World's Greatest Lie

“The check’s in the mail’ is the world’s second biggest lie. The first is the government’s patronizing remark, ‘trust me, I’m here to help you.’

Now, we know the government is said to be ‘of the people, for the people, and by the people’, but too often those little prepositions, of, for, by, are supplanted with the possessive pronouns, me, my, mine by the politicians in Washington.

In their Quixotic quest to help us, they end up hurting us much more than if they’d just picked up a club and bopped us on the noggin.

Look at the automobile industry. Over the years, administrations have constantly made new regulations regarding transportation. Now, I’m kinda like Fox News, fair and balanced, so I’ve got to say in all honesty, some good has come of Washington’s regs.

But, with the good also comes a bad side.

You remember how automobiles had to be maintained decades back. Unless you were well heeled, tinkering with your car was a given if you wanted to keep it in running condition.

With automobiles of the last decade or so, we’ve not had to face that problem. That’s good.

So what’s bad about that? To butcher a Lewis Carroll warning, ‘beware the Jub-Jub bird’ of the nanotech convenience of sophisticated technology for it brings higher repair bills.

Technologically superior vehicles are a two-edged sword. Other than regular maintenance, they require little, if any under-the-hood work from the average Joe Car-owner, but the work they require costs a pretty penny and a sophistication far beyond our puny grasp.

The only time I look under the hood of my cars today is to replace a battery or add a special mix of liquid to the water reservoir. I have the oil and fluids changed regularly.

My first car was a 1949 Ford convertible, baby blue. It was a good, dependable car. I worked on it, tuning, repairing—all the requisite maintenance.

Since then, with two exceptions, an MGB and Ford Fairlane, I’ve driven General Motors products.

Up until my current automobiles, I worked on them.

Today, I wouldn’t dream of it.

One night, I was coming back from the library in Beaumont when the ‘service engine soon’ light came on in my Chevrolet Silverado.

Now, I had run into that once on our Pontiac (General Motors). It turned out to be the gas cap wasn’t on tightly enough. (that was a first for me—I can remember driving with just a rag in place of a missing cap)

I wasn’t as lucky this time.

The service man plugged it into the computer. I learned the thermostat was stuck. The engine wouldn’t heat properly. I also found out the reason I was adding water to the reservoir that both the manifold gasket and the water pump leaked. And I also discovered that the water system was under pressure, which meant it would have to be drained, refilled, and all the air siphoned from it.

“Eleven-seventeen,” the service man said nonchalantly.

I blinked once or twice. “Eleven seventeen?” That seemed awfully cheap to me.

“Eleven hundred and seventeen,” he explained.

After fighting off a heart attack, I replied. “I don’t want to refinance it, just fix it.”

I have to give my purple face and gasping for breath credit for the ten percent customer request discount.

I can remember the time when I bought a thermostat for five bucks, yanked off the input water hose, jerked out the old stat and stuck in the new, then topped off the radiator. Total cost plus one beer, $5.75. Gaskets and water pump? A few bucks, my labor and grease, and I was done. Total time for whole job, an hour.
Not today.

Eight hours, nine hundred and ninety bucks including labor, which was six sixty-five. (And I was a teacher. I should have been a mechanic.)

When I look at all the whistles and bells on the newer automobiles as well as the prices, I figure I’ll keep my little Chevrolet pickup as long as I can afford it.

And my Pontiac. After that—I don’t know.

Yeah, yeah, I know. That’s progress, but dadgum it, sometimes progress hurts.

Grab a big bat

rconwell@gt.rr.com

Carry a Big Bat

As a kid, I was skinny and short, a physique that was less than intimidating in the country school I attended in the forties.

Even back then, there were discriminating groups, the country kids and the town kids. I was considered a town kid even through we lived a mile from town on five acres with some stock and few crops, most for personal use.

Like most youngsters, I didn’t like to fight although such Donnybrooks were the most popular events during recess. I can’t count the number of times the combatants would sneak to the rear of the building and proceed to whale the daylights out of each other.

Oh, we always kept lookouts at the corner, but more than once as a lookout, I spotted teachers looking our direction, then turning away.

I finally figured out they knew what was going on, and since boys were boys, the youthful pugilists would rid their bodies of all those raging hormones and return to class docile as kittens.

More than once, I a proponent in the battle, and more than once, I ended up with a bloody nose or a scraped chin or a black eye.

When the battle was over and the dust had settled, we shook hands and then arms draped over each other’s shoulder, strolled back to class.

But, like every class in every school, we had our bullies. Take my word, some of those farm boys were big, especially those who had repeated the fourth grade three times.

That was way back in the days when schools insisted kids learn or fail. There was no kissy-kissy, bleeding hearts worrying about the kid’s self-esteem. If he failed, his father applied the self-esteem with a boot to the miscreant’s posterior.

A horrible act today. If the father weren’t tasered, stomped on, or run over, he would be convicted of child abuse, sexual deviancy, and if nothing else, driving without a license.

Our bully was named Doyle. Even today, every time I meet someone named Doyle, I think of our Doyle. Three years in the fourth grade, two heads taller than us, twice as wide, three times as strong, and mean as the dickens.

I wasn’t the only one he picked on. He selected a new victim daily so his old classmates who were now in the seventh grade would still consider him one of them. We couldn’t whip him. He was too big. All we could do was try to talk him out of whipping up on us too much.

I learned quickly not to go home crying when I got beat up. Dad didn’t care for whiners. One day when I was pretty much torn asunder by Doyle, Dad told me to pick up a club. That’s all bullies understand, a club.

A club? I would never have thought of that. Gene Autry never used a club! He always whipped the bad guys with his fists in a fair fight at the Saturday afternoon picture show.

At recess sometime later, Doyle started pushing me around, laughing and waving to his seventh grade friends. We were playing softball, and a ball bat lay nearby. I told him to stop, but he pushed me down.

I cracked two of his ribs with that ball bat, and fat Doyle never bothered me again. You know, Doyle wasn't so mean after all.

Think about it. America has a bunch of ball bats lying around. What we need now is someone with the guts to swing those bats, because right now there are half-a-dozen Doyles coming out of the woodwork, their mouths watering at what appears to be the old timey 98-pound weakling named America.

The national columnist, Cal Thomas is right. Bullies, like Doyle, fear one thing, and one thing only, strength, and the knowledge it will be used against them.

Like him or not, Bush used strength. Now, after a few months of our present administration, terrorist cells are beginning to grow once again. Is it because those Doyles don’t believe we’ll do anything about it? The answer is obvious.

I don’t know what will happen. All I know is that kissy-kissy never won the bully over. Never! But, now, on the other hand, you take a big bat---
















rconwell@gt.rr.com
www.kentconwell.blogspot.com