What Would Jimmy Do?

There’s an old saying, “they don’t make ‘em like they used to.” I guess you can pretty much say that about anything — actually, some things are made better than they used to be, but as the saying implies, most things are maybe not as good.

A few months ago, Claire bought some toothpaste from Costco. We’re not hung up on any one brand — she usually just bought what was cheaper, or was on sale. Anyhow, she bought Crest. I’m not an expert on toothpaste and honestly can’t tell one brand from another — but — I have to say that the Crest toothpaste she bought was terrible! When it was squeezed out of the tube onto the toothbrush, it was so thin and runny, it wouldn’t stay on the brush. By the time I’d brushed my teeth, there was toothpaste all over the sink, it had run down my chin and I usually managed to dribble some on my arm. As I said, toothpaste isn’t my passion and I rarely pay much attention to it, but it seems to me that I always had to use some amount of effort to squeeze the paste out of the tube. The toothpaste we bought kind of “poured” out of the tube — it didn’t seem like much of a paste at all. 

I’m not sure what type of Crest we bought (there are about 100 different “types”) but the last time I was at Costco, I checked and noticed that neither Crest Pro-Health with Scope or Crest Pro-Health boxes use the word “paste.” I guess that tells you something.

So anyhow, this isn’t meant to slam Crest — it’s just an observation. I guess they really don’t make things the way they used to….
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I heard from a very old friend a few days ago. We hadn’t seen or talked for a very long time and we only talked a few minutes on the phone, but it brought back lots of memories from what now seems long, long, ago. 

Some of the experiences with him involved helicopters. During the Vietnam War era,  it was easy to form a love/hate relationship with helicopters. I never liked helicopters — never trusted an airplane whose “wings” moved — but they were often a welcome sight and could literally save your life. 

I’m not going into personal experiences with helicopters for a number of reasons, but helicopters are fascinating…. one of my blogs a few years ago mentioned that I worked with someone at the FAA that had been involved with assembling the first helicopter purchased by the U.S. Army Air Corps.

The helicopter is pretty much acknowledged as one of the most versatile forms of transportation ever invented. Every day, helicopters save thousands of lives. 
A typical helicopter can reach heights of 12,000 to 15,000 feet, but they can go much higher — choppers have landed on the summit of Mr. Everest (29,000 feet.) Some helicopters can reach 45,000 feet.

“Average” size helicopters usually seat around 6 passengers, but the military’s Mil Mi-26 helicopter can hold up to 90 troops and 60 stretchers. In an emergency, it’s supposed to be capable of transporting over 150 people.

The first working model of a helicopter is credited to Gustave de Ponton d’Amecourt, who built a miniature steam-powers helicopter in 1861. But the idea of the helicopter is very old — the Chinese had sketches of a helicopter as early as 400 B.C. And Leonardo Da Vinci is known to have envisioned the helicopter.

I’ve flown on a number of small planes on foreign airlines where they arranged the passengers in the cabin according to weight, so the plane would be “balanced.” If you take a helicopter ride, they very likely will ask you for your weight. Don’t lie — the weight in a helicopter needs to be distributed evenly on all sides. If the weight isn’t balanced, the helicopter will list to one side, causing a turbulent ride.

If you’re good at following instructions, you can order a helicopter online and build it at home. The Safari 400 helicopter kit takes over 500 hours to assemble and costs just under $150,000.

A couple of years ago NASA flew its’ Ingenuity helicopter (“Ginny”) on Mars. It is the first helicopter to fly on Mars and it became the first power-controlled extraterrestrial flight by an aircraft. 

A helicopter’s liftoff is achieved by its blades spinning and pushing air downwards to lift the chopper off the ground. Once airborne, it is the tilting of the blades along with the speed of rotation that maneuvers the helicopter in different directions.

So these magnificent flying machines have become an integral part of our everyday world. Someone said that if you are in trouble anywhere in the world, an airplane can fly over and drop flowers, but a helicopter can land and save your life.
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Some of you long time followers of this blog may remember that back in March of 2017, I discussed my all-time favorite restaurants. You can check the archives if you’re interested in my list of favorites. But as I mention back then and it’s still my answer today when asked about my (all-time) favorite restaurant — it’s the King’s Lodge in Hong Kong. The restaurant was located in the basement of the Palace Hotel. It always tops my favorite list for a number of reasons.

I doubt that it’s still there today — my last visit there was in the early 1970s. But the reason for this blog today is that while going through a stack of papers, I found a picture of the restaurant. I thought it’d be nice to share it with my faithful readers. The photo above is the King’s Lodge, located in the basement of the Palace Hotel in Hong Kong in the early 1970s……
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….. is like the ocean: it comes
on waves ebbing and
flowing . Sometimes the
water is calm, and 
sometimes it is
overwhelming.
All we can do is learn to 
swim.
~Vicki Harrison

When I was growing up in Maysville, Oklahoma, everyone that lived in town, as well as a lot that lived outside of town, had to go to the post office to pick up their mail. I remember every sprig the post office in Maysville sounded, and smelled, like a chicken pen. Almost every day for a few weeks every year, the back of the post office was filled with cardboard boxes full of air holes and all of them making a peeping noise. 
Most all the farmers, and even some that didn’t live on farms, always ordered baby chicks in the spring — to be raised for food and eggs. 
Because I was curious, I checked — and the U.S. Postal Service will still ship live chickens. The USPS has been doing this since 1918. 

I remember my grandparents always got chickens in the mail every spring. I realize I was just a kid, but I think they all arrived alive. If I remember, each box usually had around 50 baby chicks in it. Apparently newly hatched chicks don’t need food or water for two to three days after coming out of their shells. Just before they leave the shell, chicks absorb the yolk left inside it, which provides all the nutrients they need for their first days of life. It’s been said that “God designed them that way so we can mail them.” 

I know — you’re wondering when my extensive research skills will kick in on this. Here’s a couple of interesting things I uncovered.
Commercial incubators became popular in the mid-1800s, but it wasn’t until 1892 that Joseph Wilson of Pine Tree Hatchery, in Stockton, New Jersey, shipped the first order of newly-hatched chicks to a man named Runyun in nearby East Orange, N.J. — via railway express.

By 1915, there were 200 commercial hatcheries in the U.S. In that same year, a group of commercial hatchery men formed the International Baby Chick Association and, as one of their first acts, lobbied the USPS to start shipping poultry through its new parcel post service. They thought it would be faster, safer, and more economical than the multiple express services they had been using. 

Even in these modern times, chick shipping hasn’t changed much in the last 100 years. The chicks still have to get to their final destination within 72 hours, and they’r still mostly shipped in cardboard boxes — and most shipments take place in the spring and early summer. A lot of small farms whose eggs and chickens you find at the local farmers’ markets probably got their chicks from mail-order hatcheries. 

One last bit of interesting data I found was that initially hatcheries used to file claims with the post office when chicks died in transit, because of a delay. That’s no longer the case, however — very few, if any hatcheries file a claim with the post office. The hatcheries don’t want to give the USPS a reason to come back and say, “We don’t want to do this anymore.”
So I was glad to discover, that one of my childhood memories is still alive today. I’m gong to be sure to check the Shepherdstown post office in the spring. 
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I think I’ve mention in the past that when our daughter Kelly was little, she wanted ketchup on everything. Her opinion was — in fact maybe the opinion of most reasonable, intelligent people — ketchup was a miracle sauce. But I’ve noticed that every time I pick up a bottle of Heinz ketchup, the little label near the neck of the bottle says that there are at least 56 more varieties of this magical concoction. 

But that’s not true. Actually, I think there is only one type of ketchup — tomato. It turns out that Henry J. Heinz didn’t get his start in the condiment industry by selling ketchup. He was born in Pittsburgh and began his food-sales career before he was a teenager selling vegetables that he grew himself.

Later, his main job was managing the family brick-making business, but he began selling prepared horseradish door to door. He didn’t get into the ketchup game until later after he’d already built a relatively large condiments business selling horseradish, pickles, and sauerkraut. 

At the time that Heinz came up with his famous slogan, he wasn’t offering 57 sauce varieties, but he was peddling more than 60 kinds of food, including something called “euchred pickles.” Hines sauce bottles still today contain a “57 varieties” label. There is a lot of speculation as to what it means. Some guessed it was because the company was founded in a year ending 1ith 57, others speculated it was how many tomatoes were in each bottle, and one person guessed that the placement of the label had to do with it being the best place to squeeze the sauce our of the bottle.

It turns out that the “57 varieties” label on the neck of the Heinz Ketchup was chosen completely at random by Henry Heinz. Heinz decided he needed a number logo after he spotted a shoe company advertising 21 styles of shoes. Some believe that five was Heinz’s lucky number and seven was his wife’s lucky number. But the number 57 was apparently just a totally random number.

Today the Heinz company sells more than a thousand products, ranging from baby food to barbecue sauce. Of course only one of these products really matter — and most America-loving citizens know what it is.
So it’s good to know where the 57 came from, but I still don’t know the difference between catsup and ketchup.
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A few days ago, I wrote about being annoyed with the new “high-tech” gas cans. The old ones did the job they were designed to do, and did it well. I suppose it’s just the curmudgeon me, but I think it’d be nice for everything to do a particular job and be good at it. We recently installed a new hot water heater — it’s tankless and uses gas to heat the water, but it doesn’t have a pilot light. It uses some kind of an electrical gadget to light the burner that heats the water. It also comes with an app — so I can keep an eye on what my hot water heater is doing anywhere I might be. I suppose that’s useful — you never know when someone might break into our house and take a shower or wash a load of clothes and use a lot of our gas and water. 

I’m not exactly sure when it became necessary to make everything in your house “smart.” Maybe it all kind of got started with the smart thermostats to control the heating and air conditioning. On the surface, that seems like not such a bad idea, but we have smart thermostats and we rarely use them in the “smart” mode. 

As time goes on, I’m thinking that we’d be better off if our homes didn’t need to become so “smart.” After all, most of us know how to turn on and off lights, are able to get food into and out of our refrigerators and ovens without an LED display giving us instructions…. most of us can even operate a microwave oven without much training. 

With all this stuff in our house connected to the Internet, I’m beginning to worry less about hackers stealing data generated by all the smart devices and more about how smart devices might share their home-related information with who knows who.

Just give me appliances and household stuff that works — I’ll figure out how to operate them.
There’s just something creepy about my house knowing things about me. I’m thinking there may not be much difference between a smart home and a stalking home.
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I guess generally companies that make things are of the opinion that the general population is getting dumber. I recently had my snowblower serviced in preparation for winter. Before I stored it in its “spot” in the garage, I put gas in it — pretty simple operation, right?

Well, it used to be. For years, I’ve put gas in my lawnmowers, chain saws, leaf blowers, etc. Never had any problems with that task. But — recently, gas can manufacturers, maybe with assistance or encouragement from the government, have decided that the cans must now be spill-proof and child resistant. 

Used to be that a gas can had a spout, with a little cap on it (to keep dirt/dust out) and you just poured the gas, via the spout, into the gas tank of whatever machine your were using. I’ve done that for probably 70 to 75 years. I rarely, if ever, spilled any gas — and in all that time I never had any neighborhood kids break into my garage to open my gas can. 

But if you’ve bought a gas can recently, you know that it doesn’t have a spout with a little cap on it — it has a new, improved safety contraption — here’s how it works: first remove the new improved spout that is now inside the gas can, by using two hands to defeat the “child-proof” mechanism. After the new improved spout is removed, remove the dust cap. Then attach the new improved spout to the gas can (just like in the old days, except it has to be oriented just right to prevent spills) and “completely” tighten it to the can. Then you must “unlock” the spout by turing the base of the new improved spout counter-clockwise. Next, you must put the hook — built into the new improved spout — onto the rim of the gas tank opening that you’re filling. Once that hook is in place, you must push (the entire gas can full of fuel) down to allow the gas to flow into the tank you’re filling. (I might add that holding a five gallon gas can full of gas takes a bit of strength. All these steps must be repeated each time the spout is used. 

As I mentioned, I’ve used gas cans for over seventy years — I don’t remember ever spilling any. Now, using the new improved, and safer gas can I almost always spill a little.
If you’re ever at a garage sale and they have an “old fashioned” gas can — buy it!!
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A few days ago, the news was about a shooting at a university in Prague — 14 or so were killed and more than 25 injured. Another mass murder. And last night I watched part of a program about a serial killer. Even though I’m pretty sure I knew the difference, I thought I’d do some checking on the distinction between serial killers and mass murderers. So here’s what a little extensive research revealed….

A mass murderer kills four or more people during a short period of time, usually in one location. (I’m not sure how they came up with the number four, but apparently if someone only kills three people, he or she is not a mass murderer.) But anyhow, in most cases, the murderer has a sudden mental collapse and goes on a rampage, going from murder to murder without a break. About half the time, these outbreaks end in suicides or fatal standoffs with the police. 
School shootings, that are becoming more common, are instances of mass murder, as are famous cases of postal workers, that resulted in the phrase, “going postal.” Cases where someone murders his, or her, entire family is a mass murderer. Terrorists are also lumped into this category, but they also make up a group of their own.

A serial killer usually murders one person at a time — typically a stranger — with a “cooling off” period between each murder. Unlike mass murders, serial killers don’t suddenly snap one day — they have an ongoing compulsion (usually with a sexual component) that drives them to kill, often in very specific ways. 
Serial killers may even maintain jobs and normal relationships while going to great lengths to conceal their deadly affliction or habit. They may resist the urge to kill for long periods, but the compulsion ultimately grows too strong to resist. After the third victim the killer graduates from plain ol’ murderer to a bona fide serial killer. (Again, not sure who came up with the magic fourth killing to qualify as a serial killer.)

It’s kind of interesting, or depressing, that in between these two groups, there are others known as the spree killer and the serial spree killer. A spree killer commits murder in multiple locations over the course of a few days. This is often part of a general crime wave. One example given is that an escaped convict may kill multiple people, steal cars and commit other offenses as he tries to escape the police. Like a mass murderer, a spree killer doesn’t plan each murder individually.
The serial spree killer, on the other hand, does plan and commit each murder separately — serial killer style. But he doesn’t take time off between murders or maintain a double life — it’s just killing, all the time. One example that most of us remember is the Washington D.C. area beltway snipers who killed ten people within three weeks in October of 2002.

Of course, if you encounter any of these type of killers it doesn’t matter what category they fit into. It’s just too bad there is so much killing that we have to categorize the culprits.
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Well, this first month of the new year is shaping up to be a busy one — maybe before getting too involved we should talk about one of my least favorite months — January.

In leap years, January always starts on the same day as April and July — this year is a leap year.
The month of January, like most months, has its share of firsts and historical events…..
Ellis Island opened on January 1st, 1892.
Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
The History Channel was launched in 1995.
The first New Year’s ball drop in New York City started in 1908.
The Rose Parade started in Pasadena, California in 1890.
Alaska became the 49th state of the United States in 1959.
The first Penal Colony in Australia was established in 1788.

Many people in the United Kingdom practice “Dry January.” This is a movement to encourage people to quit drinking alcohol for the month — a means of encouraging public health. I guess that’s another way to make my least favorite month even more unfavorable.
And interestingly enough, more couples tend to separate or get divorced in January than in any other month — so be aware.
And, we’re off — today is the second page of a new, 366-page book.
Write a good one. And remember that every new year is another chance for us to get it right.
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