1974

I spent the winter of 1974 in a small, unheated cabin near Hickory, NC. To get to the cabin, I would take one of the east-west roads in Hickory, like 1st or 2nd Avenue, and drive to US 321 and then head north. Not far up 321 there was a dirt road on the right and I'd turn into that. (No doubt the road is paved now.) I'd enter a forest (now a subdivision) and drive until I came to a small cabin. It was a summer cottage and therefore it was unheated. At night (winter, remember), the room would get cold enough to freeze water left in a glass. I slept on a sofa under an electric blanket on the highest heat setting, with several "regular" blankets on top of the electric blanket. There was a sheet metal shower stall in the bathroom, but in the morning the water faucets could not be turned because they were frozen. 

I had no TV but I had a radio. At night I listened to the Larry Glick radio show that was broadcast on clear-channel WBZ 1030 in Boston. That show was a hoot. Glick would call people on his studio phone and talk to them, not telling them their conversation was being transmitted over the air as they spoke. One night he called an airplane pilot who had recently been in the news for being involved in some kind of aircraft mishap. Larry got the pilot to talk about the accident in a fair amount of detail. At the end of the conversation, the pilot asked Larry to not reveal to anyone what he had said. Larry agreed not to tell anyone about their conversation. But, of course, the entire conversation had gone out over WBZ's powerful clear-channel radio waves that probably reached all the way to Mexico.

A popular movie at the time was American Graffiti. The film was set in 1962, on the last day of summer vacation for friends Curt (Richard Dreyfuss), Steve (Ronny Howard), Terry (Charles Martin Smith) and John (Paul Le Mat). They cruised the streets of a small California town, while a mysterious disc jockey (Wolfman Jack) spun classic rock'n'roll tunes that were broadcast over 150,000 watt radio station XERB. That station today is called XEPRS-AM. (For radio aficionados, XEPRS is a Class A, 50,000-watt clear-channel station using a non-directional antenna in the daytime and a three-tower array directional antenna at night. It is licensed to Playas de Rosarito, a suburb of Tijuana in Baja California, Mexico. You can listen here.)

The year 1974 was also the year that a friend and I bought a Chevy camper van and traveled all over America with our three dogs and often with one or more hitchhikers. Fun times!

Lancaster

It's Sunday morning. Church services are on the television. I suspect the only people watching them are the believers who don't need to attend church. Ironically, the people who really need to attend church are out smashing car windows and stealing what isn't nailed down.

My partner Nuria is going to Pennsylvania tomorrow with a group of friends. They're going to the Lancaster area, where the Pennsylvania Dutch live. I've been there and I can attest that it's a beautiful area, with green pastures and white fences and, of course, horse-drawn buggies. The Pennsylvania Dutch eschew all modern inventions, except for the telephone (which must be located outside the house). They don't own automobiles or tractors, and they live the agrarian lifestyle of their forebears.

I visited Lancaster with a lady friend years ago, and I recall we had dinner in a large room with tables that seated about a dozen people per table. I think the restaurant was designed to accommodate tour groups, inasmuch as all the people seemed to be familiar with one another. We (my friend and I) went for a ride in a horse-drawn wagon that was full of other visitors to the Amish countryside, while a tour guide informed us about the Amish lifestyle.

It was a nice trip, and memorable. I'm sure Nuria will enjoy it, especially being with her friends. Anything you do is more pleasant when you have a friend with you. In fact, the person doesn't have to be a friend. I recall the first time I went to Manhattan, I made an aquaintance through a chance meeting on a Manhattan sidewalk, and he gave me a "tour" of the city. I put "tour" in quotes because we were on foot but we saw a lot of the Manhattan tourist spots, from the top of the Empire State Building to the steps of the Kennedy Center and many places in-between. On another trip to NYC I went to Radio City Music Hall and ate a meal at one of the Automats (which no longer exist).

I hope Nuria returns with some nice memories of her trip to Pennsylvania. And if not memories, then photos.

Bump In The Night

My domestic partner, Nuria, hates to drive at night. She has told her employer again and again that she can't work late because she doesn't want to drive home after dark. Nevertheless, they seem to constantly require her to work until after nightfall.

Last night Nuria was again driving home in the dark when BANG! ... she collided with another car. Here's what happened.

The night was dark. Nuria stopped at a stop sign, looked both ways, and proceeded to make a left turn to drive to my house which was located only about 100 feet from the intersection. Suddenly her car was hit by another vehicle. The other vehicle was being driven by an intoxicated individual who was driving with headlights off. Not being able to see his car in the darkness, Nuria had inadvertently pulled in front of him, The other driver tried to pass Nuria's Toyota on the right, but grazed her Toyota's right front fender. Both drivers got out of their vehicles and inspected the damage. Then Nuria ran to my front door to call the police. When I answered the door, Nuria ran into the house muttering some letters and numbers repeatedly. She was repeating the license plate number of the other car. She didn't have a pen to write it down until she got inside my house, and she didn't want to forget the plate number. Meanwhile, the other driver left the scene.

The police came and took Nuria's information. Then the officer, armed with the license plate number, looked up the address of the other driver and then drove to his house to get his side of the situation. (The other driver lives two streets from my house.) Then the officer returned. He said the other driver was indeed drunk, but claimed to have only gotten drunk after he got home. The officer printed out a police report for the insurance company (he assigned blame for the accident to the intoxicated driver who was driving with no headlights), and he gave Nuria a copy of the report for her insurance company. 

The officer left and, for a while, our conversation was about Nuria's accident. The Toyota's damage consists mainly of scrapes on the vehicle's right front fender. It certainly could have been worse. But matters slowly settled and returned to normal. Now it remains for Nuria to have her car repaired, and that will likely be a story with further adventures. 

Right Said Fred

I've been somewhat overweight for a long time. I recently weighed about 216 when my "correct" weight was 155 pounds. I will hasten to add that for me, 155 pounds would have made me a very thin person. At that weight, a breeze would have blown me over. I carried most of the excess weight around my middle. My arms and legs and even my face were fairly "normal" but, as the years passed, my middle went from size 34 to 36 to 38 to 40. 

Then in August of this year, I got sick. I don't know what the malady was, but I was sick from August 1 to August 16. Over those sixteen days, I could eat no food. I could drink water or soft drinks, but I ate nothing and struggled to swallow medicine. When I began eating again, I ate one small meal at dinnertime. That's all I could keep down. Over 16 days, my weight dropped from 216 to 197 pounds. But I thought I might be on to something. I've continued eating one small meal per day in the evening, plus snacks once or twice during the day, and my current weight is 194. My partner Nuria says I should stop losing weight when I reach 190. She says that if I go any lower I'll be too thin. I know what she's afraid of: she's afraid I'll be too sexy for my shirt. Wait -- wasn't "too sexy" a lyric in Right Said Fred's 1991 hit song "I'm Too Sexy"? I think it was.

The song of the day is I'm Too Sexy by English pop band Right Said Fred featuring brothers Fred and Richard Fairbrass. The song was featured on their first album, Up, released in 1992.