Day 8 in the Heartland

One more day and a wake up. Tomorrow I wake up, put my sandles and shorts in my bag, get out my coat and sweater and head back to Seattle. I have many stories to tell - many photos.
Tonight we had my big send off at my brother's house with take-out BBQ and some white reisling wine. White wine goes ok with BBQ in that it serves to provide much needed alcohol to the system.
We spent some time at dinner discussing "Modern Family". My sister-in-law's son is best friends with Eric Stonestreet, actor who won an Emmy for supporting actors on the show recently. Mom had never seen it. Well, she had seen it, but at my brother's house. She hadn't actually watched it as a matter of choice at her house. Her TV is hard-wired to FOX.
I went home with mom to spend my last night there and we were going to watch "Modern Family" on our own.

"What channel is Modern People on?"
"ABC mom what."
"What?"
"ABC what."
"What?"
"ABC."
We get to the show and turn the volume to 29.
"Well, I just am not getting this."
"Stay with it awhile and watch what."
"What?"
"STAY WITH THE PROGRAM AWHILE AND WATCH."
"Ok. The people are talking too fast."
So, I explain who is related to who, and which one is Eric. And we watch for awhile. The windows are open in the house and driver's by outside on the street look for the drive-in theatre which they can hear through their closed car windows but can't see.
The show concludes.
"Well, I just didn't get any of that."
"You might have to watch it more to get into it, mom what."
"What?"
"YOU MIGHT HAVE TO WATCH MORE OF IT TO UNDERSTAND."
"Well, I just don't get any of that."
We see "Cougar Town" start and I tell mom that it's a lame show and I don't like it and she says 'Oh," and continues to watch it. I didn't say anything and endured the first 10 minutes of it.
"Well, I'm still just not getting this. Now they've changed some of the people, it's just confusing."
"Mom, we've been watching 'Cougar Town' what."
"What?"
"WE'RE WATCHING ANOTHER SHOW NOW."
"This isn't Modern People?"
"No, it's 'Cougar Town' what"
"What?"
"IT'S COUGAR TOWN."
"Oh. Well, do you like it?"
"I thnk it's lame what."
"What?"
"I THINK IT'S LAME."
"Well why didn't you say you wanted to watch the game?"
We watched a few innings of the KC Royals game and called it a night.
I leave in 10 hours.

It's what we did

This place used to be a beehive of activity back when I was a kid. Dad would drive us north of town to watch the "wheat dump" in late June early July. Acres and acres of wheat harvested, put into trucks, put into boxcars and transported in great steel wheeled trains to the town's grain elevators. Late into the night it went on, screeching, groaning metal bin doors vomiting out tons of grain down through grates to be conveyored up into the cylindrical cathedrals.
It was cool. Cool to see, but also to be out at 11PM at night in the summer of 1957 when you were 10 years old.
None of this is used anymore.
About a quarter mile down the tracks stands what's left of the Salina train depot, a red and white brick building sporting knee braces and wide eaves that said goodbye to my dad and uncles boarding the train for WWII years ago.
I sat on a large stack of creosote railroad ties and pondered the weight of time slowly lumbering through this place much like the ponderous boxcars that once moved through as well.

Just a thought

They painted this 100 year-old building recently in Salina. They said the building now only looks about 25 years old.
If I painted myself would I look 15?

Politics in the Heartland

I have learned a great deal about How our country is in the fix it's in, and where it should be going during my short visit here. I hope to learn more.
First of all, I didn't know that all, not most, but all of our problems we have in this country today are the cause of liberals. I don't have room here to list all the facts, but I'm told it's true.
And - the reason the GOP, when elected back into power has such a hard time correcting the course of the nation is because the liberals always leave it in such disarray. In fact, the country is STILL reeling from the FDR administration! Holy cow. I had no idea.
It takes more than two successive GOP administrations, (8 years of power) to right the wrongs of a liberal administration. How many terms...we don't know.
It was suggested to me that, this being the case, the two party system should be done away with and candidates for office be elected out of the one true party, the GOP. Leadership would be strong and consistant and we all would come to know what is expected of us to exist as a nation.
Government would be limited to a body that offered the capitalist regime not laws, but only a suggested guide on how to operate. Government would not interfere. Goodness and right would emerge and all citizens would be expected to pull their load - do their share. The lazy and indigent would be left to the fruits of their own ineptness and would perish on their own accord, not on the State's. Those not willing to go along with the rest would be forced into labor camps and eliminate the need for illegal immigrant workers who presently plague our great nation.
No more lazy people, no more folks who choose not to make it on their own.

This is what I have learned so far. I'll keep you posted.
Oh, and if you're not white...you're fucked
Zieg heil, mein kampf!

Sarge's Apartments

Drove out to the former Strategic Air Command Air Base in Salina today after lunch with my old friend Bert. Salina used to have a SAC air base back in the Truman/Eisenhower days - the cold war days. You wanna talk about fear. This terrorist shit is lame compared to instant thermal Nuclear annhilation at 5,000 deg.F. Salina was home to several B-52's with nuculear bomb storage bays spread over acres of old farm land converted to government property. Yeah, we had a special spot on the Ruskie's missle target charts.
I used to have nightmares as a boy walking through the Kansas Van Gogh-yellow sunflower fields with periwinkle blue skies - and all these magnificent white plumes, lines of missle vapor trails, converging on our town hoping to get us before we got them. Time for one more breath. Maybe two. Yellow flash. Then white. Then heat. Then - silence after my body goes microscopic, atomic.
Our teachers taught us to get under our desks if there wasn't enough time to go to the bomb shelter. WTF? It would have been better just to all go outside and PROUDLY give the decending white plumes the one-finger salute...a last futile act of defiance.
But I digress.
Sarge's apartments. My very first job as a licensed architect. They're still standing, those magnificent converted SAC barracks I so lovingly turned into sad boxes of cheese for sad cheesy people to live in. They still do. And, Sadly, they were better off in 1975 than they are today.

It's never too soon to panic.

Haaaaaaannity in the Heartland

Geezus H. Christ, who the hell thought it was a good idea to give this cretin a microphone and airtime? This guy has everyone in Salina on the edge of their seats, clamoring for more vitreolic diatribe so they can go back to their closets, get out their voodoo dolls of Obama (well, any black faced person will do), and them gay-o-phile people.
"there, you damn n*****, take THAT!"
I have a week to go. Oh, they're nice enough back here. And I'm a home-town boy and all that. But baby - watch your back. Especially true of the jayhawk ilk.

It's never too late to panic!

In the heartland

yes, indeedy internets, i am back in the heartlands the next two weeks or so. Spent some time pondering this on the plane today. Much to write. so little time. I'm stuck in limbo without my crappy, crash-test dummy computer with all my programs on it so I can't work on the house.
I can only visit with my mom and my brother, watch Fox news, listen to the hatred of Obama and the sainted virtues of Glen Beck (geezus I can't believe I actually typed those letters that spelled the name) and newt gingrich.
a good friend of mine recently compared her family to a circus act and her fiance's family to a funeral reception. My family was in-between. Well maybe is.

I am a twisted individual. Ok, i'll share the thought i had today waiting for my flight.
I watched this poor old bent-over guy walking, no - lurching, with assistance down the airport corridor. So, when they eventually bury him, do they have to make a kind of 'bent' coffin, or maybe one with a raised section like a camper? Do they just flatten him out with some weights? He wouldn't feel it I suppose.
No, I sat there and thought about this for some time.
I dunno, maybe it was the coffee or maybe it was my cell phone rattling down in the urinal while I tried to answer it earlier that morning. (what is it about urinals that stimulate cell phones to ring?)
I answered it since it wasn't that pissy. It was Dino Rossi asking me to vote for him. Now THAT was pissy.
and remember -
It's never too soon to panic..........

no building code in 1906

Our remodel is basically a rebuild. We've filled all the concrete blocks in the foundation with concrete, we've added about 12 new columns and beams in the crawl space and added these huge goddam metal brackets that are designed to hold the house down in case of an earthquake.
What baffles me is just how did this house survive 104 years on this earth without these code upgrades?
The project moves on. More progress photos to come.

Opinions are like assholes - everyone has one, and they all stink

I'm by myself often. It probably explains why I think too much about stuff. I like to write and would like to become better. I've had 'writer's block'. I don't know what that is but if it means you just don't give a fuck about writing sometimes that's what I have. I'm sorry about using expletives here, but at my age using them in a sentence is the closest I will come to ever having the actual experience again. (Being fucked as a tax payer doesn't count.)
I'm sitting here tonight watching Glen Beck. Just finished The O'Reilly Factor. I discovered that it is better to watch these programs with the sound on mute. Why, you say - why on earth are you watching these programs? Well, I'll tell you. I'm going to Kansas next week for my 45th high school reunion. I feel I must prepare myself for the immersion back into Fox Network Land. I grew up with these values, but they have worn thin out here on the left coast (that's the oh, so clever way the west is described by those in the heartland). My old values drilled into my psyche throughout childhood have eroded out here. I still harbor virulent hate for those who are not exactly like me, but it has receded pretty far back after 30+ years.
So I am preparing myself for a two week stint in the heartland and an existence with family gathered around the sacred Fox Box every night after dinner where we will engage in lively facist conversation and what to do with the liberals, blacks, gays, chinks and kykes fouling the system. Grab your coat, get your hat - leave your worries on the doorstep....life can be complete, on the far right side of the street.....
Good night and good luck