bathroom. Literally, I was bed-bound. When I recovered, I considered back surgery, but after discussions with my doctor and people who had undergone the surgery, and after viewing graphics of the procedure, and after considering the fact that back surgery was “iffy” and might or might not help, I decided against it. All this is to say, I know how painful and debilitating back pain can be.

Durward and Charles were football fans. Durward’s favorite team was the Washington Redskins, because it was the team closest to where we lived. I don’t know if Charles had a favorite team. I think he simply liked the sport because it was violent. One time Charles traveled from Florida to Virginia to visit Durward and they went to a Redskins game. During pre-game activities, players threw out footballs to their fans in the stands. The footballs were somewhat smaller than regulation size, white, and autographed by members of the team. Charles caught one and gave it to Durward, who gave it to my brother, who put it on his chest of drawers where it sat for years.

So it was natural that, on another visit, the two brothers went to watch a high school football game in Richmond. Charles’ back was acting up, so he was in pain and couldn’t stand up straight. During the game, Durward and Charles were standing on the sideline. They were among a large number of people watching from the sideline. As they watched the game, a police officer came past, shoving people away from the sideline with the admonishment, “Get back! Step back! Get back…!” When he got to Charles, he tried to push Charles backward but with little effect. Charles didn’t move. Durward told the cop, “Be careful, he has a bad back.”

The cop looked at the two men and said, “Couple of wise guys, huh?” He walked behind Charles, put his knee against Charles lower back, grabbed Charles by the shoulders, and yanked Charles’ shoulders back to an upright posture.

Charles experienced a momentary, agonizing pain in his back. After that, the pain disappeared and he was left standing straight. The cop’s action had cured Charles’ back pain. During the rest of his visit, Charles had no problems with his back.

And now a warning: If you, my reader, know someone suffering from back pain, please do not try this “cure” on them. It might help them, or it might make their back pain much worse. It might make them bedridden for weeks. That’s what happened to me when a chiropractor examined me. While testing my legs’ range of motion, he suddenly raised my right leg, which caused me to have a searing pain in my lower back that landed me in bed and required weeks of recovery. The back is a tricky thing.

Even when Charles wasn’t making trouble, trouble found him. Chalk it up to karma. And now, I’m going to try to stand up. You see, this is one of those days when my back is acting up.

Again.

Durward and Charles – Shots and More Shots

(continued from previous Durward and Charles episodes)

Charles was a hard-living, hard-partying kind of man. But it took a toll on his body. Probably as a result of downing many, many shots of straight whiskey, he developed a serious stomach ulcer. It was life-threatening, and he needed surgery. The surgeon removed about 2/3 of his stomach. After surgery, his doctor prescribed Demerol for pain. Demerol is an opioid pain reliever and it has a long list of potentially fatal interactions with other medications—and alcohol, as you might guess.

Because of possible interactions, I don’t think it’s prescribed as much as it once was. But Charles was given Demerol in the late '50s when drug abuse was not such a hot-button issue. If you’re wondering what a shot of Demerol feels like, I can tell you: I’ve had Demerol after surgery and it feels very, very good. Demerol gives you a warm, relaxed glow all over. You feel sleepy. When it wears off, you want another shot. You know you shouldn’t have another, but you still want it. After two or three days on Demerol, my doctor switched me to Percodan, a combination of aspirin and oxycodone. (The similar drug Percoset contains acetaminophen and oxycodone.) Percodan is nice, but Demerol is on another level.

Charles liked Demerol. He liked it so much he began paying the doctor to give him a shot every week. His doctor became his dealer. For a shot of Demerol, Charles paid the doctor $150. This was in the late '50s and in terms of 2020 money, that $150 is the equal of $1300 today. As the weeks turned into months, the doctor had to increase the dose to give Charles the same effect.

It happened that Durward was visiting Charles when Charles wanted to get his shot. The two men drove to the doctor’s office together. Durward watched Charles get his shot and said the shot didn’t seem to affect Charles at all. Then Charles asked the doctor to give Durward a shot. And so the doctor did.

The next thing Durward recalled was waking up much later. The doctor had given Durward a “Charles-dose” of Demerol, a higher dose than a newbie should be given. Both Charles and Durward were alcoholics, and it’s a miracle that a large dose of Demerol didn’t kill them. Maybe both men were sober at the time.

When I think that, at one time, you could go to a doctor and buy a shot of something similar to morphine, I think, “Wow, times have really changed.” Today, it’s difficult to get a scrip for even a relatively tame tranquilizer like Valium or Xanax. The medical profession has “over-reacted”. It’s a side effect of the Big Brother mentality: Better to overprotect everyone than to risk someone, somewhere, possibly hurting themselves.

Things weren’t always thus, but things change. George Orwell saw the change coming and tried to warn us seventy years ago with his final book, Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel. Yet here we are. Big Brother is alive and well and watching you ... for your own good. Knowing that, don’t you feel better?

Durward and Charles – The Dixie Pig

(continued from previous Durward and Charles episodes)

Charles came from Florida to Virginia to visit his brother. It was the end of the fifties, the beginning of the sixties. The Beatles were still a few years away. Young folk at that time survived on AM radio music and 45 RPM records like Brian Hyland’s Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-dot Bikini, and Sheh Wooley’s One-eyed, One-horned, Flyin' Purple People Eater. And who can forget Englishman Lonnie Donegan’s hit, Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight?). That’s right, nobody can forget them, regardless of how hard we try. And we’ve tried very hard.

When suppertime came, Durward drove the two of them to a little eatery at the edge of town called Dixie Pig. It was a barbeque place, as you might guess from the name. It had its regulars, but it wasn’t exactly a magnet for clientele. Charles was in a party mood, and he decided to liven up the place by handing out twenty-dollar bills. While you may turn up your nose today, in 1960 a twenty was worth $175 in year 2020 money. Charles started handing out twenties to the waitresses, and before the night was over the customers were in on the action. Charles was a popular man that night. No pooches were screwed, no cars were wrecked, no one was beaten up or hospitalized. It was a good time for all and Charles was the epicenter.

News traveled fast. The next night, Dixie Pig had the most business ever. The parking lot was slammed. Everybody wanted a cut of the good times. Everybody wanted to be in the Dixie Pig in case the crazy man who handed out twenties returned. But Charles made only one appearance. This wasn’t Charles’ first time at throwing a party for everyone in the joint, and he knew better than to go back the next night. There’s popular, when people are having fun but they’re not really sure what’s happening. Then there’s crazy time, when people have had time to think about it and decide, “I want some more of that!”

It was a night to remember, and those who were there never forgot it.

Choke Point

I was planning to write another story about the Buick, but I soon realized I already had written it and published it—on December 29, 2012. The title was Cars and Carbs. So no point in writing it again. If you’ve been following the Durward and Charles saga, that story is relevant. And if you have not been following Durward and Charles, it is still a good story.

But while I’m on the topic, let me say this: It seems like my life has been filled with far too many of these kinds of situations, and I’m talking about what happened in the story about Cars and Carbs. On cars I have owned, I’ve had the throttle stick in the full-throttle position three times. I had a muffler explode! I’ve had a number of flat tires including one that occurred while my Jeep was parked in my garage and which required two jacks—a floor jack and a scissor jack—to remove the wheel. I had a flat tire in which one of the five lug nuts absolutely would not loosen and I had to cut it off with a cold chisel and hammer at the side of the road. I had a parking brake get stuck on while I was stopped on a country road—which may not sound too bad until I explain I had to crawl under the car with the tranny in neutral, and work on the brake to release it. I even had a friend’s horse eat part of my car's seatback. And how many people have had to rebuild a 4-barrel carburetor beside a busy highway while dressed for, and on the way to, a funeral? I’ve had so many situations like these. I even had a car save my life. It was a Studebaker.

I was a little kid at the time, maybe five years old. I was standing in the living room of my grandparents’ house, which is where my family lived for the first five years of my life. I remember standing in front of my grandfather as he gave me a dime coin. He put it in the palm of my hand with the admonition, “Don’t put it in your mouth.”

Now, it would not have occurred to me to put the coin in my mouth, but when he told me not to do it, instantly I was seized by an irresistible urge to put the dime in my mouth. So I did. The dime promptly slid down my throat into a location that prevented me from breathing. My dad saw me struggling to breathe, and my granddad told him I was choking on a dime. My dad took me outside to the front porch and called for help from the neighbor (we lived in a duplex—which, at the time, was called a “double tenement”). The two men lifted me by my legs and shook me upside down, bouncing my head off the porch floor (which explains a lot, I’ve been told), in an effort to make the dime come up the way it had gone down, but they had no luck. So dad threw me into the back seat of his Studebaker, and off we went to—somewhere, the hospital perhaps—on the rough, bumpy, pothole-filled streets of our neighborhood.

Durward wasted no time and gave the car plenty of gas. As the Studebaker plowed forward over the bumps and potholes, I bounced up and down on the seat with such force that the dime in my throat jiggled loose and went on down. I could breathe again. Which was good, because my parents were ill-prepared to pay for a funeral.

I had a good idea where the coin was, and I looked for it for a day or two but never saw it again. I was left with a memory and material for a blog post I would write decades later.

(Remember: Cars and Carbs.)

Durward and Charles – The Hank Williams Incident

(continued from previous Durward and Charles episodes)

This is a story that I hope isn’t true, but I have no reason to believe it isn’t.

Hank Williams, Sr., was born in a very small town called Mount Olive, Alabama. If you read a biography of Hank Williams, Sr., you will likely be informed that Mount Olive is in Butler County. All of his biographies that I’ve read (including the one on Wikipedia) say that. But here’s a factoid for you: Mount Olive is located in Jefferson County, Alabama. Take that poke in the all-knowing-eye, Wikipedia.

(Sooner or later, this geo-biographical mistake will be corrected, and readers of this article will be left scratching their heads in puzzlement.)

In 1934, the Williams family moved to Greenville in Butler County, Alabama. Hank was about 11 years old.

Who else was born in Greenville, Alabama? None other than Durward and Charles. Durward was a year older than Hank and Charles was slightly younger. The lives of the three boys would intersect at a public school in Greenville.

Hank loved his guitar and took it with him wherever he went. One day, Durward and Hank got into an altercation at school. It was probably only a verbal altercation until Charles showed up. Charles was Durward’s younger brother, but he was very protective of his older brother. If you were messing with Durward, you were messing with Charles, whether you knew it or not.

The altercation ended when Charles took Hank’s guitar away from him and hit him with it. Supposedly, as witnessed by someone who was there, Charles broke the guitar over Hank’s back. This would have been bad enough if Hank had been healthy, but Hank was born with spina bifida, a defect of the spine. Hanks’ condition caused chronic pain which, as an adult, he treated with alcohol and drugs. Ultimately, these caused heart failure and an early death at age 29. But as a schoolboy, getting hit with your own guitar had to sting in more ways than one.

As I said, I hope this story isn’t true. But knowing Charles, I can’t help but conclude that this incident sounds exactly like something Charles would have done. Hank went on to marry, to have a child (Hank Williams, Jr.), and to become what some would call country music’s first superstar, though without most of the money and trappings of today’s stars. Durward and Charles went on to fight in World War II, to marry and have children, and to live their own somewhat unconventional lives.

Durward and Charles - Havana

(continued from previous Durward and Charles episodes)

Charles liked to party, and he knew how to do it right. If he wanted to party harder than local ordinances in Florida allowed, he would hop on a plane to Havana, Cuba. On this occasion, Durward happened to be visiting Charles.  The two of them flew to Havana. Fidel Castro had just taken over the government there, but in most ways life in Cuba was still pre-Castro. Supporters of the revolution recall pre-Castro Cuba as “the brothel of the Western hemisphere.” It was much more than that, but when Charles went there to party, it was the brothel aspect of Havana that he wanted to experience.

After they checked into a hotel in Havana, Charles tipped the bellboy to bring them booze and a prostitute, and he did. Fun ensued. Fun for Durward and Charles, that is. For the sex worker, it was another night of working but also another night of earning some desperately needed money. Income disparity in Cuba at that time was a big factor that drove the revolution. Havana was glitzy, but there were many people who struggled to survive.

It was Charles’ opinion that women would do anything for money and part of his mission in life was to prove it. After “the boys” had their fill of sex, Charles asked the prostitute to have sex with the bellboy. Charles had an instant camera and he wanted to take pictures of her doing it. He offered her extra money. She didn’t want to do it. Maybe because she was white and the bellboy was black—though Cuba probably didn’t have the kind of racism that existed in the American south then—or maybe she hesitated because she would be photographed, or maybe it was something else that bothered her. Whatever the reason, Charles just kept upping the money until she said yes.

The next morning, Durward and Charles were in the hotel’s restaurant ordering breakfast when the same woman appeared. She had all the money Charles had paid her and she begged Charles to let her buy the photos. Charles told her to keep the money. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the photos, and handed them to her. She thanked him and left. In his mind, Charles had made his point. And Durward was just a little proud of Charles for doing the right thing.

Durward and Charles – Night Life

(continued from previous Durward and Charles episodes)

Obviously Durward and Charles had a wild streak, especially when they had a few drinks in them. But together, the effect was magnified. It was against their best interests to hang out together and drink. It was against everyone’s best interests for them to do that.

Durward and his wife, Alice, lived in Florida for a while after they got married. One night, Charles and Carolyn went out for a night on the town with Durward and Alice. The agenda was food and drink—and dancing, maybe, and just generally a good time. Charles was driving the four of them in his car.

Charles became very intoxicated and he was “all over the road” on the way home. His driving was so bad that Alice demanded that Charles stop the car and let her out. Charles did stop the car, and everyone not named Charles stepped out of the car. The fact that his wife got out made Charles angry. He tore off down the street and got home quickly. His former passengers called a taxi. When they arrived at Charles and Carolyn’s home, they found Carolyn’s car parked in the driveway with every piece of glass broken out of it. Headlights, taillights, windshield, side windows, back window—you name it, if it was made of glass, it was broken. Charles was a man of extremes.

On another night, Durward and Charles went to a bar. One of the bar patrons began ragging on Charles, trying to start a fight. At first, Charles ignored him. But the man persisted. Finally Charles agreed to go outside and fight the man. So that’s what they did. They went outside and squared off. The man threw a punch at Charles, and Charles returned a punch so hard that he knocked the man across the hood of a car and onto the ground. The man was knocked out cold. The authorities were called and they took the man to a hospital. The police thought Charles had used a weapon of some kind and intended to arrest him, but the crowd told the police that Charles had only used his fist. The next day the man was still unconscious, which greatly troubled Charles. He didn’t want the man to die. So Charles went to the hospital and prayed over him. The man eventually woke up, doubtless wiser about starting fights. No matter how tough you think you are, there is somebody tougher.

On another night, Charles was in a hotel room with a prostitute. I don’t know what transpired between them, but Charles refused to pay her and threw her out of the room. The prostitute left and came back with her pimp. The pimp demanded money from Charles. When Charles refused, the pimp pulled out a gun. Whereupon Charles snatched the pimp’s gun and pistol-whipped him with it. (See last sentence of previous paragraph.)

One day Charles had a disagreement with a shopkeeper. Did Charles go home grumbling to himself? No. Charles went to his car, fired up the engine, and drove the car through the front doors of the shop. Charles felt better after that. All of us have frustrations from time to time and we think about what we’d like to do. Charles didn’t fantasize about doing something, he just did it.

But as I said earlier, it was a different time in America. Sometimes you could get away with something that, today, would land you in jail. Yet it seems like there have always been people who could skirt the rules with impunity. I see news stories that make me exclaim, “If I did that they would throw me under the jail.” And yet the perp in the news somehow manages to skate past the consequences.

Sometimes, it seems that some guardian angel must be working overtime. I have my own guardian angel that has stepped in to save my butt on numerous occasions. I’ve had good luck too many times to ascribe it to chance. It has to be divine intervention. But if you have good luck and you abuse it, it may not be there when you need it most. I think that is what happened to Charles. But that’s another story and one I’m not sure I want to write about.

Durward and Charles – The Passing Lane

(continued from the previous post)

There was one incident with the Buick Electra in which I got to participate.

A few years had passed and I was probably about seventeen years old. Charles was visiting us again, and for reasons lost to history, I was driving my dad and his brother somewhere in the Buick. Dad was in the back seat and Charles was in the front passenger seat.

We were on US-1 headed north out of town. We were approaching a long downhill grade. At the bottom of the hill there was an old cement railroad bridge that had been built at a time when US-1 carried only one lane of traffic in each direction. The highway passed through short tunnels in the cement structure. The highway was four lanes wide (2 lanes north, 2 lanes south), but at the bottom of the hill, each direction of traffic narrowed to one lane to pass through the railroad bridge, so automobile traffic had to merge.

As we got to the top of the hill and started down the long grade, Charles put his left foot on top of my right foot which was on the gas pedal. The Buick had a powerful engine, and remember: we were going downhill. The Buick instantly accelerated. I pulled into the passing lane and within seconds we were flying past “slower” traffic moving a mere 55 or 60 mph. Durward yelled at Charles to get his foot off my foot. Charles laughed. I had no reaction. I was calm. For me, the situation was absurd, and absurd was normal. All I could do, at that point, was aim the vehicle. But I felt in control. Maybe I wasn’t in total control of the car, but I was in control of myself. Charles was just being playful. We weren’t about to die. Someone, in some car on that hill, might soon die, but I knew it wouldn’t be us. Not today.

We shot through the tunnel under the railroad tracks, a 4700 pound bullet with a 17 year old behind the wheel and a laughing madman beside him. Or, as I like to call it, good times.

Sometimes I wondered what other kids did when they weren’t in school. I didn’t know, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that my life was different.

Durward and Charles – The Race

(continued from the previous post)

Charles was plenty impressed by the performance of the Buick Electra. That fact explains what happened next.

Charles had a friend who owned a Corvette. This Corvette owner had “souped up” his already fast car. An engine re-bore enlarged the cylinders to accommodate oversize pistons. (It was a thing back in the day.) If he was serious about achieving more horsepower, there are other things he could have done and perhaps he did them. He was quite proud of his Corvette.

Charles thought the Buick Electra could beat the Corvette, so naturally Charles provoked the ‘vette owner into a race. Charles and Durward met the man on a section of highway that was under construction and therefore not in use. I don’t recall the details, but the Corvette carried only its driver and the Buick carried only Charles. Someone (Durward, probably) signaled the start of the race and both cars took off. The Buick’s transmission had two ranges: Low and Drive. Charles had the transmission in Low, and the Buick jumped out to take the lead. Charles kept the pedal floored with the transmission in Low until his speed hit 70 mph, whereupon he shifted into Drive. Durward said when Charles shifted into Drive, a puff of black smoke came from the Buick’s tailpipes. The Buick stayed ahead of the Corvette until it hit 120 mph, at which point Charles let off the gas to avoid damaging the speedometer. Finally, as the Buick slowed, the Corvette passed it.

We’ll never know how many miles were taken off the life of the Buick’s engine and transmission in that drag race. For that matter, driving a new car from Virginia to Florida at 120 mph is probably inadvisable as well. But as far as Charles was concerned, YOLO. You only live once.

Durward and Charles – The Buick

My dad’s name was Durward. His brother’s name was Charles. When Durward was a teenager he lied about his age to get into the Alabama National Guard. He loved camping, and the Guard had that. But then Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, war was declared, and the Guard was nationalized. It became part of the Army, and my dad was sent to Virginia for training and then to war in the Pacific. After the war ended, he married a Virginia woman and Virginia is where he lived most of his life. My uncle Charles went into the Army Air Corps. After the war he married and he and his wife settled in Florida in the Pinellas County area.

Charles was a man living in the wrong century. He was an 18th century kind of man. He was physically very strong, intelligent, a womanizer (to the extent he could get away with it without pissing off his wife too badly), and he was a heavy drinker and smoker (as was his brother). He founded a used car company with a $600 loan from my dad. The company was successful. When Charles saw that many of his customers borrowed money to finance their purchases, he did the obvious thing and founded a loan company to finance sales of his cars. He made money from the sale of cars and additional money from interest on the loans. Eventually Charles got into buying and selling mortgages. He made money easily and burned through it even more easily because of his lifestyle. He liked to have a good time, and a good time usually included women and booze.

One day Charles traveled to Virginia to visit Durward. He said he wanted to buy Durward a new car, and he did. He bought Durward a 1960 Buick Electra. The Electra was a 4700—4900 pound luxury car. The engine was a 401 cubic-inch Wildcat V8 with a four-barrel carburetor.

Charles suggested that Durward use his new Buick to drive him (Charles) back home to Pinellas County, Florida. This was before the Interstate highway system was completed, so Charles and Durward drove south on a US highway, probably route 1, which could take them to Jacksonville, at which point they could go west across the state and then head south toward Pinellas County. They almost made it there when an incident occurred.

The two men took turns driving, and at this point in their journey Charles was driving. He was not the kind of man to dawdle if there was an alternative, and there was. Charles was driving at 120 mph. He could have gone faster but he didn’t want to break the speedometer on the new car as he had done to his own car. So he kept the speedometer at (or just above) 120 mph as the Buick cruised down the highway with its Wildcat engine purring.

The highways in Florida in 1960 tended to be long and flat and straight. For some reason, Durward happened to look through the rear window and saw, far behind them in the distance, a flashing red light. He said to Charles, “You’d better pull over. That cop is probably after us.”

Charles pulled off the highway and switched off the engine. A few minutes later the police car, a Plymouth, arrived and pulled up behind the Buick. Steam poured from the Plymouth’s overheated engine. The cop got out and walked up to the Buick and spoke to Charles.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he told Charles. “I have to go back to my car and radio for them to take down the roadblock.”

“Roadblock?” Charles asked.

“You outran two police cars,” the cop explained, “and you were outrunning me, so I radioed for a roadblock.”

Charles and Durward were law-abiding citizens except for laws they considered patently unreasonable, like speed limits. Being law-abiding is why they pulled off the highway and waited.

The cop returned and said he was going to ticket Charles for going 120 mph. Charles protested.

“You can’t do that. You were never close enough to us to know how fast we were going.”

“I was going 120,” the cop replied, “and I couldn’t catch you.”

But Charles was an experienced bargainer and he got the ticket reduced to 85 mph. “If we had gotten into the next county,” he told Durward, “we would have been home free.” Charles knew most of the cops in Pinellas County.

Thinking about the incident now, I am surprised Charles didn’t get ticketed for DUI. But it was a different time. Attitudes about many things were different then. There were no breathalyzers, and a cop might give you a pass unless you were obviously intoxicated. Or maybe both men were sober. I like to think that was the case.

And that’s the story as I heard it from someone who was there.

But that’s not the end of the Buick story. When Charles’ wife found out that Charles had bought his brother a new Buick Electra, her head exploded (metaphorically). She demanded that Charles get the money back. So Charles asked Durward to borrow money on the car and send it to him so he could have peace in his home once more. And my dad did exactly that.

There are more adventures with the Buick, and I’ll try to write about all of them. I’ve already posted a story that included the Buick, titled How I Learned To Drive.

Eventually, after one attempt that failed, the Buick was stolen from its parking spot in front of our house. The thief was never identified.

A Sci-Fi Kind of Feeling

I was exploring part of a city last night with Linda. She wanted me to see where her grandson would soon be working. So we were on a video chat using Skype, and we were using Google Maps to look at a section of Roanoke, Virginia. Sometimes I was hovering 200 feet above the ground, then I would zoom down to ground level, gliding up and down 9th Street looking at buildings. Then I would be hovering again, an eye in the sky, looking down on streets and buildings and people and cars. And the conversation would be something like, “I’m above the big smokestack, and I see the front-end loader, and there are two guys, one is wearing an orange shirt and one is wearing a lime-green shirt…” And suddenly it struck me as surreal: Linda and I were 200 miles apart, each in our own home, but video chatting while exploring pictures of the city where she lives and where I lived for 17 years. Even 15 years ago, such a thing would have been science fiction. And after that virtual visit was finished, I began another video chat with another friend in Roanoke and his cousin in Texas. And I’m not even a high-tech kind of guy.

Google Maps was launched in February 2005. The first public beta version of Skype was released on 29 August 2003. And now people hundreds of miles apart—or on opposite sides of the planet—can visit and speak with each other in real time while hovering over a city, perhaps a city neither has visited, and “walk” its streets. I think Millennials take such things for granted. I was born into a world where transistors were laboratory curiosities, computers were women at desks with mechanical adding machines, television with crude black-and-white moving pictures was on the horizon of reality, and something like the Internet was a science-fiction fantasy. Even when I graduated with an engineering degree, engineers still used slide rules to make calculations. The first 4-function electronic calculator I ever saw was one that I built.

So sitting in my home while flying over a distant city, while at the same time visiting and chatting with a friend in that city, struck me as a bit like living in a science-fiction story. It was a momentary feeling, but it was enough to remind me that I am living in a science-fiction reality. In another 20 years, another 50 years, another 70 years, what will the world be like, and what kind of people will be living in it? Perhaps there will be regular flights to the Moon and Mars, with good jobs for those willing to work in the asteroid belt. Whatever the future brings, it will be something that we people of today cannot imagine, even though some of us—the Millennials, the Gen X-ers, and their children—will bring that future into reality.

That Kobe Bryant Thing

Gayle King is one of the latest to incur the wrath of Kobe Bryant fans by mentioning something that is already widely known, even by fans of the basketball legend. However, let’s all keep one thing in mind: a famous aphorism coined by American writer and historian James Truslow Adams.

“There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill behooves any of us to find fault with the rest of us.”

If anyone has a problem with that, take it up with Mr. Adams. If you want a better world, begin by being a better human. Keep in mind that when you point your finger at someone, you have three fingers pointing back at you.

Rainy Days

My friend Linda says she loves rainy days. That makes two of us. I love ‘em, too. It wasn’t always thus. Back in my more out-and-about days, rain was a nuisance. But now that I’m mostly a homebody, rain gives me an excuse to not do anything outside. (Not that I need an excuse.) So instead of feeling guilty because I’m not mowing the grass, not trimming the shrubs, or not doing some other boring chore, I can always think, “Rain, doggone it, and I was so looking forward to yard work today."

When I was young and for most of my life, I loved thunderstorms. My parents were not the kind of people to show affection, and when I was just a young sprout they never touched or hugged or kissed me (or each other) or did anything at all to show affection. But my mother was frightened of thunderstorms, so whenever there was a thunderstorm nearby, she would call me and my brother to her bedroom and the three of us would sit on her bed and talk. It was a kind of closeness I never experienced any other time, and I loved it. I came to associate thunderstorms with that feeling of closeness. But that was long ago and memories fade.

I was lying on my couch one night during a thunderstorm, almost dozing, when suddenly there was a flash of light and a huge boom of thunder outside my front window. Lightning had struck my house or very near to my house. The circuit breaker to my kitchen stove was tripped, and a fuse in the garage was burned out. The lightning burned out the power supply in my garage door opener. It didn’t affect the motor, but it became impossible to command the motor to do anything. Spare parts were not available for the old door opener, so I jerry-rigged a workaround that allows me to operate the motor to raise and lower the door. For me, the shine has worn off thunderstorms.

The weather forecast calls for an inch of rain today and the same for tomorrow. My house is quiet with only the patter of raindrops on the metal awnings and the whir of the fan in the heater at my feet. The coming week will have morning showers every day. If it’s cold enough next week, I’ll build a fire in the fireplace and feed it the paper and cardboard I’ve been saving for the recycling truck. Sitting in front of a fire, watching the flames, feeling the warmth, is a kind of heaven, especially on a cold, rainy day.

Coronavirus Conundrum

Americans should relax—at least for now—regarding the new Coronavirus (official name: 2019-nCoV). Why?

At this moment, there are 17,496 cases confirmed worldwide, with 17,308 of those cases in China. There are 11 cases in the US. There have been 362 deaths from Coronavirus, all of them in China. There is a global map here of confirmed cases—a map created and updated by Johns Hopkins CSSE. If you examine that map you may be scared or reassured, depending on where you live. Will this Coronavirus develop into something we should all worry about? Only time will tell. Should we worry about it now? No. Unless you live in China, then maybe.

The CDC estimates that in the 2018-2019 flu season (the last flu season, not the current one), 35,520,883 people in the US got sick, 647,000 people were hospitalized, and 61,200 died. That flu season was considered moderately severe. Compare that to the previous year’s flu season, 2017-2018, in which 48.8 million people in the US got sick, with 959,000 hospitalizations and 79,400 deaths.

Now let’s look again at Coronavirus in the US: 11 people sick and 0 deaths. Those numbers are likely to rise, but at the moment, almost anything else is more likely to kill you. Such as lightning (about 51 deaths annually in the US). Or falling out of bed (about 450 deaths annually). Or opening a bottle of Champagne (about two dozen deaths annually). People have died while taking a selfie for YouTube. So before you freak out, remember that your chances of not dying are excellent.

And as for influenza, you did get your annual flu shot, didn’t you?

Perchance To Dream

“To sleep, perchance to dream…” So said Prince Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. But I often don’t dream. I fall asleep if I’m lucky, and the night passes unnoticed by me. The night could be a single night or a million dreamless nights. I wouldn’t know the difference. I’m what some people call “dead to the world.” But Hamlet wasn’t talking about that kind of sleep.

Hamlet’s soliloquy begins with another famous phrase: “To be, or not to be.” So, “To sleep, perchance to dream…” has nothing to do with that thing I often struggle with during the night. Hamlet is talking about death. “To be, or not to be … to sleep, perchance to dream …” Sleep is a metaphor for death; dream is a metaphor for consciousness after death. Hamlet is contemplating suicide but fears he might not find peace even after death.

I feel like I’m back in my British literature class in college. But in those long ago days, Shakespeare’s play was merely words. Now they have meaning. Especially after so many people have recounted near-death experiences. We have to consider it is possible that consciousness does not end at death. And if it does not, then what will be our fate? Will we have to account for each and every one of our failings? I fear that we will.

I try to live my life on the principle that if I intentionally hurt someone, I’ve got a lot of explaining to do to The Powers That Be. I have a feeling it’s not the kind of thing I can talk my way out of. If only I had been a lot smarter a lot sooner.