Rants January 25, 2009
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1. My friend Sal is exactly like so many of my other friends: he can do things that I, and perhaps you, can’t do. He is a specialist in his field. Sal spends summers down the road a bit from me in Port Clyde, Maine and winters down the road a little bit from me on the Florida Keys. Oh, the one thing that you and Sal have in common is the stories you tell me, and this is one of them. Every January there is an antique car and tractor fair in Fort Meade, Florida. It is such a large fair that one rents a golf cart at the gate for $65 just to get around. One year Sal arrived at the fair too late to rent a golf cart. Alas! Every last one was gone. But when he walked onto the grounds he saw a small tractor for sale. Sal said, “I bought it for $400 and rode around on it all day.” I said, “But what did you do with it after the fair?” Sal said, “I sold it for $2600.”
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2. It doesn’t take much to make me laugh --- even if I haven’t had a cup of coffee. This morning I laughed when I deleted some of the emails in my junk email box. One said, “Looking for a Fling?” What is a fling nowadays? If I had been pressed to define a fling, I would have said that a fling is running off to some near-by town for two or three days. But not until today did I ever wonder if yesterday’s fling is called a flang or a flung. I just Googled “Looking for a Fling” for a current definition. According to Google, the affliction known as “Lonely Wives Looking for a Fling” is now pandemic.
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3. For years I’ve enjoyed collecting and sending along to you the silly things I encounter throughout the day. This one is an email from a Maine couple in which someone mentions that they’d like to hear from their Maine friends. It says, “I am forwarding this message from Ron and Lorina … as they wish to be remember to everyone. Joleen ----- Original Message ----- Subject: Hello Hope everyone made it back safe and sound. We were wondering how Marge is fairing? Please give her our address & email. Really would like to hear from our Maine friends. Simone & Ron …“ The wonderful thing about a letter like this is that it justifies the institution immortalized in Melville’s story about Bartleby --- the dead letter office.
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4. For a year I have toyed with the idea of making a television program that consists of nothing except an old man who sits in a chair and simply talks while tossing a baseball from hand to hand. Until this morning, I wondered who would watch such a show. I wish I’d asked you, because that person lives with you so you knew a long time ago. For hour upon endless hour, that person sits like a rag doll and watches men run with a ball under their arms, or men hit a round thing with a stick. When they are lucky, they watch girls who hop on sand while pounding a ball over a net. Sometimes they watch cars going round and round an oval track and won’t even take a bathroom break for fear they’ll miss the pile up of the century. So --- we have determined that it is not what it is on the screen that builds a faithful television audience --- anything that provides an excuse to sit and drink whatever is in the glass or can is a show capable of climbing off the charts. So, when the day comes that they stumble upon this show, and they will, will you please do me a favor and, as you fill up the dish with heavily salted nuts, suggest that it might be time to order a catheter?
+5. It must be true because I not only heard it on TV, I also read it on the Internet. Drivers who use cell phones in their cars kill 2600 people and injure 330,000 every year --- just in the United States. Cell phones are now right up there with those beloved dogs and cats in a driver’s lap when it comes to causing automobile accidents. You can believe it, because half the people you pass on the turnpike have a cell phone plastered to an ear. Scientists tell us that 20-year-old drivers have the same reaction time as 70-year-old drivers who don’t even know how to use a cell phone. My first car was a 32 Ford coupe convertible with mechanical brakes and because I probably weighed around 100 pounds when I was 15, for all practical purposes I had no brakes. If you don’t know what mechanical brakes are, you should look it up. It took everything you had, and even big, rugged men had trouble stopping a car that had mechanical brakes. Eddie Tyler might tell you that in 1951 I passed him on the right hand side. I was coming up on him too fast down there between Harrington Cove and the Clark Island Road, there was a car coming the other way, and because I couldn’t stop I went out in the dirt and the grass and passed him on the right with dust and rocks all a flying. At the time I’d probably been driving a car for only a few days so it was a valuable lesson --- ever since then I’ve driven as if I have no brakes. I’ve taught driver education so I also have the annoying habit of hanging in there with the speed limit and stopping at stop signs, so my friends all hate to ride with me. When they do, they call me nasty names. And you probably know that in Europe they have Yield signs so I don’t have to stop there if nobody is coming. In America they have stop signs in many, many places that would be better served by a Yield sign. Anyway, can you tell me why the experts talk about reaction time when they should be talking about thinking time? If you don’t tailgate, you don’t need that famous reaction time they talk about where you have to jam on your brakes to keep from ramming that car ahead. And if a deer jumps out of the dark, you don’t need reaction time because they say you hear the bang and never see the deer anyway. When all is said and done, I’m glad I don’t have a cell phone. It’s bad enough to have to drive a car when you’re over 70. I’ve been hit in the rear end at least 6 times just because I stop at stop signs.
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6. I am thinking about having my credit card paid by big brother. I pay off the balance every month but think my payment arrived one day late because of a holiday and my negligence. There is, I think, a $30 or so fee for this. You might have many of your monthly payments automatically deducted from your checking account so this can’t happen. I haven’t done it yet, because I don’t like the idea of someone being able to dip in there and take what they want. You might have seen some months, when there might not have been anything in there to take, when you had to very judiciously juggle things around. Businessmen would not have that problem. They haven’t seen a bill in years because their office staff takes care of things like that. I think they ran electricity down our road around 1923 and I’m old enough to remember hearing that my neighbor Alex went into a rage when CMP sent him a bill. He said that he’d always paid cash for everything, no one had ever sent him a bill in his entire life and he’d have the power shut off if he were going to get bills. You might be old enough to understand that most any change is upsetting.
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7. You will recall I mentioned a while back about seeing a program that promised to tell me how to tell a real Rolex watch from a counterfeit Rolex watch. I was so busy taking notes, so I could tell you about it, that I didn’t see how the program ended. Radio friend Bill Miller sends this: “Dear Humble, Once, while working for U -Haul a few years back, I stumbled upon a Rolex laying in the under-seat portion of a truck. No one claimed it, and I had, a Rolex Presidential watch. This watch had diamonds on the quarter hour and a gold bezel...Im not sure what that would get me in life but wow...I had a Rolex. For years I wore that watch very proudly as a status symbol..showing I was a winner in life..a ROLEX. Some years later I was working as a paramedic on the beach in florida and had to extricate a young man who had imprudently dove into the water wearing speedos ,showing off to women who wanted gucci flannel pajamas, and had broken his neck. As I reached below the backboard in 4 feet of water I felt that watch unclip and fall off my wrist...gone...forever. That was a life lesson I couldnt have paid enough for. I wear a Timex now. Bill” My question to you is the obvious one: Why would anyone wear a watch that came with a cheap strap?
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8. What you can learn when you listen to the radio. Of course it has to be a certain kind of radio and I’ve been getting my radio off a place called PRX on the Internet. This week I learned that Hawaii has about the highest electric bills of any state. Right up there with New York, Vermont and Maine. But on this radio program I heard that the University of Hawaii is going broke trying to run their air conditioners. How about that? Haven’t you always heard that the temperature in Hawaii is perfect? Never hot, never cold. And now we hear they can’t afford to run their air conditioners. I guess this punches a hole in that bit of folklore. Another bit of folklore, which approaches an outright lie, is calling Florida the Sunshine State. And if you have never heard of Ibsen or his play called “An Enemy of the People” I suggest you Google “An Enemy of the People” right now and become familiar with it. --- Because there are days when they shut down highways in Florida, The Sunshine State, because you can’t see the road through the smoke from wildfires. Even worse are the controlled fires caused by burning the cane fields and the burning forests that are being swept away by endless housing developments. On an average day, you might not see that smoke or even be aware of it, but the soot builds up on your car and in your lungs. Some days the air is so bad in parts of The Sunshine State that you can’t get enough air in your lungs to ride a bicycle. You find that your lungs make a little whistling sound when you breathe. People who live in many parts of Florida take this constant smoke and burning eyes for granted and should you mention smoke, they’ll give you a funny look and say, “What smoke?” Don’t expect to see anything about Florida’s rotten air quality on television or in the newspapers. It would be bad for the tourist business. Yes, and please do look up Ibsen’s play, An Enemy of the People.
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9. When I called my wicked step mother she said that one of our neighbors had fallen on the floor and perished. She stayed right there and languished because they didn’t find her for a day or so. She had one of those magic buttons to wear around her neck, I think they call them Lifelines, but she didn’t bother to put hers on that day. So when she dropped, she was helpless. You know, there are days when you can go out in the woods and scramble to the top of a 60 foot spruce tree and I remember those days well. But I told the wicked one that I knew I was at the age where it would be foolish to go out in the woods unless I told someone where I was going. She said that she was at the age where it would be foolish to go out in the woods.
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10. Here’s another junk email that got my attention. If you are a social commentator, you should be grateful for junk email because you will never run out of topics. This one says: “Your wife need your attention? Solve all your problems with IT.” I don’t know why they need to advertise. You and I have friends who no sooner left for work, when IT came in the back door.
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11. (prx 090120) On the morning of the presidential inauguration I looked at the television and saw three million people jostling each other, elbow to elbow in that space between the Washington Monument and the Capitol Steps. I couldn’t help but think what a great day it was in Washington for pickpockets.
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12. Have you ever seen the Eifel Tower in Paris? Have you ever seen The Brandenburg Gate in Germany? This is redundant. Where else would you find the Eifel Tower or The Brandenburg Gate? I was going to say that for over 30 years, I have boasted and bragged that I have never talked down to you. I was going to say that when I mentioned An Enemy of the People or Bartleby, I took it for granted that you were familiar with the works of Ibsen or Melville, so I would never day, “Ibsen’s, An Enemy of the People.” I was going to say that President Obama was talking down to you by pointing out to you and me in his inaugural address that his words, “the time has come to set aside childish things,” came from the scripture. But, much to my surprise, in looking over my notes, I see that I have recently been as guilty as the President of the United States. Is there not a lesson to be learned here? You hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye.” That’s Scripture, Matthew 7, 3.
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You are invited to stop by for supper anytime.
Robert Karl Skoglund
260 Hamlin Drive
Fort Myers, FL 33905
207-226-7442
humble@humblefarmer.com
Hear humble's radio show on his web page
http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/ThisWeek.html
See and hear humble tell stories on his web page:
http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/
Hear dozens of humble's rants and even his radio show on PRX:
http://www.prx.org/Enjoy humble's music/humor program on Maine cable television stations:http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/TvTowns.html
Did you know that Robert Skoglund, The humble Farmer, stands on stages and tells funny stories?Ask humble to entertain you and your friends with dry stories like these:http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/PortlandA.html
You can visit humble and Marsha at their Bed & Breakfast on the coast of Maine.
http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/BaB.html
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