busy

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I just saw an ad from someone looking to hire carpenters at $33/hour.

That is in the Greater Pittsburgh area which is not known for being a high paying area.

I also saw that Sheetz, a local convenience store chain is hiring starting people for $12.50+/hour. They also have maintenance jobs paying $15 to $23/hour.

Looks like the $15/hour starting wage will soon be a reality soon without any government help.

Say what you will about Donald Trump but I bet this wouldn't be happening under Hillary Clinton.


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Busy working on another project

Stay tuned. It will be posted here.


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Stop signs

Are probably necessary but they sure are a nuisance.

I will cheerfully admit that anyone that blows through one without even slowing down deserves a ticket. To me they serve as a warning that I ought to start paying attention, especially in residential neighborhoods.

As I near one I slow way down and start scanning for kids, cats, dogs, cars and jack-in-the-boxes. Sometimes I don't come to a dead stop, though. If the coast is 100% clear I might creep on through one.

Enter the local Citizens on Patrol that raise holy hell with people that don't come to a complete stop and even some that do unless they pause there for several seconds.

There's one group that stops at them, drunk drivers. They stop because they don't want to be pulled over. A cop following a suspected DUI looks for excuses and that's a legal excuse to check someone out.

I know because up until the mid 80s like a lot of other people, I drove after drinking. An awful lot of us did. Of course, we stopped religiously at stop signs to the point where I heard a cop mention it to another cop.

I had a Joe Citizen come off his porch shouting a while back and instead of giving him the finger as I drove off, I stopped and backed up and stopped right in front of his porch and asked him what he wanted.

He was a lot humbler when I did this. He walked out and started in on telling me to watch for the kids. Ever notice it's always the kids.

"What did you do? Remarry a woman half your age? I bet your kids are in their thirties and can take care of themselves." He obviously was uncomfortable with that.

"No, the other neighborhood kids," he said, somewhat lamely.

"I've been driving through this neighborhood regularly and I have never seen a kid in any of the four houses on the intersection. I have seen you, though and you drive past my house every day on your way to work a lot faster than the speed limit allows!
Clearly he wasn't ready for this.

"You know who stops carefully at stop signs? Drunk drivers so they don't give a cop an excuse to pull them over!" He wasn't expecting this.

"Listen, I slow down to less than a crawl, carefully check, look out for kids, animals and care ant then proceed carefully. I hope that's good enough. My head is always on a swivel in this neighborhood."

"Yeah, but you didn't come to a complete stop," he was still trying.

"So what. Let's face it, you're just being an a$$hole about it. You don't care about the kids, you just like telling other people what to do! While we're at it, slow down in my neighborhood. We got little kids there."

He didn't know what to say so I drove up the the stop sign, stopped, backed up and stopped again and shouted out the window, "Made up for it. I stopped twice!" and with that I dumped the clutch, sped up to about 20 and went home.

Laws like that were made to protect the public and overzealous bull$hit enforcement doesn't do anyone any good.









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You know who you are and I really ought to use your name here.

You had the outright gall coupled with stupidity to call me a liar just because I changed the names in a couple of my epistles.

Did you ever stop to think for even a nanosecond that we all have things in our past that we don't want shared with the general public?

There are a lot of fine people out there that had wild younger years and re-entered normal society. While many of us are not rally ashamed of things we dad back when, we really don't want them published.

Some of these people are raising kids and don't need to have their kids hear what their parents did when they grew up. Others don't need the embarrassment in either their social circles or at the work place.

You wouldn't like it either. 

Before you get upset over things like that ask yourself how you would feel if someone said about your past on a public forum and named you.

A little common sense and compassion in your life is in order.

And don't get too damned uppity about it. You are no saint, either. I know a few things about you.

Off for a day trip to Camp Perry

Someone has to bring thee Marines a case of beer.


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Another long memory post of far way and long ago.

https://hashleftovers.blogspot.com/2019/07/las-vegas-circa-1981.html



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Half of nothin' is nothin'.

One of the things I remember about fishing is that a lot of guys worried about the percentage of their crew shares. A ten percent share got one ten percent of the take of the boat. A fifteen percent share got someone fifteen percent. Seldom did any boat pay a bigger share then fifteen percent.

I generally looked at how successful the skipper was likely to be and ran with that.

After all, fifteen percent of nothin' is nothin'.

Ten percent of something is far more than fifteen percent of nothing.



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Last night I got a pretty good night's sleep

After the chaos of yesterday morning I needed it.

Here's another project.

https://hashleftovers.blogspot.com/




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It's been a strange day.

At 0500 the outside motion detector lights went on and I was awakened. A second later the lights went out and then came back on again. My CPAP stopped and I got up to find that the lights were dim but anything with a motor in it would not run.

That meant refrigerator, A/C, microwave, CPAP, dehumidifier and surprisingly enough, my router. I grabbed a multi meter and sure enough the voltage was down to about 68 VAC.

A brownout.

A few hours later everything was up and running but it ws one hell of a way to start the day.

I need a nap.



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Got busy again

with a bunch of stuppid.

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I saw someone try and play the race card the other day. It was declined.

It was a small business and the clerk was dealing with someone that wanted a refund on something that had been not only opened, but also used and on top of that was a couple months old.

The customer dragged her race into it and the owner politely explained that while they do take VISA and Mastercard, that the race card was not a valid form of payment.

I was not surprised to see a small businessman do this and I do think we will be seeing more of it.

People are so sick and tired of the bull$hit accusations of racism these days that I would not be surprised to see people embrace the accusations by putting 'Proud racist' bumper stickers on their cars.


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ALmost missed another day

I guess a lot of people crap on the sidewalk in San Francisco.

Yet you can bet it doesn't happen in middle America. Hell, if anyone tried they would get the tar beat out of them by the first person that saw them and be carted off to jail.

I can picture the crapper facing the judge.

"Your Honor, I tried to hold it but that little old lady done beat the crap right out of me!"

Middle America would not tolerate it and he'd get at least a couple of weeks in jail as he should.



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I just watched a video where James Matthis

had to explain to some dippy do gooder that all that matters is the lethality of our military.

As usual, Mattis was pretty good at wading through what was nothing more or less than a political minefield.

It struck me that the Senator grilling Mattis really didn't give a damn about the troops. All she cared about was her political agenda.

My guess is she doesn't have a kid in tha service.

A lot of people have noticed that liberals are pretty generous with other people's money. 

Something else worth remembering is that they're also pretty generous with thee lives of other people's children.




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Missed yesterday. Oh, well.

I do have some catching up to do.



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mADE IT ON TIME!

Been on the road all day.



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Busy

Busy


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On the road

Busy


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Again, someone asked me why I have not made posts about my career at sea.

I gave him my stock answer.

"Wait until I retire and I'm going to write a book exposing the entire industry!"

It will actually be somewhat of a disappointment because the so-called good old days are long gone and have been gone since about the time I entered the industry. It was in the process of cleaning itself up when I entered it almost thirty years ago. The major turning point was the Good Friday Prince William sound oil spill back in '89.

Yet, probably after three or four decades the old stories of the days of yore still refuse to die.

About ten years ago I met a New York cop that told me that even then if a cop called in and mentioned tugboat, barge or merchant seaman that a backup or three would be immediately sent, no questions asked. I laughed and said that most of the guys on the water these days were family men with wives and kids. I pointed out that a DUI was reason enough for a sailor not to have his papers renewed.

He said he knew it but that old habits die slowly. The cop sheepishly told me about an old retired skipper in his late 80s that fell. He called for an ambulance and said it was for 'Old Joe the retired tugboat guy'. Apparently the dispatcher heard the word tugboat and two cruisers showed in in seconds. It was one of the funnier cop stories I have heard over the years and the cop was a good storyteller. I laughed like hell as he grinned.

Interestingly enough, over the years I have seen more drug and alcohol abuse by the shore side people than by our guys and even that has been extremely rare. I have had to deal with a couple of drunken dock men and inspectors over the years. The last time was well over a decade ago. It was an inspector and the dock man and I quietly whisked him ashore and had him replaced rather quickly. The incident was handled quietly and I never heard of that particular inspector showing up with any alcohol on his breath.

When I was a novice I saw a drunk dock man dealt with by a middle management type who simply relieved him. Later I heard he was quietly suspended. The supervisor said, "He's a good guy."

I shot back that good guys don't drink at work and risk other people's careers. The supervisor said I had a point. The next time I saw that man he was sober as a judge and thanked me profusely for not reporting him up the chain.

Still, when you look at the big picture, the industry is pretty damned clean and is a far cry from what it was and a VERY far cry from the public's perception of what the maritime industry really is.

As far as violence goes, my career on the water includes commercial fishing. I have not fished since '86 and to be honest fishing was somewhat of a circus. There were no papers required, anyone could fish and it drew all sorts of people. I knew of at least two murderers and a number of fishermen I knew personally had extensive criminal records.

I have been out of the commercial fishing business since '86 and know nothing of what it is like today.

Since I have been working in a license/documents required tug and barge business I have only seen one actual fist fight and two somewhat serious shoving matches. In one of the shoving matches someone went down on his ass. In the other a mouthy green deckhand got bounced off of a bulkhead a couple of times.

In the latter incident no real harm was done and the whole issue was quietly buried. The tug skipper agreed that no real harm had been done. There was more good than bad because the green kid learned the boundaries. Actually it gave the kid a pretty good lesson in life.

Recently I did hear of one unpopular shore side supervisor shoving a pile driver that was working on the dock. Bad move. Pile bucks tend to be Old School. After the pile buck knocked the supervisor flat on his ass he picked himself up only to be fired. The supervisor had it coming for two reasons. First he shoved somebody. Secondly he deserved to be canned for outright stupidity. Anyone that picks a fight with a pile buck is just plain stupid.

Companies don't put up with that kind of thing anymore. For one thing, lawsuits tend to get expensive fast. It's no longer a let's duke it out and may the best man win world anymore. An employee getting into a fist fight with someone can cost the company a fortune.

I, personally, did not witness this incident but the person that told me about it said he actually saw the whole thing and had to make a witness statement.

One has to remember that these jobs have seen quite a bit of change over the years. Many moons ago the food was lousy, there was little machinery and long, heavy towing hawsers were warped in by hand. It was damned hard cold and wet work and anyone with even an inkling of education avoided it like it was leprosy.

Good deck machinery has replaced Armstrong's patented line haulers. Refrigeration and other modern conveniences have made it a lot better of a job to have. The caliber of people increased.

What was once a simple job considered a haven for criminals and throwaways has morphed into a pretty good career.

Most guys out here are guys with wives and kids to feed and tend to steer clear of trouble. They have responsibilities ashore.

Since the US flagged shipping industry has fallen off a large number of people out here are maritime academy grads with degrees.

At first there was some resentment until it became clear that competence and merit came first. Over the years I have seen a King's Point grad replaced with a man with a grammar school education and I have seen the opposite happen, too. Over the years I have worked with maritime academy grads and they have been anywhere between first class and dismal. Actually the degree itself means little out here. Performance comes first.

The old bar busting, drinking and fighting Popeye or Barnacle Bills of the past are long gone. Still, it is pretty funny that a lot of people still live in the dark age and believe that sailors are the way they were a century ago.
















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The French Foreign Legion takes care of their own.

They have a pretty good program for retired Legionnaires, many of which have no family or even no country to return to.

For some these poor souls, leaving the legion is like leaving a job, a family, a country and a neighborhood all at the same time. It is a real whammy. 

Some of these people can't seem to adapt, some wind up in prison and God only knows where else.

In 1954 the Legion realized this and purchased a villa of some sort in what was proved to be a great spot for growing grapes and making wine. It's manned by a number of retirees that make a pretty good wine that is commercially available to the public.

They take in former retired legionnaires to work the vineyards and man both a book binding and ceramic shop there. The wine, ceramics and bound books are sold commercially to the public and the proceeds are used to support the project.

It is actually a win/win situation.

It gives these man a home and something to do in his old age.

It's a lot more of a personal type of thing than just sending someone a check.

Then again, the Legion has a different sort of situation to deal with than the US services do. We don't have 'orphans' that have left everything behind to serve. Most of out GIs are Americans and upon retirement most start second careers here.

Still, it seems to work for France. 

Here's a link to an article about this.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/french-foreign-legion-wine





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One of the things I did if I sensed trouble was use an alias.

They were generally reversible like the one Yossarian used in Catch-22. Yossarian censored letters using the alias 'Washington Irving'. When he got tired of that he started using "Irving Washington.

Sometimes when I was hitch hiking and in a town I was going to be in for a while if I was asked my name I would say I was Robert Thomas. In the next town I would use the name Thomas Robert.

Another name I used to use was Joseph Lewis/Lewis Joseph. It worked reasonably well as far as not being trailed. At the time not all states had picture IDs and I managed to get a driver's license made with the name Lewis Joseph on it from a college dorm somewhere.

This came in handy once when I was in a rural county when I got picked up for hitch hiking out in the middle of nowhere. This was long before the internet and instant communications.

I got hauled before a justice of the peace type and fined the or fifteen bucks for the high crime and misdemeanor of hitch hiking and it never showed up anywhere.

I suppose if one were to dig through the bowels of a county building somewhere in one of the flyover states (possibly Iowa) they might find a record of one Lewis Joseph being apprehended by a brave county sheriff's deputy and fined. Then again, maybe not because I'd bet that the deputy and the JP probably split my fine.

Then again it may be Joseph Lewis was the one that got pinched.

The only thing that was scarier than a city situation for a hitch hiker was dealing with the rural county sheriff system back in the day. One had to be careful because it was often easier to pin a crime on an outsider than a local and it happened all too often.






  





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Someone recently asked me what I would do if/when I retire

and I do believe I would do some volunteer work, probably with the troops that have come back all shot up.

Sometimes I would run into a number of them at Camp Perry that they had sent from Walter Reed while getting their various prosthetic devices installed.

I met one guy that had what amputees refer to as a paper cut. A paper cut is a below the knee amputation. This guy planned on staying in. He had a to pass his PT test and was getting around pretty good. I do believe he managed to stay in.

One of the things I didn't do with these guys is fuss all over them and do stuff for them that they could do for themselves and it seemed appreciated.

There was one guy that seemed to be having a hard time with a door so I simply stood there patiently and waited for him to deal with it which he did with some effort. Someone tried to jump in and I told the good Samaritan to butt out and let him do it.

It took the guy a few seconds and two tries but he figured it out.

When he looked at me I just shrugged and told him he had probably learn now and he agreed.

I was at a club match once with a wheelchair bound casualty and noticed that the rest of the guys are pretty careful not to rob him of his dignity. We occasionally give him a break and push him up a hill or something and help him over an obstacle he can't handle but by and large we leave him to his own devices.

One time I acted as a chock of some sort for a wheelchair bound shooter that was shooting a Garand. He was afraid the recoil would knock him over backwards and it very well might have. I just held the handles when he fired and made sure he didn't go anywhere.

Being the smug bastard that I am I told him he ought to get a wheelie bar or something installed and then I would only have to push him back into bay every time he cranked one off.

"Like a cannon on Old Ironsides?" he asked. I shook my head and grinned back at him.

Incidentally this guy was a total animal when he played wheelchair basketball. It's a rough game to begin with if the guys decide to really cut loose. I tried it once for about fifteen minutes and instantly swore I'd never do that again. This guys don't take any prisoners.

Anyway some kind of volunteer work will probably be a part of my retirement.



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I just heard from "Over Yonder'

Who is a retired tug skipper I went round and round with because he was a lousy communicator. He's doing well as far as I can tell and that's fine by me. I have no animosity toward him although he was once a frustrating person to work with.

The nickname he earned by referring to someplace as 'over yonder' which means everything to him but nothing to anybody else.

He'd shout "Catch a line over yonder!" and nobody had an inkling of where he wanted the line.

I solved the problem by defining where 'over yonder' was. It was the midships timberheads. Every single time he said 'over yonder' I would go straight to the timberheads. I made this clear to him that I would do this every single time.

He could tell us to go one, two or ten cleats ahead of over yonder or one, two or ten cleats aft over yonder if he wanted to but 'over yonder' actually meant something. It had a specific value.

He could still use the term but at least it actually meant something.

Things quickly got better after some frustration on his part.

He actually would say something like "Two cleats ahead of over yonder." My shipmate was amused but did the same thing I did simply because it worked.

Chesty Puller once had a similar thing happen in Korea. Some ROK Koreans reported "Many many North Koreans in open field."

He asked how many and got "Many, many" as an answer.

He got on the horn and asked an American lieutenant who replied "A whole Goddam pisspot full, Sir!"

Puller turned to his S-3 and said, "Thank God someone out there can count!" and ordered the artillery to open fire on them.

Apparently Puller knew how many North Koreans fit into a piss pot.

I learned that particular trick of assigning a value from a Marine officer that was serving in Vietnam where the general term 'beaucoup', meaning many, was often used. The officer didn't tell his people they couldn't use the cool term of the day. He simply assigned it the numerical value of seven. Beaucoup plus three was ten.

Three beaucoup was 21 and beaucoup beaucoup was 49. It worked.

I suppose he did this because he figured they would use the beaucoup term when they were nervous and under fire. Looking at it, it made sense.

Sometimes you gotta think outside of the box.

Anyway I saw Good Old Over Yonder and he looks pretty good for a guy about 80+ years old. 



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I am a sloppy typist and it isn't getting easier with age

The blog people try and make it possible that creative types can create spectacular blogs. It really is a wonderful thing for those types.

But to a sloppy typist like myself it tends to make things a little more difficult. I keep hitting things and opening up things I don't want to like the little box that enables one to look up things.

I remember writing stories on a simple portable typewriter I bought while I was in the service and wish I had the stuff I cranked out on it. I'd haul it everywhere and sit down just about anywhere and write. Somewhere along the line an entire boxful of my epistles disappeared. I'd write up a bunch and send them home in a manila envelope to my dad who kept them in a box, unread.

Some of them were about the salty characters I met during my adventures and others were disguised stories where the names were changed to protect the innocent. I couldn't see having some poor bastard tagged with a felony when in reality he had done nothing wrong. I learned early on that it is very possible to commit a felony while doing the right thing. For example I saw someone knock a person out once that truly needed a good spell of unconsciousness administered to him.

Some of the stories I wrote on the old portable were full of the basic humor and pathos of daily life. Several of them took the reader along in adventures where the protagonist would wind up right where he started off at.

The one I recall the clearest is the kid registering for classes at the local community college played holy hell waiting in line and finally persevered only to find that the first station had not given him a certain piece of paperwork and he had to go back the end of the line and start all over again. This happens a lot in life.

Much to the guy's credit he got smart and on his way back to the end of the line he stopped off and grabbed a tray from the cafeteria and bought several Cokes. He put his paperwork under the tray and, carrying the Cokes, went to the front of the line.

Everyone thought he was a school employee of some sort and when he gave out the Cokes he quietly schlepped one of the people there his stack of paperwork and was back in the fast moving part of the line in an instant. He did wind up getting all of his classes, too.

The people he gave the Cokes to were grateful and quietly accepted them and got him back on track.

It was one of my better stories.

I wonder what eventually happened to the guy. He probably made out OK because he was smart and wasn't afraid to use his head and try a different tack.

Anyway, I can manage laptops OK but the old typewriter was more forgiving in some ways even though it was much harder to make corrections. This is because there were no additional programs tied in and nothing for a clumsy oaf like me to hit and open.

Still, I do notice that I am not getting any better with age.

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I always thought the most useless rank in the army was major.

It's probably the same way in the Marine Corps.

Lieutenants got to run platoons, captains got companies, lieutenant colonels got battalions and colonels got regiments.

Majors had damned few command positions and were generally staff officers. If I remember it was a major that was the Bn XO was probably in a pretty good job and we had another major running the S-3 (operations) shop which I imagine sort of sucked.

It always seemed that the rank was a placeholder or a limbo of some sort. A lot of majors seemed to be annoyed all the time and tended to be a little testy on good days.

It always seemed that if I was going to have a close call with getting into trouble that it would be a major at the bottom of it.

It was a major that gave me hell for having my hands in my pockets at a Coke machine when I was digging for a quarter.

It was a major that tried sneaking up on me while I was on guard duty. What made it worse is I saw him first and set him up and got the drop on him. I was not kind and made him eagle spread.

When he got snotty about it I replied he could tell it to Danny Thompson. That made him turn white.

Some time earlier Danny had shot a lieutenant in the leg for trying to sneak past his post. The lieutenant had ignored Danny's warning so Danny opened fire. The lieutenant was lucky. He survived.

The best part was when the whole mess got sorted out Danny was exonerated of any legal wrongdoing. He didn't get off completely, though. He was sent to the range for remedial marksmanship training by the regimental CO. The lieutenant was transferred.

Knowing this, the major never did anything about the incident save to smarten up and treat the guards with a little basic respect which is something lieutenants did because even the greenest second lieutenant knew the privates had weapons and ammunition while on guard.

Still, it always seemed to me that majors were a thorn in my side during my time in the service.

The major knew this but was dumb enough to think that nobody knew the story.

I have always thought that they either ought to find something worthwhile for majors to do or eliminate the rank. It always seemed to me that the reason they pestered the lower enlisted guys is because they didn't have anything worthwhile to do.







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Still no laptop that is mine. Either borrow one or it's Kindle time which sucks.

I am not where I can simply pick one up.

I suppose I can scrape up another Toughbook or something for a few bucks and that's my likely course of action.

I was using a regular office type and I think it got damaged at sea which doesn't surprise me. You really have to baby stuff out here.




Whoops! I think I found another Toughbook at a reasonable price that looks like it will fit the bill.

We will see how that works out.





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Happy Independence Day

which is what I call the fourth of July.

I call it Independence day because it is an American holiday and I am an American.

AMERICANS celebrate Independence Day.

Those that refer to it as the Fourth of July always seem to forget that every other country in the world has a fourth of July.

Did you think that the rest of the world skipped a day?

Next time you run into someone from the UK ask them if they have a fourth of July in the UK and they will look at you like an idiot and say, "Of course we do. Did you think we were going to skip a day?"

I have a reunion coming up, a fiftieth.

Time flies and it has been a good fifty years since I graduated from high school.

I went to one a couple of years ago and came away thinking that I was not wrong taking the road less traveled.  When I was about 25 and living in a tipi in the Rockies I came home and most of the classmates I met told me I had best shape up or I'd be out in left field.

I didn't and I am not out in left field and I daresay I played a pretty good game of catch-up as my house was paid off before a lot of my classmates houses were if that is any indicator of things.

I've done rather well in ways. I have had two car loans, and a mortgage. The car loans were paid off in about a year and the house was paid off in under ten. I don't like debt.

What is a lot more important to me is that I have made a pretty good life for myself. I was and still am an adventurer by nature and never have seemed to fit in with the 9-5 crowd. Working on the water has agreed with me as a career.

I once told a classmate that I have done just about everything interesting but join the French Foreign Legion, whom I owe for saving my life. There's a certain solid grain of truth there. It has at least been interesting.

I've served in the Army, lived in a tipi, hitch-hiked to Alaska, commercially fished, hunted, and for a later on in life career I ran away to sea. It sure hasn't all been fun but it has been interesting.

Had I wound up a Dilbert in a cubicle I would be long gone by now, probably by my own hand. Either that or still put away in the booby hatch.



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It happened again last night

the recurring dream of losing my simple 2x4  pickup and having someone try and replace it with a bigger, more complex 4x4 rig. It generally is a case where I accidentally wind up saving the city and getting my pickup demolished in the process. Nothing really heroic about it.

It became one of those unrelenting force versus the unyielding object situations. I didn't want a huge behemoth, I wanted what I had, a simple ride.

This time I was being forced to take it as reparation. I don't want it and the mayor is making threats under his breath to me if I don't take it...and take it graciously in front of everyone.

So with a VERY angry face I shake his hand, take the keys from him and in front of God and the TV cameras I walk off the stage, slide under the loaded with every option behemoth, cut the fuel line, strike a match and walk off as about $100,000 worth of pickup goes up in a soul satisfying fireball.

The mayor is livid at having been embarrassed and stands there sputtering. New York's bravest  (who don't like the mayor)are laughing like hell as they extinguish the conflagration.

When I don't want something I simply don't want it.

About a week later I sell my key to the city to Rick Harrison at the Gold and Silver pawn shop for fifty bucks and get ready to continue my odyssey riding my thumb. Harrison tells me that there is a GoFundMe started by a couple of people that understand simple to buy me a simple two wheel drive manual transmission, roll up windows and no air replacement.

Harrison hands me a phone and I call and am told to meet someone at Las Vegas Toyota where I get a simple used four cylinder manual transmission Tacoma and I am happy again. The Las Vegas paper interviews me and I explain that I am a simple person with simple tastes and that damned few people understand that.

It's rather hot in Las Vegas as I take the new pickup so I simply roll down the hand cranked windows and drive off into the desert and head off into the sunset, grateful that SOMEONE out there understands the word 'simple'.

It's been a while since this recurring dream has happened and maybe it is slowly going away. I don't know how I feel about the dream either way anymore. I guess I'll just say that it is what it is. Sometimes when I wake up after the dream I am  annoyed, other times it is very soul satisfying.

777777777777777777777

Someone once asked me what kind of sports car I would own if I won the lottery. I told them I would take my '91 Miata to one of those rebuild shops and have it brought back to brand new but with no A/C and a manual steering box and the suspension set up the way I have it now.

Truth is I am very satisfied with what I have.









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Over the years I have been a magnet for certain types of women

and not all of it has been good. Much of it sucked.

Until a couple of years ago I was a stripper magnet. I do not know why other than maybe they had daddy problems and looked at me in a fatherly light. If I wandered into the convenience store near a strip club I would instantly be addressed by a stripper from the nearby club in there for a pack of smokes. More often than not, she was coked up.

Then there were the airheads that were cranked up on mood elevators. These were no prize, either. Most of them would babble incoherently about whatever and I would smile, shake my head and nod until I could un-ass the area of operations.

Actual professional hookers never seemed to bother me. I think their instincts told them I wasn't interested. The buy me a drink amateurs were another thing altogether. I outraged a couple of these  by telling them to go out into the parking lot with me and pay me up front. That was generally good for a pretty entertaining horror show.

On the other hand I have found a number of good time people sometimes seek me out. I mentioned in a previous post that I briefly dated a women that was a head taller than I was. She had a really outrageous ribald sense of humor and was a lot of fun to be with. If I recall she was a few years older than me.

For a while I was a helpless single mother looking for  daddy for her kid magnet. It always seemed that these woman were pretty much incapable of taking care of themselves and were looking for an easy out and a free lunch. Early on I learned to avoid many of these like the plague. 

Divorced women with a kid or two was usually an entirely different animal. Many of them were OK. It was the single moms I tended to avoid like the plague. The never been married single moms generally had more traps set  out for men than Jeremiah Johnson or even the Viet Cong. 

For about a decade I dated quite a number of older women and it wasn't because of mommy issues, either. I was divorced in my mid 20s and was not looking to make the same mistake twice. I was not looking for girls, I was looking for women.

Looking back on it I can say it was a pretty good choice as I managed to avoid a lot of pitfalls and had a lot of fun. Most of these woman were in their late 30s and early 40s and were not looking for husbands. They were looking for fun and I had  pretty good time with most of them.

One time I was in a convenience store talking to the clerk, a woman about 60 years old. She seemed to have a pretty good sense of life so on impulse I asked her if she wanted to go to a movie and have a drink. She asked me what people would say if they saw us. I told her they would start scandalous rumors because they were jealous of her being with a man half her age. She laughed like hell and accepted and the two of us laughed the evening away.

She lived near where I was hanging my hat and told me there was one nasty old guy that had been hitting on her regularly. I told her I could fix that and the Grand Plan came together. A couple of times a week I'd go to her house for dinner as she loved to cook but had nobody to cook for and I would walk home from dinner and leave my truck in her driveway overnight. Word went out she had a boyfriend half her age and the nasty old guy got the word and went away.

Still during that period I basically dated divorced women older than me to keep the 'my biological clock is ticking' crowd away. It worked.

I remember being at a wedding and betting my kid sister drinks that some twenty something airhead would be hitting on me before the night was through. Sure enough, Sis wound up buying the drinks after some airhead wandered up and started yakking away and telling me all about herself and her Xanax use and so on. I think she showed up about five minutes after I laced my bet.

It's rather interesting how many girls over the years were attracted to me and I rebuffed most of them. I avoided girls and was attracted to women.

On retrospect it was a wise move on my part.








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