Within this Cave, Everything….

The somewhat strange title of this piece has its origin, oddly, in an email sent to be long ago by Dr. Dennis, who, besides being a Ph.D. in something or other is also a Buddhist Monk, and it’s in that latter capacity that he wrote, saying that, in his tiny basement apartment sublet from someone above him in the Carmel Highlands, he had everything that he needed, meaning in Dennis’ case, I suspect, he had everything of the spirit, he was one with the Universe, and so on. I don’t need to point out that the title stuck with me; it seemed so….I don’t know…mystical, if you know what I mean. And, Dennis being Dennis, it wasn’t a stupid thing to say, far from it, so it didn’t annoy me, it just was the right thing to say in the context of where he was, and I hope he doesn’t mind me now borrowing his phrase, and using it in the context of where EYE am.

Which is here in the RV, as we have been, now, for over two days. There are times in the RV life when you better friggin’ have everything you need within your own cave because you simply aren’t going anywhere and what you’ve got is what you live with. Sickness, yours or your dog’s, can get you there, but so can weather, and here in Alabama more often than not the strange subset of weather, the humidity, is the main villain, coupled with the regularly-attending rain and localized but still ferocious thunderstorms that to this uninitiated ex-Californian sound like someone banging on the gates of their personal hell. Which has been the case here, in the PeeWeeRV, over the last two days. It rains, it thunders, it keeps on raining. The rain lets up, we let the dogs out, the thunder portends more rain, the dogs want to go back in, I look up at the sky, Irene shouts out that the back of the RV stinks of sewer gas which, inexplicably, is beginning to settle there -she opined earlier that a dead opposum had crawled into the vent to the washer and drier and died there, it smelled that way to her, and, this being Alabama, I didn’t question her but went outside and looked at the exterior of the vent pipe to see if, in fact, I could see claw marks on the paint. That I couldn’t didn’t mean she was wrong, and that I would say something that patently is that silly speaks more to this being Alabama than to anything more serious, for instance that I have finally gone to the Dark Side and joined up with, as Charles Pierce would say in his book of the same title, Idiot America.

The sewer gas smell comes and goes and in between attending bouts of nausea I look around and realize that Dennis was right, one can have a little cave and have everything in it one needs, especially now that I have three flat-screen TVs, with working HD and three different DirecTV receivers to go with them. The three allow me to have Speed Racer on one, a 2008 World Series of Poker event on a second, Kite Runner on a third for Irene to cry at and some other martial arts experience being taped to disc, all at the same time. But, attractive as this reality is, the real value is in the metaphor…not only do we have everything in this perhaps 300 square feet that we could possibly need, including each other, the two mutts and the HIK (Highly Interactive Kitty), but past all that we have the luxury of enough to eat, a toilet that flushes and books beyond the immediate reads that give us the illusion of seperate lives we can experience as soon as we get a minute…and in this case a blog site and readers, or at least one, otherwise how would you know about all this? Ain’t logic grand?

I had intended, when I began, to use the elegant bridge earlier in this piece to morph over and talk about Charles Pierce a little more, and to rant awhile about the continued dumbing down of America in general and as near as I can tell, except for Tom and Ann and a few other folks, of the South in particular, no offense to anyone if there is anyone reading this who takes offense at my calling the South dumb, which, in context, there probably won’t be for reasons that may become clear if you bear with me a little longer.

But I don’t know about all that right now……from here I intend that we migrate over to Montpelier, home of President Madison, who with Jefferson formed one of the great duos of earlier constitutional thought, although they certainlydidn’t spend a lot of time agreeing with each other. I point out in the doing that not all people here in the South are, in fact, stupid….but as Forest Gump so famously said, “Stupid is as stupid does”…and I’ve seen things here that are, in fact, stupid, but I’ve probably seen as many things being done in other parts of the United States that are just as stupid, and I’m really afraid, afraid….afraid in this case that what I’m really saying isn’t that the South is stupid at all, at least no more so than any other place, but instead I’m saying that people everywhere simply don’t think, and suddenly I have six hundred examples of this lack of thought to share and no energy remaining to share it with, and, back to Dennis, I have everything here that at least EYE need, and therefore will retreat for a few moments, intellectual coward that I can be, to the refuge of a soft chair, to the hypnotic patter of rain, to the sympathetic murmer of air-conditioning and to the comfortable belly on my arm of a once-sick but hopefully recovering-somewhat dog, and take a nap. The stupidity, if that’s what it is, will be there, waiting for me, the next time I dare venture outside our cave.

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July 7, 2009 by aj in Dogs, People We've Met, RVing and Motorhomes, Thoughts

Balance? I don’t need no stinkin’ balance! Do I?

Today I tried to answer two intriguing emails from friends. Both men are…after unplanned layoffs….working, although in Mitch’s case he is nearing retirement and in Raoul’s case he is not yet 30. I consider both guys good friends.  Otherwise I suspect Mitch and Raoul don’t have much in common, except that they both admit to deriving much of their identify from the work they do…certainly not unusual among the men I know. That said, even the work they do differs significantly; Mitch is a seasoned, senior executive most comfortable when facing difficult organizational challenges, while Raoul is an expert software sole-contributor-type consultant, most comfortable when working through extraordinarily complex computer network issues. It’s this issue of identification with their work that has caused me to stop and think a bit and as usual try to clarify my own still-uncertain perspectives on the meaning of work.

Before I go there, however, let me wander off into a quick reminisce about this past Fourth of July weekend, which Irene and I spent in the company of friends on their spectacularly groomed 15-acre farm outside the rapidly-growing and decidedly (albeit rural-y) upscale Atlanta bedroom suburb of Canton, GA. Our friends Ann and Tom are each retired from exacting professional disciplines themselves; Ann was a touring concert pianist under management to Columbia, Tom a senior veterinary surgeon and professor. And today, while they are retired, it’s hard to imagine them being less retiring…Ann, who seems to have almost inexhaustible energy still, is a strong contender for the Martha Stewart award, given every year to the Southern hostess with the most-ess….but who also conducts music appreciation classes in her home, organizes book clubs, does friends-of-everything benefits, grows most of the food they eat and prepares it all in beautiful and unusual ways and even plays decent pickleball in her spare time. Tom, in turn, owns (and by this I mean he does) all the outside work around the farm, hiring only a few people to assist him, and in the meantime they both are prosletizing pickleball among the community and, on the two days we played with them, 12 and 8 other pickleball players showed up, on the busier day giving us three-courts-full of the four courts possible to play on their property…an excellent local turnout and an example of their generosity of spirit, time and place.

Why do I mention Ann and Tom and how does it related to Mitch and Raoul and this question of balance? Well, Mitch’s comments to me recently have been around how grateful he is that he again HAS a job, even though he is clear this will be his last job before he retires. He talks about how humbling the last ten months’ search for employment has been for him, even though he considers himself in some ways a humble guy to begin with…something I agree with, by the way; he is humble, in the good sense, and not because he would need to be, either. And Raoul? Raoul, straight up, is a workaholic, and when he lost HIS job six months ago, before long he was busier than ever as a computer and networking consultant and as a programmer, writing and implementing the programs he would recommend as necessary to his clients, a nice one-two punch of capabilities. Where Mitch is grateful for the new job and humbled by how hard even HE had to work to get it, Raoul is busier than ever and doesn’t have time to think about whether or not he is humble at all.

Melding in Tom and Ann’s experiences, both when working and after they quit, and you see that, in this small sample of four folks, these high-achieving people all work hard and they often continue to work hard whether or not they are gainfully employed per se (meaning, whether or not they get paid money to work), and they all get some satisfaction from contributing and some sense of self from the work itself, but they realize, usually down the line, that less is more relative to employment. Tom and Ann are there, Mitch is nearly there, and, although Raoul is NOT there (”there” being conscious of less work being more), he IS asking questions about balance that surely EYE never asked when I was his age, being…wait for it….too busy working to think of balance.

For me, I have a persistent thought (or is it a hope?) that my own work-life isn’t yet through, that there is one more page to be turned in in my work-book. But, unfortunately (or fortunately, I don’t know), I can’t read what’s on that page yet. As I mentioned recently a number of things that could become work still appeal to me…antiquarian book dealership, antiques in general, collecting (meaning buying and selling) artifacts about poker and gambling and fly-fishing, playing professional poker, writing at some level, selling my own book(s) and that of my brilliant brother the Judge….oh, and more, I’m sure.

And then there is the question of balance in my own life. When I STOPPED working…finally…in 2006, it took a good while for my psyche to understand that I was no longer working but that I had not disappeared because of it. And, truth be known, I’m still not entirely comfortable with my new identify, whatever it is, except that it seems to be more about me and less about what I used to do, in so far as I now know who “me” is, at least. And then there’s the whole question about who writes about you…and about Mitch, and Raoul, and Tom, and Ann, if it isn’t me, and if I’m off working, how do I do that, assuming it really does need to be done? Which of course makes one wonder if you can do both and make a living out of writing something…which I have certainly tried to do in the past, although I failed miserably at it…but haven’t the times and publishing opportunities changed now, and does that create new opportunities for Moi? Or not? Should I follow it up? Or just think about it all a whole bunch more? Eventually, the problem will resolve itself, but given typical life expectancy that could be awhile yet…..

What to do, what to do……

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July 6, 2009 by aj in People We've Met, Pickleball, Places We've Been, Poker, Thoughts

The Frog that Came To Stay

Do you remember Froggie, in Wind in the Willows? Adopting every fad that came by as the final answer to a question that he probably would never even ask himself? Discarding it just as quickly? Vroooom, vroom, racing around from bikes to boats to cars and back again.

I get that frog, and I suppose I get the limitations to the approach as well. When I feel good about myself I can describe me as a Renaissance Man, interested in almost everything. When I’m feeling judgmental I recognize the same reality differently; to be interested in so many things is to focus on nothing and (while limiting risk around putting oneself out there) certainly assures you will never be acclaimed as number one at anything, either, thus insuring that no waves of adulation will ever lap at my feet. Too bad, so sad…..

….and yet this character strength or flaw does allow me to experience other lives, sometimes one after another, if only in my still-fertile imagination and if only for a few moments. Take today, for example….

Irene and I started the morning exactly where we have been for awhile, on the outskirts of Auburn, AL., a small still-redneck not-quite-cosmopolitan University town about an hour out of Montgomery, if that helps you geographically. Jake, now recovering a bit more regularly from his cancer surgery of this past Tuesday, actually walked with us all the way to the trash receptical and almost all the way back, a distance of half a mile, easily the best he’s done by two times and prompting us to believe we could leave him alone for an hour and get a bike ride in before the humidity came to join the already-evident heat. Changing into our bicycle touring gear, putting on the orange breathable top, the dark gray pickleball short, the cool lighter-gray short-fingered gloves, the charcoal hard helmet, I became like Lance Armstrong, of course too old, too heavy, riding a hybrid bike that Lance wouldn’t laugh at, him being seemingly way too polite a guy, but surely would snicker at behind a metaphorical hand, but I was he for just a moment, and straining to cross the semi-busy rural highway and rocketing up and down over the train crossing just past it. Just for a moment, but I got it. The ride, no more than ten miles and maybe an hour, was done with no stops to celebrate my Lance-ness…the first longish ride we’ve taken non-stop, as it were. VERY cool, good to be him.

Fifteen minutes later Irene and I were bound for the Jule collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University, a pretentious title for a fine modern building housing a few terrific permanent collections. One of them, Dale Kennington’s Shifting Mythologies exhibit, consisted in part of five richly painted multi-panel screens and brought me so far into the art that I thought I could never escape. All of her perspectives are uniquely arranged to draw her viewers in, take for instance the panels depicting a beautiful pre-pubescent girl, standing and struggling through some obvious anguish, glancing at us as if to recognize that we weren’t going to save her, but could, if we only wanted to. And in THAT moment, I wanted to, wanted to have the skills of Dale Kennington, knew I never would, but, oh, my….I got it, and her, right then, if just for that second.

Around the corner, same gallery…and there is a permanent exhibit of…would you believe it?…pop-art Icon Andy Warhol, arranged to show first the polaroid snaps he took of subjects and then the paintings themselves, so heavily stylized and yet so true to the photos, showing another exposure, another side of the same thing that didn’t exist until he put brush to canvas, and what genius, and, after we talked about it a bit, I think both Renee-girl and I got it, and him,  although I could feel myself losing it as I turned the corner and left him behind.

The rest of the day has gone like that. At lunch in the wonderful Amsterdam Cafe (”wonderful” and “cafe” are two words that only juxtapose in Auburn at that particular place, home of, among other things, a lump-crab-meat-and-avocado-on-croissant sandwich that ranks as “one of the hundred things you have to eat in Alabama” for very good reason.), I talked over with Irene this book I’ve been reading, a great little first-edition of Big Deal: A Year as a Professional Poker Player, by Anthony “English Tony” Holden, in which, ala George Plimpton, Tony takes on another life, a life EYE have often dreamed about, playing in, among other places, the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. VERY, VERY cool…a life that I still want, but believe that, now, I may never see it unless something changes. That something may be in me or just in my finances but I’m putting it out there now….just give me a year, and let me show just a small profit, and I’m a happy man. The book is written well enough for me to know that I don’t want to be Tony, not all the way through…I just want to do what he did, and still dream about it.

I wasn’t through yet, though. When we left, we stopped by, next door again, into a vintage clothing shop, and as I look to my left into the mirror here in our coach, I see a short-haired aging geezer-jock, not quite over the last hill yet, wearing a true vintage tie-died tee-shirt, orange and red mostly, with the most bitchin’ picture of Mickey Mouse falling down on the front. Who IS that cool dude, I ask out loud, just playing, knowing, of course, that it’s another version of me, a version that may continue to please, who knows? And, really, who cares? Consistency can be badly over-rated, don’t you think? Vrooom, vroom!

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July 1, 2009 by aj in Dogs, Eating, Pickleball, Thoughts

Great Places for Life, Hate to Visit There

This summer we have been in a larger-than-normal number of pet hospitals, which begs the question, “Is there a normal number?”. Irene and I think that, if you have multiple animals, (we had four at the beginning of the summer), you will be in a veterinary hospital at least once a year. Keeping in mind that I say, here, pet HOSPITAL” and not just your normal give-’em-a-checkup-and-booster-shot veterinary clinic, once a year signifies some kind of emergency that a normal doctor can’t handle and, unfortunately, there is always something that falls into that catagory. In Truckee last year, for instance, we scored a rare double and got both Spyro and Rocky into a hospital at the same time, due in part to a very large mountain porcupine who rejected without much consideration the idea that his den in his bush was something that could be shared by others, especially if the others are dogs. This visit was particularly costly as I think they charged for quill extraction by the quill and Rocky had about the same number of quills in her muzzle as there are grains of sands on Monterey Beach. Spyro, being intrinsically more cautious than Rocky and half her size, only had quills equal to half the beach, but it was still, in the vernacular, a poop-pot full of quills. Interestingly dogs never seem to acknowledge that they’re sick or hurt unless really pressed and both of them sat still as little soldiers on their way to the hospital, and the next day, after the anaesthesia wore off, the first thing they both wanted to do was to go find Mr. Porcupine for a rematch, so I guess no permanent harm was done to either body or psyche.

Those visits turned out to be the opening of a floodgate of sorts and, since then, Rocky was in the hospital three more times, all around her diagnosis as having metastasized organ cancer and her eventual euthanasia, Spyo did what he could by contracting a still-to-this-day-unexplained super-infection that came within an inch of killing the poor mutt and took three days of intravenous live-in care to overcome, and Jake contracted liver cancer and as we speak is just out of his third hospital in three weeks, with this last time having him returned to us tumor-free although very sore, grouchy and without much appetite yet.

We could write volumes on the differences between these hospitals, on the high quality of some doctors and the mediocrity of others, on the up-beat and positive vibes thrown off by some, on the rundown nature of their brothers. Animal hospitals, like animal clinics, people hospitals, and people clinics, are, by nature, profit-making enterprises or should be. I suspect the ones that seem the best and the brightest DO the best from a fiscal point of view but uniformly I can’t prove this.

The quality of time one spends in a veterinary hospital is similar to that spent in a regular hospital if you are waiting around. There is nothing to do. You bring your lunch, your drinks, your book, your cell phone. Sometimes you bring another animal, just to wait with you. You make small talk with the people in the waiting rooms, and if they have animals you “ooh and aah” over them, even if you really think they  are scruffy and ill-behaved (the dogs, not their owners, at least usually), which I suppose you’d expect in a hospital where no animal can be at its best. You look at your watch, go heads-down and read for awhile. put your head back, sunglasses down and try to nap. You think. You worry. You get up, walk around outside, get water you don’t want, check your cell. Maybe call somebody you don’t really want to talk to. You come back, sit down. Your partner looks at you expectantly like you are going to have some news to relate. You talk about literally nothing, repeating nothing over and over as if by repeating it, it can become new or it will somehow become more significant.

The doctor, when he or she comes out, tells you all you really need to know simply by the way they walk and the expression on their face. Our Aburn doctor, Ralph Henderson by name, has so far communicated good news to us, so we like to see him coming. He’s a kind, gentle, sometimes-funny and always- intelligent man anyway, with little of the apparently-Southern polite evasiveness about him…he’s very direct, although soft in his communication. He wears orange Crocks and an orange-and-brown headband with blushing doggies on it, and always sports a large stethascope over his very traditional white lab  coat and green uniform. I can’t imagine a guy who looks more like what he is…a very fine animal oncology surgeon…and he almost makes all the waiting worth-while as he takes all the time you want, talks about every aspect of the upcoming or just-past operation, talks about post-care endlessly, discusses dental hygine, pooping habits, the amount of exercise a dog should or shouldn’t get and makes cute little analogies up about relationships with spouses and what that means to our care of dogs. He says, for instance, that Jake will be an “all-new-dog” in a week or so and our principle problem at that time will be to keep the little guy a bit calm, still, so he doesn’t damage still-healing sutures.

But nothing Ralph or anybody can do changes the fact that waiting in any hospital and/or caring for any still-recovering out-patient, animal or human,  is stressful, and at the end of each day, now, Irene and I are exhausted and fall into bed knowing that, at best, tomorrow we will do it again, hoping to see some incremental progress. Nobody can make a hospital a fun place to visit, although they certainly can be good places to save a life. Jake’s already a good example of that, come what may. And, stress or no stress, we’re grateful…for the doctors in general, for Red Bay’s Dr. Odie who got out of bed in the middle of the night to see Jake, to Mississippi State’s Dr. Johnson for her diagnostic skills and friendship, of course for Auburn’s most-excellent Dr. Henderson, for God’s giving the little guy another chance, and, overall, for the hospitals that we find along the way.

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June 28, 2009 by aj in Dogs, People We've Met, Places We've Been, Thoughts

Not Talking about Health Care

Being, (I can scarcely say this), a near-elderly person , (gag me with my false teeth), if I were speaking to another geezer, and if that person were here in the Allegro Campground in Red Bay, in Alabama, I would have to do two things.

First, I would have to talk VERY LOUD because in this age group we’re all deaf and none of us (well, them, not me) are listening to each other, and besides that, talking loud seems something of the badge of membership amongst this age group, at least around here in this RV Park. In fact, here, the older you are, the louder you are allowed to shout, until among the truly aged…say like Benjamin-Button- the din is deafining. If you are very old and disabled, you have a license to kill – or at least to maim eardrums.

The hands-down all-time winner, no question, in this ersatz competition is a fat red-haired only-semi-elderly gent on a gaudy mobility scooter. Irene swears he dies his hair, it’s actually such a strange orange color, and if he is, he did it to match his scooter, which wouldn’t surprise me as  little does when it comes to matters of taste among the old.

This particular guy -we’ll call him Rowdy, ‘cuz he looks like somebody who would call HIMSELF Rowdy because he thinks that’s a cool name, talks so loudly that it vibrates the plates in our kitchen cabinet when he’s across the street. Really. Don’t listen to Irene about this, I swear it’s true.  Interestingly, although Rowdy talks louder than the south end of a north-bound tandem-axle Allegro Bus, he does it seemingly without conveying any information at all.  He may have come close once. I did hear him say something about doing his Renaisance thing at some kind of a Renaisance fair recently, and I can only infer that this “thing” of his had something to do with his imitating Friar Tuck as he looks like him, especially if FT was orange-haired and piloting an equally orange mobility scooter, all in the name of salvation, I suppose. Also the good Friar Rowdy’s personal repetition factor…a standard I made up recently measuring how many times an elderly speaker will repeat almost exactly, (within 10%), the same ten words (or more) IN THE SAME ORDER within one minute…is also very high and, again, I would give this particular contestent somewhere near a 10,  10 being if not perfect at least perfectly miserable to listen to, and I actually get so annoyed I find myself waiting for the next repetition so that I can self-flagellate even more in this perpetual three-step of annoyance, self-disgust and more annoyance. Plus, if I just went out and said “YOU! UGLY GUY ON THE VERY UGLY SCOOTER! I’M TRYING TO WATCH TELEVISION AND MY VOLUME CONTROL WON’T GO LOUD ENOUGH TO DROWN YOU OUT! SHUTTTTUUPPP!” I would feel momentarily fantastic and then miserable for two days. How could I yell at a crippled guy? And he probably got that way defending his country in the Spanish-American War or some such and here I am, yelling at a cripple AND an old guy AND a veteran…BAAAAAD ME! I swear, I can’t win.

But back to the title.

The second thing I would have to do here, talking to some other geezer and besides just talking loud,  is to avoid talking health care. Talk about a sensitive subject back here, and it turns out that racism is more of a factor here than I thought, especially about this subject, although why that should be I don’t know. Once the subject has turned to health care of late, a number of cute little comments have been trolled out indicating that, if Obama was white, this would still be terrible because Demos are evil, but at least we could live with it, but now all the whites are gonna be deprived of health care and “everyone else” will get for-free health care. Drives me crazy, crazy, crazy….nobody here has even looked at the proposed legislation, nobody cares what reality is, they just blather on, and on, and on, and loud, too….did I mention the loud part?

Since I’m asking and you’re answering, have you ever head the story about the geezer complaining at the customer service desk of the local department store? After carefully listening, the customer service agent queries the geezer as follows:  “So, sir, let’s say we give you your money back. We also give you a new, improved product for free. We shoot the manager. And then we close the store. Would that be satisfactory?”

And THAT’S discussing health care in the Allegro Campground, in Red Bay, in Alabama, where nobody listens, and even if they did, they couldn’t hear you anyway.

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June 17, 2009 by aj in People We've Met, Thoughts

Looking for Work in All the Wrong Places

Compared to these guys, I have no work ethic at all.

In fact, I’m sitting pretty today, typing away in an amazingly tasteful and even more comfortable customer lounge, (and, hey, you wanna look? Check it ooouuutttt….), Irene and I just waiting (and OH how we love waiting!) for six things to simultaneously get done on our Allegro Bus. Outside in the almost-spotless shop, Brannon and his consistently hard-working family – his brother, father, father-in-law and his wife – stay hard at it, replacing my 2,000 Watt inverter with a 3,000 Watt version, adding two more house batteries, and getting ready to install our Kenmore residential refrigerator, which will roughly double both our refrigerator and freezer capacities while simultaneously working, which the Norcold refrigerator standard to most motor homes hasn’t done very well. In fact, I could tell you stories about the Norcold but won’t, at least today – all I can say is that Irene is liable to be so happy having a reliable, working, decent-sized refrigerator instead of, as she so succinctly says, “that friggin’ Norcold” – that it could bode very well for me if you know what I mean, nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

But it’s all taking some doing, and don’t tell me ‘cuz I’ll tell you, nothing fits easily when you are doing a retrofit. For instance, the six batteries will be increased to eight, but there is no good other place to install the extra two batteries, so they are customizing two battery slide-outs and will install six batteries on the bottom on one and have the other two batteries on the top. The space they have to work with is exactly the size it needs to be…to about the sixteenth of an inch. If they get it working correctly, and right now it looks like they may, it will be a feat of custom engineering that will alone be worth the price of admission, not that I’m telling Brannon that until this is all done, of course.

Nor is the refrigerator install the end of the story, even given all it entails. By the end of tonight, per Brannon, not only will the refrigerator be installed (and the supporting batteries and inverter), but a residential-style fan will be in the bedroom,

Brannon and friend install fan

Brannon and friend install fan

the old-school night drapes will be gone from the coach’s front and the new-school drop-down day/night shades will be in place, and Brannon’s peer Chris will have also showed up after having worked three other jobs to install our flat-screen TV in the bedroom. There are other things….trouble-shooting a water-pump light that shows a continuous “on” condition and putting a new power plug into a wall to facilitate the subwoofer’s new home, a change in placement necessitated by the previous replacement of the cabinets by the dining table, done yesterday by the famous Tim (who has yet MORE cabinet work to do, but that’s Friday…what day is this, anyway?).

They work hard and they apparently don’t stop and I recently learned they don’t sleep. Brannon has estimated we will be finished up by 11:00 PM this evening. But he and his brother won’t be finished. A bit ago he received an emergency phone call from the famous Bob Tiffin, who owns Tiffin Motor Home Company. Bob has a highly irate customer in a new Zephyr…the top-end Tiffin coach….without air-conditioning for three days now. In Raleigh, NC. Five hours away at least.  In 90+ heat and supercharged humidity. And, when Brannon and his brother are finished here, they will, without sleep, drive five hours to Raleigh and help out the guys there. Because, you see, Brannon is still working for Tiffin, and until July that’s the way he’ll roll.

If, when I talked previously about my observing a somewhat lackadaisical work ethic in some of the Tiffin employees over the month we’ve been here, I bet you thought I meant EVERYBODY who works back here, didn’t you? Let me say right here, right now, I didn’t. I didn’t mean everybody. I didn’t, at least, mean Brannon and his gang. Or Tim or Chris. I can’t speak for everybody, but I can speak for them. These guys, at least, rock big.

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June 10, 2009 by aj in Eating, People We've Met, Pickleball, Places We've Been, Poker, RVing and Motorhomes

Keep on Truckin’ that Truc Atoll, Mama….

There’s life, there’s death and, hopefully, in between, there’s a bit of renewal. And there are parallels, it seems, between updating a no-long-spanking-new motor home and revitalizing an ever-so-slightly-aging body.

Forgive me if I’ve said this before…seems I may have, but with my geezer memory I can’t swear to it….but in the RV World updating RVs instead of re-buying is ordinary, especially in our current fiscally perilous times. Fact is, there’s a whole cottage industry here in Red Bay around remodeling Tiffins. Every evening after 3 PM, multiple multi-colored monster machines (2009 literary license granted courtesy of Alliteration R Us) roll on out of their assigned spaces, idle down around the rows of Tiffin service bays and south to the “runway area” just off the Tiffin-owned grounds…so-called because this whole piece of ground was once an airport, abandoned years ago but with all of the concrete beyond it still a set of mostly-intact runways. We head down there because this aforementioned Red Bay cottage industry is staffed mostly by current Tiffin employees also working full-time side-jobs, like Tim who yesterday finished the first piece of our cherry cabinets, including a (gasp) fully-removable dining-room table allowing four adults to sit AROUND it instead of scrunching in cheek-to-jowel two-across with knees a-knockin’, and Brannon who will install our residential refrigerator tomorrow, and Chris who, hopefully, will re-working our bedroom TV cabinet the day following.

By executive fiat they can’t do non-Tiffin work that Tiffin could do on Tiffin property, (can you even imagine), so that’s the most convenient work-around for them…and not all that bad for us, as, being geezers, none of us really want to be driving these things on real streets after dark. We gather together, put jacks down, slides out and generators on and wait for somebody to come by and fix us all up, at heart still just the same ol’ bunch of hopeful teenagers waiting in our cars for a kindly drunk to stagger by and buy us our date-night six-pack. Assuming they show and after they finish work late into the humid night, we-all pick up our jacks and come back around the corner and set up again at “home” and go directly to bed (it could be as much as 9:30 or even 10:00!), only to spring up the next morning ready to repeat the process again. Renewing our coaches makes them more residential, customizes them more to our own unique needs and, perhaps most important, delays the necessity of our buying new, and doing it at night gives us something different to whine about.

Revitalizing an aging body has similar benefits but is more complex. For one, it ain’t just a remodel….most of us have already done that; the tattoos, the earring, grown our hair or shaved our heads….it’s not just a new look. Physically, emotionally, there are SO many things suddenly not right…once-flat bellies now hang over belts, lungs  that once powered us through marathons now come up short of breath when we just bend over to tie shoes, once-stable blood pressure now continuously roller-coasters, once-eagle-like-eyes now cloud to where we can’t read the credits for the cool song we just heard even standing six inches from the TV WITH both lights and glasses on, the mighty mood swings, the memory….did I talk about that already? – the list is long, but still, too few of us do much more than worry, well, I mean we do sporadically but not systemically.

Mike, I’m happy to say, is a bit different.

Mike, Lucy and Mo

Mike, Lucy and Mo

After his heart attack and stroke I was worried about him. He’s got a bit of the black-dog about him, a touch of the ‘ol manic-depressive tar-brush, something I relate to pretty well, and I’m more than aware it can keep you down. In fact the first couple of years after his incident(s) were so slow-going for him, I thought once or twice he had given up. After he was further diagnosed with diabetes I feared we were (or at least HE was) nearing the steep, downward slope to perdition.

I was wrong.

In retrospect it seems that re-inventing Mike, for Mike, had to do with achieving a goal; well, a series of interconnected goals. First, he bought the sailboat he always wanted.  Then he started diving more aggressively again. Fifty years of diving was not to be denied…he tried a few dives and suddenly he and his group, (coolly named the Feral Divers), were diving all over the known free world. Exaggeration? Only a little…when I asked recently, he sent me a list of checked-off locations:

“Taveuni Fiji, Kadavu Fiji, Truc Atoll, Palau, Peilalu, Hawaii, Maui, Kauai, Oahu, Isla Mujeres, Belize, Terneffe Island, Guanaja, Roatan, Utila  Bonaire, Key West,

Puerrto Rico, British Virgin Islands, Saba,  St. Eusacia, Martinique, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Tobago Keys, Union Island, Grand Cayman Island, Cayman Brac  Island, Manado Indonesia, Blue Fish Cove, Carmel Bay.”

And the diving wasn’t all he did. Suddenly surprised at his having a good time, he ramped it all up. He got his meds straight, his blood pressure and cholesterol down to the level of a fit 12-year-old, and – perhaps most important – his weight pointed downhill. He started his “WOG” – sorta an Ipod-driven eclectic weight-loss-journal with Twitter overtones, like daily weight-centric Facebook updates for friends. He and his long-suffering trophy wife Mo had adopted Lucy the Portuguese Water-Dog, and Mike found himself walking miles again to give the pup her due. Life, good, now became better. His emails, once mordant, became alive; his interests in politics, previously sardonic and curt, now blossomed, his obsessive worry over his old company, now sold to employees, dropped off, and he indeed entered the golden age of life.

Well, maybe the silver age. When we revitalize and renew ourselves it takes a bit of doing, and perhaps nothing comes as easily as it once did. There are accommodations that must be made. As example, take this current email I received from Mike about some of the dive-trip-oriented changes that have recently gone down (so to speak) among the Feral Divers,

Ferals, on Boat, with Gear

Ferals, on Boat, with Gear

his aptly-named and long-standing group of dive junkees:

“We are getting old. Where we used to dive in rough, cold water with lots of current, we now dive in warm Caribbean waters with no current and have the young dive mistresses put on our gear for us and lead us over to the side of the boat and push us in. Of course, …(this is) after they have gone in first to check the current at depth.

Where we used to drink all night and run around nekked (sic)  and get into as much trouble as we could, we now sit around the dinner table and talk about our medicines and the latest surgery. None of us can drink much any more and we will pay money to make sure most of us stay fully dressed. And bedtime is about 8:00 PM……….”

Which does not mean that he or the other Ferals are giving up on new locations, but it does mean they are becoming increasingly selective, as well…..

“…..Cushy is next  on our agenda now. However, it is far removed from the most heavily traveled islands and only has room for 15 couples. That means it will be quiet at night.”

I’m pretty encouraged about all this. Not just for Mike-although it’s clear he’s working his plan and, while seemingly-sorta complaining about not being able to do the bad-boy routine any more on his dives, he’s still moving it down the road, still checking off his personal bucket list. I’m encouraged more because, well, if Mike can do it, you can do it, because, after all, Mike had struggles but you have struggles, too, like we all do, all the time. And by “you” of course I also meant “me”…maybe I can do it, too. Starting today, right after my nap.

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June 9, 2009 by aj in People We've Met, Places We've Been, Thoughts

20 Steps to an All-New Jihad

It may sound extreme, but I believe some people SHOULD die violent, ugly deaths, and, if possible, should then be temporarily resurrected so they can to die the same way again, if possible over and over again, like they were living out their own malevolent Groundhog Day movie. These people include the folks next door to us

The Folks Next Door

The Folks Next Door

here at the Allegro Campground, who, for some reason, choose to have the strangest party almost every night outside their coach door, which, since they are parked on our driver’s side, means that they are partying right underneath our living room window. Since motor homes all have the sound insulating qualities of a single thickness of spider-webspider webs, it’s as if we are attending a virtual party every night. Which would not be a problem except for, as I said, the strangeness of it all…their parties are attended by all those around here who they have previously met on other factory visits and who only exist to share, at top voice, the stories of their lives. The noise level, which goes on until the outrageous time (by geezer standards) of 10:30 PM and once….hard to believe I know…even until 11:00 and is about equivalent to their repeatedly throwing a bowling ball at our coach. They seem to take turns at this, none listening to the other, often two or more sharing (or bowling) at the same time. What they get out of this I don’t know, but what I get out of this can be similar to the following, shared just last night by Walter over a period of not more than a minute and a half, I’m sure. (I’m sure because I tend to get migraines if I force myself to listen to unasked-for, unimaginably boring drivel  for more than 90 seconds, and in this case I didn’t….):

Walter (talking at top decibles to overcome the other sharers who are simultaneously telling all about THEIR admittedly fascinating lives):

1.                  Is from somewhere 200 miles West of Albuquerque, NM, where

2.                  It rained 14 inches the other day when they were there, which

3.                  Caused his front slides to leak again, but

4.                  They’ve leaked since he got the coach in 1999, plus

5.                  He’s glad he left Los Angeles. anyway, since

6.                  Los Angeles was the worst foreclosure market in the world, because

7.                  ACORN really gave too many mortgages to people who couldn’t afford ‘em, (yeah, I know, but that’s what Walter said…NOT me….), and anyway

8.                  He has a cousin in Wichita, Ks. who owns a fish market and who

9.                  Would let people take fish right from the counter and leave notes saying they owed him, and

10.              they called him Brown because (could I even be making this up?) his last name was

11.             Smith, and the Smiths all got rich and famous and

12.             Bought a big ranch up by Cotton Valley, and then the government came and

13.             Bought part of from him for a million, and Walter never

14.             Saw that kind of money “slapping” pigs (said to great personal hilarity, with him then explaining it’s SLOPPING pigs, not that anyone other than me heard him or could have guessed for themselves) but

15.             His other 10 brothers and sisters had chores, too, except

16.             His oldest brother who had allergies, and

17.             They had 16 milk cows but he didn’t have to milk them, or

18.             Feed the horses either, but when they sent the pigs out to market, he would wave and say “goodbye, pigs, I don’t have to feed YOU any more,” at least until

19.             The next batch of pigs was born and ready to “slap”, as

20.             They always tried to have 125 pigs getting’ ready for market at the same time, and so on.

There was more, but you get the point.

Is this kind of behavior worth the violent and painful death(s) I advocate above? Others would say not, including my sweet Irene, who has the tolerance of a saint, and says, strangely enough, that I can still be (even 25 years after I last had a drink) quite loud myself. She says I should have tolerance. I say that I do have tolerance, and would be more than happy to sponsor a designated “strange party” zone where the geezers in these parks can go to share. These rooms already have a good model in airport smoking rooms, which nicely contain smoke, hot air and noise, meaning they could do a similar good job here, I’m sure, and would be much cheaper than installing a large, soundproof booth, shades of the old TV show $64,000 Question” with its’ Cone of Silence, and better, too, because the booth I have in mind would have places to sit, being all heart as I am.

In an aside, Irene adds that, while I’m entitled to this as an opinion, I do NOT get to cut another sandstone identifying marker to put out in front of our coach. Our existing simply says “A.J. and Irene” on one line and “Flyfishing America” on the second, with a pretty scene of a forest and a trout jumping on a line shadowed into the background. The new one, which I think would be a great match, would say something like “You Think Your Story is Interesting?” on one line, and “We Don’t!” on the second. Optionally, it would have a third tag line underneath, saying in a much smaller font, “(so shut up!)”.

This, of course, doesn’t mean I’m out here advocating Jihad against EVERYONE who annoys me. Other people should never die, even though they have tried my patience as God tried Job’s…they’re the good ones. This may include you, dear reader, depending on your comments….but first and foremost this certainly includes my buddy Mike, who I’m pretty sure never will die anyway, being both too ornery and too important to my own fragile sense of self, as I’ll discuss in my next post.

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June 6, 2009 by aj in People We've Met, RVing and Motorhomes, Thoughts

Albert’s Use of Malevolent Avoidance in the Us-vs.-Them War

Albert and I left the Tiffin accounts-payable office at the same time the other morning, each of us with our paid receipt in hand. “How’d ya do?” he asked jovially…a warning sign that he had “done” better than I in an unspoken contest consistently played between us Tiffin owners and the Tiffin service center, where winning or losing is decided by how little is paid for the same service. The offsetting factors are usually what percentage of the work can be claimed, legitimately enough for Tiffin to accept it, as being under warranty. If Tiffin agrees the work is warranty, then you don’t pay for that work. If they don’t, you do, except when you don’t, as I will explain.

The weapons used in this battle are legion. Did you identify an issue to Tiffin during the warranty period, but not bring the coach in? Better, do you have proof of that…an email you sent, or a letter? Best, did THEY offer a commitment back to you via email or letter or fax? Is there a recall on something? Did they do the same thing for somebody else at no charge – and can you prove it? Did you whine at Bob Tiffin and get him to take pity on you?  Do you have an extended warranty that might pay for something? (Extended warranties are useless, I think…I own one – paying almost $3K for it – and so far have been unable to use it for anything because of the restrictive conditions and the deductable.) We all look for an edge…but it creates a constant source of tension between them and us and, while Tiffin is, given they are one of the rare motor home manufacturers still even in business and providing warranty service to begin with, quite nice about the whole thing, they are likewise somewhat less giving than they apparently (this being our first time here and therefore relying on the historical experiences of others) are more profit-center-oriented than they used to be.

This profit-centeredness is attributed by many of the Tiffin coach owners towards Tim Tiffin (the son) taking charge of the service plant and displacing in this role Bob Tiffin (his father and founder of Tiffin Motor Homes). Tim apparently is setting his own brand on the service side and in the doing wants to insure that the service biz. pulls its weight, but it’s a rare business these days that isn’t tightening its belt where it can, to mix weight-oriented metaphors a bit. This all said, we-all get that doing business means something a little different today even to a famously service- and customer-oriented group like Tiffin, and those of us that have a strong business background get this completely and want them to be here….and thus are willing to pay our fair share.

So there is the push and pull of it. We (all consumers on the macro level, Tiffin customers in general, Irene and I in particular) have our own economic crises to address and we have no government bailout likely. So we want to spend as little as possible. But Tiffin is providing work for 1,200 or more people (in previous counts I underestimated this number, having heard only a factory and manufacturing component number closer to 400-500, so if you’re remembering a past post, don’t bust my chops, OK?) and their responsibility to them is to continue as a profitable business…and, again, we, if we’re being sensible, want them to be here, because obviously they are not here for us if they are not here at all.

Albert and I apparently see things differently, however. An example:  he and I had both had our coaches’ fronts repainted under warranty. This by itself would be an expensive item any time; in my case the bill for that work was over $2,000 and I think Albert’s was at least that. And both of ours were to be covered under warranty and neither of us expected any push-back from Tiffin about this, and neither of us had gotten any grief, either…expectations met, no problemo.

However, there is a gray-area part-two to the front-end-painting scenarios. This is the re-doing of the protective coating that must be applied over the front end paint when complete. Both Albert and I have 2007 Allegro Buses (this being one of Tiffin’s more up-end models if that matters…thought I would just brag on myself for a second). In 2007 Tiffin was trying an unfortunate experiment called Armor Plating. This involved spraying a rubberized compound over the paint, and eliminated the installation of a physical film that was previously applied by hand, a film made by 3M and usually referred to simply by the manufacturer’s name, e.g.  Q.  “What coatin’ ya’all got on yer coach?”, A. “3M!”.

When I met with Bob Tiffin earlier last week and asked him about the coating scenarios, he himself described the Armor Plate as an “experiment”, although he stopped short of calling it unfortunate…those were my words. But unfortunate it was and is. It, not to put too fine a point on it, doesn’t work. At all. When I showed up here and we-all did a front-end check on our coach, Tiffin identified 127 rock-dings in the paint, most visible, a few not yet, none of which should have been there (not that ANY protective shield can be entirely fool- or even rock-proof. But, as he said, “3M” had its limitations, too, and now they didn’t even offer Armor Plate OR “3M” but have gone to yet another, more durable product/service called Diamond Shield. Diamond Shield’s both a product and service because the product, a very rugged yet very clear film, is installed only by their own people, who work in two separate bays in the Tiffin service area. And it is very pricey. Per Bob, they upgraded the cost of the 2008 and beyond Allegro Buses to compensate for Diamond Shield’s almost $1,200 price tag. And, he said, the approach they were using with the 2007 customers was to re-paint the front-ends of their coaches if they wanted that and then to credit them the cost of the previous, relatively inexpensive Armor Plating…$300…against the Diamond Plate, so that customers would be “encouraged” to upgrade. Also per Bob, inadvertently reinforcing something his service manager had previously told me, all customers are being treated the same here, the implication being that whining about paying additional money for protection we thought we had bought wouldn’t get us a free ride.

Therein lay my personal dilemma. I didn’t want to pay for the Diamond Coat, but I wanted the additional protection. Bob did offer that they would replace the Armor Plate, if I wanted that, but didn’t recommend it – the same deal, as I already said HE said, he had offered others with the same problem. Not much of an alternative, thinking back on the 127 rock-dings previously mentioned. So, after kicking around alternatives with Irene, I did what I was told the many other 2007 Allegro Bus owners did…I went ahead and had the Diamond Shield installed and agreed to pay the additional $895…which, just prior to meeting up with Albert, I had done.

But, as implied earlier, Albert had taken another approach. He had worked around the system. He had the front-end repainted and then…without having a recorded conversation about it….”allowed” the coach to go from the “paint” step to the “Diamond Shield” step…the coach being moved, with only his tacit approval, from the paint bay to the Diamond Shield bay sub rosa, as it were. This allowed Albert, in effect, to claim that Tiffin had never consulted with him about the Diamond Shield installation. And, by extension, it allowed him to argue that, if he wasn’t consulted about it, he didn’t feel he had to pay for it. And it allowed him to walk out of the office with a receipt totaling charges paid of less than $100, whereas I paid $2,400, because he applied this philosophy, with variations to fit the circumstances, to a number of other things as well – not just the $895-worth of Diamond Shield.

Malevolent Avoidance, my descriptor of Albert’s negotiation technique, is obviously a successful approach to getting away without paying, and worked, if not paying was the only objective, for Albert. But I have issues with it, and I’ve already mentioned them. Let’s cut to the chase; it isn’t honest. It takes money away from Tiffin. And it encourages the “Them vs. Us” competition, that, while inevitable, isn’t positive. So, truth be know, while I’d like to keep my money if I can, I’d rather be honest with Tiffin and pay for the services they provided.

Of course I’d have to be completely naive to feel that Tiffin was totally honest with me in the exchange. After all, they (Bob and his Service Manager) both told me that all customers were paying full-boat for the upgrade, and my entire exposure to other customers with the same problem as I (this being Albert) is 100% in favor of them getting it done for free because they used Malevolent Avoidance, or other tactics when I didn’t and, I suppose, because Tiffin then decided not to try to out-argue the point. I had offered to split the cost of the service with them and they had refused; seems if they were giving it away to some they could have compromised with me. Thus, in the unspoken contest I described above, I can’t help but feel somewhat like I lost – but at least I can view my loss from the moral high ground.

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June 4, 2009 by aj in People We've Met, RVing and Motorhomes, Thoughts

When I Was Young and Cars were Cars

Many of us are concerned with the issues surrounding the automobile industry, but these will pass. Here’s hoping we each have stories about our own cars that we remember longer. Would you care to hear one or two of mine?

In the summer of 1961, between our sophomore and junior years, Bill McCormick, a widow-peaked, tallish to the point of already-stooping delinquent who everybody knew was a bad actor and who, just a few months later, would figure prominently in my first minor-in-possession bust, talked me into buying my first car, an ominously large greenish-black rusted-out 1947 Plymouth sedan that could have easily handled our entire high-school cheerleading squad in its torn brown-fabric back seat, a thought that had crossed my mind when I first saw it, not that any one of the five of the women involved would have been caught dead in it, of course, much less the whole squad at once.

Well, it was OUR first car, really, a car Bill and I both needed to get to work in the lettuce fields, our shared summer profession of choice, chosen because the owners by Federal law had to hire us first, displacing in the doing their real workers, the Mexican laborers. Bill had $50 he was willing to front to buy the car so he and I took the Greyhound Bus from Salinas, California to San Jose, bought a San Jose Mercury, looked in the classifieds, called the woman who owned the cheapest car on the list, verified with her that the car ran, hitchhiked across town, found her and it, bought it for the $50 Bill had, and drove it home. We used it for much of that summer as planned and my parents never did ask about it, although it was often parked either in our driveway or somewhere on the street down the block. I think they were just happy I had stopped asking to use their car, or maybe they just couldn’t believe I’d every buy anything like that.

Eventually the long summer ended and we felt compelled to dispose of the car. That was an interesting dilemma, as we hadn’t been old enough to actually register the car and hadn’t, (insurance had never even been considered), and, not really owning it, we didn’t know how to sell it. We decided to abandon it, but in order to make the abandonment look legitimate, we figured the car would have to be dead…I mean, nobody abandons a working car, right?…and if it WAS working maybe somebody would come looking for us somehow. So Bill and I went to the back of the field we were working in, drained the oil, and then drove it down the highway until the engine seized, happily abandoned it where it was and walked away. As I said I’m not sure of the logic that prompted much of the above sequence but I’m sure it all made more sense at the time, or maybe it was just the alcohol. Whatever…it worked, and we never heard anything about the car again.

A year later, in my junior year at Palma High School in Salinas, California, I got my first real car…all mine, I mean. It was a red 1957 Volvo PV 544, My '57 Volvo PV544! a car with two primary characteristics. First, compared to other stuff I wanted, it was inexpensive. Second, it looked a lot like a 1948 Ford, which in turn bore passing resemblance to the ‘47 Plymouth Bill and I had just danced with. The first characteristic, affordability (coupled as it was with built-in parent financing, obtained through consistent whining), sold me; I tolerated its appearance, even though cars that looked like ‘48 Fords that looked like ‘47 Plymouths were nowhere near as desirable as ‘34 Fords or even ‘40 Fords, both of which were normally retrofitted with large-block Chevy V8s and didn’t look much like themselves soon after my more-ambitious friends, who drank less and therefore had more money than I, got them.

I’m making too long a story out of it – anyway, the PV 544 was a fine, peppy little car, the first four-cylinder car I had ever heard of, and initially was reliable to a fault, a condition I eventually changed. I tried to drive it into the ground, customized it with metallic blue paint, black upholstery and huge rear tires that would have been more at home on something in a monster car rally. I ran it into things, usually when drunk, and eventually failed at driving it between a school building and a kids’ merry-go-round, said failure flattening one side of the car and putting a narrow crease completely down the other. It was not as nice a car when it departed my company soon thereafter.

My second all-mine car, purchased immediately after the departure of the Volvo in 1965, was a baby-blue 1957 Thunderbird with a white porthole top….the only car I ever bought primarily because a woman I liked happened to like it. Turns out she liked it more than me and got rid of me, and I in turn got rid of it, the primary motivation I had for owning it being gone. But before it went away I customized it with a audio-reverberation unit that made the radio sound as if it were playing at the bottom of a well, making it outstanding for (literally) cruising Main, hanging U’s at Mel’s Drive-In (Salinas actually HAD a Mel’s Drive-In and it really WAS on Main Street). I also found we could adapt the removable porthole top of the car to other purposes, like bringing it into a rented motel room while we were attending a bowling tournament in Fresno, covering the inside with plastic painters’ tarps, and filling it with ice, seven-up, and Bali-Hai wine, the percentages favoring the latter. In this specific instance we then drank all ten or fifteen gallons of said mixture, refilled it and drank it again.

My last memory that evening, having had several Texas Tumblers of the stuff at least and beginning to nod off, was that of Bobby Guitierez, who had matched me drink-for-drink, jumping off a second floor balcony into the motel’s swimming pool. I remember thinking that it didn’t matter much whether he hit the pool or not ‘cuz he wasn’t bowling with my team in the tournament, but he probably would have been OK anyway; Bobby was too damn mean to die from something as trivial as hitting a pool-deck from a second-story, if he did.

My third AM (all-mine) car was a 1957 MGA, which I purchased right after the car lot which had mistakenly financed its purchase churlishly re-acquired the T-bird. This was my first hot-rod, or at least it looked hot-roddish when I was finished. It had started out matte black but soon became canary yellow with black tuck-and-roll upholstery, sporting a chrome roll-bar that I never quite finished paying for. The sound system was a too-cool eight-track cassette, and, other than the car being electrically just as bad as every other British car of its era, it was way fun to drive, right up until the point that a drunk PFC from Fort Ord (near Monterey, CA.), driving his buddy’s borrowed truck, rear-ended me at high-speed in the middle of the night on the Monterey-Carmel highway and put me in a ditch and my poor little car in a wrecking yard.

Subsequently I’ve owned many other cars, mostly better, and, on balance, have treated most with an increasing level of respect, being slow-to-learn but not totally dense. I even owned and properly cared for an AC Cobra, SNAKE88 by name, for awhile…a separate story if not a book.

And today, of course, I live in a fine motor home, an ‘07 Tiffin Allegro Bus, living here with four others besides myself (albeit three of them are dogs and cat), and all five of us depend on this vehicle to get us where we need to go and to house us when we are there, wherever “there” is at the mo, and I treat it better than any car I ever owned, better than I’ve sometimes treated myself in days of yore, and I intend to keep that up, and to gold-plate the little darling if the price of gold drops. I understand the importance of maintaining my vehicles now, and often make my daughter’s life more complicated (as dads will do) by continuously asking her how HER maintenance of her car is going. I finally get that cars are important as more than just transportation, too. They say reams about you and your life. A person who cares well for his car is likely going to take good care of other things, too….maybe even you, if you are in partnership with them either personally or professionally. Thus when our older son acquired a new BMW a few years back I knew this was a good thing…good for him to have a nice car, and good for his view of himself.

Cars are indeed iconic, aren’t they? – truly integrated into our being at, seemingly, the deepest levels. I wonder if this has something to do with all the hoopla around the auto industry bailouts and bankruptcies of late. We are talking about one of the largest underpinnings of our economy when we talk about the auto industry, but even more than that we are talking about companies we grew up with, companies that gave us the cars that we first loved, hated, and, eventually, learned to care for. Why, we wonder, can’t these companies that created these cars and helped us earn these memories do just a little better job caring for their responsibilities…their bottom-line? If they learned, couldn’t they stay intact, rather than parting themselves off and disappearing?  If we learned to do better, can’t they?

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June 2, 2009 by aj in Thoughts

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