It's the Small Stuff, Stupid

The things that Trump needs to focus on if he's going to be a successful president:

Give us back our:

Incandescent light bulbs

Old-fashioned gas cans that pour gasoline into gasoline tanks, and not onto the ground.

Gasoline without alcohol in it.

Coca-Cola without High Fructose Corn Syrup in it.

High-capacity toilet tanks that flush your entire turd in a single flush.

Shower heads without water saver restrictors.

A complimentary glass of water at all full-service restaurants.

A return of full-service gas pumps so you can, if you prefer, get your oil, wiper fluid, and tire pressure checked and topped off as necessary.

Gainesville, Florida, Burger King, and the Whopper

"Gainesville, it turns out, is the actual ‘home of the Whopper’

My hometown. My sister and I attended Catholic school from 4th-8th grade, and every day after school my dad would pick us up, drive us to Burger King for takeout, and we'd eat in the car on the way home, which was 16 miles away in Melrose. Usually we'd be done eating by the time my dad stopped at a convenience store for a beer and a pack of cigarettes, so we'd get a bottle of Coke and a candy bar as dessert. In those earliest days Burger King still sold hot dogs (I guess they do again in some places now), and the employees wore those polyester gold-and-scarlet uniforms seen in the TV commercials.

Cane Syrup

Syrup made from sugar cane.

It's not molasses. Cane syrup was a favorite of my father's, he'd spread it out on biscuits and eat them with a fork.

Devil's Millhopper

The Devil's Millhopper is a large sinkhole near the city limit of Gainesville, Florida, that is now a Florida State Park.

Way back before it was a state park it was a favorite playground for Gainesville's kids; I went there several times, including once as a Cub Scout. There used to be a walking trail down to the bottom, and a couple of shallow caves here and there. Back then the walls of the sinkhole were bare from kids playing (there were some rope swings) and you could see the entire sinkhole, wall to wall. Now, with access to the bottom restricted to the "official" trail, it's a leafy green rain forest:

Back in those days of the late 1960's/early 1970's when Evel Knievel was active as a daredevil motorcycle jumper, we had our own daredevil (reputedly; it may have been a rumor started by my wiseass sister) named Eebus Kneebus, who supposedly jumped the Devil's millhopper on his Schwinn bike. Well, if he didn't, it would have been nice if he had.

Wish I Could Go Back, Too

"USS Donald Cook arrives in new home port in Spain."

That would be Rota, one of my fondest memories.

What Went Wrong?

One man's notion, from a favorite book:

"Things won't ever be like they used to be."

"What went wrong with it all?" I asked.

"They shot off the buffalo, and they meat-hunted the game. They slaughtered the wildfowl, and they give the vote to the women. The women stirred up a ruckus about their menfolks spending too much time in the saloons, and so they got Prohibition and handmade corn whisky and what they call 'speakeasies' in the cities, where you can drink gin that was made out of embalming fluid and go blind for twice the price. They invented the automobile and the airy-o-plane and speeded everything up. They got mixed up in other people's wars and got to betting on the stock market and altogether they're in a hell of a mess. And no free lunch."

"Any cure for it?"

"Not much," the Old Man said. "People ain't like they used to be, either. A bunch of smart alecks, running around in circles like beheaded chickens, dancing the Charleston, and raising Hell in general. They tell me some fellows won't dance with a girl without she takes her corsets off."

"I wouldn't know about that," I said. "But I do know I'm hungry, and that moon tells me tomorrow's high tide, and we'll be up early. Let's go down to Pete's and get a hamburger or something."

The Old Man spat.

"A hamburger," he said, as if it was a cuss word. "A hamburger, at my age. Like I said, things ain't like they used to be. But I suppose from some standpoints, they never were."


From Chapter 27 of Robert Ruark's The Old Man and the Boy, "Terrapin Stew Costs Ten Bucks a Quart."

Where'd She Go?

Beaumont, Texas.

In the haze of the Southeast Texas sky, the shape and color of the vessel is unmistakable — boxy and gray with a flat top and a superstructure perched on the right side of the deck.

The deck doesn't have quite enough room for a conventional fixed-wing aircraft, like a clunky old dive bomber from 70 years ago or a sleek and lethal supersonic spear of an F-18.

The ship, christened the Nassau, once served the country as a Tarawa-class helicopter assault carrier.

That class of ship is named for a grim island battle in World War II, which took a heavy toll on the Marines who fought it.

The Nassau was one of five of the amphibious assault ships and is now in the Inactive Ship Maintenance anchorage in the Neches River, where the Cape class of military cargo ships also are berthed.

I served aboard Nassau twice. First time we crossdecked from USS Belknap(CG-26) at sea, the Nassau sent an LCU to pick us up; we clambered down a netting ladder from the cruiser into the LCU, which sailed back to the Nassau and into her cavernous well deck. The second time I served on her as she went to relieve the USS Guam (LPH-6) in the eastern Mediterranean right around the time that the US Marine barracks in Lebanon got blown up. We crossdecked via helicopter on that trip, my only helicopter flight to date.

When the Tarawa-class LHA's were designed and built they didn't bother with fastening down the tables on the mess decks, using folding cafeteria-style tables instead, believing - - incorrectly, as it turned out - - that the ships wouldn't roll enough to require fastened-down mess tables. I remember eating chow more than once on the deck, with all of the tables roped off securely in one corner, as the ship rolled back and forth. Nassau and Saipan (LHA-2) both had probaby the best cinnamon rolls of any Navy ship I served on. I remember one sailor, though, a heavy smoker, who habitually carried a mini-bottle of Tabasco in his shirt pocket and I watched him put Tabasco on the cinnamon rolls one morning - - smoking had destroyed his sense of smell to the point where it as the only thing he could still taste.

Treasure More Precious Than Gold Or Diamonds

An entire Jerry Clower Concert.

Part 1:



Part 2:




I discovered Jerry in the early 1970's when I was a young teenager in Melrose, Florida. I had an AM radio in my room, and at night I could catch the signal from WBT way up in Charlotte, North Carolina. The midnight-to-six a.m. disc jockey for WBT was Truckin' Tom Miller, and he'd play Jerry Clower records - - the first one I ever heard was "Coon Huntin' Monkey." In the Catholic school I was attending at the time I had a buddy named Rusty who was a Jerry Clower fan, and he loaned me some 8-track tapes. Later that year I heard that Jerry Clower was going to be in concert in Gainesville, so I made my father buy tickets for us to see him. The concert was general admission, I was first in line at the door with my dad. When the doors opened I dragged my father to the front row, and we had a good view of Jerry when he finally appeared (there were three opening bands before Jerry got there). My dad and I laughed ourselves sick that night, as did everyone else in the concert hall. It's one of my fondest memories.

The Wildwood Men...

...and the Wildwood Weed:

Three men were arrested and charged with possession of marijuana late Saturday night after the driver of the car they were in led Marion County Sheriff's Office deputies on a high-speed chase.

You know exactly where this is going, right?



Jim Stafford is an old Florida boy himself, by the way.

Life At Silver Springs

What life was like for a veteran employee of Florida's most famous pre-Disney tourist attraction.

Although I have pleasant memories of Silver Springs, and my exposure to Ross Allen's reptile show lighted my own interest in snakes, I have to admit a personal preference for the rival Rainbow Springs (both Rainbow and Silver Springs are now part of the Florida State Parks system).

If you're an old Florida native, you can visit this website to see the old tourist attractions of your youth, most now close for many years.

"Not For the Squeamish!"

"Bizarre Violence...Explicit Sex!"

That would be the 1971 novel Spargo by Jack Denton Scott. Those are actual blurbs on the back cover of the novel, by The San Francisco Chronicle and The San Francisco Examiner, respectively. Back in that 1971 time period when I was a pre-pubescent boy in Florida I found the novel in my dad's bedside table and decided to read it:

It all began with a quiet dinner in New York and an espionage assignment - - to the pleasure palaces of Rome, the exotic brothels and back alleys of Hong Kong, and the mist-shrouded mountains of Tibet...

It was a mission to suit the taste of Spargo - - an epicure, sensualist, knife virtuoso - - sent to shadow-box with danger, to challenge an unknown enemy in the stronghold of the mysterious Himalayas!

LOL.

The novel was by Jack Denton Scott, who at one time wrote for Sports Afield, was their hunting dog editor, as a matter of fact. The novel features an "About the Author" page, which has this to say about Scott:

Jack Denton Scott was born in West Virginia, of Northwest Highland Scots, and is an adventurer who has been around the world fifteen times. His preference is for the offbeat and obscure places beyond the boundaries of the usual tourist experience. He will not write about an area unless he has been there - - Indian jungle, Asian or African mountain peak, Arctic tundra, or tropic ocean floor.

He served as a combat correspondent for Yank magazine in World War II and has written twelve books and more than one thousand magazine articles. He wrote an adventure column for the New York Herald Tribune with a worldwide assignment. His skills as a writer are complemented by his experience as a field naturalist and expert chef, the latter being recognized by the award of the coveted Commandeur Associé, Commanderie des Cordons Bleus de France. He presently lives in Washington, Connecticut, with his wife, Maria Luisa, who is the pasta expert of the family.

Spargo. He Brings a Knife To Every Gun Fight.

I quite enjoyed the book, which is why I bought this old used paperback. Wanted to read it with adult eyes and see if it holds up forty years later. It was probably responsible for my knife fetish; Spargo, a globe-trotting spy in the James Bond tradition, uses a throwing knife as his weapon of choice. Here on my desk as I type this I count 11 knives of various types. And a tomahawk. Oops, twelve knives. And a gun. There are more knives in the desk drawers. Over to my right, standing in a corner, is a Mosin-Nagant M38 carbine. Zombie Apocalypse? I'm ready.

Anyway, that's my reading material for this weekend.

California's "Glass Beach" Endangered

People keep collecting the pretty glass.



Back when I was stationed in Norfolk in the early 1980's there was a small pebbly beach at the marina located where Norfolk Naval Base becomes Norfolk Naval Air Station. There was lots of "sea glass," as I called it, that washed up on that little beach - - most of it brown, from beer bottles, as you might expect.

50 Adventures Every Kid Should Have

Story.

Most of the list includes stuff that any outdoor-oriented child of the past would do, such as fly a kite, go blackberrying, or learn to ride a horse. "Catch fish with a net" is listed, although catching them with a handline, cane pole or fishing rod would do just as well, I suppose. And no mention of cleaning and eating the fish afterwards.

Since it is a UK list, nothing about shooting a BB gun, shotgun or .22 rifle, as rural American kids do (and as UK rural kids did in the past). What sort of things do you think an American would add to the list? I'd say "build a tree fort," because I built more than one of those in my youth. How about "explore a 'haunted' house?" Skinny-dipping? Let me hear your ideas in comments.

Time Capsule: 1960

50 years later, a backyard fallout shelter in Wisconsin is unsealed, disclosing a treasure trove of 1960's consumer items.

The items, which had been carefully packed in US military ammo cans, looked as fresh as the day that they had been placed in storage:



The shelter had become flooded over the decades, but the old ammo cans proved to be watertight and rust resistant.

While We're On the Subject of Nostalgia...

...how many of you who grew up in the 1960's and 1970's remember Words In Color?

I learned to read using that method. It helped me immeasurably.

Nostalgia of the Day

A blog post over at Roberta's called to my mind the old fire towers that dotted the landscape of my native Florida when I was young. That memory of fire towers led directly to the memory of Ranger Hal, who hosted a morning kid's show in Jacksonville, Florida. Ranger Hal also made personal appearance throughout north Florida, and I remember my sister and me having to sing Christmas carols at a show Hal hosted at my grandfather's Moose lodge. Here's a YouTube clip I found of Ranger Hal:

Go Back In Time 100 Years...

...and buy a piece of candy.



Be sure to watch the video, too.

Musical Interlude

I'm feeling nostalgic for the late 1970's, thanks to Borepatch posting an old country favorite. So I'll offer another song from the same era, from a very similar singer, the late Johnny Duncan. This one features Janie Fricke, a legend in her own right, who got her start as a session singer and had several hits with Duncan. Here's one of their best, Stranger:

The Return To Charlotte...

...of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.

I'm conflicted on them. I've eaten them since boyhood; the Catholic school I attended from 4th-8th grade in Gainesville, Florida (St. Patrick's) didn't have a proper cafeteria, just an "activity center" that had a kitchen in one corner that sold Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a few hot items made in a microwave. Or maybe it was a small broiler, since microwaves were a novelty back then (early 1970's). So I ate them often during those years.

They're good hot and fresh, which everyone acknowledges and which is a part of the company's drawing power; they're much less so once cold. Too light and airy for me, I like a doughnut that is heavier and doughy. Truth be told I prefer cinnamon twists to all other doughnut styles, but they aren't as easy to find as they used to be.

And how did they come up with that name? Doughnuts ain't "krispy." Even the glaze, although it breaks into glass-like fragments, ain't "krispy."

Not To Say "Stoned"

Saw this headline in my hometown newspaper, The Gainesville Sun: "Melrose Residents Protect Their Laid-Back Lifestyle."

Melrose, Florida, is where I spent my teen years, from 10-17. Life there centers around Lake Santa Fe, which has a small cove on its SE corner called Melrose Bay. It's a great lake for fishing and water skiing. You can even sail on it. Melrose, when I lived there, was a rural area, with only a single traffic signal, and that one was only a flasher. Back then there was only a single grocery store, a couple of gas stations, a convenience store and two restaurants. No schools back then; students bused to either Hawthorne or Interlachen.

We had a house right on the lake that my father inherited from his parents. I spent those ten years out on the dock bass fishing, and later on exploring the lake on the boat we acquired. I knew many of the secrets of the lake: the old canal leading to Lake Alto, the semi-secret (and forbidding) Black Lake, which seemed like the Black Lagoon to me; and the gar-infested Bonnet Pond, which was a sort of grassy marsh.

We didn't see many waterfowl in the lake, save for the diving grebes that we called "coots." Much of the wildlife had local names; black crappie we called "speckled perch," bluegills were "bream," (pronounced "brim"), red-eared sunfish were called "shellcrackers," pickerel were called "jacks," bowfins were called "mudfish," and anhingas (a type of long-necked diving, swimming bird) were called "water turkeys." Water turtles were called "cooters," usually with a snicker by teenage boys (a popular t-shirt of the period was from The Yearling Restaurant at nearby Cross Creek, which read "Eat More Cooter At The Yearling Restaurant!)

That was the 70's, and everyone was a pothead back then, it seemed (I never even tried it; too much of a prig). The small cottage next door to our house was owned by people from Jacksonville, and they rented it out to a succession of hippies who never seemed to stay long, the rent payments being unreasonably high for the tiny one room that the cottage was. We knew by the care they gave to the lawn how long each pair of hippies would stay; when the St. Augustine grass became untended and long, we knew that they hippies had outstayed their welcome. One pair of them actually grew pot in large quantities behind a wooden fance they built beside the cottage; after they were evicted marijuana seeds would sprout for the next year or so on their property. My dad, amused, took one of the young plants and grew it himself, just for entertainment, since he smoked only unfiltered Camels and nothing else.

Halcyon days, as they say.