Fathers, Sons, and Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving often brings families together. 

Why we suffer for the misdeeds of others

 

I just got a letter from my homeowner's association. Apparently, they were fined by the state because too many households were unavailable for the safety inspection. Pro-rated to everybody, we each will have to pay $27 and change. It reminds me of the bills I used to get from Rutgers every summer for the damage done to my dorm by my classmates.

I did everything right. I was always available for inspections. I   changed my smoke detector to bring it up to code. I even opened my neighbor's door so his unit could be inspected. I was the model homeowner. 

Getting punished for what other people do is not a new occurrence. I remember in 4th grade the whole class had to copy three pages of a dictionary because one kid smart assed to the teacher.  I remember having to do jumping jacks all period at gym class because one kid did something, I don't remember what. Sometimes other people do something stupid and the rest of us have to suffer. 

Editor's note: This isn't the first time I've bitched about inspections. Once the US Dept of HUD inspected and failed my office in the library for being sloppy. It almost held up the grant for the handicapped elevator. 

The time Brother Adrian came to dinner

 

Speaking of Brother Adrian, that reminds me of the time our family had Brother Adrian over for dinner. Apparently he had taught my father at Manhattan College in the thirties and was known for his leaf etchings.  In an act of bravado, my father suggested to the members of the local KFC that this artistic member of the Christian Brothers faculty at Manhattan College would make a good evening speaker for the next month's meeting. 

As part of the arrangement, Mother would treat him to a Southern dinner before his speech. My father may have had an ulterior motive here since he had been lobbying my older brother to attend his alma mater after high school He thought the good Brother could extoll for him the virtues of Manhattan. However, the cause was lost after my brother got accepted at MIT. 

Brother Adrian was an entertaining dinner guest, gave the family a leaf etching, then happily joined my father on the way to the Knights. Mother whispered that she hoped she hadn't fed him too many Manhattans. 

College reunions

 

Since I donate to my alma mater, Rutgers, every year I am on the mailing list for other publications of that esteemed institution. Recently, they have been trying to cajole me into attending my upcoming reunion for the class of 1974. I am not attending for the simple reason that I didn't have any friends in my graduating class. I was in the cynical group that felt that college was a meaningless waste of time and that its only purpose was to keep young people out of the labor market. My friends all agreed with me. When September came around, I was always surprised to see that all of my friends had dropped out of college. Each year, Sophomore, Junior and Senior I had to make new friends since my old pals had all dropped out of college. 

Being popular and a person of some prestige since I was on the college radio station, I had no trouble making friends. However, I have few college friends, certainly not from my class, that I could share a table with at a reunion dinner. 

My father had friends from his class at Manhattan College and loved to get out his green college ring and attend reunions with Mother. They had a celebrity in the class, Dennis Day. My mother talked to him one year and asked him how much his records were worth, since we had one of them. 
"About ten cents", the esteemed singer and comedian answered. 

Editor's note: I see from the picture that Manhattan College is now co-ed. Brother Adrian would be surprised. 

Cartesian and Aristotlean concepts of truth now supplanted

Those of us with a formal education have probably grazed upon Aristotle's concept of truth. Those of us with a college education have encountered Descarte's definition of truth, too complicated to delve into here. 

Happily, for many of us we are now being encouraged to see a modern interpretation of truth. In the future, we will be able to deny things have happened that may have negative impacts on our lives.

 

The employee will now be able to say, "Oh no I didn't come in late" even if that is far from the truth. For now if you deny, deny, deny, your falsehood will be able to be accepted as true and legally binding. 

If you say something false in order to elucidate a greater truth if not entirely factual statement you will be admired as a sage. Boys who break windows with their softballs will now be exonerated if they lie and all the parties will now agree that if one says something untrue but in a forceful manner, it will be accepted as if from the word of the Gospel as it will be directionally correct. 

 

Whiskeys

 

Recently I was reading Slate and discovered that Beyonce and Bob Dylan have their own whiskeys. That got me thinking about the whiskeys of my youth. 

One of the affectations of adolescence is to appear to be knowledgeable about adult things like the pros and cons of fine whiskey, I remember declaiming about my preference for George Dickel over Jack Daniel's in my dorm room. Although I was only parroting what I had heard my friend's older brother say, it gave me the air of being a man about town to the co-eds I was trying to impress. 

Once on a trip to Texas to visit mother's kinfolks, Mother brought back a bottle of white lightning. Her people lived in a dry county so my mother was assured the liquor was locally, if illegally, sourced. I remember it had a piece of charcoal at the bottom. Sometimes the bottle would get trotted out at family parties for entertainment.   Many years later when Ma and Pa retired in Texas, I always went to the liquor store in Longview Texas (affectionately called the Baptist Bookstore) for their   cheap Dickel. While hard to find in New Jersey it was plentiful in Texas. 

Today I usually just order a Jack Daniel's when I'm at a bar. Where I'm known, they pour it when they see me. 

Idle thoughts from an idle fellow

• 
  It's time the Democrats aim a bit at the old grouchy men at the bar. Most of us wouldn't recognize those celebrities at a police lineup
•  Robert F. Kennedy has dropped out. He was such an entertaining character. He would have confused uninformed voters that he represented the Kennedy line instead of all the weird stuff. Apparently, he offered his services to Kamala but she said "no thank you".
• If Kamela started her name with a "c" the Spanish pronunciation of camela would be obvious. Because her name starts with a "k" the tendency is to anglicize the pronunciation so that "ka" rhymes with "cat". 
• I'm getting tired of Tim Walz constantly touching his heart, I'm always afraid he's having a cardiac episode. The praying bit is also getting a bit old. 
• Men should wear ties at conventions and women should wear dresses. T shirts are for the beach not serious political gatherings. 
• The counting of delegates is a serious occasion. Hip hop music belongs in the nightclub not the convention.
• True I have supported Democratic causes in the past, but my text messages are inundated with pleas for money. Okay, I get it. 
• Too many relatives on the stage. Just because you saw your aunt ten years ago at Grandma's wake doesn't entitle you to go on the platform and drone on about how the candidate served you ice cream when you were five.