Leave Me Alone

Have you ever been on a safari to see the wild animals in their natural setting to you can photograph and appreciate the sense of being one with a past evolution? Unless you only got National Geographic for the topless natives, you viewed with wonder the lions, tigers and bears and didn’t keep the scores.

Did you ever think about your incursion into their territory to watch them act naturally for your amusement was like a tour group walking through your living room?

We species must cohabitate with each other to work and feed and propagate but in the end, we want to be left alone.

Did you ever wonder what happened before we invaded their habitat?

Just like the rest of us, they would have to get up and move to where there is food and water and, on a good day, be able to scratch on a tree without getting eaten.

The Puppywoods’ mission has been to allow the local individuals to live as natural as possible without disturbance. This little plot of land while providing shelter and some food and water, allows the native residents to live as their ancestors did.

As with any nature setting there is disruption, shenanigans and disputes but without human intervention, all is settled with judge or jury. Life and death occur and time moves on.

Most of the inhabitants are local to the region with a few visitors for the summer who have heard this was the best Howard Johnson south of the Mason-Dixon line. The buffet is open every day with a variety of greens, sunflower seeds and antioxidants that most of us should eat anyway.

So instead of viewing monsters or explosions or the depth of man’s inhumanity to man, I look out the window and watch nature being true to itself, at least in the confines of a small forest provided for them.

Peace.

I don’t need to know that

Much of our intellect is based on learning. Our exposure to new facts makes us smarter. That is the cultural accepted belief.

Barraged with information it may be difficult to decipher fact from fiction. Perhaps that is the message?

A few years ago after watching repetitive fodder, I decided to stop wasting my time and turned off the television.

I no longer needed to be glued to the screen watching smiling youthful faces spouting nascence or wondering who shot J. R.

Taking a step back from the normal routine makes one wonder why other people’s ideas fascinate us to the point where we will purchase giant projectile screens to watch ‘Upstairs/Downstairs’ revision to ‘Downton Abbey’ or the continuing carousal of doctor and cop shows?

Being a fan of news that informs me of current events, I wonder what appears on my screen every morning. I’ve declined the delivery of the local newspaper for the electronic presentation only to find it less interesting or informative. Social media announces the latest event faster without verification.

Our minds are flooded with remembrances and nonsense and confusion of what to remember and what to forget.

Some things we shed yesterday’s papers that become engrained in our minds without our permission.

Avoiding the useless rabble of useless content that neither educates nor informs is just waste and should only be discarded. Scrolling through the selected sites chosen for information input are easy to delete.

Filtering what is offensive or just focusing on what is important to listen and view to what is important to remember or what should be allowed as freedom of speech.

While all these tabloids titillate our interest to find out who is divorced or what some famous person is doing makes our mundane lives seem exciting by emulating them, buying their line of clothing, taking a once-in-a-lifetime cruise or a fine dinner of an overpriced pinot noir with Crème brûlée when your normal pallet is cheeseburgers and soda pop.

If your life is dull and boring, to envy the rich and famous is only a waste of time for they too will lose their attraction and fall by the wayside only to be replaced by another. If one learns to play the hand they are dealt, there may be less stress in the world.

Books reviews and NPR introduced me to literary and musical awakening without the time and effort to purchase the product, wade though hours to only find I didn’t like it. The same is true of movies. YouTube shows me the trailers and the best parts and I can make my own popcorn.

Then the ballistic onslaught of ‘questionable’ news that spreads like wild fire only to be confused with the reality that seems more like a fantasy; and the mind becomes filled with what should go out with the garbage Monday morning.

I’ll admit I’ve never been a fan of fantasy. I didn’t get hooked on comics and superheroes in my youth so I have no desire to see them on the big screen. I understand most of the back stories but for the most part they seem ridiculous. Now I appreciate the artwork but only a few can match ‘Little Nemo’.

Everything else (news, sports, documentaries, live action, etc.) is becoming entertainment sponsored by and we (the public) are supposed to adhere to the message like it was 1984. I personally reject that proposal and vie for the simple life.

I don’t need to know how many dead there are in that explosion for tomorrow there will be another and another. I don’t care about the continuing migration of the poor and hungry for wherever they go they will be turned away for another Exodus. I don’t know whom that actor from a movie I didn’t watch is to give a hoot about his break-up from somebody from a tabloid television binge I’ve never watched.

If all this lack of social knowledge makes me the wallflower at the cocktail party then so be it. If our conversation only references these elements without a personal reflection, I may yawn. Unfortunately my disinterest continues to your personal family information unless they are details that could become a novel.

Avoiding personal drama or observing it from afar makes life much easier to manage except for those dreams and they are my own demons.

Your first haircut

Do you remember your first haircut? Probably not, but it was probably traumatic. I don’t remember but I have the blond curls in an envelope that someday I might glue back on.

From what I remember every summer I got the yearly haircut. I was given a couple of bucks and sent to Cary Street to Bob’s Barbershop across from the Byrd Theater. Back in those days going to the barber was like going to the doctor (which in history they were).

There were no reservations so you just entered and took a seat awaiting the call to the rotary chair. Depending on the number of other hairy guys to be sheared, you just sat waiting the procedure.  

There were pictures on the walls of photos of headshots associated with the latest fashions and magazines showing how the celebrities combed their hair, but I was not here for a choice. I flipped through the hunting and fishing magazine until the man in the white coat motioned for me to come up and hop into the rising leather captain’s chair.

I have no idea if my parents called and told this stranger what sort of slicing and dicing was to be done on my head but once I was strapped down in a sheet and a toilet paper roll around my neck, I was at the mercy of this guy with sharp instruments.

Barbers like to talk so there is almost as much talk as the dentist. “What would you like?” he asks while he was arranging the torture tools. “Just a little bit off the sides” I’d say while trying to get a breathe under my collar before my head was tossed back by a powerful hand and this roar of an electric razor next to your ear.

The regulars continued to share jokes distracting this butcher was the blade got closer to my ear. Just close your eyes and wait for the blood bath to begin.

Now I know those razors have plastic attachments that cut a distance from the skull, like raising your mower blade above the grass. All I remember was feeling whatever fuzz was on top of my head falling on my shoulders and rolling down to the floor. Your hair, like your fingers and toes are part of you and now is being swept off the floor.

Just to make sure you understood the power this man had he’d take a straight razor and wipe it back and forth on a strap, then lather your neck to scrap the final roots coming scary close to your jugular vein.

I understand the buzz cut. I simple take no prisoners that will last through the summer and into the school year. I never had a completely shaved head but was pretty close to those boot camp styles. All through elementary and junior high school I was not going to impress the opposite sex with my waves even with the customary gift of Brylcreem along with the Old Spice after-shave before shaving.

Not having any hair was easy to maintain with combs or brushes but while Elvis and Kookie and Fabian were getting all the girls, the rest of us had to put on caps or just look dorky.

Then ‘The Beatles’ arrived with mop tops meaning combing down whatever you had on top over your eyes was cool.

In high school being cool was imperative with being popular so for those who dared, the hair grew longer. Even though some girl friends would clip and trim, the principal had certain appearance requirements on the length of girl’s skirts or guy’s hair, so I missed a few days.

In the 60s and in college it was all about hair. Haircuts had become a sign of the past.

Yet when my mother asked me to get a haircut because my grandmother was coming to visit, I obliged the request. I wasn’t quite spiffy but I passed.

While Bob is probably still sitting in the swivel chair discussing baseball scores while putting his combs in that weird liquid and rubbing his hand together with that sweet aftershave, I’ll not be seeing him again.

I appreciate to learn about how sharp scissors can be and even tried that straight razor, but for the most part getting your haircut is like mowing your lawn.

Next week it will all grow back. 

Taking Out The Trash

In my continuing remembrance of youthful chores, here is one that follows you throughout your life like that bad tattoo you got in the Navy.

This is not an invitation to a blind date.

We make lots of trash. Everything we purchase comes in a box or a bag or containers within a container with an instructional booklet. Its all got to go somewhere.

In the past, all the scraps and ashes and broken china and even poop was gathered up and move as far away from the house as possible. Some could be burned, animals ate some and the rest just rotted. Back then it was important to know which way the wind blows.

Today we are efficient with our waster removal.

Every Monday I fill four plastic supper cans and at 9:00AM, a monster truck rolls through the alley with two guys who roll the containers to the back of the truck and a mechanical life tosses my leftovers into a vice that squishes it down and they move on to the next stop.

When I was a kid, one of my ‘family assignments’ was to take out the trash.

There were no plastic bags back in the day, so mom would put a paper bag from the grocery and put it in the bottom of the trashcan. That didn’t work well with the drippings and heavy stuff so the entire trashcan had to be lifted and hauled out to the alley with overflow dropping along the way.

The three tin trashcans with the ill-fitting bent lids sat in a wooden rack that was believed built by my father. I think coats of paint held the rack together more than his craftsmanship.

Move the lid and heft the smelly can tilting it into the appropriate cylinder in hopes of not missing the opening or getting splattered by the grunge. None of the cans were ever washed out as I remember so the smell just went back inside the house.

My dad had brought home this 4-foot tall bullet shaped trashcan with a swing door at the top. It did keep down the smell but was heavy enough when all the leftovers were smushed into the bottom.

The rest of the house trash was little tin receptacles in every room. Before trash day the object was to gather up all the lip stick containers and balled up paper and broken light bulbs into the largest trash container and move that out in the rain or snow or heat or just that long walk from the house to the alley.

Just like today, the city would send a huge truck down the alley but the men in their wet overalls had to lift the cans full of sludge into the truck by mere strength and repetition. I don’t think they were considered Waste Management Engineers so when they tossed the rusted out bottomed cans back in the yard it was an understood message.

Since then I’ve learn the art of filling trashcans.

Large heavy-duty plastic cans have replaced the old tin trashcans with attached lids and they are on wheels. There are no holes for drainage, but that is another story.

For six to eight months, I tested the cities capability to haul off heavy cans. I believe the cans are classified as about 90 gallons, but I heard some major groans. I appreciate the cities dedication of taking anything that fits in the can, including wood and wallboard.

Luckily I live in an area where if I put out a broken appliance, in a day or two it disappears from the opportunist in white pickup trucks for a free yard sale.

Now I recycle most of the plastic, paper, glass so the four super cans mostly remain empty or half full. In the fall there are leaves to pick up and in the spring sticks that didn’t survive the winter, but for the most part, I don’t throw much away anymore. Without a trash compactor or garbage disposal I still use paper towels to clean up the mess or the roaches take care of the rest.

In the end, someone else will have to put me in a bag and put me out with the trash.

Heretic

Heretic is a dissenter, nonconformist, apostate, freethinker, iconoclast, agnostic, atheist, nonbeliever, unbeliever, idolater, idolatress, pagan, or heathen.  A Heretic is a person holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted. A Heretic is a person who maintains beliefs contrary to the established teachings of the Church. A heretic is someone whose beliefs or actions are considered wrong by most people, because they disagree with beliefs that are generally accepted. A Heretic is ridiculed and ostracized for ideas. A Heretic is a person who belongs to a particular religion, but whose beliefs or actions seriously disagree with the principles of that religion. A Heretic is a person who holds unorthodox opinions in any field.

Heretics were banished or put to death!

Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. A heretic is a proponent of such claims or beliefs. Heresy is distinct from both apostasy, which is the explicit renunciation of one’s religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is an impious utterance or action concerning God or sacred things.

The term is usually used to refer to violations of important religious teachings, but is used also of views strongly opposed to any generally accepted ideas. It is used in particular in reference to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

In certain historical Christian, Islamic and Jewish cultures, among others, espousing ideas deemed heretical has been and in some cases still is subjected not merely to punishments such as excommunication, but even the death penalty.

The term “heresy” is used not only with regard to religion but also in the context of political theory.

In other contexts the term does not necessarily have pejorative overtones and may even be complimentary when used, in areas where innovation is welcome, of ideas that are in fundamental disagreement with the status quo in any practice and branch of knowledge.

Scientist/author Isaac Asimov considered heresy as an abstraction, Asimov's views are in Forward: The Role of the Heretic. Mentioning religious, political, socioeconomic and scientific heresies. He divided scientific heretics into endoheretics (those from within the scientific community) and exoheretics (those from without). Asimov concluded that science orthodoxy defends itself well against endoheretics (by control of science education, grants and publication as examples), but is nearly powerless against exoheretics. He acknowledged by examples that heresy has repeatedly become orthodoxy.

The term heresy is also used as an ideological pigeonhole for contemporary writers because, by definition, heresy depends on contrasts with an established orthodoxy. Expanded metaphoric senses allude to both the difference between the person’s views and the mainstream and the boldness of such a person in propounding these views.

Religion is the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. Religion is faith, belief, worship, creed, sect, church, cult, denomination or a particular system of faith and worship. Religion is a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance.

 A religion may be defined as a cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, world views, texts, sanctified places, prophesies, ethics, or organizations, that claims to relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements.

Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, sacred things, faith, a supernatural being or supernatural beings or ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life and beyond. Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of deities), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture.

 Religions have sacred histories and narratives, which may be preserved in sacred scriptures, and symbols and holy places, that aim mostly to give a meaning to life. Religions may contain symbolic stories, which are sometimes said by followers to be true, that have the side purpose of explaining the origin of life, the universe, and other unknowns.

The study of religion encompasses a wide variety of academic disciplines, including theology, comparative religion and social scientific studies. Theories of religion offer various explanations for the origins and workings of religion.

Traditionally, faith is considered the source of religious beliefs.

Hypocrisy is the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform, pretense, dissimulation, false virtue, posturing, affectation, speciousness, empty talk, insincerity, falseness, deceit, dishonesty, mendacity, duplicity, sanctimoniousness, sanctimony, pietism, piousness; phoniness or fraud.

Hypocrisy is the contrivance of a false appearance of virtue or goodness, while concealing real character or inclinations, especially with respect to religious and moral beliefs; hence in a general sense, hypocrisy may involve dissimulation, pretense, or a sham. Hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another. In moral psychology, it is the failure to follow one’s own expressed moral rules and principles. Increasingly, since the 1980s, it has also become central to studies in behavioral economics, cognitive science, cultural psychology, decision-making, ethics, evolutionary psychology, moral psychology, political sociology and social psychology.

If one question the teachings of a religion does that classify as heresy? If the scriptures of a religion proclaim ‘thou shall not kill’ and yet endorses war’s senseless murder in the name of the Lord, is that hypocrisy?

You decide.

Cutting Grass

Yet another summer chore growing up was the weekend morning spent cutting the grass.

My parents were not horticulturist. We lived on a corner lot with a few bushes in the front yard and a long line of shrubs on the side of the backyard. There was a little plot that someone somewhere attempted to grow a rose garden but without much result. Other than that, the yard was a flat bed of weeds pretending to be grass.

This was the time of suburbia so to keep up with the neighbors; the job of cutting the grass was given to me.

Power mowers had not been invented yet, at least in my yard, so the rotary push mower was my tool of trade. On a hot summer day after much coaxing, I’d slowly walk to the little shed, unlock the padlock, and roll out my weapon of destruction against the grassy plain.

Back and forth over rocks and anthills I’d walk lobbing off the heads of dandelions and whatever else popped up above the dirt. There was no raking of the fallen heroes so the soil just got worse.

The best part was the hills. Being a corner lot, the front and side of the house was on a hill. The contractors, in their infinite wisdom, had brought in bulldozers to cut out a flat street. At the same time on top of the mounds of land, they seared off a flat surface to construct row after row of cookie cutter houses. That left a 60-degree drop down to the street.

Push a rotary mower up and down a hill I suppose is a good workout but there is no better method than to go up. I tried every variation but pushing up the hill was the only way.

Also trimming the line of ‘bee bushes’ on the side was an adventure of running with really big scissors. The line of bushes had grown wild and every winter would become filled with snow, thus widening their berth. They had a small white flower the bees loved so trimming in the summer meant the real possibility of creating angry bees. 

Even though I was still responsible for cutting the grass after I moved out, I looked at my yard of my first house and wondered, “Is this what life is all about?” The new yard wasn’t much better than the old yard but was smaller and I thought I could make a difference.

I borrowed a tiller from a friend at work and decided I would dig it up and start all over. 1. I had never used a tiller before. 2. The dirt was as hard as concrete just like my father’s yard. After a few hours of bouncing around on this mechanical bronco and getting nowhere but bruised, I raked over the carnage and went back inside for another hit.

By the time I got my second house, there were power mowers and trimmers but it was still a Saturday morning chore to entertain the neighbors. I was just starting to learn about dethatching grass when my wife decided to take over.

Now I don’t have a lawn mower. I don’t need to cut the grass because there is none. In the fall I’ll pull out the weedeater and wack back the ivy or whatever greenery I don’t want while the rest runs rampant in a forest for the creatures that never had to cut the grass. 

Washing a Car

Do you own a car? Then you wash it. It is part of the ritual like aligning the tires, changing the oil and replacing that air freshener hanging on your mirror.

My wheels stay inside and don’t get the TLC they deserve but I remember a time when washing a car was necessary and a chore.

I have purchased a car, even though I don’t drive, and wanted to keep it just spiffy with that new car smell. Every Saturday I’d pull out the hose and fill a bucket and get out the big sponge and splash away until the street was flooded and I was a soaking mess. After it was in a wreck I lost my interest in maintaining my pride possession.

Once I became old enough to handle a sponge, I was assigned the chore of washing the car. I was never taught anything about the process so I just rubbed and scrubbed and hosed everything off until the yellow pollen as on the driveway and not on the hood. Never heard anything about waxing or cleaning the hubcaps so after a good squirt, I was done.

The only plus to me was it was usually hot and washing the car was like taking a refreshing bath. The other thing was you didn’t have to wash the car in the winter.

I don’t see people in the neighborhood washing their cars but now there are drive-thru power hosed locations that, for a price, make your automobile look real fine. Of course there are all those teens trying to raise money who will get wet for your automotive pride.

Food

It’s the stuff that makes the engine go. Without it you get tired and frail and finally starve to death. (Disclaimer: you are going to die anyway)

The farmers grow it, the ranchers raise it, it is shipped and cut and packaged and labeled and delivered to a warehouse near you where you can pick and choose the nutrients and prepare recipes to present to your family as a healthy alternative to eating dirt.

There are certain vitamins and minerals and proteins that the body needs to function but is MSG as good as gluten or trans fat? All the herbs and spices can’t make kale appealing, but it is good for you.

Millions are spent in packaging and advertising to entice you and yours to consume food that taste so good you go back for more and get fat.

The kitchen is the favorite room in the house because that is where all the grub resides. Cabinets on the walls hold cardboard boxes filled with wonders while a big box on the floor opens a door to frosty surprises.

Shopping is a constant battle to keep the stores filled for the eager feeders who must have snacks with constant viewing of their various screens.

Mom used to be the ultimate provider of food. Her life assignment (beside poofing out babies) was to be the cook. Some turned into chiefs, but most were no more than cooks following the instructions in a book.

The television took the family away from the dining room table and easy TV dinners made preparation faster and easier if not as tasty.

Since having more time on your hands meant you were always hungry, every corner became a burger drive through or pizzas pick up spot. Between each was a tavern or a brewery depending on the clientele. Instead of walking off your meal, hopping in the car to the next spot full of food and beer trucks to feed the frenzy seem appropriate while the food in the freezer at home had to be thrown out.

Food is always trying to make us rediscover greens or beans or grains or pigs feet and yet some go hungry while the world’s abundance is wasted.

Buried At The Beach

We’ve all done it. It is the beach and you’ve never seen that much sand and during those times when you can’t go back into the water because you have just eaten and your mom says you will get the cramps and your brother says you will be eaten by sharks, you dig.

The beach is the biggest sandbox and stretches as far as the eye can see. Sand is hard to walk in and impossible to run in but it is easy to dig a hole in. Take you little tin bucket and plastic shovel and start digging. (Safety note: do refill your holes so someone doesn’t break a leg or worst – thank you)

Since you can’t run around on the beach without much effort, most like to just sit on a blanket or on one of those aluminum stretch lounges with vinyl weaving and bake in the sunshine to discover what a sunburn is like.

Another pastime to sitting on this yard of sand is to cover up a reclining body. Just take a handful of sand and pour it overtop of whoever is sleeping in the sunshine. Get a few friends and the job of covering up the body can be complete in no time.

The recipient of this game can enjoy the warmth of the sand until it is thick enough to entomb the body restricting movement. At this point it is imperative that someone digs you out before the tide comes in.

Whatever reason to become this vulnerable is beyond question but a good life lesson.

Bumper Cars

Another one of those childhood memories I don’t understand.

There was a ride at the beach with these little one-seated soapbox derby sized cars that were electrified to the ceiling for power. The ticket holders would scramble for a seat behind the wheel for once the juice was fired up you could get fried if you were standing on the wooden floor. You don’t ask questions in the game of bumper cars.

The purpose of the game, so I thought, was to step on the pedal and circle around a median strip, sort of a race to the finish, but they didn’t tell you this was more like a NASCAR bump and run event.

The joy of the ride was running into each other and knock other drivers into the wall where they are get stuck and can get passed. Some would even turn their cars around to have head on collusions. This was not driver’s education training as I remember.

I suppose this was a training class on how violent people could be against each other with no reason for the purpose of the ride except to use the cars as weapons without causing death. At the same time on the B&W screens was roller derby and wrestling to fan the testosterone and feed the reward of superiority over another through violence.

Today’s video games can be channels for destruction and gore without leaving the bedroom but the physical jostling within a tin toy vehicle being battered by family and friends teaches lessons that will carry on. 

Tripping

Yes, I lived through the sixties and yes, I partook and survived.

Like most of the things we do as kids, it was more about peer pressure than personal curiosity. Driving fast, smoking, drinking, and fooling around with the opposite sex was the same experiments in conformity and being popular, so when drugs came along why not?

You’ve seen all the posters and the Haight /Ashbury pictures and the Dragnet episodes to make your opinion of those long haired hippies hopped up on dope, but it wasn’t like that in my town.

The east coast was at least a year behind the west coast on music, style trends and drug use. Now drugs were around for years and certainly celebrated in the speakeasy parties but mostly underground. I assume my parents had ‘mary jane’ along with their bathtub gin, but it was never discussed.

Only when kids started to feel rebellious with loud music, blue jeans and long(est) hair did the drug scene take hold. Like the previous generation of passing the flask around, someone would have a joint for everyone to share.

My history with drugs had been aspirin and shots of penicillin. The idea of getting stoned became a cultural change from the popularity of getting drunk.

Hallucinogenics was a different matter. People had written about losing your mind while others toted the use to free your mind, so when it arrived at our group of friends, people became apprehensive. Like a rite of passage or fitting in, one would lead the others into their trip.

No one talked about your present state of mind or the possibility of a bad trip due to quality of the drug or the experience. Unlike the pot high, LSD took some time to dissolve into the body and longer for its effects to wear off. The gatherings changed from darkened rooms rolling joints to light shows and pillows. Movies, artwork and music awareness was heightened and sex was always an excuse for physical freedom.

After that fad ended white powder became the trend and pill popping changed the love generation into the punks mosh-pits and disco strobe lights. Needles were always in the mix but only for the hardcore.

There became a paranoid fear of who was making the dope and the increasing fear of being busted. Titles were appearing to insure the potency of the product because it was becoming an industry.

Drugs did intensify some experiences like the total eclipse of the sun at the beach, listening to Pink Floyd underwater or tossing a piece of tinsel into a fireplace during a Yule Log ceremony. Like every high, in the end you come down.

I admit I did my share only when it was available and reliable. Does it change my perception of life? Maybe but I don’t know what my perception would have been without it.

Would you do it again?

Waiting For The Bus

On a rainy day like today it reminds me of alternative transportation other than a bicycle. Without a private gas guzzling metal mobile machine my options turn to public transportation.

For years, I depended on public transportation to get me from place to place throughout the city. It was/is a dependable safe and inexpensive mode of transport but you can only get on board at certain sites and must wait for it to arrive.

I wasn’t required to take the bus to school because I lived close enough to walk, so my first real school bus experience was summer camp. I’d wait across the street and the giant yellow wagon would pull up, swing the door open and I’d climb aboard with a bunch of screaming strangers. We’d be delivered to some place deep in the woods and as the sun was starting to set would reload and return us to within sight of our homes. Those trips were just about survival over bumpy roads with no springs.

My father took the bus to work for a while. The bus stop was right in front of our house so just walk out the front door and you are there. His hours started getting longer and he started driving downtown, but it taught me a mode of transportation easily available to me.

Riding the bus was a big deal when I was a kid. Traveling downtown to the department stores, movie theaters, cafeterias, and going to see my dad at work took all day.

During college (also in town) I would take the bus back and forth until I started walking there.

My working location (also in town) was an easy commute. Even in the snow, the behemoth bus could plow through anything. Pull a cord hanging from the ceiling to ring a bell and the bus would pull over to the next stop.

I think this was when I started to appreciate the time waiting for the bus.

Buses, like trains and boats and planes, have schedules and I found our local carrier kept close watch on the time. On my route there was only one bus that went the same direction back and forth. In the morning there would be a bus every 15-20 minutes and the afternoon rush hour was the same. The rest of the day was an hour between pick-ups.

Some days the bus would be crowded with standing room only while others was fairly empty. When I began riding the bus (Jim Crow) the whites sat up front and ‘the Negros’ sat in the back. When white flight happened, except the poor, homeless or students, Caucasians rarely used public transportation.

If with another that you know, the bus ride was long enough for a brief conversation like in a restaurant but without the grub. If traveling alone, the bus ride could be a time for meditation, observation, cultural education or anticipation. I tried to use that time to arrange my thoughts for the day’s chores, but couldn’t help get distracted by my fellow travelers. Everyday was a new cast of characters and every ride was different.

Today my bus stop is a block away from home. Still easy enough to walk to in good and bad weather and most days the bus was there on time. Through the years other neighbors would catch the same bus. Some would just stand (there is no shelter at the stop, just a sign on a pole) while others might strike up a conversation. In the rain or snow, an umbrella was used and in the summer, well, it was just hot.

The other plus, while waiting a few minutes for the bus to arrive, was the ‘people watching’. People do not realize the windshields in their cars are clear enough to not only view out but also view in. Once inside the automobile bubble, all sorts of actions take place that normally people would not do in public.

Since my bus stop was also at a stop light, me and my fellow passengers would stand two or three feet off the street watching the other commuters read their newspaper, drink their coffee, talk on the phone, apply makeup, pick their noses and other disgusting behavior before the light would change and they’d zip off feeling sorry for us who had to wait.

That was a special time awaiting a bus, or maybe I was just loitering?

Keep Moving

Recently there was a new item about two men being escorted by the police exiting a coffee shop for loitering.

Loitering has historically been treated as an inherent preceding offense to other forms of public crime and disorder, such as prostitution, begging, public drunkenness, dealing in stolen goods, scams, organized crime, robbery, harassment/mobbing, etc. Especially when criminal intent is suspected but not observed, loitering provides a lesser offense that can be used by police to confront and deter suspect individuals from lingering in a high-crime area.

Local areas vary on the degree to which police are empowered to arrest or disperse loiterers; limitations on their power are sometimes made over concerns regarding racial profiling and unnecessary use of police force.

The offense remains highly subjective: in many places, loitering is a crime in and of itself, while in others it is not, and serious criminal activity must be observed before police can confront any suspect.

Loitering is to stand or wait around idly or without apparent purpose, linger, wait, skulk; loaf, lounge, idle, laze, waste time, lollygag, hang around, archaic tarry, travel indolently and with frequent pauses, dawdle, stroll, amble, saunter, meander, drift, putter, take one's time; dilly-dally and mosey.

There are signs posted warning malingerers not to toddle around without suspicion from others.

This is where our bias and presumptions define our perceptions. If the person(s) look appropriate for the clientele with proper dress and demeanor, they are not given a second notice. The bias of skin color is for another discussion.

Proprietors of service providers have to be concerned in keeping a flow of customers to make a profit. If you have ever gotten with a group of friends at whatever sort of restaurant or pub or coffee shop and after you have had your drinks and paid your bill decided to just hangout, you may have noticed how the waitress frequently ask you for further orders or start cleaning the table? This is all an effort to get you to clear out so another customer can sit down and spend some more money.

A ‘no loitering’ signs only state this area is not for hanging out but it doesn’t tell you for how long or what the consequences are if you do.

The debate will continue and kids without enough money to get into a club or people without shelter in the rain or just a gang that doesn’t want to end the party can decide if the living room should be a ‘loitering area’ but perhaps moving along would help with the obesity problem?

A Malingerer

M•O•N•E•Y

Benjamins, Benjie, Bills, Bread, Bucks, C-note, Cabbage, Clams, Coin, Dead presidents, Dough, Greenbacks, Jackson, Kiwi, Lettuce, Loot, Moolah, Sawbuck, Scratch, Singles, Smackers, Spot, Two bits or whatever you want to call it, money greases the world.

Some say we are financial illiterate?

With money anyone can purchase the needs for survival and possible posterity and without money anyone must depend on charity, illegal means, possible bankruptcy or possible suicide.

How did you learn how to handle money?

Most would aspire for the parents to teach children on the value of money with allowances in payment for chores done. Some would hope that parents would confide their efforts to provide for the family’s welfare and thus enter the child into the economic world with desire for gainful employment and a good salary.

What did our parents have for reference?

Their parents had been merchants, farmers, fishermen or lumberjacks scratching out a living without family planning education or practice. Their parents had settled the land. The land was the inheritance passed down for generations.

After the bubble burst in the 20’s, our parents were handed the depression. Suddenly barter was out the window and the federal government became the parents to help out with bread, milk and eggs.

During the war there was work but rations. After the war (to end all wars, again) tanks turned into refrigerators and new roads helped sell cars and everything looked good with easy bank credit.

My father kept (worked) the books while always working the deals, but he never taught me any of how that worked. He did show me how to get a bank account and put my weekly paycheck in a little book stamped by the teller only to immediately take it back out to purchase my desires. He never taught me about credit cards because he never had a credit card. He knew cash. He never showed me there were other means of accumulating cash, but I found out by myself.

He did teach me how to use a ledger (now an Excel spreadsheet) and keep track of all my expense and save the receipts (but he didn’t tell me the ink would fade away causing hours of frustration). He also taught me how to do my own taxes.

Now there are all sorts of financial planners and advisors present financial products, services, planning or advice related to investing, retirement, insurance, mortgages, college savings, estate planning, taxes and more.

They will tell you how to handle money as long as they get a piece-of-the-pie. Look at any late night or weekend television for advice for how to invest or not invest, to buy or save or just stick all your cash in a pillow under the bed for a rainy day.

Money keeps you awake at night. Either figuring out new skims on how to make more or worried about the debt collectors calling, money is always on your mind. When you have enough money, you want more. When you don’t have ‘enough money’ it is an addiction to find a way out of debt. Culture always bombards images; reminders of millionaires (and now billionaires) cars and houses and boats and vacations to lust after.

Salaries are one of our biggest complaints (other than not having enough sex). Employees are given money to do a required task in a time limit. Pay scales are set (without transparency) so the water cooler talk is about ‘who is making more money than another by rumor and gossip’. Backbiting turns to distraction and productivity decline and finally union bartering and threat of strikes. If employers posted salaries to start with everyone would know where they stood and could ask what they needed to do to make more money.

Money (like sex and religion) just isn’t talked about in polite societies, except to speak of the pride our possessions, status, vacations and even children’s education can be compared against others.

I can’t tell you how to handle your sawbucks, anymore than raising your children and treating your spouse or pet.

I don’t have all the answers but if I got two nickels to rub together I feel blessed and I’ll give one who is down on their luck.

Personality

You’ve seen them. They present the local news and sports. They point out the weather H’s and L’s. Young smiling faces trying to make terrible announcements more pleasant.

They are personalities to your village or burg, but wherever you go, there is another identical group to take their place. They resemble what you’d like to think is the diversity of your community.

Young smiling faces you’d like to relate to your family or neighbors. As they grow older they will be replaced with another of the same. They are our personalities.

Our stars of the little screen with awards and directors and cameras and makeup and clean pressed clothing. They could be manikins of our nightly dreams but the next morning they will be back making bad jokes between commercial breaks.

If the personality decides to go beyond the normal local volunteer activities, a ‘celebrity’ might bring a televised colonoscopy. Now the person can be reported on in the tabloids with no makeup bad swimsuit shots and other paparazzi photos and other gossip.

Unfortunately when a celebrity gets too old or wrinkled or fat, a new one will have to replace the curious public still accustomed to their friendly local personalities.

So where did you get your personality? A personality doesn’t come with your DNA but is learned along the way. Personality is defined as the set of habitual behaviors, cognitions and emotional patterns that evolve from biological and environmental factors.

The study of the psychology of personality, called personality psychology, attempts to explain the tendencies that underlie differences in behavior including biological, cognitive, learning and trait based theories, as well as psychodynamic, and humanistic approaches.

Whichever personality you decide to project may not be what others perceive.