A Day Late & Two Dollars Short

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

                     ABOUT                                              GLOSSARY 

"Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals."                                                                                                       -John Steinbeck

Dear Gentlereaders, 

In my last two columns, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth 1 and 2, My subject was the first seven years or so of my life. The response from my millions of gentlereaders was overwhelmingly favorable so I plan to continue the series. But this time I'd like to explore...

{Wait-wait-wait. I've got a question, you "self-identify" as an independent columnist who self-publishes columns, but your columns have the same format as a traditional letter.}

True, so what?

{Well, everybody and his their brother sibling, including real columnists, are trying to get people to sign up, to subscribe to their "newsletter" which isn't actually a letter, it's their latest column, essay, editorial, recipe, whatever... In fact, your gentlereaders can "subscribe" to your column on your website and receive it via email. What's the difference between a column, or any sort of writing, and a newsletter?}  

Forgive the cliche, Dana, but: it's complicated. 

As you've noticed, "newsletters" aren't usually letters by anyone's definition. Newsletter has become a catch-all term for something that you subscribe to (by providing an email address) so that whenever there's a new version of that something, it will be sent to you via email.

There might be a fee or it might be free but either way, it places their content in your hands (in front of your eyeballs) without you having to seek it out. Win/win, as far as the sender is concerned anyway. The sender is hoping this will help to build an audience and/or make 'em some money. 

As you mentioned, anyone can "subscribe" to have my columns emailed to them just by clicking a button on my webpage. I use a free service for this but they (and their competitors) who also offer free versions, offer paid versions as well. 

The more you're willing to pay, the more services they offer based on the data they collect from the people who sign up for your content so that you can offer them more services...as well as find out what your readers are up to, or into.

Pass. 

I don't think that whatever my readers are up to or into, is any of my business. I'm not even aware, or even care, who subscribes to me...with the exception of my lovely sister, Arletta, because she told me she does.   

Big BUT, we all should never forget there's a veritable industry of not only content providers but thousands of others who do care, very much so.   

{Looks like this is what you're writing about this time.} 

That's your fault, and whaddayamean real columnists?

Shortly after I started writing columns, I decided my focus/motivation was my grandkids, the Stickies, and my columns all began with, Dear Grandstickies, and ended with Poppa (the proper way to spell poppa by the way) loves you, Have an OK day. (For various and sundry reasons previously explained they've since been folded into the gentlereaders demographic.) 

This was a cosmic coinkydink that had absolutely nothing to do with the (insert fanfare here) RISE OF THE NEWSLETTER. 

Unfortunately, the (inflation-adjusted) idiom, a day late and two dollars short, is a term applicable to several stages of my life. I was oblivious to how pervasive the newsletter phenomenon had become and just kept writing my columns till it was impossible to ignore but by then I had missed the boat once again.

When I had finally started blogging, blogging was not only far from a new, cutting-edge way of communicating, it was well past its peak, had become a very crowded endeavor, and was playing second fiddle to ubiquitous online video content of all sorts. 

Having a face and physique made for radio, and being so introverted some days that I'm one psychological step away from subscribing to Huts and Hermits quarterly, I thought I'd try blogging anyway, but declare myself to be a columnist, being an enthusiastic reader of columns for several decades now. 

{You're a wild man... What's the difference?}

Well, a given publication, traditionally, publishes the work of a given columnist on the same day (or days) every week as I did till recently, of roughly the same length. Bloggers tend to post whatever/whenever and are often ghostwritten - or AI-written - or are advertisements disguised as blogs, or my personal favorite — bloggers who blog about how to make money blogging by writing blogs that are actually advertisements.  

But I had a vague notion that if I was good enough, I might get a syndication deal, or at least be offered a few shekels to write for an individual publication. This would be hard enough to make happen under normal circumstances, and I began my writing "career" when newspapers and many a meatspace magazine had collapsed/were collapsing and everyone and their uncle Bob was trying to land a gig in cyberspace. 

No joy.

Next, I set my dignity aside and tried running ads. The Goog, who owns the software that powers my scribbling and provides it for "free" just like they do various other services ("If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold," a famous tweet by one Andrew Lewis) and builds the ability to do this into the software, virtually effortlessly. 

Any given content provider can become part of a globe-spanning business that generates billions in revenue for the Goog. The bad news is, unless you have a lot of readers who click on a lot of the ads the Goog places on your site, you're not going to make enough to pay for an overpriced cup of coffee.

No joy. 

Running ads for Amazon is nearly as easy to set up so I tried that...and setting up a "tip jar," and making it possible to commit to paying me a monthly fee (via services that handle processing credit cards, and the ability to sell stuff to build a "community" — for a piece of the action). 

No joy. But I didn't take it personally.    

 

Yes, Virginia, it's true, very few writers, of anything and everything, will ever quit their day job. The good news is that writers, of anything and everything, can nowadays easily self-publish in multiple forms and fashions, and thanks to the internet can potentially reach almost everyone on the planet Earth. 

The bad news is that gazillions of writers, of anything and everything, can (and do) nowadays easily self-publish, and thanks to the internet can potentially reach almost everyone on the planet Earth. 

The Pareto principle applies to even sensitive arteeestes like myself. About 20% of the H. sapiens in any field are going to make most of the money. That's why you're brother-in-law is still living on your couch despite the fact he plays a mean guitar, and  practices  every  damn  day.

And while all of the flailing around on my part mentioned above was happening, the (insert fanfare here) RISE OF THE NEWSLETTER was going on while yours truly was busy being repelled by the fact Big Data had found yet another way to profit from electronically looking over our collective shoulders. 

{Wait just a minute there Sparky, I know for a fact you're thinking about publishing on Substack, newsletter central...} 

I've been thinking about that forever, and if I ever get around to it my stuff will be free to access, but not because I'm a selfless saint hoping to illuminate the path to paradise. For the record, I don't begrudge the relatively few writers, or any sort of "creators," who make a handsome living on the internet. 

I don't even begrudge professional "Influencers" although I confess that... well, never mind. All marketing all the time is the American way, it pays the bills, directly or indirectly, for literally millions of us, and after all, the root of much evil is not having enough money to maintain a fairly modest, sensible lifestyle.

I write because I enjoy it, I mean really enjoy it, which is a generous form of payment unto itself, and I'm doubly blessed. My pathetic retirement income enables me to just get by without having to work (for now at least) in the "real" world, and fortunately for me, I'm a man of relatively modest and sensible tastes by nature, not discipline. 

Although I admit that like many of you, I occasionally got carried away in my extended callowyute phase. I am a Boomer after all.     

At this point in the proceedings, I had begun ranting about how we should be getting paid by the Tech Lords with cash instead of the software/services (high-tech honey traps) they use to harvest our data and sell it to the highest bidder. 

Now they're "scraping" (harvesting) anything and everything available on the internet to "train" artificial intelligence software to help them harvest our data and sell it to the highest bidder...and "disrupt" (eliminate) jobs that can be done by machines much cheaper than they can be done by meat puppets. 

But I've written about this sort of thing before, and anyway, the world seems to have accepted the mission statement of the Borg: Resistance is Futile. You will be assimilated. So permit me...

{Wait-wait-wait. What about that Universal Basic Income thingy?}

Heavy sigh...UBI is a scam, it's based on the idea we should toss some money into a pot (taxes) and then send each other a monthly payment.

 

But there's no such thing as a free lunch. (You may have heard something about that.) There aren't enough Tech Lords and other rich people to fund the plans and dreams of those looking for a way to fund life as they think it ought to be, as opposed to how it is.

We would have to enact a UBI tax (good luck with that) or raise income taxes, and I have no doubt that a significant number of the Citizens of the Republic (roughly 60%) of Americans who pay the federal income tax might quibble with funding payments for the 40% who don't. 

And there's this: America now pays more in interest on the national credit card than it does on defending itself against the Pooteens of the world, and continues to charge present America to future America in the meantime. 

"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." I was never a Tweeter, and nowadays I'm not an Xclaimer, although I wish Elon Musk all the best in his efforts to stick it to his fellow Tech Lords, but that's another column. 

A bit of research revealed that when Mr. Lewis posted the quoted comment on what was then still called Twitter it took the Twitterverse by storm. His is not the only version of this modern-day truism. For example, "If you're not paying for the product, then you are the product" is a quote from the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma.  

That is to say, all that alleged free stuff the Tech Lords provide for us is sorta/kinda equivalent to the bread and circuses the powers that were in ancient Rome used to supply to the plebians to keep them happy and/or distracted and not considering the torches and pitchforks option.

{Sorta/kinda equivalent?}

In our case, we plebs are picking up the tab.     

   

{Hmmm...say, what was it you thought you were going to write about?}

I don't remember, and I have a headache.

{Oh, and by the way, you used entirely too many quotation marks in this "column."} 

   

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

P.S. A tip o' the hat to my big brother Ed, my biggest fan. He's long been my sorta/kinda dad and occasionally has been to me as Theo was to Vincent.  

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Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved 

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth 2

More reminiscences of a garrulous geezer.  

Not breakfast at my house, then or now. Image by Jo Justino from Pixabay

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

                     ABOUT                                              GLOSSARY 

"Whenever I think of the past it brings back so many memories." 

                                                                                     -Steven Wright 

Dear Gentlereaders, 

Beginning with this column, I'm no longer committed to publishing a new missive every Saturday but I will be publishing a new, lengthier, column approximately every two weeks. Please stay tuned. 

Fear not, I remain committed to writing these letters/columns, and many of my millions of gentlereaders have expressed a desire for longer letters anyway.

{I doubt any of our gentlereaders are living in fear of a lack of letters on your part.}    

Welcome back boys, girls, and others. In our last episode, Dana asked me what was so cool about being a child of working-class parents with lots of kids and little money back in my day when the Baby Boom exploded. 

Answer: Dumb luck and good timing.

I, and my fellow Boomers, didn't come along till after the Great Depression had been overcome and the Second World War won, two back-to-back globe-spanning crises that killed off multiple millions and laid waste to no shortage of other countries. 

If you were lucky enough to be a kid, particularly before about 1965 — when things got weird and our current era began  — you benefited from the traditional American zeitgeist, an economic boom, and the birth of modern technology. 

You hit a trifecta without even making a bet. 

Of course, life was hard for most and terrible for many as it always has been and always will be. I/We need to proceed carefully. Nostalgia and our unreliable memories often generate a golden glow; sucky circumstances can morph into fond remembrances with the passage of time.   

Big BUT, that's not going to keep me from posting a paean to my childhood, specifically to my life prior to reaching the age of reason. 

{The Age of Reason? Just how old are you?}

When I was a kid attending a traditional Catholic grade school, much of second grade focused on preparing us for our First Holy Communion as it was assumed that we had more or less reached the age of reason. This is (according to the newadvent.org Catholic encyclopedia), "The name given to that period of human life at which persons are deemed to begin to be morally responsible."

On a related note, if you were a Roman Catholic kid "back in the day," particularly if you attended Catholic school but no longer consider yourself a Roman Catholic, the website quoted above can update you on how much things have changed over the years. Quite interesting.

{Fascinating. When do we get to the cool stuff?}

This is cool stuff, Dana. Any traditions that are actually cultural RBFDs with long histories behind them (as opposed to say kindergarten commencement ceremonies) provide firm foundations to stand on. Just as importantly, if you decide to reject a given tradition, it provides something real to rebel against. 

Being a rebel without a cause, or a clue, isn't romantic, it's merely embracing teenage angst as a lifestyle.  

Once upon a time in a country called the United States of America, there was a rough but widespread consensus. Although our country had/has its sins and flaws — having been created by H. sapiens, a notoriously flawed species — it was a product of something called Western Civilization which has roots that reach back thousands of years.

Thousands of years of having to get out of bed in the morning and do what you had to do to keep you and yours fed, clothed, sheltered, and as safe as possible given your circumstances at the time, resulted in some hard-learned lessons. 

Please be sure to take note of the italicized phrase circumstances at the time.

The traditional family, and some version/notion of a higher power — be it God, or at least ideals to strive for even once you're wise enough to realize you'll never quite reach them but are wise enough to keep trying anyway — worked/works rather well. 

A Judeo-Christian spiritual tradition provided/provides a moral/ethical framework that worked/works well even for those who were/are "culturally" Christian or Jewish (GRIN). 

{Your love of the slash can be/often is very annoying.} 

Caveat: Much sin has been committed in the name of religion, and of course, other religious/spiritual traditions can thrive in a Western country if its adherents are willing to live and let live, and like a civilized gentleperson, avoid stepping on the toes of others...as much as possible. 

{Fascinating. When do we get to the cool stuff?}

I also must point out that the current epidemic of "illegitimate" parenting (there are no illegitimate children) will not be cured by attempting to turn back time. It just ain't gonna happen. While we shouldn't neglect explaining to the kids the why and how of the nuclear family and other traditions with proven track records, as always, life happens while you're making other plans.   

We need to look reality in the eye, not fear change, and try to come up with real-world solutions that work in today's real world. I have a few ideas, but ideas are like butt...wrinkles, everybody has some, and I confess I have no world-changing revelations to offer.  

When I was a kid Wokies and Critical Theory(ies) were already loose in the world but hadn't reached critical mass. 

If a visitor from the future had arrived in a time machine and tried to convince people that in the relatively near future, the Woke Mind virus had escaped the lab (the universities) and had become a pandemic, they wouldn't believe it. 

But a time machine? Why not? Disneyland opened in '55 and included Tomorrowland where you could catch a virtual rocket to the moon; the future was so bright we were all wearing shades. In 1962, in the middle of the Space Race, JFK challenged the nation to put a man person on the moon by the end of the decade, why not? So we did.

{Who were we racing?}

Not a who, a what, the U.S.S.R., and Marxism, an ideology responsible for more deaths than all the other -ologies put together. We won, but certain diehards are hanging on in certain places Marxism being a reliable cover story for blood and power-thirsty thugs. 

And in the meantime, some frustrated intellectuals, pissed off because most of the proletariat preferred joining the bourgeoise to violent revolution, created Critical Theory since the Deplorables were/are too damn dumb to realize that everything wrong with their lives is the result of adhering to the traditional mores of Western Civilization...and caucasian, male, H. sapiens of course. 

Wokies of the world, unite!

{Fascinating, when do we get to the cool stuff?}    

Sorry, you know how I get...

In my semi-humble opinion, having enough choices, but not an excessive amount of choices, choices made without the mediation of computer/smartphone screens is why I think my analog childhood was cool.

The cultural Rules&Regs that existed at the time didn't all make sense, and some needed to be altered or even radically changed (the term Jim Crow immediately springs to mind). Still, a rough consensus is required if a household, or a country, is to run relatively smoothly and a kid can be a kid for a few minutes before being dragged to his/her/their first drag queen story hour. 

Burning down the house, or country, and starting from scratch because you believe that changing human nature, ASAP, ain't a big deal, is simply not a defensible position for any rational grownup to maintain and it's why we're in the fix we're in. 

Too many choices + too few restrictions - a sense of history = our current national mental health crisis. 

When I was a kid, other than window screens to take the edge off of the lack of air conditioning, the only video screen in our house was the one on our black-and-white TV. It came with an antenna with aluminum foil signal boosters but often stopped providing content after The Tonight Show was over. 

Music, books, video, etc used an analog format that by definition suffered from all sorts of limitations. This forced my fellow Boomers and me to spend an inordinate amount of time together in meatspace as cyberspace didn't exist yet.   

Fortunately, there were a lot of us and although almost everyone I knew had a mum and a dad — believe it or not, divorce was not something that was taken lightly, and single parents were relatively rare — we were left to our own devices for hours on end. 

For example, a lot of baseball (still the national pastime at the time) was played at/on "The Field" in my inner city neighborhood. It was just that, a field, in which well-worn paths connected the bases and a home run was a fly ball hitting the wall of the building that bordered the opposite end of The Field from home plate. 

The Field also featured an abandoned car for playing in and on. The top half of the field, which sloped down from the Boulevard of the Allies mentioned in our last episode, was more or less grass-covered and was used for all sorts of things, and there was no schedule. 

Somehow, this was accomplished without the benefit of adult supervision, and to the best of my knowledge no one was killed. Although injuries were commonplace, this was considered normal, life happens.  

Luckily, fleets of battered, rusty white vans manned by pedophiles roaming the roads in search of victims were not yet a thing. Being sent to a corner store several blocks from your house with a note (please give Mark a pack of unfiltered Kools and a loaf...) and some cash at a relatively tender age was not only reasonably safe (there were protocols in place for dealing with local ne'er-do-wells) it could be fun. 

"Hey, Mum, can I get a..."

No! and come straight home.

All the way there I'd be carefully scanning the environment for lost change. A penny could buy a penny pretzel stick, or gumball from a colorful machine that might also award you a prize. If you stumbled across the rare and elusive glass, quart soda pop bottle you could turn it in at the store for 5¢ and get five pieces of penny candy, or a full-sized candy bar, or a pack of baseball cards, or...

Everyone knew, knew of, or could easily find out who you were, or who your parents were, so you had to think twice about getting up to no good, or about disrespecting any adults you might encounter lest they turn up at your house to discuss things with your parents.

I remember this one time when... never mind. 

I could go on... I could mention more upsides from this period of my life and/or I could mention the downsides of life in the Stone Age. I could confess that I'm a bit of a hypocrite in that given a choice I wouldn't give up the internet, and many other technological advancements. 

I know how lucky I was given the terrible things that didn't happen to me, like not contracting polio for example, having been vaccinated. I believe I mentioned the power of dumb luck and good timing. 

Big BUT, as I apparently never tire of repeating, we Boomers accidentally tossed out the tot with the Jacuzzi water. 

I wish I knew of a way to fix it so that kids nowadays have a chance to be kids for a few minutes, with a full-time mum (or dad) till at least first grade and lots of other kids to play with instead of being parked in daycare, and then preschool (which incidentally, doesn't work). 

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved

  

  

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth

Image by Jo Justino from Pixabay

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, an auditory hallucination and charming literary device.

  

                     ABOUT                                              GLOSSARY 

"Ward..." (pause) "Don't you think you're being a bit hard on the Beaver?" 

                                                                                  -June Cleaver     

                                                   

Dear Gentlereaders, 

Reminiscences (say that word six times fast) of a garrulous geezer.  

My first memory. It's late August 1953 and I'm a newborn in Mercy Hospital's nursery surrounded by other newborns. I have no sense of myself other than being a point of awareness surrounded by other points of awareness. I remember thinking that the lights were too bright. 

{Somehow I doubt that.}

Me too, Dana, but although vague and fuzzy, the memory persists.

WW2 had ended only eight years previously but as I grew up, from my perspective and that of my peers, the deadliest war in human history had occurred in a far distant past. My old man was in the service but never saw combat. I had uncles who did, but I never heard them talk about it.

We're now aware that many combat veterans came home with PTSD. Being members of the Greatest Generation most just "walked it off" as best they could and set about playing their part in the unprecedented economic boom my fellow Boomers and I grew up taking for granted.

Many Boomers still do, and are oblivious/indifferent to the current economic plight of the many, perhaps most, of the three generations that have followed them

The Korean War ended the month before I was born and although I'm certain I heard about it before I saw the movie that came out in 1970, that's the first time I can remember being really aware of it.

I was very aware of a war that the US had gotten itself entangled in, the one in Vietnam that had been going on long before we got there (officially at least). This was because I was in high school at the time and facing the possibility I might be drafted after graduating.

In fact, the possibility of being killed or crippled in Vietnam — which from what I could tell at the time, and have since confirmed, was a well-meaning, deadly blunder of a war on America's part — crossed my mind quite often.

For the record, the military draft effectively ended in 1971, the year I graduated; I dodged the bullet, so to speak. Roughly 200,000 of "my fellow Americans" did not. According to statista.com 58,220 were killed, and 153,303 were wounded.

My big brother, Eddie then, Ed now, wasn't there (officially at least) in the early sixties.

Lessons (I eventually) learned:

Never underestimate the power of dumb luck.

"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." -not Leon Trotsky

{I don't think you're allowed to use the word crippled nowadays.}

Obviously you've never heard of the Grumpy Cripple.

I was brought home from Mercy Hospital, which is still there and has roots reaching back to 1843 to my first home (that I have no memory of, on Marion Street) in the Pittsburgh neighborhood we shared, which according to Wikipedia is called Uptown. This neighborhood wasn't, and isn't, up-scale, and has a number of AKAs: da Bluff, Soho, and Boyd's Hill.  

Da (Pittsburghese for the) Bluff is the only name I was aware of as a kid. This was the first of the four houses I lived in within Pittsburgh's city limits by the time I was 16 at which point we moved to the 'burbs. 

The Wikipedia article titled Uptown Pittsburgh (linked to above) contains the following passage, "...a residential community that was once flourishing during the first half of the 20th century." This is not quite accurate. 

{Mistakes in Wikipedia!?!} 

Along with most of Pittsburgh — with some notable exceptions like the Hill District next door to da Bluff which was flourishing in its own way till an urban renewal scheme destroyed it in order to save it from itself — was "flourishing" till the late '70s when the steel industry collapsed and the poop hit the fan.

Nowadays I'm prone to say the excrement hit the air conditioner, or the climate control system. Back then, I didn't personally know of anyone who had an air conditioner, or even a color TV come to think of it. But I don't wish to give a false impression, we didn't live in a ghetto of some sort.  

We had electric fans, and I knew of several people who had their "good" furniture in their "front room" sealed in hot, noisy but effective plastic slipcovers. Some people bought a cheap, tri-colored plastic screen that you could stick on your black and white TV and pretend it was a color TV.    

{Four different houses?}

Ed, Reda (no, that's not a misspelling), and their seven kids had to occasionally engage in some... um...creative geographic/financial maneuvering to keep the family fed, clothed, and sheltered. There had been other houses before I came along.  

My second home, which was literally perched on the edge of da Bluff, was on the Boulevard of the Allies (near Marion Street) and overlooked the Monongahela River.   

{Right. I think your poetic license should be revoked.}

Well, the house is no longer there, in fact, the entire block of homes has been erased and replaced by an expanded Mercy Hospital, but the rest — Boulevard of the Allies, Monongahela River — can be easily verified by a bit-o'-googlin'.

In retrospect, I had a very cool life till we moved across the semi-mighty Monongahela to the Sou'sidah Pittsburgh the summer before third grade. Not that it suddenly turned awful. Things just got a, um, little more real? A prelude to life in the real world?

I had no idea how lucky I was back then but I do now. In my defense, me and mine were subject to periodic outbreaks of Day Late Dollar Short Syndrome which often prevented me from living the life I thought I was entitled to. Yet somehow, I survived with a minimum of psychological damage.  

While I didn't resent my parents for this state of affairs, still don't, I had absolutely no appreciation of how hard they worked to give their kids the best possible life under the circumstances, I took it for granted, completely oblivious to what I now realize they must have gone through.

I have no memory of either one ever pointing out that compared to living through the Great Depression or WW2 we had it made. I thought it was fun when we had fried potatoes and sunny-side-up eggs for dinner the night before payday. I thought that being assigned toaster duty and making piles of toast with a cheap two-slice toaster, out of bread that was more air than bread for egg yolk dipping, was also fun.     

I took it for granted, and didn't really appreciate till decades later, that although at our peak there were nine of us at home my mom kept our extremely humble abodes clean and organized with minimal help from her husband or sons. 

Sorry, mum. While I'm at it, permit me to apologize to my three sisters, who were also expected to do their share of "woman's work."

In my defense again, if there were meetings of a secret society of toxic men, I was never invited, I suspect that for most men, and women, this was just the way things were at the time, the result of multiple millennia of H. sapiens lives happening to them while they were dreaming dreams and making other plans.

Well, I'm exceeding the word limit and...

{Wait-wait-wait! I've got questions, Sparky. First, what's with the warm and fuzzy Illustration up top there? Second, what's with the h at the end of Pittsburgh? Finally, what was so "cool" about being a working-class kid living on da Bluff in the 1950s in a household where there was often not quite enough money?}  

I'll answer the first two questions, but I'm saving the last one for next time, stay tuned.

The watercolor illustration above immediately made me think of my grade school textbooks when I came across it. 

I was lucky enough to be a child at the tail end of an era when it was possible to be a kid in an America that still believed in itself, and believed that kids should be sheltered from the real world as much as possible and for as long as possible.

Details next time, sta...

{Yeah, yeah, stay tuned.} 

Suffice it to say that even as a kid I would've found the pictured parents unrealistic, they're not even smoking. They don't have bags under their eyes, and they remind me of Ward and June Cleaver. But I would've been certain that someone's parents looked like that in the morning, and that someday, me and my beautiful wife would look like that in the morning. 

As for the h, pure serendipity. I remember being taught that while there was more than one Pittsburg in America, the one that I lived in was the only one spelled with an h at the end, which to this day, pleases me for no logically defensible reason. It turns out this is not technically true, but it's my truth, and I'm stickin' with it.     

Speaking of truth, urbanDICTIONARY.com defines my truth, an oft-used phrase nowadays, thusly: "Bullshit, a 'Lie.' Often associated with people who are not telling the truth, when they have no defense to back themselves up. Often the choice of words when a horrible liar is confronted with their own stupidity."

Technically, I couldn't agree more.   

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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