Lectured by a Man in a Pink Turban

This past weekend we went to NYC to do the annual Christmas thing, and it was atypical in several ways. As usual we flew into LaGuardia and caught the usual yellow cab for the trip over to Midtown Manhattan. As usual Sandy, Timmy, and Erika raced to the security of the back seat and left me up front with the cabbie. Again as usual we had a turbanned cabbie with a long flowing grey beard and an urge to converse with someone, me in this case. His turban was faded pink , and looked like the last time it was clean was when Ghandi was having his hunger strikes. He had a propensity to talk very softly ,and being in a poor hearing mode I would just nodded as I couldn't understand a damn thing he was saying. What I could understand was that he was going at speeds up to 70 mph , and kept looking towards me as he talked.Sandy kept trying to translate for me as she has wonderful auditory skills,and I was watching the road and speedometer as we wove our way across the Tri-borough bridge. He was trying to tell me that he was going to add the $4.50 toll to our fare. At this point I had serious doubts that we would even arrive at our hotel. After we went past Harlem and headed toward Central Park I mercifully had a phone call and was momentarily distracted. As I hung up he was trying to talk to me and nearly rear-ended a shiny green mini van stopped for the light ahead He looked up and we went from 60 to 0 in about the same time those f-14s used to land on the aircraft carriers. I was praying the air bags worked. After nearly Blue-crossing us he sheepishly said"Sorry ,Sorry". I was so relieved that we were still alive that I just laughed. Our past closest near- death experience was when a Korean cabbie almost t-boned a car that pulled out in front of us. That was entertaining as I watched his oriental eyes turn round and caucasian for a brief moment. I have determined that NYC cabs smell so bad because tourists accidentally pee their pants from fear, or worse.Any way we were entering Central Park when these three Hispanic babes crossed the street going to work out at the neighborhood gym. Now these girls weren't movie stars but they had that J Lo look. I mistakenly said we should give those girls a ride and evidentally Mr. Purity went on a lecture tirade about respecting women and morality, subjects that I'm usually somewhat deficient in. Sandy told me that she was afraid I heard him and was going to "Get Started"(her words). Well we made it to the hotel unharmed and he drove off in a squeal of tires, a yellow and pink image headed down 8th street. Somehow The Wrath Of Khan enters my mind.We lucked out on the weather and had three beautiful days of subways, carriage rides, and strange food. I told Timmy that we should have invested in Apple because every human in the Big Apple had an IPod cord hanging out their ear. The ones that didn't had Blue Tooth devices that were flashing and they were talking into.I wonder who is so involved with anything that makes them wear a speaker device to the cell phone in their ear. I personally think it looks dorky. Sandy Kay stayed on her own little Razr V3 and talked to her buddies while the rest of us watched skaters in Central Park. Some were taking lessons; one busted his ass big time. It really looked like a Currier and Ives Lithograph except for those nasty blue tooths and IPods. I told Timmy that Sandy loved her fellow workers more than me. Neither he or Erika had the decency to disagree. I told them if she left me that I would miss our trips together,again to silence. They didn't reassure me that I would be welcome if Sandy weren't along. I think I know now what they are talking about in the back of the screaming taxi. Later that night we went to Carnegie Hall for the New York Pops Christmas Program. It was a first for all of us and we enjoyed the experience. It was a long way from Marlow Tacketts, but sometimes you have to try new things. Next day to Greenwich Village and SoHo; lots of unusal dogs and even more unusal owners. A prime memory was the pet store with windows full of cavorting and energetic pups. The sign proudly proclaimed that the little ratty looking (I can't spell Chiwawas) were on sell from$1100 to $899!!No wonder Paris Hilton carries one of those little bug eyed yappers. Went to see Rent for the last time, you know 525,600 minutes? Mimi looked great and Maureen still likes Joann. Somethings never change. Angel didn't make it.

The World In Casey County

Having projects in Tennessee and Columbia I have found frequent journeys down Highway 127 Southward to be necessary as I travel to the jobsites.As I travel to Algood, Tennessee, I usually take the highway across Wolf Creek Dam and through Clinton County and Albany to the Tennessee line at Static, Kentucky. You know when you have entered Tennessee because beer and liquor is now legal. You then have a choice of turning around to go to Jamestown , Kentucky or heading South to Jamestown , Tennessee. Not much difference except Jamestown, Tn. is on top of the plateau, and Jamestown, Ky. is near Lake Cumberland. The biggest difference is how easy you can buy a Budweiser. Going to Jamestown, Tn. takes you through the countryside home of Sgt. Alvin York, the most decorated veteran of WW 1. I would venture a guess that that particular part of Alvin's home has not changed much since he was shipped off to France around 1917. The little settlement has a beautiful park on the side of the creek with a bucolic looking mill. The creek is always a greenish -blue color and makes me feel a little nostalgic for my own childhood. Alvin's wide spot in the road is named 'Pall Mall"; you know like the extinct brand of cigarettes.I think Alvin died in the 1950's. He was played in the 1941 black and white movie by Cary Grant, along with help from Walter Brennan. York killed 28 German soldiers, captured 132 if my memory is close, and received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his troubles.I would like to have known York. Even today there are many York family members around the region. Nearby is also the home place of Cordell Hull who was the Secretary Of State for FDR from 1933 to 1944, and who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945. Those two gentlemen certainly made their small communities proud. I can't say the same for native son Al Gore who failed to carry his own state against W in 2000. He did invent the Internet and Global Warming if you believe him. Some of these facts come from my friend the Past President who implies he knows a Foxtrot when he sees one.When I come back across the Wolf Creek Dam I always travel fast over the concrete because the Corps of Engineers seem to think there is some implied or imminent danger of a collapse and subsequent release of millions of gallons of water that would turn 1500 miles of shoreline into stinking red mud and dead fish. It seems the damned dam builders built the thing over limestone caves in the early 1950's. Our only bright spot would be a collapse in mid summer which would wipe out half of Ohio's population and the resident Buck Eye Navy.I have Scuba Dived close to the dam and the water is the clearest here than anyplace else, and I saw no man-eating catfish which is commonly rumored. AS I approach near home I often cut through Middleburg in Casey County. This is the home where I visit my dad's grave , with his father, grandfather, great grandfather, and great great grandfather all buried in a row. Middleburg, like Pall Mall has not changed much in all those years. The only new addition is a beautiful white swan swimming on the old mill pond. Where did he come from?? Up the road is a field with a smiling lama whose best friend is some sort of small donkey. Otherwise seems the same. Every house has a snarling, mixed up dog and two or three old cars rusting in the ground. Some things never change. Me?? I just wonder about the swan and blow by the lama and donkey listening to Jimi Hendrix at 70 mph. All Along the Watchtower isn't any more out of place than the big white duck. I'm betting the rednecks have swan for New Years Lunch.

Sitting On the Dock Of The Bay

Early in October of this year the crew went on a trip to San Francisco, mainly because we had free tickets anywhere in the continental US that US Airways flew, and this was about as far as we could go from Kentucky.Sandy Kay and I departed out of Bluegrass Field in Lexington, and it was a bit eerie after the tragedy on Com Air earlier this summer.There was a couple from Stanford on that plane and somehow it was on everyones' minds.Nevertheless we had uneventful flights westward, and 4 and one half hours later we were in the golden west, or the land of Lotus Eaters. There is little to draw a parallel with Kentucky,so I quit trying and opened up to a totally new place. We rode the BART from our hotel the first day and quite frankly it was too clean to suit our experiences with the New York Subway. It was quite interesting to go by these communities built precariously on the hillsides , looking like some sort of insect colonies in their boxy, gravity defying existence on these steep mountains. Someone needs to tell these modern cliff-dwellers that San Francisco has been known to have earthquakes . Remember Al Michaels going from Baseball coverage to earthquake coverage from one sentence to another?? Well I do. We went down to Pier 39 and little did we know that Sandy Kay and I crashed a big party called Fleet Week.The Saturday was the most gorgeous that I have ever seen; not a cloud in the sky, and temperatures in the 70's. The water in the Bay(actually an estuary we were told) was deep blue , only broken by Alcatrez Island, and the bridges if you looked left or right from our vantage points on the pier. The harbor was covered with every conceivable form of boat or ship, as we watched Fire boats spraying monstrous archs of water in salute to huge Navy ships coming under the Golden Gate Bridge.I suppose these ships were coming in for Fleet Week. There was also this gargantuan cruise ship in port , with its host of senior citizens clogging the streets and sidewalks as they disembarked from what must have been a terrible cruise. It seems every couple waiting for cabs or courtesy buses was in foul moods , and each was at least eighty years old. It appeared as if the white ship pulled up to the pier and became violently ill and retched these old farts out upon the sidewalk. Lord spare me from any cruise, and spare any cruise from me. Pier 39 has this resident population of sea lions that seem to bark, fight, and defecate all day long. I was told that they came mysteriously after the last earthquake and haven't left. Those ugly things would get on my nerves in a hurry.We took a tour and one leg took us across the Bay to Sausilito(sp?), which could be somewhat of a Shangri La, except for the average cost of housing(6 figures). The guide told us that Odis Redding had sat on the pier and looked toward San Francisco, and was inspired to write his masterpiece Sitting on the Dock of the Bay. Now that got my attention as I remembered being a little pimple-face freshman at EKU around 1968 and listening to that song. I just wish I could whistle the parts . Anyway we went back over The Bridge and a major fog was coming in from the ocean. It was surreal to see only those orange towers coming out of the fog and to hear the deep fog horns warning the ships away, in an otherwise vista of deep blue water and clear blue sky.Later on I watched a poignant moment on the side of Embarcadero as these two young men touched lips together as they departed for the day , each dressed as junior executives or lawyers, their leather backpacks just right and their fashionably styled hair moussed to perfection, little silver tips and all. For a moment I thought I was on the Queer Guy set but Sandy reminded me we were in San Francisco. We went through Haight Ashberry and there was not a hippy in sight.There were no peace signs or demonstrations to be seen . I guess the old hippies had married and had children, who were perhaps gay and kissing down on Embarcadero. The next day was Wine country and then south to Monterrey. Odis said"I left my home in Georgia headin for 'Frisco Bay. ".I saw the same sights as Odis but I couldn't write a masterpiece. Maybe just being there was karma.

A Man's Home Is His Goose

Tradition holds that in old England freedom and land ownership was valued above all else, and Feudal customs arrived that a Man's home is his castle. In early frontier days many customs came across the Atlantic Ocean, then across the Appalachians, and took up residence in Kentucky. Early settlers' homes were more often than not primitive structures constructed of the most plentiful resources available--logs and wood . Nevermind that most experts attribute the log cabin to Scandanavian influences, most of the pioneers were nevertheless sturdy settlers of British descent. Many battles were fought with Cherokee and Creek Indians with only thick poplar and chestnut logs shielding the newcomers inside from the sharp tomahawks and scalping knives of the native Americans. Forget about the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. These Indians huffed and puffed , but they couldn't blow the log houses away. Today the old Wilderness Road still transverses Kentucky, but the Cabins are all but gone, save the occasional modern tin -roofed affair with triple car garages abounding with new Escalades and Denalis.Yes, just go through Eastern Kentucky to see what the modern dwellers have concocted to live comfortably from mother nature. Some of the houses are prominently displayed atop flattened mountains, or nestled up some hollow or cove, as the old timers used to say. The writers of the old West used to say that God Created man, but that Samuel Colt created them equal. I venture to add that Frank Lloyd Wright helped create American Architecture, but that Mr. Caterpillar made it possible in Eastern Kentucky.After working many years in the mountains I have resolutely come to believe that it should be against the law for rich people to build houses without some kind of guidance.The nouveau riche have the tastes of drunken cockroaches, and the old money is no problem because they won't spend a penny on anything. I've worked on 45,000 square foot monstrosities with commodes carved out of solid marble, or with swimming pools and miniature golf courses in the basement. One has a huge basement basketball court under the garage.I often wonder at what point a rich man wakes up and is beset with a vision? What person needs 5 plasm tv's in one bathroom? I've seen it. Or what lady needs a commercial dry cleaner's motorized clothes rack to bring her clothing to her at the touch of a button?One wanted storage for 200 pairs of shoes(per season of course), and the showers? Man the last big house I worked on had a glassed in shower with assorted stations where 5 people could take showers at the same time. This area was next to a sunken spa and another glassed in shower the size of my garage. I believe this couple must be the cleanest people alive ,or the dirtiest;maybe both at the same time. All of this laborious one finger typing is leading up to an inescapable fact that this craziness in home building is nothing new. That little perverted Vanderbilt geek built Biltmore around the turn of the century, and some Nimrod built the Goose House in Hazard, Kentucky. One look at the Goose House dispels all notions of the sanity of mankind. From its round ,stone ground floor to the towering green neck with the yellow bill, the Goose house screams out in anguish at how troubled the human mind can stray from the norm. What possessed some otherwise sane human to awake one morning and decide to build this house?? It has been in numerous travel magazines, and is often viewed by tourists off the beaten path. It has been there so long that the average citizen of Perry County no longer think of it as an oddity. I often wonder that if fate played a cruel trick on humanity and wiped everything out but the goose house how future travelers or civilizations would perceive earthlings? Wouldn't it be apt if such wonders as the Guggenheim or the Chrysler building were destroyed and mobile homes and the Goose house survived? Thats not far fetched because it has been postulated that the only thing to survive a nuclear holocaust would be cockroaches and rats, and probably the goose house.I'm apologetic that I have wasted this much time typing one-fingered and single paragraphed into such drivel in a time of global warming.