Up In Smoke

As I have mentioned before, I will be celebrating my 60th birthday this year.

I used to joke about being old. Now I am. I think.

Supposedly sixty is the new forty. I don't know who came up with that, probably somebody who just turned sixty.

But as you turn sixty, you start talking a lot about the past.

To me, the biggest difference between "back then" and "Now" is that "back then" everybody smoked cigarettes.

When I say everybody smoked cigarettes, I mean everybody.  Even preachers.

In Southern Evangelical terms, preachers were not supposed to smoke because the body is the temple of the Lord. It also had something to do with a holy rhyme we were given:  I don't smoke and I don't chew and I don't go with girls that do.

But still, there were some denominations which didn't care if the preachers smoked or not. I know this makes me a hick, but it always bothered me to see a man of cloth smoking a cigarette.

Legend has it that a famous Baptist preacher, J.D. Gray, smoked cigars (or as my Uncle Jimmy called them:  "Cee-gars").   I guess it was okay because Brother J..D. was tall and he was funny.  That means a lot in some circles.

Everybody's parents smoked.  My parents smoked. My parents loved smoking. I think it was their hobby.

Old Man Manis smoked Winstons.  They tasted good like a cigarette should.  Sometimes he would walk a mile for a Camel.  He was not above a pack of Lucky Strikes every now and then. The pack had written on the bottom: "L.S.M.F.T". Translated: "Lucky Strikes Means Fine Tobacco".

Inez usually shared whatever brand the old man was into, although she did eventually get into a brand called Doral.  One time she got really wild and got into Virginia Slims, which was a "woman's cigarette".  Steve Martin, that wild and crazy guy, said each Virginia Slims cigarette had breasts.

People smoked everywhere. At work. At restaurants. At bars. At stadiums. At church, except not during worship. But that few minutes before church, the good deacons would be standing around outside taking one last puff.

You could smoke in the hospital, except while performing surgery. Maybe. (Doctor: "Scapel". Nurse: "Scapel".  Doctor: "Pall Mell"  Nurse: "Pall Mell")

You could even smoke at school. My high school, Wheeler, had a designated area called "The Smokehole", which I wrote a best selling book about it and as luck would have it is still for sale.

You can't do that anymore. I'm not certain that it is legal to smoke on earth anymore.

On top of that, a carton of cigarettes cost, at Wal-Mart, $29.39. That's an expensive habit.

This has led to the creation of something known as Electronic Cigarettes or E-Cigarettes which "are battery-operated devices that people use to inhale an aerosol, which typically contains nicotine (though not always), flavorings, and other chemicals." 

It is better known as "vaping" and is considered "less harmful" because "a study found that some toxic substances have levels 9 to 450 times lower than in regular cigarette smoke".

It is also, generally, cheaper than smoking cigarettes. Clark Howard could probably vape for $387.00 a year if he used his Costco card.

Vaping is still rather new and the long term consequences haven't been determined. And it still looks kind of New Age-ish to see somebody walking around, sucking on a pen and then watching that person disappear in a cloud that smells like waffles.

I don't know what it is about smoking, but people just like it. John Prine says that when he gets to heaven he's "going to smoke a cigarette that's nine miles long".  He'll probably have to fight Old Man Manis and Inez first.

 

Goodbye, Grumpy

In September of 2012, Bryan Bundesen posted a picture of his sister's cat named Tarder Sauce. The cat looked like she was frowning. She was soon named "Grumpy Cat' and a thousand memes were born.

According to CNN, "Grumpy Cat garnered 1.5 million followers on Twitter, 2.4 million on Instagram and 8.5 million on Facebook.".  CNN also notes "She was basically the Kim Kardashian of house pets".  That's a terrible thing to say about a house pet.

Grumpy Cat was a published author. Just a guess, I don't think she actually wrote the book. I mean, I've never seen a cat send a text message much less write a book. In any event, Grumpy Cat's book hit number seven on The New York Times How-To-Do bestseller list.

I have written three books myself which are still available on Amazon. I've been outdone by a cat.

Grumpy Cat also met a lot of famous people. She met Stan Lee, the late, great founder of Marvel Comics, J-Lo, and Hulk Hogan.  By the way, my wife says she saw Hulk Hogan in a Ryan's Steakhouse one time so she and Grumpy Cat have something in common.

All I'm saying is that Grumpy Cat did pretty well for herself. Her owners dispute a Huffington Post report that says Grumpy Cat brought in $100 million in 2014. However, the owners did win a $710,000.00 in a copyright infringement case in 2018. Not bad, for a cat.

When Grumpy Cat died the other day, she received an obituary in The New York Times. I can't think of any other cat that got an obit in The Old Grey Lady.  Morris The Cat, maybe? (For you younger folks, Morris The Cat was a cat used in several years worth of cat food commercials and was sort of a '70's version of Grumpy Cat).

Here's how the newspaper of record reported on the death of Grumpy Cat.

"Grumpy Cat, the ubiquitous internet celebrity whose permanent scowl spoke for all of us in our darkest moments, died in the arms of her “mommy” on Tuesday, her family said on Friday. She was 7. Her death was due to the Trump Administration along with complications from the passage of  Georgia's  Heartbeat bill and the Alabama abortion ban"

 Sorry, the last sentence I just made up. But, come on, "whose permanent scowl spoke for all of us in our darkest moments"?  Isn't that just a little bit much?  She was a cat. Cats are very libertarian. They speak, or meow, for themselves.

Grumpy Cat died from complications of a urinary tract infection.  We are dealing with some of that now.

Our Grumpy Cat is named Gracie and she is 21 years old. You might remember her from a previous post I wrote several years ago. https://manisville.blogspot.com/2013/02/gracie.html

We got Gracie from a no-kill cat shelter for our son for his seventh birthday. Although she hasn't written any books and never had one meme created about her, she's been a valued if a not bossy member of the family.

She has a nasty urinary tract infection right now. We took her to the Vet a couple of weeks ago. We got a call.

The Vet said that Gracie had a mass on her lungs.  It looked like cancer and they wanted to send the x-rays off to a specialist.  The specialist said it was "calcification" and probably wasn't cancer. But, she still had that UTI and she received an antibiotic for it.

But for now, we are watching the slow decline of this little cat, who we have fed and taken care of for so many years.  One of my friends from high school noted that a third of my life has been spent with this cat.

Gracie mainly wants to sleep or sit in my lap and sleep.  I could have sworn she liked watching "Stranger Things" with us, but I know that is simply personification.  I think.

I would like to think that somewhere in that feline brain, Gracie realizes that she won a form of the Cat Lottery. You get all your meals taken care of and you don't have to worry about predators. But, you know, she's just thinking about her next meal and if that fat guy is ever going to sit down.

So, goodbye, Tarder Sauce. Gracie will see you soon. Maybe next month. Maybe next year.

No Place Like Home

My son and his wife moved into their new house last week.

Yes, my son is now one of us: those with a mortgage.  So, in a little while, he'll have something else: equity.  Even though there are positives to living a rental life:  you don't have to make the repairs yourself and if you live in an apartment you don't have to mow a yard, it doesn't beat having equity.

My wife and I lived in an apartment for three years.  I loved it. Didn't mow a yard once in that time. However, the apartment was flooded, twice.

There were the occasional loud parties. And my upstairs neighbors.

We lived on the ground floor and the neighbors on the second floor were newlyweds like we were.

Around two o'clock in the morning, usually on a Saturday or a Sunday, we would hear "Thud. Thud. Thud, Thud. Thud. THUDTHUDTHUD" followed by a giggle. Ah, young love.

Being the wise man I am, of course my son sought my advice when buying a house. I told him, "Never buy a house that has a mechanic's lien on it".  It is advice like that gets me the cool Father's Day presents.

When my wife and I bought our first home, it was in a subdivision being built by a builder that had hair like a professional surfer.  It was blonde and kind of shaggy.  That was my second bit of advice to my son:  Never buy a house from a builder that has blonde, shaggy hair.  I really should write a book about it.

We met him at the closing and we gave him the list of items we noticed for the "punch list". That is, things around the house that need to be completed or corrected. By law, the builder is responsible for corrections made on a newly built house.

One of the corrections on the punch list was on the walkway from the driveway to the front porch. It had a size 11 footprint in the concrete.*  Yes, I know, picky, picky, picky.

About a week or so after we moved in, the shelf in the closet of our bedroom fell because it was not screwed into studs, but simply screwed into the sheetrock.  I called the subdivision's superintendent and asked him to go and fix it.  I must say he did. That was the only thing he fixed.

Two weeks later, the builder declared bankruptcy and skipped town. He took the superintendent, who seemed like a well-meaning guy and the superintendent's sorry son-in-law who keyed my car (I asked him when they were going to fix something).  This winner was also a Peeping Tom that saw our next door neighbor's wife naked.

The hits just kept coming at that place.  We bought a corner lot and put the mailbox next to the driveway, which was another street, not the actual address street.  No mail.  Finally, I had to call the post office and spoke to the Post Master.

The Post Master said it was against the law to deliver the mail in the mailbox at my driveway. The mailbox would have to be moved to in front of the house for it to be legal.  I am not making this up.

I told the PostMaster that I lived at 460 Holt Road in Marietta, Georgia for 9 years and our mailbox was on Beckwith Trail.  The PostMaster said that my parents and their mailbox were in violation of the law.

If you can believe it, this conversation ended with both of us screaming at each other. The Post Master said, again, this is the truth because I am not making any of this up, the fire department would not be able to find my house in case of a fire if my mailbox stayed by my driveway.  I replied, in a loud voice, that I thought the flames shooting out of my house would be a big enough clue.

I moved the mailbox.

Which means the mail was finally delivered and then came the cherry on top of this new homeowners dessert nightmare: a mechanic's lien.

When builders skipped town, they don't pay their subcontractors. The subcontractors are forced to hire an attorney to slap liens on the houses in the subdivision that the builder didn't pay. The idea is to somehow pressure the builder (or somebody) to pay the subcontractors because nobody will buy a house that has a lien on it.

My mom was still alive back then and I told her about the mechanic's lien. She said, "Alan, how many times have I told you not to buy a house that has a mechanic's lien on it.?!"   Being the loving son, I said, "None" and then Mom insisted that she told me in some great real estate seminar that she taught one day when we went to Burger Chef to pick up lunch.

When we closed on the house, the house was free and clear of liens, which meant that the liens were exhausted.  So, the builder kept his money. The subcontractor didn't get any money. I got a lot of hassle and had to prove the house was free and clear of liens when we closed. Plus, I got a free real estate seminar from my mom.  The only person who got paid was the subcontractor's attorney.  Funny how that works out that way.

Eight years later we sold that house.  A few weeks after we moved, we went back to see one of our old neighbors.

The guy we sold the house to moved the mailbox to right beside the driveway.

I pray there is never a fire.

*This may come as a big surprise, but that footprint was still there when we moved from the house. It was a great conversation piece.