This is some stuff I know (or think I know) that I think might be interesting to my descendents. In most cases there is at least one other person that knows it too, but a number of them are now dead. The memory is a treacherous thing

George’s new car arrived at Price motors. It was a medium blue metallic Chevy 2-door with manual transmission. I saw to it that it was prepped to perfection and drove it home, parked it out front and tossed him the keys. “There’s your car, George.”

He went to the car and thus began about twenty minutes of the most horrible treatment of a clutch and transmission I have ever experienced. It was just awful. All of the instruction I had given him had been in a car with automatic transmission. Finally the car was away from the curb, up the hill and around the corner out of sight. He was back in a couple of hours smiling. “Well, I can drive it.” He said.

The other side of the coin is my two boys. Steve and I went out to the garage. I put a sanding disc in my electric drill and started it. I held another disc on a spindle and said “When you let out on the clutch pedal this is what happens,” pressing the hand held disc onto the spinning one, letting their speeds slowly match. I drove him out the baseball diamond by Cary High School when it was deserted. We used the VW bus. I showed him how to clutch and find low gear. I told him to forget shifting, just get rolling and steer to miss anything in the way. I had him stop and start until he could do it smoothly just weaving around the ball field for about an hour. I told him that was all there was to it. Two years later he got his driver’s license.

For John, I gave the same clutch demonstration and we used the Chevy II. I drove out to the huge IBM parking lot in the triangle on a Sunday. I showed him how to find low gear and had him drive up one lane and down another. I had him stop on inclines and start up with a minimum of roll back until he got it right. It took about an hour. Two years later he got his driver’s license without any trouble. No fights, no temper tantrums, just Dad giving his kids a start in one aspect of adult life. Simple as that.
FREEDOM

Freedom is messy. Free people often do things in irregular, unexpected ways. Because of this governments are formed to smooth out the worst of the excursions from the normal conduct of humanity. A number of activities are universally agreed to be forbidden; most murders for instance.

Well organized governments delve deeper into the conduct of the citizenry to more tightly regulate them, having theft or rape or physical assault stand at the top of the taboo list. This is true regardless of the way the government is constituted. Emperors, monarchs and tsars set those kinds of rules at their whim and enforce them likewise. That is why some people came up with the idea of representative government wherein the mass of the people would decide how and how closely they would all be regulated; ushering in “the rule of law’.

It now comes to the point of conservative or liberal government. At first ‘liberal’ meant supporting ‘the maximum amount of liberty for the maximum number of people.’ Conservative meant adhering to the previous restrictive form of government. Over the years, the meanings have metamorphosed.

Liberal now means minimum control of personal conduct and maximum control of commercial conduct. Conservative, on the other hand, means minimum control of commercial conduct and greater control of personal conduct. The former wants controlled commercial conduct so that tax funds will be available to do supposedly good things ‘for the people’. The latter wants controlled personal conduct so that people will do good things for themselves and others.

That liberty is messy, disturbs both liberals and conservatives because it means the powers that be have little control and things are not steady, predictable, and ‘regular’; that Valhalla of the regulatory mind.

Personally I tend to side with the conservatives. If people will be good to themselves and others in all meaningful ways, there would not be much need for government of any kind. Liberty demands much self control.
MORONI

Over a generation ago, two aspiring elders of the Mormon Church arrived at our door. Young, earnest, clean, bright-faced and sweating from their summer bicycling recruiting duties, they were. We talked to them. We were receptive to their words. We accepted copies of The Book of Mormon. We even made an appointment to have them return a week or so later after we had read the book.

It was interesting; it’s melding of conventional Christianity with the extraordinary excursion of belief that Mr. Smith took on the way to writing the book. There was the story of the now-missing golden plates found on a farm in rural New York, the ephod and apparatus needed to be able to read those plates, the deduction that white northern Europeans were actually the ‘people of Israel’ referred to in our Bible. I was tempted to believe at least some of it, and respected its urging toward moral conduct.

We talked with the potential elders on their return, told them about our admiration and respect for the several Mormons we had known; Bob Miller and family when in Art Center School, the Dennings who ran the local grocery store, and Bob Wilson, an army buddy in Korea. We accepted their urging to attend their church service the following Sunday in north Raleigh.

I must say that when I was in that church service I had the most powerful feeling of oppression I had ever experienced. It was nothing that was said and nothing that was done. There seemed to be no actual preacher, just a series of congregation members that felt moved to go to the front and address the flock about some aspect of personal conduct that was on their minds. There was no music. Infants were kept in mothers’ arms in the sanctuary and their cries and babbling was ignored and tolerated by all.

I vowed never to go back.

Our Founding Fathers were visionaries, extraordinary visionaries. They set about to do something that never in history had been tried. They set out to establish a government where people would mostly govern themselves, bearing fealty only to a set of principles not to any ruler. They thought they would establish a nation not entangled with the kings and satraps of the rest of the world; one that could conduct its business in a commercial and social way with any nation or enterprise that was willing to reciprocate.

By and large America and her people conducted themselves in that very fashion for some years. We felt dragged into wars not of our own making and tried mightily to avoid them. Isolationism was not a bad word then. “Foreign entanglements’; a term used by President Washington in his farewell address rung loudly in America’s ears for many generations.

However, our visionary founders and leaders could not see the future they were making. They had little inkling of the explosive ingenuity and productivity of a people largely left to conduct their lives in a way of their personal choosing unfettered by an authority higher than God. They believed that our farms would continue to provide sustenance to a growing population with a bit left over to export. They assumed that men with shovels and draft animals would carve out roads, streets and cities from the western wildernesses and prairies. They thought others would hew timber and saw lumber for buildings and homes; make bricks and carve stone for same; would cast iron for tools and forge it into horseshoes; that others would study natural sciences or educate the illiterate. A nice idyllic situation, sheltered from foreign aggression by two massive, trackless oceans.

How could they have possibly foreseen the birth of the Edisons, the Deeres the Watsons, the Langmuirs, the Lands, the Shockleys the Gates, the Eatons and the Wrights? Bright and forward thinking as they were, they mightily underestimated the energy and inventiveness they were unleashing upon the world.

It is for this reason that we can no longer wholly rely on their advice as we conduct our twenty first century business. Communication is now instant, travel is at mach one. In our mostly unrestricted application of individual and corporate inventiveness and energy we have filled the world with an almost unlimited spectrum of devices both helpful and harmful. When government decides to forbid a practice or product imaginative types immediately devise a way to achieve the same (or nearly same) result by other means. Just as we can no longer keep those who would do us harm or who covet our wealth away from our shores, neither can we stay at home hoping those bad guys will do the same.

And so it is that much to my regret, I find myself agreeing with the new principle of preemptive defense. We are now in such a situation that we have armed forces based in 137 of the sovereign nations of the world. These men and women face varying levels of danger and do the bidding of whichever administration is currently in power. They are provided with an astonishing range of weapons, equipment and devices that exist largely because our Founding Fathers devoutly believed that leaving people alone to do their own bidding and follow their own interests was the best way to achieve progress.

Progress has been achieved in spades. We now live in a century wherein we must act swiftly in any part of the world where forces which bid us ill conspire to work their evil ways upon us. Though no nation dares attack us, radical forces are ranged against us and they act with stealth and deception. We must do the same. I don’t like it and I know some innocents are going to suffer but this situation, left unattended, means even more innocents will be harmed and I don’t want any of them to be my children or my children’s children.

I ponder hopelessly; what would Mr. Washington think of this situation? Oh how I wish he was here to help me understand.

SMOKING HABIT

When I was six or seven, Dad said to me one day “Dick, if you’ll stop picking your nose, I’ll stop smoking.” I was surprised at this, thinking that no one paid attention to the fact that I had one finger or the other in my nose nearly all the time. There were always boogers in there that needed to come out.

Dad was big on cigars then; El Roi Tan being the stogie of choice and he had one clenched in his teeth almost constantly. The smoke suffused our home and his car. I saw no problem in it; it was what men did in that generation, nearly all of them.

Unbeknownst to me at that time, what was happening was that I was getting a smoking habit without lighting up. Anyway, he never quit smoking and I didn’t give up picking my nose. I did take care to do it mostly in private, however. Such was the constancy of my index fingers twisting in my nostrils when the bones were still solidifying that both of them have a unique twist to them to this very day. A human’s hands more than triple in size from very young to adulthood, the head hardly doubles in size during that span and so I could get my index finger in my snorter then but only my little finger today. In addition, my only known allergy is to tobacco fumes and thus it is that my sinuses run constantly.

Thus far, I have avoided emphysema, mostly because I never inhale deeply, the heart attack might have been smoking related but arteriosclerosis is not always the result of smoking either. Lung cancer only occurs in 10 percent of smokers. Heart failure got Dad; that may be my end too. I’ve got about a year before I reach the age he was at death (on January 8, 2005, I will have lived exactly as many days as he.) and detect no approaching episodes, so we will see what we will see.

As I was completing my ‘depression medication’ experiment in early 2004, the examining physician reviewed all of the stats gathered on me, (six EKGs and complete blood work, weekly BP, pulse and temp), and did an in-depth interview of my medical history wherein she learned I had been a smoker for 60 years, had never consciously attempted a healthful diet or lifestyle and said “How can you be so healthy?” I thought to my self “I never eat uncooked fat and take 1000 units of vitamin E every day.” But thought it would be stupid to say it out loud.

Some years ago Duke University began a study centered on how best to treat heart patients. They wanted volunteers who suffered angina or had had a heart attack. Three courses of treatment were to be studied: 1. An exercise regimen, 2. Medication, and 3. Counseling/group therapy. I volunteered and was accepted because I had suffered a heart attack. The protocol was to treadmill each volunteer to the point of chest pain and then assign him/her to one of the three groups. Each week there would be a retest to determine if the therapy was having an effect. Volunteers did not choose which therapy they would undergo.

The treadmill test started gently and effort was gradually increased as the technicians monitored the real-time EKG/BP screens, asking each 30 seconds if chest pain was felt. As I reached a pace of 4 mph on an 11% grade, after about 10 minutes, I said I could not pull any more air and was simply exhausted. “Had any chest pain at all?” “No.” I said. “Too bad, pal, you can’t qualify; your BP is at 200% and your pulse is 144 with no chest pain.” There was nothing to treat. Shucks, it would have been fun.

Most everyone who knows and loves me wants me to quit the filthy habit, but I just get too much mechanical pleasure out of it. I’ve done what I could to reduce the cost as smoking gets more expensive every year and there probably is a cut-off point where it is just too costly to continue, but I may not live long enough to see the day.

When I lay in bed mulling over my day and my life I sometimes get so mad I can’t sleep, like now. What I get mad about is the multitude of people both near and far who know me and don’t know me but want me to quit smoking. The reason, they imply, is so that I won’t get sick and die. Huh? I want to scream at them: “And you are going to live forever?” EVERYBODY gets sick and dies, or is killed, or commits suicide. Betty didn’t smoke and she is fucking DEAD! John Lang didn’t smoke and he is fucking DEAD! Bill Busby didn’t smoke and he is fucking DEAD! Gloria Austin was 36 and wouldn’t even let folks smoke on her back deck, she is dead from a head-on, Christmas Eve, 2000. Neither Betsy, nor John Max, nor Lucy T., nor David, nor Frances, nor Elizabeth nor Newt smoked but they are all fucking DEAD. They all died years younger than I am now except for Newt. Graham quit smoking 30 years ago and he is dead, George quit 50 years ago and he is dead of Parkinson’s, liver cancer, uncontrollable electrolyte levels, diabetes, edema multiple hernias and ulcers, and Harvey who also quit years ago is now afflicted with Parkinson’s. Dammit, everybody dies! What difference does it make as to HOW? They say “But it is such a horrible death.” They didn’t spend days in Graham’s hospital room watching the life drain out of him by the hour until he was just an unconscious bloated body with a pulse and breath. Horrible way to go? You want to hear horrible? Mom lost the use of her hands and arms in 1961 or 1962 and had to be fed. Within a year she had lost use of her feet and lower legs and had to be carried from chair to bed and back. She then lost control of her torso muscles and could only lie in bed, being rolled to prevent bed sores, bed-panned and bed-bathed. All this while she was perfectly conscious and aware of what was happening to her. Later she lost the ability to chew and thus was fed only liquids. Then she lost use of her epiglottis and could no longer swallow, feeding was by IV. By late 1967 her diaphragm began to fail and she was put on a ventilator. She was still mentally alert and lucid, knowing all of the terrifying things that were happening to her body. In January, 1968 the muscles of her throat gave up, it closed and she suffocated, conscious until the last molecule of oxygen was burned in her body. All those years Dad had to attend to her every need, day after day, month after month, year after year; exhausting and heartbreaking to him, humiliating and heartbreaking to her. Man, my impending massive stroke or heart attack is a comparative picnic.

I was friends with Steve Welch who was in charge of data analysis for the National Institute for Health Statistics. At parties he was quick to offer a match to anyone who drew a cigarette in his presence. I asked him about that and he explained that he had quit smoking but he got a bit of relief from quitters jitters by just lighting one up for someone else. He moved back to Washington after he was promoted and it was about 10 years before I saw him again. When I did, he was smoking. I brought that to his attention and he said he had seen all of the statistics for long enough to know that smoking or not smoking “……doesn’t make any difference, the same terrible diseases kill us all, some early, some late, some smoking, some not.”

Mounting numbers of studies continue to show that there are beneficial effects in smoking. Grudgingly science, which always knows what is best for us, is coming to the conclusion that smokers don’t get Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s as much as the non-smoking community, nor do they suffer other kinds of cognitive dementia as they age, at a rate as high as non-smokers. That kind of news is buried in the back of the paper and never followed up.

Smokers cost the Medicare System one third of what non-smokers do because they have fewer serious illnesses than non-smokers before they die, and many die at an earlier age as well; thus reducing the burden on the Social Security System. Dad said it best: “You are gonna die from what you were born with.” Not very grammatical, but still precise.

However, a March 2004 scientific study has revealed that picking one’s nose is good for you; my . nose picking habit, begun so long ago might be a good thing. Although socially repugnant, the researchers found, that those who continued to pick their noses into adulthood were significantly happier and lived longer than those who did not. It had something to do with disposing of the poisons captured in the mucous as well as some kind of psychological release mechanism which reduces stress.

As I passed my 74^th birthday, I noticed that I am becoming weaker in legs and arms by a very noticeable amount. It somewhat worries me, since it is making it harder than ever to do the work I ordinarily gave no thought to doing, like tending to the plants and flowers. Rising from a crouch has become a project requiring some planning on how I am going to achieve it; what I can grasp with my hands to assist in the task.

ENGLISH COMP. 101 –, FINAL EXAM

This is a three-part exam.

For 10 points:

Compose one page of prose using each of the following proper nouns at least once:

Navigator, Avalanche, Escape, Aviator, Explorer, Liberty, Expedition, Tracker and Gladiator.

For 80 points:

Compose one page of prose using each of the following proper nouns at least once:

Tiburon, Elantra, Celica, Maxima, Prius, Spectra, Enzo, Verona, Vitara, Aerio, Murano, Altima and Sephia.

Name the nation which made proper nouns of each word.

By the time Dad was 60 he had a full set of false teeth, uppers and lowers. He had always taken care of his teeth. I, on the other hand more or less ignored my teeth most of my life and got a multitude of fillings over the years; eventually losing 9 which now have gold crowns. 6 others are on a removable bridge. A number of what remains have fillings. Oddly, the 6 lower front teeth, the crooked ones, never had any decay and thus have no fillings.

On December 12, 1942 (George’s birthday) I was in the basement of the Methodist Church as a Tenderfoot member of Scout Troop 4. We were learning knot tying. The Scout Master had given each of us an open-back chair and about 2 feet of cotton clothes line. As we Scouts tied the knot he specified, we would bring the chair to him to determine that the knot was properly tied. When he called for the girth hitch (the easiest of all knots) we rushed forward in such a crowd that he protected his face from the onslaught of chairs in such a way that mine was flung back so powerfully that it bashed my open mouth, breaking off my right upper incisor.

I went home in pain and tears. Dad called Dr. Runyan and he agreed to meet us at his office. With Mom and Dad hovering nearby, the dentist shot me with Novocain and gripped the stump of tooth with his most powerful pliers. He almost had to put his foot on my face to get the tooth out. The gap was packed with gauze to stanch the bleeding and we went home.

After about a week the gums had closed over the opening and Dr. Runyan proceeded to make a space retainer to replace the missing tooth by making a mold of the roof of my mouth and then casting a pink plastic plate holding a hard plastic false tooth. “It was temporary, only a space retainer.” he said. Yeah, I only wore it until I was about 46 years old. It is now one of my 6 false teeth on the stainless steel removable bridge, made by Dr. Fulp in 1977 or thereabouts.
ONE KIND OF FUN

Back in the dark ages (1950s) there were many dual lane city streets; block after block controlled by a traffic light at each intersection. Young car nuts used these streets as impromptu drag strips dragging from light to light. Usually the speeds attained were moderate; 50 – 60 mph, as it was necessary to begin stopping well before the next red light. The police were hard on those caught in the act and so it was usually a daytime activity so that the competitors could survey the area for patrol cars while waiting for the green.

With my 55 Chevy, it was great fun because it had a 4:11 rear axle ratio; a great advantage in low and second gear. I beat a bunch of cars that were supposedly more powerful so long as top speeds were not a factor. Once I was on Van Nuys Boulevard going against a 1957 Thunderbird. I had beaten him in three dashes from the lights. The blocks were longer up north of LA and I actually got into high gear between lights. The fourth red light was coming up and I had him by a fender again and hit the brakes. They had overheated and it took both feet on the pedal to get enough stopping effort to avoid rolling through the red light. A later inspection of the front brakes showed that the linings had cracked for the entire length of the shoe flange and the drums were blue spotted to the point they had to be replaced. Give thanks, you all, for disc brakes. They are a major factor, I mean SERIOUS major factor in the improved performance of modern cars.

The ’57 convert was fun that way too. Having the Duntov engine gave me a ‘secret’ advantage since it was a rare option which produced about 50 more horsepower than the usual power pack Chevy. The added weight of a convertible didn’t help but there was still enough stuff in there to beat most challengers. When I was driving the Corvette, there were not many challengers at lights and so the fun part was somewhat diminished.

The powers that be finally figured out a way to stop this renegade kind of racing. Most all multi-lane streets now-a-days have one lane devoted to ‘must turn’ service and leave only one lane for straight ahead drivers except at the busiest of intersections where it would be impossible to engage in light-to-light drags. And so one of the most enjoyable kinds of fun I ever had was put to an end.