Random Ramblings as the Weather Cools

I'm going to do a lot of jumping around today.

01. Chan. Do you remember the Charlie Chan movies? They were the "B" movies that were shown in double feature shows. I always liked the Charlie Chan movies more than the "A" movies.

Charlie always had a saying to educate his "Number 1 son", and us kids would walk around after the movie, saying those clever aphorisms that we had heard.. usually not understanding them..

A few of these aphorisms:

Politeness golden key that opens many doors.

Long road sometimes shortest way to end of journey.

Action speak louder than French.

Can cut off monkey's tail, but he is still monkey.

Confucius says: A wise man questions himself; a fool others.

Cornered rat usually full of fight.

If befriend donkey, expect to be kicked.

Advice after mistake is like medicine after dead man's funeral.

Confucius says: No man is poor who has worthy son. (Charlie's number one son was usually Key Luke, who sometimes almost solved crimes by himself.)

One that I liked (but I'm sure Charlie never said) was "Confucius says: 'Many man smoke, but Fu Man Chu!'"

Over the years, several actors have portrayed Charlie Chan:

1936 Warner Oland
1946 Sidney Toler
1948 Roland Winters
1957 J. Carol Naish
1971 Ross Martin

Check out this great Chan site:

http://charliechanfamily.tripod.com/

02. Chinese Fortune Cookies: Years ago, fortune cookies displayed Charlie Chan-like aphorisms. Now, they've been updated a bit. Here are the last three that I received when I broke open my cookies:

Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing perfectly.

A lifetime of happiness lies ahead of you.

Anyone can memorize things, but the important thing is to understand it.

You have an important secret.. guard it well.. for at least one month.

It's time you asked that special someone out on a date. (Sorry, I'm spoken for.)

I have personally examined every detail of this garment to make sure it meets our high quality standards. Inspector 41. (Wait a minute! How did this get into a fortune cookie?)

These "fortunes" also contain language lessons now. Examples:

Boss: Lao-ban
Friendly: you-hao
Summer Camp: xia-ling-lying
Medical doctor: Hai-zi

But wait... That's not all.. they also have lucky numbers! Play them and you are sure to win loads of money.

03. Lucky numbers. My grandfather loved to play the numbers. He always played 437 (boxed). He couldn't afford to play much money.. so he usually played ten cents a bet. But when he was "flush", he would play numbers recommended by an out-of-town newspaper.. The Afro American.. out of Baltimore, Maryland. (I'm sure he wasn't quite sure where Baltimore was at the time.) He always told me that those numbers were the best you could get.

He would get his Afros delivered weekly by an ancient African-American, who would walk two miles uphill to get to our house (probably his only customer in the West End of New Bedford, Massachusetts.) Rain or shine, he would struggle up the hill just to deliver the 5 cent newspaper to my Grandfather.. and, perhaps, take a small numbers bet from him.

My grandfather "hit" the numbers quite often. Usually for around $7.00. Not much, but enough to buy 140 five cent beers at the Buttonwood Cafe, where my Grandfather "held court." He was called "Senator Vaughan", and he looked the part.

03. Alphabet soup at Spring training? Some time ago, one of the famous Baltimore Orioles pitchers was stopped at an early morning traffic check in Florida, and was asked to recite the alphabet. He tried vainly to do so, and afterwards told the policeman: "But I'm from Alabama, and they have a different alphabet." He was then arrested and charged with driving under the influence.

04. RIP Jack. Today, as I was "getting organized", an obituary fell out of some papers.

Jack S. Futterman passed away on March 22, 2000. I attended his funeral.

Jack was the Social Security Administration (SSA) manager responsible for the establishment of the Social Security Alumni Association, the organization which I have been president of, off and on, for 15 years. Jack had the vision of retirees being utilized by SSA for special projects, and also meeting regularly in social settings.

The Alumni Association has always volunteered to do SSA's bidding. A few years ago, they did use some retirees to pass out brochures in a shopping mall, and that worked very well. We are still available, but SSA apparently has enough staff to do all of their work without calling upon us. However, individuals with specialized experience have been rehired temporarily to help SSA when conditions warranted it.

Thanks to Jack, the SS Alumni Association has been a viable organization now for over 30 years.

Jack was quite an artist in his spare time and when he passed away, his son donated several of his father's paintings to the organization. A couple of them are hanging in our office. One is a rendition of a local church; the other is a still life with various artifacts.

05. Useful tip. Use empty toilet paper rolls or paper towel rolls to store appliance cords. It keeps them nice and neat and you can write on the outside what appliances they belong to.

06. Hairspray. (Not the Baltimore movie) During the 1960's one of SSA's famous computer room operators had a marvelous hairdo. Normally tall, with the addition of a foot of hair on top of her head, she was a spectacularly tall lady. Very impressive!

To keep her "do" looking good and appropriately erect, she used lots and lots of hairspray. She spent a great deal of time in the ladies' room spraying.. much to the chagrin of the other ladies, who sometimes came running out coughing and wiping their eyes.

Well.. here is another tip: If flies or bees are bothering you, spray them with hair spray and they will take a quick nosedive.

I'll bet that famous computer room operator never had problems with flies and bees.

07. Bulbs. Another tip. Have you ever had a burned out light bulb break off in your hands. Then you have to shut off the circuit breaker, get out the pliers and wrestle with getting the bottom of the bulb pulled out of the socket.

To avoid this problem: whenever you need to insert a new bulb, rub some vaseline on the threads. Later, when the bulb dies, you can easily remove it. Saves a lot of cussing.

Speaking of bulbs.. when we visited Thomas Edison's home in Florida, we were shown light bulbs that were glowing brightly. We were told that these bulbs had been turned on by Edison himself and were still alive after decades of use. The secret ingredient was not revealed to us, and I'm sure that if we knew it, we all would get those kinds of bulbs and put the bulb manufacturers out of business. (My sister-in-law Linda worked in a bulb manufacturing plant, I wonder if she knew about these bulbs.)

08. Tip for winos. I can't believe this one, and I quote: "Don't throw out all that leftover wine: Freeze into ice cubes for future use in casseroles and sauces."

Does anyone have leftover wine? I'm a very cheap wino.. my doctor says that I should have two glasses of red wine each evening. I try to adhere to his prescription, but not with wine that costs a lot of money.

I have a hard time believing the prices that shops get for wine. Perhaps it was because I spent 4 years in Germany where a good bottle of Riesling cost 25 cents (yes, I know, it was a while ago). Even in Paris, I did not spend a lot for wine. Remember, European water was not usually nice enough to drink.. so people drank a lot of wine and beer. (Americans in Europe mainly drank coca cola at a Cafe Americain.)

My advice.. buy a box of good California wine for about $11 for 5 (count 'em) litres! In my opinion, that wine is just as tasty as any of these highly touted wines that cost over $30 a bottle. Try it, you'll like it.

09. Alka Seltzer. Some more tips that someone sent me via email:

Drop two Alka Seltzer tablets in your toilet. Wait 20 minutes. Brush and flush. Voila.. bright vitreous China toilet bowl!

Drop two Alka Seltzer tablets into a glass of water and immerse jewelry for two minutes. Should polish the jewelry.

Clear a sink drain by dropping three Alka Seltzer tablets down the drain followed by a cup of Heinz White Vinegar. Wait a few minutes, then run the hot water.. and presto! A clear drain.. or so they say.

10. Alka Seltzer. My addiction. I like Alka Seltzer and am probably not going to pour it down any old drain.. I'm going to drop one tablet into a glass of nice cool water, watch it fizz, and then drink it down in one gulp. I've been doing this for years... secretly... until, during a recent doctor's examination, I confessed. Amazingly, he thought it was a good idea.. this is a Cardiologist and he wants me to take an aspirin tablet every evening.. so, since aspirin is in Alka Seltzer, I can substitute.

I mentioned this to my General Practitioner, and he thought it was a good idea too. And I've been having a guilt feeling about this for years. Now I can relax.

One of my Elaines teased me about Alka Seltzer and told everyone that my kids used to stand close to me in the evenings to hear the fizz in my stomach.

My mother-in-law decided she wanted to try Alka Seltzer and asked me what to do. I told her to open the bottle, take out a tablet and drop it in water, wait for the fizz and drink it right down. Later that night, she poured a glass of water, opened the bottle, took out the top item and placed it in the water. After a long period of non-fizz, she tried to help it along by breaking it up with a spoon. Still no fizz. She called me up. I told her that she had taken the foam topping out of the bottle instead of a tablet. After she got over her embarassment, she was successful and became an Alka Seltzer junkie like me.

11. Venezuelan Cleanliness. Harper's Magazine's Index mentions that Hugo Chavez called upon Venezuelans to limit their morning showers to 3 minutes. (Assumes that everyone in Venezuela takes a shower?)

12. U.S. Obesity Problem. Harper's Index mentions that 40% of all food in the U.S. supply chain is wasted. (Waisted?)

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To Insure Promptness (TIPs)

My granddaughter, Kaitlin, commented on the fact that people neglect to leave tips in a coffee shop when the price of their coffee goes up. Unfortunately, people don't usually realize that the workers make minimum salaries and rely on tips to make enough money to live on. How well I remember when tips made a great difference in my life.

For a couple of years, as I attended Boston University, I drove a taxi evenings in New Bedford, Massachusetts. At the time, you were paid a very low percentage of the money you took in from riders. Some nights, when you only had a couple of riders, take home pay might be as low as $1. If the riders did not tip you, that was all you made for 6 hours of your time.

At the same time, my wife worked as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant, and had to put a crossover toe-hold on the owner every week to get him to pay her the minimum amount that he was obligated to pay. Her main income was from tips.. and she was a great waitress and made enough on tips to cover for the small amount that I made.

There were several reasons why I didn't make much in tips. One was that I was a sucker for a sob story. Many of the people I took in the cab were very poor, so they couldn't leave much if anything for a tip. And because I didn't complain when they stifted me, they always wanted me to take them for their trips. Also, I had a number of blind and disabled clients who did not have much money.

Another reason for low tips was that I would take the famous lady named "Fish Mary" in my cab. Nobody else would, because she was a "lumper". If you want to know what that is, check out my earlier blogs. Just be content to know that a "lumper" smells like dead and dying fish. Whenever she left my cab, I had to be side-lined for an hour to let the cab air out.

Another reason for low tips was because of cut-throating. We honest drivers were preyed upon by the old-timers, who would give money gifts to the dispatchers so they sent jobs their way. One of the dispatchers was a drunk and got a bottle of gin every night to take home with him from one of these old-timers.

However, even though I did not earn much money at this job, I did have lots and lots of interesting experiences. I got to see a side of my home town that very few people get to see. (And some church-goers would be very surprised to see who was doing what to whom.)

When I was driving my cab, another Vaughan was also driving. He was called "the dirty Vaughan"; I was called "the clean Vaughan". I could never figure out if he was related to me or not. I hope not, because he sure was a scroungy guy.

Driving cab in New Bedford was rather dangerous because many customers were rugged fishermen who had just come in after three weeks on the ocean. They were paid a share of the income from the catch and sometimes this pay was astronomical for a town of New Bedford's size. The wives of the fishermen usually stayed tuned to the fisherman's news on the radio so they could tell when their husbands' boats came in. Then they would stick their kids in strollers and hustle down to the barroom area near the docks and lay in wait for their husbands so that they could get some of that money before they blew it all on drinks.

The cab drivers would get the drunken fishermen to drive from bar to bar.. you can guess what often happened then. But, if they had any of their senses left they would give you pretty good tips. Sometimes they had no money left. It was useless to try to get them to pay when they were dead drunk and beligerent.

But I survived all that. And now, I do try to tip when deserved.. but not when the server is nasty. One has to be careful these days when some restaurants add an 18 or 20% tip automatically to the bill. I always wonder if the server gets that.

Usually this add-on is done for large parties. However, one of the local IHOP restaurants started adding 20% to all bills.. most of their clientele was senior citizens.. customers began to go to other restaurants instead.

The bottom line: Businesses that have servers who are able to get tips, usually pay their servers very little. If the customers do not tip the servers, they are not able to make a living wage. Besides that, they have to pay income tax on their tips!

So... go and tip some more!