Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Gear and Loafing in Ocean City
Gear and Loafing in Ocean City
The annual Maryland Waterman’s Association Expo attracts commercial fishermen from the Mid-Atlantic States. They buy boats, engines and gear at this show held in Ocean City, Maryland, in January. My fisherman husband and I attended the show every year. It seemed like a good venue to sell my book, Wet and Hungry: A Commercial Fisherman’s Life.
Most booths displayed candy, pens and other freebies to entice customers and occupy children. Life raft companies, engine dealers and government entities could afford such largess, especially the ubiquitous government agencies. NMFS, ASMFC, MDDNR, NOAA and other government acronyms occupied numerous booths.
I considered what hand-outs I could afford to offer. That didn’t take long to consider. None, unless the other exhibitors would each donate one piece of candy to my booth. My daughter rescued me with an offer of leftover Halloween candy an ex-boyfriend had given her, an unusually generous offer for a candy fiend like her. We poured it in a large tin and I took it to the show.
In 2008, fishermen had suffered from profit siphoning, stratospheric fuel costs, added to poor catches, erratic markets and harsh regulations. Now they were broke. Instead of the usual heavy crowd of fishermen eager to buy gear, a meager few trickled in and many carried no money.
Beset with lachrymose ennui, I sat in a ten by ten-foot booth waiting for customers. I looked at my watch, again. Only fifteen minutes had passed since the last time I had looked. I felt like I was back in high school waiting for a tedious school day to end. I visited the other booths, stocking up on pens and note pads. Then I returned to my booth and waited for business to pick up.
Our fish dealer strolled by and plopped a couple of pieces of my candy in his mouth. He grimaced. “Yuck! You need to get better candy!”
I watched people’s faces contort as they tried the candy.
A fisherman tried a piece and his face puckered up like an elderly person who’d soaked in a bath tub too long. He grabbed another piece and offered it to a fellow fisherman. “Have you ever tried this candy?”
The second fisherman unwrapped it, put it in his mouth and immediately spit it into a trash can.
I looked in my tin. The wrappers said, “Extreme Sour.” I made a warning sign, “Worse show candy, guaranteed. Best books.”
This encouraged every passing child to grab a handful. Several returned for more.
During dull spells between sales and candy incidents, I contrived imprecations and ripostes I would like to sling at irksome people who did not buy books. I practiced proper public behavior and only dreamed of using these responses.
To the armed policeman who didn’t have any cash to buy my book, “Are you afraid of muggers?”
To the henpecked man who claimed, “My wife says I have too many books,” I would retort, “Are you afraid of that illiterate battle ax?”
To the woman eating a fried clam and smearing grease over a book, “Pig, you’ve gotten enough grease on that book to deep fry a turkey.”
To adults who grabbed candy without looking at the book, never mind, they were going to get puckered mouths and acid reflux.
To others who passed by, oblivious to the literary masterpieces on my table, “You unobservant numbskulls probably don’t notice sunsets, flowers, butterflies or kittens, either.”
To the guy who stood in my booth to make a cell phone call, “This is not a phone booth.”
To the men, one booth over, selling Diesel additive, “Do you really need a gorgeous, slender blonde in tight jeans and spiked heels to sell your product? What next, a thong-clad girl slathered with Diesel additive?”
To the loquacious know-it-all who stood in my booth endlessly rapping, “Take your big yap over to the booth with the blonde.”
To the idiots who asked where they could get someone else’s book, “You can get it in Hades. Why would you come to a fishing expo, claim to be interested in books about fishing, ignore a highly rated book on the subject and ask for a book not remotely related to fishing?”
Meanwhile, honks and quacks from gaggles of geese and flocks of ducks, emanated from the duck call booth. Fishermen perambulated the hall carrying plastic fish baskets, boat hooks and shopping bags advertising engines. By the end of the three-day show, in spite of low attendance, I’d sold forty books to wonderful, highly intelligent, generous, broadminded, sensible people. I also enjoyed ego inflating compliments from readers and on the second day, the company of my dear friend and fellow author, Ann.
One extreme sour remained in the tin.
The annual Maryland Waterman’s Association Expo attracts commercial fishermen from the Mid-Atlantic States. They buy boats, engines and gear at this show held in Ocean City, Maryland, in January. My fisherman husband and I attended the show every year. It seemed like a good venue to sell my book, Wet and Hungry: A Commercial Fisherman’s Life.
Most booths displayed candy, pens and other freebies to entice customers and occupy children. Life raft companies, engine dealers and government entities could afford such largess, especially the ubiquitous government agencies. NMFS, ASMFC, MDDNR, NOAA and other government acronyms occupied numerous booths.
I considered what hand-outs I could afford to offer. That didn’t take long to consider. None, unless the other exhibitors would each donate one piece of candy to my booth. My daughter rescued me with an offer of leftover Halloween candy an ex-boyfriend had given her, an unusually generous offer for a candy fiend like her. We poured it in a large tin and I took it to the show.
In 2008, fishermen had suffered from profit siphoning, stratospheric fuel costs, added to poor catches, erratic markets and harsh regulations. Now they were broke. Instead of the usual heavy crowd of fishermen eager to buy gear, a meager few trickled in and many carried no money.
Beset with lachrymose ennui, I sat in a ten by ten-foot booth waiting for customers. I looked at my watch, again. Only fifteen minutes had passed since the last time I had looked. I felt like I was back in high school waiting for a tedious school day to end. I visited the other booths, stocking up on pens and note pads. Then I returned to my booth and waited for business to pick up.
Our fish dealer strolled by and plopped a couple of pieces of my candy in his mouth. He grimaced. “Yuck! You need to get better candy!”
I watched people’s faces contort as they tried the candy.
A fisherman tried a piece and his face puckered up like an elderly person who’d soaked in a bath tub too long. He grabbed another piece and offered it to a fellow fisherman. “Have you ever tried this candy?”
The second fisherman unwrapped it, put it in his mouth and immediately spit it into a trash can.
I looked in my tin. The wrappers said, “Extreme Sour.” I made a warning sign, “Worse show candy, guaranteed. Best books.”
This encouraged every passing child to grab a handful. Several returned for more.
During dull spells between sales and candy incidents, I contrived imprecations and ripostes I would like to sling at irksome people who did not buy books. I practiced proper public behavior and only dreamed of using these responses.
To the armed policeman who didn’t have any cash to buy my book, “Are you afraid of muggers?”
To the henpecked man who claimed, “My wife says I have too many books,” I would retort, “Are you afraid of that illiterate battle ax?”
To the woman eating a fried clam and smearing grease over a book, “Pig, you’ve gotten enough grease on that book to deep fry a turkey.”
To adults who grabbed candy without looking at the book, never mind, they were going to get puckered mouths and acid reflux.
To others who passed by, oblivious to the literary masterpieces on my table, “You unobservant numbskulls probably don’t notice sunsets, flowers, butterflies or kittens, either.”
To the guy who stood in my booth to make a cell phone call, “This is not a phone booth.”
To the men, one booth over, selling Diesel additive, “Do you really need a gorgeous, slender blonde in tight jeans and spiked heels to sell your product? What next, a thong-clad girl slathered with Diesel additive?”
To the loquacious know-it-all who stood in my booth endlessly rapping, “Take your big yap over to the booth with the blonde.”
To the idiots who asked where they could get someone else’s book, “You can get it in Hades. Why would you come to a fishing expo, claim to be interested in books about fishing, ignore a highly rated book on the subject and ask for a book not remotely related to fishing?”
Meanwhile, honks and quacks from gaggles of geese and flocks of ducks, emanated from the duck call booth. Fishermen perambulated the hall carrying plastic fish baskets, boat hooks and shopping bags advertising engines. By the end of the three-day show, in spite of low attendance, I’d sold forty books to wonderful, highly intelligent, generous, broadminded, sensible people. I also enjoyed ego inflating compliments from readers and on the second day, the company of my dear friend and fellow author, Ann.
One extreme sour remained in the tin.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
The Haunted Parlor
The Parlor
The ancient, oak, pump organ groaned, moaned, wheezed, thumped and squealed. I pressed its peddles with my child’s feet and pushed its keys at random with my skinny fingers. I had nearly flunked flutophone in third grade and had no musical talent. All I could play was a record player.
I wondered why my grandmother had bought such a hideous instrument, rather than a piano or guitar. The organ’s cacophony was worse than a bag pipe’s and it took up more space. My grandmother couldn’t even play the contraption. Nobody in the family could until my mother took piano lessons and my mother’s musical ability matched mine. The family home didn’t even have an indoor bathroom when the organ was purchased. At that time, no house in rural Campbelltown had indoor plumbing, yet many homes were furnished with pump organs, even my stingy Aunt Manie owned one. A superlative salesman had persuaded those thrifty farmers to buy pump organs.
The dark varnished organ, bereft of its ornate superstructure, which had been relegated to a dirty shed, stood in the parlor on the west end of the T-shaped farm house. Like most houses built in the late 1800s, whether farm house or city row house, this house was built with sixteen-foot joists spanning the width of each section. The parlor wasn’t sixteen feet wide, however. A wide, enclosed stairs took up one side of the room, but we didn’t use this comfortable stairs. My grandmother preferred the steep, narrow kitchen stairs.
Mature box elder trees and a porch shaded the gloomy parlor. My grandmother’s best furniture filled it; a dark blue velvet couch and chair; several tables and lamps; my mother’s old radio, enclosed in a wood cabinet as tall as I was. The radio needed new tubes and didn’t work. A little clock hung on the wall. It didn’t work, either. A Victorian superfluity of knick knacks furnished every table and shelf. My mother’s Bobsey Twins books gathered dust on one shelf. A rug covered the baby-poop-brown painted floor. Two 16”by 20” calendar pictures hung in wide elaborate gold-painted frames against floral wallpaper. One frame held a copy of a Dutch master’s vase of flowers and the other frame held a picture of Jesus with a flock of sheep. In spite of these comforts, my grandmother never used the parlor except for special visitors.
I always felt that a benign presence watched me in that cold room, but it didn’t bother me much, not with that organ bawling loud enough to dissipate any spirit. However, in the evening, I never entered the parlor alone. I felt a stronger presence then, even when accompanied by my grandmother.
On dull summer days, when the sun and humidity made outside play miserable, I retreated to the cool parlor and investigated postcards and a photo album stored in the organ’s empty top. My grandmother had sent most of the cards, with one cent stamps, to my grandfather when they were courting. The photo album contained tin types, photos printed on thin metal plates, of family members I didn’t know. Most of them had died before I was born.
Family members consistently died young. Most died of tuberculosis, but one great uncle had cut himself shaving and died of blood poisoning.
When I was four, my father held me up to kiss my beautiful, blonde, fifteen-year-old cousin goodnight. She was sleeping, he said. I thought it strange that she slept fully dressed, in a satin-lined box, in a strange house. I never saw my cousin again. Later I learned she had died of an aneurism.
The parlor seemed to fill with spirits when I looked at those old photos. Sometimes I thought I saw movement in the shadows, but reasoned that was just my nerves. Even in summer, the parlor was as cool as my dead cousin’s skin.
Years later, my grandmother died and we faced the usual family concerns, or usual for my family. Would the hearse get stuck in the narrow track that led to the family graveyard? The graveyard sat on a slight sand hill in the midst of a muddy corn field. The quarter mile path to it consisted of two deep, overgrown ruts. Grass-grown muck served as a parking lot by the graveyard. The hearse didn’t get stuck and we buried my grandmother between her husband and granddaughter. The next year, we added my uncle.
By then, we had sold the farm. My mother sold the organ to Florida relatives for ten dollars. They fetched the organ, but never paid the money. My father said it didn’t matter, “Good riddance! We didn’t have room for that ugly old organ. Now those queer Florida relatives won’t bother us because they owe us money.” My family used the word “queer” to describe our ubiquitous oddball relatives. Odd was typical in our family.
My mother told me once that the good stairs in that old farm house were only used to carry coffins downstairs when someone died in bed. In former times, the family displayed the corpse in the parlor for all the friends and relatives to see before burial.
The ancient, oak, pump organ groaned, moaned, wheezed, thumped and squealed. I pressed its peddles with my child’s feet and pushed its keys at random with my skinny fingers. I had nearly flunked flutophone in third grade and had no musical talent. All I could play was a record player.
I wondered why my grandmother had bought such a hideous instrument, rather than a piano or guitar. The organ’s cacophony was worse than a bag pipe’s and it took up more space. My grandmother couldn’t even play the contraption. Nobody in the family could until my mother took piano lessons and my mother’s musical ability matched mine. The family home didn’t even have an indoor bathroom when the organ was purchased. At that time, no house in rural Campbelltown had indoor plumbing, yet many homes were furnished with pump organs, even my stingy Aunt Manie owned one. A superlative salesman had persuaded those thrifty farmers to buy pump organs.
The dark varnished organ, bereft of its ornate superstructure, which had been relegated to a dirty shed, stood in the parlor on the west end of the T-shaped farm house. Like most houses built in the late 1800s, whether farm house or city row house, this house was built with sixteen-foot joists spanning the width of each section. The parlor wasn’t sixteen feet wide, however. A wide, enclosed stairs took up one side of the room, but we didn’t use this comfortable stairs. My grandmother preferred the steep, narrow kitchen stairs.
Mature box elder trees and a porch shaded the gloomy parlor. My grandmother’s best furniture filled it; a dark blue velvet couch and chair; several tables and lamps; my mother’s old radio, enclosed in a wood cabinet as tall as I was. The radio needed new tubes and didn’t work. A little clock hung on the wall. It didn’t work, either. A Victorian superfluity of knick knacks furnished every table and shelf. My mother’s Bobsey Twins books gathered dust on one shelf. A rug covered the baby-poop-brown painted floor. Two 16”by 20” calendar pictures hung in wide elaborate gold-painted frames against floral wallpaper. One frame held a copy of a Dutch master’s vase of flowers and the other frame held a picture of Jesus with a flock of sheep. In spite of these comforts, my grandmother never used the parlor except for special visitors.
I always felt that a benign presence watched me in that cold room, but it didn’t bother me much, not with that organ bawling loud enough to dissipate any spirit. However, in the evening, I never entered the parlor alone. I felt a stronger presence then, even when accompanied by my grandmother.
On dull summer days, when the sun and humidity made outside play miserable, I retreated to the cool parlor and investigated postcards and a photo album stored in the organ’s empty top. My grandmother had sent most of the cards, with one cent stamps, to my grandfather when they were courting. The photo album contained tin types, photos printed on thin metal plates, of family members I didn’t know. Most of them had died before I was born.
Family members consistently died young. Most died of tuberculosis, but one great uncle had cut himself shaving and died of blood poisoning.
When I was four, my father held me up to kiss my beautiful, blonde, fifteen-year-old cousin goodnight. She was sleeping, he said. I thought it strange that she slept fully dressed, in a satin-lined box, in a strange house. I never saw my cousin again. Later I learned she had died of an aneurism.
The parlor seemed to fill with spirits when I looked at those old photos. Sometimes I thought I saw movement in the shadows, but reasoned that was just my nerves. Even in summer, the parlor was as cool as my dead cousin’s skin.
Years later, my grandmother died and we faced the usual family concerns, or usual for my family. Would the hearse get stuck in the narrow track that led to the family graveyard? The graveyard sat on a slight sand hill in the midst of a muddy corn field. The quarter mile path to it consisted of two deep, overgrown ruts. Grass-grown muck served as a parking lot by the graveyard. The hearse didn’t get stuck and we buried my grandmother between her husband and granddaughter. The next year, we added my uncle.
By then, we had sold the farm. My mother sold the organ to Florida relatives for ten dollars. They fetched the organ, but never paid the money. My father said it didn’t matter, “Good riddance! We didn’t have room for that ugly old organ. Now those queer Florida relatives won’t bother us because they owe us money.” My family used the word “queer” to describe our ubiquitous oddball relatives. Odd was typical in our family.
My mother told me once that the good stairs in that old farm house were only used to carry coffins downstairs when someone died in bed. In former times, the family displayed the corpse in the parlor for all the friends and relatives to see before burial.
Dull Heros
Dull Heroes, Compelling Villains
Often writers give villains deeper, more interesting characters than heroes. I believe writers use their own most hated traits in their villains, like an exorcism. Since we have bad thoughts and emotions, why not use them? Here are two examples from excellent books nobody reads anymore.
In Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, we learned little about Ivanhoe except that he was brave, handsome and good. Yawn. I don’t recall any passion in that superficial hero, but the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert suffered from unrequited lust and conflicting emotions. Brian had life and fire, but he couldn’t be good. Anyone who ever suffered from lust or conflicting emotions had to feel a tinge of empathy for the Templar, who died of a heart attack.
In Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, the hero is another brave, handsome youth of no depth or complexity. We hardly know him, let alone identify with him. But Dickens must have put every evil emotion he’d ever suffered in Bradley, the angry school master, another villain tortured with lust and jealousy.
Writers divide their own feelings with all their good going to heroes and all their bad going to villains. The recent Batman movie, The Dark Knight, poses another example. The handsome millionaire, who is secretly Batman, is so dull his girlfriend dumps him. The Joker represents pure, psychopathic evil, yet he’s more intense and fascinating than the hero. Heath Ledger, a charismatic actor, creates much of this attraction. The colorful Joker provokes with his eccentric make-up, clothes, action, mystery, underlying good looks and odd humor. He’s everything Batman isn’t. It’s easier to imagine the Joker telling a joke than Batman telling one. Fortunately, the Joker is so thoroughly evil, he excites no sympathy.
Ian Fleming’s James Bond is one of the few heroes more interesting than the villains. The villains in James Bond movies tend to be megalomaniacal bores, with no emotional or physical attractiveness. Lusty Bond engages us with his cool sense of humor and physical vigor. He’s comfortable with his sexuality, a charming and fun guy to have around, good without being impossibly perfect.
Often writers give villains deeper, more interesting characters than heroes. I believe writers use their own most hated traits in their villains, like an exorcism. Since we have bad thoughts and emotions, why not use them? Here are two examples from excellent books nobody reads anymore.
In Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, we learned little about Ivanhoe except that he was brave, handsome and good. Yawn. I don’t recall any passion in that superficial hero, but the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert suffered from unrequited lust and conflicting emotions. Brian had life and fire, but he couldn’t be good. Anyone who ever suffered from lust or conflicting emotions had to feel a tinge of empathy for the Templar, who died of a heart attack.
In Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, the hero is another brave, handsome youth of no depth or complexity. We hardly know him, let alone identify with him. But Dickens must have put every evil emotion he’d ever suffered in Bradley, the angry school master, another villain tortured with lust and jealousy.
Writers divide their own feelings with all their good going to heroes and all their bad going to villains. The recent Batman movie, The Dark Knight, poses another example. The handsome millionaire, who is secretly Batman, is so dull his girlfriend dumps him. The Joker represents pure, psychopathic evil, yet he’s more intense and fascinating than the hero. Heath Ledger, a charismatic actor, creates much of this attraction. The colorful Joker provokes with his eccentric make-up, clothes, action, mystery, underlying good looks and odd humor. He’s everything Batman isn’t. It’s easier to imagine the Joker telling a joke than Batman telling one. Fortunately, the Joker is so thoroughly evil, he excites no sympathy.
Ian Fleming’s James Bond is one of the few heroes more interesting than the villains. The villains in James Bond movies tend to be megalomaniacal bores, with no emotional or physical attractiveness. Lusty Bond engages us with his cool sense of humor and physical vigor. He’s comfortable with his sexuality, a charming and fun guy to have around, good without being impossibly perfect.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Economics and Aunt Manie
A Concise Economic Treatise
Spend less than you make. Vote for tightwads. The End.
An Economic Treatise with a Brief History of United States Economics and Explanation of the Current Situation, OR Economics and Aunt Manie
Part I
I learned about economics from the following: Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, Frederick Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Richard Salsman and Aunt Manie.
Aunt Manie was born about 1890, the oldest of six children. Her father worked as a lumberjack and the children shared two unfinished attic bedrooms, five girls in one room, one son in the other. From their beds, they saw the wood shingles that covered the roof. Although this family doesn’t sound prosperous to us, living standards had improved dramatically in the 1800s, except during the Civil War period. Prior to the Civil War, the United States had enjoyed stable, gold-based money.
The founders of the United States had issued paper continentals during the Revolutionary War. These lost value and the founders wrote a constitution that allowed the government to only issue metallic money, no paper money. The government allowed private money printed or minted by banks until 1864. The Constitution mandated gold-based money until Supreme Court decisions allowed the government to issue fiat, paper money, called greenbacks, during the Civil War. These were eventually redeemed for gold and the United States returned to the gold standard until WWI.
After the Civil War, government controls on banks created money panics and currency shortages. Instead of repealing the restrictions, the government increased control, a pattern of government behavior that continues today.
The government established the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913 to stabilize the currency and prevent panics and recessions. The Fed has done neither, but exists to support government. The government acquired a monopoly on the issuance of money. When President Wilson unnecessarily involved the United States in WWI, the government abandoned the gold standard and devalued the currency to inflate the money supply and pay for the war. Congress established the Federal income tax in 1916. Recession followed. Instead of returning to the classical gold standard, the government conceived a gold exchanged standard managed by politicians rather than the market.
In 1925, Britain returned to a gold standard, but at an exchange rate that had prevailed before the war. Pound notes had expanded, exceeding the gold supply. To help the Bank of England return to gold, the United States Federal Reserve lowered interest rates and encouraged Americans to hold gold claims in pounds, not dollars, to offset the inflating increase in pounds.
Low interest rates stoked a speculative boom in United States stocks. In 1929, the Fed drastically raised rates leading to a market crash.
The United States defaulted on the gold exchange standard when public fear that President Franklin Roosevelt would abandon the gold standard led to the banking panic of 1933. The government nearly doubled income tax rates and supported artificially high wage rates by unions. Roosevelt ordered confiscation of all privately held gold coins and bullion, forcing unstable paper money on the United States.
After WWII, the Bretton Woods Agreement established a new gold exchange standard, defining a dollar as 1/35th ounce of gold. Central banks held gold, but private citizens were not allowed to own gold other than jewelry. Only foreign governments could redeem dollars for gold.
The Kennedy and Johnson administrations set the country on a course of unprecedented deficit spending and inflating. The last balanced budget was in 1969.
Part II
Aunt Manie had big, blue eyes, wavy black hair (a woman’s crowning glory) worn in a Gibson girl pouf, a fair complexion and a figure of a slender hourglass form. An early twentieth century knock-out. Manie’s striking beauty attracted a prosperous local farmer. They married, but Manie was unable to have children and folks said she dominated her husband. She loved children, however, including her sisters’ children. My grandmother was one of those sisters.
After Manie’s husband died in the 1950s, she lived alone in an old, two-story, T-shaped farm house. Manie occupied two downstairs rooms, a country kitchen and a small bedroom. An outhouse stood in the backyard between the garage, where her deceased husband’s car resided, and the hen house. Aunt Manie had running water in the kitchen. When the faucet leaked, she had the electric pump removed and replaced with a hand pump. She heated her two rooms with a coal stove. She didn’t use the rest of the house, including a living room with an old television and a pump organ, items purchased when her husband was alive.
Farmers didn’t qualify for Social Security benefits at the time. Although past her sixties, Aunt Manie raised broiler chickens and, sometimes, turkeys. She kept a few laying hens and feral cats roamed the yard. An empty barn fell into disrepair. The old lady, like her sisters, had never learned to drive, but she kept her husband’s car.
Aunt Manie grew a vegetable garden, saving seeds each year to replant. Mauve petunias self-seeded in her yard and she grew zinnias and cosmos from saved seed. She yanked up a handful of yellow sedum one day and gave it to me. “Just cover it with dirt and it will grow,” she said and it did. Like her sisters, she canned produce and made her own clothes, quilts and rag rugs.
Addie, Manie’s widowed sister, lived in similar circumstances on a nearby farm. A couple of miles down another dirt road lived my widowed grandmother, who had an indoor bathroom my father had installed. On another road, the youngest sister, a spinster, Hettie, lived with the bachelor brother, John. All farmed. A fifth sister had died young. Only John drove. None had ever received government benefits and all were thrifty.
Manie beat them all for thrift. Relatives complained she was tight, miserly, stingy and parsimonious. They said she had money and should live up to it.
Aunt Manie walked to my grandmother’s house when I stayed there. The old ladies shelled peas or beans or sewed, while rocking by the iron, coal stove and listening to crop prices on the radio. Evenings, they moved into the living room, turned on the oil stove and watched television. They loved Laurence Welk’s music and Oral Roberts’ preaching.
When the nearest country store closed and delivery men stopped coming by with bread and meat, my mother drove the old ladies to a grocery store. Aunt Manie always gave me a quarter and smiled when my mother told her I put them in my piggy bank. These were the genuine silver, pre-1965 quarters. I wish I’d kept them in the piggy bank instead of depositing them in a commercial bank, but most adults didn’t know the government would devalue our coins and I was only a child.
A doctor told Aunt Manie she didn’t eat right. In winter, she lived on melted cheese and jelly sandwiches and probably skimped on the cheese. When she needed cataract surgery on both eyes, she only had one done to save money. Aunt Manie had to stay in the hospital a few days. She said the food was good, the first time I’d ever heard anyone say that about hospital food. She wasn’t a complainer.
When antique dealers roamed the countryside looking for farmers willing to sell their heirlooms, Aunt Manie sold old furniture and glass ware, old stuff she’d inherited and didn’t need. When she died, her relatives found a broken glass oil lamp, the pump organ and other stuff that the dealers didn’t want. Aunt Manie’s nieces and nephews didn’t complain about her frugality when they inherited shares of her small estate. She produced food for others most of her life and never used anyone’s money but her own.
Part III
By 1970, nearly half the gold confiscated from American citizens in the 1930s was in foreign central banks. When France continued to exchange dollars for gold, Nixon defaulted on foreign gold payments, ending the dollar’s connection with gold.
By 1980, gold sold for over $800 an ounce. Inflation and interest rates soared over ten percent. Savers lost millions. During the 80s, despite President Reagan’s battles with congress to rein in spending and balance the budget, government spending, taxes and debts increased.
The Federal Reserve Bank serves the purpose of financing government and has no place in a free economy. The Fed underwrites federal loans, controls money supply, manipulates interest rates and regulates banks. This central planning creates instability and economic inefficiency.
“When we assign the production of money to government, we should expect inferior money.” –Laurence White
The Fed enables government to spend more than it can take in taxes, creating inflation. After 9/11, Alan Greenspan lowered interest rates to revive the economy. Lower rates and government policies encouraging home ownership increased housing demand, inflating prices. Real estate speculation and development increased. Lower interest rates encouraged the purchase of larger homes and goods to fill them. Low rates led to purchases of more and bigger vehicles to drive greater distances to work and shop.
Government borrowing and spending increased to finance war, homeland security and new government programs such as No Child Left Behind and senior prescription drugs. An increased money supply devalued the dollar. Expanding economies in Asia, fed by United States consumer spending, increased demand for fuel. Demand, the devalued dollar and speculation increased the price of fuel. That created more inflation and people found it harder to pay off their debts. The Fed exacerbated the problem by increasing interest rates to control inflation. The results: default, foreclosure, tight credit, recession and deflation in home prices, leaving financial institutions and homeowners with homes worth less than the prices paid for them.
Politicians believe they can create jobs with public works programs, industry bailouts and subsidies to new industries. Public works programs prolonged the Great Depression. Government money comes from inflation and taxes.
Politicians and the media condemn CEOs and Wall Street. The uninformed demand more regulation. Regulation won’t cure a problem caused by government control of money and the resulting profligacy. Americans will experience booms and busts, fluctuating speculations in commodities, real estate, stocks and production as long as the government controls the money. We need to get rid of government’s drunken sailor economic policies and replace them with tightfisted Aunt Manie policies.
Spend less than you make. Vote for tightwads. The End.
An Economic Treatise with a Brief History of United States Economics and Explanation of the Current Situation, OR Economics and Aunt Manie
Part I
I learned about economics from the following: Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, Frederick Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Richard Salsman and Aunt Manie.
Aunt Manie was born about 1890, the oldest of six children. Her father worked as a lumberjack and the children shared two unfinished attic bedrooms, five girls in one room, one son in the other. From their beds, they saw the wood shingles that covered the roof. Although this family doesn’t sound prosperous to us, living standards had improved dramatically in the 1800s, except during the Civil War period. Prior to the Civil War, the United States had enjoyed stable, gold-based money.
The founders of the United States had issued paper continentals during the Revolutionary War. These lost value and the founders wrote a constitution that allowed the government to only issue metallic money, no paper money. The government allowed private money printed or minted by banks until 1864. The Constitution mandated gold-based money until Supreme Court decisions allowed the government to issue fiat, paper money, called greenbacks, during the Civil War. These were eventually redeemed for gold and the United States returned to the gold standard until WWI.
After the Civil War, government controls on banks created money panics and currency shortages. Instead of repealing the restrictions, the government increased control, a pattern of government behavior that continues today.
The government established the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913 to stabilize the currency and prevent panics and recessions. The Fed has done neither, but exists to support government. The government acquired a monopoly on the issuance of money. When President Wilson unnecessarily involved the United States in WWI, the government abandoned the gold standard and devalued the currency to inflate the money supply and pay for the war. Congress established the Federal income tax in 1916. Recession followed. Instead of returning to the classical gold standard, the government conceived a gold exchanged standard managed by politicians rather than the market.
In 1925, Britain returned to a gold standard, but at an exchange rate that had prevailed before the war. Pound notes had expanded, exceeding the gold supply. To help the Bank of England return to gold, the United States Federal Reserve lowered interest rates and encouraged Americans to hold gold claims in pounds, not dollars, to offset the inflating increase in pounds.
Low interest rates stoked a speculative boom in United States stocks. In 1929, the Fed drastically raised rates leading to a market crash.
The United States defaulted on the gold exchange standard when public fear that President Franklin Roosevelt would abandon the gold standard led to the banking panic of 1933. The government nearly doubled income tax rates and supported artificially high wage rates by unions. Roosevelt ordered confiscation of all privately held gold coins and bullion, forcing unstable paper money on the United States.
After WWII, the Bretton Woods Agreement established a new gold exchange standard, defining a dollar as 1/35th ounce of gold. Central banks held gold, but private citizens were not allowed to own gold other than jewelry. Only foreign governments could redeem dollars for gold.
The Kennedy and Johnson administrations set the country on a course of unprecedented deficit spending and inflating. The last balanced budget was in 1969.
Part II
Aunt Manie had big, blue eyes, wavy black hair (a woman’s crowning glory) worn in a Gibson girl pouf, a fair complexion and a figure of a slender hourglass form. An early twentieth century knock-out. Manie’s striking beauty attracted a prosperous local farmer. They married, but Manie was unable to have children and folks said she dominated her husband. She loved children, however, including her sisters’ children. My grandmother was one of those sisters.
After Manie’s husband died in the 1950s, she lived alone in an old, two-story, T-shaped farm house. Manie occupied two downstairs rooms, a country kitchen and a small bedroom. An outhouse stood in the backyard between the garage, where her deceased husband’s car resided, and the hen house. Aunt Manie had running water in the kitchen. When the faucet leaked, she had the electric pump removed and replaced with a hand pump. She heated her two rooms with a coal stove. She didn’t use the rest of the house, including a living room with an old television and a pump organ, items purchased when her husband was alive.
Farmers didn’t qualify for Social Security benefits at the time. Although past her sixties, Aunt Manie raised broiler chickens and, sometimes, turkeys. She kept a few laying hens and feral cats roamed the yard. An empty barn fell into disrepair. The old lady, like her sisters, had never learned to drive, but she kept her husband’s car.
Aunt Manie grew a vegetable garden, saving seeds each year to replant. Mauve petunias self-seeded in her yard and she grew zinnias and cosmos from saved seed. She yanked up a handful of yellow sedum one day and gave it to me. “Just cover it with dirt and it will grow,” she said and it did. Like her sisters, she canned produce and made her own clothes, quilts and rag rugs.
Addie, Manie’s widowed sister, lived in similar circumstances on a nearby farm. A couple of miles down another dirt road lived my widowed grandmother, who had an indoor bathroom my father had installed. On another road, the youngest sister, a spinster, Hettie, lived with the bachelor brother, John. All farmed. A fifth sister had died young. Only John drove. None had ever received government benefits and all were thrifty.
Manie beat them all for thrift. Relatives complained she was tight, miserly, stingy and parsimonious. They said she had money and should live up to it.
Aunt Manie walked to my grandmother’s house when I stayed there. The old ladies shelled peas or beans or sewed, while rocking by the iron, coal stove and listening to crop prices on the radio. Evenings, they moved into the living room, turned on the oil stove and watched television. They loved Laurence Welk’s music and Oral Roberts’ preaching.
When the nearest country store closed and delivery men stopped coming by with bread and meat, my mother drove the old ladies to a grocery store. Aunt Manie always gave me a quarter and smiled when my mother told her I put them in my piggy bank. These were the genuine silver, pre-1965 quarters. I wish I’d kept them in the piggy bank instead of depositing them in a commercial bank, but most adults didn’t know the government would devalue our coins and I was only a child.
A doctor told Aunt Manie she didn’t eat right. In winter, she lived on melted cheese and jelly sandwiches and probably skimped on the cheese. When she needed cataract surgery on both eyes, she only had one done to save money. Aunt Manie had to stay in the hospital a few days. She said the food was good, the first time I’d ever heard anyone say that about hospital food. She wasn’t a complainer.
When antique dealers roamed the countryside looking for farmers willing to sell their heirlooms, Aunt Manie sold old furniture and glass ware, old stuff she’d inherited and didn’t need. When she died, her relatives found a broken glass oil lamp, the pump organ and other stuff that the dealers didn’t want. Aunt Manie’s nieces and nephews didn’t complain about her frugality when they inherited shares of her small estate. She produced food for others most of her life and never used anyone’s money but her own.
Part III
By 1970, nearly half the gold confiscated from American citizens in the 1930s was in foreign central banks. When France continued to exchange dollars for gold, Nixon defaulted on foreign gold payments, ending the dollar’s connection with gold.
By 1980, gold sold for over $800 an ounce. Inflation and interest rates soared over ten percent. Savers lost millions. During the 80s, despite President Reagan’s battles with congress to rein in spending and balance the budget, government spending, taxes and debts increased.
The Federal Reserve Bank serves the purpose of financing government and has no place in a free economy. The Fed underwrites federal loans, controls money supply, manipulates interest rates and regulates banks. This central planning creates instability and economic inefficiency.
“When we assign the production of money to government, we should expect inferior money.” –Laurence White
The Fed enables government to spend more than it can take in taxes, creating inflation. After 9/11, Alan Greenspan lowered interest rates to revive the economy. Lower rates and government policies encouraging home ownership increased housing demand, inflating prices. Real estate speculation and development increased. Lower interest rates encouraged the purchase of larger homes and goods to fill them. Low rates led to purchases of more and bigger vehicles to drive greater distances to work and shop.
Government borrowing and spending increased to finance war, homeland security and new government programs such as No Child Left Behind and senior prescription drugs. An increased money supply devalued the dollar. Expanding economies in Asia, fed by United States consumer spending, increased demand for fuel. Demand, the devalued dollar and speculation increased the price of fuel. That created more inflation and people found it harder to pay off their debts. The Fed exacerbated the problem by increasing interest rates to control inflation. The results: default, foreclosure, tight credit, recession and deflation in home prices, leaving financial institutions and homeowners with homes worth less than the prices paid for them.
Politicians believe they can create jobs with public works programs, industry bailouts and subsidies to new industries. Public works programs prolonged the Great Depression. Government money comes from inflation and taxes.
Politicians and the media condemn CEOs and Wall Street. The uninformed demand more regulation. Regulation won’t cure a problem caused by government control of money and the resulting profligacy. Americans will experience booms and busts, fluctuating speculations in commodities, real estate, stocks and production as long as the government controls the money. We need to get rid of government’s drunken sailor economic policies and replace them with tightfisted Aunt Manie policies.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Thorn in the Ointment
Thorn in the Ointment
I attended a town hall meeting held by our area’s two state delegates, Norm and Jim. Jim got a bill passed a couple of years ago that put five or six commercial clammers out of business. These men operated conveyor belt clam boats in the coastal bays. At one time, there were over seventy of these boats, but men don’t want to work that hard anymore. The Maryland Coastal Bays, a government sponsored environmental organization, had worked out an agreement with these clammers that allowed them to continue working, but some people accused them of damaging the bays and that’s why Jim got this anti-clamming bill passed.
I had a letter for Maryland’s fisheries director proposing a change in commercial rockfish allocation, an issue too complicated to explain here. When I gave it to Jim, I explained that local fishermen considered him against them due to the clam bill. He protested that he had met with twenty-five clammers and the president of their organization. He couldn’t remember the name of the president of the Maryland Waterman’s Association or the organization. This group and its president have been prominent in Maryland for over twenty-five years.
Jim looked at my letter and asked if it was for the DNR. I said yes, for the fisheries director. Jim didn’t know who that was, either. I decided not to attempt to explain the matter to Jim, or bring it up during the meeting.
Norm, Jim and Gee, the Mayor of Berlin, sat down at a table on the ends of two other tables. They wore suits, as did the county’s state’s attorney, who attended with his wife. She works for Maryland Coastal Bays, but they attended as private citizens. An aged Republican, a fireman, three newspaper women and two other private citizens, besides myself, sat down. Later my council woman Aunt and a member of the school board arrived.
Although the meeting was to hear our desires for the up-coming legislative session, the politicians, particularly long-winded Jim, dominated with their motor-mouths. The news ladies photographed them. The politicians spoke about the difficult session they would have cutting the budget. The Republican guest asked about distribution of slot machine money to towns. Gee said he hoped they wouldn’t change Berlin’s ten percent as the town was counting on it for the budget. They don’t even have slots yet and how do you count on something that can vary?
Two citizens wanted more money designated for highway widening and medical care. The fireman was concerned about medivac funding. The state is considering privatizing it. He also said the fire company could no longer run back ground checks. The states attorney said he couldn’t do it for them or he’d lose his license to do it. Some weird federal law restricts access to this information.
A news lady had no more sense than to ask the loquacious delegates about their pet legislative projects. Norm had a truancy court bill and a proposal to keep Holly Center, an institution for the disabled operating. A group for the disabled wanted it closed and the residents put in group homes. “They object to the idea of an institution,” Norman said, but many patients and their parents needed and wanted the center.
I said, “Some people object to the institution of marriage, too.”
Fabulous Jim was working on a law to ban the sale of salvia, the latest drug craze. Salvia’s probably safer for Maryland citizens than Jim is, at least to clammers. The state’s attorney said nothing about this.
Gee asked about getting federal infrastructure money for Berlin, a bailout. The federal government required the town of about 4,000 residents to get a new $18 million sewage treatment plant using spray irrigation. A newspaper lady asked if spray irrigation was to help the farmers. She didn’t understand this was a water treatment method. This is why I didn’t bring up my fisheries problem.
Developers have expanded Berlin since the last sewage plant was built twenty or so years ago. I asked if tax money from people in California and Texas should be used for this. What would happen if the town didn’t get federal money? Gee said they would still get the system, but he was annoyed by my question. After all Berlin taxpayers were going to pay for projects in other states.
Gee said that deregulation had hurt Berlin’s power plant. Berlin is one of few towns that operate their own electric plants. It needed a new generator and Gee wanted the state to help with a program to educate the public about saving electricity. At some point during this meeting, a private citizen had said that private citizens had restored the town’s Victorian buildings and she thought more should be left up to private enterprise.
Gee bitterly repeated the term deregulation. He wanted re-regulation, but said he knew re-regulation wasn’t likely. Could the delegates help the town with this?
I asked, “When the state deregulated, didn’t it continue to regulate the price utilities could charge the customer?”
“Yes, I’m glad you brought that up,” Gee said.
“That’s not deregulation,” I added. When the cost to produce electricity goes up, the utilities can’t raise prices to compensate without state approval.
Gee claimed small town plants could use renewable energy. (Berlin’s unprofitable plant uses Diesel and the town can’t afford wind mills.) The towns needed to be entrepreneurial, he said.
I refrained from barfing. “The government’s not good at operating power plants. That’s why Berlin’s plant’s in trouble,” I said.
“We need to live in the real world and leave ideology aside,” Gee said, “We have NGOs and businesses. We shouldn’t put up walls between them and government. We need partnerships.”
Whoa! “Ideology is what gave us our freedoms,” I said, adding, “Okay, we don’t have them now. Everything is enmeshed.”
I learned I had an ideology, but leftist politicians didn’t! There is nothing realistic about every municipality collecting federal money, borrowed money that would have to be paid back, with interest, to foreign governments. Today’s profligate spending would bring future higher taxes and inflation.
“This is what’s great about meeting and hearing the public,” someone said.
“Yeah, but if it weren’t for me, one point of view would dominate. You’re all democrats and a little bit socialist.”
A lot socialist, but I didn’t want to offend. One private citizen thought I meant everyone in the room was socialist, but I meant the politicians. So I offended anyway. Every political meeting needs a thorn in the ointment.
I attended a town hall meeting held by our area’s two state delegates, Norm and Jim. Jim got a bill passed a couple of years ago that put five or six commercial clammers out of business. These men operated conveyor belt clam boats in the coastal bays. At one time, there were over seventy of these boats, but men don’t want to work that hard anymore. The Maryland Coastal Bays, a government sponsored environmental organization, had worked out an agreement with these clammers that allowed them to continue working, but some people accused them of damaging the bays and that’s why Jim got this anti-clamming bill passed.
I had a letter for Maryland’s fisheries director proposing a change in commercial rockfish allocation, an issue too complicated to explain here. When I gave it to Jim, I explained that local fishermen considered him against them due to the clam bill. He protested that he had met with twenty-five clammers and the president of their organization. He couldn’t remember the name of the president of the Maryland Waterman’s Association or the organization. This group and its president have been prominent in Maryland for over twenty-five years.
Jim looked at my letter and asked if it was for the DNR. I said yes, for the fisheries director. Jim didn’t know who that was, either. I decided not to attempt to explain the matter to Jim, or bring it up during the meeting.
Norm, Jim and Gee, the Mayor of Berlin, sat down at a table on the ends of two other tables. They wore suits, as did the county’s state’s attorney, who attended with his wife. She works for Maryland Coastal Bays, but they attended as private citizens. An aged Republican, a fireman, three newspaper women and two other private citizens, besides myself, sat down. Later my council woman Aunt and a member of the school board arrived.
Although the meeting was to hear our desires for the up-coming legislative session, the politicians, particularly long-winded Jim, dominated with their motor-mouths. The news ladies photographed them. The politicians spoke about the difficult session they would have cutting the budget. The Republican guest asked about distribution of slot machine money to towns. Gee said he hoped they wouldn’t change Berlin’s ten percent as the town was counting on it for the budget. They don’t even have slots yet and how do you count on something that can vary?
Two citizens wanted more money designated for highway widening and medical care. The fireman was concerned about medivac funding. The state is considering privatizing it. He also said the fire company could no longer run back ground checks. The states attorney said he couldn’t do it for them or he’d lose his license to do it. Some weird federal law restricts access to this information.
A news lady had no more sense than to ask the loquacious delegates about their pet legislative projects. Norm had a truancy court bill and a proposal to keep Holly Center, an institution for the disabled operating. A group for the disabled wanted it closed and the residents put in group homes. “They object to the idea of an institution,” Norman said, but many patients and their parents needed and wanted the center.
I said, “Some people object to the institution of marriage, too.”
Fabulous Jim was working on a law to ban the sale of salvia, the latest drug craze. Salvia’s probably safer for Maryland citizens than Jim is, at least to clammers. The state’s attorney said nothing about this.
Gee asked about getting federal infrastructure money for Berlin, a bailout. The federal government required the town of about 4,000 residents to get a new $18 million sewage treatment plant using spray irrigation. A newspaper lady asked if spray irrigation was to help the farmers. She didn’t understand this was a water treatment method. This is why I didn’t bring up my fisheries problem.
Developers have expanded Berlin since the last sewage plant was built twenty or so years ago. I asked if tax money from people in California and Texas should be used for this. What would happen if the town didn’t get federal money? Gee said they would still get the system, but he was annoyed by my question. After all Berlin taxpayers were going to pay for projects in other states.
Gee said that deregulation had hurt Berlin’s power plant. Berlin is one of few towns that operate their own electric plants. It needed a new generator and Gee wanted the state to help with a program to educate the public about saving electricity. At some point during this meeting, a private citizen had said that private citizens had restored the town’s Victorian buildings and she thought more should be left up to private enterprise.
Gee bitterly repeated the term deregulation. He wanted re-regulation, but said he knew re-regulation wasn’t likely. Could the delegates help the town with this?
I asked, “When the state deregulated, didn’t it continue to regulate the price utilities could charge the customer?”
“Yes, I’m glad you brought that up,” Gee said.
“That’s not deregulation,” I added. When the cost to produce electricity goes up, the utilities can’t raise prices to compensate without state approval.
Gee claimed small town plants could use renewable energy. (Berlin’s unprofitable plant uses Diesel and the town can’t afford wind mills.) The towns needed to be entrepreneurial, he said.
I refrained from barfing. “The government’s not good at operating power plants. That’s why Berlin’s plant’s in trouble,” I said.
“We need to live in the real world and leave ideology aside,” Gee said, “We have NGOs and businesses. We shouldn’t put up walls between them and government. We need partnerships.”
Whoa! “Ideology is what gave us our freedoms,” I said, adding, “Okay, we don’t have them now. Everything is enmeshed.”
I learned I had an ideology, but leftist politicians didn’t! There is nothing realistic about every municipality collecting federal money, borrowed money that would have to be paid back, with interest, to foreign governments. Today’s profligate spending would bring future higher taxes and inflation.
“This is what’s great about meeting and hearing the public,” someone said.
“Yeah, but if it weren’t for me, one point of view would dominate. You’re all democrats and a little bit socialist.”
A lot socialist, but I didn’t want to offend. One private citizen thought I meant everyone in the room was socialist, but I meant the politicians. So I offended anyway. Every political meeting needs a thorn in the ointment.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Good Neighbors, wish I had them
Good Neighbors, Wish I had them.
Cap held a loaded shot gun. “I’m seventy-five. I’ve lived my life. I’ll be doing the world a favor getting rid of that kid,” Cap told his visitor
A twenty-two-year-old, in the apartment upstairs, played loud rap music all night. His friends yelled obscenities, slammed doors and dropped cigarettes on the cars below. A cigarette burned a streak in the hood of a car a friend had loaned Cap. The friends drove BMWs and Hummers. The twenty-two-year-old’s parents are well off Ocean City business owners.
Cap’s landlord gave the “kid” two week’s notice to vacate the building, but he won’t leave until forced out. Cap consulted the Sheriff, who pulled up the kid’s arrest record, seventeen arrests since he was eighteen and in trouble since he was ten. The sheriff said it could be six weeks or more before the kid could be evicted. Meanwhile, a deputy drove by one night. The apartment grew quiet until the deputy left. Then the ruckus began again.
I experienced a similar situation years ago.
3 a.m. loud speakers blaring Jimmy Buffet, dogs barking, men yelling, shot guns blasting.
My neighbor had rented her farm house to a brother and sister who worked in a restaurant. She said they were good people; she wouldn’t rent her house to anyone who wasn’t trustworthy. After renting the house, she moved to Texas. The brother had an Appaloosa horse. He asked if I would board it on my farmette. I took in the horse for $30 a month plus feed. Three months later, Brother hadn’t paid me, but he had thrown all night keg parties and bought a Great Dane puppy. He also sublet rooms to 6 or 7 others.
I told him I couldn’t keep the horse for nothing. Brother tacked fiberglass roofing sheets to a dilapidated barn on my neighbor’s property and tied the horse to my wood fence with an extension cord. The roof blew off the barn and the horse ended up wandering the neighborhood for weeks that winter. Then I locked it in my stable and filed a claim in court. The sheriff got up with Brother at work and told him he had to pay me and move the horse. After paying me and receiving my tongue lashing, Brother paid a man with a trailer to move the horse. The man with the trailer reported he took the horse to an old couple’s farm. They were parents to Brother’s girlfriend and surprised to see a huge horse installed in their chicken house. They were not at all prepared to care for a horse.
One morning, I found the Great Dane lying by the highway with a broken leg. A farmer helped me put it in my truck and I took it to a veterinarian, explaining it wasn’t my dog.
I knocked on my neighbor’s door and Sister’s boyfriend answered. He said they had thrown the dog out because it wasn’t house broken. Later they threw Brother out, too. He had collected money, but not paid the bills.
Meanwhile, more loud parties from 2 to 6 a.m. My neighbor called from Texas. The renters hadn’t paid the rent for months. She tried to call them, but they wouldn’t answer. Would I talk to them? I told her about the situation.
My husband, a fisherman, got up at 2 a.m. to go to work and didn’t understand why I was so mad at the neighbors when he got home in the afternoon. “We used to party when we were that age.”
“Not like that!”
A party. Cars parked on the public road and in my drive way. At least 100 people, many minors. The party animals drove an old car around the yard and then shot out the windows and beat on it with pipes. When they finished that one, they started on another one that wasn’t in use because the owner, Sister’s boyfriend, had lost his license.
The next morning, I saw where the party animals had driven through my fence, destroying a ten-foot section. Horses were in the field at the time. I walked over to the farm house. Debris scattered everywhere. An empty keg, bottles, cans. I knocked on the door and saw people passed out on the floor. Finally Sister’s boyfriend showed up. I complained about the noise and the damaged fence. He said I was trespassing and called the police.
I walked home and called the police, myself. They asked, “Why didn’t you go to the party?” The Party animals had told him I was invited.
Police never came to my house, but a month later, the no-account neighbor who lived in a house behind mine told me the police left a note on her door saying everything was okay.
My neighbor in Texas died that winter. The following spring, I was tying a horse out in a field behind her house when two young men I’d never seen before approached me. “Would you tie that horse someplace else?” they requested in a polite tone.
“Why?”I asked.
“We just planted tomatoes there.”
I looked at the “tomatoes.” “That’s pot,” I said and left the horse there to trample it. Since I believe the drug laws are wrong, I didn’t turn them in. If the partiers had just quietly smoked dope, I wouldn’t have minded. It was the nerve wracking noise that kept me up all night.
Things got quiet at my neighbor’s house that summer. Black plastic bags of garbage piled up by the back door, but I didn’t see or hear much from the occupants. When I did, they told me one of the sub-leasers hadn’t paid rent and sneaked out a window one night. The pound husky that barked constantly bit one of them and they returned it to the pound. The phone and electric were cut off. A sheriff’s deputy knocked on the door every week with summons for various misdemeanors and an eviction notice. Sister’s boyfriend went to jail for DWI. I enjoyed watching events unfold at the old farm house that summer. By autumn, only rat-infested garbage and wrecked cars remained at the farm house.
The next time Cap’s friend visited, Cap informed him, “My landlord told the kid that he and I were going to take him to court if he wasn’t out of there in two weeks. He didn’t want to hear that. The sheriff says he’s going to stake out the next place the kid moves to.”
Cap held a loaded shot gun. “I’m seventy-five. I’ve lived my life. I’ll be doing the world a favor getting rid of that kid,” Cap told his visitor
A twenty-two-year-old, in the apartment upstairs, played loud rap music all night. His friends yelled obscenities, slammed doors and dropped cigarettes on the cars below. A cigarette burned a streak in the hood of a car a friend had loaned Cap. The friends drove BMWs and Hummers. The twenty-two-year-old’s parents are well off Ocean City business owners.
Cap’s landlord gave the “kid” two week’s notice to vacate the building, but he won’t leave until forced out. Cap consulted the Sheriff, who pulled up the kid’s arrest record, seventeen arrests since he was eighteen and in trouble since he was ten. The sheriff said it could be six weeks or more before the kid could be evicted. Meanwhile, a deputy drove by one night. The apartment grew quiet until the deputy left. Then the ruckus began again.
I experienced a similar situation years ago.
3 a.m. loud speakers blaring Jimmy Buffet, dogs barking, men yelling, shot guns blasting.
My neighbor had rented her farm house to a brother and sister who worked in a restaurant. She said they were good people; she wouldn’t rent her house to anyone who wasn’t trustworthy. After renting the house, she moved to Texas. The brother had an Appaloosa horse. He asked if I would board it on my farmette. I took in the horse for $30 a month plus feed. Three months later, Brother hadn’t paid me, but he had thrown all night keg parties and bought a Great Dane puppy. He also sublet rooms to 6 or 7 others.
I told him I couldn’t keep the horse for nothing. Brother tacked fiberglass roofing sheets to a dilapidated barn on my neighbor’s property and tied the horse to my wood fence with an extension cord. The roof blew off the barn and the horse ended up wandering the neighborhood for weeks that winter. Then I locked it in my stable and filed a claim in court. The sheriff got up with Brother at work and told him he had to pay me and move the horse. After paying me and receiving my tongue lashing, Brother paid a man with a trailer to move the horse. The man with the trailer reported he took the horse to an old couple’s farm. They were parents to Brother’s girlfriend and surprised to see a huge horse installed in their chicken house. They were not at all prepared to care for a horse.
One morning, I found the Great Dane lying by the highway with a broken leg. A farmer helped me put it in my truck and I took it to a veterinarian, explaining it wasn’t my dog.
I knocked on my neighbor’s door and Sister’s boyfriend answered. He said they had thrown the dog out because it wasn’t house broken. Later they threw Brother out, too. He had collected money, but not paid the bills.
Meanwhile, more loud parties from 2 to 6 a.m. My neighbor called from Texas. The renters hadn’t paid the rent for months. She tried to call them, but they wouldn’t answer. Would I talk to them? I told her about the situation.
My husband, a fisherman, got up at 2 a.m. to go to work and didn’t understand why I was so mad at the neighbors when he got home in the afternoon. “We used to party when we were that age.”
“Not like that!”
A party. Cars parked on the public road and in my drive way. At least 100 people, many minors. The party animals drove an old car around the yard and then shot out the windows and beat on it with pipes. When they finished that one, they started on another one that wasn’t in use because the owner, Sister’s boyfriend, had lost his license.
The next morning, I saw where the party animals had driven through my fence, destroying a ten-foot section. Horses were in the field at the time. I walked over to the farm house. Debris scattered everywhere. An empty keg, bottles, cans. I knocked on the door and saw people passed out on the floor. Finally Sister’s boyfriend showed up. I complained about the noise and the damaged fence. He said I was trespassing and called the police.
I walked home and called the police, myself. They asked, “Why didn’t you go to the party?” The Party animals had told him I was invited.
Police never came to my house, but a month later, the no-account neighbor who lived in a house behind mine told me the police left a note on her door saying everything was okay.
My neighbor in Texas died that winter. The following spring, I was tying a horse out in a field behind her house when two young men I’d never seen before approached me. “Would you tie that horse someplace else?” they requested in a polite tone.
“Why?”I asked.
“We just planted tomatoes there.”
I looked at the “tomatoes.” “That’s pot,” I said and left the horse there to trample it. Since I believe the drug laws are wrong, I didn’t turn them in. If the partiers had just quietly smoked dope, I wouldn’t have minded. It was the nerve wracking noise that kept me up all night.
Things got quiet at my neighbor’s house that summer. Black plastic bags of garbage piled up by the back door, but I didn’t see or hear much from the occupants. When I did, they told me one of the sub-leasers hadn’t paid rent and sneaked out a window one night. The pound husky that barked constantly bit one of them and they returned it to the pound. The phone and electric were cut off. A sheriff’s deputy knocked on the door every week with summons for various misdemeanors and an eviction notice. Sister’s boyfriend went to jail for DWI. I enjoyed watching events unfold at the old farm house that summer. By autumn, only rat-infested garbage and wrecked cars remained at the farm house.
The next time Cap’s friend visited, Cap informed him, “My landlord told the kid that he and I were going to take him to court if he wasn’t out of there in two weeks. He didn’t want to hear that. The sheriff says he’s going to stake out the next place the kid moves to.”
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Death in Berlin
A wild cat lunged at me, while a big horn sheep and several antelopes gazed in my direction. A bear and other carnivores hovered nearby. A big game hunter, Dr. Laws hung his trophies in his dark, narrow waiting room. Like the other two doctors and one dentist in the town of Berlin, Dr. Laws worked out of his house, a big, old, form-stone-covered, four-square.
My nervous mother waited on the old sofa with me. I wondered why she was nervous. I was the one with the devastating case of poison ivy. I tried not to scratch the raw, oozing blisters on my hands, arms and face. I didn’t understand how I got it. I avoided any vines when I rambled in hedgerows and fields. I didn’t know poison ivy grew as a woody shrub along the dirt lane where I picked wild flowers.
The north facing waiting room remained cool on that warm September day in 1964. We waited alone. I felt grateful Mum hadn’t taken me to Dr. Shot. She’d hauled me to his dark, unsanitary office a couple of years before when I had stepped on a rusty spike. Dr. Shot said I needed a tetanus shot and took a horse-sized needle from a rust-stained pan on a stove and used it to give me the painful injection. The next week, my arm swelled and hurt worse than my foot. My parents had muttered unfavorable things about that old doctor and that’s why we now waited in Dr. Laws’ office.
The somber and reticent doctor opened the door and we stepped into an office that probably looked as it had when Dr. Laws began practicing in the early 1900s. He looked old to me, but I was fourteen and every adult looked old to me. In the 1960s, many old people didn’t qualify for Social Security and didn’t retire unless forced to by incapacity. Elderly people worked all around town and doctors were no exception.
I sat on the examining table, hoping I wouldn’t have to undress, while my mother chattered about my affliction. Dr. Laws glanced at my ravaged skin, strolled over to a glass case and took out an unlabeled, brown, glass bottle. “Have her take a table-spoonful of this morning and evening,” he said.
My mother paid the modest fee. Since most local people didn’t have health insurance, doctors charged what they thought their patients could afford. If they charged too much, word got around. That’s why we didn’t go to Berlin’s youngest doctor, a man in his forties. People said he charged an arm and a leg.
I took the thick, brown medicine as prescribed. The mysterious substance tasted like cola syrup. I didn’t expect it to do any good, but the poison ivy blisters that usually lingered for weeks disappeared in one week.
My parents thought highly of Dr. Laws until my grandmother, who lived with us, had a heart attack. Dr. Laws lived down the street, so my father called him immediately. “Give her whiskey,” the doctor advised.
That was the first and last whiskey that ever touched her lips. She died. My parents waited in vain for Dr. Laws, but he didn’t show up and they never forgave him. They declared, “Dr. Laws and Dr. Shot are too old to practice medicine.”
The old doctors’ patients didn’t help their reputations. A Mr. Jones frequented Dr. Shot for asthma treatments. Dr. Shot gave him injections to aid breathing. Mr. Jones had been ailing for months when his oldest son, Bill, about twenty, visited. Mrs. Jones asked Bill to drive his father to Dr. Shot’s for an injection. Bill helped his father into a station wagon and drove to the doctor’s house, where he helped his father out of the wagon. Mr. Jones said he felt too weak to walk to the back of the house, where the doctor had his office. Bill seated his father on the front porch steps and walked back to get the doctor.
Dr. Shot prepared the injection and walked back to the front steps with Bill. Mr. Jones had slumped over. Dr. Shot examined him briefly and said, “Best get him to Miss Anna’s.”
“What!” Bill exclaimed. Miss Anna was the town’s undertaker.
“No need to have her come out here. You can just take him there,” the doctor added. Dr. Shot grabbed one end of Mr. Jones and Bill the other. Together, they hoisted Mr. Jones’ mortal remains into the back seat.
“Now hurry on,” Dr. Shot said, eager to get the dead man away before anyone noticed he’d lost a patient.
As their patients died of old age, the doctors’ practices faded and then they died, too. Dr. Laws’ poison ivy remedy remains a mystery. Jewelweed is an antidote for poison ivy, perhaps it was the ingredient in Dr. Laws’ cure.
A wild cat lunged at me, while a big horn sheep and several antelopes gazed in my direction. A bear and other carnivores hovered nearby. A big game hunter, Dr. Laws hung his trophies in his dark, narrow waiting room. Like the other two doctors and one dentist in the town of Berlin, Dr. Laws worked out of his house, a big, old, form-stone-covered, four-square.
My nervous mother waited on the old sofa with me. I wondered why she was nervous. I was the one with the devastating case of poison ivy. I tried not to scratch the raw, oozing blisters on my hands, arms and face. I didn’t understand how I got it. I avoided any vines when I rambled in hedgerows and fields. I didn’t know poison ivy grew as a woody shrub along the dirt lane where I picked wild flowers.
The north facing waiting room remained cool on that warm September day in 1964. We waited alone. I felt grateful Mum hadn’t taken me to Dr. Shot. She’d hauled me to his dark, unsanitary office a couple of years before when I had stepped on a rusty spike. Dr. Shot said I needed a tetanus shot and took a horse-sized needle from a rust-stained pan on a stove and used it to give me the painful injection. The next week, my arm swelled and hurt worse than my foot. My parents had muttered unfavorable things about that old doctor and that’s why we now waited in Dr. Laws’ office.
The somber and reticent doctor opened the door and we stepped into an office that probably looked as it had when Dr. Laws began practicing in the early 1900s. He looked old to me, but I was fourteen and every adult looked old to me. In the 1960s, many old people didn’t qualify for Social Security and didn’t retire unless forced to by incapacity. Elderly people worked all around town and doctors were no exception.
I sat on the examining table, hoping I wouldn’t have to undress, while my mother chattered about my affliction. Dr. Laws glanced at my ravaged skin, strolled over to a glass case and took out an unlabeled, brown, glass bottle. “Have her take a table-spoonful of this morning and evening,” he said.
My mother paid the modest fee. Since most local people didn’t have health insurance, doctors charged what they thought their patients could afford. If they charged too much, word got around. That’s why we didn’t go to Berlin’s youngest doctor, a man in his forties. People said he charged an arm and a leg.
I took the thick, brown medicine as prescribed. The mysterious substance tasted like cola syrup. I didn’t expect it to do any good, but the poison ivy blisters that usually lingered for weeks disappeared in one week.
My parents thought highly of Dr. Laws until my grandmother, who lived with us, had a heart attack. Dr. Laws lived down the street, so my father called him immediately. “Give her whiskey,” the doctor advised.
That was the first and last whiskey that ever touched her lips. She died. My parents waited in vain for Dr. Laws, but he didn’t show up and they never forgave him. They declared, “Dr. Laws and Dr. Shot are too old to practice medicine.”
The old doctors’ patients didn’t help their reputations. A Mr. Jones frequented Dr. Shot for asthma treatments. Dr. Shot gave him injections to aid breathing. Mr. Jones had been ailing for months when his oldest son, Bill, about twenty, visited. Mrs. Jones asked Bill to drive his father to Dr. Shot’s for an injection. Bill helped his father into a station wagon and drove to the doctor’s house, where he helped his father out of the wagon. Mr. Jones said he felt too weak to walk to the back of the house, where the doctor had his office. Bill seated his father on the front porch steps and walked back to get the doctor.
Dr. Shot prepared the injection and walked back to the front steps with Bill. Mr. Jones had slumped over. Dr. Shot examined him briefly and said, “Best get him to Miss Anna’s.”
“What!” Bill exclaimed. Miss Anna was the town’s undertaker.
“No need to have her come out here. You can just take him there,” the doctor added. Dr. Shot grabbed one end of Mr. Jones and Bill the other. Together, they hoisted Mr. Jones’ mortal remains into the back seat.
“Now hurry on,” Dr. Shot said, eager to get the dead man away before anyone noticed he’d lost a patient.
As their patients died of old age, the doctors’ practices faded and then they died, too. Dr. Laws’ poison ivy remedy remains a mystery. Jewelweed is an antidote for poison ivy, perhaps it was the ingredient in Dr. Laws’ cure.
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