OT--You Know You Don't Live In California When...

[Swingman]

I believe you're right.

Uncle Teet was here from Gurdon, Arkansas a couple of weeks back. He's right about 80 (an age that doesn't seem all that out of reach anymore), was a woodworker his entire life (apparently out of necessity for part of it), and often waves that badge of an old time woodworker, the stub of a ring finger, to punctuate a remark. Although he can only move about enough to make bird houses and turkey calls these days, he makes them "by the dozens", to hear Aunt Marianne tell it.

Uncle Teet's lived in rural Arkansas his entire life - outside a town most folks pass though without ever realizing they've been there - and you could tell he couldn't quite figure out what to make of Houston, although he blamed his anxiety (out of country politeness, I am certain) on "passing that big kidney stone last week". After all, he'd only made the trip to these parts to see, almost certainly for the last time, a dying half-sister he hadn't seen in 30 years over in San Antone, and Houston was a necessary evil of a stopover on the way back. Everyone said you'd never get him to stay past the next day.

That first evening SWMBO showed him through the house, pointed out my furniture and stuff, as she's wont to do, and Uncle Teet kept his counsel and didn't' say much, until I offered to take him out to the shop the next morning. Shucks ... a stick of dynamite couldn't of moved him out of there for the next two days. When he wasn't sitting on a stool in the shop knee deep in sawdust, he was looking out the kitchen window to see if that was where I was ... like a kid looking out the window to see if his neighborhood pal was let out of the house for the day. I think he was disappointed the second morning when I wasn't out there at 5 AM sharp.

Thinking back on his visit, I can't remember when I've enjoyed anything as much as having Uncle Teet sitting in my shop. He didn't talk a lot, mostly just sat and watched, but he had a look of approval in his eye that was, as they say on the commercials, priceless. When he left to go back home, two days later (reluctantly, I do believe), he was carrying a chunk of my cocobolo that was about the right size for a couple of "turkey call experiments", and he promised me a truckload of white oak, if he had to bring it down here himself.

You gotta understand that, until this visit, Uncle Teet was not blood kin ....

[Tom Watson]

Hot Damn! That was a good one, Swing.

Hope you get that load of White - but you know as well as I do - it don't really matter if you don't - the good stuff was already there.

Thanks.

Thomas J. Watson-Cabinetmaker (ret) Real Email is: tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet Website:

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Nice story. The old guy probably felt 50 years younger sitting out in the shop. You can bet he enjoyed it immensely. Everyone should have an uncle like that in their life. Ed

[Bay Area Dave]

I ate all the things I shouldn't have: Philly cheese steak sandwich, fries, and a monster desert. I was doing fine for about 5 hours, then it started to rise. I stayed up until I knew it wouldn't go any higher, around 2:30 AM.

thanks!

dave

patriarch wrote:

[Tom Watson]

I hear ya, Nahmie - and Charlie Self, too - in the following post.

I'm going to use this opportunity to get on my high horse about something that has always pissed me off.

Most of the people who do the making and baking - the hunting and fishing - the child raising and life making - the saving and the scraping to get by - don't live in urban areas.

Yet, the media, which allegedly holds the "mirror up to nature", is mostly located in highly urbanized centers.

I kinda don't figger that I'm the reflection in that mirror.

People in urban areas don't hold the same values as those who live outside those areas. They never have - and they never will.

I'm guessing this goes back at least to the Roman times - when a Pagan (pagano) was a country fella - in contradistinction to those who were saved - by being city fellas.

What a crock.

I don't like the fact that my twelve year old daughter thinks that she has to be like B. Spears - just because she's on TV. I don't like those people that my wife watches on "Survivor", nor any of the little pricks who are on the shows that pass as Family Hour Entertainment.

I'm not ready to go totally Amish, but I'd damned sure like to shut off the city media and its influence on people who should know better

- and who already live better.

I guess I've gotten too curmudgeonly over the years - Andy Rooney seems like a moderate to me - but this whole culture - as it is presented to us on the mass media - is a total POS in my estimation.

We are no longer a culture involved in the making of things.

We are only interested in managing the making of things.

At least, that's what I see on my television, my used-to-be-local-but-now-a-part-of- blah blah publications newspaper - and the gay and lesbian stations on the radio (formerly PBS).

Tired of it.

There are still vast areas of this country where a man's word is his bond - won't see that much on TV. There are still huge sectors of our country where a neighbor will be helped out of common human decency - but I don't see that reflected in that media mirror.

This rant is wandering a good bit - and so I'll shut it off. I still meet good people - and I meet them in all kinds of places - but the culture (writ large) that I live in - doesn't give them the respect or encouragement that they deserve.

This saddens me greatly.

Thomas J. Watson-Cabinetmaker (ret) Real Email is: tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet Website:

[Charlie Self]

snip of a great start

There are never enough days like that in our lives. But maybe if there were more, we'd appreciate them less.

Charlie Self "It is not strange... to mistake change for progress." Millard Fillmore

[Charlie Self]

And you'll find in future fewer and fewer of those good people because of it.

A quick question: there's a show, such as it is, called American Idol. I've watched parts of it twice. There's a little Brit accented prick on there who is the nastiest piece of work I've ever seen on the idjit box--real life style, sorta. Don't know his name, but he's easy enough to spot once the mouths move.

Dop they pay that little piece of shit, or do they just refrain from torturing and killing him.

Charlie Self "It is not strange... to mistake change for progress." Millard Fillmore

[Swingman]

You speak for many, and you speak well!

I am not a religious man, but I thank God daily that my 18 year old daughter, raised in one of the biggest cities in the county, sees through that crap like she was born with x-ray vision.

I've tried hard since she's been sentient to teach her to know the difference, and I can't help but think that the fact that she "got it" early on can be laid directly at the feet of my own "rural roots".

Not to say that you have to be from the country to raise a good citizen, but I pity the kids who never have had the opportunity to see life through a lens unclouded by the noise of "urban pop culture".

[Tom Watson]

That's another one that my wife and daughter watch. I've seen some of it and the little bastard's name is Simon.

He wouldn't have lasted two minutes around where I grew up.

Thomas J. Watson-Cabinetmaker (ret) Real Email is: tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet Website:

[Bay Area Dave]

you sound more angry than sad...

dave

Tom Watson wrote: snip rant

[Phil Hansen]

Well for one there are no alligators in Southern Africa, crocodiles yes but they do not look like that and there are no rattlers here either. No oil pipeline either. There was talk of a gas line though. Somebody has their wires / facts crossed.

[Larry Jaques]

On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 20:54:36 -0400, Tom Watson brought forth from the murky depths:

Does the Condo Owners' Association know about your fertilizer plant there, Tawm?

That's right, we don't. (Well, "we" except for the hunting, fishing, child raising, and life making" part.)

I fixed that here. When I had to move to Satellite TV, I chose to opt out of the local channels and network channels. You wouldn't believe ho much peace there is in NOT having those. I still turn on the local weather report on occasion, and when I watch a full half hour of the news, complete with 'lebenty seven commercials for penis wash/vaginal stoppers/NewImprovedSolidSugarFlakes cereal and all the other goodies, I realize just how good I have it. I can turn it off and not go back for a month. Whew! Besides, the Weather Channel has nice jazz music background and really cute chicks. What more could a guy ask for? (No, no, no, _besides_ a real weather report.)

Wow, a steam-powered, overhead line, leather-belt driven Normite shop like this?

GIFs or JPGs yet?

Y'mean Andy's -not- a moderate?

Most of us on the Wreck are of the former culture. Ditto the rec.metalheads and most of the .sci readers.

Me, too. If the idiotic media would just stop feigning iration (izzat a word?) over any given 2 people in love, the "problem" would simply go away. Psychology, history, and human behavior tell us that banning things doesn't work and usually has an increased opposite effect.

No, "nice" doesn't sell advertising. That's what drives the media nowadays. "News" is secondary to exploitation and selling SUVs and fake pizza. Have you seen what a small 3x5" display ad in the local newspaper costs nowadays? In Vista, it was over a GRAND A WEEK, and that was if I provided camera-ready art. I don't even want to think what a NYT or LATte ad costs. How many mil to put half a minute on the Stupor Bowel?

Hear, hear! And when you look around and see the corruption in politics (both sides of the aisle), Faith-Based preemptive wars being started over oil, Americans being herded, rights being taken away in the name of totally false "security", it's obviously time to

REBOOT AMERICA!

------------------------------------------------- - Boldly going - * Wondrous Website Design - nowhere. - *

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[patriarch]

[e-mail] (Charlie Self) wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Sunday evening, I'm whipped & tired, from a long weekend of everything, plus a little. I'm sitting in the most comfortable chair in the house, falling asleep to Norm on the Tivo, about 8:30. My wife is at her sister's place, playing Scrabble, when the telephone rings. I almost didn't answer it, but it's Stanley.

Stanley's a little like Uncle Teet. Well out of warranty, if you know what I mean. He just wants to drop by for a couple of minutes - he's got something for me. By the time we get done visiting, he's brought me a piece of mahogany veneer, hand cut, and a box of brass knobs he won't ever have a use for, but mostly he's cheered me up, and nudged me forward, and helped me realize how much I've learned in the last couple of years.

We all need Stanley's in our life.

Patriarch

[CW]

The difference is, California deserves it.

[CW]

Greatest state in the union? I thought the subject was California.

But I'm also very proud of

[Morris Dovey]

You know better than that. If you don't, then it's time to start following the links you find in rec.woodworking.

I think you know better than that, too.

Have you forgotten to apply Sturgeon's Law? Ninety percent of the stuff on TV /is/ crap. If you're not selective, then ninety percent of the time spent watching TV is wasted. If you /are/ selective, you can shrink the waste considerably.

[BTW, this bit of insight might be one of the most useful you could share with your 12-year old.]

Yabbut it's not geographical. There are good people everywhere and bad apples everywhere, with the huge majority of people trying to be the best they know how to be. If you're trying to see the world though the filter of television, you might miss this important observation. The media realize sales by peddling the /unusual/.

Of course not. It never has. How do we fix that?

[Mark and Kim Smith]

folks tune in for. Off camera, he's pretty quiet. Me? I'm looking forward to baseball season to provide background noise while making sawdust. Other than that, I don't have much use for TV nor do I have much time for it either. It is evil and has already taken up too much time in my life! Oh, I could sit in front of it. But it's more fun gathering up my little ones and taking them out to experience some of what this country has to offer.

I think I started noticing TV was evil when I saw that cars now have little screens to watch stuff on. Ask any of the kids in the car how they got to their destination! Bet they won't know! That'll come in handy when they get seperated from their folks! Create a whloe generation that can't find their way!

[Charlie Self]

Mark and Kim Smith remarks:

Maybe that's why he's lived this long. His job is to drive people with a brain off the couch? You'er right, maybe he should be paid for that.

I fyou can sit in front of it mroe than a half hour, you're a better man than me, Gunga Din.

Charlie Self "It is not strange... to mistake change for progress." Millard Fillmore

[David Hall]

Yeah, Charlie, can't you just see how apoplectic Bruce would have gotten over a T-shirt like that about CA? Hell, he about popped a vein over a newsgroup posting ;)

Dave Hall

[Lew Hodgett]

For many years now, my definition of television programming has been:

"Designed by and executed for congenital idiots"

Even the news programs appear to be designed to be more entertaining than informative.