Category Archives: Over the Transom

Ask St. Joseph

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Cold rain, shorter daylight, still some green, since there hasn’t been a hard freeze yet. But it won’t be long. Mid-November has arrived all sullen and damp.

We’re not in the market to sell our house, but some things you can’t help noticing. I spotted this in the impulse-buy section near checkout at a hardware store I visit sometimes, an alternative to the big box DIY store not far away, where seeking a particular item can turn into a longish expedition.

I’d heard about burying a statue of St. Joseph to help along a residential sale – I think back around ’09, when that method was probably as good as any other. But I hadn’t thought about it since.

Ten minutes of looking around on line about the practice, and you find out at least two things: a number of sites offering instructions on burying your statue that may or may not endorse the practice, but certainly seem to say what the heck, might as well give it a go (such as here). On the other hand, there are also short essays about the superstitious nature of the practice (such as here), asserting that Catholics shouldn’t be burying saint statues upside down, or at all.

It made me wonder whether St. Joseph can help renters find an apartment that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, which would be seriously useful assistance in the current market. He is the patron of housing, after all. Just another thing to think about waiting in line at the hardware store.

One-of-a-Kind Montana Shops

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US 287 north from Helena, Montana, is a little short on signs of human habitation.

Eventually, you come to the Census-designated place called Augusta, pop. 300 or so. Part of its Main Street is US 287, featuring the sort of things you expect in a small-town main street.Augusta, Montana Augusta, Montana Augusta, Montana

A main street in Montana, that is. Augusta, Montana

There are other ideas about what the flag should look like, and considering the wave of new state flags, it might be changed.

Then there was this house stuffed to the gills with stuff, offering that stuff for sale. A lot of stuff. A resale business dealing in stuff, let’s say. No formal name that I could see.

We couldn’t pass that by. The mind boggles at how this accumulation accumulated, and you should boggle your mind every now and then. The place was so jammed that I had to be conscious of every movement, lest I bush into something and cause of an avalanche of stuff.Augusta Montana junk shop Augusta Montana junk shop

Lots of stuff outside, too.Augusta Montana junk shop Augusta Montana junk shop

Say, whatever happened to Lash LaRue?Augusta, Montana

Just curious. I’m not enough of a fan to buy a beat-up $20 comic book, though I bought a few postcards unrelated to LaRue or Westerns or even movies.

In fact, I didn’t know much about LaRue, so I later read one of his obituaries. He died only in 1996, with B Westerns having long passed him by. Even by the early ’70s that was the case, as reflected by the Statler Brothers’ catchy 1973 bug-in-amber song, “Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott?” (Who died in 1987.)

Just west of the western entrance of Glacier NP, on US 2 in the town of Columbia Falls, Montana, is Ten Commandment Park, a.k.a. God’s Ten Commandments Park. I hadn’t read that Roadside America article or heard about it in any way. But I saw it. Couldn’t pass that by either. Not retail, strictly speaking, but there were items for sale inside. Or, I suppose, available for a donation.Ten Commandments Park

The welcome center is along a U-shaped driveway that sports many billboards. Ten Commandments Park Ten Commandments Park Ten Commandments Park

Some exhorted one and all to follow a specific Commandment; others were pro-religious quotes from famed U.S. presidents; and yet others lauded Jesus.

I had to go in.Ten Commandments Park Ten Commandments Park Ten Commandments Park

A fellow of about my age, large and gray bearded, was there to greet me. Frankly I expected a bit more witnessing from him. Instead, he told me to look around, let him know if I wanted to buy anything, and he offered license plate-sized Ten Commandments and Jesus magnets for free. Also, a few free snacks. That was it.

Virtual Lightbulbs & Cats

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Something new in the world of robots asking whether I’m a robot.

Or at least something new to me. Previously I’ve tended to run into a challenge to click on buses or motorcycles or traffic lights or the like. Maybe those have been cracked by nefarious robots pretending to be people, and so we need cats to foil them.

Whatever the case, there was a reason for the CAPTCHA photos of objects you’d find driving.

“In 2012, Google started snippets of photos from Google Street View,” says the Grove Street Auto Repair Blog. “By 2014, the CAPTCHA system was primarily focused on training AI. Google has mentioned that by this time, they used CAPTCHA to teach self-driving cars, such as the new rideshare Waymo vehicles.”

I think I’d read about that before. It’s a steep learning curve for the robot cars, apparently.

Down in Oklahoma

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Received a collection of postcards from my brother Jay recently, who picked them up at an estate sale, where occasionally one finds such things.

One of them featured some period-specific doggerel about Oklahoma, with 7-24-40 written on the edge, which no doubt was when the card was new. It wouldn’t have been the only gag postcard of roughly that vintage. The card was printed by Curt Teich (it says Curteich on the card), as so many were, on behalf of Mid-Continent News Co. of Oklahoma City. No copyright date.

Nothing like a wild-and-woolly oil patch, eh? That’s the vibe, of course, but some specifics are a little hazy. The populace is “boost”? As in, prone to steal? And what was it about wearing dresses to their knees for big girls and wee ones? A sideways comment on Oklahoman female morality? Also: “whist out” in the morning? The context is clear enough, but that’s a turn of phrase that seems lost to time.

A Quiet Suburban Spot

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Rain blew through last night and so did cool air. Dropped temps by about 20 degrees F. compared with yesterday, making today feel like a pleasant day in October. The days ahead look to be warm and dry: a nice run for declining summer.

Spotted near a suburban street recently in Du Page County.Bloomingdale descanso Bloomingdale descanso

I parked – off the road – and took a look. I drive this street fairly often, maybe twice or three times a month, and hadn’t noticed this descanso before. That probably means a recent accident, though a simple search using the street and town names and a few other items turned up nothing. A look at a fatal accident database with a helpful map pinpointing the incidents (just the kind of thing to set your teeth on edge) told me there was a fatality on that road in 2017 involving one car, one drunk driver, and one death.

If this were that person’s memorial, it seems odd that it was take so long, so I doubt it is. My search wasn’t conclusive, but that was as far as I wanted to take it. Someone died unexpectedly on this uncrowded, obscure suburban street, and someone wanted to remember that person.

A Normal Car

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When I see a car decked out like this, I admire the effort that went into it. Spotted in a large parking lot in Normal, Illinois, a little over a week ago.

That effort is more than decorating the car’s surfaces. Cars move around. This isn’t going to be set and forget. What happens when you drive on the highway in that machine? Or a hard rain falls? Or wind gusts, even when it’s parked? Things fly off, of course. Lose, replace, lose, replace. The enthusiast who owns this car has to work at it that much more, and more often.

So – interesting to look at, but I wouldn’t want it in my driveway.

Not a Ford Falcon, But Still Evoked Childhood Memories

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What’s that, I thought from far up the street. Possibly a Ford Falcon? Not a model you see much on the streets any more.

I got closer and no, it was a Chevrolet Bel Air. I’m not enough of a car aficionado to pinpoint the model year, but it looks early ’60s to me. Still not something you see much on our 21st-century suburban streets.

My grandmother drove a Ford Falcon. Shorter than the Bel Air, if I remember right, and somewhat rounder. It was the last car she owned, an early or mid-60s model. Again, I’m not enough of an expert to know the exact year, and it isn’t something I would have asked grandma.

I have scattered, but fond memories of riding in that car. It was gray and mostly, I believe, she drove (when I was with her) the short distances to shops she traded at, such as the Handy-Andy grocery store on Broadway in Alamo Heights, or to Brackenridge Park for my amusement.

Oddly enough, besides reminding me of grandma and the Brackenridge Park Eagle, the memory of that old car makes me also think of survivorship bias. There was no seat belt in the back seat, though the the front had lap belts. I usually rode in the back as a kid and, of course, survived the beltless experience. I consider this good fortune.

Some older people – my age, and I’ve seen it in writing – thus come to the conclusion that making children wear seat belts or other safety devices while in a car is merely the heavy hand of a nanny state. Hey, I survived my belt-free childhood in the ’60s! That’s an example of a statement that’s true but also dimwitted. Are there no children (or anyone else) in their graves from that period who would have survived had belts been in use?

Street Sign

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He’s back.

The light is fairly long at that place, so I had time to document his presence not long ago. I don’t know that I see him every summer at this location, at the intersection of two major roads here in the northwestern suburbs, but I know I’ve seen him there over the years. With his straightforward message.

More of the carrot approach, rather than the stick favored by a sign-holder I saw on Michigan Avenue once.

Tent Failure

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Did a lot of things today, some involving more effort, other things less. None had a higher aggravation factor than trying to put a tent back in the package that it came in. Normally, I wouldn’t consider such a thing, in favor of keeping the various parts of the tent in more-or-less the same place, whether that’s the garage or in the back of a car.

Earlier this year, I bought a new tent from a large physical retailer, a non-brand I didn’t know, with the idea that there will be a revival of tent camping in this household. Been what – 10 years? The old tent is pushing 20 years, and while it was in good enough shape the last time I set it up a few years ago, it has been leaking since its third summer. As much as a few inches of water inside the tent, that one time in Wisconsin.

New tents, on the other hand, even those that claim only to be “weather resistant,” should not leak the first time they are set up, and only the second time they are rained on. The rain was fairly heavy over the weekend, but not as heavy as it can be, and I expected it to stay dry inside. No. The water wasn’t near the door, either, in case it was a matter of leaving it unzipped a bit, but on the other side from the door. A matter of a lousy seam, it seems.

As I was pondering taking it back to the retailer, I noticed (this morning) that two of the four guylines had broken. Just because of the stress of being anchored to the ground, since there was little wind last night. That settled it. Back in the box and back to the store, never mind the aggravation, and good luck getting me to buy that non-brand again.

Bashful Bob

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I didn’t imagine it: Bashful Bob’s Motel in Page, Arizona, was a real place, which I called “a real, honest-to-God tourist court” more than a quarter-century ago. I still have a card I picked up when we stayed there in 1997.Bashful Bob's MotelWhen we returned to Page two years ago, the renovated place was the pleasant but less interestingly named, and more expensive, Lake Powell Motel. Bob Wombacher was nowhere to be found. Not a surprise, since he died in 2011.

I suspect, but don’t actually remember, that we met Bob briefly in May ’97, when we checked in. Running an honest-to-God tourist court is (was) usually hands-on work for the proprietor. In our time, someone with a name like Wombacher, if he left any trace at all, can be found on the Internet.

Turns out Bob was more than a tourist court operator. He left a legacy of obscure humorous poetry, according to a curious site called Porkopolis, the “arts, literature, philosophy and other considerations of the pig.” (Which has a page devoted to Arnold Ziffle, I’m glad to say.)

Bob wrote a poem about pigs, or at least referencing pigs. A collection of Bob’s – Rhyme Time – can be found here. It includes such verse as (picked at random for their brevity):

“Just Following Orders”

I step inside my fav’rite store
And spy a cone inside the door.
“Wet floor,” it states, and so I do
Exactly what it tells me to.
Then, rather wishing I had not,
I’m banished to the parking lot.

“All Set”

I’ve saved enough money
To last me for life.
The children are grown;
I don’t have a wife.
I’ve got enough money.
Yes, plenty and then some.
To last me forever.
(At least ’til I spend some.)

“Half-Pint”

It isn’t that I’m little.
I’m just not very tall.
Until I grow,
I’m last to know
When rain begins to fall.

I also wondered: Bashful Bob? I always considered that a just bit of alliterative whimsy on the part of Bob, but I now know there was a song of that name recorded by Bobby Vee. Mainly because I just found out.

Maybe the song title was an inspiration for him. If so, it was still a bit of Bob’s whimsy. Mr. Wombacher seems like the kind of guy to name his business after a teen-idol pop song of an earlier time, just for fun.