Some new stuff.. at least to me.

I learned a lot of fantastic information this week. Some of which I will outline here.

01. What's in a name? I apologize to this beautiful person for picking on her name, but somehow it makes me giggle, I don't know why, but I believe that there once was a stripper on the Baltimore infamous "Block" with the same name.

The AARP Sex and Relationship Expert is named Pepper Schwartz.


http://uwnews.org/uweek/article.aspx?id=52956


02. It had to happen: A heavy-set woman was charged extra in one of those fingernail salons for being too fat and endangering their chairs that are tested for only 200 pounds.


Many years ago, fellow Mensan, Marvin Grosswirth established an organization called Fat Pride. based on a book he wrote with the same name. Other such organizations were established over the years, but I think his was the first. Marvin wrote lots of interesting books and unfortunately, died of cancer at the age of 53. A man of great intellect, as well as great girth... which rhymes with his last name.. which means a "great innkeeper".. at least in the German dialect I know.

Anyway, Marvin felt that one should not be ashamed of being overeweight. Why on earth would one want to be a skinny-bones? (However, personally, I would like to be a little bit thinner.)

(Marvin also was in favor of beards.. at least on men. He felt that if one wore a beard, one should wear a real man's beard, not one of those "sissy beards" worn by some rock stars.)

http://openlibrary.org/authors/OL1346088A/Marvin_Grosswirth



03. Caution! Kevin Dayhoff, former mayor of Westminster, Maryland, in one of his interesting newspaper articles, mentions that in the 1960's, some traffic lights did not flash yellow, only red and green. I was around then, but I don't remember such lights in the places I lived. This probably confused children who thought that the traffic lights were Christmas decorations.


Among lots of other things, Kevin Dayhoff writes a journal called the New Bedford Herald. (It's not about New Bedford, Massachusetts, where I was born and brought up.)


http://kbetrue.livejournal.com/



04. Deep fat! Vendors at the upcoming Maryland State Fair will be selling lots of deep fat fried items, including Oreo cookies, Snicker Bars, Twinkies, Buckeyes (peanut butter and chocolate mixed), and even ice cream bars... but they will have to go a lot further in their plans to clog up Marylanders' arteries to top the Canadians. At an exhibition in Toronto, vendors are selling deep fat fried butter!



http://www.deepfatfryerspro.com/

05. It's a digital world all right. A street musician now has a card reader by his side. If you like his guitar music, you can give him a tip (donation) by swiping your credit card and keying in the amount you want to give him. (I wonder if he takes American Express.)

06. Mis-attribution. One of the few poems I ever learned was the one about a pelican:

A curious bird is the pelican,

His beak holds more than his belly can.

He can store in his beak,

Enough food for a week,

And I don't know how the devil he does it.

I have always attributed it to Ogden Nash.. it's the kind of stuff he wrote.

Well, I learned this week that I was wrong. The poem was written by newspaper humorist, Dixon Lanier Merritt, and goes like this:

A wonderful bird is the pelican,

His bill can hold more than his bellican.

He can hold in his beak,

Food enough for a week,

But I'm damned if I see how the hellican.

(Which one do you like?)

http://search.intelius.com/dixon-lanier-merritt

07. Ugh! A nutritionist who was interviewed on NPR said that shrimp imported from Thailand is "grown in dirty ponds." Think about that the next time you order scampi at your favorite restaurant.

08. Banana Bread: I love to bake banana bread! Sometimes I make it plain.. just bananas.. sometimes I add blueberries; sometimes I add walnuts; sometimes I add chocolate chips; sometimes I add butterscotch chips; sometimes I mix them all together.

A well-known local Carroll County humorist, with another interesting name, Cathy Drinkwater Better, writes a funny column in the Carroll Eagle. This week, she mentioned what goes on in her house when her husband finds real old bananas in the fridge. Of course, as anyone knows, you have to have real old bananas to make good banana bread. I'm probably one of the few men in the world who knows that the secret to delicious banana bread is old, black, mushy, gnat-infested bananas.

Elaine and I always laugh long and hard when we read her Sunday articles. She is a gifted story teller, and as I also learned this week, a well-known author, with a lot of books to her credit.

http://www.cathydrinkwaterbetter.com/

09. New word. The big-name dictionaries are adding a new word in their latest editions: bromance .. friendship between two men. I have a brother Joe, that I sometimes call BRO and a friend from early childhood named Bob, and we both often refer to each other as BRO. But of course, there is no "romance" there. There are lots of BRO- words, such as bromide, brocade, Bromo Seltzer, .... Broken = what Barbie's brother now calls Ken.. NBC's Tom Brokaw... etc etc

10. A Dog's Best Friend: I've mentioned this before, but some one of you may still never have heard of this great invention. It was dreamed up by the brother of Tony Shalhoub (you know... Mr. Monk!)

Yes, I'm talking a bout the Shapoopy.. better than a pooper-scooper.. it catches your dog's poop before it even hits the ground! Wow!

http://theshapoopie.com/

Have you heard the jingle?

www.televisiontunes.com/Family_Guy_-_Shapoopy.html

11. What would Johnie Cash do? I learned today that those automatic faucets that are now ubiquitous, will not work if you are wearing black. Imagine that.

12. An amazing author! Over the years, Tom Robbins has written a lot of thoughtful (weird) books. His latest is a children's book called B is for Beer.

Tom says that he ate so much mayonaise as a kid that his parents threatened to send him to the Mayo Clinic. ! He is the inventor of the Gin-Greasy.. which is a combination of gin and mayonaise. I don't think I'm going to try it.

Quote from Tom: "I believe in nothing, everything is sacred. I believe in everything, nothing is sacred." Whatever that means... I think I will put it into my email messages.

http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=25708

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Conversation

One of my favorite movies: The Wrong Box has an elderly character who likes to share facts with anyone who is nearby. At one point in the movie, he gets a chance to ride on a horse-drawn wagon for an hour, seated next to the driver.

As they enter the town, he breaks off his monologue and tells the driver that he would now be able to disembark. The driver, clearly battered and worn from his rider's incessant chatter, says: "Oh, would you?" (with an implied PLEASE!)

So it is with blogs. The good thing though, is that one can avoid visiting the site or one can block the writer's entries, at least on Facebook.

With that bit of off-hand advice, I will continue with my blog entry.

01. Death of another Icon: Dan Shorr passed away at 93 on Friday. I didn't always agree with his actions, but usually I agreed with his commentary. Besides, anyone on Nixon's Enemies List has to be someone I admire.

02. Hate Groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) says that they are now tracking 23 organized extremist groups in Maryland. They also state that there are 1,753 active extremist groups in the U.S. Anti-immigrant groups have grown astronomically recently.

Let me ask one question related to immigration: If suddenly all illegal aliens were kicked out, who would pick our fruit and vegetables, clean the toilets in our fast food joints, or watch the children of our elected officials?

03. Gun control: Comic, Chris Rock says he has the solution to the "bearing arms" issue. "Bullets should cost $3,000 each." That way, only serious hunters would have them..and children and crooks might be deterred. What do you think?

04. Bliss. Jeremy Quinn, Mensan, says: "The beautiful thing about marriage is that you can wear your old, discolored shirt in front of her when it would embarass you no end should anyone else witness it."

05. Harvard grads? Massachusetts put out a list of the top 1,000 State tourist attractions.. but the list only showed 996 places, and some of them don't exist. (I'll have to look for New Bedford entries. A few years ago, I compiled my own list of about 100 places to go and things to do in the geater NB area. I would be glad to share it.)

06. Nature's Bounty. Last year, we discovered the Earthbox and grew lots of vegetables on our back deck. This year, we bought three more and are enjoying lots of delicious home-grown veggies, such as giant zuchini, giant cucumbers, tomatoes of all kinds, patti-pan squash, .. and even corn!
(Google Earthbox)

07. Toastmasters take note: Shakespeare wrote 31,959 speeches! (Could Bacon have done that?)

08. Mushrooms: The Crystal Falls, Michigan Humungus Fungus Fest will be held in August. I believe that they make a 10' x 10' mushroom pizza. (Is it true that there is a mushroom growing on 37 acres underground..that is 1,500 years old?)
http://www.humungusfungusfest.com/

09. Sarah sez: New word.. refudiate. Is this related to Elmer Fudd's dislike of Bugs?

10. The Bard: Sarah said that Shakespeare made up new words all the time..when he wasn't writing thousands of speeches. Mensa has a Special Interest Group (SIG) for Shakespeare lovers.. it's called Bardolatry and can be found on Facebook.

11. Jobs: Maybe we should move to Bell, California. Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me reports that the Bell City Manager is paid $787,000 and it's Police Chief is paid $457,000. I wonder what the salaries are for L.A., which probably has a rather larger population?

12. Burning Question: Is this the year twenty ten, two thousand ten, or two thousand and ten? (Answer, from Mensan Richard Lederer.. "twenty ten ... saves five letters, one syllable, and one word." I know, you are wondering why us guys with genius IQ's are spending time on this subject. I wonder too.)

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Thoughts for April 3, 2010

Some notes about the richest woman in the world, the census, and funeral stuff.



01. Rich Woman!

Who do you think has the distinction of being the richest woman in the world? Oprah? Queen Elizabeth? Cleopatra? Nefrertiti?



Nope, none of them.. the woman who has that distinction is/was Hetty Green of New Bedford, Massachusetts, my old home town.



Who do you think has the distinction of being the stingiest person in the world? Scrooge? ENRON executive? Your spouse? Your boss?



Nope, none of them.. that distinction also belongs to Hetty Green.



Hetty was part of the Quaker family that controled the whaling fleets out of New Bedford. She lived from 1834 to 1916. She parlayed a massive whale oil fortune into an even massive fortune by playing the post Civil War bond market and lending lots of money to the city of New York.



It has been written that she ate dry oatmeal for lunch to save money and did not change her underwear until it wore out. At one time, her son injured himself and she tried to get free medical care for him. When it was not forthcoming, she endevored to cure him himself. Unfortunately, gangrene set in and he lost one of his legs.



It has also been reported that she once spent 6 hours hunting for a lost 2 cent postage stamp.



Hetty was a remarkable woman, who was once called "The Witch of Wall Street".. if you want to read some amazing information about this amazing woman, try the following books:




The Day They Shook The Plum Tree by Arthur H. Lewis (1963)



Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon by Charles Slack (2004) .. I haven't read this one yet.

02. The U.S. Census

Government sources are complaining that people are slow in filling out and returning their 2010 census forms. Duh? Right there in the instructions it says that it wants to know who is in each dwelling on April first 2010 ! Not March 2010! It doesn't take a Mensa member to understand that the form should not be filled out until April first, 2010. Or is that an April Fool joke? So quit complaining!

03. Funeral stuff.

None of us want to think about it, but we are not immortal, even though some teen-agers think so. We should all make some kind of plans so that the poor people who survive us know what to do with us.

My son has always told me not to worry because he would find a real nice ice floe to put me on when my time grows near.

Seriously, you might want to think about it. And to help you, the Carroll County Maryland Chapter of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees (NARFE) is having a funeral expert come and talk at our next meeting in Westminster, Maryland, on April 8th, 2010. Anyone may attend the meeting. It is at the Cactus Willie's restaurant. Come at 11:30 am, and enjoy their buffet. They have the second best fried chicken legs I have ever eaten! Fill your stomach and then fill your brain with new information.

The speaker guarantees that his talk is not depressing and he is even bringing appropriate door prizes. (Hope its not little pine box key chains.)

See you there!

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Chinese Immigrants in New Bedford, Massachusetts

The Nation magazine for January 4, 2010 has an article about Chinese illegal aliens. They mention a Sister Ping who arranged shipments out of a mom and Pop store in New York City.

In 1992, she had a boat off the coast of Boston holding more than 100 illegal migrants who needed to find an off-loading point. For the payment of close to a million dollars, the immigrants were deposited without notice on a wharf in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Apparently, for an average of $30,000, Chinese citizens could arrange for a trip to The Golden Mountain, which the United States was known as in China. The 100 illegals had probably paid a total of 3 Million dollars.. so Sister Ping could afford the one million.

The main ship that ferried illegals was named The Golden Venture.In 1993, the ship went aground at New York's Rockaway Peninsula and 286 illegals escaped the ship.. ten drowned. U.S. marshals took posession of the ship and it was repainted and renamed the United Caribbean. After carrying cargo for a while, it was abandoned in Miami. Currently, it has been turned into an artificial reef in Boca Raton, Florida.

As far as I'm concerned, Chinese immigrants are welcome to the US, legal or illegal. These are intelligent, motivated workers.

For years, I have wanted to study the Chinese language at the local Community College. Just imagine.. 5 year old Chinese kids can read and understand those characters so confusing to us European types. Our friend, Rose Marie, has a nice red sign tacked to her apartment door that she assures us says: "Welcome." She also has a dangling brass set of characters that say: "Good Luck." I would like to be able to read such characters.

You heard me talk about the brothel sign in a recent blog. Let me repeat another Chinese story: My late wife and I used to go to a nice Chinese restaurant in Catonsville, Maryland. On one wall was a picture of lots and lots of horses. I decided, while waiting for supper, to count the horses. Each time I counted, I got a different number. 99 92 102 98 105, etc.

Frustrated, I finally gave up. Seeing some Chinese characters on the picture, I decided to ask the waitress what the characters meant. She said: "100 Horses."

Now, if you will forgive me, I will confess to an indiscretion which I perpetrated as a child of ten years. Remember, I was a street kid, with not much adult supervision. In the downtown of New Bedford, there was a wonderful walk-up Chinese Restaurant called: Charlie Wong's. We kids would sneak up to the back door and yell: "Charlie Wong plays with his ding dong!" Immediately, a large Chinese man would come out of the door, wielding a large meat cleaver and chattering in Chinese.. we would get a great workout running away from him. (I wonder if he really would chop us up if he caught us.)

I'm in awe with the advancements that China has made since they dropped Communisim. But have they really? If one looks further into Communistic Theory, one sees that the next step after communism has equalized everything, is to jump into a form of Capitalism. So, was it the death of Communism, or the birth of the next step? For instance, China has now passed the U. S. in the number of new automobiles purchased. Amazing!

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Thoughts for a Snowy Saturday in December

I'm sitting at a bay window, watching a junco on our porch and lots of sparrows at our bird feeders. The birds seem to be enjoying the blizzard.

I see by the Sunpaper that the greatest recorded snowfall in the Baltimore area was 28.2 inches right after Valentine's Day in 2003. Elaine and I were in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania at that time and when we got back to Reisterstown, we got stuck and couldn't get close to Elaine's home. I remember trudging through what seemed like a million miles of snow drifts to her house, so I could feed her cat.

I'm surprised to see that the Sunpaper did not list any large snowfalls in the 1960s. Once, during that time, there was a large snowstorm and I felt that I could get in to work even though the authorities in the Baltimore area had downsized by selling off most of their snowplows.

I was one of two persons responsible for preparing everybody's monthly Social Security checks, and I felt duty-bound to walk through unplowed Randallstown streets, through the unplowed country roads, to the unplowed Woodlawn Social Security Headquarters building.... Nobody was there except one guard.

It was nice working there all alone.. the only smoke was from my pipe.. but.. I was a little upset that my fellow worker did not even try to make it in. That night, instead of spending another few hours trudging home through snowdrifts, I stayed overnight at the home of a friend who lived nearby.

I vowed at that time to never again do such a stupid thing as walk miles through snowdrifts to a workplace where I was only one of a couple of people there, when the usual workforce was over 5,000.

But guess what... in that same year, we had another big snow storm.. and once again I felt that I could walk in.. at the time, we had what was considered an immovable deadline.. so, duty called once more. Luckily for me, a little way into the walk, a snow plow driver felt sorry for me and drove me in to work. Again, only a few workers made it in.

What did I get for these two "duty calls" efforts? My boss said: "You damn fool, why didn't you stay home?" I felt like saying to him: "Would my hero, Abraham Lincoln have stayed home?" I didn't.. but, the next time we had a big snowstorm, I stayed home just like everybody else. (However, my efforts did gain a kind of notoriety for me at Social Security.. I became the subject of a legend.)

I grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts and big snow is not unusual there. That city is on the edge of Cape Cod and it catches every storm that comes up the coast, and also those that come across the northern part of the U.S. In 1959, while attending college, I drove a taxi sometimes, and a little snow would never deter me from trying to make a few dollars. Lots of people took cabs in snow storms.

One weekend it snowed 48 inches.. yes, I said 48 inches (probably not a record for New Bedford).. Armed with a shovel, I dug myself out of my house and walked (yes, you guessed it, through snowdrifts) the two miles to the cabstand, dug out my cab, put on chains and went to work. In Massachusetts, streets are usually all fairly clear shortly after any kind of snowfall, but I still made a lot of money that day.)

So, you see a little 22 inch snowfall in Maryland was not about to keep me from going to work, at least until I wised up.
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Let me tell you one more story about snowfall in New Bedford. I love to tell this story.

One night in Winter, I had taken a trolley to visit my future bride and her family, who lived three miles away. This was in the early days of television and my fiance's family had one of the first sets in the neighborhood. We all lost ourselves watching some of the old popular shows, like Uncle Milty, What's My Line, The Ed Sullivan Show, or somesuch. When the test pattern came on at 11 pm, I got ready to go and catch the late trolley.

That was when we noticed that we were having a blizzard. The snow was already quite high. My fiance's family insisted that I stay the night. I sacked out on a couch in their front parlor. The next morning was Sunday, and everyone but me rose at 6 am. As usual, all the streets had been cleared already.

My future father-in-law said "You need to wake Joe up because he has to get ready to go to mass with us." My fiance said: "He doesn't need to get up this early, he's not Catholic."

"HE'S NOT CATHOLIC!" bellowed my future father-in-law.

Well, I survived that crisis and we did get married, in a Catholiic church, and at the altar to boot.
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If you live on the East Coast, stay home today, look out the window and enjoy the beauty of the pure white snow. Throw some bread out to the birds, they look happy, but they are probably very hungry.
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Portuguese Treat

My daughter, Diane, received about one thousand pounds of kale from a friend. She offered it to me and I quickly took it off her hand. I found an authentic New Bedford, Massachusetts, recipe for Portuguese Kale Soup and I spent a couple of hours today making the best smelling kale soup I have ever had the experience of smelling.

I had to change the recipe a bit because Elaine doesn't do garlic. I love garlic, so I sneaked in some garlic powder. Also, I couldn't get linguica, so I got a similar sausage to use. The great thing about Kale Soup is that you only have to cook it for 30 to 40 minutes, after sauteing the meat and onions.

We usually have fun on a Sunday night making special food that we can't get at the restaurant we use on other days, so we will now enjoy our kale soup with some nice red wine.. Elaine will probably have milk instead of wine. Perhaps, as we eat, I will regale Elaine with some Portuguese phrases that I learned as a child in New Bedford.

New Bedford is a great place for people who like good food. Some of the food: Quahog chowder! Twin lobsters! Lobster rolls (even McDonald's serves them)! Portuguese wine.. Madeira, Port, etc; Portuguese rolls; Linguica/curica (sp?); mussels; clams, scallops, etc etc.

I talked to my daughter, Elizabeth, and she reminded me that my late wife made kale soup quite a bit. The first time that Elizabeth ate some, her mother asked her if she liked it... Elizabeth said.. "Oh yes! Except for the green stuff!"

My daughter, Diane, accompanied me to New Bedford for my uncle Allen's funeral recently. After the service, we had supper at Davy Jones' Locker... we had New Bedford seafood and Diane loved it. I would highly recommend a trip to New Bedford, and a sampling of the great food.

New Bedford is a great place for tourism. However, the Fisherman's Union for years has downplayed the tourism issue because they want the city to be known more for scallops and fish instead. I always wanted to offer my services to advertise the city around the world. At least the city finally was able to get the cobblestoned area declared a National Park.

There are still scores of beautiful homes in the city.. most were the homes of Whaling Captains. I lived in one of them for a couple of years. It was a beautiful building.

After the demise of whaling, because of the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania, the textile industry took over in the City. However, when the union movement bothered the mill owners, they moved down to the South and New Bedford became a poor place (after being the richest US city during the whaling era).. until fishing took over .. I think that New Bedford is now the largest fishing port in the US.

If you get a chance to visit New Bedford and/or try kale soup... bon appetit!

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Martha's Vineyard

The Obama family's vacation in Martha's Vineyard triggered some memories for me. I grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts, about 10 miles over the ocean from Martha's Vineyard. I remember when that island was not the fashionable (read: expensive) place it is today.

When I was a kid, it was a whole lot of fun to pack a lunch basket and take the ferry to Oak Bluffs, one of the little towns on Martha's Vineyard. On the ferry, there would always be a Portuguese band blasting away marvelous tunes, in between slugs of Madiera wine. We would all sing and dance for the hour-long trip. When we got to Oak Bluffs we would find a spot on the beach to eat our lunch and then swim or ride the famous Merry-Go-Round until time to get back on the ferry.

Oak Bluffs is now a small African-American enclave on the island. Most of the homes are brightly colored small cottages which were built in the early 1900's, when camp meetings were the rage. People would come over on the ferry, rent one of the cottages for the week, and listen to the hell-fire preachers. I'm not sure if the preachers are still around, but the houses look as good today as they did on the day that they were built. It is well worth the trip just to see these cottages.

Once, I think it was in 1951, my girlfriend, Elaine, and I took the ferry to the island as a treat for my eleven-year-old future brother-in-law. When we got to Oak Bluffs, we rented a car for the day and drove all over the island, from Edgartown to the Gay Head cliffs. We stopped here and there and bought stuffed quahogs, fried chicken, and fried clams from vendors. We played on the beaches and jumped into the ocean. We had a ball! The eleven-year-old said that it was the most fun he ever had. (He still talks about the fun he had back then. It was a much gentler time, guys.)

During that 1951 trip, we noticed a lot of land for sale at very cheap prices. For $1,000. one could buy a very large plot of land with a nice clapboard house and outbuildings, and get change back. At the time, I was only 17 and earned $1. an hour at the YMCA, so I was not able to become a land speculator. Some people apparently were though, and now that same plot of land would probably go for ten million dollars!

The estate that the Obamas are renting goes for $35,000. per week, I believe. There are some bed and breakfast businesses on the island for a bit less.. probably still too rich for me to afford. However, you can still take the ferry out of New Bedford for not too much money and spend a day exploring the many quaint locations on the island. Try it.. enjoy the boat trip, listen to the Portuguese band, get windburn, drink some Madiera wine, try stuffed quahogs, eat fried clams, look at the little painted houses, ride the old Merry-Go-Round, pick grapes along the road, dive into the ocean surf, enjoy the bracing sea air, get away from the cares of your job....you may never want to leave.

Just don't get arrested for wearing clothes at the nude beach. You know, the one that is near where the Obamas are staying.
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Another Famous Person from New Bedford, Massachusetts

Let me tell you about a "small world" experience. When I was 7 years old, my Aunt Marjorie enrolled me in a tap dance studio in New Bedford, Massachusetts, my home town. The studio was run by a man named Al Sanger.

I don't know how many boys were in the tap dancing class, but there sure were a lot of girls. I took a strong liking to one of the girls and during a recital, instead of going off to the side for a tap solo, I followed this girl off the stage and screwed the whole bit up. Everybody teased me about this for years.

Now.. fast forward to when I was 23 years old and just married. My wife and I rented the second floor of one of those three story tenements so popular in New Bedford. On the day that we moved in, we spent a long time talking to the landlady who lived on the first floor.

I don't know how the subject of dancing came up, but I mentioned that I had studied tap when I was 7 years old at Al Sanger's. When my new bride heard that, she said that she had also studied there when she was 4 years old. Suddenly, the landlady said that she had been an instructor at the studio at that time.. and guess what.. she remembered the names of the boy who screwed up and the girl he followed off the stage. Yes.. that boy was me.. and the girl was my bride!

She also mentioned that her fellow dance instructor was Carol Haney, who later went on to Broadway and a Tony award in 1955. I knew Carol because she lived one block from me, on the corner of Palmer and Court Street. I had been her family's paperboy for a few years.

I remember when she came back to New Bedford to see her family. She brought along her husband, Larry Blyden, who spent the day reading scripts on the front porch of his father-in-law's house. I thought that he was a funny looking guy because he wore great big horn-rimmed glasses, which were not popular yet at that time. Larry did a few movies but I don't think he ever made the big time. He and Carol were married from 1955 to 1962 and had 2 children together.

Carol went to Hollywood in the 1940's and became a protege of Gene Kelly. She was in the dancing chorus of lots of films, but made it big in the Broadway production of the Pajama Game. She also starred in the film and was the sexy babe in the Steam Heat number.

She hurt her leg one night on Broadway and her understudy took her part. Unfortunately for Carol, a casting director picked that night to watch the show and immediately hired the understudy instead of her... Shirley MacLean, who went on the great success in movies. Carol and Shirley were kind of look-alikes.. both with "gamin" faces and bodies.

However, as I said, Carol was able to do the film version of the Broadway musical in 1957, and is still remembered fondly for the role. (Order it from NETFLIX and check it out!) Around this time, she found out that she had diabetes and her health began to deteriorate. She died of pneumonia in 1964, probably somehow related to the diabetes. She was only 39 years old.
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Tough Friday Crossword

Friday's (July 31, 2009) crossword puzzle in the Baltimore Sun (actually a syndicated L.A. Times puzzle) was a tough one. I had a lot of fun solving it. And I learned a lot of things in looking up (yes, I had to google some answers) things I had no idea about before.

Along the way, I came across a recipe for frittata (one of the answers). Frittata is an Italian omelet. So, for breakfast I used the recipe and Elaine and I "feasted", if I do say so myself.
The only thing missing was garlic. Elaine doesn't like it, but I love it.

The puzzle had a strange type of theme. X's replaced SK's in some of the answers and made for nice wordplay. This reminded me of my Concordance of X, my weird "work" that I tried to palm off on a con man. But, he was smarter than I was, and my opus remains unpublished. (I talked about this in an earlier blog.)

I also was reminded of a speech by Mercutio about "Queen Mab." (Shakespearean scholars take note.).

I found out that "Laugh-in" was campy instead of corny.

A place to unwind is a tub? I guess so.

There is a river in the Carolinas named PeeDee.

A hockey team lineup makes a hexad.

A Borneo swinger is an orang.

A Beatle wig was popular in the '60's. I don't remember that.

King Xerxes was a tough son of a gun.

Fellow Mensan Jean Auel wrote The Clan of the Cave Bear. I didn't remember that the heroine's name was Ayla.

I forgot that "a sitcom set in a garage" had to be Taxi. (One of my favorite TV shows, probably because I drove a cab for a couple of years in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The least paying of any of the many jobs I have had in my lifetime, but one of the most interesting.)

I was reminded of a folk singer named Nanci Griffith.

After I solved the puzzle, I went out to one of the sites that write about each day's puzzles and their solutions. Very interesting. If you ask me to, I will supply the website addresses. There is a whole Crossword Puzzle sub-culture out there. I love it and my brain does to.
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Slum-dog Millionaire

Elaine and I watched the Slum-dog Millionaire movie last night. I enjoyed it immensely; Elaine thought it was "so-so". Because the area of my right ear is still numb from my carotid surgery, I am not able to wear my high-tech hearing aid. Because of the numbness, if it fell off of my ear I would not notice it.. and I can't afford to lose a $2,000 device. So, because I felt that there would be Indian accents that I couldn't hear properly, I put on the English sub-titles.

I needn't have bothered. Mysteriously, the main characters had hardly any Indian accents at all. Some Hindi words were used, but these were translated as said on the edge of the screen.

Were the speaking parts dubbed? I assume they were, since 20th Century Fox was the producer. They know how to entertain.. (and manipulate) and they definitely did not want any viewer to not understand what was being said.

The slum-dogs of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) were a lot like the street kids of New Bedford, where I grew up. The slums, of course, were different.. at the worst, our slums were castles compared to those in Mumbai. We would never have allowed the garbage mountains to accumulate like those shown in the movie. But, we kids in New Bedford were Urchins and knew how to survive by "hook or by crook", just as those did in Mumbai.

Instead of begging from the general public, we kids begged from the thousands of sailors that filled New Bedford during WWII. These young service men were suckers for a kid's lament. We got lots of dimes from them. Enough to pay for plenty of movie tickets and junk candy.

Also, we were chased a lot by store owners and the police. Luckily, I was never caught. I can't say the same for some of my friends.

The movie was supposed to be "true to life" and seemed to be that way until the end.. when the Bollywood stuff took over. The cast all began to sing and dance in an unrealistic manner.. but one that I like. Of course, this meant that realism was no longer in effect.

The views of Mumbai were spectacular. It is a city of 19 million people. Slums are disappearing as new high-rises sprout up. But what has happened to the people who cannot afford the high-rises?

Years ago, I read a Look magazine article about the future of big cities. They projected that eventually there would be massive mile-high apartment buildings, each holding up to 300,000 people. In between these buildings would be extensive gardens and parks. However, whenever I think about the future of cities, thoughts of "Soylent Green" come to mind. and scare the hell out of me.

........................................................................

Fortune Telling

Do you believe in fortune tellers? I'm not sure if I do or not. If you have a few minutes, let me tell you some of my experiences .. one of them I think is amazing.

My beloved Aunt Marjorie once worked as a waitress in a tea shop in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Marjorie usually took me to work with her and the shop owner and customers didn't mind because I was such a cute little rascal...!!! (I was 4 years old.)

The shop owner also employed a fortune teller to read the tea leaves left in the cups. One day, the fortune teller told Marjorie that she saw something about me in the dregs of my aunt's tea cup.. she wouldn't tell her what that was and Marjorie was worried. A couple of days later, the teen-aged son of the owner, who was extremely jealous of the attention I was being given at the shop, told Marjorie that he was going to shoot me with his rifle. He warned her that he would kill her too if she told his mother. (I overheard this and was very scared.)

Of course, Marjorie related this to the fortune teller's reluctance to tell her my fortune, so she believed that this kid meant to do me deadly harm. Marjorie did not tell the boy's mother what he had said, but she did quit the job. For a couple of years after that she was very wary when she went out and was overly-protective of me. And then, one day, she got word that the boy had used his rifle to blow his own brains out. I can remember the feeling of relief I felt, as young as I was. Marjorie must have been relieved as well, because when I started Kindergarten, I was allowed to walk the 8 or 9 blocks to school without a chaperone. (At this point, my son should ask: "Was that 5 miles uphill to school and back, during raging blizzards?")

My son's mother was brought up in a French-speaking community in the north end of New Bedford and was also allowed to walk to school alone and play outside without fear. (It was a different time then.) At one time, her mother (my future mother-in-law) enrolled her in piano class. Twice a week, she would go to a local music store for lessons. However, she never learned to play more than a few basic tunes because the teacher didn't speak French and would rather let her sit at the store window with her and watch the gypsies who also had a store across the street.

She found the gypsy fortune tellers very interesting and as soon as she learned English she and a friend would have their fortunes told on a regular basis. This continued for many years. She never told me what the fortune tellers told her. Her mother, who spoke fluent English as well as French, was a life-long customer of the gypsies, and once told me and her daughter what had been recently foretold. See if you think this is amazing... it is perfectly true.

Just before my late wife and my wedding in 1957, my future mother-in-law told my fiance and me what a fortune teller had just told her.

"I see that you will be taking a long trip in the future to visit your daughter and her new baby in Baltimore, Maryland."

When we heard that we laughed and laughed. That fortune teller must be crazy.. Baltimore? We lived in Massachusetts and we knew that somewhere down south there was a place called Baltimore. I had read Mencken's classic American Language books and I knew about his involvement in the Scope's "Monkey Trial", and I knew that he lived in Baltimore. I had also, of course, heard about the famous Johns Hopkins Hospital (after all, Johns Hopkins was born in Massachusetts.) But.. having a baby in Baltimore in the future.. this was laughable.

However... four years later, in October 1961, my mother-in-law did take a trip to visit her daughter and her new baby in Baltimore, Maryland! Now.. isn't that amazing?

Over the years, I have read and studied fortune telling and recognise that there are tricks that "oracles" utilize to make people think that they can foretell the future. I have tried some of those tricks for fun with my friends. Part of the act is paying attention to the little things that people say and convey with body language. Besides, being an empath as I am, is helpful.

Once, at the Social Security Administration, my Branch Chief talked to me about a problem he was happening. We had a lot of weird people "working" in our Branch and he was having trouble relating to them. He had noticed that I seemed to get along well with all of them and he wanted to know the secret. I found him a book titled "People Reading" and I could see him studying it at his desk. (People reading is an art practiced by fortune tellers.)

He did achieve a modicum of success through his efforts and most of his charges shaped up for him. However, one of his test cases could not take the new close chummy scrutiny and one day disappeared. The Branch Chief did not want this to be a failure and kept the guy "on the books" for months, hoping that he would reappear. (Those of you who worked in SSA when I did will know who we are talking about.) The miscreant was spotted once on a New York subway, but ran away when approached.

So, what I am trying to convey is that fortune telling is mostly scam.. when you visit them, you are being "read" by your body language and casual utterances. Some predictions will also be made far into the future, because the fortune teller will have gone on to other venues by that time. Don't be scammed.. save your money. Unless you don't mind and want to have some fun in a drab life. Just be aware that fortune telling is "buncombe" as Mencken would say.

However... how the hell do you explain the Baltimore prediction?!

New Bedford

I've written a lot about New Bedford, but I don't think that I've included web addresses. So here goes:

The New Bedford Whaling Museum .. Without a doubt, the best museum in the world dealing with the whaling industry, the famous City of New Bedford, Massachusetts, and the current preservation of cetaceans. Visit this site and take all of the tours and I am sure that you will want to visit New Bedford and the Museum on your next vacation.

Most people think about New Bedford (if they think about it at all) as the home of the famous "Big Dan" case. But that is only one part of New Bedford's history.

01. It was the richest city in the United States for many years.
02. It was where the Lizzie Borden trial was held.
03. It is the biggest fishing port on the East Coast and probably in the whole U.S.
04. Herman Melville worked there and was inspired to write Moby Dick there.
05. The famous painter Albert Pinkham Ryder lived there.
06. Frederick Douglass took the "Underground Railroad" to New Bedford and worked in the whaling industry there.
07. Major Roberts wrote his parliamentary procedures manual (Robert's Rules of Order) while stationed in N.B.
08. The richest woman in the world lived there and made her money from the whaling industry. Hettie Green, the so-called "Witch of Wall Street".
09. Joe Vaughan grew up there.
10. For many years it was the Textile capitol of the U.S., until cheap labor lured the industry to the southern part of the country.
11. etc etc etc

Visit the website for the museum and browse the features. You will like it.

http://www.whalingmuseum.org

If you do have an interest in the whaling industry, you might also like to visit
The Nantucket Massachusetts Whaling Museum ..

While in no way as large or inclusive as the New Bedford museum, it is very interesting to visit. Some people think that the whaling industry was centered in Nantucket.. not so. New Bedford deserves that honor. But.. it is a very interesting place to visit, and its also a wonderful place to live if your income tops one million dollars a year.

http://www.nha.org/sites/index.html

Now, if you have gotten this far, I'm sure you will love this site.. this is where you can read the whole novel Moby Dick online.

http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/moby/

Finally, here is the address of the blog for a wonderful place in Melbourne, Australia.

http://whitewhaletheatre.wordpress.com

I may as well sign this edition of my blog with one of my nom de plumes that seems appropriate.


AHAB

Life in the 1950's

I attended a Crime Prevention seminar last month and heard from law enforcement persons a common theme: Wouldn't it be nice if we could have the society today that we had in the 1950's? Most of the people saying that were not even born in the 1950's.

What was different about the '50's?

The gangs were more like those in Westside Story. Kind of unsophisticated and nowhere near as violent as they are today. I belonged to a couple of "gangs".. I believe I've mentioned this before, but I joined a "North End New Bedford, Massachusetts" gang in order to play "street football." All we did was get together to play in the streets or to talk about girls. I only played in one game.

The night before the game, the "gang" came together to discuss a problem. One of our members was "beaten up" by a member of the "gang" we were going to play on the next day. We shook hands and vowed to slaughter that team to avenge the beating. They "skunked" us! As I nursed the bruises and cuts all over my body, I decided that a gang life was not for me.

Unfortunately, I still thought that I might become a great football player. So, since I was a Freshman in High School, I asked to join the Junior Varsity football team. On the first day of practice scrimmage, I donned my protective gear and ran out on the field. You might have said that I was "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed".. ready to show the world that I was a natural in this sport.

On this day, the Junior Varsity was having an honor bestowed upon them: the captain of the first team was going to show us some great moves. The captain's name was Bobby Watkins and he later became "All American" at Ohio State. (A friend of mine in the service came from Ohio, and was thrilled that I came from the same town as his hero, Bobby Watkins.)

Captain Watkins was, I believe, 5'8" and weighed 280 pounds of solid muscle. (He was "built like a 'fridgerator" as Jim Croce might have said.) Anyway, in the first 2 minutes of the scrimmage, Bobby hit me dead on. Suddenly, my madulla oblongada (sp?) must have come to life.. I said to myself: "To hell with this! A person could get killed." I picked up my mangled body and slinked off the field, never to be heard of by anyone connected with football ever again.

Since I try to make something good out of every experience, I was able to do so this time as well. I realized that even though I no longer was a member of the Junior Varsity.. I could use their initials to good advantage. "JV" Every time there was a New Bedford High School game at Sargeant Field, I would tell the ticket taker: "JV" and he would wave me in without paying. This was certainly not dishonest because "JV" was my initials.

While we are still talking about the '50's and initials, let me tell you what I feel is an amazing story. While attending Boston University, I traveled in a car pool to Boston every day for a year with a friend with the initials PM. (Now I am going to tell what is probably still a secret, but I will not tell the person's real name and maybe that will be ok.)

Under his real name (P.M.), this guy had a radio show each evening from 5 to 7 pm in New Bedford, Massachusetts. At the end of his show at 7 pm, he would quickly drive the 10 miles to Fall River, Massachusetts, where he did another radio show from 8 to 10 pm, under the name Paul Mills (P.M.). The people in New Bedford did not know that he was the same person broadcasting in Fall River.. in fact, he even had a rivalry going between the two shows, and still listeners did not catch on.

Forty years later, after I had been long gone from Massachusetts, I returned for my 40th High School reunion. P.M. was there and we talked. I found out something even more amazing about him. At the same time that he was broadcasting as two separate people from two different cities in Massachusetts, he was somehow squeezing in another two hours a day on an Attleboro, Massachusetts radio station. (Under a different P.M. name!) This guy was and is truly amazing. I wish that I had had more time to talk to him; I"m sure he has other interesting things that he has done with his life.

Another of my friends in the '50's opened a "coffee shop" in New Bedford. (Was that what they were called?) It was in a run-down store-front building. Strong coffee was served and folk songs were sung and stand-up comedians performed. No drugs! No female b
elittling joking! Hardly any profanity. It sure was a gentler time then.

And guess what.. you could walk down any street in my home town without being bothered, mugged or killed.

Parents backed up teachers.

The police walked a "beat" and were friendly towards the people in the neighborhood.

A cup of coffee or a small glass of beer cost 5 cents. I would put a $1 on the bar of the Buttonwood Grill and me and my grandfather would sit there for hours sipping our beer and sharing some of the 20 glasses with friends. (Even with Charlie Wilcox, but that is another story that needs to be told.)

Evenings, I liked to stop at Portuguese bars, have a beer and listen to fados.

Gasoline cost 18 cents a gallon.

I earned $1 per hour at the YMCA.

Life was so much simpler then. Or maybe I'm living in a dream world because I am now an old man.

(Oh.. I forgot about the other gang I was in. It was a very small group.. One day I went to meet with the guys and a new person was there to talk to us. He was a big fat guy, and he took an instant dislike to me. He said that he did not want me there, but my friends talked him into my staying. He talked to us mainly about how we could make it to the "big time" by robbing gas stations and small "mom and pop" stores. Huh? What was this guy talking about? This was not something that I wanted to get involved in. I was definately not an angel, but I did not want to become a "big time" or even a "small time" hood. So, in the middle of this guy's spiel, I got up and walked out, never to return.

I later learned that this guy spent a lot of time in jail, became a "hit man" and later squealed on his buddies. He was given a new identity, which lasted a little while.. but his "buddies" found him and "rubbed him out.") But the "rub-out" was in the '70's, not the idyllic '50's.

My Saturday Morning Delight

Time flies so fast.. its Saturday again and time for me to enjoy listening to my favorite radio shows: Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, Car Talk, and CSPAN commentary. I also like to use this time to review favorite magazines like This Week and Bottom Line Health. In case you do not have the time (or inclination) to do as I do, let me tell you what I am learning today.

01. The lack of sleep has now been linked to hardening of the arteries. We all need to get at least 6 hours of uninterupted sleep each night. (Ben Franklin didn't think much of sleep. Two of his quotations: "Plough deep while sluggards sleep." and "There will be sleeping enough in the grave.")

02. Time magazine has an article titled: The Future of Work, in which 10 educated predictions are made about the workplace of the future. Widespread working at home will be a major change. Managers who are just as technically knowledgable as their workers will be commonplace. Clashes between Baby Boomers who won't retire, and Generation X'ers. Etc.

03. Atlantic Magazine has an article Do CEO's Matter? Why do companies continue to pay a lot of money to the very CEO's who have taken them down?

04. President Obama has nominated the Republican Governor of Utah for Ambassador to China. He has spent lots of time in China and is respected there.. also, he speaks Mandarin. When he is confirmed, he will be one less potential adversary for the next election. But.. mainly, I think it is a good move in Obama's attempt at making his administration more bi-partisan.

05. Somebody with a Mac computer keeps trying to break into my home computer network. I wonder if there is some way to track by the numbered id. I know that this can be done through some virus checker programs but I don't know yet about Trend, which came with my laptop.

06. Wolfram Alpha debuted last night. It is a new search/computational engine. I went out to http://www.wolframalpha.com/ and tried it out. First, I keyed in my birthdate and found that I was born on a Thursday. (But, I had programmed for that back in the 1970's.. so what else is there?)

Next, I keyed in "New Bedford" and it assumed I meant New Bedford, Massachusetts and not one of the other ones in the US. It told me that the population is now 93,102 (down from 110,000 in its heyday..) and it told me that it is part of a metro area that contains 1.612 million people. Then, it gave me an excellent satellite picture of the city so that I could see the top of a house that I had lived in. (Are Google's satellite pictures from the same source?)

A couple of times, a pop-up said that I had lost connectivity to Wolfram Alpha, but that wasn't true.

Next, I tried the computational part. I keyed in 95,000 x 200. I can multiply this in my head in 5 seconds or less.. the answer didn't come back to me from Wolfram Alpha for almost a whole minute. Perhaps that would not be a problem with a more complicated problem.

Finally, I keyed in General Motors and recieved an enormous amount of information about the compay.. except that it did not give the current price on the market. It also told me that they are currently paying $1 per share dividend. I don't recall ever getting a dividend from them, but I will check it out.

So.. it was kind of fun going to Wolfram Alpha, and I highly recommend it. It will get better and faster in time.

07. A man was attacked in a WalMart store by a nutria.

08. Miss California blamed a gust of wind for her "toplessness".

09. Sexual assault victims in someplace in Texas have to pay $700 to cover the emergency room rape kit used in their case.

10. A 17-year old Amish boy was busted for having beer in his buggy.

11. My screen just had a pop-up that said: Is Santa so jolly because he knows where all the bad girls live?

12. Scientists enjoy looking at the 75 KM high plume of gas and dust that spews from a volcano on IO, one of Jupiter's moons. It's called the Prometheus Plume. (Looks like Old Faithful)

13. Because of its health claims, Cheerios must now come under the scrutiny of the FDA.

14. Toothpicks can now be used by acupuncturists when their patients are scared of needles.

15. If you play on the computer while at work, you are now engaging in "weasure time."

16. A Baptist school suspended a student for dancing at his girl friend's prom. (I was once kicked out of a function for my Baptist church's Sunday school because I had a deck of cards in my pocket. But then again, I was also rapped on my head for nodding off at a Quaker meeting.)

17. The aroma from your home can now be put into an aerosol can and taken with you on vacations. You can then spray it in your motel room so you won't feel so homesick.

18. A HAZMAT crew rescued office employees overcome with noxious fumes from decaying leftovers in an office refridgerator.

19. An irate consumer called his local grocery store to complain that his frozen pizza had no topping. It looked like just baked dough when he took it out of his oven. After ranting and raving for a while, he realized that he had baked it upside down!

BASTA!

The YMCA

For 4 or 5 years I worked in (and worked out) the New Bedford, Massachusetts YMCA. At that time, it was truly a "Young Men(s)" organization, not the family-oriented gym club it has become. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.) I loved my job at the YMCA.. I watched people's valuables, gave them their gym clothes and smelly sneakers, sold them combs (unofficially), showed men how to curl the famous 65 pound dumbbell, watched over the kids swimming in the pool (even saved one of them from drowning), and made lots of friends.

While I did my jobs, I always had a weight in my hand, doing curls and presses. I was in pretty good shape then .. BB (before belly).. in fact, there actually are pictures of me flexing some muscles (believe it or not). When I went into the service during the Korean War, I had planned to take my job back when I came home (at that time, employers were told to return jobs to returning servicemen.) However, when I came home, an older man was doing my job (parts of it) and I did not want to take it away from him. Anyway, I had decided to go to college then anyway, and would have only worked at the old job for a few months.

The YMCA was located in an old (c:1888) red brick building. It had 4 floors of gyms and classrooms and offices and a great cockroach-infested basement where the weight-lifting, swimming pool, showers, locker rooms areas were. But it also had secret passages. My friend, Casey and I found some of them and used to traverse them from time to time... that was lots of fun. It was a marvelous building.

Years later, when I lived in Maryland, someone wrote me that the old building had been torn down and a new facility built a few blocks away. I realized that they would need a new Y someday, but I had hoped that they would keep the wonderful old building. (It has been replaced by an ugly parking lot!)

The next time I visited New Bedford, I hurried to the new Y. I wanted to see the new facility. Also, a friend of mine was now the physical director and I wanted to talk over old times with him. When I got to the front desk, a lady said: "What do you want?" in what I thought was a rather snippy manner. But, I told her very politely that I had worked at the old Y for several years and wondered if I could take a tour of the new facility. She said: "No. You will have to pay for a membership." It was downhill from there. So, I never did get to see the place.

I was back in New Bedford for some funerals recently and learned that one of my relatives is now a manager at the Y. So, maybe someday I'll be able to visit.

Spirit, mind and body. That is (or was) the motto for the YMCA. I lived it for several years until I went into the service and got a little corrupted in the body part. However, in bringing up my children, I tried to instill the concept in them. They turned out to be amazing, thoughtful, and tolerant people, so I think that what I learned at the Y lives on.

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!