We have A LOT to be thankful for!!!!

Bride and I are so blessed, we have so much that I am embarrassed for all I have to be thankful for.  I am most thankful that Bride is in my life, she has made me into the man I am today and I am a better person because of her influence.  We have been together a while now and not a day passes that I am not thankful that she is in my life.  We have rode out good times and bad times and here we are, she has stuck with me – through all of my idiosyncratic behaviors.  I love her and she iswhat I am most thankful for.

I am thankful for the blanket of freedom and protection under which I sleep.  That blanket is provided by our Military - a couple of those folks I know but mostly they are folks I do not know.  They volunteer to be the blanket makers, mostly kids when they start out but some stay and like any job that one likes, they make a life out it.  They are burdened with more responsibility at a young age than most of us will ever have in our entire lifetime.  Unlike most jobs though, theirs is somewhat thankless and has them making sacrifices that most of us free Americans can not even comprehend or fit inside of our spoiled little heads.  We take them for granted and sadly they know that, and still they make those blankets for us.  I am thankful to each and every member of the Military, past present and future.     

I am thankful to have so many great friends in my life, each of you make me happy.  Ya’ll are the green thumbed gardeners in my life that have allowed the blossoms of friendship to flourish throughout my life.   By using Facebook as my search engine I have reconnected with old friends, spanning each period of my life.  I have relived many old memories and it is nice to see what everyone is doing all these years later.   My friends are the family that I have chosen.  There is nothing wrong with my biological family, I consider them my friends as well.  My friends are the ones who know me best, know about all the baggage I tote around and do not judge, they only ask if I need a hand carrying them.  I am thankful for you all, for loving and being loved. 

I am thankful that my Niece decided to uproot her Ohio life to follow her dreams.  I remember that first call, it started with “remember when I was 12 and asked if I could move down with you and Aunt to go to school”.  She moved to Florida, went to school, graduated and starts her first job in her new field on the Monday the 29^th.  She has brought so much joy to our lives in so many different ways, to see life through a 23 year olds eyes was more fun than when my eyes were 23 and going through it.

I am thankful that I am so blessed in my life.  I am a financial dynamo – NO - but I am very happy and contented with my life.  I am able live in a nice place, I am able to give back some to the community in which I live and I am able to see the simple beauty in the everyday things that surround us all.  I do not grieve for the things I do not have, I am however VERY thankful for the blessings I have received.

Chicken Enchiladas, Winn Dixie and going Green – what in the world do they have in common?

So Bride had fixed Chicken enchiladas for my Sister who flew in for my Nieces graduation. They are world famous enchiladas and they are GREAT!!! She made them up early in the day and put them in the fridge, to be taken out 60 minutes before cooking. We took them out and then we went down to the river to watch the sunset, Sister and Niece stayed behind and Bride and I went home to prepare diner. Mostly it was bride but I put out a bowl of Tostito’s and salsa. Little did I know that the salsa I put in little containers was meant for the enchiladas – OPPS. After realizing that I may have messed up dinner I made a rush trip the corner Winn Dixie to get an additional bottle of Pace medium chunky salsa. That is where the madness of the world became apparent to me.

So I run into Winn Dixie and the Salsa is right there at the front of the store, I grabbed a bottle and started looking for an express lane. No luck on that, there were three lanes open and all were full and had lines. I headed for the courtesy counter with my one bottle of Pace picante sauce. I was pulling out my Winn Dixie card out as I approached. That little rewards card gets me additional discounts over any other discounts. I have to fill out an application to get it, they know who I am, where I live and what I buy when I visit the store. All throughout the year I accumulate bonus points as well. The advertised benefits are as follows:

• You'll get instant discounts on thousands of items, specially-marked throughout the store. And, you can still use manufacturers' coupons...so you can save twice!

• See the savings on your register receipts.

Look for Customer Reward Card items highlighted in our weekly circular and marked with special signs in the store. When you present your customer Reward Card to the cashier, the discount will automatically be deducted.

• Enjoy exclusive Winn-dixie shoppers' rewards.

Winn-Dixie Customer Reward Card cardholders automatically participate in special programs and promotions not available to non-cardholders. It's our way of rewarding your loyalty to Winn-Dixie.

Well, I want to circle back to the single jar of pace picante sauce I was there to buy. The clerk smiled and said hello and then asked if I had a Winn Dixie card, to which I whipped it out and said yes. She scanned the bar code on my card then the bar code on the Picante sauce, that will be $3.79 she tells me. To which I swipe my debit card and mash in my secret numbers and this is when it came to me. All of the sudden the register starts spitting out the receipt and then another little device, the coupon machine, started spitting out as well. When it was all said and done I got three pieces of paper, the main receipt was 3 inches wide and 15 inches long – for one bottle of Pace picante sauce, it was taller then the jar of sauce, crazy right? The other two pieces of paper 2.25” x 10” long, coupons for Beneful dog food and the other was for coffee mate cream. I commented that it looked like we burned up a tree just too properly document my picante sauce purchase, the clerk looked confused but smiled as I walked away.  Here is a picture of the paper I came home with. 

On my way home I got to thinking about that some more, that was A LOT of paper and wondered if it could be done with less or none. First off, I thought about the receipt. I need that in order to enter it into my banking, we use Quicken to keep track of our checking account. Once I enter them into banking I wad them up and throw them away. And then the coupons, I like those because in this economic times every little bit helps. Then it dawned on me, the entire solution popped into my head like a flash, like a jalapeno popper stuffed with picante sauce.

So here is my idea, and yes I am sending this blog to Winn Dixie. First of all, lets make it an option to get a receipt. The clerk asks the questions, do you have a Winn Dixie card and then also asks, would you like to help save the planet by not getting a printed receipt. They would stroke a couple of keys and no receipt would be printed.  For those in the Winn Dixie club, yes you rewards card holders, that receipt could be sent to you electronically via email or text if you wish. That would allow me sit at my computer when I got home to pull up the text or email to get the total and enter it into my banking. That could be a selection when filling out the card application, or it could be done via some slick web based interface. Insto-presto I would imagine there could be easily a 20-40% reduction in register tape usage, saving Winn Dixie money that could then be reinvested in some localized green community projects.

Secondly back to the coupon machines and their tree burning processes. I already have a Winn Dixie card, they know what I buy, when I buy it and how often I buy it so here is my solution to that paper. Have a computer algorithm search my actual purchases and provide me with coupons for stuff that I actually buy and use, it could even be tailored to the time of year. Say around thanksgiving, throw me a 30 cents off the can off pumpkin. That is but one example of how they could provide me with more useful coupons. Next, stop printing them out, start adding them to our entry in the big Winn Dixie database in the sky, there is already a database keeping track of our every move, make that bad boy start working for us more AND go green at the same time. No more paper coupons and another benefit to this is you can market the card as being smart. Knowing what you use and giving you coupons based on that consumption and it could all be done electronically with a slick web interface – it might even get them more people signing up for the card.

If Winn Dixie were to market this correctly they could show that they are leading the way in the green revolution and at the same time save a ton of money, that could be reinvested back into the community – which would raise their standings even more.

So how about it Winn Dixie, whaddayathink?

BTW, the chicken enchiladas Bride made were FANTABULOUS!!!

The Kodak Disc 4000 – what a camera!!!

Well you most likely do not remember that camera but it was an early 80’s technological marvel. Why the hell is writing about this you might be asking……. Well it started with my recent reconnection with guy I served with in Illinois while attending electronics schooling, we were best of buddy’s while stationed together and then just kind of lost track of each other. For those who have served you know what I mean. Anyway the other day I was saw an old CJ5 jeep with the Renegade decal package and I laughed in amusement because I had one of those back in the day. If you have a collection of the magazine, Peterson’s 4-wheel and Off Road go back in the collection to 1984 and you will find a picture of me and my Jeep.

So when I was there I was much younger much more dimwitted (I know, even more than I am now) and on top of that I still drank. WHEW….. Anyway we used to go 4-wheeling all the time, I can not remember the names of any of the places and I suspect even if I were there again I would not be able to find them again. There were a group of us in the barracks that had four wheel drives and almost without fail, on the weekends we were tearing something up. It was great fun and no one got hurt so we had that going for us. Joe and I hung out a lot there, I remember we installed cruise control on his car and in the instructions it clearly stated to turn the potentiometer to mid point to start with. Well there was no way that was happening, we turned it all the way up and on our first test we found learned they actually knew what they were talking about. When Joe hit the cruise button the gas pedal hit the floor, I do not remember the model car it was but it was red and when he hit that button it took off like a scolded dog. Hahaha, makes me laugh just remembering it.

So after reconnecting with him on Facebook I decided to pull out some OLD photo albums to see if I could find any pictures of Joe, and I did. It was one where we were in my Jeep and it was dark, I seem to remember we were stuffing our sleeves with beers before going into see the Rocky Horror Picture show. I posted it up on his page, his response was funny – “Wow, that is a blast from the past”. It certainly was, it is amazing how different we become with age, not only inside but outside as well. He also commented, “That's weird that you would even have a camera. Nobody carried around cameras back then” to which I got to thinking, he’s right. How many people had cameras when they were teenagers, not now but in the early 80’s? I always had cameras and being that I am a gadget head from way back I bought the Kodak Disc 4000 camera when I got out of boot camp. I had a 35mm Pentax but that was not something you just drug around with you, you might be confused with a tourist. So the first trip out of boot camp in Orlando I bought that camera and I bought and Kozo Ohsone’s little invention – they called it the Sony walkman.

Both those items were ahead of their time, in my opinion anyway. The walkman played audio cassettes, for those of you who remember what those are, it was crude by today standards but was a technological marvel of the late 70’s. I even got an optional am/fm tuner – it was the exact size and shape of a cassette and you popped it in like a cassette. Man, looking back that seems so hokie. I remember being blown away by the small (not by today’s standards) headphones and the incredible sound that a cassette player offered in such a small package. It was cool and therefore I was cool because I had one of them. Was I the only one who thought like that back then or was that common? Anyway, I was all of 18 and I was all set, I had the very cool Sony Walkman and the very cool Kodak Disc 4000.

So the Disc 4000 was one of many models that Kodak sold, and there were many other makers of the Disc series of cameras. The Disc series was designed to be a still photography film format aimed at the consumer market, it was introduced by Kodak in 1982. That camera was not all that different that the Nikon 14.3 megapixel camera I have today, in size only. The film came in a flat disc and was fully enclosed in a plastic cartridge. Each disc held fifteen 11 × 8 mm exposures, arranged around the outside of the disc, with the disc being rotated 24° between each image. 11x8mm is TINY and even 4x6 photos were a bit grainy, 5x7’s were bad and an 8x10 – FORGET it, it looked like butt. It was really a very consumer-oriented point and shot camera, aside from the 110 (which was 13 × 17 mm so it looked a little better). The 126 cameras were still a little better than both of them, the term "126" was intended to show that images were 26mm square, using Kodak's common 1xx film numbering system. However the image size is actually 28 x 28 mm, but usually reduced to approximately 26.5 x 26.5 mm by masking during printing or mounting

So this technological marvel actually produced the worse looking pictures of any of them, but it was small and shaped like a modern day digital point and shot and that made it cool, which made me cool just by having one. I can not remember how many “discs” of film I shot on that camera before it gave up on me. While the base model disc 2000 used a replaceable 9 volt battery but the more advanced Disc 4000 had an integral lithium battery and an automatic low light detection. Both the battery and the low light detection in a 60 dollar camera were unheard of in those days. You could not even open the thing to change the lithium battery, it had to be sent back to an authorized repair facility, like I would do that. The completely flat nature of the disc format (about an eighth of an inch thick) led to the (potential) advantage of greater sharpness over spool-based formats such as 110 and 126 cameras, it was more like a floppy disc or even a large memory stick than anything else. Although the camera was discontinued in 1988 the film was available from Kodak until December 31, 1999.

It still makes me look back and laugh at this camera, by today’s standards a 6 dollar point and shot disposable from Walgreens takes pictures that are magnitudes of order better in quality. I cannot imagine a negative that is only 8x11 mm hahaha. So compared to today’s best of breed point and shot digitals, the old Disc 4000 seems crazy. That was not the last camera I purchased though, I have since had many other camera’s. My all-time favorite is my Nikon F3 HP with auto winder and 14 lenses, what a great film camera, the best film camera in my opinion. I have taken thousands of pictures with it and it is still my very favorite. I did move into the digital camera world in the late 90’s with the Polaroid PDC 700, the Disc 4000 of digital cameras. It was an 800kilopixel marvel. Yeah, not even one megapixel. My Bride got it for me for a couple hundred bucks and it was cool, which made me cool. It had 4meg of internal storage so you could take about 50 pictures in normal mode, 1024x768, it completely wiped out the four AA batteries taking those 50 pictures. That is the size I shrink pictures down to now to get them through the email, hahaha. It had a fixed-focus lens with a focal length of 5mm and it connected to the serial port on my Windows 95 machine. It used a TWAIN driver and it was a PAIN IN THE ASS to setup and it was SLOW to the pictures off.

So today I have three digitals, a Nikon S220, and Nikon S570 and a Nikon S6000 and I love them all. They are a 10, 12 and 14 megapixel marvels for sure and each was around 200 bucks when I bought them. They take stunning pictures that come flying off the camera onto my computer at blazing speeds. It makes me wonder if I will be looking back on these cameras I have now in 10 years going, WOW 14 megapixel – what a piece of crap compared to my new 200 dollar 500gigapixel model. Funny how todays cutting edge gadgets quickly become tomorrows trash.

Someone asked me yesterday, how do you stay married for 20 years? What is the secret – well here is what is working for me.

My immediate response was, marry your best friend. After thinking about it some more, I still think that is the secret to our success, we are still, best friends. We started dating a long time ago now but after all this time we still do not sweat the small stuff. When we first started living together, and yes that was in the barracks at a little base in Maryland, we talked bluntly about our expectations. When I say expectations, I mean about everything from how the lid was to be installed on the toothpaste tube to how to position the chair when pushed under the table. We talked about EVERYTHING, and still do. I remember one of our first dates Bride telling me, “no one is going to take your food”. I was a seafaring sailor and when out to sea in rough weather one might wrap their arm around the tray that held that days gruel. While that was perfectly acceptable on a ship full of men when trying to keep ones tray in front of ones self and not on the floor, it was not quite as acceptable at a restaurant while on a date – who knew was my response? Well I am glad she told me instead of just determining there was something permanently wrong with me and running away like her ass was on fire and her head was catching. I guess I was so used to eating like that I did not even notice how odd it actually was.

I remember taking her back to my hometown of Millerstown Ohio, which to some might seem a little odd and potentially Steven King like. She did hit it off with Granny and my Dad but was concerned that if we were to continue our relationship she might end living up there. And, she told me so, I laughed and told her I had NO plans to move back to Ohio when my military service was up. We talked about the “L” word but we never used it, no need. We were going to hang out with each other until we got tired of it and then we would go our own separate ways. That was until one day nearly 2 years into our relationship we said it, we loved each other. I remember the feeling, I already knew I was in love with her but it was the “L” word thing. I think it was three days later when I got a ring and proposed. Seems funny looking back, say I love you and three days later, I was on bended knee with ring. By the time I love you came tumbling out we were already in a committed relationship, I knew she was the one and she knew I was the other one. We set no date, we were just engaged and we decided in a few years we may legalize the long date I think is how she put it. Makes me laugh remembering, she always has made me laugh. We were married a while later and have been laughing together every since.

There are lots of things and lots of reasons it works, some complex and some just simple things. Sometimes no words or explanations can describe the feeling I get when I see her smiling at me, she is so special to me. My heart still races when I hear her say I love you. I can count the fights we have had in 20 years on one finger, we just don’t let things reach the level that we are pissed off, because no one makes very good choices when they are pissed. Talking about it, whatever it is - seems to be working for us. We do not take each other for granted, when we were dating I remember people watching. It is still a hobby of ours by the way. Anyway we would pick out the people, especially eating out, who were married, the ones who were dating and the ones who were on that ever important first date. Some married folks can get all the way through diner without as much as word to each other. I pray I never get that disinterested in my bride – if I do someone shoot me, in the head and multiple times! We kiss each time we separate and each time we meet back up, maybe not from the back yard to the front but if one of is leaving the house we always kiss and say we love you. Life is too short to take that little step for granted.

We have, over time, figured out what chores we wanted to do and oddly that has worked out. She does the laundry because I hate to and she does not complain when I seem unable to get my socks right side out when I take them off – ever. I take care of the yard because she does not like messing with the landscaping, bugs and worms are not her thing. I take care of the trash, she takes care of the dishes, I take care of vehicle maintenance and she takes care of dinner. Seems like a simple enough thing right, then why doesn’t it work for some folks? We do these things because the other one does not like to and we don’t hold that against one another. I am not saying that I have never done dishes or that Bride has never toted the trash but our routine works for us. It seems that maybe it is just being courteous to each other, taking her feelings into account first when making decisions or doing things. I like to make her happy and whatever I have to do to see her smile is worth it to me, and she feels the same about me. It is not hard, if you really love the person, and we do – MADLY.

A number of years into our journey we also discovered something else, we are really odd people and most likely no one else would have either one of us. We are each others lot in life, I for one love my lot. I am not saying that we have not had rough spots on our trip, we have. We have made VERY good money and we have been so broke we could not pay attention. We have ridden through the loss of parents and the loss of friends. We have watched friends start dating and to see those unions blossom into meaningful relationships that have produced couples with kids – you have been a special joy Scott and Sarah – and now Jack. We have been through two back surgeries and all that is involved with that. We have chased what we thought were our dreams and then realized that it was actually our dreams chasing us. We have reevaluated what was important to us and made life adjustments together, some easy, some not so much. The most important thing was that we kept each other first - always. We have dealt with addiction and helped others climb that mountain. We are still working our way through a bipolar disorder diagnosis, that part of the ride has been the most interesting to date but we are still moving forward and we are still together – still watching other people and being amused. We have adjusted our course so many times that it makes me wonder, in awe, as I look back on our journey so far how lucky a man I am.

As we examine our lives we begin to realize that some people come into our lives and pass quickly by but the impact of those short relationships can be powerful and life changing. Other folks we meet on the ride stay come in and stay awhile, they track footprints across our hearts and they change us forever. Someone, somewhere said “love is like temporary madness”, I could not disagree more. Love to me is more like a great pair of jeans, broke in and comfortable. As great as that puppy love was at the beginning of our relationship the deeper love that has evolved from that is so much better and I wish that feeling for everyone I know. To me true love is what is left over when “being in love” has burned away, it is truly beautiful art and I am so fortunate to have gotten to sit and stare for a while and figure out what it means to me. So my parting advice would be this, be slow in choosing your friends and even slower in choosing your best friend and be even slower in attempting to change them – then marry them!

I Love you Sandy, thanks for being my Best Friend and sharing this great ride with me!

BTW, she has been taking a nap on her chair, less than two feet from me, while I wrote this 

A blast from the past on Facebook – Mike Rosencranz, who I have not seen or heard from since the mid 1980’s

I have found a lot of people on Facebook over the year or two that I have played on it, but the other day I found Mike Rosencranz. We were friends when we were kids serving on the USS Stump, a Spruance class destroyer that has since been turned into a reef on the oceans bottom. I have reconnected with other friends on that ship and the other ship I served on, the USS Gettysburg as well as the shore duty stations I spent time at. With Mike it is different, we have a life long bond. Not anything weird and it is not that we were inseparable in those day, we just shared some really good times together while serving in the Navy. So what is our lifelong bond? It is a scar, mine is on my right arm and his is on his left. They are identical, about an inch and half long and about three quarters of an inch wide, more on that later.

In 1985 we were on a UNITAS cruise, which is a four month show of the flag around South America, at the end of that we had a WATC, or west African training cruise so the cruise totaled 6 months. That was my first 6 month cruise, so I was apprehensive and excited at the same time. Going through the Panama Canal was kind of bittersweet, it was very cool but I was on the sea and anchor detail so we had to work our asses off for what seemed like days straight. It was very cool to use the canal, Teddy Roosevelt got this project started after the failure of the French and most all of the original mechanisms and controls are still being used, they do not build things like that anymore. The design was ingenious, not that I dwelled on that for long though, when we got through the canal and we got liberty and we were all out in the bars, all the coolness of the canal drowned in cheap beer, at least for me.

There were many adventures on that cruise, many I can talk about, many I won’t talk about and still more I probably don’t remember. Anyway, we hit Rio de Janeiro Brazil and my little hillbilly ass thought I had died and gone to heaven. YES it is that cool there! So Mike and I decided we needed tattoo’s, it was not such a popular thing like it is now outside of sailors. So we find a place, the guy did not speak any English, at least that is way I remember it. I was reminded by Mike that he would not tattoo us if we were drunk so I think we came back the next day or maybe later that day. I selected an Eagle, flying through a sun with flames on it. I was a bit nervous when after he shaved my arm, he used the lid of the shaving cream to outline the sun. Nothing would deter me though. So it seemed like it took a long time to get through and it really hurt where the skin is soft but I got through it. When he was done he tells us he is tied and to come back tomorrow so he can ink Mike.

I am not sure if we went back and could not find him or we pulled out but my friend Mike never got inked. He served 20 years in the US Navy and never did get that tattoo. Not sure what that meant for him but the one chance he had slipped through his fingers, or should I say – off his arm. I remember my Mom askin me, “where did you get the tattoo”, I said “in Rio” and she laughed and asked what part of your body did you get a tattoo. I remember thinking that was funny. When we left Rio we went up the coast to Recife Brazil, WHEW, not sure why I mention that because I do not think I can tell one story about that port of call that would suitable for distribution. I can say we took over some 2nd floor bar and a GREAT time was had by all! We left there and went to Africa, which was not a bad trip, lots happened there as well and much beer was consumed. I think it was in Dakar Senegal that I broke my eardrum, it was either there or Freetown in Sierra Leone. I remember drinking a lot of beers from gigantic gold cans, I have no idea what kind of beer it was but it was good. I fell or slid off a very high diving board and somehow hit the water on my side, the pressure of the water perforated my eardrum instantly. I knew something bad had happened right away, even though I was VERY drunk I headed on back to the ship. After that is was back to Puerto Rico and then back to Norfolk.

Well Norfolk is where we got our matching scars. This is the story, the best I can remember it, anyone who may have been there please correct me if you find errors. I can say without doubt that this is how I remember it all happening. Mike and I were at a bar drinking whatever it was we were drinking when a few other friends showed up. I can’t remember who they were, other than one was Jeff, a large and gregarious friend with screaming red hair. There was also a woman with us but neither of us could remember who she was or who she was with. I also can’t remember what bar we were in or who drove us there, or home for that matter. So here we are, minding our own business, having some cold beverages when our friends start buying us shots and then double shots of tequila. I was not a tequila drinker and I do not think Mike was either. Well somewhere along the line we thought it would be a good idea, or at least our somewhat more sober friends thought it would be a good idea, if we, Mike and I, were to put our arms together and drop a cigarette between them to see who pulls away first. Childish and STUPID I know but we were young and plowed on Tequila. Well it seems that neither of us pulled away, so I was told the next day. So they decided to stoke up a couple of cigarettes and alternate them in there. Still nothing from Mike or my drunk ass.

Not sure how long that lasted but they must have at some point grown bored and let it go, not before we each had a scar that bonded us for life. It is about an inch and a half long and about three quarters of inch wide and it took a very long time to heal. I remember the next day waking up in excruciating pain and making my way to the head to wash off my right arm, there were still ashes in the wound. At that point I was unsure what had happened the night before but was looking forwarding to hearing the story. It was a few minutes later that Mike came in and he started washing out an eerily similar scar on his left arm. We just looked at each other and laughed. We knew that we would be unable to go to sick bay to get treatment, alcohol related incidents did not look good in the record so we struggled through the healing process. He slept on the bottom rack and I slept on the top with Eddie Kelso in the middle so we got to compare notes every morning. I wonder what ever happened to Eddie Kelso?

Well over the years I have told many stories about that scar and I have quit drinking as well. My favorite story about it started in Alexandria Egypt and ended in the kings chamber of the Pyramid of Cheops and had Egyptian police and military chasing us. That story is too long for this oratory. The most common and the one I ended up telling my Mom was that my arm got pinched between the exhaust manifold of my Nova and the shock tower. I fFelt bad fibbing to Mom but that truth was just too embarrassing, at least it was at the time – must not be so embarrassing anymore because here I am sharing it with the world.

Mike, thanks for being my buddy all those years ago and I am really happy that we have at least reconnected in Facebook, which may lead to meeting up in person again someday.

I recently experienced the most special day of my life, to date, it was truly an overwhelming experience.

I have been hanging with my best friend for nearly 22 years and we recently celebrated 20 years of being hitched. Our anniversary was actually on September 22 but we celebrated on Saturday the eighteenth.

It all started a few weeks prior to that with an idea I had to attempt to surprise Bride on our anniversary. If you don’t know this about me, I go out to the beach at least once a week to watch the sunrise. I get there when it is dark and get to watch the whole show. Bride is not a morning person but she does like to go sometimes and always goes with me on our anniversary. Well I remember when we got married we talked about a 5 year deal, if we still liked each other in 5 years we would get married again, if either of us thought is wasn’t working out we would have the opportunity to get out. Seems silly as hell 20 years later but that was our mentality when we started out together. So when we hit the 5 year mark we were still having fun so we convinced our great friend Lonnie to reaffirm our vows, and we did the deed at our house with about 50 people in attendance.

That was a great experience and we planned then that we would just keep a running 5 year deal, if one of us wanted out, we had to wait for the 5 year mark when the contract was due. Well along came 10 years and it so happened to be working out that on our anniversary we were closing on our new home, not brand new but new to us. We celebrated well into the night with our great friends Scott and Sara, who were just dating then and have since gotten married and just added little Jack to the family. So we did not officially renew our contract on the 10 year mark, but buying another house together was kind of an unofficial renewal of the deal. We did not renew at 15 either, that was about the time that Bride was diagnosed with Bi-polar disorder. That was quite a blow to our otherwise idyllic lives that required a reevaluation of everything, not whether we still loved each other but how this news was going to affect our lives moving forward.

We have both learned a lot about life in those years between 15 and 20. I think after all the turbulence we both experienced we came out the other side stronger than ever. I am not saying that she is no longer Bi-polar, I am saying that we approached it like everything else in our lives, with open minds and love. The medications are crazy and changes in medications are even crazier but we are still chugging away, still in love and dealing with life one day at a time as it comes. All we have is this moment and we learned that no matter how much planning for the future you do, it can all change with a 15 minute trip to the doctor’s office. We live in the moment, Bride is retired now and has even gotten her nose pierced and is growing her hair out and not coloring it anymore, I love her confidence. She says she is throwing off the shackles of the business where she toiled for so long. She is the strongest woman I have ever known. Even when her mind is playing tricks on her, she just keeps on keeping on. I do not think that I would be strong enough to deal with a diagnosis like that.

Anyway, back to a few weeks ago when I decided to surprise her for our 20 year contract negotiation. I thought, I will get Lonnie to marry us again, I had recently reconnected with him on FaceBook. He was unable to make it though, work obligations. I was sad about that but was not willing to let the idea die there. I have a great friend, Pervalia, who recently became more active in ministering to those in need through her church. I called her and she said she would marry us, and to top that we would be her first marriage. OK I thought we are on our way. I wanted to surprise Bride on the beach while we were watching the sunrise. I contacted some of our other friends to see if they were interested in getting up VERY early and making it the beach. After I meticulously timed things out, as long as everyone was on the beach by 6:15 or so it would still be dark enough that we would not be able to recognize anyone. So that is what we did, my Niece Amanda was a gate keeper, directing folks where we were at and where they were supposed to go and wait. She then called me, under some other guise to let me know that everyone was there and ready. I asked Bride if she would marry me again and when she said yes, I jumped up and did a little jig, that was the cue for everyone to make their way over to where we were sitting.

Well I had spent so much time planning the event and getting things arranged, who was bringing mimosa’s and things like that that I neglected to think about myself. I was also worrying about Bride finding out and how excited that she would be that I had not spent one minute thinking about how this would make me feel. Well Bride was very excited and it was an incredible experience watching the realization and happiness sweep across her face as our friends came wandering up, at O-dark thirty on the beach. I found myself completely overwhelmed with joy. I can not even begin to describe how special it was. To Watch Bride beaming with joy made my heart leap with joy, it was very emotional for me, it was priceless. I had given Pervalia free rein as far as the service, which ended up being a rededication of our rings. It was the most incredible and beautiful service I have ever heard – thank you Pervalia for officiating the most wonderful ceremony ever, I was so happy that we could be your first, you always remember your first time.

To be able to share that wonderful experience with our friends at sunrise meant so much to me, the fact everyone got up so early to share this very special moment with us was overwhelming and I can not thank everyone enough for coming. I want to try by thanking them here, Thank you Scott and Sara, thank you Doug and Judy, thank you Bob and Beth, thank you Betsy and Wally, thank you Pervalia and Vincent, thank you Jeff, thank you Roy, thank you Ruth-Ellen and Vincent, thank you Conny and Mark, thank you Bobbie, thank you Amanda, thank you Debbie and thank you Tami. You guys, one and all, contributed to my experiencing the most incredible day of my life to date. Not to mention that without Sandy saying yes none of this would have been possible.

Sandy, you mean more to me than I ever thought anyone ever would. I can not imagine what my life would be like without you in it, it would no doubt be a dark place without joy and with dim, uneventful sunrises. You make my life complete and I can not believe my luck in finding and catching you. Everyday my love for you continues to grow. I want to take away your fears and sooth your concerns, I want to lift you above the fray that some seem to get stuck in. I want to continue to be best friends, who can laugh at the ridiculousness of life. I want to be having coffee with you at sunset on the river for the rest of my life. I enjoy hanging out with you so much that I will keep playing the lotto so I no longer have to go to work and we can just play together.

Thank you everyone for being involved in making me and Bride so very happy!!!

Jalopy repairs, expensive yes but basically a one time cost and therapeutic for my soul

About 4 years ago I picked up the Jalopy, I was almost ready to buy a motorcycle when I came upon it. Now I am kind of a car guy so when I saw this car, that I did not even know they made in 1958, I just had to get it. I have been to countless car shows and have never even seen a Ranchero older than 1960 when they started using the Falcon body style. The first year for the Ranchero was 1957, two years before my all-time favorite car – the 1959 El Camino, those fins are just magnificent.

I had an opportunity some years ago to purchase a 1959 El Camino from the original owner. This is when I learned that in fact, money talks and bullshit walks. I came upon this beauty with a for sale sign in the window in rural Virginia, I immediately stopped. The transmission went bad several years ago I was told and now the engine will not turn over either. Undeterred, I looked the car over and found the body and interior in very good shape. Everything was old and faded but was not rusted out or dented up, and he only wanted 600 bucks. This was in the mid 80’s, before an ATM on every corner and actually before they became popular at all. I told him I would have to run to the bank and get the cash and I should be back in a few hours. Well off the bank I went and on my way back - what passes me, a pickup truck pulling a trailer with that El Camino on the back. When I got back to the place it was for sale I asked, why did you sell it out from under me? The old man’s response is still ringing in my ears – money talks and bullshit walks.

So when the opportunity on the 1958 Ranchero came up, again from an older gentleman, who reminded me of the “money talks” man I knew I had to act quickly. The car was far from perfect, there had been some body work and the car was loose. By loose I mean I could tell it would be needing some suspension work, engine work along with the eventual body work. For me that mattered little, why you might ask? Because I knew this car was going to become a project car, a never ending project that I could work on when it needed worked on, or and more importantly when I needed to work on it. Don’t get me wrong, it was drivable and all but I knew there was enough work there to keep me as busy as I wanted to be for as long as I wanted to be busy. One thing you learn driving an old car every day is patience, in spades. There will be times it will not start, there will times it will not move and there will times it will leave you someplace. Those are inevitabilities, you can’t get mad, it is just a fact of driving a Jalopy. I just keep a tool bag and some critical spares in the car and anything else I can call friends.

I find it very cathartic to tinker around on old cars. My job is, like most folks, a never end sea of too many things to get done with no end in sight. TV and Radio are never ending and in some respects more monotonous than delivering the mail. The Jalopy allows me some mindless thing to do, not that working on cars in mindless, but for me it is. Never will I have to worry if this piece of hardware will no longer operate correctly when a new update to Flash player comes out. Never will I have to worry about a satellite feed being adversely affected by sun spots, taking the broadcast off the air. Never will I have to worry about a power supply filter failing and placing just enough ripple on the DC voltage to cause a weird intermittent popping on the digital radio channel. In 1958 things were simpler, no computerized anything, no software compatibility issues, no anti-locking anything and no way was someone from Onstar going to unlock my doors, shut off my car or even determine where I am located.

Bride humors me on this, sometimes barely but she does and I love her for it. I use the logic of comparing all repairs to a number of car payments if I were to go and buy a new car and that works, she likes Jalopy riding so that helps as well. So about 7 months ago I started pondering what needed doing next and I came to the suspension and steering mechanisms and after crawling around under there for a few hours I determined it all needed replaced. WOW I remember thinking, this is going to be a big project. At that time I also started wondering if some upgrades might not be in order. Maybe a conversion to front disc brakes, something that was not even available in 1958. The Thunderbird was the first Ford that disc brakes came standard and that was not until 1965. I knew that would require big changes. The factory tires and rims were 14” and the disc brake mechanisms would not fit inside that rim, I had to change over to 15 inch rims. No problem except that I wanted to keep the original 14 inch hubcaps. I ordered new steel rims and then had a metal fabricator create, and weld in, some rings that would suspend my 14 inch hubcaps in the center of the 15 inch rims. A quick trip to the powder coater for a shot of red powder coating (to match the car) and the first part of the project was complete.

Next was the rear suspension, new shocks and new spring mounts and then mounting the new and much larger rims and tires. That also required some modifications to the fenders to allow them to fit, although none of that is visible by looking the underside required quite a few hours of work. I also reworked the original drum brakes that were on the rear, I wish they had the automatic adjusters that were available starting in 1959. I have since found a conversion kit for that that is cheap – 40 bucks but requires me to pull it apart again to install, I already order the kit so that will be coming soon. With the rear done I moved onto the front, first ordering most of the parts in a “front end” kit from Kanter Automotive. I also order new springs and an updated stabilizer bar from Concours parts that far exceeded the factory original. Next was the conversion kit for front disc brakes from Master Power Brakes. Once I had all the parts, I planned the disassembly. The underside of the front end was horrible, 52 years of dirt, grease and grime was fossilized all over everything. My best friend Mark came by to assist with the tear out. It was every bit as nasty as I had anticipated and I greatly appreciated the assistance, thanks brother.

We were able to get the entire front end pulled out in one day. There were three weeks of scraping and cleaning and primering and painting and powder coating of the parts I was going to use. Once everything was clean and all the new parts were installed I was thinking this should be pretty easy. After installing the master cylinder and brakes lines, which is one of my least favorite things to do by the way, we were on to reinstalling all the parts. That actually did go pretty smoothly, the only big mistake was I installed the lower control arm bushings backwards which required about an hour each to remove and install correctly and yes there are four of them. When I went back to the shop manual there was a line that was BOLDED and in all CAPS that said, be sure to install bushings with the flanges on the inside, yes I had read that whole section before I started. Once past that little snafu everything else went pretty smooth and it went back together pretty quickly.

I knew that I would need to get the front end aligned at least close enough to drive it to the shop for a front end alignment and to get the new tires installed. I remember a trick I learned from my 11th grade auto mechanics teacher at Ohio High Point joint vocational school to get close on a front end alignment using sticks (3 foot yard sticks) and a piece of string. Well I thought, this is 2010 I should be able to accomplish this task even a bit better. So I broke out the laser pointer, a stick, a string and dusted off Pythagoras’s theorem for a 21st century version of that old trick. Well sir, I surprised even myself with that one and the alignment was, I believe, closer than what it was before I tore it apart. I am going to ask for the before and after numbers from the alignment shop to see exactly how close I came. It drove fabulously, without a shimmy or a shake and the new disc brakes stopped very strongly with no pull to the right or left.

She drives like a brand new 1958 Ford would have, and that is a lot better than what it was driving like before I started. I was amazed that it still had the factory original upper ball joints, I know that because they were riveted in and none of the aftermarket ball joints, even from Ford directly were riveted in, they were all bolted in. The project took, all told, about 150 hours spread over 6 months. Since I did not want to stop driving I performed the work in stages with the longest period of outage being about 4 weeks while I had the front end out. I spent in the neighborhood of 4 grand, or about 8 car payments but that money was spent replacing items that were mostly 52 years old, they will not need replaced again in my lifetime so I my opinion it was money well spent.

The biggest bonus is this, I got to spend male bonding time with a great friend and I got the satisfaction of fixing the jalopy and I got to get my mind off of work for a while. I am already wondering what is next, I may have to learn to work sheet metal and body filler as well as how to paint. Who knows, I might replace the old and tired 110 horsepower six cylinder with a Boss 302 with a supercharger pumping 500 plus horse power. Whatever is next, it will have to wait for me to replenish the “car” fund.