Happiness is 76 lbs of pulled pork......

     Well,  maybe that's a little too specific, but this blog is a little about making pulled pork and a lot about service to others.

     I'm dog tired today.  I spent the weekend helping my sister Meter Maid with an event that she has held on her property for 2 years now.  It's a Hare Scramble motocross event and her husband's farm hosts it.  She asked us to help last year in setting up and working the food concessions, and I readily volunteered. 

It's called a smoker for a reason....

This year my family was able to join me, well at least my wife and one son.  As I reflect on what we did, and then look at the bigger picture, I'm not surprised at how smooth it went, how much fun we had, and the compliments that we received about the energy and enthusiasm that we all had, and as I reflect on all who worked, I see a pattern emerges in the people that I choose to spend my time with.

     We pulled in late Friday afternoon and after unloading went straight into seasoning the Pork Butts.  My smoker can hold about 10, but I don't like to overcrowd them, so we settled on doing 8- 9.5 lb butts.  They were bone in, which I prefer for the flavor, but if I do have to cram more in, I'll settle for the boneless ones. My wife and son Nolan helped to season them with the dry rub and we had them on by 6.  I use a mixture of seasonings and one person shakes them on and another massages them into the meat.  I use wet mustard sometimes too, but didn't for these.  I like to cook them low and slow at 225 degrees, but that means they will take 14 hours or so to fully finish, but like all things good, they are worth the wait.  After we loaded the smoker, we helped to start setting up for the next day.  My sister has a gorgeous place near Ithaca, and you've probably seen pictures of it when I wrote about the annual pig roasts that she has (A Swine Time ).  My brother, the Sergeant Major, had arrived before us, and that's saying something since he lives in Ohio.  Incidentally he stayed longer than we

A thing of beauty to behold......

did too.  My sister Hummingbird and her husband came down, and soon after were joined by my brother Ace and his wife.  The family circle was complete after Meter Maid's youngest daughter arrived and with my brother Socrates' youngest son in tow, an added bonus.  We set up all that we could and then went across the street to a local watering hole for a planning session.  Not surprisingly, my sister had agreed to advertise the chicken BBQ that they were having to the people that were at her event.  It was more of a nighttime thing, and we weren't serving chicken, so they weren't really competing with our food sales.  I wouldn't have been surprised though, even if they were, if my sister Meter Maid, wouldn't have agreed to do it anyway, she is one of the most generous souls that I know.  The event ran on Mother's Day, and I know my Mom would have been proud to see her children working so closely together and in support of a sibling. 

     Predawn we awoke to put on the big coffee pots. The kitchen and serving areas resembled a beehive or an ant colony with bodies seamlessly passing over each other, with their assorted tasks and chores to accomplish before we could open.   I like to stop for a second just to watch this happen, our

Some of the overnight campers

charity golf tournament gets started in the same manner each year and it never ceases to impress me. The morning menu was simple, 2 kinds of breakfast sandwiches, fruit, and coffee.  It's good practice for when we get busier for lunch and the afternoon. The afternoon menu is a little more complicated, hamburgers, chili, hot dogs, nachos, fries (with hot melted cheese), and my brother in law invented a new dish that we called a Garbage Barge that had fries, pulled pork, melted cheese, jalapenos, and a diced hot dog on it.  We sold over 25 of those to some brave adventurous souls who tried them.   We didn't get everything right the first day, but the crowd gets bigger on day two, so we fine tuned it all in preparation for the big event. That night, after a 12 hour shift of standing on a concrete floor or serving under a tent, most of us bopped back across the street and some of the more foolish stayed there until after 1.  That made for a long day the next day.

     Day two started with a bang and we had triple the orders on the breakfast sandwiches and coffee.  I had reloaded the smoker but only with 4 more butts, which looked lonely in there compared to the

The kitchen crew

day before.  I turned the fryer on at 9 and almost never stepped away from it after that point.  For a several hour period, I had to reload the basket with fries just as soon as they were empty.  My brothers on the grill and steam table had similar experiences on their equipment. This is not to dismiss all the ladies working up front doing the order taking, running and money collecting, I'll guarantee that they all got their 10,000 steps in that day. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that a lot of my sister's friends helped us, either working the food concession or helping to staff the event in different areas.  Some donated equipment to be used, like 4 wheelers or Gators.  My niece's daughter jumped in to help staff a table on day two also.  The first day we are lucky to make back the expenses, but day two puts some money in the bank for my sister and the farm.  We busted hump all day, and we sold out of some items completely at the end like cheese and fries.  There was still a little pulled pork left when I started packing up, but I'm sure it got finished as well.  My sister had a better year financially this year as we got dialed into the crowd and the patterns, and she even tried to pay the volunteers, which elicited a laugh from them all, there were no takers. As I mentioned before, my sister's generosity is legendary and when you have an opportunity to repay some of it with some labor, you just do it.

     So wrapping it all up, our weekend was comprised of 2 grueling days of work, but when we drove

back home, we all had smiles on our faces.  Most of the folks involved spend a lot of weekends volunteering for school and civic groups, or just helping those in immediate need (my sister Hummingbird dropped off food at a funeral on her way down to the event).  When you surround yourself with people like this, it's food for your soul too.  I find, that over the years, I've slowly replaced my friends with people like this.  Those people take a little longer to find and then to develop and keep relationships with, because they are always busy doing for others, but trust me, it's worth the time and effort, just like good pulled pork. 

On the joys of home ownership....

     This morning, as the dawn  breaks, my home will be swarmed by men in pickup trucks with ladders attached.  In a few short hours, they'll tear the roof off my 100 year old house, and start replacing it with a new one.  I'll be thousands of dollars poorer by the time they get done and I wouldn't have it any other way.....

     We have both types of folks in our families, people who rent their homes and domiciles, and people who purchase them, and I've never had any interest in doing the former, when I had the ability

and financing to do the latter.  I'm a home owner and always suspected that I would be.  I'll not stake the claim that my home is an investment, because if it is, it's a poor one.  I can show receipts for tax bills, insurance, additions, home repairs and maintenance that when added to my mortgage, clearly will show a net loss from my current assessed value, but for me, it's not about investing my money wisely, it's about the quality of life and freedoms you have while you are in your prime years, and I gladly will swap that for the pile of money I could have had sitting in a bank at the end of my life.

     We were renters first.  My wife and I rented 3 different apartments in Canandaigua NY over a period of 6-7 years. The first one was an older house, split into two apartments, one atop the other.  It

had huge ceilings that were so big we had to buy a kerosene heater just to supplement the furnace that was in it, to help with heating it.  We had great neighbors at first, a policeman and his wife, but then they purchased a home and a mother with a couple of kids moved in.  I was studying one day downstairs and kept hearing a hellacious noise above me, only to discern that her kids were roller skating on the hardwood floors above me.  We were evicted from that home when it sold, so that the new owners could live in our apartment.  In the next apartment, we were the upstairs neighbors and the nice older couple, a brother and sister, happily heated our apartment for us, by turning up their heat so high in the winter.  We'd keep ours off and sometimes still have to open a window to cool down.  In our last rental place, we went back to being the lower renters and had a great couple as upstairs neighbors, until they moved out and were replaced by a less

considerate couple.  For years we shared a driveway with the first folks, seamlessly placing our 4 cars in it, with no hassles.  With the next couple it was always a fight to ask one or the other to move a car so that we could get ours in and out of the driveway.  So you can see through our experiences, what we gained from home ownership over our rental time, no roller skating kids (except our own which were much cuter when they did it), we control the temperature in the home, we can't get evicted if we pay our mortgage, we pick who we share a house with and we can put our cars anywhere in the driveway we damn well please.  Priceless.  
    
      We looked at many, many, houses before we purchased this home, but we were so anxious to have our own place that we overlooked some serious flaws in some, and had to have people that weren't emotionally invested in the process, point them out for us.  The most memorable one, was when describing a place to my brother Ace, that we were considering making an offer on, he quickly pointed out that it was directly across the street from the Ontario County Fair and Racetrack where every Saturday they race stock cars.   We lived several miles away from there at the time, and could clearly hear

when the races started from there, so being race-adjacent would have been horrible.  We still drive by another house, that we had come close to buying, and it looks so small and unappealing that we can't even recall what we liked about it.  Our eventual home, in the sleepy little hamlet of Hall NY turned out to be exactly what we needed, but that's not to say that it was perfect from the beginning or that we've made it into anything but our own.

     This house had an outbuilding kinda garage when we moved in, but the floors were rotted and it barely fit one car in it.  We knocked it down, leveled the area, and a few years later, put up our version of a garage (See - The Garaj-Mahal) and fitting our cars in it, is no longer an issue.  The house had clapboard two-tone siding when we moved in, and we had grand ideas about painting one

side of the house each summer to maintain it.  After 5 years, we hadn't gotten to painting even one side and they all were peeling, so vinyl siding seemed the way to go.  An enclosed front porch was replaced by an open-railing one, a lopsided back deck was replaced by a green composite one with a sunken hot tub, and the driveway was replaced with stone, and then blacktop just last year.  The property has seen horseshoe pits built, dilapidated, and then dug under.  It's seen swing-sets built, expanded and then demolished (The former owners had different priorities, I'm told that there is an in-ground pool that is buried in my back yard somewhere).  5 of the rooms inside have been redone, and a couple could probably use it again.  The furnace was replaced, we've seen a few hot water heaters come and go, we added electric outlets and overhead lights to most of the rooms, which necessitated an electrical panel upgrade.  I try and think these things through so when we did that, I

 set up an outside plug to run the house with a generator, but we don't even own a generator yet.  We buried all our electric lines to and from the house and while we were at it, put down some drainage pipes to keep the water flowing away from the home.  We expanded the septic system and found a crushed pipe while doing it, which quickly explained the odor we used to get in the house after a heavy rain.  Most of the windows in the house have been replaced but we've still got a few that need it.  The attic was better insulated a while ago, and my wife never forgave me for ruining a storage space for her to hoard in.  I've been using the word "We" pretty freely in these paragraphs, so I'd better come clean and tell you that all of this was done by more qualified people, my brother Ace, my brother in law Frank, and a bunch of skilled laborers.  Although I own most tools known to man, I long ago figured out the best tool for me to use, was my checkbook.  You see, I have to protect this home that we bought, it's an investment after all. 

After 3 years, I'm still pretty appless.....

     I'm on a flight at o-dark hundred this morning, so this blog will be abbreviated, maybe I should skip the commas?  This one is about my purchase of an Iphone and the limited number of apps I have put on it. 

     I bought my Iphone about three years ago, a lot of my co-workers had switched to one, or an equivalent, and I figured it was time for me to get a smarter phone.  I'm not sure, however that I am smart enough for

the phone I have, as I do very little with mine.  I currently have only a couple of applications that I have added to my phone, and a lot of the ones that were pre-installed, I have never opened.  I liked the idea of having a phone that would do more, but I struggle with the concept of spending any more time looking down at it, versus looking up at the people I'm with or the places I'm in.  Here's what I've tried so far....

     I had installed the Livestrong program last year while dieting and while I did find it useful, after I had lost the weight, I found it less necessary to track my calories on a daily basis, so it got deleted.  I have the link still on my desktop and I can see using it again for short term diets (I have my 30th high school reunion coming up this summer, so I should drop just a few lbs before that), but I didn't find it necessary to haul the extra weight of the application around on my phone, unused, anymore.  I had a similar experience with Gas Buddy, which tells you where the cheap gas is.  I


I took cooking classes from this owner, featured on Triple D

used it for a while, but at the end of the day, I'm not the guy who is going to drive an extra mile or to the other side of town to save $.02 a gallon on gas.  The cheap place was almost always the same place, so if I'm by there and am close to needing gas, I fill up, but I deleted the application as it became less used.  My wife installed the Triple D application on her phone, which tells you when you are close to a Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives location, but I never put it on mine.  I like to check those places out with my wife and family, so if I need it, I'll just use my wife's (like she plans on using the cash in my wallet instead of her own).  I probably had installed others and deleted them but I don't recall any more.  When they create an app to help me to remember everything that I forget, I'll probably add that one.

     Many of the current icons on my phone go unused, some are redundant and some I have no use for.  Why is there a separate icon for photos, for example, when you can just open up the camera application and

touch the photo on the bottom?  It literally saves no steps.  When I open photo, I have to then choose camera roll to do anything, and when I open camera I have to choose a picture and start flipping through them.  I do take pictures on my phone regularly, but I don't do a lot with them after I take them, which makes me wonder why I take pictures regularly on my Iphone?  I have a Notes icon next to a Reminder icon and they seem redundant too.  I honestly just noticed the reminder icon when I started this blog, but I've entered things in the Notes section to remind me of things, so I'll say it again, I may not be smart enough for this phone.  I have a Game Center icon that I never opened until today and it thinks I'm my son Dan for some reason.  It may be Cloud related, but I've chosen not to get on the Cloud, so I really can't explain it.  The Newsstand icon goes unused, mine tells me that I can go and download magazines from the App store. Do I

Where I'll probably be after my wife reads that last line

really need an icon to tell me things I already know?  This seems really redundant, I downloaded a live application called a wife, for that,  26 years ago (only kidding dear, I'd be lost without you!).  I have no interest in using Passbook for travel or Stocks for checking stocks or even Itunes to use my phone to listen to music so those icons are useless to me.  I have exactly one song downloaded, it's the one for my ringtone and that took me years to customize. 

     I have recently downloaded Yelp and I have used it a few times, however, I find I get better information from the places that I eat.  My M.O. is to go to a good place and dine the first night, tip big, and then ask my server or bartender what other places in town are worth checking out.  They generally have the best information and after you've spent money in their place, they have no reason not to share it.  As I tend to travel in an area for 3 days, and repeat my visits,

thus far, this has been an more dependable way for me to find good restaurants.  My wife put Google Maps on for me, but I like my Tom-Tom, so I'll probably only use it if Tom-Tom doesn't work or it gets stolen.  I've thought about downloading a flashlight, but since I'm a Boy Scout leader, when I need a flashlight, I tend to have one.  I thought about downloading an app for tracking my wines, but I would have to enter the data while dining with others and I try and turn my phone off during these times, so it wouldn't be very helpful.  I regularly use the Contacts app, and I try and enter business cards in as soon as I get them.  If I'm at a great restaurant or hotel, I'll enter it in there and put a note in about why I liked it. A few weeks ago, while in Albany, I entered a great place to eat that was right in the lobby of a hotel I really liked (they even had a relaxation room with steam, tanning and massage).  That is invaluable information to me.  If there is a cheaper room rate to register under, then that gets entered too.  I use the  mail icon regularly, the settings button when I get on planes, and the clock button for an occasional alarm or stopwatch.  I text with the Message icon, but not very well.  Lastly, I'll use Safari to do a quick Internet search, but won't just surf the web on my phone, I'll wait to do that on my laptop later.  That's the whole gambit of what I have, have had, use and don't use on my phone. 

     Why do I resist the use of the technology so much?  It comes back to the old adage, just because you can do something, doesn't mean you have to.  In my business and in my life, I'll take a live conversation over

an e-mail and especially a text, any day.  It especially doesn't help when my phone auto corrects things that aren't incorrect to begin with. I meet people every day that are experts on something, so I take advantage of that and ask about what they do, and try and learn from them.  It's not as efficient as Google, but I feel connected to someone and it's usually mutually beneficial.  I limit the use of my phone and because I do, I'm not dependant on it.  I don't twitch when I hear an e-mail tone or ring, and I can get a text, buzz or beep without my feeling the need to check it out immediately.  I did fine in the era prior to instantaneous communication and instant self gratification and I suspect I'll do fine in the next era, whatever that one brings too. 

I could live vicariously through my lost jackets.

      My mother would be proud of me, well, maybe half-proud, is that a thing?  I always remember to take a jacket with me, it's remembering to bring it back every time that I struggle with. In this blog, I wonder about all those jackets, that I've left behind, and what kind of life that they are living now.....

     This wasn't an issue when I was a kid, I don't remember losing my jackets then, of course, back then I only had 2 coats.  I had a winter coat for winter, and a jean jacket for all non-winter seasons and as

I live in Western NY, they split their time equally.  I wore that jean jacket well after it went out of style, and I was sad the day I looked into the mirror and I had to recognize that it no longer fit my growing frame.  Even then, I retired it to the back of my closet but I don't think it's there anymore (I blame my wife, she hides my things), I have a vague recollection of giving it to someone I know, like my daughter or son, or nephew, but that could just be a false memory as a coping mechanism I developed due to the loss of the jean jacket, it was just that cool.  The first jacket that I remember losing was in a nightclub in Atlanta GA, and by then, thanks for my generous company, I had a half dozen light coats, wind-breakers and jackets. 

     I was out with a bunch of my coworkers, people from all over the country, who worked with me as foodservice pie salespeople (It's weird, right?).  It was late, and I carried that light windbreaker from bar to bar, sitting it next to me in big leather booths, until

finally one club had a coat rack.  I put it on there when I walked by the coat rack, but we left by another exit, so I had no visual clue to remind me to claim it, and so it got lost.  A few bars later I remembered that I had taken a jacket, but by then it wasn't feasible to navigate back, so it remains lost.  Since I lost it in a nightclub, I imagine that it has had an interesting life, being thrown over the shoulders of scantily clad beautiful women (If you've never been to Atlanta, trust me, you can't even picture how pretty the girls in that town are, and they do try to out-do each other when they dress to go out), listening to 10 years worth of modern music, and learning the latest dances.    Last

year I learned how to Dougie, I wonder if that jacket did?  I lost another jacket kinda like that in Alex Bay, where after a long night of bar hopping, I was headed back to our resort in a limo with a bunch of people and a guy riding in the limo was really giving me the creeps, pestering a girl that had been over-served.  As we exited, I offered to escort her back to her door, and she accepted.  I made sure she got into the room and listened for her to throw the deadbolt, and then headed off to mine, but my jacket remained in the limo. Chivalry is not dead, but it will lose you a jacket or two in the process.

     I've lost 2 jackets at the Sand Bar in Canandaigua, though they really aren't lost, I know right where they are, I just realize that I'm not getting them back.  My wife and I were leaving there one

Sand Bar opens May 1

night and ran into a poker buddy of mine with his wife.  It was getting later and chillier, and she hadn't taken a coat with her, so I offered mine up, figuring that I'd get it back at my twice a month poker group.  Shortly thereafter, however, I started playing less due to my travel schedule, and then I heard that couple was divorcing.  You'd be amazed how hard it is to slip "Did you get my jacket back?" into a conversation when your buddy is telling you about his soul-crushing divorce and ongoing custody dispute.  That jacket, I imagine, hangs in the front closet of where my friend used to live and now has witnessed the weekly transferring of kids from one house to the other, many times over. I'm not sure I want to live vicariously through that

one.   I've seen her out a few times and thought about asking to come over to get it, but as I think that through, I always get held hostage at the threshold with her telling me what a jerk my buddy was, so I'm simply not getting that one back. I lost a nice black Nike windbreaker to my sister Hummingbird down there one night too, and she simply refuses to give it back.  Admittedly it looks pretty good on her, so I've written that one off.  I'll bet you that windbreaker gets out a lot, she'd married to a fireman and they love dining out in Rochester, which is something I never think to do. She raves about one place, Good Luck, and though I've never been there, I'll bet my coat has. 

  My last few lost coats were lost to family too.  My son Dan started borrowing one of my black mid-season Reebok coats while he was in high school and it ended up following him to college.  You would think that, that would be the coat to live vicariously through, but I think my current coats get out more than that one does, it seems to spend a lot of time on the Internet and gaming.  He's young

My Dad's coat

though, so there is still hope.   My wife has a coat or two of mine, but since we spend so much time together, those aren't ones that I would want to live vicariously through, but I do travel a lot too, so feel free to tell me what she has been up to while I'm gone (Smart money is on laundry and track meets) One of my prized coats was just returned to me from my sister, She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.   It's a 30-year old green workman's coat with a red quilted liner with paint specs on it that was my Dad's.  He wore it in his electrical, plumbing and heating business, and I likely left it at her house one day.  It used to smell like paint and plumber's putty.   She kept it for a while, but she had a better conscience than Hummingbird, so she returned it recently.  It smelled of family outings like hikes, bike rides, sledding, and fall boat rides.   I'm not sure that smell will come out, and I'm not sure it is supposed to either. 
    

I want to help the faceless on Facebook

     This week I examine the phenomenon of joining a social media site that has face in it's name, but then never posting a picture of your own visage. 

     I think Alanis Morisette would find it ironic that I have over 50 Facebook friends (wait for it, that's not the ironic part), that currently have pictures of inanimate objects, their pets, their kids,

cartoons, or other people posted as their profile picture instead of themselves.  I've probably been guilty of doing this occasionally myself, with things like a Sapphire bottle or a panoramic background, but I also have friends who never post pictures with themselves in them, and no one can say that I'm guilty of that.  I'm not sure of the motivation behind never posting a face picture, I can imagine that there are the small few who are afraid of Facebook's facial recognition software, but I would guess that the vast majority of these people are just unhappy with some feature or combination of features and therefore don't share their faces with the world, and that I find unfortunate, because it assumes a shallowness in others, that I don't think exists.  I'll take this in a different direction now, to lighten the mood a little, but be warned, I'll close with some deeper thoughts.  I'd like to batch people together now and remark and why I don't like what they post....

     The pet people come first.  You can't make this stuff up, but I swear, this morning as I was

counting the profile pictures of my faceless friends, I had one that had a cat posted as the profile picture come up right next to one that had yarn posted as the profile picture, and it took every bit of my self control, of which I have little, to not suggest them to each other as friends.  I like cats and dogs, and fish, but I dislike seeing them as Facebook profile pictures in part because the picture rarely matches the sentiments of the accompanying status updates, and I dislike incongruity.  "Had a rough day at work, why do people have to act that way?" comes up next to a picture of a fish floating in a tank.  Is that the fish's sentiments or yours?  Am I defending humanity to the likes of fish or I am consoling a friend when they've had a bad day?  I get so confused.   We all have FB friends who speak from their profile pictures point of view, but how do you know when they are doing it and when they aren't? There is also the privacy concern thing to consider, would your dog appreciate Facebook's facial recognition software having several shots of him for any mailman to look at, or any street camera to capture and compare?  I don't think that they would, I've seen where they put their noses, and it's not pretty.  

     Sports fans, I do understand more, but they don't exactly show that they are multifaceted do they?  These folks  must know that it invites anyone who isn't a Yankees fan or Bruins or that thinks their

I wouldn't dare....

football team all belongs in jail to disagree with every other thing that they post, right?  I'm sure that one of these people has posted an update on their own children's sports accomplishments like, "Becca scored a goal in the big game!" next to a sport's team's logo, only to have someone argue the point with things like "yeah, but her defense was weak and her percentages for the year are still low...."   I like that people support their favorite teams, but I'll still take the picture of them wearing the team jersey over a corporate logo any day.

     Wilson Syndrome or the puzzle people come next.  In the TV series "Home Improvement" there was a running gag with the neighbor Wilson whose face was never shown in it's entirety, mostly

obscured by the tall privacy fence, and I have FB friends that do this.  I get profile pics of just a small part of them, an eye, an ear, cleavage, and I'm not sure what to do with those.  I will admit I read the status updates more closely when accompanied by the cleavage shot because  they seem more intelligent to me, but I'm always wondering if I should be printing each part and saving them up to make a picture of the whole person? Should I be messaging the other friends and trading, like " I have the right ear, do you have the big toe? "    My office would be full of partial portraits of people, mostly women, if I did this, and frankly would look like a stalker's shrine and create suspicion with the authorities, so I resist this urge too, but it leaves me unsatisfied.   To carry the Wilson analogy to it's logical conclusion, I'll compare the actor who played Wilson, Earl Hindman's career, to the actor who played Lisa on Home Improvement, Pamela Anderson's career and I think very quickly you see that posting a part of you doesn't compare with

Of course I found a reason to post this

 posting all of you.  I've seen Pam on Baywatch, Dancing with the Stars, in Playboy, with Tommy Lee, and in VIP and Barb Wire, but I've never seen Earl again. 

     I'll batch the rest of the posts in a game I like to call FB Bingo.  You'll get some of these profile pics on a random card and you have to fill it from your friend list.  I would include the following......

     Cat, Dog, Fish, Sports logo, sports stick (bat, hockey or lacrosse stick, etc), beer bottle, beach, bridge picture, Mickey Mouse, smart phone, overly attached girlfriend meme, sunset, dice, birds at a feeder, political slogan, sexy shoe, TV shot, album cover (not allowed by me unless you are on the album cover), bar sign, duckface, cigar, kid's artwork, black and white photo, tree, statue, Betty Boop, Spongebob, skull, flower, sci-fi character, sports car, angel, pot leaf, truck, and a picture of a guy with a girl on each arm. 

    I'll close this week with these thoughts.  I've been as heavy as 50lbs more than my high school

weight at times in my life, my forehead is growing and my hairline receding, I've never had good fashion sense, and yet I've shared each of these stages with my FB friends, to not do so would seem disingenuous to me.  I viewed a series of pictures of a friend's vacation with her children recently and as I noticed that she was absent in all she posted, I could only hope she had taken some with her in them, and chose not to post them.  How sad would it be if your children only had photos of themselves, without you in them, when you pass away?  How comforting would that be for them?  In my family, my wife takes the vacation pictures, so she's not in as many of them, and I need to start correcting that and documenting her participation in our family and our lives.  I politely request that you do too, we are less judgmental than you think, even your cat would agree.

The only acceptable album cover, is with you on it.

Some things that scare me.....

     I had no ideas for a blog this am, and then one was provided for me.  I'll stretch a simple incident into a 4 paragraph rant, or my name isn't the Ongion. 

     Few things scare me, but this morning I'll admit, it was a bright yellow Easter chick with bunny ears window cling that did it.  After I rose and as I started the coffee, the outside motion detector

Pretty scary, isn't it?

lights on my back deck went on.  As the man of the house, it's my responsibility to investigate these things to keep my family safe, so I went to the french doors that lead to the deck and parted the venetian blinds to peer out, and came face to face with a window cling that my wife had put there.  At 4:33am I had no expectation of coming face to face with anyone or thing, history had taught me that it likely was a neighborhood cat or maybe even a fox, or even just the wind and some leaves, so when the window decal was right there, in my face, unexpected, I was scared for a second.  It was only a second as my brain processed what it was, and I don't expect a long term phobia or anything to develop because of the encounter, I was just startled for a second, but in that second I knew some fear. 

     I won't declare myself brave here, but I will say that I don't get scared easily as I tend to approach things from a position of logic, so I quickly dismiss things that are illogical or improbable.  I grew up watching Star Trek in the 70's and I gained that trait by emulating Mr. Spock.  I fly often, but am not

scared of crashing, because I know the statistics bear out that I'm far more likely to die heading to the airport in my car, than dying due to a plane crash.  Even in heavy turbulence, I only have to remind myself that over 75% of crashes are survivable too, so I can go back to reading my book.  After 9/11 many people were afraid to fly, travel or even go out.  I, on the other hand, flew into New Jersey the week following, had a great Disney vacation that winter, with slow crowds in the park, and got some fantastic tickets for a Broadway play due to soft sales.  I didn't hesitate for a second on these decisions, because I knew logically that we were more prepared to prevent a similar attack the weeks following 9/11 due to all

Roseland's Skyliner, now in Altoona PA

the restrictions and checks put into place.  Similarly, I will try any thrill ride in an amusement park once.  They are tested regularly and most deaths on them come from people disabling or disregarding the safety systems put into place.  As a youth, I'll admit a moment of regular panic that would come as I rode the roller coaster at Roseland Park.  The weird thing is, that it wasn't the big coaster, the Skyliner that scared me, it was the kiddie coaster that did.  At one point during that ride the coaster would take a sudden dip to the left and it felt like the car was going to come off the track and fall towards the lake, and it got me almost every time.  So, you can startle me, but scaring me is harder to do. 

     In Myrtle Beach last week, I paid good money to go through the Ripley's Spook House, and my only fear during it was tripping in the pitch black darkness that they had you navigate.  I've done my

share of these and never have been scared in them. The same goes for the ghost walks that I've paid for, and for walks in the woods at night. Barking dogs and snakes tend not to scare me, although I'll give them a wide berth if they act aggressively, that's just common sense, not fear.  I'm not a huge fan of spiders, but I'll manage them, but admittedly hate to encounter them unexpectedly while showering, that's just creepy.  So what things do scare me?  Not death, it will come when it does, and I believe I'll live as long as God intends me to, so no fear there.  Some of the only things that scare me are the ones that I have no control over, like the possible breakdown of our society.  This country was founded because the populace felt that they were being overburdened with taxes and that they had no say in the process by which they were governed.  As a conservative, living in NY, this statement is as

Now, I'm scared

true today as in 1776, so is a rebellion possible?  Sure.  So is a natural disaster like a meteor strike or an earthquake, so I'm more impressed by people that prepare for these (preppers), than I am worried about them as a group.  I don't find their actions threatening at all, they are just preparing for what they think are events, likely to occur.  That sounds logical to me.  Our crushing national debt is a big fear of mine, and relating it to a roller coaster, the ride has no end in sight, and it's increasing in speed within a infrastructure not designed to maintain it.  We are watching other countries and even cities within the US now coming off their rails, and no one wants to take on the task of fixing it, they just want to slap a new coat of paint on it, and tell us how it's not as bad as it looks.  To not fear this, would be illogical, even to Mr. Spock. 

Lessons from my Father - part 3

The last part in a 3-part blog on life lessons learned from my Father, Paul Cooper Yarger.  While he may have left this earth, I know at least some of his teachings remain.

Lessons from my Father - part 3

Spare the rod and spoil the child, but use the rod sparingly too - I grew up with parents that spanked their kids.  Misbehaving would earn you a trip to Mom and Dad's bedroom where the punishment was usually administered, and while a firm hand was the normal method of delivery, a wooden spoon, a paddle or a belt could be used as well.  As weird as the next sentence sounds, especially in 2013, I was never abused in my life.  Yes, I was hit with a belt, a paddle and a spoon but it was always done by a loving parent

who was administering a deserved punishment for some egregious behavior on my part.  Sure, in the moments immediately following a spanking, I would mutter and curse and swear how I hadn't deserved the punishment, but even as the redness on my posterior faded, so would my misplaced anger and it would be replaced by the inevitable realization that I had earned the spanking, and that it would likely happen again without some adjustment on my part.  That's not abuse, that's parenting.  My father understood this and I'm sure that he grew up in a household  where corporal punishment was administered, but I suspect that my father used it less than his father, and I used it less than my father.  My father would vary his routine, so that you never knew whether you would be punished by spanking, or when, or with what.  It wasn't uncommon for him to line the perpetrators up, spank the first few only and then send the rest packing with an admonition of "Let that be a lesson to you".  It was a lesson, it showed the quality of mercy and that the threat of punishment can be equal to the actual punishment itself.  He believed in Birthday Spankings too, where he would give you a spanking for each year lived of your life, and I never knew my dad to count

these correctly the first time or to not finish with "And one to grow on".  My wife thinks the practice is barbaric, but I never did.  My father was also known to occasionally throw in the "Gotcha non-spanking" where he would call you down from your bedroom in the same voice that normally accompanied a spanking, only to offer you a surprise of some kind, a visiting relative, or even ice cream.  I remember a particular incident in Boston where we all filed down expecting a deserved spanking only to be given ice cream, which we all ate with one eye firmly affixed to my father, not really knowing if he was softening us up first or not.  Dad had to spank less as each kid shared his/her horror stories with the next and due to the power of adolescent exaggeration, he attained Keyser Soze status (The Usual Suspects, rent it if you haven't seen it) in both our family and in the neighborhood.  Yes, my dad was loved, but he was also feared.  The right look from my father could quiet a whole room within seconds.  Later in life, when you knew all the rules of the house and my parent's expectations, a look of disapproval could be an even more effective way to communicate.  I know that I would trade 1,000

The infamous Keyser Soze

spankings for every time I got one of those looks from my father, and I suspect almost every sibling I have, would too.  I spanked my children and you never know if you get the punishment part in proportion to the lesson part right, but I do recall one time, almost immediately after spanking Nolan, where he crawled into my lap to snuggle with me.  That day I got it right. 

It's OK to have a girlfriend or two - To my knowledge my dad lived a completely faithful life as it relates to the marriage to my mother, however, I never knew him to shy away from close relationships with other women, and he found benefits in them.  He flirted shamelessly with my mother's sister, he danced with other women, and he had more

Did you really think I wouldn't use a pic like this?

breakfasts, over time, with our family friend Glenda, than I think he ever had with my mother.  The trick was that the interactions always supplemented his relationship with his spouse, it never supplanted it.   My mother would much rather have dad take his girlfriend out for a 6 am breakfast than to rouse her to get up and ready before 8am.  I suspect that my mother liked it when her husband got attention from other woman at gatherings because she knew where he'd be at the end of that evening and every other one, snuggled up and snoring next to her.  When we were on family trips, and you would see a pretty girl jogging, dad would almost always give 2 short beeps of the horn as we passed her, but I never remember him ogling the girl, he would always be giving a sideways glance at my mother, awaiting her reaction.  I have an exercise girlfriend who helps to keep me in better shape (yes, round is a shape) and I'm sure my wife never minds me going off to be with her either, because she has my mom's instincts for picking men. 

Finish what you start and above all protect the honor and integrity of your name - My Dad wasn't a quitter.  He was taught that if something was worth starting, it was worth finishing, so I never knew him to

A typical 4th degree Knight

give up on a project or job until it was completed to his satisfaction and he passed that lesson along.  I recall him sitting with my mother one time talking about a job that he had bid that had gone sideways and he ended up making little or no money on it. He was a heating, plumbing and electrical contractor at the time, and while it was a hard thing to do, he felt it was the right thing to do, so he completed the job at the agreed upon price and learned his lesson from it.  It was that kind of honest dedication that kept the phone ringing many, many years after he had shut down his business.  When he joined the Knights of Columbus he was as active a member as you could be, in spite of his many other obligations and rose to the order of the 4th degree.  When he worked in a union shop, he became the steward or the union representative.  When we started a job or a sport, or joined an organization, we were encouraged to participate fully and to rise the highest level that we could.  One winter morning I agreed to shovel a neighbor's driveway and negotiated a pittance to do it and instantly regretted it, as I started the job.  I tried to come back in, but Dad had me bundle up and go back and finish what I had agreed to do.  Dad felt that it was your obligation and duty to do no less than your best and he felt it reflected on your honor and integrity and your good name if you didn't.  This was the last lesson he passed along to his children as they prepared to depart his house.  Dad gave a plaque to each of this boys (not sure if the girls got one too?) with a poem penned by Edgar Guest, the people's poet, on it.  To comment after such an eloquent and moving piece would only detract from it, so I'll simply finish this blog, about the lessons learned from my dad, with it. 

Your Name

You got it from your father,

t'was the best he had to give,

And right gladly he bestowed it

It's yours, the while you live.

You may lose the watch he gave you

and another you may claim,

But remember, when you're tempted,

to be careful of his name.

 

It was fair the day you got it,

and a worthy name to bear,

When he took it from his father

there was no dishonor there.

 

Through the years he proudly wore it,

to his father he was true,

And that name was clean and spotless

when he passed it on to you.

 

Oh there's much that he has given

that he values not at all,

He has watched you break your playthings

in the days when you were small.

You have lost the knife he gave you

and you've scattered many a game,

But you'll never hurt your father

if you're careful with his name.

It is yours to wear forever,

yours to wear the while you live,

Yours, perhaps some distant morn,

another boy to give.

And you'll smile as did your father,

with a smile that all can share,

If a clean name and a good name

you are giving him to wear.

 

- Edgar A. Guest