Jack T Chick has died

It was the first week of my Freshman year at Rutgers. I was coming out of the Student Center when a man handed me what I thought was a comic book. It was called "This was your life". I read it and shared it with my dorm mates. In future weeks I got more of these comics. I had quite a collection at one time. These books taught me the meaning of irony. 

This past week he has been memorialized throughout the media. A cornerstone of American culture has passed. 

Play dates

I am now working on another floor at work. The move has been long and hard and next week I'll get fitted for a back brace. One nice thing about my new lunchroom is I can eavesdrop on conversations, which allows me to get a new grasp on life as it is lived in our country.

Not surprising, I have found that young men still talk about sports at the lunch table. As they get older the conversation will move on to home projects and finally, health problems. 

The women's table has reassured me that women, at the end of the day, still talk about children primarily, especially children's health issues. I have learned that one daughter is both afraid of the dentist and getting shots. In my day my face would meet my mother's hand and all my phobias would have been solved. 

The other way I have of learning about life is through situation comedies. My favorite show this fall is Better Things,  starring Louie C. K.'s co star, Pamela Aldon. From this show I have learned that the real purpose of play dates is that it is a way for divorced Mom's to meet up with divorced Dad's. The kids are just the pretext.

Thank you Mother and Father. They never made me go on a play date. Since I was disliked by all the kids at school it would have been excruciatingly embarrassing to have to be involved in setting up a play date. Perhaps things are better now. Kids seem more worldly and are taught social skills at an earlier age. 

Nah. I went to two kids birthday parties in my life, never was the star of one, and don't regret it. I also never went on a play date. 

Editor's note: I made up the part about getting a back brace. 

Ellie and Hillary run for office

Recently I was watching the Andy Griffith episode where Ellie Walker runs for office and gets the women and men in Mayberry all asunder. Made me think of today and the upcoming Presidential election. Here you have the archetypal man versus the archetypal woman in a contest. Or to put it another way,  it's an interesting contest because it pits the type of woman men can't stand with the type of man that annoys  the women folk. 

Hillary is the assistant manager at work who writes in your review that you keep a messy desk. She is the school teacher who gives your son a C in algebra, which keeps him from playing sports. She is the sister-in law that doesn't allow smoking in the house and then hits you up for a contribution to the church charity. 

Trump is the loud mouthed guy at the bar who explains why a player should stand up for the National Anthem if he wants to play football. He is the guy who shows up at the party with a date the same age as his daughter while his wife is staying at home. He's the bragadocio who can fix everybody's problems but never pays the waiter a tip. 

So there you have it, a man that women don't like and a woman that annoys most men, certainly those over forty, who remember when women at work brought in the coffee and wives did the laundry.  Wonder if Ellie won that election.  

Buying a t shirt for your grand neice

This is (trigger warning) a somewhat sexist appraisal of how to handle extended family purchasing situations.

The wrong way to buy a gift for your niece.
You are at the gift shop at Valley Forge and want to buy a cute t shirt for your grand niece. You buy it on impulse. Inevitably, the grand niece will never wear her t shirt. The size is wrong. She doesn't like the design. Anyway, she already has five hundred t shirts and on birthdays and holidays she always gets a few dozen more. The truth is your grand niece only shops at fancy schmanzy children's boutiques with designer names and prices. You have made a mistake. Your t shirt will be sold at next year's church rummage sale.

The correct way to buy a gift for a grandniece. Your wife calls your nephew's wife and they have a nice chat. Your wife tells you what she wants, she buys it, and you sign your name on it. Or, if you don't have a wife, you can buy her a cash card at Amazon.

Never lie to your mother

When I was a tot, I went playing with some of the older boys on Parker Avenue. When my mother asked me why I came in late for dinner I explained that I had been playing with the Mills girls on Kaplan Avenue.

The next morning, my mother said, "A little birdie told me that you were playing with some older boys on Parker Avenue yesterday afternoon." You always have to be careful about the neighborhood birdies who tell tales. Poor Ryan, losing all those endorsements. Just because, like the Rolling Stones in 1964, he had to take a leak in a gas station.  Moral? We should never lie to our mothers.

Donut peaches

Yesterday I had my first donut peach. I saw them in the local farmer's market and the next day I bought them at the garden store in Morrisville, Pennsylvania. They actually are good. They are drier and less sweet than a regular peach and I guess are a treat partially because they only appear briefly in August.

The Morrisville Garden Farm market is always fun. It looks like it was last remodeled in 1961 and has no self check out. The floors are saggy and the place reeks of atmosphere.

Goodbye Taj Mahal

When the folks first visited me in New Jersey in the summer of 1990 they wanted to see me, the graves, and some of the aunts still living in the area, but most importantly, they wanted to go to the Taj Mahal. They didn't want to hurt my feelings or anything but they had been reading about it and I always suspected that it was the real reason they wanted to go up north from their sweet retirement home in Texas. 

At the time, with all the hype and hoopla about Atlantic City being the great gambling mecca East of the Mississippi a lot of people wanted to try their hand at the slots and perhaps see what a casino looked like. I know when I came back the first time I wanted to see Merv Griffin's palace, Resorts, and the Taj Mahal was even bigger. Tastefully decorated in what was faux Hollywood style exoticism, the Taj Mahal was big and a once in a lifetime treasure. A wonder that brought to New Jersey, however briefly, the distinction of being one of the most written about sites in the country. 

We came, played the slots, and as a souvenir, my father decided to discretely carry his coin tub with him back to the car. He was stopped in his tracks by the site of Donald Trump marching through the casino and shaking hands. He put the tub behind him so Mr. Trump wouldn't notice. Later we saw the Trump helicopter on the sands.

Now we hear that the great mecca to gambling and culture is closing. A monument to the second golden age of Atlantic City its closing symbolizes the decline of both the jewel of the Atlantic and the would be president of this fine country.