Author Archives: Old Jules

Denouements

Posted on September 29, 2013 | 3 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Certain types of problems seem to follow us through life, probably so’s the Universe can teach us whatever lessons it is we’re supposed to be learning during this one.  Frequently we’re slow coming to an understanding as to what ours are.  Mine, I suspect, probably are a consequence of karma acquired during a previous lifetime involving motor vehicles.

Which I hadn’t realized until I began looking at all the posts here involving transportation during my stay here.  One piece of that saga was the Toyota 4 Runner that carried me to this piece of real estate in 2008.  And became a subplot microsaga:

 Got me a new truck!

 Confession Time

The New Truck Resurrection

The Communist Toyota 4-Runner

A long one.  And one I’m finally going to apply a razor to.  I’ve found a guy who’ll follow me back out here next time I go to Kerrville, and put that 4 Runner onto a car dolly, pull it out of my life.

I went out and put the wheel back on it, took it off blocks and pushed it up the hill with the Toyota RV far enough so’s we’ll be able to get it onto the dolly.  Gale and the guy up the hill came out and improved the road enough yesterday with some machinery so’s a regular person will be able to get in and out of the valley without blowing a tire.

It’s not easy for me to part with that 4 Runner.  Lots of life history events trapped in it, but it’s clear enough the time’s come for a denouement.  Turns out I’ll be doing something similar with the Toyota RV, because Jeanne’s son, Michael’s decided it’s not the best option for him.

I’m willing to believe, for the moment, that when the 4 Runner goes out of this valley I’ll have poured enough of the life-ingredients into it to have filled whatever hole it was the vehicle challenges demanded of me this lifetime and I can have some other kind for a while.

Gracias, Jack

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Posted in 2013, America, Texas, Transportation, Trucks

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Being the luckiest man on the planet has a down side

Posted on September 27, 2013 | 15 comments

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

Those who read here, I assume, predominantly wish they could be me.  Most likely you think living the life I’m blessed with is all smooth sailing.  Figure all I have to do is remember to be grateful for the flat tires and 47 different ways to cook potatoes, 98 raman recipes, and clean the burrs out of the cat hair.

Sometimes I even think that’s true.  But the fact is, even the flood of blessings I enjoy in life become a trap.  Complacency slips in through the cracks and sometimes I forget to look for all the reasons those rough spots are actually a gift the Universe gives me, sometimes only as a reminder.

As an example, there’s a dragon lady in the courthouse in Timewarpsville who’s in charge anytime someone wants to try licensing or registering a trailer or motor vehicle.  I’ve found, if a person wants to get it done in fewer than three 100 mile round-trips he’d best find a time when she’s out to lunch and the other lady’s the one doing the business.

In the name of just doing her job that dragon lady can find more tees that need a 50 mile drive to cross and eyes that need dotting next trip any the average person who hasn’t experienced being Adolph Hitler could imagine.

But that’s okay.  That’s actually the Universe reminding me again I’m the luckiest man because, you see, I don’t have to be her.  Hells bells, I rarely even have to deal with her.  Don’t have to live in the same town, don’t have to have her for a relative, barely have to acknowledge such people are alive on this sphere and are part of the human species.

Sometimes I forget.  But that’s just the downside of being me.  Complacency.

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Human Behavior

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Scaring the high-tech scarable

Posted on September 24, 2013 | 6 comments
Three wooden toothpicks under the hatband forward of the feather leaning backward scares the hell out of them

Three wooden toothpicks under the hatband forward of the feather leaning backward scares the hell out of them

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

During those upsy-downsey times when I was trying to squeeze out a living playing blackjack I picked my casino carefully.  Only casinos offering the surrender option allows the player to throw out the blackjack books and stack the table and the odds in his own favor.  It’s a cause for black looks and hatred from the other players, but deep suspicion on the part of casino security and pit bosses.

Surrender doesn’t exist in a lot of gambling joints.  It allows players, once they see both their cards and one of the dealer cards, to take back half his bet and bow out of the hand.  I’d spent a lot of time on the computer figuring out how to turn this into a slight, but significant bending back the fingers of the house advantage.

One day I was doing fairly well on third base at the Santa Ana Star Casino.  I was wearing the high roller, and I always kept a few toothpicks in the hatband ahead of the feather for easy access during moments of contemplation.

My splitting 10s and not splitting aces at times, not at other times, doubling down sometimes, surrendering others, was working despite the fact it defied the traditions, superstitions and religions of blackjack.

I’d been there an hour or two when the pit boss came over standing beside me, watching.  At one point he bent across the partition during a hand, close to my head.  I thought he was smelling my high roller.  But a few minutes later two security men came and stood with him, watching.

A couple of hands later two more security folks came and stood behind me watching the play.  I didn’t change my strategy, kept getting as much money on the table as I could when the advantage was my way, surrendering when it wasn’t.

When the dealer finished the shoe the pit boss leaned over to me and said, “Would you mind taking your hat off please?”

I reached up and pulled it off, thinking he was admiring my high roller.  He bent over and squinted, along with the four security guards.  I handed him the hat and he showed it around, feather side up.  They all squinted.  Then one of the guards carefully took one of the toothpicks out of the band.

“They’re just toothpicks!”  He handed it around so they all could confirm it.

He handed my high roller back to me and shrugged to the security men.  “You can go.”  Then he turned back to me.  “Why do you keep toothpicks in your hatband?”

By this time I’d caught onto their suspicions and concerns.  I was barely able to restrain myself, keep my humor dry.  “Mojo.”

“What?”

“Mojo.  Three toothpicks brings me paired 10s and more blackjacks.”

Sneering, he shrugged and walked away.  Surrendered and never knew it.

Old Jules

6 Comments

Posted in 2000's, America, Gambling

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Hats You Can’t Wear Sideways or Backwards

Posted on September 23, 2013 | 1 comment

As accurate today as it was when I posted it the first time. Jack

So Far From Heaven

For a number of years I’ve watched people wearing ball caps turned backward and sideways, nobody raising an eyebrow.  I’m not sure why they do it because the purpose of the visor on a ball cap is to protect the nose from Old Sol’s battering.  But I gradually began to wonder if people just didn’t know which piece of a hat is the front, which is the side, and which is the back.

Eventually I decided to perform an experiment.  I carefully selected a hat for my next trip to town, determined to wear it backward all day, seemingly oblivious to that.  I wanted particularly to corner-of-my-eye observe the reactions of people wearing their ball caps backward and sideways.

My findings weren’t ambiguous.  From my first stops of the day I saw that people of every age and gender did double-takes, then attempted to surreptitiously call the attention of someone…

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Posted in Adventure

Time to switch hats

Posted on September 23, 2013 | 9 comments

hatrack

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by.

I just want to remind those who might have forgotten it’s time to put aside that old sweat-stained straw and don your felt, or cloth hats.  Admittedly a lot of people don’t notice these days because they’re wearing ball caps sideways or backward, or just aren’t sensitive to delicate style issues.

Tilley

But the people who matter will notice.

Old Jules

9 Comments

Posted in 2013

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“The men who write upon these walls,” mystery solved

Posted on September 22, 2013 | 8 comments
The part about rolling it in little balls had scientists tearing their hair out. Putting periscopes under the partitions trying to catch someone doing it.

The part about rolling it in little balls had scientists tearing their hair out. Putting periscopes under the partitions trying to catch someone doing it.

If they'd looked at the floor they could have solved it decades earlier.

If they’d looked at the floor they could have solved it decades earlier.

Hi readers.  Scientists have finally solved one of the most puzzling mysteries of the 20th Century.  The poem beginning, “The men who write upon these walls,” found on the stall partitions in Mens’ rooms was a phenomenon more pervasive than the “Kilroy was here” riddle of the WWII era.

Now they can finally settle down to studying why the magnetic poles of earth wander around from hell to breakfast.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2013, Human Behavior, Nature, Science

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Witch doctors as an alternative to everything else

Posted on September 22, 2013 | Leave a comment

Aside from the fact it’s making all my old scars vanish, this stuff is working like gangbusters for me. I’m not waking at night with my knees or shoulders on fire, not since the first day taking it. Mightn’t work for you, but it sure as hell seems to be working for me. Jack

So Far From Heaven

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by.

20 years ago I quit going to doctors because they never told me anything I wanted to hear. So I bought some books about vitamin and mineral approaches to staying healthy, learned about a number of other non-mainstream alternatives including diet, exercize, and metaphysical healing techniques. Considering my age I’m one hell of a lot healthier today than I was when I was going to physicians and letting them tell me all the ways I was likely to die and what I needed to let them cut off or out to keep me living.

I’m not trying to sell you on the idea you ought to follow this route. Although, if the docs have given up on you and sent you home to die you might find a pleasant surprise waiting for you if you should look into it.

But I’m writing this…

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Posted in Adventure

Fanaticism might be giving religion a bad reputation

Posted on September 22, 2013 | 3 comments

Hi readers.  Here’s something to think about.

Even though they’ve created homelands for various religious fanatics, they still create a lot of problems.  For instance, the Shinto religion in Japan could be said to have been responsible for the WWII war in the Pacific, the Rape of Nanking and Shanghai, the slaughter of thousands of Filipinos, the Bataan Death March and other inconveniences.

Similarly, creating a homeland for Protestant religious fanatics in Northern Ireland has filled the news with trouble almost from the beginning.  Then there’s the Zionists and Israel, along with the Muslims in Palestine. 

For that matter, the State of the Vatican for Catholic religious fanatics has been the source of all manner of difficulties in the Americas and elsewhere over the centuries.

The reality is that it isn’t just in the homelands.  Religious fanaticism spreads all over history for the past 2000 years and refuses to stay within any boundaries.  Admittedly the symbiosis between ruling aristocracies and one-or-another religion, and instilling fanaticism into the peasants has done a good job keeping them in line, arousing them to go out chopping up the people the aristocrats point them at.

But most people would admit it’s gotten out of hand in some instances.

Maybe it’s time to sit down with religious fanatics of all varieties and have a prayer meeting.  Try to find out what it is makes them so violent and difficult to get along with.  Find out why they keep discommoding regular people by burning them at the stake, blowing them up, chopping them to pieces and other inconveniences.  Maybe there’s something we could do to keep them happier.

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in 2013, America

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The good news behind the bad news

Posted on September 22, 2013 | 2 comments

Hi readers. Thanks for comng by for a read this morning.

The news is always so full of Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious fanatics terrorizing one another we sometimes overlook the larger issues.  This is one example.

Look at the Kenya army troops in this picture. 

  • First thing you notice is they’ve got a lot of meat on their bones.  Obviously, once they kicked out the British these people had food left lying around they could eat and fatten up.  Same as the Irish.
  • Second thing you see is the weather’s cold, but these guys are dressed for it.  Looks as though they’re wearing US Marine Corps sweaters.  But all of them are bundled up, which means they had the means to do it.
  • Third, they’ve got helmet-liners which don’t look like the old NAZI coal-scoop ones from WWII nor the ones US troops wear now.  That means they’re not indiscriminately blowing up civilians for the hell of it.
  • Then there’s the boots.  Those are good boots.  Those boots weren’t taken off some civilian corpse.
  • Look at the weaponry.  Any gun nut in the United States would kill to get one of those rifles.
  • Okay, yeah, the truck they’re in doesn’t have a spare tire.  But hell, y0u can’t have everything.

Here’s a better look at the boots and trowsers of the troops.

Notice they’re mostly wearing pre-Vietnam combat boots, though one’s wearing Vietnam era ones, and one’s wearing desert boots.  Obviously they have some style choices.  But they’ve all got US Army fatigue britches from back when US military clothing was made from US cotton and sewn into uniforms by US workers.

Now, here’s the parking lot in front of the mall those Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious fanatics attacked.

Notice the automobiles.  The lousiest car in that picture is better than any I’ve owned in more than a decade.

Seems obvious once they ran the British out of Kenya things got a lot better, all in all.  At least in that part of Africa you can’t tell it from the US. 

Sure, they have problems with Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious fanatics.  But who the hell doesn’t?

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, America

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Evil Empires, Reagan and the Slaviet Onion

Posted on September 21, 2013 | 2 comments

Hi readers.

When our sainted once-king Ronald Reagan wasn’t parking small Volkswagens under his hair next to his scalp he was fond of saying the Soviet Union was an evil empire.  But Reagan meant this in a good way.  What Reagan intended to communicate was, compared to not being an empire, the Soviet Union was evil.

As the somewhat temporary monarch of his own empire extending from Guam to Hawaii to Alaska to the contiguous states of the continent to Puerto Rico, Reagan had noticed the condition of being part of an empire wasn’t an unmitigated blessing for all the non-aristocrats living inside it.

Reagan was wise enough to know that he couldn’t do much about the ills of being non-aristocrats in an empire, but he wanted to do something good anyway, or something someone might call good in the history books.  And since he couldn’t do it for the non-aristocrats, hell, at least he could be a popular cult-figure doer-of-good-deeds for the aristocrats.

He decided if those aristocrats could be turned absolutely loose to acquire wealth and power beyond their wildest dreams they might be satisfied and allow some of the good to trickle down into the pockets and households of the peasantry who were mowing their lawns, flipping their hamburgers and doing tune-ups on their Rolls Royces.

The result was profound.  The nature of his empire went through a lot of subtle changes and the texture of the evil was distilled in some unexpected subtle directions.  In no time at all US jobs, businesses and small industry were swirling down the toilet headed for China and other countries where the labor was less expensive.  His aristocrats discovered the multi-national grass was a heluva lot greener than the stuff under the purple mountains majesties on the fruited plains.

So in a sense it can be said Reagan destroyed his own evil empire in favor of a much larger one owned by banks and multi-national corporations.  And somehow in the process he managed to make the rednecks and semi-literates lower their voices in reverence when they spoke his name.

Today he’s still remembered that way, but more within the legions of Oliver North clones serving his multi-national aristocrats.

Finding something that rhymes with empire that isn’t evil is a tough gig.

Old Jules

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Posted in America, Communication, Government, History

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