Bye Bye Chummy

It was the best of times, it was the worse of times. My beloved Chummy was sold and drove off to live in Denver today. I once thought this day would never come and that they would carry my body in Chummy to the burial grounds. Once there the crowd would open the awning, break out the grill and have a picnic. My grandkids would honk the horn as they saluted my soul lifting to the great Airstream heaven above. But Chummy will not be carrying this body anymore, dead or alive. The time had come for us to sell Chummy and move on with a new chapter of Airstreams and that begins next Monday when we pick up our new trailer.

We found Chummy a very good home with nice understanding people. They are new to Airstreams but not to old cars, trucks and restoration. They reminded me very much of the folks who bought our first trailer and they turned out to be great Airstream owners and friends.
I spent the past two weeks getting Chummy ready for his new owners. First he went into the service department for a thorough check up and fluid change. He came out with flying colors. When he came home, I gave him a good scrubbing on the outside to get all the winter crud off, then Fran and I started to unpack the years of accumulated goodies we had stuffed away inside.

I spent the next week making absolutely certain everything worked perfectly. I tightened screws, oiled and greased, tested and adjusted. When I thought I was finished I started again just to make sure all was absolutely perfect for the new owners.

I picked Bill and Phyl up at the motel and brought them back to our house to introduce them to Chummy. He was smiling as we pulled up, little did I know it was really a sneer.

First, Bill wanted to know everything about Chummy. He crawled under the front end and started to ask me questions about things which lived under there. I had to explain to him that the only time I had been under the front end like he was, was a time the kid’s frisbee landed there. I don’t think I said "I don’t know" so many times in a single day in my entire life.

Then Chummy decided to act up. A pipe which had lain dormant for six years started to leak. I didn’t even know the pipe was there. Fortunately there was a shut off valve and the flood stopped. The awning which always folds right back into its place decided this time for the first time to go back cockeyed. I had to straighten it out. The worse was yet to come.

They were all packed and ready to leave. The mirrors adjusted and the engine warmed up. However, I noticed that the steps did not retract. This was the very first time this had ever happened. I knocked on the door and they opened it up and I looked down to see the magnetic switch had fallen into the chassis.

Chummy was sneering at me. I ran into the house and got a pliers and screwdriver. Located the wires and somehow pushed the switch assembly back up through this impossible tiny hole and into its correct position. A piece of tape held it in place and the steps worked.

All I could think of was the two weeks of checking and rechecking to make certain all was working as it should be. But now as I think about it maybe Chummy was testing his new owners. He’s not perfect and things are going to break. He would not want owners who got upset. His new owners just took everything in stride.

The new Chummy is sitting in Wilmington, North Carolina. He is 31 feet long and a lot younger than the first two Chummys. He has never been above the Mason Dixon line or experienced a real winter. We are excited to get him home and start tearing him apart and making him ours. And by the way this will be my last Chummy. You read it here.

Easter Dinner at a Family Homeless Shelter

Sunday was our church’s regularly scheduled night to bring dinner to the Cathedral House Shelter. Sunday was also Easter Sunday and since we would be celebrating our Easter the week following my wife and I decided to volunteer to do some cooking and help serve the dinner.
Cathedral House is a shelter for women and families. It also provides a variety of services to homeless women and children. They depend on volunteers to provide a meal seven nights a week. These volunteers come from area churches and the logistic nightmare of arranging for them is done by the Interfaith Council of Greater Milwaukee.
Our assignment for this Easter Sunday was to prepare dessert for about fifty people. This was a labor of love for both my wife and me. We each love to bake. My wife made a sinfully delicious double chocolate sheet cake and I experimented with a buttermilk sugar cookie recipe which ended up as buttermilk sprinkle bars. Other volunteers prepared ham, potatoes, fresh baked rolls, and a fresh vegetable tray with dips. Beverages were supplied by yet another volunteer, and bags of pretzels rounded out the before and after meal snacks.
Children met us at the door eagerly wanting to help us carry items up to the third floor dining room. The adults greeted us with more offers of help. We scooped potatoes, served ham, poured beverages and assisted in any other manner we could for about an hour and until everyone was fed. The children all said thank-you. Many of the adult women came back to the line to express their gratitude for us being there.
The shelter was at capacity on both the family and women’s floors. These were the fortunate ones who had a safe, clean place to sleep. These women and children received a wholesome Easter dinner tonight. I could not help but think of the families still on the street who could not get into this, the only family shelter in the city. What would they be eating tonight? Where would the children sleep?
Our final task before the cleanup was to pack lunches for the working women to take with them the next day. The count was thirty-nine, so we made that many lunches and packed them away in the refrigerator. We also made up plates of cookies for the children and put them away. The cleanup went quickly and soon we were on our way home.
We volunteers were filled with a satisfaction that this night we had done something special. We did not spend a lot of money or commit to a lot of time. The work was not challenging or difficult but it was very satisfying. This Easter I feel that I made a difference in a small way and I was able to extend my hand to help someone in need. I felt good.

Gotcha Day

When my first two grandchildren were born I only had to drive a few miles to see them. When my third grandchild was born, I had to travel more than six- thousand miles to see her. I have the memory of my first meeting with each of my grandchildren permanently imprinted in my mind. This is the story of my third grandchild, Elizabeth whom I call Bitsy.
The story actually begins on a crisp September day almost three years earlier. I sat with my daughter, Rachel at a campsite at our favorite State Park, Pike Lake. She was upset and frustrated. Both she and her husband David had been undergoing fertility tests and nothing had turned up as to why they had not gotten pregnant. We talked about parenting, their son, Sam and children. I remember telling her that what is most important is the child, not where the child comes from. The conversation turned to adoption and the process began.
Rachel and David decided to adopt from China and they chose an agency with which to work. They understood from the onset that this was a long and arduous process as well as an expensive one. My wife and I gave them the money to start with and soon the mountains of paperwork were being sent from Milwaukee to New York and then to China. To help with the funding the kids held yard sales, collected cell phones, and had other fund raisers. There were so many people from across the country who contributed in some fashion to their cause that I could not begin to name or list them all. So many things just went right starting at the beginning with the choice of a good agency which was efficient, supporting, and honest. They chose Homeland out of New York, NY. Now it was all up to this agency to complete this miracle which began almost three years ago. "Gotcha Day" is what they call the day when the parents and child are joined together and the day had finally come.

There were nine families in our group and with the nine families was an array of grandparents like us and brothers and sisters. We were quite the crowd meeting in the downstairs lobby of our hotel in Nanjing, China. Needless to say no one was late and all were excited to get on the bus and start this day. My wife, Fran and I were equipped with cameras and a camcorder so we could record every second of this event. I stood in line with the rest of the cam cording grandfathers and fathers recording the every step we took as each of us got on the bus. Fran kept snapping pictures just in case I missed a moment. The bus ride over to the official building was short and soon we arrived at the Jiangsu Registration Center for Foreign Related Marriage and Foreign Related Adoptions building. This was a very official looking place with a small entry room and a man working at a desk which spanned the length of the room.
We were all ushered into this room and the man at the desk never looked up from his work. We were in this room for only a few minutes when I heard my daughter’s name being called and heard David saying, "there she is." I turned to see Rachel holding Elizabeth. Other names were being called out and soon bedlam erupted in this room. Babies were crying, mothers and fathers were crying and this grandfather was crying. There she was my granddaughter in my daughter’s arms and they were both beautiful. I totally forgot about the camcorder so the moment was lost on tape but it is permanently recorded in my mind. David took Elizabeth and she grabbed his beard exploring her new father. He then handed her to Sam who could not have been prouder to have his new sister in his arms. Sam gave her a big kiss and said, "Hi cutey."
I was next in line and when I got her in my arms I was overwhelmed with emotion. Here I was in this room of total bedlam and noise holding my granddaughter who was not crying just looking at me. She was not afraid or wanting to leave my arms, she just cuddled in like this is where she was supposed to be now. I handed her to Fran and she snuggled right down with her grandmother.

The man at the long desk steadily kept working throughout this cacophony of noise which only became louder when the care givers from the orphanage were let into the room. Elizabeth’s care giver was among them and she came over to say good bye. She held Elizabeth and pointed to Rachel and David and told her in Chinese they were her mother and father. She then gave Elizabeth back to Rachel and Elizabeth went without a fuss. We thanked her for her love and care, then she left. We found a row of official looking chairs by a window and sat down waiting for whatever would come next. Elizabeth snuggled in her mom’s arms and looked as if she had always been with her.
The seemingly endless streams of paperwork and hoops which Rachel and David went through to get to this day were forgotten. The process which began on that crisp September day almost three years ago had come to the perfect ending.

Berry Sour Cream Yogurt Coffee Cake

I had volunteered to bring something to the Easter sunrise breakfast at our church and decided to try something new. One of my favorite cookbooks is a Mennonite Church cookbook I bought almost forty years ago when we lived in Iowa. This cookbook is filled with good old fashioned country cooking recipes. I found this recipe there and started to mix things up when I realized there was not enough sour cream. The recipe called for one cup and I barely had a half cup. My substitution was a container of peach yogurt. The other changes were to use nutmeg in place of cinnamon since I do not like the taste of cinnamon, and I added a mixed berry fruit filling. It all worked and the coffee cake tastes great.

½ cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tbs.. Vanilla
2 cups flour
1 tbs.. baking powder
1 tbs.. baking soda
½ cup sour cream
1 6oz. Container any peach yogurt
1 tsp. nutmeg
½ cup frozen mixed berries, thawed.
Preheat oven to 375.
Combine and mix all ingredients except the nutmeg and berries. Pour ½ of the batter into a greased and floured 9" round cake pan. Sprinkle nutmeg over this layer and use a knife to swirl it into the batter. Spread berries on top and cover with remaining batter. Bake 35 to 40 minutes at 375 degrees.

Factory Girls by Leslie Chang

Before we left for China, I had read many articles on the imbalance of males to females in China. One article even stated the ration as high as one-hundred and twenty males to every one-hundred female. The reasons given for this outbalance were startling to me. Many articles pointed to the one child policy and the cultural preference to males as the reason. I read about families having abortions to control the sex of their one child and even the outright killing of female babies. The fact that we were going to China to pick up our new granddaughter only reinforced my idea of what we would see on the streets of china. I fully expected to see only males and an occasional female. This was a false impression.
When we arrived in Beijing I was surprised to see large groups of young girls. From my observation these groups far outnumbered the males. When we traveled to Nanjing, the ration of girls to boys on the streets was even higher and only grew when we were in Wuxi. When we reached Guangzhou, it was a rare sight to see a young boy on the streets. My observations were not scientific, only an impression, although it was hard to believe the many articles I had read before coming to China. I began to ask why I was seeing so many girls and the answer was always that they were from the countryside.
I have since read about the mass migration, in China, of the rural girls to the cities for factory work. Among my readings the best book is by Leslie Chang. The Factory Girls, From Village to City in a Changing China, New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2008. After reading this book I now feel I have a very good understanding of whom those young girls were and why they were in the city. Reading this book was an epiphany experience. I began to understand the many young girls we interacted with at the hotels, shops, and restaurants. I understand the intense shyness coupled with the curiosity they exhibited toward us. I know why some were so eager to talk English with us and receive the little gifts of postcards of Milwaukee, WI we passed out. This book brought me into the world of these migrants and allowed me to glimpse what their lives were like. When I finished the book, I felt an emptiness not for the girls but for myself that I had to leave them.
Leslie Chang is a marvelous writer. She could have easily written a book judging the circumstances causing the migration and detailed the horror of the migrant’s life in China. Instead she opened the door to examine the migrant’s life and allowed the reader to come to their own conclusions. She allowed the girls in the book to speak for themselves and in so doing the reader becomes personally involved with the girl’s stories. Wrapped around these stories is the author’s personal story of discovering her family in China. I must admit that at first I did not understand why she included this personal narrative. Now I can see that it enabled her to better understand and write about the migrant population.
The Chinese migration of one-hundred and thirty million workers is the largest migration in history. This migration has an enormous impact on our economy, our foreign trade, and relations with other countries. The migration provides the workers to make the products we consume. These are the faces of those who have changed the way we go to work and the jobs we do here in the United States. They are manufacturing the products which just a few years ago were made right here in the United States. Today many of those companies are not even in business and the jobs are just a memory. The migration in China is transforming the society in China and also here in the states. Without these millions of young girls who have left their rural villages to travel thousands of miles and work in the factory towns we would still have an industrial economy and not a service economy.
Factory Girls is an important book for both its understanding of an ancient and changing society and the new global economy. I will never put on a pair of shoes without thinking of the worker’s at the Yue Yuen. Even the computer I am using now has taken on the faces of the workers in Dongguan. I have also taken a keener interest in my own family. I now want to investigate my grandfather’s role in unionizing the International Harvester plant in Chicago. This book is life changing and I am very grateful to Leslie Chang, her talents as a writer and her integrity as a person.

The Oakland Mills Store

The Food Channel has a popular show, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives which features different eating establishments which mostly specialize in greasy fried food. These out of the way mom and pop eateries all have one thing in common, lots of good freshly prepared food, served in a friendly atmosphere. Each of them has a specialty which the host of the show will help prepare and then eat. Generally he will be standing in the kitchen with food dripping out of his mouth making satisfied noises and extolling the taste with robust phrases like, that’s heaven, or this is money. The audience sits and wonders why we can’t all have jobs like that? In a way we can if we get out of the franchised restaurants and into the home-grown variety. First we need to exit the interstate highway and drive on a two-lane road.
This television show got me thinking and reminiscing about the Oakland Mills Store. We once lived in Oakland Mills, a spot on the Iowa map with twenty or so permanent residents. This spot is on the banks of the mighty Skunk River. You’ll need to drive on a county trunk road and even some gravel to get there. Oakland Mills was once a thriving community with a grist mill and a button factory which manufactured buttons out of the river clam shells. The community’s livelihood and its demise was the river. The river provided power to the mill and factory, first by water power and then a small hydroelectric dam was built. The demise came when the spring rains brought heavy flooding which would drown the community when the Skunk ran out of its banks. The Oakland Mills Store also depended on the river for part of its income and it too had its share of floods.
During the time we lived in Oakland Mills we never fully appreciated the store. Since it was always there and would probably always be there we took it for granted. The store was housed in the former railroad depot which used to sit on our property. Our old shed was originally part of the depot but was left behind when they moved the larger part of the building closer to the river to use as the store. This move was necessary since after they took out the rail line they also closed all the roads leading to the depot and that area eventually became our side yard. Besides we were the furthest property from the river and a store which made and sold catfish bait needed to be right on the river. All of this splitting of and moving of buildings happened many years before we purchased our home but the stories of the move were told like it was done yesterday.
The new location was perfect and the inevitable sign was hung out front: Best Little Store by a Dam Site, it read. Inside the store was a long counter with stools in the front. Along the front windows were two tables. Behind the counter was the kitchen and the store’s inventory. The bathroom originally was out back and a tiny single hole affair was brought inside at a much later date. A partition wall was built on the left side of the counter to give the toilet some privacy. Hand washing was at the kitchen sink toward the middle of the counter. Most of the patrons preferred the outback facilities over the new indoor plumbing. When the county took over part of Oakland Mills for a park, they installed bathrooms in a building just to the front of the store. This new bathroom put the outback out of service.
The store sold a few essential food items like bread, milk and eggs. They also carried fishing equipment for the fishermen who flocked to the dam site for fishing. And they sold bait. The most famous was their catfish bait. This was made on site on the right side of the long counter. There were big plastic pails filled with cornmeal and special secret ingredients. The mixing was done by hand. After the ingredients were mixed, the bait was rolled into balls about the size of a baseball and laid on the counter to dry. Some fishermen preferred the fresh bait over the dry bait and would buy it straight from the counter. Behind the front door was the refrigerator which held the worms. They packaged the worms onsite so you knew they were fresh. The catfish bait and worm packing was all done in the morning so by noon the counter was cleared for the lunch time crowd. The breakfast crowd shared the counter with the bait.
The left side of the counter was where the tenderloins were made. An Iowa tenderloin is a slice of pork tenderloin cut thin then pounded to make it even thinner. This pounded meat is then breaded and deep fried and served on a regular hamburger bun. A true Iowa tenderloin will be twice as large as the bun. The Oakland Mills store made true tenderloins and they were the best I have ever eaten. The breading was delicious even though there was a slight taste of cornmeal one never wondered or worried about how it got there. The meat overflowed the bun and they were served only one way, the proper way, with lettuce and mayonnaise. A side order of crinkle fries filled the remainder of the plate. You were allowed ketchup for the fries but never for the tenderloin.
There is only one method of eating a true Iowa tenderloin. The sandwich is never to be cut in half. You pick up the sandwich, holding firmly to the middle of the bun. Next you begin to nibble off all of the meat overlapping the bun. You work the bun around in a circle being careful not to squirt any of the mayonnaise out of the bun. The sandwich cannot be put back on the plate until all of the excess breaded tenderloin has been eaten. You cannot bite into the bun until there is no longer an overhang of meat. If you were not able to hold all of the mayonnaise on the bun and some did squeeze out you are now allowed to wipe it up with the edge of the bun. At this time you can go ahead and bite into the bun and finish the sandwich. I am led to believe that these rules have been incorporated into the Iowa State Constitution.
The beverages were to be found in the pop cooler next to the door. There was cola, root beer, orange and lemon-lime but all of it was simply called: pop. Coffee was made behind the counter but this drink was only for breakfast and was never intended to be drunk while eating a tenderloin. If you were sitting at one of the tables, ordering was done by simply calling out how many tenderloins you wanted. Most customers grabbed a pop on their way in since the entrance was so small the cooler was blocked by others standing at the door. You’re ordered tenderloins were placed on the counter when they were ready and you had to get up from the table and reach around the persons sitting at the counter to retrieve your order. You paid on your way out. No paper was ever used to write down an order, this would have taken up too much room and space was a premium in the Oakland Mills Store.
We sold our home in Oakland Mills and the population dropped by two since the new owner’s had no children. Over the years we did make some return visits but never to the store. Our first return to the store was more than twenty-five years after we had moved. We were accompanied on our return trip by both our now adult children, their spouses and our grandson. Our kids wanted to show their spouses where they were born and spent the first years of their life. Having lunch at the Oakland Mills Store was the highlight of the trip.
Rural Iowa has a tradition of naming a house after the former owners. We always lived in the Jenning’s house when we lived in Oakland Mills and the new owners of our house lived in the Hadley house. Our house had not been resold since we sold it so it was still the Hadley house twenty-five years after we left. The house was pretty much the same as how we had left it and the store was exactly the same. All seven of us marched into the store filling both of the tables. After we sat down, a man sitting at the counter turned to us and said: "You used to live in the Hadley house. Did you ever get that generator fixed?" I replied that it was still in the shed and still not working as far as I knew. He replied telling me that was too bad since it was a good generator. No mention was ever made of us being gone for twenty-five years.
The tenderloins we ate that day still had a slight taste of cornmeal and they were still twice the size of the bun. Customers came in and out of the store buying bait, pop, milk, bread, and eggs. Some stayed for a cup of coffee or a tenderloin. My friend at the counter was busy telling the gentleman next to him all about our generator which was never fixed, to my knowledge. We have not returned to the store since that day and do not even know if it is still open or not. If it is still open, I can assure you nothing has been changed since the first day it opened.

Cromwell Takes to the Field

Throughout the years there have been people who have made their mark on history. These people have been responsible for a change in events which have affected lives and changed the course of history. Oliver Cromwell was one of these people. He served as the only non-monarch ruler of Great Britain. The affects of his policies are still being felt today.

Oliver Cromwell was a cruel man. He was ruthless and practiced genocide against the Irish people. His legacy includes being dug up from his grave for a posthumous execution. All evil persons have an antithesis. There exists a complete opposite for every evil person alive or was alive. My dog is the antithesis of Oliver Cromwell so we named him Cromwell.

Both Oliver and Cromwell the dog started off life in a similar fashion. They were not born into royalty or even titled families but their families were notable. Cromwell the dog is a pure bred Field Springer but not AKC or so called show quality. He was bred for the field. Cromwell the dog and Oliver Cromwell both have or had warts around their eyes. But that is were the similarities’ stops. When Cromwell the dog was trained to hunt he excelled in flushing and tracking. He was tops in retrieving and could find anything the trainer sent him out to look for. However, he had one problem. Cromwell the dog is afraid of guns. Cromwell the dog is a pacifist.

He is not only afraid of guns but he shies away from other animals as well. Cromwell refuses to fight or attack. Cromwell will not bark when a stranger comes to the door. He will run to get a ball in his mouth when someone enters the house. The neighbors and their dogs have nothing to fear as they walk by our unfenced yard. Deer, wild turkeys, coyotes, racoons, and other forest animals are just his friends. He refuses to even attack the chipmunks as they eat out of his food bowl. This mighty hunter who was bred and trained to hunt has no instinct for the sport. He was so bad as a hunter, his original owners abandoned him in a marsh one winter day.

Cromwell spent only a few days in the city animal shelter before we adopted him but in that time he became the staff’s favorite. On his deportment and behavior test they listed him as extremely gentle and loving. Within a few days he had adjusted to the routine of our household. Never did Cromwell do anything naughty. He does not chew, go after the garbage, or expel large amounts of gas when he sleeps. He loves our grandchildren and plays with them. In short Cromwell proved to be the perfect dog.

Just how perfect Cromwell was became apparent when summer finally arrived. On our frequent camping trips Cromwell showed us how he is boundary trained and will remain inside any campsite we stay at. He also demonstrated how he walks off leash and runs through the fields and forests. During my volunteer months as a campground host for the state DNR he will play gently with any child who visits our campsite. He never barks at strangers coming into the campsite and welcomes the rangers every day. Now you are waiting for the but?

There is this one thing about this perfect dog, our antitheses to Oliver Cromwell. Our Cromwell has an abundance of energy. He is now seven years old but still acts and plays like a puppy. In his world there is never a day to just sit back and rest. His world is filled with a tennis ball and the game of fetch. If there is no tennis ball he will bring you anything to play fetch with. He has brought me tools from my tool box, lengths of wood, logs, bricks, tin cans or anything else he can get his mouth on and drop by your feet. One afternoon while working in the garden, I became tired of throwing the ball after forty-five minutes of digging, bending down to throw the ball then digging again. He dropped the ball into the hole I had just dug and I dumped a shovel full of mud on it. I then put down the shovel and picked up a rake. Cromwell then picked up the shovel and placed it in front of me this was his new fetch toy. I dug up his ball and off he ran and we played fetch for another hour or so.

Each day needs to have an exercise period built in so Cromwell can work off his energy. I will pass up my workouts at the YMCA just to give Cromwell his exercise. His favorite place to go is the dog park. Somehow he knows when I turn in the direction of the dog park. Even though he rides in the truck almost everywhere I go he understands the directions to the dog park. When I put on my turn signal to exit the highway at Fond Du Lac Street. He gets excited. We go to the dog park in all types of weather, rain, snow, sun, winter and summer. He loves to be there.

The Grandview Dog Park is a reserve of paths along the Menominee River in Milwaukee County. The park is owned by the county but maintained by volunteers. Inside the park are three large hills which were created with the excess fill of the neighboring highway, several nicely wooded paths and the river. Dogs are able to run loose inside the park. Often you will see a group of dogs running and socializing while their owners socialize together in their own group. The park has its regulars and Cromwell is one of them.

When we arrive at the park, I send him out to find a ball. He will immediately go searching in the woods, along the paths, up and down the hills, until he finds a tennis ball. Usually the search does not take long. Sometimes if we have just had a snowfall he will need to dig up a ball which was buried under the snow. With the new found ball in his mouth we begin our hike around the park. When we come near the river Cromwell will take off and jump in to go swimming. He will do this whenever there is any open water regardless of the temperature. He has even been known to break the ice just to get at the water. He loves to swim. After a swim in the winter his fur will freeze into icicles but he’ll continue to run with his tennis ball. Toward the end of the walk we climb the highest of the three hills and I will throw the ball down the hill into the woods so he needs to search for it. This game will last until I am too tired to throw the ball anymore. Cromwell never tires out. One time our vet admonished me when I brought Cromwell in with his nails worn down to the quick. The vet told me I was the adult in this relationship and need to set the limits of how much play he gets. I felt bad.

So now I set the limits at what my arm can endure or in the winter at how much wind in the face I can withstand. Cromwell will run enthusiastically up and down the hill as many time as I throw the ball down. When it is time to leave, we walk back to the truck and a drink of water. By this time Cromwell has been in the river, rolled in mud, run through bushes with burrs and with other dogs. He cannot sit inside the truck, and he goes in back. When we get home, he gets washed off in my shower.
Life is good for Cromwell and it is for me too when I am with him. I am grateful for my antitheses of Oliver Cromwell.

Cut Up Cakes

Fran is the cake maker. As our kids were growing up, they would tell her which kind of cake they wanted for their birthdays. Nigel’s was usually something to do with sports and Rachel’s had something to do with music. Along the way we had soccer balls, footballs, and a cello. There were also dolls and Easter Bunnies since Rachel’s birthday is close to Easter.

As the kids got older the cakes became more sophisticated. One year Nigel had a beer mug complete with a Miller label. However, she does get to make the kids cakes again for the grandchildren.

Hopefully I will someday scan the old 35MM slides and be able to post the many cake pictures from the birthdays from our kids. For now I am posting the pictures of the grandchildren’s cakes as I find them. I will be posting more in the future.

The Lego cake was made for Sammy’s birthday and the Panda cake was made for Bitsy’s shower before she came back with us from China. I’ll see if I can get Fran to post the instructions on how to make these cakes.

Coming Soon to a Store Near You- Pot

Marijuana will soon be legal in many of our states. There will be marijuana stores and pot bars on the corner. Possibly even the grocery, liquor, and Seven Elevens will also have a display of the newest brand of marijuana to hit the market. Major corporations like the Altria Group A.K.A. Phillip Morris will be jumping on the bandwagon to manufacture marijuana cigarettes. Tobacco farmers will be converting their lands from the leaf tobacco to the new more profitable marijuana plants.
People magazine to Popular Mechanics will be running advertisements hawking the better tasting, better acting pot from competing manufactures. Billboards will go up in our cities showing a satisfied couple puffing and sucking away on their marijuana. The sweet pungent smell will be common place in parks and public areas. Sporting events will have their separate cigarette and pot smoking areas, equally crowded.
There will be little debate over the safety, moral and social concerns. Gone will be the objections that pot is just a gateway drug to hard time drugs like heroin. You will not see any scrambled egg poster signs saying this is your brain on pot. Marijuana is going to be good from now on. Marijuana will be the next big answer to our state’s budget crises. That’s right, and pot will be just the thing to balance the budget. State legislatures will soon be rushing to legalize the growing, processing and manufacture of marijuana so they can tax it.
What’s left? The states have already taxed cigarettes beyond the useful limit of what they can reasonably bear. Twenty-four states now place at least a one dollar a pack tax on cigarettes. Fourteen states tax that pack more than two dollars each. Booze has also seen a generous tax increase. Twenty-eight states place more than five dollars a gallon tax on hard liquor with nine of them taxing more than fifteen dollars on every gallon of booze. The figures come from the Tax Foundation and are current as of January 1, 2009. These taxes have grown so high that they are hurting the sales of the products and thus the collection of the tax. States cannot raise them higher without risking the loss of revenue.
Gambling was once an answer to the state’s budgets. Remember when gambling was bad? Well not anymore, today forty-three states operate a state lottery plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. There is a large multi-state lottery known as the Power Ball and other smaller ones,
as well as regional lotteries. State run gambling has really grown since New Hampshire started it all off in 1964. But there is little room for growth in this industry. Many states have jumped on the river boat, or floating casinos. If it floats, it is not as sinful as a casino with a foundation. However, even this industry has reached its saturation point.
The states need to have more revenue. Sometime over the past several years a silent mandate went out which said no legislative body can raise taxes on its citizens. Maybe it’s a hold over from the "read my lips" days. Wherever it came from, it is a cast in stone policy they all follow. A state, a county, a city, would all prefer bankruptcy to taxing its citizens. Deficits and budget shortfalls can only be dealt with by cutting services and programs. There were once the sacred cows which never felt the knife of budget cuts but not anymore. Today we think nothing of slashing our police, fire, and education budgets.
The only source of additional revenue allowed is to increase fees and the so-called sin tax on beer, cigarettes and hard liquor. A tax is not bad if it is called a sin. These have all been raised to the limit of good return. There is a point that the fisherman will say no to the high priced fishing licence. The hunter will not take the trip to the neighboring state to shoot at a deer or pheasant. People will and do stop smoking and drinking. The states have no choice but to add another product to their list of items to be taxed. The most logical choice is marijuana.
I project that after marijuana is legal and taxed California will have a budget surplus in three years. Other states like Iowa will take a little longer but they do have two rivers to float casinos on. Marijuana just may be the answer to all of the state’s budget problems. New jobs will have been created. New businesses will be started. Main street will be alive again. People will be happy and laughing. All will be well once more. That is until the tax becomes too high on marijuana.

Have A Great Recession

That could never happen to me. My job is secure, I’ve been with the company for almost fifteen years and am on a first name basis with the owner. Our industry is recession proof. People will always need wire shelving. If we are not selling to new homes then we are selling to the remodeling market. Sound familiar? Let’s fast forward a few weeks and listen in again.
What a surprise it came out of no where. Never in my wildest dreams did I suspect they would get rid of the accounting department. Imagine, the owner thinking he can out source our jobs and save money. Sure sales were down but we’ve had dips before. I wish we had saved a little bit more for a rainy day. I’ve never been unemployed in my life. What do I do now?
Not an uncommon scene. We hear on the news about the cut backs in the auto industry and other high profile job losses which number in the tens of thousands. What we do not hear about are all the smaller to middle size companies who are also cutting back and discharging employees. The media talks about these jobs as the ripple affect but we don’t see the faces of any of them. What we do see is a lot more mothers and fathers showing up at day time events when they used to be at work. Second hand stores are seeing a new clientele and food banks are experiencing an all time high demand. Each of those thousands of numbers laid off, cut, or eliminated from their jobs have a face. The ripple affect flows over faces as well. Those faces are mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, aunts, uncles, friends, and neighbors.
The government has stepped up to the plate with stimulus packages, bailouts, emergency funds and programs. The media is full of personal interest stories about this family or that person. Experts are falling out the walls to spout their method of coping. Advertisers has picked up on the terminology of bailout and stimulus. Credit card companies are now trying to convince you they will help you budget not purchase. The band wagon is filling up and there does not seem to be any lack of players. It’s getting quite bad so what can we, or what can I do?
We can spout off as to who is and who is not to blame for this mess. We can sit back and criticize everything the government is trying to do. We can turn our backs and say, it’s not going to happen to me, I’ve saved for a rainy day. We can jump on that bandwagon and profit from those who are suffering. We can say I pay taxes and that is enough. We can hide and hope we are not next to be affected with a job loss. We can ignore it, after all if you are retired what is there to worry about? These are all options and I honor those who choose to take one of them or a similar option. I will have no argument with you.
Although there are ways we as individuals can help and it is with these people I will choose to stand. There is no need to go into detail of the many hardships which follow a job loss. There is one though, that I wish to highlight with the current economic situation in our country. And that is the period of unemployment will probably be longer than usual. This will only prove to amplify the many other problems which come with unemployment. So what are the things we can do?
First there are out local Goodwill, Salvation Army, St Vincent De Paul and other thrift stores who have seen a drop off in donations and increase of shoppers. Let’s clean out our basements and closets and donate those good useable items. Garden time is approaching. Plant a second row of crops for the food pantry. Are you a retired Human Resources director who could assist first time resume writers? Can you provide child care while a parent searches for work? The list goes on for big and small ways we all can be helpful. The pot of resources available is bottomless, it only needs to be opened and stirred.
This obviously will not stop the recession or turn the economy around. What it will do is put a smile on faces who need smiles. It will get our minds off of the doom and gloom we hear each day and give us a sense of purpose. Our parents, grandparents, great grandparents did this during the depression and today they refer to it as the "great" depression. I have always wondered if the great was meant to describe the depth of the depression or the coming together of a nation of people to help one another. I like to think it was the latter. We are faced today with a similar opportunity. Maybe someday this will be known as the "great" recession.