Prohibition

The United States of America is a great country full of wonderful people. Sure, we have our share of assholes, but what country doesn't? I could spend a lot of time talking about all our good qualities, but that would appear immodest. If there was one thing my parents taught me, it was not to be a show off or a braggart. So rather than go against my raising, I am gonna talk about one of our lesser qualities. As a nation, we are a bunch of hard headed, slow learners.

Somewhere back in the late 1800's to early 1900's, a bunch of folks figured out that there were some problems with alcohol. Ben Franklin is credited with saying that God must have loved mankind because he gave us beer, but some folks didn't see it that way. As a person of Scots Irish decent, I can tell you first hand that there are indeed some problems with alcohol consumption, but taken in moderation, it is not bad and in fact may be beneficial. Those folks I mentioned earlier did not see it that way. They saw alcohol as a great evil that had to be stamped out. They formed  a temperance movement and whined and moaned and marched and lobbied until , in 1920, they got the 18th amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed. That amendment banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol. That brought in what is known as the era of alcohol prohibition.

This might have worked if the laws of men were as binding as the laws of nature, but they are not. The laws of men are more like suggestions than they are actual laws. They only work if the majority of the people respect and honor them. Unfortunately for the prohibitionist, the majority of folks did not respect prohibition and set about finding ways around it. While alcohol prohibition was not successful in stopping alcohol consumption, it was successful in creating a black market. The black market provided an opportunity to make lots of money and competition for that money fostered increased violence. This sad state of affairs went on unchecked until 1933 when the 21st amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed which repealed the 18th amendment. Alcohol was once again legal, but you can never put the toothpaste back in the tube. Organized crime had 13 years to make money and grow strong. A whole generation had come of age learning to use alcohol illegally instead of responsibly. I don't have the numbers to prove it but I have read that alcoholism, drunkenness and alcohol abuse were worse problems during prohibition than they had been before it and that after prohibition ended, they never quite returned to their pre-prohibition levels. There should be a lesson in there somewhere.

Fast forward to the 1970s. Richard Nixon didn't fool around with an amendment to the constitution, he just declared a war on drugs and away we went. It is now 40 plus years later and we have as bad a drug problem in this country as we did prior to 1970 and we have spent 1.5 trillon dollars fighting the war on drugs. Back in the 1960s when I was a teenager in rural Alabama, the biggest drug problem we had was the occasional drunk driver. Now, 40 years into the war on drugs, not a week goes by that the local paper in the county where I grew up doesn't have an article about the county sheriff busting up a meth lab. Heroin, cocaine, marijuana, speed, crack, meth, and dozens of other drugs are prohibited, but drug use appears to be as high as it was before the war on drugs started. Drug dealers kill each other in territorial disputes. The land on either side of the border between the United States and Mexico has become about as safe as the no mans land between the armies in World War I. The illegal drug trade is a multi billion dollar business. In fact, some folks estimate that it is the single thing keeping the US economy from sinking. If the goal is violence and illegal profits then drug prohibition is a resounding success, but if it really is intended to make the USA and its citizens safer, then it is an absolute failure. Again, there should be a lesson in there somewhere.

Today, in light of the tragic murder of 26 innocent teachers and students in an elementary school in Newtown, CO. there are a lot of people crying out for more gun control laws, taking certain types of guns away from citizens and there are even those who want a total prohibition of guns. To those who call for the total prohibition of guns I can only say, have you been paying attention? Do you realize what you are asking for? The nearly certain consequence of such a law would be a black market in weapons followed closely by increased crime and violence worse than anything we have seen to date.

To the others that think that some kind of new law, some kind of new gun control is going to protect us from the misfits, malcontents and mental defectives of society, I can offer only one illustrative story. If you have ever seen the Movie, To Kill a Mockingbird, you certainly remember the scene where the mad dog was coming down the street toward Atticus Finches house. For those that don't remember it, briefly, the dog is some distance away from the house but staggering in that general direction. Sheriff Hech Tate knows that Atticus is a crack shot and is much more capable of making a shot at the distance the dog is located. Although Atticus is not a man of violence, the sheriff prevails upon him to take his rifle and shoot the mad dog. They do not stand there talking about how all dogs should be vaccinated for rabies, or that all dogs should be on a leash, or that people ought to have to apply for a license before owing a dog. They don't go up and down the street in front of Atticus' house putting up "mad dog free zone" signs. Tate hands Atticus the rifle and Atticus drops the dog in his tracks. 

Friends, no law is gonna keep guns out of the hands of criminals and human mad dogs. If they want to bad enough, they will find a way to obtain a gun.  When those people come to prey on your family, your children, your love ones and your neighbors, the only way to prevent a tragedy is to have some one like Atticus Finch, some one who, although their disposition is such that they normally would not hurt a fly, is trained and capable of dropping a mad dog with one shot and who has a firearm available for them to take that all important shot. 

To my fellow Americans, learn from the past or re-live it, it is your choice.

Fresh Ham

A week or so ago, I saw a Youtube video by Jim Foreman  showing how to make posole. To borrow a term from Jerry Clower, it flung a craving on me. All this past week I had intended to go by the grocery store and pick up the items that I needed, but it did not work out until yesterday. For those of you who don't know, posole is a soup that is made with pork and hominey. Jim made his with some pork stew meat. When I checked at the local FoodDepot, I could not find any meat that I felt was suitable. I came back by Publix and had just about given up on finding what I wanted there as well until I spotted a fresh pork ham butt. It was about 3 1/2 pounds which was at least  2 1/2 pounds more than I needed, but I knew that a good portion of that was inedible bone and fat and it was only $5 including tax so I got it.

When I got home I sliced off about a pound of the fresh ham and set about to make the posole. But what to do with the remainder? I remembered back when I was little the Kelley side of my family often boiled a fresh ham for Christmas. They had a big cast iron wash pot that sat in the backyard. They would clean it out, build a fire around it and drop in a fresh ham. I don't have a wash pot, but I figured that a pressure cooker might serve the purpose. So, I washed what was left of the ham, sprinkled it with salt and pepper and put it on in the pressure cooker with 4 cups of water for 55 minutes. It got done long before the posole and turned out real well. There is nothing else quite like boiled fresh ham on white bread with Louisiana hot sauce. Although I do have to admit that the posole was also real good for supper.

The Endemic Human Need For Complexity

I just got through reading an article about the problems the federal government faces setting up insurance exchanges called for in the Affordable Health Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare. I know a lot of you were counting on the other guy being elected and all that going away, but believe me, even if he had been, we would have still had some kind of additional health care bureaucracy installed on top of the mess we currently have. Once something like that gets on the table and gets voted into law by the Congress, it never goes away. In fact, when I think about it, in recent history aka. my life time, I can recall very few complications that have ever been rolled back.

I've often wondered why that was the case. Why do things just get more and more complicated. The only viable answer that I have been able to come up with is that, that is the way we want it to be.  I believe that there is an underlying need for complexity in the human psyche. Somewhere deep in most humans, there is a fundamental need to make things increasingly complicated. Layers upon layers of rules, regulations, procedures and rituals are constantly being added to all aspects of our life. The end result is that man made systems continue to become increasingly complex to the point to where they are completely unworkable. They collapse and then the whole process starts over again. Even the casual student of history can observe this happening repeatedly throughout the years.

Is this some master plan for humanity laid in by our creator? Is it a relic of some evolutionary misstep? I don't know. I've searched on the internet to see if someone has figured this out and has written an explanation, but so far I have been unable to find an answer. If you think you know or have a link to someone that does, let me know. If I am looking at this all wrong, in other words if I have totally misunderstood this process, you can explain that to me as well.

Wisdom from a 4 year old

A wise little girl.

The 800 Pound Gorilla In The Room

Did you ever come home to find your front door kicked in? You go inside and some person or persons have rummaged through your stuff. That $2 bill that your daddy gave you when you were five years old is gone. All your guns and silver coins are missing as is the spread off your bed. How did it make you feel? What about this, did you ever go to the graveyard to visit your parents grave and find that someone had desecrated their grave site? How would that make you feel?

Now imagine that you pick up a newspaper a few weeks later and there is an classified ad in there where the people that committed the robbery or the desecration are taunting you. Would you be pissed off? Upset?

Now imagine one more thing, you call the police, they go to the paper, track down the person or persons that ran the ads, find enough evidence that they committed the crimes and arrest them. You would expect that the perps would be brought to justice, but maybe not. Maybe they get a shifty lawyer and then another shifty lawyer and get continuance after continuance and finally they get themselves committed for psychological evaluation. Would that be a distraction to you? Would it eat at you? Would it affect your ability to concentrate on the task at hand? Think about it.

War Eagle!

Steel Skillet

This year I went on the World's Longest Yard Sale. That should come as no surprise to anyone since I have been doing that faithfully since my first trip in 1995. It used to be that I went for all four days and made the trip all the way to Covington KY, but that was back when I was working and could take vacation. Now that I have retired, it has been much more difficult to be able to be gone for four days in a row. I know that sounds counter intuitive but it just seems to work out that way.

Anyway this year I made it for the first day and did the section from Gadsden to Cloudland GA. Over the years I have become much more selective in what I buy. Mostly that stems from the fact that I already have at least  two of almost every thing I need or want. Maybe I should change the name of this place to Pi's Ark. One thing that I did not have was a steel skillet. I have several cast iron skillets and one that I use regularly but no steel skillet. When I lived at home, mama and daddy had a steel skillet. Seems to me that there was a story behind it, like the Chronicle knife, but I can't remember it. I remember using that skillet. Carbon steel skillets cook differently. They heat up faster. They really match my cooking style.

Every once in awhile at a flea market or yard sale I will run across a carbon steel skillet but they are typically rusted beyond usefulness. I could buy one off the internet for $30 to $40 but they are made differently and besides, what is the fun in that.

Back to the yard sale. On Thursday morning I got up early and me and Dixie loaded into the little Nissan pickup and headed toward Tabor Rd. in Gadsden. Linda was under the weather and did not feel like going. On the way, Dixie and I drove through the drive-thru at the Springville McDonalds and got breakfast and before we knew it, there we were at the start of the WLYS. The last few years, the WLYS has been off a bit, especially right in Gadsden. Don't misunderstand. It is still a big thing and well worth the trip if you are into yard sales, but now there is walking room and driving room and not as many yard's have sales. We proceeded on up the route, stopping at places where I had had luck before, passing places that never have anything worthwhile and looking longingly at yards and fields that once were busy with sales but now stand vacant. Also along the way we picked up the occasional new location that in the past had not had a sale. We kept that up until we got to Fort Payne around lunch. I was in the mood for a hamburger so we departed the yard sale route and headed down into Fort Payne to the Krystal. We went through the drive-thru and headed back up the mountain eating our lunch (Dixie likes Krystals too). We had finished the Krystals by the time we got back to the top of the mountain and were ready for some more yard saleing.

One of the places that I like to stop, if I can find a parking place is in the north edge of Fort Payne. They have a fenced in front yard and apparently rent spaces to other people. Lots of shade trees so it is always nice or at least not as hot as it is out in the direct sun. This year I was lucky as there was a parking place near the gate. I stopped and left the little truck running with the a/c for Dixie and walked down in to the yard. There are always a lot of interesting things at this location and this year was no exception. As I made my way to the back, looking over all the treasures, I noticed a lady seated at a small table off to the right. She was located at the far right of the drive way and the spaces next to her were vacant. I started for a moment to turn back to the left and finish looking at the other tables but something drew me to that table. As I walked up I could see nothing of interest on the table and then I looked on the ground in front of the table and there it was, a little 5 1/2 inch National steel skillet. It was really rusty and I first figured it was rusted out, but when I picked it up and tapped it, it seemed solid. I held it up to the light to make sure there was not some unseen hole. None, it was fine. I asked the lady how much and she said $6.00. I reached in my pocket and got the money and gave it to her. I now had a steel skillet.

At 5 1/2 inches, it is a bit smaller than the one that my parents had but it is fine for me. I have cleaned it up and begun to re-season it. In a few days it will be cooking bacon and eggs, okra and potatoes and who knows, I might even pan fry a salmon filet or a skillet steak. Life is good.

Tomato Gravy at Maxwell Field

It is strange how as you get older, memories from long ago just seem to pop into your head. I know it is an accepted characteristic of old people that they are always talking about something that happened years ago. If you think about it, it makes sense that they would talk about old things, after all, they are old, they have been around and they have amassed a train load of memories. I say they instead of we cause I still don't feel old, but I do meet some if not most of the criteria.

This morning I was sitting here at my computer reading emails and checking out some links when something, I don't know what, caused me to remember an incident that happened many years ago. It had to be around 1964 because I was still in high school. It was in the summer and I had attended Boy's State at Troy State College (now Troy University) in Troy, AL. I don't remember a lot about that experience. I do recall that Troy had a beautiful campus and that we were there to learn how the government worked (that was back before I learned that the government doesn't work).

Anyway, along toward the end of the session we took a trip up to Montgomery to visit the legislature. All that was relatively uneventful. What I do remember is that we ate lunch at a cafeteria on Maxwell AFB. Why, I don't know, but that is where they fed us. I don't recall what all they had on the menu but I do remember that one of the vegetables was mashed potatoes served with tomato gravy. There were a lot of us and I was near the back of the line. When I reached the servers, they had run out of tomato gravy. That was nearly 50 years ago but I can still think back and easily summon up the disappointment I felt. That was the first time my government let me down and it would not be the last, but just like the break up with your first love, it is something that will never be forgotten.

Over the years I have eaten at a good many restaurants that served tomato gravy and I never fail to order it. I have even learned to cook it myself. If I am making gravy and I have fresh or canned tomatoes in the house I am a threat to make it tomato gravy. Funny how such a little thing can make such a lasting impression on you, but I do come from a very food oriented family.

Chimney Swifts

Back in the mid 1980's, I built, or had built, a log house on my lot in Pelham. On the south end of the house, in the den / living room I got a local man who did such things to build  a brick fireplace. My dad did not think much of having a fireplace installed. He said it just looked like a waste of money for something I would never use. I told him I didn't think a log house would look right without a fireplace. He didn't think much of that either.

Within a year or two after the house was built, chimney swifts started nesting in the chimney each spring. I would not have minded so much, but when the little birds hatched out they began to raise hell to be feed and that went on for several weeks. At odd times, you would hear the flutter of wings as one of the parent birds entered the chimney and then all manner of cheeping and chirping. It got to be a bit unnerving at times. After one or two seasons, I had had enough. I was up on the roof anyway checking something so I cut a piece of hardware cloth a bit bigger than the chimney tile opening, folded the edges back and pushed it down into the chimney. That put a stop to the chimney swifts for a long time. Then a few years ago, I was out in the yard doing something and found the piece of hardware cloth laying next to the base of the chimney. I am not sure what happened to extract it from the chimney, but I think it might have been about the time I had my first raccoon infestation in the attic. Those little buggers will tear up or tear into anything. Maybe they were exploring the chimney as a possible entrance to the house.

The next year or maybe the one after that, the chimney swifts returned. That has been 4 or 5 years ago and every year they have been back and raised a family and one year I think they may have even raised two families. Every year I say, when those sobs get out of there, I am gonna climb up on that roof and put hardware cloth back in that chimney, but then when they leave everything is quiet and I look up at that steep roof and think maybe climbing up there is really not such a good idea.

I never have gotten around to re-installing the hardware cloth so this year when spring rolled around, I was prepared for the fluttering of wings followed in a few days by the chirping and cheeping. Once I even thought I heard some wings flapping, can't be sure, but that was the only time and the chirping and cheeping never started. I don't know what happened, but for some reason it appears that the chimney swifts did not build in my chimney this year.

You know it is sort of strange, but in an odd way,  I kind of miss them.

My Peach Tree Bears Fruit

Back in the mid to late 90's, I decided it would be a good thing to plant a mini orchard in the front of my house. I did some reading, a bit of measuring and figured out what would fit in. I opted for dwarf and semi-dwarf plants and ordered a couple of varieties of apples, a peach, a 5 in 1 pear tree, and a few blueberries from some mail order nurseries and set them out.

I live very near the boundary of the Oak Mountain State Park and my property might as well be declared a zoo. There are raccoons, possums, foxes, coyotes, squirrels, rabbits, armadillos, and deer constantly tracking through my yard. All of the aforementioned animals were no problem to my little orchard except for the deer. Deer are browsers. If you have ever watched them eat, they walk along and get a bite of this and a bite of that. They spend as much time eating leaves off trees as they do nibbling grass. They seemed to relish my orchard. It was their own little smorgasbord. The apple trees didn't make it but about two years before they died. The 5 in 1 pear did great until it got up about 8 feet tall, then I came home from work one day and the deer had pulled it down from the top and broke it off at one of the main grafts. It has come back out forked, one side has pears and the other side, which I suppose sprang up from the root stock, has what looks like big chinaberries. Due to neglect and birds, the blueberries never have done much. That leaves the sad little peach tree.

It sits up closest to my drive. For as long as I can remember, it has been between 3 and 5 feet tall. Everytime it would put on new leaves, the deer would come through and strip it. They not only ate the leaves but also the young shoots. In the last couple of years, something has happened. For reasons unknown to me the deer have left the little peach tree alone. I suppose that all those years it was being pruned from the top allowed it to develop a big root system because it has really taken off. This year it is up around 10 feet tall. A week or so ago I went out to get in the truck and I noticed that it had some small peaches on it. They were about one and a half inches, which is kinda small for peaches. One of them was actually starting to turn a reddish hue. I was in a hurry and did not take the time to examine them closely. Yesterday I was outside getting ready to go somewhere and Dixie had walked over to the edge of the yard. I walked down to get her to come back and when I got up close to the peach tree I noticed that the reddish hue was now a purple hue. I walked over, felt of the one that I could reach and it did not have any fuzz. It is not a peach at all, but a plum. I've waited 15 years on my peach tree and all the time it was a plum tree.

Now some folks might be really pissed off to wait 15 years on peaches and get plums but I am sort of a glass half full kind of guy and am just happy to have the plums. A storm did come through last night and knocked 3 of the 5 plums off but I retrieved them this morning and set them on the counter in the kitchen to finish ripening. Life is good.

The Georgia Game Park

Saturday, Dixie and I got up early and drove up to Whitney Junction and followed Hwy 11 up to Chattanooga. Last Thursday through Sunday was the Antique Alley Yard Sale that runs from Meridian MS to Bristol VA along Hwy 11. Saturday was the day we took in our portion of that sale. It is not as big of an event  as the World's Longest Yard Sale in August, but I like it and the weather in usually a bit cooler.

Every time I go this route and get up near Rising Fawn GA I pass the little building that was once the site of the Georgia Game Park. Many people remember the Georgia Game Park from its existence out at exit 1 on I-59 but I remember when it was on Hwy 11. Several times in the past, I have searched for Georgia Game Park on the internet but this year I was successful in finding a site that told its story.

Back in the 1960's my family made a trip to Tennessee, I think we started out in Nashville and ended up in Chattanooga. I seem to recall a visit to The Hermitage near Nashville and maybe Rock City and Ruby Falls in Chattanooga. I don't remember much else about that trip but I do remember that we came back down Hwy 11 coming home and passed by the Georgia Game Park. We did not stop, but for some reason it stuck in my mind. After reading the article about it, I kind of wish we had stopped. I would have liked to have tried some of that cherry cider.

Food

I was talking to my sister yesterday on the phone. She was telling me about a video that she and my brother-in-law had watched called "Forks over Knives." She was talking about, when we were growing up, what we ate when we were down at my maternal grand parents house. They always had two big gardens and there was always an abundance of fresh vegetables during the growing season and home canned vegetables the rest of the year.

After we got off the phone, I started thinking about how much food has changed in just the last 60 years. By the time I was born, supermarkets were already in place and my grandparents made regular trips to the A&P in Alexander City, but they did not buy prepared foods. In fact the main thing that I remember them buying was Eight O'clock Coffee. I am sure they were getting sugar, flour, corn meal, baking soda and things like that as well, but the bulk of their food was raised at their home down in Pentonville.

They always had a pig or two and 6 or 7 cows with 2 or 3 of them being milked daily. I recall being down there for numerous hog killings and at least once when a steer was butchered. As my sister pointed out in our conversation, they did not eat that much meat with lunch and dinner. That was at a time when chicken was still a Sunday dinner treat. They did have a lot of meat when a steer or hog was killed but that was before they got a freezer so the fresh beef was shared with other families in the community and most of the pork ended up in the smoke house and lasted through to the next year. They drank the sweet milk raw, unpasteurized and churned their own butter which resulted in a good bit of butter milk. I never have been a big fan of milk, although I drank my share of butter milk growing up.

They also ate a fair amount of fish and some wild game.  My grand dad loved to fish and if there was no farm work to do, he was fishing. Most of the game was squirrel. I know that occasionally they ate possum and probably rabbit, but deer were scarce in Coosa County back then and no one I knew hunted deer or turkey. Personally, I was involved in numerous fishing trips and quite a few squirrel hunts and I have cleaned my share of fish and squirrels as well.

Speaking of dressing animals and fish reminds me of something that happened when I was still fairly young. I was school age I am certain but I don't think my sister who is four years younger than me had started school yet. We lived on US 231 / AL 21 just south of Rockford. The road was relatively flat for a 1/4 mile or so north of our house, but right in front there was a slight rise and then a dip. Cars coming from the north could not see what was in that dip and that dip was where every animal in the vicinity choose to cross the road. I have drug a dump truck load of cats and dogs, one at a time of course, out of that road during my life. We took them out behind our barn an buried them. On this particular occasion, it was not a cat or dog but a little bantam hen that picked the wrong time to cross the road in front of a car. She could not get out of the way so the car obligingly knocked her out of the way, killing her in the process. We witnessed the accident and run and told mama. Mama went down to the edge of the road and retrieved the hen which while quite dead was not mangled. Unlike the cats and dogs, the little hen got a more useful ending. Mama cleaned her, boiled her and used her to make chicken and dressing. Little bantam hens are not even as big as the Cornish game hens that you see in the grocery stores now, but as I remember it, she made a nice pan of chicken and dressing.

I know I could still dress a squirrel and clean a fish and I suspect I could handle gutting a chicken and picking it clean of feathers, but most of us have become so accustom to buying our meats wrapped in plastic on styrofoam trays that the thought never crosses our mind. I wonder in the next 60 years if food will have changed as much as it has in the past 60.

The Old Blogger Interface

I am writing this post using the old blogger interface. The last couple of post that I have done have been with the new blogger interface. I used the new interface because when I logged in that was what came up. I finally took the time to figure out how to move back to the old interface. When I did, I was confronted with a note that said the old interface would disappear within the next month. I can tell you that I won't be pleased when that happens but such is life. This may be my last post using the old interface so I will enjoy it while I can.

Primary Elections

People in Alabama don't understand primary elections. It is because we have always been a one party state. Not the same party mind you but a one party state nonetheless. Back when I was growing up, everybody was a democrat. My maternal grandparents said the word republican with the same facial expression and respect that I use when I say dog crap. Back then, the democratic primary, which was held in May or June, was the election. Whoever won that won the general election in November 100% of the time. Therefore everybody voted in the democratic primary. In fact I am not sure that the republicans even bothered to have a primary. I think it was in the late 70's when Ronald Reagan came along that everything changed. Suddenly Alabama was a republican state. In the county where I currently live, very few candidates even bother running on the democratic ticket. The republicans win all of the local offices in the November election.

Back when I worked, everytime there was an election, folks wore those little stickers that said "I voted, Did You?". When it was the primaries, invariably some ass would come up and ask me where was my sticker, had I not voted, was I gonna vote after work? I always tried to explain to them that the primaries are for the parties to nominate their candidates for the general election and that since I was neither a democrat or a republican, it was not appropriate for me to vote in the primaries. Almost always they looked at me glassy eyed for a few seconds and then started lecturing me on how voting in a democracy is a responsibility. I could have pointed out that we don't live in a democracy but a democratic republic instead, but it would have done no good.

My father always voted in every election, or at least he did until Alabama became a two party state. The first time he went to vote in a primary and they asked him democrat or republican he told them he was neither one. I was not there but sources close to the scene told me that the polling person told him that he would HAVE to declare one or the other. To which he is reported to have replied "I don't have to do a goddamn thing but die" and he turned and walked out. I don't know if he ever voted in another primary election, could have, could have not, but I do know he missed that one.

Looking back on it I sometimes wish I had used his approach when folks challenged me about voting. Since I was hired out, it would have of course been untrue as there were lots of things I HAD to do, but I suspect it would have ended a lot of tedious conversations a whole lot quicker.

Motor Oil

A couple of days ago I filled out an online survey about motor oil. Completing that survey got me to thinking. Back when I was growing up I spent most of my free time at Miller's Garage. There were no gas pumps or grease rack at Miller's Garage, but we used a good bit of motor oil. A great deal of it was put into repaired vehicles or vehicles that came in and needed a quart added. Of course we did some oil changes as well, particularly for customers who came in to have some repair made and wanted their oil changed while the vehicle was in the shop. The oil of choice at Miller's Garage was RPM. I think it was a Standard Oil product. My daddy swore by it. He said it left the inside of engines nearly clean enough to eat off of. Naturally when I got my first vehicle I started using RPM. Some where during the years, RPM disappeared. I think it was replaced by some similiar Chevron branded product. I changed vehicles and although I had been raised to use the same type of oil in a vehicle and not be swapping brands, I was not too excited about one brand versus another. Over the years I've used Quaker State, Valvoline, Pennzoil and lord knows how many others.

Then in the mid 1990's I bought a used Astro van from my friend Wendell Pate. He and his family had bought it new and had named it "ole blue." It was like a family member and I think they almost cried when they sold it to me. One of the things that Wendell told me was that it had always had Mobil One synthetic oil in it. Now synthetic oil was a bit more pricey than what I was used to running, but that little voice in the back of my head told me to not be changing brands in midstream, so I opted to continue to use Mobil One synthetic in ole blue. The van had a lot of miles on it but the engine always purred like a kitten and never used any oil. I was impressed. So much so that when, in 1999, I bought a new Nissan Frontier pickup, I started using Mobil One synthetic in it. That was 13 year and 218,000 miles ago and the little Nissan still runs smooth and does not use any oil between changes. Who knows, I might have used reclaimed motor oil or re-refined oil as they called it at Miller's Garage and the Nissan might have done just as well but in the back of my mind that little voice keeps telling me use good oil and keep it changed and you won't be sorry. Sometimes I hear that same voice saying that the inside of that Nissan engine is nearly clean enough to eat off of.

Mi Español

As I reported back in December of last year I have renewed my efforts to learn Spanish. It is going slow, but that is mostly by design. I have set the flash cards that I am using to only provide 3 new words or phrases per day. Some of them I already know, most I learn within a half dozen tries and some are hard as hell. Many verbs still give me fits. This morning I was looking at something on the net and it reminded me of the scene in Casablanca with Carl the waiter and the old German couple who are immigrating to America. I am sure you know the one I am talking about. Anyway, it dawned on me that if and when I ever get in a conversation with someone that is speaking Spanish, I will probably sound to them like that old couple sounds to us.

Long or Happy but not both.

The other day I was reading an article and the guy writing it was commenting on a study he had just read. Seems the study concluded that when you eat red meat you increase your chance of death by 15 percent. Now his point was that your chance of death is already 100 percent so how can you increase it? Good question.

Which brings me to something I saw yesterday. I was perusing the tweets in my timeline on twitter and I came across one that linked to an article about eating red meat. According to the article, eating red meat makes you happy. Someone, somewhere, did a study that found that if you eat red meat you have less depression and if depressed people eat red meat they get happier. About a dozen or so tweets later a lady had linked to an article that said eating red meat shortens your life span. OK, don't know that either of these studies is valid, but assuming they both are then you have a choice, eat red meat, be happy, die sooner or don't eat red meat, live longer, be miserable.

The whole thing made me recall reading a long time ago where someone did a study and found that married men live longer, to which some comedian commented, not really, it just seems that way :>)

Coaching Searches

Well the bowl season will soon be over. Both Auburn and Alabama have coordinator openings and I am sure that they are already beating the bushes looking for the best replacement candidates. One place they may not be looking but probably should be is at the folks who comment on al.com. These people know more about college football than anyone else. They are experts on offense, defense, recruiting, play calling. Everything. If you don't believe it try reading their comments. In fact if coach Chizik and coach Saban really want to do spectacular things, they should probably hire a couple of the al.com commenters and make them Chief Operation Coach (you know kind of like the CEO and COO in companies). The head coach could be like the CEO of a big company and just step aside and let the COC (Chief Operation Coach) run everything. After all, they know everything there is to know about college football, they are the world's greatest experts. Don't think so? Like I said, just read their comments. They will tell you themselves.

By the way, I know that it shows a lack of judgement on my part that I keep reading al.com comments. I promise myself that I won't and then somehow, I am scrolling down, reading an article and the first thing I know I am reading the comments. Once you start, it is kind of like watching a horrible train wreck, it saddens and sickens you but some how you can't look away. I don't make New Year's Resolutions, but if I did, mine this year would be to not read al.com comments. Every time I do I am pretty sure my IQ drops by 5 points.