Attitude Adjustment

Looking back, way back, way, way back...

This one is long. I almost titled it ‘Writing Just to Write’. I need the practice. But with that title I have my doubts anyone would make it to the end of the article. I guess I’m just looking back one more time on what I used to be before covid slapped me on the cheek, and maybe I’m just catching up. Skip all the way to the last paragraph if you want…

My possessions, what remained of them, were packed into a cargo trailer in a storage lot. I had a lot more stuff before that little remnant of what is left made it into the trailer. I lived in a decent size house. There were a few reasons I took a mortgage out on that big house. One of the reasons was that it had a detached garage that would make a great workshop. Another reason being that the price reflected the tremendous amount of work that it needed. I loved working on things, but I didn’t want all my income to go toward a mortgage. It was to my benefit that the flippers had not found the house, and I was lucky enough to get into it with a reasonable offer. The roof was in need of repair. The crawlspace was a disaster. The landscaping was over run and there was plenty of need almost everywhere.

The first order of business was to take care of the roof. The shingles were at the limit of there serviceable life. When seeing houses in the country with rooves in disrepair and houses with caved in roofs, the necessity of maintaining the integrity of a roof is in vivid evidence as a top priority. Hold on, I do have to backtrack that statement as to the roof being the first order of business. The shingles were old but still functioning. What became first order of urgency that bumped the roof project showed within a few days of moving into the structure as the resident. It starts with the story of the fireplace. Really it was a fireplace insert. Many that have lived with a fireplace know why that was a feature that would nudge someone like me into buying the property. Nothing quite like backing up to a fire in the wintertime. And talk about being able to sleep in the easy chair with all that heat, oh yea! That fireplace insert was set into a room most people would call the living room. The living room had great cathedral ceilings that were shared by an upstairs area that eventually became somewhat of an office/museum.

Moving into the house in January and excited to light a fire in the living room, some friends were invited over for an evening house warming party. Well, a fire got lit. But it wasn’t warm. We were all sitting around a lit fire wearing our winter coats laughing about the pathetic performance of the fire place insert. It was fun. Then the first electric bill came in the mail. Oh my, my, my, that could not be tolerated on my wage. It seems that all the insert really did was suck all of the heat right out of the house and send it up the chimney. That house was cold. Something had to be done. First order of business was to run a new pipe up the chimney and install a real, heavy, iron wood stove with proper baffles whereby radiating the heat into the interior of the house. Ah yes, the living room was much better. At this point, the roof could be addressed.

Off of that living room, there was a large room that had four sliding glass doors that open to the outside. There were also four skylight louvers in the ceiling. Thus, this room was quite naturally called the sunroom. There was a spot in the sunroom where a baby grand piano eventually fit perfectly and I soon after finger walked my way into some music. Also there was a spot where a refrigerator fit nicely. One hobby I had was making homemade ferments including ginger ale and hard apple cider. This refrigerator was used to chill these delicious beverages. This sunroom, with these accents, had begun to fill up with house plants and was truly turning into the real living room. Those fours sliding glass doors of this living room opened outside to a very nice deck and patio. I built that deck and patio with my own sweat (and blood). The old deck was but a set of dry rotted steps and definitely needed to be replaced. The new deck stepped not only into some nice flower beds but also into a twenty four foot round swimming pool. I got someone else to install that, by the way, before I built the deck. That pool was great. When it needed cleaning, a whirlpool could be made that put all the debris to the center for an easy scoop out. It turned into my bathtub, and I hardly used the indoor facilities at all during the summer. I loved it.

While my mind was churning on just how I was going to make the pool available year round, there was the detached garage that needed attention. It was my workshop. But it was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. I eventually finished it with insulation, sheetrock, air conditioning and a wood stove. It was a very nice place for me to maintain my vehicles as well as do some woodworking jobs. I had made many crude cabinets and tool boxes over the years and I wanted to learn how to make stuff the old fashioned way; That is mortise, tenon and dovetail using only hand tools. All that was in the works. That workshop was also a good place to turn the bad batches of hard cider into some good apple brandy.

With my axe and a log splitter therapy in the very back of the yard and visions of what else the property could become, I had almost everything I ever dreamed of having. I had my own little piece of heaven. I made it and I had it made.

Until the added requirement for keeping it of getting shot in the head with a laser came along.

When a requirement of getting shot in the head comes about, at the same time an unapproved technology that has yet to this day pass the tests is hoodwinked into existence, the next progression in the diabolic logic, is to require that unapproved technology to be inserted into the body. A man has got to draw the line somewhere.

I moved out of that house. I got a decent price for the house. It reflected all the work I put into it. Other folks were getting great prices for their houses that seemed to only reflect the mania of the time. I could see this yet I had to ignore it. I shoved all my stuff into a storage room. I had to, sort of. The process of getting a commercial drivers license during the time took months. I saw my savings disappearing and some expensive fixes on the house coming up in the near future. Namely, thirty year old appliances and AC units (three of those). It was a nice house, okay. I kept all the stuff in storage while living in my van until and after I got a truck driving job.

When the truck driving job started looking less than promising. I started to sell. It is difficult enough to get a decent price for used items when there is no pressing matter. When pressed for time, you take what you can get. Under this scenario, some items are much easier to depart with than others. The furniture was the easiest to let go. The pickup truck and the boat had to go, along with the motorcycle. I slapped the seat of that with near a tear when that went away. The books had to be whittled down. The tools had to start by size and weight. One of my newest acquirements was a five ton arbor press, an item quite heavy but very handy to have around, well that had to very reluctantly go away. The welder/generator and one of the items I’ve had for a very long time, my oxy-acetylene setup, had to go. The little VW I just rebuilt (against opposition from everyone I knew), it had to go too, (for a tenth of what I put into it). The wood splitter and all my tree service equipment, the oscilloscope, the HVAC stuff, and the wire... It was all sort of like a dream anyway. The stuff kept going out the door and going out the door until I was so saturated and depleted that I bought a trailer big enough to hold what was left, shoved the stuff in there, sold the camper which was also in storage and then I was gone. I mean, I was gone. There was no more dream, nothing, … a big vacuum.

The Substack story picks up from there. and..

I finally got here, into another warehouse. I emptied the trailer onto the floor. I still have most of my archaic woodworking tools. With stuff strewn all over the floor, I was just supposed to look at it and evaluate what to do with it. I wasn’t supposed to add anything else to the mess. But I started building tables to put the stuff onto because that’s what I do. It would also be easier on my back when looking at it. I guess that is what I do. Build, work, maintain. Maybe I need it. I like to tinker around. What can I say? The thought now is that with several distractions on the table, maybe I can be more motivated to do other things as well, like write or do music.

The ultimate goal of wet concrete is to set up solid. These days, at times, that is all that I want to do. I’ve made up my little shop, I can tinker again. At times I just want to sit and talk, though. Intimately. I might possibly not be writing this article at this very minute though, if I did have that. With the big boys dominating every aspect of my life, that activity has been a very elusive thing to find. And most everything looks like work anymore. The books became work. The piano became work. Work isn’t as fun as it used to be either. It used to be much more enjoyable.

The programming needs an adjustment.

I pulled into a convenience store one day while in the ice delivery truck. I won’t say which one. But the parking lot was large enough to park the truck while I ate my lunch. The choices for refreshment are rather bleak in convenience stores, and this one was no exception. This one is one of the new-fangled models that are springing up everywhere. I suppose the appeal of the franchise must be that it has a fast food restaurant of its own where the menu diverges from the well known fast food places. I bought something off the menu at one of these stores, once. It had avocado and other pretty good looking stuff. But the meat did not resemble food. I ate it anyway. I was hungry. Today, or this day, I picked up a coffee or a drink or something. And went back out to the truck to have a sit.

The modern delivery trucks are wonders of technology with their own monitoring and GPS systems with varying amounts of features. On the truck I was driving, a dash-cam monitor was installed. They were originally supposed to be looking to the front of the truck as a safety feature that can be used as evidence in the case of an accident or something. Also originally, us drivers were told that the cameras would not be used to monitor us. That did not last long. An articulating stand attached to the dashboard held the route manager tablet that was used for a variety of administrative functions relative to delivery operations. It also has a camera. Then there is my own phone with its camera. That’s three cameras. Big brother is watching. I know it first hand.

Like one time, on my own phone, I get some text messages from the boss telling me that I ran three stop signs. I was way out in the country with no one in sight. I just shook my head. Another time, the onboard camera, with a computer voice, was telling me that I was a distracted driver. Accompanying the computer female like voice were some red LED lights that resembled the kitt car of the old TV show Knight Rider. I was cruising the parking lot of a huge industrial center while talking on the phone with a contact about where to go to make the delivery. My manager called me, while I was on the phone with the contact, to tell me that I’m not supposed to talk on the phone while driving. This was particularly annoying, since moments earlier the truck’s automatic braking system slammed on the brakes while going over a bridge. By the way, I was pushing on the accelerator pedal at the very moment. Why did it slam on the brakes? No one cares. I had some choice words for him. My heart was still racing from the instant workout. Later, while talking to the boss amongst other people, stories were abound about other drivers having conniptions over these cameras. They were all laughing about the degrees of profanity the drivers spewed when those red lights came on. I was not.

This day, however, in the parking lot of the convenience store, was a relatively calm day. The work days can be very long for a truck driver, so minutes are shaved where they may. Regulations have a twenty minute break the drivers are required to take, by law. Most drivers including me work that time into a delivery and eat while driving. This day, the route was odd and there was a traffic jam that I was able to avoid by discreetly looking at the GPS in a manner out of sight of the camera. Its a trick, ridiculous yes, but most get habituated into doing it to avoid the menacing red glare as well as the phone call from the boss. My time requirement had me stopped at a non delivery location. I drank my coffee, and right in the nineteenth minute, I started the truck and was creeping out of the parking lot. Under five miles and hour does not trigger the device that monitors compliance with regulations. I was creeping out of the parking lot ready to take off as soon as the twentieth minute hit. Right in this nineteenth minute, dispatch calls me. Were they watching or what? Well, I pick up the phone to answer, and red eyes starts its menacing routine. Over and over until I put the phone down. I didn’t get mad this time. I kept talking until the conversation was done. But I did tell the dispatcher to hold on a second. I stopped talking and then proceeded to pat the camera like a puppy and I told (her, female voice) what a fine job she was doing. She was only doing her job and a fine job of that. I never got another call about my driving. Maybe the bosses reconsidered what they were doing.

Patting myself on the back for not letting the incident rile me up, I began to consider these devices. I’m thinking, hmm, there are three of these cameras in my cab monitoring me, plus at least one monitoring the truck. These one eyed monsters. Like cyclops they are. Maybe indeed there is nothing new under the sun. Maybe we are living in the time of myths. Cyclops and all. What other terrible creatures are represented? Say, umm, Homer, ahem, are there any lessons from your epic poem that might apply to today?