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Butchy the Chicken Whisperer, chap 1.

If you remember the last time we got together I mentioned to you I was a chicken whisperer. I chose this vocation because wearing cheap wire rim glasses disqualifies me to be what I really wanted to be. Roy Rogers. Roy Rogers does not wear glasses. I wear glasses. And yes, broke them three or four times. Mostly in a tussle with another second grader. My folks were furious. Not with the other tussler but with me. Me someone who THINKS he should be Roy Rogers but a skilled chicken whisperer. So my tussling capabilities are limited. So off to Dr. Downs’s optic office for another pair. But the bottom line was I never wanted glasses in the first place. MY dad didn’t wear glasses. Tarzan didn’t wear glasses. Only Mrs. Block, my second grade teacher wore glasses. But she was over sixty-years old. Just a granny person needing glasses.

But when I wasn’t chicken whispering, me and my neighborhood friend Donnie were collection agents. A quick and dirty way to make easy money. Back then we collected glass soda bottles and traded them for hard cash. The twelve ounce glass bottle fetched and easy 2-cents. The quart size glass bottle gained us a nickel per bottle. This process would start early on Saturday mornings going house to house asking for empty soda bottles. At first we rang doorbells starting about 7-AM and quickly discovered people didn’t like coming to the door at seven Saturday morning. SLAM! The doors went. Some asked to go around the back in the alley and look in the trash bins. So Donnie and me did. Usually with some success. So we would collect enough bottles to make about 30-cents apiece. Then it was off to our personal banker. Joe Miller ran Miller’s Market on Olympic Boulevard and there we made our financial transactions. We would roll in a red wagon full of empty pop bottles and he would immediately pull out the correct change and place it firmly in our hands. Then We quickly went to the comic book section of Miller’s and chose one comic, two Double Bubble gums, a Snickers bar, and would hand back the hard earned cash to Joe Miller. He must have thought we were just financial wizards. “Firm but even handed”. No one would ever take advantage of me and Donnie for sure.

More about Butchy the Chicken Whisperer next time.

Featured

We gotta do this.

It takes a village.
Actually it takes a significant population to do the heavy lifting.  It takes a significant number of people to fund a benevolent charity.  It takes money and volunteers to run a helping organization like the Red Cross or to support research for diabetes.
None the less, it will take a little bit from all of us to help the working poor and their children, the homeless, people with pre-existing medical conditions and the disabled to be able to afford health care.  It’s up to us to do the heavy lifting for those who are unable to help themselves.  It’s our moral responsibility.  America needs either Medicare for all or a single pay health care system.  Tell your congressperson we need this.  We all can help do this.  It’s not a political issue.  But we can do this together.  Millions of us can pitch in and do the heavy lifting.  Probably doing without a monthly pedicure, couple of streaming movies and a dinner out could pay for this.  

Its only fair

The Tulsa State Fair.
I have been to several in the past. Took my dad once to see all the farm animals. Big cows, little cows, big and little horses and ponies, huge hogs, sheep, goats, chickens and the Four-H kids. Saw the midway and its visiting scary rides. Plus saw the dozens of seldom if ever won dart throwing and ball tossing games. My favorite was tossing quarters with hope of landing on decretive crystal glass dishes and bowls. If your coin stuck, you win that dish or bowl. An almost impossibility giving its hard glass surfaces.
Never the less, my oldest daughter as an adult would go to the fair, get her whatever on a stick, find a good sitting space and just watch all the weird and crazy looking people walking around in their newest outfits and carrying their turkey drumstick and sushi on a stick. The folks coming from out of town, according to my daughter, were the weirdest and mostly those coming in from rural areas dressed in loud and colorful outfits never seen in Tulsa my daughter certainly would watch for. Their loud rural speech gave themselves away. That’s it. That’s all she would go for and watch.
If you have never gone to the Tulsa State fair, this year would be a good time to go. Have a fun day at the fair.

Professional collectors 

 

We could have lost our business.

Had single use plastics been used back several decades ago when Donnie and I collected glass Coke and Pepsi bottles we would not had means to buy our Saturday morning comic books and candy from Joe Miller.  Joe Miller was president and CEO of Millers Market on Olympic Boulevard in East L A. 

Almost every Saturday morning, Donnie and I would rummage through trash cans in the back alley off our street, Simmons Avenue.  Often finding empty bottles of Coke and Pepsi.  Glass bottles redeemable at our local Ma and Pa market.  Sometimes we would find a whole six pack of glass empties.  Better yet if we found quart glass bottles we returned them to Mr. Miller for even more money.  Two cents for a 12-oz bottle and five cents for a quart bottle.  Bottles sent back to the soft drink bottlers to be washed and refilled.

But as it is now, almost all soft drinks come in a “Single Use” disposable plastic bottle.  Creating huge land fills full of disposable plastic.

So gone is our Saturday morning enterprise.  Therefore we’ll just stay home and watch Saturday cartoons and eat pancakes.  Pass the syrup would ya.

 

 

Strings attached.
I think it was September 1985. We were sitting out on a poolside area at the Intercontinental Hotel on the Island of Maui, Hawaii. The topic of discussion was why was America in Vietnam. Certainly a heavy discussion for the time and place. One person in our midst was a pilot for PanAm airlines. He was a crew captain. He argued the necessity of being inVietnam. Back at that time he flew B-52’s and bombed Hanoi and other targets. Thus was most certainly in favor of engaging North Vietnam in war. The captain was sitting in a poolside chair wearing his swim shorts with a Hawiian shirt. Sitting directly across from the PanAm pilot was myself wearing swim trunk and a colored T-shirt with the Premo logo over the left brest pocket and arguing we should had never sent armed forces toVietnam. Next to my right was wife and arguing the same.
Then to her right in a chase lounge chair and leaning back for maximum sun exposure was a PanAm flight attendant from Germany. For a native German she spoke exceptional English.
What was most distracting and hard for me to consentrate was the flight attendant was wearing a skim; tring bikini. She took a netural position on America’s presenes.

Flight attendant, where’s the barf bags?

Up up and away.

My preference is to fly alone.  I can relax and not be bothered with others flying issues.  It gets complicated when others that demand my attention.  Especially when my oldest and youngest daughters had flown with me.

Let me explain.  The most stressful flying was when traveling with my two daughters either separately or together.  Flying with them and hoping they don’t succumb to motion sickness.  What to do when they indicate they might barf.  and they often did when younger.  Big time!

It all started with my oldest.  Just take her near an airport and she starts complaining travel sickness.  Monica, the oldest, up-chucked just walking into the airport waiting area.  Barfed with no means to clean it up. 

Then one-time inflight Monica complained she was going to throw up.  So, she did.  All over the aircraft seat cushion and then I had to run her back to the plane’s lavatory and hold her back so she wouldn’t fall in the toilet.  Then the flight attendant scolded us for being out of our seats during a “fasten your seat belt” event.  And this happened several flights after.  Once when we were flying home after her college sophomore year in California.  “Dad, I don’t think I can fly today.  Can we wait until tomorrow?”  So, we did that.

Then there was my youngest daughter.  Her prelude to sickness was loud moaning and groaning.  And when she did bring it up it was a throaty w-a-a-a-a!  A Rore heard from the flight deck door to the back gally.  And it all came up.

Then the next time she indicated barfing, I had to have her count backwards from 100 to one and not skip a number in sequence.  This worked a time or two.

Then when we were flying from Tulsa with a stop in Pheonix we repeated the routine and made to Pheonix without a stomach eruption.  but while the aircraft was sitting at the jetway ramp and a flight crew change, a ‘helpful’ flight attendant asked all the kids onboard if they wanted to come with her and eat some pizza.  Boy was my youngest happy.  So, they all went to the pizza concession and ate pizza then came back and resumed their places on the aircraft with broad smiles.

Then we took off and my youngest started her prelude to throwing up once again.  Loud mournful wailing.  So, I grabbed a barf bag and the helpful flying attendants back my bag up with a larger plastic trash bag.  Then here it came like a volcano.  Reprocessed pizza.

Yes, I like to fly alone and now you know why.  And then you ask me, what’s up Chuck?

Jimmy Carter

Stupid me!
I voted for Gerald Ford and Carter won. I voted for Ronald Reagan twice and he won. I voted for Reagan because I liked him in the Bonzo chimpanzee movies. No other reason. I do though regret not voting for Jimmy Carter. Obviously the most thoughtful candidate in the mix. God bless Jimmy Carter and rest in peace. You were the best Ex-president ever.

Wrong way voters

Many people vote for the wrong reason.
Many folks vote for a particular person because their spouse tells them who to vote for. Others vote for a particular candidate so they can tell their friends who they voted for and only because the friend keeps asking in order to intimidate him or her vote. Sometimes known as peer pressure. Never mind it’s no one’s business who they voted for. It’s a private and secret vote. Vote for whom you choose.

No, no snow 

White Christmas?

Why do we need snow to celebrate Christmas?  I grew up in Los Angeles and it rarely snows in L A.  One exception going way back: One day in early January 1949 we had a dusting of snow and our school principal let us kids out of class to play in the snow.  As far as I know, it had never snowed since.

Never the less, Christmas came in L A no matter the weather.  Come smog or rumbling earthquake.  So as expected, Here came Santa Clause right down Santa Clause Lane every December 25th.

all one really needed was a Sears Wishbook.  Make your selection and hope for the best. 

Merry Christmas.

A shiny thing 

The next shiny thing.

It came Christmas 1961.  In our living room in front of our Sixth Street Bay window.  It was silver and shiny.  My Okie mom wanted the latest thing.  An aluminum Christmas tree.  Yes, aluminum.  Light weight metal. Fashioned from bauxite and extreme heat.  It didn’t come from a picturesque pine scented green forest.  It most likely came from Kizer aluminum Out in Fontana 50-miles east of L A.  The same company that made rolls of aluminum foil and the smallish Henry J car.

However, the casual observer would say it had the classic tall triangle shape but that was the only semblance of a Christmas tree.  All the rest was it looked as if a roll of aluminum foil had exploded into shreds and wads of foil 

So, after many comments that Christmas, the metal tree never came back.  It stayed in the hall closet and finally taken to the dump.  Merry Christmas.