What's A "Maaco"?

The Old Man is going to have a sort of a "make over" in a few weeks.  A fellow who's been a little further in school than I have is going to perform some cutting, splicing, and welding on my lower back.  I think the official word for it is "fusion" which, while it sounds like a fruit drink, probably feels more like a freight train hitting a stalled bulldozer.  At any rate, I'm optimistic that the back problems that have plagued me for nearly 3 years will become a memory, and I'll emerge from the "body shop" new and improved.

Over the years, I've had a degree of experience with auto body stuff.  I've done a little work with Bondo, and even painted a couple of cars along the way.  My efforts have met with mixed results but never measured up to the professionals.

Miss Alma was a different matter.

Mom was an adventure looking for a location.  She was never reluctant to tackle a project, heedless of its complexity, and she always gave it her absolute best efforts.  One of the things that Mom loved to do was paint.   She would paint inside, outside, or in the yard.    She painted furniture, appliances, walls, porch railings, you name it.  Had I stood still, its quite possible she might have painted me.  She even painted an old buggy that we had in our side yard for a few years.  A brilliant white and red, it caused traffic to slow when each year Dad would fill it with pots of flowers.
One summer morning when I woke up, I asked, "What are we going to do today, momma".  She answered in her matter-of-fact way,  "I figured we'd paint the car".

It was shortly after WW II.   So many things had been rationed or even unavailable during the war, so this was a period of awakened consumption.  We had an old Dodge coupe that we'd had for a while, but had been very limited in the time it could be driven.  All around Bedford, folks were emerging from the wartime mists and beginning to refresh, renew, and starting to move ahead.  I guess Mom was caught up in the movement.

I was just a little kid and didn't know anything about painting a car, but I was a willing accomplice.  So I obediently "heeled" and we headed out into the back yard.  Mom had laid in her materials and supplies.  She had a gallon of enamel, some of Dad's old undershirts for rags, a can of turpentine and two brand new brushes; no masking tape, no drop cloths, and what's a spray gun?

Between the two of us, we painted that old Dodge.  Mom figured how to thin the paint so that it leveled out pretty well, and she was smart enough to limit my painting to a few inconspicuous areas.  Dad was still walking to work then, so when he came home, Mom beamed with pride at her work.  He just grinned at her and pulled it into the ramshackle garage to keep bugs and leaves from settling into the wet surface.  Mom was not a complicated person.....simple problem, simple solution.

We kept that Dodge for several more years, and the paint job was just as sound when Dad traded it in as when it was new.  Fishing trips, daily use, visits to family, and church were all conducted in what became known as "Babe's chariot".

"And They Come Roaring Out"

The Old Man caught one of those 1950's hot rod movies on TV the other night.  It sent the memory wheels spinning and I dredged up thoughts of The Roadmasters.  During the '50s, the Hollywood flick de jour was heavily weighted toward low-budget productions that pandered to teen interests;  girls, hot cars, girls in hot cars, hot girls in cars, monsters being fought by boys while protecting girls in hot cars, and girls in poodle skirts dancing with boys in leather jackets and ducktail haircuts while their hot cars lined up around the drive-in restaurant.  Bedford was about as far removed from that Hollywood characterization as Idi Amin is from Mother Teresa.  None of my friends had what could be termed a true "Hot Rod".  Most of us drove the family car and spent more time in denial than someone with a Donald Trump comb-over.

Kenny and I were a couple of good examples.  I drove the really 'screaming' 53 Dodge that served as our family car.  This monster would only "get a wheel"  before the chains were put on in a snow storm.  The "super powerful" 6-cylinder engine was coupled to some monstrosity of a transmission called "Fluid Drive".  To get it to change gears, you had to take your foot off the gas and allow a momentary hesitation during which you would hear a "clunk" indicating the gear had changed. Speed-shifting in it meant you could get from the front seat to the back seat quickly. I'd usually get customarily quiet when the guys would talk about going out to The Lake stretch for a 'run'.  That Dodge would have fared poorly on the stretch against even a 3-legged mule.

Kenny occasionally had access to a sweet little old lady's Pontiac.  Still following some inner urge to hear tires screech, he developed a technique that amazes me to this day.  Kenny would put the car in reverse, back it up, and then quickly jerk it into Drive.  As we were scraping ourselves off the ceiling of the car, we could count on the rear tires spinning a bit with that satisfying squeal.  His technique failed us only once that I can recall.  While making one overly ambitious move, the rear end sounded as if it were disassembling itself, and Kenny drove the car home accompanied by whangs and bangs mixed with clicks and clucks.

Tucker and a couple of other guys came up with the idea of forming a car club.  They called it The Roadmasters and we met in a room over Tucker's family's garage.  It was a worthy club.  We even had jackets.....white jackets with "The Roadmasters, Bedford, Va" printed on the back in bright red. We looked at ways to do community service; parked cars at events, that sort of thing.  At our meetings, we discussed cars, projects, automotive dreams, girls in hot cars, and who'd been out to The Lake stretch lately.

Kenny and I usually rode together to the meetings.  We'd be in either the green bomb (Dodge) or that wild-ass Pontiac.  Every time we'd leave, Kenny would pick up a line from the hot rod movie trailers and say, "And they come roaring out".  It just seemed to cap off the evening.

I don't know how many of The Roadmasters are still around these days.  Kenny is gone, and with him, a boatload of talking about good times.  Tucker is gone, his existence stolen in a Southeast Asian cess pool.  Others I just don't know about.  But whenever I run across one of those movies on late-night TV, I usually manage to raise a glass to the "back then" in all of us.

'Tis The Season

The Old Man wishes all the Merriest of Christmas, the Happiest of Holidays, and the Prosperous-est of New Years.  Even though I have been on hiatus,  regular postings to the blog will resume shortly.

Fall Just Feels Right

The Old Man has been spending some time out in the garage over the past few days.  The weather is finally beginning to break a little and my motivation has started to sneak back like a dog who knows he shouldn't have turned over the neighbor's garbage can.  Every year the heat of summer gathers me up by the collar and smacks me around until I just want to crawl back into the house and beg for mercy.  The first few cooler days of fall become my heroin and I clamor for more.

The Old Farmers' Almanac says we're going to have a colder and snowy-er winter.  I believe them, for their accuracy rate is difficult to dispute.  Other substantiating evidence supports their theory.  The acorns  falling on my garage roof from the two huge red oaks that shadow my workshop both startle and comfort me.  Startling because of their unannounced randomness and comforting because of their prediction of nature's care for her own creatures.  The leaves are just beginning to "color up" as the old people used to say.  The air is crisper, the sky bluer, the apples are redder, and the plants are starting to hang their heads as they prepare for their hibernation.  The anticipation of a roaring fire on a day when sleet pecks on the windows and darkness comes early, generates an inner coziness.

My dad was not an avid hunter.  In his earlier days, he trained bird dogs and did some quail hunting back when "Mr. Bob White" was plentiful, but never moved up to game larger than squirrel and rabbit.  After I came along, he attempted to pass along some of his lore to me.  I confess, some "took" but most did not.

In Bedford, "fall" and "hunting" were as tightly wed as The Old Man and his Miss Martha. Hunting was a big deal when I was a boy.  I'm sure it still is, even in spite of the encroachment of progress into some of the areas I remember so vividly.
I remember going out with Dad on his quest for "pot meat"......rabbits...from time to time.  We got a few and Mom would fry them up.  Hard to beat, as I recall.  Down both sides of the backbone is some of the tastiest  meat I've ever had.

I recall my first shooting lesson with the old single-shot 20 gauge.  Schooled on a steady diet of Saturday westerns at the Liberty Theater, I figured I had that shooting thing licked.  I was 11 or 12, and as you know, knew all there was about everything.  Dad said, "Well then, OK, what kind of pattern can you put on that fence post, there?"  I said, "Watch", and proceeded to sight 'er in.  BLAM!  The fence post was unscathed and my right eye was watering like it had been poked with a stick.  A right proper "shiner" was already starting to form.

Dad said, "I could have told you not to wrap your thumb over the breech, but to lay it along side, but you seemed to know that, I thought".  "At any rate, I guess you'll remember that from now on, right?".  Then he put his arm around my shoulder and said, "Are you alright?".  That's when I cried.

I don't hunt now.  But I love the feel and the smell of a well oiled and maintained shotgun.  I still have that 20 gauge, and on the rare occasions when I have the opportunity to shoot it, the smell of gunpowder is as enticing as any holiday kitchen aroma.

The acorns on my roof keep falling and sometimes seem to send a message......"Are you alright?".
Yes, I am.

You Could Have a Heck of a Time for Two Bucks

The Old Man found the combination to the lock on the Memory Vault the other day.  It has been missing for a while.  The addition of a new (to us) TV channel called ME-TV to our local line-up has rekindled a few memory embers that I thought were long extinguished.  Living in the land of Combat, 12-O'clock High, Gunsmoke, and The Honeymooners has shaken awake my snoozing data bank.  I started thinking about some of the cinematic extravaganzas of my youth.

The upscalers and media wonks called them "B-Movies".  The Park Street Battalion simply called them, "fun".  Blackboard Jungle led the charge.  It was the first to feature our music.  In the darkened theater, a booming back-beat followed by Bill Haley trumpeting, "One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock ROCK" as the opening credits rolled, set the stage for Hollywood's impression of teenagers.  I don't think Bedford's kids got the memo.  I never knew anyone who could totally identify with a sneering Vic Morrow as the street punk who made "Teach's" life miserable.  I've watched that film a number of times since then.  It was actually a pretty good movie with Glenn Ford and a young Sidney Poitier bringing a boxcar load of class to the whole thing.  It came to our theater during the summer before I started eighth grade, and made me wonder what I was in for.

As is often the case with the movie business, it went downhill from there.  What followed was a chain of "teen flicks" whose sole mission was to exploit the blossoming rock-and-roll culture.  Oh, there were some standouts; Michael Landon in his first feature film role, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, and Steve McQueen in a silly bit of fluff called, The Blob in which a huge pile of jello ate people.  But by and large, we kids were happy to see our music heroes in such offerings as, Rock, Rock, Rock,  Don't Knock the Rock, and Rock Around the Clock.  These usually followed a similar format;  young kid has talent, falls under the spell of a fast-talking agent  who ends up making the kid a star as well as falling in love with and marrying the kid's sister.  Along the way, the popular singers of the day would be on stage at some point lip-syncing their present hit.  In those pre-video days, it was about the only predictable way we could see those folks who were making the records we were buying.
Always in these films was the ubiquitous strife between the teen protagonist and his parents.  Invariably, the parents and other authority figures were portrayed as little more than out-of-touch bumblers who "saw the light" by the end of the movie and managed to snap their fingers, clap their hands, or tap their feet in a reasonable facsimile of sublime hipness.

Throw in some "hot-rod" movies and you've got a 14 year old by the brain stem. Hot Rod Girl, Delinquent Daughters, and Thunder Alley got red blood juiced up.  It's been over 50 years and I still get a rush when I see a "T-bucket" or a "Deuce Coupe".

And let's not forget those cinematic masterpieces of horror.  Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (wrap your mind around THAT one), Attack of the Crab Monsters,  Bucket of Blood, The Day of the Triffids, and Tarantula played to the fears that all this messing around with "that atomic stuff" would result in hybrid  creatures who were really pissed at being so rudely awakened.  It was a known fact in the Battalion that when you heard the music get creepy and a Geiger counter got all hyper, you'd get lucky and your date would wiggle a little closer.

Like all of us, movies have changed through the years.  My grandson and I spend some very happy times analyzing and discussing special effects and other fine points of today's offerings.  But there's a difference...one that's not easy to quantify.
Suffice to say, I still check out the TV guide channel religiously, because from time to time, one of these old movies will show up.  And when they do, I turn the lights down, kick back, and brace myself for Bill Haley and The Comets......I just know they'll be there.

My Yin Hates My Yang

The Old Man is trying to not get caught in the emotional quicksand otherwise known as, "The race for the White House".  Oh, I confess, I like to toss an occasional stink-bomb into a political discussion on social media from time to time just to see who runs for cover, or who will begin to joust at the windmill, but beyond that, I'll pull the lever as I see fit when the time comes.  Forget the sumo wrestling known as "campaigning".
My inner workings, however, must not have gotten the memo.  There's plenty of conflict and contention there.  My back keeps playing and singing, "The Old Stenosis Blues".  Aleve is good, but it's often about as effective as rolled-up windows at a stoplight next to one of those cars that go, "WHOMP-WHUMP-WHAMP" with a bass speaker the size of Donald Trump's comb-over.

So my search for lasting relief has led me to investigate some alternatives to the familiar.  Acupuncture is my current experiment.
 Now, I'm a traditional, conservative type of person.  If it gets any further out than John Wayne and Audie Murphy, maybe with a little Clint Eastwood thrown in for good measure, my comfort level starts to nag at me like a three year old in the candy aisle.  Let me try to explain my understanding of what's going on in my body.
It seems that my life force is in a constant state of flux.  This is called my "chi".  Inside of that life force are two equal but polar opposites called "yin" and "yang".  I think I understand that my yin is pissed at my yang and chi is running around haphazardly wringing it's little hands going, "What to do, what to do?". 

Several thousand years ago, some Chinese folks figured out that it was possible to haul yin and yang to the woodshed for an attitude adjustment by sticking some needles in selected places on the body.  I do wonder how that idea took root.  In my more cynical moments, I envision a robed-up guy saying, "Ah.....Grasshopper.  We make back feel better by stick thorns in foot."

So, off we go......into the "puncture palace".   It's a pleasant enough room; an examining table and minimal furniture.  The acupuncture specialist listens as I describe my symptoms.  She then says, "Take off shoes and socks".  Uh......it's my back.  OK, I get it, this is the "grasshopper moment".  Then she instructs me to, "Undo belt and pants but keep on and lay on stomach".  Now, this is more like it.

She begins to insert the needles.  I lost count at 8 plus the one in each heel.  The big surprise was the absence of pain.  I anticipated little bee stings but instead got what felt like a little "thump".
She said, "Now I hook up electrodes".  SAY WHAT!  "Electrodes to make little tingle.....tell me when you feel".

I heard a "click" and my butt did the Boo-ga-loo, the Watusi, and the Bristol Stomp all at once.
"I dial back", she said.  Then she said, "Maybe take nap", turned off the light and left the room.  I was alone with my thoughts.  I could just envision a kid opening the door by mistake and saying, "Look Mommie,  it's a bald porcupine"!

An hour later, she was back, unhooked me from the open circuit, and removed the needles.  She gave me some stretching exercises and sent me on my way with a promise to return next week.

Is it helping?  A guarded "yes".  So I'll follow the plan to give it a fair chance until I'm better or until I spring a leak.

Just In Case You Were Wondering

The Old Man is gradually making his way back to the blog.  A hectic travel schedule, coupled with a reversal of sorts in the old back have occupied my time and energies.  If there are followers left out there, I promise a  hearty return!