More Genoa Tales

There is an old joke about a group of elderly, decrepit men who got together to have lunch at a local restaurant. One guy held the menu out at arm's length complaining about the size of the print, another grouched that the waitress who came to take their drink orders needed to speak up. Why do all these young people nowadays mumble? Another complained that the chairs were too uncomfortable. Why do they keep the air conditioner turned down so damned low? And how can they charge so much for a cup of coffee? I remember when coffee cost a dime. Every complaint received encouraging acceptance. Finally, one of the old men said, "Listen to us. We've become the kind of old people we used to make fun of...nothing but complaints and negativity. Sure, we can't hear like we used to, we can't see like we used to, we can't get around as quickly as we used to, and times have changed but, hey, look on the bright side. We've still got our drivers licenses."

 

The Dr. Willliams from a couple of posts earlier was in his eighties but he still drove in 1960s Genoa, Nebraska. What harm could it do? right?  Well he found a way. 

 

My friend Bob Peterson, like other kids who lived in the country but were not old enough for a drivers' license, had a school permit. Kids only needed to be 14 years old to get a school permit and, no doubt, live a minimum number of miles away from the school.  It is curious that kids could get school permits before they were old enough to get learners' permits, when they turned 15. The single most important limitation was that these were permits to drive directly to and from school, no cruising main street to impress one's fellow students.

 

Of course all rules are made to be broken, and one afternoon after school I was riding around town with Bob Peterson in his car on one of the side streets when, crash, Dr. Williams had backed out of his parking space into the side of Bob's car. I don't remember what was said right then, but there was probably a swear word or two along with that instant realization of being in trouble, for Bob, not me. I don't remember at this remove why everything didn't stop at that point, cars in place, but Bob must have moved his car. Probably he made a quick decision that there was no need to get the local police involved since he was driving illegally at the time.. As soon as Bob moved his car, to our surprise Dr. Williams just continued backing out onto the street and drove the two or three blocks to his house, with us following.

 

When Dr. Williams got out of his car in his driveway, Bob was all over him. Probably it was a very short conversation, but even so there was likely more to it than the part that I remember. "Why don't you look before you back out?" "I did look...before I got in the car."

 

I think a lot of small town indiscretions in that era involved cars. It was also the era when people sometimes gave names to their cars. I have the vague idea this practice started with some television show, but I don't know if that's true. Even then, I thought it was both funny and a little déclassé, not done by the better people.  Leo Koziol, an attendant at the local Co-op gas station had an old work car, probably about a 1940 Plymouth, black with it's name hand painted in white letters on the left rear fender, B.O.

 

Leo liked his beer on a Sunday and was usually ready for a nap by early afternoon. One Sunday I still recall the spirit of his last words to his son Ken on his way upstairs to lie down.  "Don't you take BO." It shouldn't have been necessary for him to say this, because Ken was only 15 and didn't have a license, but that was a small matter. I'm sure Leo hardly had time to lie down when Ken and I were in BO driving out into the country.  We hadn't been out very long when we were on a road that must have been freshly graveled. Ken drove into a pile of loose gravel, lost control and we rolled into the ditch, BO landing on its top. It was almost a slow-motion accident and neither of us were injured.

 

The accident happened practically in front of a farmers house, to which we walked and asked to use the phone.  I have no memory of what road we were on, who the farmer was or anything else about the day, but the scene that followed is burned into my memory because it was so like a sitcom scene. Ken dialed the number and woke up Leo. He said "Dad, I wrecked BO." Then without waiting even an instant, he held the telephone straight out at arms length and the farmer, the farmer's wife, Ken and I stood in the kitchen listening to Leo Koziol swear quite a long blue streak.

 

Probably the best car stories about my classmates should involve Marc Baue, with always-innocent little me (have you noticed?) in the passenger seat on more than one occasion, outrunning state highway patrolmen. Unfortunately I can't recall many details, and I'm quite sure there are two or three incidents mixed up in my mind. I do know on one occasion we were on a country road driving at high speed with our lights off and we whipped into a farmers yard (without touching the breaks, of course) and watched as the patrol car raced past. Marc also knew how to make a high speed 180 degree turn using the hand break; I remember being with him once when he did this while being chased. This should be a good story because, at least in theory, we would have then met whoever was chasing us...but I just don't recall.  I'm think every highway patrolmen in the area knew Marc Baue's car and I think he knew them all by name...and probably by their driving skill. I don't believe he was ever caught, and I don't know that he ever did anything more serious than drive fast. Probably there was frequently underage beer drinking involved, but that would have been all.

I guess Marc did more than drive fast and drink a little beer while he was still underage. He also got expelled from school in his Junior year for punching the music teacher. He finished high school down the road in Fullerton, and he probably became their best football running back instead of Genoa's. The Baue's lived outside of town on a farm, and Fullerton was probably about 18 or 19 miles from their place...probably about a 15-minute commute for Marc.

I thank everyone who gave me permission to use their name (Bob).

Don't Worry, J. Edgar's Boys Are All Over It

Heitor and I have our own little inside joke about Yahoo journalism. In essence, the joke is that there is journalism and then there is Yahoo journalism.

So...I always treat what I read on Yahoo with more than a grain of salt, but a story about hackers taking over a government website seemed fairly significant. Also, it was an AP story, which lent it more credibility.

Still, I read it on Yahoo and wanted to find some confirmation. The NY Times website had nothing. The LA Times on line had the following brief story, which I found by searching for it. It was not prominently displayed.

The hacker-activist group Anonymous says it hijacked the website of the U.S. Sentencing Commission to avenge the death of Aaron Swartz, an Internet activist who committed suicide. The FBI is investigating.

The website of the commission, an independent agency of the judicial branch, was taken over early Saturday and replaced with a message warning that when Swartz killed himself two weeks ago "a line was crossed."

 The hackers say they've infiltrated several government computer systems and copied secret information that they now threaten to make public.

Family and friends of Swartz, who helped create Reddit and RSS, say he killed himself after he was hounded by federal prosecutors. Officials say he helped post millions of court documents for free online and that he illegally downloaded millions of academic articles from an online clearinghouse. 

The FBI's Richard McFeely, executive assistant director of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, said in a statement that "we were aware as soon as it happened and are handling it as a criminal investigation. We are always concerned when someone illegally accesses another person's or government agency's network."

Why am I not impressed that the FBI was "aware as soon as it happened?" And why isn't this considered a more important news story?

A Random Memory or Two, or More

For those of you who don't really care what I think about filibuster reform etc.

It is almost impossible to believe now, but there was a time when the little town of Genoa, Nebraska had three doctors, Drs. Williams, Davis and Dalton.

By the time I was growing up, only Dalton, who was of my parents' generation, was still practicing, although the other two were still living. Come to think of it, probably during my high school years Dalton took on a younger partner, so Genoa had two practicing doctors even in the days when I was still there, and four overall.

Nowadays there is a nurse practitioner who comes around to the nursing home on some sort of regular schedule. What the people who live in that little town but aren't in the nursing home do for medical care, I don't know. Perhaps he/she has scheduled office hours somewhere in town. Perhaps everybody just drives 22 miles to a town with doctors.

But this is about the good ol' days in Genoa. Drs. Davis and Williams were probably in their eighties when I was in my teens. Davis may even have been in his nineties.

I recall that Davis in his last years had regular home care. He lived alone, but with a housekeeper/cook in one of the largest houses in town. I remember one hag of a housekeeper who wasn't local, but showed up out of nowhere and then was gone just as quickly.

At the time I worked in the IGA store, run by one of the most unscrupulous cheap skates I've ever known. He ground unsold pork into the stinky beef he made hamburger out of, and who knows what adjustments he might have made to the scale? The town shoe repair man used to come in and buy hamburger and bread. For his lunch he would make a sandwich of raw hamburger (which was almost always, unknown to him, partly raw pork). I am of the generation today that can't quite adjust to the idea of ordering a pork chop in a restaurant and being asked how I want it cooked. I want to yell, WELL DONE! What are you trying to do, kill me? Trichinosis might have been one of the few medical terms I knew in the 7th grade, but I was too chicken to alert the shoe guy of what he was eating.

When Dr. Davis's housekeeper/hag would come in to buy the groceries, she always bought some Copenhagen snuff as well. She said "it's good for the houseplants." I remember the day I delivered her groceries to the back door and watched through the lace curtain as she scooped  the wad out of her lower lip...and then let me have it for coming to the wrong door.

At some point in his last years, Davis was bedridden and women in town were hired to stay overnight at his place. My mother supplemented the family income by being one of them for a short while. I don't believe any of them stayed on the job very long, probably because of Davis's reputation for randiness and, let's say, inappropriate actions, in his senility. I do remember that, when my youngest brother was born, someone said to my mother "Why, Isabelle, he doesn't look at all like Dr. Davis."

Dr. Williams was a widower who lived alone. My mother would tell stories about the tremendous fights he and his wife used to have. They were the kind of fights apparently that the whole town knew about. She was a nurse, and she would argue with him in front of patients about his diagnoses and his prescriptions, I guess about almost everything.  According to my mother, she was charged at one time with practicing medicine without a license, but unfortunately I don't know any of the details.

About the time I was a Junior or Senior in high school, I worked after school at the one and only local beanery, owned by another character Teeny Little Burroughs, but I'll save her for another time. Dr. Williams came in every night for dinner. By then he was a mess, but he tried to maintain an appearance. He would have on a white shirt and tie, unaware I guess that large parts of his last meals were distributed all over both. He dribbled food when he ate, his language was slurred and guttural but, hey, he still lived alone and he still drove his car. There is another story about him and his car that I'll save for another time also.

One night in the restaurant a stranger came in who had apparently lived in the area many years earlier. He saw the old man and went up to his table. "Hey, aren't you Dr. Williams? How's your wife?"

"Ahhh, that ol' bitch'es been dead for years."

It occurred to me much later that the immediacy of the man's question about "your wife" must have been mildly malicious in its intent, just to see what kind of response it would get. If so, he had to be pleased, as were all the rest of us.

Boring Crap I Suppose, But I Love It

The bipartisan agreement on what is being called filibuster reform in the Senate does have some good aspects, but it is mostly related to Senate procedure. Some aspects are only applicable until the end of this Congress in two years and some are "permanent." The whole process is a reminder of what a conservative institution the Senate is, regardless of which party is in control.

It sounds like it will speed up the confirmation process for federal judges, of which a record number are currently blocked, and it will apparently eliminate the ability of a single Senator to place secret holds on legislation and/or nominees. It will also put a process in place that makes it easier for the minority party to offer amendments, a particular complaint of Republicans.

I don't have any problems with the fact that the Senate is a slower and, at least theoretically, more deliberative body. Who wants a Senate like the House? Another staged vote to repeal Obamacare, anybody? What's the latest count? Thirty-some or forty-some? But there are two aspects of sensible filibuster reform which these rules don't touch, and which I think could have been included even by a conservative body.

It will still not be necessary for filibustering Senators to actually be on the floor talking. And more importantly, the onus for ending a filibuster still lies with the majority party. Instead of the majority party needing 60 votes to end a filibuster, true reform would have required the minority party that is using the filibuster to have 41 votes on the floor to enable it to continue whenever a closure vote is called. The filibuster is a legitimate tool of the minority party; the onus for keeping it going (and thwarting the will of the majority) should be placed on that minority. And I think the Democrats should have taken the position that they know the majority party can be the minority party in just one election, but this is a rule change that is right whichever position they are in.

Reportedly, if the Republicans did not agree to this current compromise, which they did overwhelmingly, Harry Reid and the Democrats were ready to use an obscure Senate rule to change the filibuster rules of the Senate with only 51 votes. Reid was on record as saying that, if it came to that, the so-called nuclear option, they would change rules to put the onus on the minority.

It was clear the Democrats didn't want to do that any more than did the Republicans and I'm sure there were sighs of relief on the Democratic side that McConnell didn't call Reid's bluff on the matter.

Job Satisfaction at The Onion

I love it when stories in The Onion are picked up and repeated as true.

My two favorites involve fooling the Chinese. A few years ago they reported as true an Onion story that parodied the way sport franchises like to play one city against another. The story was that the US Congress threatened to move itself to Nashville, TN unless certain conditions were met.

Then a couple of months ago the Chinese reported as fact a satirical Onion story naming North Korean leader Kim Jong Un the sexiest man alive.

Now a St. Paul, Minnesota radio host reacted to this Onion photo, purportedly of an inaugural flyover by drones, as if it were real. He posted it on Facebook as another thing about which to be outraged. He is the host of a community radio program called, of all things, "Truth to Tell."

“Never seen three in a cluster formation like that, but they're obviously scanning the crowd for potential trouble—all monitored by a site in Las Vegas.”

When confronted with his gullibility, he said said, well, it felt true.

Arms and the Woman

Culled from Gail Collins's column today. (I also plagiarized her clever title.)

Women in the military are going to get to serve in combat. They killed the Equal Rights Amendment to keep this from happening, but, yet, here we are. And about time.

It’s hard to remember — so many parts of recent history now seem hard to remember — but it was the specter of women under fire that did more than anything else to quash the movement for an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution in the 1970s.

The biggest safety concern for women in the military is actually not so much enemy fire as sexual attacks from fellow members of their own service. 

A Blog I Stumbled Upon

The name of the blog suggests a narrow, but intense, focus:

F*ck You, Victor Hugo. 

(Dear Mr Hugo, If you weren't already dead I would kill you, slowly! And with long interludes where I go into great detail about my backstory. Regards, Brandon)

What Else to Call Him? He's a Gun Nut

No, it isn't a comedy skit or an Onion news story.

The head of an organization promoting "Gun Appreciation Day" on the same weekend as Martin Luther King day, responding to criticism, said on CNN that he believes Gun Appreciation Day "honors the memory of Dr. King."  But he couldn't stop there:

"..Martin Luther King would agree with me if he were alive today that if African-Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from Day 1 of the country’s founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history."

Amend the Amendment

The fact that President Obama was privately sworn in for his second term today, one day before the public ceremony, raised some questions in my mind, partly about history but mainly, what would have happened if Romney had won the election? Well, the short answer I guess is that he would have been sworn in today, and all of the official hoopla would have happened on a Sunday, which is fine with me, but probably would have seemed blasphemous to many religious Republicans. On the other hand, they would have been so glad to see the last of Blacky McBlack's black ass..... (apologies to Bill Maher).

Prior to the ratification of the 12th Amendment to the Constitution in 1933, the President-elect was sworn into office the following March.  The long delay between election and inauguration may have been necessary or logical in colonial times, but it made no sense in the 20th century. (Actually it made no sense even by the time Lincoln was elected and may have contributed to the chaos of the time.) The same Amendment moved the beginning of the new Congresses to January 3rd. Why prolong the lame-duck status (a curious term, the definition of which you can find for yourself on Wikipedia, if you're inclined) of either Congress or President?

It apparently was no concern in 1933, but one does feel that, if the 12th Amendment were being written today it would include a provision that says the inauguration date would be January 20th or the following Monday, if the 20th were to fall on a Saturday or Sunday. Why waste a good weekend? seems to be our current motto.

Since the 12th Amendment was ratified, inauguration day has occurred on a Saturday or Sunday four different times, but in three of those cases it was of absolutely no importance because the incumbent had been reelected:

January 20, 1957 - Sunday
Einsenhower was sworn in privately for his 2nd term on Sunday. The public ceremony was on Monday.

January 20, 1973 - Saturday
Nixon took the oath of office for his second term publicly on Saturday.

January 20, 1985 - Sunday
Reagan was sworn into his 2nd term privately on Sunday. The public ceremony was on Monday.

January 20, 2001 - Saturday
G.W. Bush was sworn into his 1st term publicly and officially on Saturday.

So, as you can see, Bush II was the only President to begin his first term on a weekend, and it was a Saturday. Nixon had already set the precedent for holding public inaugurations on Saturday, if necessary.

But no President has ever begun his first term on a Sunday. Romney would have been the first. I wonder, is the country ready to give up televised Sunday sports for a Presidential inauguration speech?

Maybe the 12th Amendment needs amending.

Ahh, and I just saw that for only the 2nd time in history the the inauguration will occur on the day of the Martin Luther King Holiday. That is awesome.

Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?

Frank Bruni's column today was a reminder that everything in the U.S. isn't completely absurd. As he concludes:

Ours is a peculiar land, growing saner in some regards even as we remain absolutely bonkers in others.

 For "bonkers," please accept my substitution of "bat shit crazy."

And what brought about that observation? It had to do with some optimistic developments in the world of electoral politics and the candidates' relationships.

We all know that Reagan broke the divorce barrier and Clinton broke the adultery barrier. Ok, the latter had been broken repeatedly for centuries, but less publicly. We might even say that Jefferson broke the miscegenation barrier.

What is left to break? There are the candidates-without-partners barrier, the candidates-with-partners-they're-not-married-to barrier, the candidates-who-don't-live-with-their-wives barrier and the biggie, candidates-with-same-sex-partners barrier.

Mitch Daniels disappointed many Republicans by not running in 2012, at least partly it was reported because he and his wife lived in different states and Republican primary voters just aren't very forgiving of non-orthodoxy. Daniels didn't want to have to discuss his marital relationship on the campaign trail, so he has settled for the presidency of Purdue.

While one can/should always sympathize with that point of view, it is refreshing to see that changes seem to be in the offing. And, dare I say it? The Republicans might be behind the curve.

In New York, Andrew Cuomo was elected Governor despite living openly in an unmarried relationship which his Catholic church deplores as sinful. Cuomo is assumed to have presidential ambitions. As he reportedly said, "Even when we’re building a bridge, opponents say, ‘You’re only building a bridge to run for president." (An aside: Now, when he has pushed through and signed tough gun control laws, his opponents are saying the same thing, as if a tough stance on gun control has always proven to be a winner in presidential politics.) There is no talk of Cuomo and his long-time partner marrying.

In Colorado, the Governor, John Hickenlooper, and his wife have publicly separated. They have shared the whole story with the public. There were no affairs or infidelity; their lives have simply taken different directions and they have been honest enough to recognize they have different values and different priorities, deal with it, and remain close.

Why are we still so batshit crazy about other things?

Bad Samaritans

A couple of years ago, a friend mentioned that he tries to read at least one science/physics book per year even though they are mind-bogglingly difficult and they can tie one's mind into knots, even the ones that are supposedly written for a general audience. I periodically try to do the same thing, but I have come to the conclusion that people who genuinely understand quantum physics, or string theory, or particle physics in general and use it to understand the world have brains not only infinitely better than mine, but truly organized differently. Sometimes I just have to admit I'm in way, way, way over my head and give up on the book, and just hope that something I've read has worked its way into my unconscious by osmosis.

I'm now thinking of also reading at least one economics book per year. They have the value of not being as obtuse as physics, although even the best of them are probably pretty dull. I can recommend the one below. It is well-written and easy to understand. It is a very intelligent criticism of the current orthodoxy of free trade and globalization, and shows the way in which the economic histories of the advanced nations have been rewritten to reflect a reality that never was.

The  two countries with histories of the most protective trade policies are the U.S. and Great Britain. Their current policies of advocating for free trade and even playing fields are not only hypocritical, but counter-productive because developing economies need the security of protective trade policies. The current position of the the developed world is the classic case of climbing to the top and then kicking the ladder away.

The author touches on one aspect of protective trade policies only indirectly, but I can't help thinking about it in the context of the current political debate in the US. Protective policies that nurture infant industries (an expression coined by Alexander Hamilton, by the way) have the negative impact of denying a country's citizens access to cheaper and/or better quality imports. The plus side, of course, is overall economic development and growth for the nation. 

Remember the theme of the Republican convention? I built it. Of course that was nonsense, and always was. But this book made me think of the extent to which the whole strength of the US economy has been built at a cost to the larger society, an cost that was paid without cessation over more than a century and a half of protectionism. Society in general sacrificed for the common good, and everyone has benefited from the overall economic development, but there is a large segment of American society that would rewrite the history of how our economy grew, who sacrificed and who benefited. There is a large segment of the population who think the government can do nothing right who owe their very economic existence to protective governmental policies.

It is hard for me to encourage anyone to read an economics book, but this one is worth the effort.

It's Cynicism, That's All

I guess when you lose elections, you can either change your message or change the rules.


According to an AP story, Republican leaders in states that went for Obama but in which Republicans control the legislatures are putting together efforts to allot electoral votes by congressional district as opposed to the current winner-take-all system that exists in every state but Nebraska and Maine. Reince Priebus, the chairman of the RNC and other Republican leaders are endorsing the idea,

(Before anything else, I think the name Reince Priebus should be included in every story about Republicans, much like Gail Collins made a point of including Mitt Romney´s dog in every column she wrote about Romney during the campaign. Nothing says "man of the people" like the name Reince Priebus. It makes Thurston Howell III sound like the name of an illegal gardener.)

At first blush, it might seem to be an innocent enough proposal. The electoral college is a stupid institution and the winner take all system is flawed. But the problem is illustrated perfectly by what happened in Nebraska between the elections of 2008 and 2012.

In 2008, Obama garnered one of Nebraska's electoral votes by winning the congressional district that included Omaha, that liberal city of Omaha. What did the "non-partisan" Unicameral legislature do? They redrew the congressional district boundaries to make sure it wouldn't happen again. All the Nebraska congressional districts were once again safely Republican by the time of the 2012 election.

And of course this is what has happened all around the country. Both parties have played at this game over the years, but it is the Republican state legislators in the last couple of decades who have made this sort of redistricting into an art form. Tom Delay's design of the Texas congressional map is the best example, but I can't find a good link. It was eventually overturned by a federal court anyway. The map below, from Pennsylvania will serve very well to show the artificiality of districts created by one party:



 To the best of my knowledge, which may not be as good as I'd like to think, the redesign of congressional maps used to happen only about once every decade after a national census added or removed congressional districts from various states. It is now an ongoing political strategy of the Republican party.

Republicans in the House of Representatives like to say that the message from the last election was mixed because the voters left control of the House in Republican hands. What they always neglect to mention is that Democratic candidates received a majority of the votes across the country in House races. But Republicans retained control because of the very type of gerrymandering described above in state after state where they controlled the legislatures.

This current effort by Republicans is cynical, self-serving and a dangerous precedent. If they were interested in promoting democratic elections, they would get behind the National Popular Vote Initiative.

This Is Going To Be an Interesting Fight

I think this is an important video that´s worth watching. What scumbags!  For sure, what we need to keep (y)our children safer are more guns. As Mika Brzezinski apparently pointed out, this has moved beyond the normal activities of a Second Amendment rights group, whether you agree with them or not, and moved into the area of the lunatic fringe.

Several months ago I read a story about the NRA which pointed out how it has changed over the years. Despite its origins and despite its representations as a grass roots organization, the NRA´s principle source of funding is money from the arms industry, not from individuals. I´ve only seen one column where the author put together the connection between the NRA´s absurd "solution" of putting armed guards in schools and the boon this would be for its weapons-manufacturring supporters.

I Guess I'm Just Another Anti-Semite

Does anyone else find this more than a little ironic?

It is taken from a story in the NY Times about the opposition to the likely (now announced) nomination of Chuck Hagel to be the new Secretary of Defense.

For weeks, some Jewish groups sought to dissuade Mr. Obama from choosing Mr. Hagel, who once referred to advocates of Israel as “the Jewish lobby.” Having failed, opponents over the weekend shifted to trying to block Mr. Hagel’s confirmation.

 Regional chapters of the American Jewish Committee, which has bipartisan bona fides, began circulating letters to their Democratic senators, urging them to oppose Mr. Hagel.

I want to make sure I understand. Gentiles can't refer to the Israeli lobby as the Jewish lobby, but a group calling itself the American Jewish Committee can lobby for Israel by questioning whether a patriotic American is sufficiently committed to Israel's current policies to serve in the Obama Cabinet.

And who the hell cares what the Israeli lobby thinks about our Secretary of Defense? First we have to put up with Netanyahu meddling on the edge of  U.S. domestic politics during the election, and now this?

Let's hope this is a severe case of overreach, but the history of the last umpteen years doesn't give me any confidence about that.



 

Nothing like moving to Brasil just to get nostalgic for small town Nebraska.

Actually, I'm not nostalgic. Perhaps a little melancholic about the passage of time, but what's new about that?

The town where I was raised, Genoa, Nebraska, has had roughly 1,000 residents for at least since I was a kid. Since the world began with my birth, who knows how many people lived there ten years earlier.

It had three small grocery stores then (we didn't know the word Supermarket). Now, it still has about the same population I think, but it only has one market and most of the other stores have now closed too. The taverns will be the last to go.

 In retrospect, it is easy to see that this post WWII world, which had barely had time to take root, already contained the seeds of its own demise built into it. The middle class was growing, everyone was becoming more mobile and less tied to their home towns and stores like this one pictured couldn't compete with bigger competitors 20-25 miles away. It was a concern even then. People were probably a little ashamed of shopping down the road in the larger city to save a few cents, but they all did it, even if they felt a little guilty.

 To give a perspective, the teenager in the top photo is probably three years older than me, so I would have been familiar with everything in this picture.

The real reason for this particular post is the phone number in the bottom photo. Number 6. It makes me feel so old. I can almost, just barely, remember the time when everyone in town received a new 7-digit number, and I can almost make myself believe that I remember the era before that when one would pick up the receiver and wait (perhaps after dialing "O,") for the operator to blandly request "number, please."  I wonder now what the transition was like. Did every home have to buy a new telephone? I kind of recall that phones at that time were the property of the telephone company, so probably we all just got new ones. I wonder if anyone bothered to sympathize with the operators who lost their jobs (and opportunities to eavesdrop, I don't doubt).

One last note: I just got off the phone with my mother. Her number in the assisted living facility is the same one the Martin family had from the beginning. WYman 3-7728. Now, of course, WYman 3 = 993, but that's not what I'm thinking when I punch in the number here in São Paulo.

A Beautiful Coat

Just because, as I've said before, I love this kind of stuff. Thanks to Conrad for sending it.