Family Treasures

All families have their treasures. After helping settle estates for over a quarter of a century, I’ve learned that the things that cause the most fights aren’t, in fact, the ones with the most nominal value.

Instead, relationships with siblings and cousins are ruined forever over things that have little monetary value; indeed, they might go into the trash can if the unknowing were sorting through the house.

Grandpa’s watch, although it’s broken where a horse stepped on it and smashed the works.

Aunt Lily’s soup ladle, which used to have a red handle but has been worn plain after so many years of service, and which was the one that she threatened to whack the kids with when they were underfoot and on her nerves.

A clock, long silent, with the face drawn in by hand when Grandma and Grandpa got in a terrible fight and Grandpa threw it in the bayou – then felt so bad the next day that he waded in and found it in the murk and tried to draw a new face for it with a grease pencil.

Stocks, bonds, bank accounts are all easy to divide. Accountants do their numerical magic, we know how much each part is worth and everyone gets their share.

Nobody can put a value on sitting on dad’s lap when they’re sick and playing with his pen, though, or learning to "shave" with Grandpa's straight razor when you're 4 or 5.

These things, while they have little intrinsic value, serve to spark memories that might otherwise be forgotten, a visual reminder to encourage the next generation to ask questions about these oddities.

So as we continue to clean out our house, I want to make sure that there are no rifts of that type between my brothers and I. I looked at several treasures and decided that one should be shared with another branch of the family before it becomes a topic of dissention among us.

I got it when Grandma Johnson died a few years ago. I was the oldest grandchild, so I guess the theory was that I remembered it longer than anyone else.

I like to think that’s the reason, anyhow. In reality, it’s probably more to do with a warped sense of humor and irony that goes through the family.  The fact that my brothers couldn't stop giggling when they presented it to me was something of a tipoff.

Grandma’s sister, Fern, was an accomplished ceramicist at a time when ceramic do-dads were an essential part of decorating your house. She undoubtedly spent hours on this decorative piece – a peacock about 18 inches tall or so. It has marbles embedded in the tail to reflect the light. We always thought it should have had a light bulb in it, but that wasn’t the case.

It was one of three or four things that would get your hand slapped if you tried to reach for it. Apparently, Grandma’s method of protection was effective, because it’s lasted close to half a century with only 2 toes broken off to show any wear.  One was taped to it's neck when I packed it up for shipping, the other lost to the ages.

It was probably the height of working-class chic' when Aunt Fern made it about 1958.  In the light of 2010, though, it's pretty damned ugly.

I wish I could say otherwise, but there's not much of a way to dress up that pig.

So last month an appropriate opportunity presented itself. My youngest brother and his wife have moved into a new home. The colors are a perfect complement, and I think that it’s only fitting that he should have the chance to fend his grandchildren off of it for a couple of generations until he passes it along.

Somehow, though, I think he’s missed the tenor of the honor which I’ve bestowed upon him. He accused me of “giving him the bird,” which is technically accurate I suppose but misses the whole, “thought that counts,” concept.

Of course, the fact that it gets this family treasure out of my house is just an added bonus.

Someone's full of Bologna

Did I mention it’s hot? Today is forecast to be the hottest day in over 22 years.

The heat is apparently getting to lots of people, including criminals.

Earlier this week, a 19 year old woman returned to her car at the mall where she found that ten pieces of bologna had been left on it.

My first thought was that someone was simply trying to have a bar-b-que, grilled bologna being a southern delicacy that is frequently overlooked.

Maybe a case of taking some old wive’s tale – like “hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk” – a step further.

“Hot enough to grill Bologna on a Toyota.”

I don’t think it’ll catch on, though. It just doesn’t roll off the tongue smoothly.

The police report said that the car was covered in scratches and gouges that looked like, “. . . . a fork-wielding vandal had made them,” further supporting my cookout theory.

Who hasn’t gone on a picnic, forgotten some essential item like cups or plates or flatware and had to make due with whatever was available?

That little silver bag that keeps the wine in the cardboard box from spilling out works great as a cupless dispenser if you don’t mind a little sidesplash.

The dipstick out of the car can work to make a weenie roaster, if you can ignore a little 10W40 aftertaste.

The picnic people even wrote a note for the car’s owner – “Opps” – presumably a misspelling of “Oops” -- was scratched into the hood. They also etched “toilet paper” into the rear bumper, probably as a reminder of another essential item that shouldn’t be forgotten in the future.

The police speculated, based upon information on the internet that bologna may take the paint off a car and the act wasn’t an attempt to cook using solar energy gone awry but rather an act of vandalism directed at the car’s owner.

They newspaper reporting the matter noted that the US Department of Energy’s website says that slapping bologna on a car is not going to do much damage to the finish.

I don’t find it especially bothersome that the question of bologna removing paint is a topic people discuss on the internet. It’s probably got as much or more merit as a lot of other things that are discussed there.

I do find it bothersome, though, that the US Department of Energy has purportedly chosen to both study the issue and found it important enough to put up on their website.

Was bologna contact with automobile finishes sufficiently prevalent to warrant that diversion of resources? We have a gazillion gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico and are clueless as to what to do about it, and someone decided we needed to pull a couple of folks off of the project to go study bologna on cars?

My hope is that the study happened during the prior administration, encouraged by either the bologna or car paint lobby.

It’s interesting to note that I can’t find the topic anywhere on the DOE website, either. You’d think that the site would be indexed better than that – after all, who knows when there is going to be a bologna – paint removal emergency for which citizens need to be able to immediately access information.

Besides, it’s probably about as useful as some of the other government pamphlets that are out there.

Corpses

The botanical people in Charlotte are all a-titter this week.

It seems that their “corpse plant” is starting to bloom. In the botanical world, that’s quite an achievement and this is the second or third time that they’ve pulled it off.

I’m not impressed, though.

I’ve managed to reduce countless plants to corpses over the years. Between last winter’s icy blasts and the heat wave we’ve had this year so far, I’ve managed to turn three substantial shrubs into cadavers recently.

My corpses don’t usually bloom, though.

For those not in the know, the “corpse plant” at the UNC Charlotte’s McMillan Greenhouse is actually the Amorphophallus titanum, which comes from the ancient greek and roughly translates to “giant shapeless penis” and is the largest flower in the world.

You’d think that the florists would have picked up on this for Valentine’s Day.



Of course, the defining characteristic of this plant isn’t the two foot tall bloom, but rather the fact that it puts out an odor like a rotting corpse.

That’s got to be a romance killer for most people.

The most recent plant corpse produced at our house happened to be one of my favorite plants. Called a “patio peach”, it stood at the corner of the driveway, a four-foot tall beacon that sported shocking pink blooms for a few days every spring.

For some reason, about the time this heatwave blasted into town it started to wilt.

I gave it more water, and would have climbed on top and done CPR if I thought it would have helped, but sometimes the patient’s outcome is clear.

In less than a week, it was brown, leaves sadly hanging on and the little peaches (which we never ate, but which produced lots of offspring when they fell on the ground and sprouted) were all shriveled.

Yesterday it was dug up and cut into pieces, along with the hydrangea tree and the evergreen that didn’t make it through the winter. It was a sad event for me, not just because of the loss of the landscaping, but because I was emotionally attached to these trees, especially the little peach. It moved around the yard 3 or 4 times before it finally settled into it’s position as sentinel of the driveway, and the space looks a little empty without it there now.

They’ve been set out for mass burial with the yard waste guys that will come by on Thursday, but in the meantime they’ll lie in state as a sad reminder of what they were and could have continued to be.

After all, you can’t keep a rotting corpse around forever, even if it is a giant shapeless penis.

Heatwave

It’s hot.

That’s not a surprise, since yesterday was the first day of summer, but it’s a bit surprising that it’s gotten so hot here so quickly.

When I first moved to North Carolina from Oklahoma, I thought, “these people don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no hot.”

Coming from a place where triple digit temperatures are the norm in July and August, and temps in excess of 110 F are notable but not unusual I was under the impression that a place where 90 degrees was considered miserable was a little slice of heaven.

Little did I know. It’s about like the difference between an oven and a microwave. You’re cooked either way, it’s just that with one you start sweating and do something about it. With the other, you’re just instantly fried and explode on the inside.

In Oklahoma (and those other western states), people recognize the heat and deal with it. In my former life, it was perfectly acceptable to get up at 5:30 in the morning when it was just getting light out, crank up your lawn mower / weed wacker / leaf blower and hit the yard.

Your neighbors were doing the same, because by 10:00 in the morning it was waayyyy too hot to be out there and everyone had gone back into the AC to have something cool to drink and take a nap, emerging again sometime well after dark.

Premium parking spaces weren’t determined by proximity to the building so much as available shade, especially if you were going to be parked for several hours and have to come out to a hot car.

Most people have sunshades up in their windshields, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Anyone who’s ever been branded by a seatbelt buckle or inadvertently cauterized the hair on the back of their legs by sliding across a black leather seat understands this. It’s not an experience you choose to undergo again.

In North Carolina (and most of the southeastern coastal states) the thermometer stays deceptively low, rarely creeping into the mid-90’s. Break a hundred and the local news programs will talk about nothing else for days.

Otherwise, it's like they simply deny the heat exists.

The problem is that the air is too thick to breathe. When that 90 degrees is combined with 89% humidity, it’s almost like breathing underwater. Those of us born without gills have problems adapting, especially if we’re foolish enough to think that outside labor is not going to be a problem.

In weather like that, watering the plants on the patio is a big deal.

Of course, all the water goes right through you, coming out every available pore so that you go through more than a couple of sets of clean undies during a typical day, not to mention the fact that a starched shirt wilts within seconds.

When it’s that hot out, there’s just not enough air conditioning to keep the house cool. It can take the edge off, but you’re still going to stick to things. It makes even your brain go dead and nothing gets done very quickly or very well.

So I’ve suffered from a summer malaise lately. That’s as good a thing as any to blame it on, anyhow. The heat came early, has stayed on and there’s no end in sight.

It’s arrived early, given that summer just “officially” started yesterday, but we’ve now had ten consecutive days of temps over ninety with humidity close behind.

The good thing is that it’s not permanent, but seasonal, and it’ll go away soon. In the meantime, all we can do is drink lots of cool things, stay inside and try not to move around a lot.

A Shocking Perspective

A red letter day occurred last weekend in the history of the Miller House.

That’s the name of our house, incidentally. Built by Grady and Anna Miller in 1930, it was the 3rd largest building project in Hickory during that first year of the Great Depression.

It was bid before the crash of 1929, so the blueprints (which we have) show some things much more ornate than they are in real life. Financial reality meant that Mrs. Miller – who ran the second shift as foreman at their factory – acted as her own General Contractor.

She was, by all accounts, a tough old bird.

Looking to economize wherever possible, though, she cut a lot of things to the bone in the house.

Light fixtures when we moved here in August, 1999, were for the most part a single bare bulb in each room.

The notes to the subcontractors that Mrs. Miller left made it clear that she was not paying for any fluff. She would paint the house herself. Windows and doors were standardized so they could be bought in bulk.

More than one electrical outlet per room was simply wasteful.

A decision that, in retrospect, I wish she’d re-thought.

One of the things that has plagued us the most is that the old knob and tube wiring – ceramic pieces in the wall that hold cloth-wrapped wire – is still in place and functioning through most of the house. If we open a wall and get a chance, it gets replaced, but we’ve stayed pretty true to the origins of the house, the kitchen being the main exception.

There was one -- yes, ONE -- electrical outlet in the entire kitchen.

Remember how Lisa Douglas on Green Acres had to number her appliances with point values and then if she exceeded that the circuit blew? We had that originally. You could run the Coffee Pot and the Microwave, but not the Toaster and the Coffee Pot. Given that the breaker box was in the basement, it sometimes made cooking breakfast a real pain.

So our most recent project is to separate.

Our offices, that is. For the past few years, we’ve shared an office upstairs. He wanted space to himself, though, so he could spread out things and be a bit more comfortable as he returns to graduate school.

I kind of like the idea, too, especially since getting rid of superfluous furniture is in line with our 5-year plan to be ready to downsize someday.

As a result, the dining room table – all 14 feet, 3 pedestals and 8 chairs worth – and the 7 ½ foot long China Hutch that weighs at least a metric ton went off to a consignment store last week and I’ve got great new space downstairs in what was originally the den turned dining room.

We’ll eat in the kitchen or in front of the television in the future.

That new office, though, came at a price. Namely, it had to have wiring for computers, telephones and enough electricity to power the Starship Enterprise into the 25th Century.

I'm done with lots of projects at this point in my life, major plumbing and electrical revisions being top of the lists. It’s cheaper to hire someone than it is to pay for (a) blood pressure medicine or (b) emergency room visits, not to mention the emotional wear and tear that goes with them.

So we hired a nice crew of electrician types to make it happen.

Overall they did a good job, but as with every construction project it exceeded both time and budget – mostly because of my tendency to utter the phrase, “. . . .as long as we’re here . . ..” followed by a change order of some type.

In the end, there were a couple of things I still wanted to do and my urge to putter took over. Besides, I don’t need no stinkin’ ‘lectrician to replace a couple of light switches.

You don’t even have to turn off the breakers if you’re careful.

So we hit a milestone. The last (known) original ceramic and Bakelite switches was replaced with a new, modern dimmer switch.

The old one went into the trash. And before the angry emails and comments start from the historic preservation purists – get over it! They’re old technology. There’s nothing romantic about a light switch that sparks when you flip it. There’s lots of more modern options that are both safer and more efficient.

I threw it away and am glad I did it.

Now, there’s a nice white switch that glows a soft orange to tell you where it’s at in the dark.

And I only had to put it in and out three times before I got it right.

Aging Professionals

The first time I noted it was about a year and a half ago, when our dentist retired. His practice was bought by an aspiring young professional.

Young being the definitive characteristic here.

He looks roughly the same age as, umm, Richie Cunningham on Happy Days.

He even looks a little like Opie Taylor.

So it took just a little rethinking when he came into the room for the first time all rubber gloved and ready to put his hands into my mouth.

Did I really trust someone this young with my molars?

Turned out, it wasn’t a problem. He’s very nice and seems to be a good dentist, although he doesn’t understand any of the references to 1970’s television like the last guy did.

Especially when they’re spoken around a mouth full of gauze or while giving directions to “spit”.

After a couple of visits we’re settling into a routine. He calls me “Mr.” I call him “Doctor”, rather than “Skippy”, which is probably the best thing to do since he occasionally has sharp instruments poking around among some of the more tender spots in my head.

Besides, he had things on the wall that said he was authentic. He could pick at my teeth because the State of North Carolina said so.

I keep reminding myself that, eons ago when I first graduated, several people had enough confidence in me to let me handle their important business. I ought to return the favor now that I have a bit of grey in my hair.

Then last week I found out that a friend’s kid was now an appliance repairman. Having learned that GE appliances suck since we spent several thousand dollars for a kitchen full of them a few years ago, and without the desire to send the appliance dealer’s children through college I’d been looking for an option to get some diagnostics done to tell me whether what I had could be fixed or if we needed to start looking at a home equity line to buy new appliances.

The ice maker doesn’t dispense appropriately. The trash compactor was never fastened in right (more my fault than the manufacturers, I have to admit) and the dishwasher wasn’t doing well at all.

A friend suggested that her son was a Certified Appliance Repairman and would be happy to come over and look at them one evening.

I thought back on the fact that I’d known him since he was about 12. There were transgressions of which I was aware. Minor, but transgressions nonetheless.

But hey, I’m cheap. What’s the worst that could happen? I have to call the appliance repair company or buy new ones?

The young man showed up, mom in tow. She just came along for the visit, not to hand him tools or anything.

Maybe to occupy my “supervision” time. Moms are like that, you know. They’ll run interference for their kids if they think it’s necessary.

I was hovering on the edges and fine until the question came up—“Do you have a bigger hammer?”

Of course I have a bigger hammer. That’s a ridiculous question. I probably have 6 of them to choose from since every project is the opportunity to acquire another tool and I’ve had a lot of projects over the years.

Whether I can find it or not is an entirely other question, but if I can’t we can go buy another one. There’s a Lowe’s Hardware a quarter of a mile up the road.

Then I thought about the question. “DO I HAVE A BIGGER HAMMER?”

This implies that he's already used a smaller hammer on my relatively new appliances.

This kid – again, whom I know from his childhood – is asking if I have a hammer so that he can beat the hell out of the ice maker in my $4,000.00 refrigerator.

I admit a moment of panic. Then I thought, “I’ve fixed lots of things with a hammer. Besides, if I can’t fix them, I at least get the satisfaction of beating them up.”

Of course he can borrow my hammer, assuming we can find it.

Turns out, it was OK. He knew exactly what he was doing (including the specialized “appliance repairman vocabulary”), had all the appliances taken apart and put back together within an hour or so, didn’t have parts left over as I frequently do, and explained why the things weren’t working just right and what I could do to avoid problems in the future.

Apparently a tablespoon of dry dishwashing soap is enough. Filling both cups with liquid soap isn’t necessary and just gums things up eventually, which is why the dishes weren’t getting clean.

Who knew?

And I’m learning to appreciate the fact that gray hair isn’t necessary to be a professional, although having extra hammers may be.

Visualization

Today, after several days of writer’s block I had a topic dumped in my lap.

I didn’t really want it, but there it was. There are so many other things to talk about, but this one has suddenly come to the forefront.

I’m rethinking my position on the death penalty.

Not for capital cases. Not even for felonies. I think that it should be an option for certain seminar speakers who make ridiculous PowerPoint slides as a part of their presentation.

After public floggings.

Most professionals have to do some type of continuing education. In my case, it’s twelve hours a year. That’s not onerous; there’s usually some topic that I could stand to learn a bit more about.

The people who run those seminars have quite the racket going. You will end up driving to some (hopefully) nearby city and going to a conference room in a hotel where, along with between 3 and 200 of your professional colleagues some “expert” will expound upon the topic at hand.

For the pleasure of attending this, you will pay somewhere between $250 and $400 per day, coffee and sodas included but lunch is on your own.

In today’s case, the room was cooled to about 40 degrees and, having reached the point where comfort conquers vanity, I immediately returned to the truck for my “don’t freeze to death beside the road” sweatshirt advertising the Dirty Shame Station in Carnegie, Oklahoma.

Most of these events are pretty decent. They offer “nuts and bolts” information that you can use every day, along with lots of forms that mean you can copy their work and incorporate it into your own practice. There is a manual or handouts involved.

Today, however, we had a former preacher turned lawyer who was the first speaker. He was obviously competent in his topic, was a decent speaker, and knew his stuff.

From him, we learned absolutely nothing.

Why? Because, according to him, his wife and daughter decided that his PowerPoint slides were “too plain”.

They helped him out and spiced them up by putting a variety of backgrounds on EVERY SINGLE SLIDE. We started with flowers, then went to kittens and had an assortment of wildlife finishing up the set.

Unfortunately, they also had either white or grey print on the face of them.

The attendees in these classes tend to be well over 40. Reading glasses are almost universally in use.

Contrast is a big issue for us. Black on white, white on black is fine. The occasional line graphic or shot of a single color on a slide keeps it plenty interesting for us. Legibility is far more important than aesthetics.

In this case, the issue was Laws related to Elder Care.

No puppy or kitten in the world was going to make it interesting. Instead, all it did was mean that we had to turn out the lights in the room to even begin to see the material being offered on the screen.

Material which, incidentally, he didn’t bother to hand out. And now it was dark enough that we couldn’t see to take notes, either.

I like seminars. I like learning about things that keep my practice alive and vital.  I get to meet other professionals and chat with them, to exchange ideas and network.

Unfortunately, all I learned from this one is that you have to have an independent person screen your PowerPoint slides before you inflict them on some poor unsuspecting audience.

And bland isn’t always a bad thing.

Writer's Block

Without a doubt, it's the worst case of writer's block that I've had in years, possibly ever.

I'm rarely without words or an opinion on some topic.  Some days, I can hardly type fast enough to get it all out.

Not lately, though.

Nothing.  Haven't even gotten myself frothed into a fury over the latest stupidity of someone or some group.

For anyone inclined to push my buttons to get me to go off, this is an open invitation.  Suggestions would be welcome.

I just hope that general malaise isn't terminal!

Necessities of Life

There are some things that will start a fight in most any house.

Usually, it’s something that each person thinks the other is responsible for, and often it’s something that nobody is really “responsible” for, like mowing the yard or picking up the dry cleaning on time. It’s an unallocated chore that is a parasite associated with another errand, like getting a lottery ticket whenever you fill up the car with gas. It seldom rates a trip out on its own.

Last week, we found ourselves in that very position as we faced a crisis of biblical proportions.

We were out of toilet paper.

TP is one of those niceties of modern society that we expect, but it’s usually not a chore that gets assigned. Whomever is responsible for buying groceries or supplies gets it added to their list. Nobody thinks about it.

Until you run out. Then everyone thinks about it.

A lot.

Tissues are used in a pinch, but believe it or not, they’re a very different thing than toilet paper. The people who run the solid waste plant hate it when you flush Kleenex.

They hate it when you flush lots of things, but that’s a different topic altogether.

A friend's teenage son decided that paper towels were an acceptable alternative once. $20,000 worth of repairs due to a clogged and overflowing toilet later, he realized that this was not a good choice at all.

When the shortage is discovered, special trips are made to the store, hopefully while nobody is indisposed.

A trip like that could exceed the material available in the reading library.

Sometimes you learn that you’re not the only one with a toilet paper crisis, like we did the other day.

One of our friends sent a text message to the other.

“In the bathroom in Food Lion. No toilet paper or paper towels. Suggestions?”

As soon as the recipient quit laughing (and posted it for the world to read about on Facebook) he responded, “Use your underwear and then leave them behind. Leave the groceries behind, also. Please double wash your hands.”

A reasonable yet fairly innovative solution to a significant problem.

Paper currency, made of a fairly high quality linen, offered a different choice that apparently wasn’t considered.

If all I had was a $10 or $20 in my wallet, the choice between dead presidents and Fruit-of-the-Loom might be a bit easier. If it’s a $1 or a $5, it’s less of an economic decision and comfort factors in.

Depending on how raggy the underwear are (and at our house, some of the favorites are the ones that most resemble something with which to polish the piano) and the availability of a small denomination bill, I might have made a different choice if faced with that conundrum.

Usually, though, I’d be stuck because I seldom carry cash any more and a credit card is going to be fairly worthless in that situation, regardless of the limits on your account.

I guess a person who decided to go commando that day as they ran out for a gallon of milk with only plastic for money could be stuck there for quite a while.

There would undoubtedly be a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.

Especially to the poor kid who discovers the situation when he comes in to mop later that day.