TACO TUESDAY

 I had a hankering for Mexican food last night. Instead of going out, I made some shrimp tacos, which turned out great if I do say so myself. I know that Tuesday is official "taco day," and so I may have violated some law by having them on a Monday. Oh well, sue me.  Anyway, it reminded me of the Tuesday nights in the summer up in Washington State when all of the cherry-drying pilots in our company would descend on one of our favorite restaurants in the area, The Club Sports Bar and Grill in the town of Okanogan. They had a deal where you got three tacos for $3.00.  

All of us...usually twelve or thirteen...would amass and terrorize Connie and John (the proprietors) and their hapless but unfailingly accommodating staff.  We'd eat tacos and drink beer until the wee hours, playing Tom Jones' "What's New Pussycat?" over and over on the jukebox until the regulars got frustrated and left...until we were all good and drunk and the female pilots would be up on the tables, dancing topless.  Well, usually the female pilots.  The owner of our company stopped coming to Taco Night.  Even he didn't want to be associated with us.  The "clippers" (the kids who worked in the nearby marijuana fields trimming the product) always eyed us suspiciously.

"Bruh, I think those guys over there are helicopter pilots!"

"No bruh, they must be sailors.  They're drinking and cursing and partying like they're on shore leave."

"Bruh, that one chick's been dancing on that table since we got here."

"Bruh, the chick in the blue polo shirt with the gray hair?  That's a dude, bruh.  He's, like, the ringleader or something. And he's got them...whaddya call 'em...manboobs."

"Bruh, no way!  Maaaaan, they should just smoke weed like we do and chill out."

"Bruh!  Pilots can't smoke weed - it's illegal for them!"

"Bruh, the FAA ought to make alcohol illegal then."

I was usually designated to make the reservation because we need a very big table.  Very quickly, The Club began recognizing my phone number.  If Connie answered, I'd hear a long, exasperated sigh followed by, "Bahhhhhhhhhb...." (Another sigh) "How many tonight, Bob?"  I mean, you'd think she'd be happy to hear from us!  Then again, twelve pilots ordering two "sets" of (3) tacos apiece meant that they'd be making up to 72 tacos - just for us!  They would sometimes run out of taco shells, or meat.  And even if they didn't make money on the loss-leader tacos, they certainly made money off us on the beer...which is, I think, the point of Taco Night.

Anyway, when we finally left, usually as the sun was coming up, the 17 year-old grandson of our owner had to drive us back to the compound.  He was the least-drunk of all of us.  He didn't drink at the bar, but what he did before he got there, we didn't know and we didn't ask.  The other pilots were all, like, "Bob, you should drive!"  But Bob is not stupid. Or so I tell people.

Yes, we had some great times up there in Brewster, Washington, eating and drinking (mostly drinking!) at great places like The Club, Smallwood Farms, and of course, the Sweet River Bakery.  That episode of my life is over now, but I think back fondly on it every time I eat a taco.  Even on a Monday.

Political Advice From Actors?

The headline in my newsfeed read: "ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY REACTS TO TRUMP IMPEACHMENT."

Hmm.  I don't know about y'all, but I'm really kind of tired of *actors*...let's say, "all people in the entertainment industry" trying to tell me how to think.  I mean, I really don't give a shit.  What makes friggin' Alec Baldwin an expert on anything, much less politics?  George Clooney?  Come on.  I might cut Arnold Schwarzenegger a little slack because he was actually governor of California.  Then again, seeing the idiot who currently holds that office, I'm not sure the hiring standards are all that high.  So stuff it, Arnie, nobody cares.

Why do some people listen to these nitwits?  Do we think that the ability to act and communicate (or host a late-night talk show) imbues them with some special power or insight that nobody else has?  Puh-leeze. 

There sure was a lot of scoffing about Trump  I'm tempted to cue-up that video...I'm sure you've all seen it...from back in 2016...the montage of people (both inside and outside of politics) who were ABSOLUTELY SURE that Donald Trump would never become President.  Oh, how confident they were!  And they were all...umm...what's the word?...oh yeah, *WRONG*.  Remember Nancy Pelosi? "Take it to the bank, Donald Trump will not become President of the United States."  I wonder if she regrets being so vocal about that now?  For it's quite embarrassing.  

Given the abject hatred of Donald Trump by Liberals...  Given the repeated failed attempts at removing him from office... It would not surprise me in the least if the DNC spent the last four years concocting a way of making sure Trump didn't win re-election.  And yes, that begs the question: Can a election be rigged?  Some people say, "No way! Not in America!"  But 74 million or so other people suspect the opposite.  74 million people think that politicians actually could be that devious!  And before anyone dismisses Trump supporters as unwashed, uneducated, deluded, cultist boobs, let's realize that there are some pretty smart, highly-educated people both inside and outside of government people who agree that the election was tampered with.  Do we just cast them aside as kooks?

I don't know.  But I certainly don't need Alec Baldwin to give me political advice.

"Simple" Jobs

I walked into my laundry rooom the other day and thought I'd entered a sauna.  Most of the year, that's not a totally unfamilar sensation here in Florida.  But in January?  Something was wrong.  You've probably already guessed that the dryer hose had become disconnected.  Not a big deal, right?  Pull the dryer out, clean up all the lint and lost socks and other crap behind it, reconnect hose, push dryer back against wall.  Simple, right?  Riiiiight

The hose that connects the dryer to the wall is not that long.  So the dryer cannot be too far away from the wall with both ends connected.  (So there's not a lot of space to work in back there, is what I'm saying.)  There's a plastic cap with a 90-degree angle that slides onto the dryer outlet.  There is a little hole in the thing, providing a way so that it could be secured with a set-screw, I suppose, but there is not a corresponding hole in the outlet on dryer and it would be a bitch drilling one.  So I, like probably most of you, just pushed it on hoping it would stay there.  Then I pushed the other end onto the wall inlet.

Now the only thing to do was get out of there.  Turned out I could not lift my fat ass up and over the dryer.  One complication was the shelf that is installed on the wall above the dryer, which blocked any vertical movement by me.  So I pushed the dryer out from the wall...and the hose disconnected again.  And I'm thinking, "How the hell did we get all this crap together in the first place?"  If I owned a small child, I could hold him/her by the feet and dangle him/her upside down behind the dryer to hook things back up.  No such ruck.  Dammit, being single sucks!

In the end, I did get the hose reconnected and the dryer pushed back into position.  But it was not easy.  It was one of those deceptively "simple" tasks that ends up being a sonovabitch.  At least now all of the wet heat from the dryer goes outside of the house like it should.  And with our daily temperatures down in the 50's, we need all the help we can get!

Lesson In Humility

It was Saturday, January 2nd and I was out Ubering, now that that's a verb.  I had both the Uber and Lyft apps on.  I get a Lyft "ping" to pickup at the ghetto Walmart out on Mobile Highway.  We Uber/Lyft drivers usually decline such trip requests, even at the non-ghetto Walmarts.  Most WM shoppers live pretty close to the store.  The trip usually involves a ton of grocery bags for a $3.00 fare.  And they never tip.  Not worth the time and effort, in other words.  But I took this one.  Sometimes I am a cold-hearted, money-hungry bastard; sometimes I am a glutton for punishment.  

I roll  up and see two Black women with the typical grocery cart full of crap, PLUS two small girl's bicycles with training wheels.  Warily, I get out and see that many of the grocery bags are full of toys...Christmas toys?

After years of doing this job, you learn a lot about people.  Not all assumptions are correct, of course, but most of them are.  If you get a "ping" to pick up "Destiny" at one of the fleabag motels in town, you can expect the girl to come out with her "luggage" consisting of plastic garbage bags.  She will reek of cigarettes and weed and God knows what else.

At Walmart, the heart-breaking realization dawns on me that these women (a single mom and her mother, I'm guessing) probably had a really austere Christmas, and they've gotten their stimulus money, and so they went out and bought the stuff to have a "delayed" Christmas for the kids.  

I could have told them to call for an Uber XL and "noped out of there" as the kids say, but the Jetta has a huge trunk.  And what am I, Scrooge?  I  had to get creative, but we somehow managed to fit it all in.  "Where we headed?" I ask as we start out.  "Bobe Street, across from the Fast Lane gas station," the older woman says. "You know, the trailers."  Ahh, The Trailers.  Indeed I do know The Trailers.  They're right around the corner.  It's a big ghetto trailer park...mostly tiny, old, rundown FEMA trailers left over from some past hurricane that were never intended to be anything but temporary shelter while your real house got rebuilt.  There are actually a couple of trailer parks like this here in Pensacola. This place ain't exactly Beverly Hills.

We pull up, and I start unloading. The women bring the bicycles in, and I can hear the squeals of joy from the little girls (twins, I think).  The "Christmas wrapping" of the other toys and gifts is just grey Walmart bags, but it'll have to do.  The kids probably don't care.

A lot of people got their stimulus money early, deposited right into their bank accounts.  Mine took a while last time, and will probably take a while this time too.  Not that I care.  Money is not much of a problem for me these days, and I've been sort of scoffing at this pathetic $600 handout.  When I was younger, I could blow that much on coke and booze on any given weekend.  But this one Uber trip reminded me of those who are less fortunate...those who couldn't give their kids a proper Christmas - but were now actually able to.  To some people, this stimulus money is not a "handout" at all, but thank the Lord, it's a little New Year's windfall.  Lesson learned...again.