This and That

Rummaging around in the dusty attic of my mind I believe my first new car was a 1956 four door Chevrolet. Price: $1800. I bought it off the lot and it came with several options: heater (an option !), radio, vinyl seat upholstery, two-tone green paint. It had manual steering, manual 3 speed shift, one speed windshield wipers, no air conditioning, no power anything. Air conditioning was described as being "460" which meant 4 windows open and driving 60 miles an hour.


At the time of purchase my wife and I thought the two-tone green paint was unique to our little town. In a few days we began to see cars with the same color scheme everywhere. But to us it was a treasure. No subsequent car purchase brought with it the same level of excitement we felt with the first one.


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I see that "whatever" has been voted the current most annoying expression in the English language. I would have voted for the ubiquitous "you know" without which, you know, some people would be unable to converse. You know?


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Another member of Congress has been caught in a scandal that may have far-reaching and negative effects on the Democratic party. Charles Rangel, (Dem.), N.Y. failed to pay some of his income taxes and to report all sources of income. What is it with members of Congress that makes them think they don't have to pay taxes? The IRS, without mercy or second thoughts, would put a widow out on the street if she did something similar but the rich and the powerful escape punishment.


Five will get you ten that Rangel will get out of this with a mild slap on the wrist. The "Ethics"
Commitee" is "investigating." The facts are known so what's to be investigated? They will stretch out their "investigation" because they depend on the American public's shamefully short attention span. That may not work this time.


The danger to the Democratic Party is that the Public's smoldering wrath may finally get fully vented at election time because of Rangel's blatant disregard of integrity and other Democratic mis-steps.


In the meantime, few if any Republican Congresspersons have halos to polish or unblemished records to crow about.

Pray, pray, pray for our country!
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Our President and First Lady recently made a fruitless trip to Copenhagen. Their intention was to charm the socks off the Olympic Committee and secure the Olympics for the city of Chicago. Alas, the OC proved to be immune to the radiant charm of the First Couple and the prize was handed to Rio. Reading the transcripts of the Obama 'I/Me' speeches it seems they were inviting the world the wonderful opportunity to come visit the Obamas.

The "City of the Broad Shoulders" (Walt Whitman's description of Chicago) may now have sagging shoulders but it will survive. My brother suggests it may all be for the best. If 'Chi' had won, it would have been necessary to add a new Olympic event : "Dodging bullets and 2x4's to the head."


I honestly take no satisfaction from the President's failure. He did what he thought best. And I believe that no matter what he did the OC was determined to grant the Olympics to a country other than the USA.


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Miscellany

Josef Stalin: "The death of one person is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic." Stalin should know. He was responsible for the deaths of millions of his own people.

Leo Tolstoy: "Love hinders death. Love is life. Anything at all that I understand, I understand only because I love. All is bound up in love alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a tiny particle of love, shall return to the universal and eternal source."

The Good Old Days

Sometime around 1935, at the age of 10, I contracted hepatitis (called "yellow jaundice") and was confined to my bed for awhile. My parents called Dr. Heath and he made a house call.

(This is not to be confused with a telephone call; he actually came to our house). Doctors making house calls was not at all unusual. For some reason the amount of his fee, $3.00, has stuck in my memory.





I was often the one sent to the A & P grocery store 2 1/2 blocks from our home with a list of items to be purchased. I presented the list to a clerk, behind the counter, who then went about the store to retrieve the items. If self-service existed it hadn't made its way to our little town at the end of Long Island, N.Y. The clerk tallied the prices in pencil on one of the paper bags that he loaded the groceries in. The question, "paper or plastic?" never came up since there were no plastic sacks.




At the time:


Bread was 9 cents a loaf


Eggs, 18 cents a dozen


Hamburger meat, 12 cents a pound


A hamburger (bun, meat, ketchup) at the diner was 5 cents as was a cup of coffee or a coke





Gas, 10 cents a gal.


A new Pontiac, $745


Average new home, $3845



Man's broadcloth shirt, $1.00



Woman's wool sweater, $1.00



Washing machine,$23.95



Gas stove, $19.95





Before you think that we were lucky to live in a time when prices were so low consider this:

Worker's wages were 9 cents an hour, ---if you could get a job. Skilled labor managed to get slightly higher wages. To date, inflation has moved prices and wages to their present levels so, everything is relative.



The history of the Federal Government's handling, (mishandling, really) of the depression crisis is both fascinating and depressing (no pun intended). President Herbet Hoover seemed incapable of understanding economics and spent a lot of his time organizing commitees and conferences. The country verged on socialism with both Big Business and Big Labor briefly advocating collectivism based on their individual agendas. For example, Big Labor would have had a Government agency appointed to force businesses to hire the number of workers the agency determined the businesses should have. Big Business leaders had equally unpalatable ideas. A radical left-wing newspaper was lavish with praise for the fascist inclinations.



To say our country during the 1930's was on an extremely slippery slope is no exaggeration. Only the advent of WWll pulled us back from the abyss.

Once again our nation is on a slippery slope; perhaps not as steep as the Great Depression but still dangerous.



I may well be mistaken in my belief that in many ways we are not the nation of my earlier years. After all, greed and corruption in high places is still with us except it is more overt. We still do not have lobbyists for the mass of average citizens. We are a country divided. Often I have the feeling that nobody is in charge.

This is not the nation of my earlier years. Our liberties are slowly being chipped away but each succeeding generation does not realize it, thinking the way things are is the way it's always been.

If you've never had something how would you know if it's gone?



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Miscellany



Charles Dickens slept facing north. He believed it improved his writing (Did I hear one of you saying I ought to try it?)

The house where Thomas Jefferson wrote much of the Declaration of Independence was torn down to make room for a hamburger stand.

The above 2 facts are from "The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader"

Lincoln: "A man is about as happy as he makes up his mind to be." (It's our choice)

Check Your Ammo

In part of my 3 years in the US Navy Air Corps during WWll, I was a top turret gunner on a torpedo bomber. I was no danger to the enemy but I did almost shoot down one of our own nearby planes accidentally and almost cause the death of its 3 man crew. Although entirely unintentional, had I succeeded I would have no doubt spent many years in prison. Memory of the incident pops up ocassionally and even 65 years later it still causes me some distress. I will tell you it was a matter of 1/32 of an inch between incarceration and my life since then. I am firmly convinced that God was involved in the outcome ; there is no other possible explanation.



Those bombers were relatively slow; so slow in flight that birds sometimes rested on the wings. Actually, not so; it just seemed that way. When I was not flying, my other duties involved my training as an aircraft mechanic. I worked on 1700 horsepower radial air-cooled engines. I am mechanically inept around car engines, BUT if they ever start putting 1700 hp air cooled engines in cars I'll be ready.

In my first story above, I was operating with the mistaken belief that there were no more bullets left in my machine gun. Over the target range I had pulled the trigger in bursts until the weapon quit firing. On the way back to base I swung the turret around, pointed my weapon at planes in our formation and pulled the trigger. The closest plane was about 50 feet away. When we got back to base and I got out of the turret and removed the can of spent shell casings I looked up and saw to my horror that there were still 5 fifty caliber live bullets hanging in the belt. I scrambled back up into the turret, opened the lid to the firing chamber and could see that the mechanism that pulled bullets into the chamber had scratched the next bullet in an attempt to pull it into firing position. If that bullet had been somehow moved 1/32 of an inch more it would have fired and carried the next 4 with it.

Operating with insufficient, mistaken, false or unverified beliefs is as dangerous to our spiritual lives as was my similar dangerous actions with live bullets. It is up to each of us individually to do the study required to build on solid scriptural ground; to seek, recognize, listen to and abide by, the teachings of the Holy Spirit delivered through whatever source He may choose.

My second story illustrates that if we are going to stay prepared, we cannot stand still in our learning. To live the abundant life Christ promised us it is not enough to sit on our salvation. My knowledge of the 1700 hp radial engine is useless to me now and it did not prepare me for dealing with the complexities of modern car engines. Too many Christians say to themselves, "I know all I need to know." They stop growing and then resist the gentle prodding of the Spirit to move on to greater and greater joys in Jesus.

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A little boy asked his mother, "Mommy, where do people come from?"
Thinking the boy was too young for the birds and bees story she said, "Well, the Bible says we come from dust and we return to dust.'
That seemed to satisfy him and he went to his room to play.
A short time later he came back to his mother and said, "Mommy, I looked under my bed and someone is either coming or going."