Water, water everywhere

        As in rainwater. Every day. A good part of the day and all night. I know because I was goofing around on the computer all night and it rained cats and dogs the whole time. I didn't pay too much attention because by all reports we're more or less high and dry here especially since a housing complex next door has diverted most of the runoff from what-used-to-be adjacent fields. But riverside and near creeks locally it's a different story, lotta messy scenes on the nightly news.

    It reminds me of the flood, of course. Agnes was a hurricane storm in '72. Or was it '73? Like my memory is to be trusted either way. I do remember to creek working its way over its banks and slowly swirling up and over the road effectively blocking escape, all the while dragging trees and picnic tables and trash cans complete with their concrete bases and all manner of washed away stuff merrily, merrily down the stream. So we trundled out in the middle of the night when the water finally threatened to reach our little house on the hill. Trundled out through the woods and over the hill to a neighbors' house where we spent a few days, maybe a week, while the waters abated. My brother and I had a swell adventurous time, fighting like we were right at home, sneaking copies of, well, uh, photographic... uh, art magazines from our hosts' bedroom stash and, perhaps most memorably, encouraging a younger neighbor boy, also displaced by the floodwaters, to pee on the property's electric fence. Boy, we caught some serious disciplinary measures for that, ouch!

   Went looking for The Wild, Wild West on DVD today and found The Big Valley instead. Very cool! I liked this show probably only a slim second after Bonanza for western fun and adventure. Of course, it didn't hurt that Lee Majors, Heath Barkley, went on to become another stalwart TV hero favorite o' mine, The Six Million Dollar Man. Hey, I'm missing part of the first episode already! Gotta go!

Quickie

    More or less just to displace that last downer from the top of the page. Yow! "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!", says Batman as he dashes about in search of a place to ditch the giant cannonball of a powder charge so as not to maim innocent passersby! It's true in the cinema fantastique, yes, and in real life too. So you just gotta give it a day or two, a month, maybe a year or longer and the lingering gunpowder smell will eventually dissipate to some extent.

    Did a little toy scouting this weekend, found nary a one vintage plaything but bought a big old metal bedframe instead. Not too ornate and in need of some TLC but it'll serve it's purpose certainly. Saw a batch of cowboy goods at another antiques emporium, too princely priced for my empty wallet so I just took pictures which excited some members of the staff. Apparently they've had experience with some unscrupulous patrons who will snap a pic just to sell the item at a profit for themselves via electronic marketplace. Note to self: Ask before jauntily snapping pictures in the next antique store you visit. And order Wendy's burgers plain because, boy, do they squirt on the mustard. Aaauuughh!

   Let's see, what else? Wyfe on another photo-finding mission in the family archives- a bunch of shoe boxes and mismatched containers under the bed -found a few more pics of the glory days of the Mustang and Van Halen hair. As she handed them over she made sure to add the proviso that should I start to think of recapturing that particular artifact- the car not the hair! -it would be at the expense of the toy collection, the guitars, the computer. Ouch! So much for the middle age car crazies! I'll post 'em to the Family album on day soon along with some guitar photos in that album.

   Spent some time in a cemetary yesterday in Millersville. Coupla Lehrs, my grandaprents' name, interred therein, even a few McCues, a lot of familiar surnames but only one I knew personally. That I got around to see anyway, couldn't see each and every stone. I remember this fellow in my art classes at school, funny kid, a year, maybe two older than me. They had engraved a guitar, mandolin and banjo on the stone. I never knew he was musical but then that wouldn't have been so interesting to me back then. I don't recall what happened to him if I ever heard...  We like to swing in on Sunday drives to graveyards we've never been to, check out the dates and names, see who we don't know and just consider the big picture; life, death, modern life vs. times past. Now that's 'bittersweet', baby. Always some tragically short lifespans represented, people almost certainly killed in wars. Moms and Dads, children. Gives one pause to appreciate every day, every breath, because, sad to say, somebody somewhere ain't enjoying that glorious pastime any more.

   Hey! I gotta get movin'! I've got grass to mow- both my Mum's mowing job- I love it, Forrest Gump -and her own lawn since she's laid up with a Franken-foot, all stitched up and metal-pinned -and the forecast is for rain all week long with today the least chance of thunderstorms. Th-Whack!  

   See ya next time! Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!

  

Buffy and Jody

   Family Affair was one of those sugary sweet shows nobody seems to remember, like The Courtship of Eddie's Father or My Three Sons. Two dear little orphans taken in by their bachelor uncle and his manservant. The kind of stuff that wouldn't stand a chance next to the fascinating TV offered nowadays: scorpions crawling over screaming scantily clad women and small claims courts full of Jerry Springer rejects. But Buffy and Jody and Uncle Bill and Mr. French were beyond family friendly, even without a Mom. I guess older sister Cissy was sort of their stand-in Mother figure.

    The point is, I remember Jody singing- maybe Buffy joined in, I forget -on more than one occasion. The cheerful little waif was so earnestly freckly and dimply and... well, earnest. Once it was 'Any boy can be President, can be President... of the United States, United States...'. And the other was 'Open up your heart and let the sun shine in...!' Cheery, upbeat stuff, guaranteed to make you smile and think, 'Yeah! I need to open up my heart and let the sun shine in! By golly...!'

   Some days it's hard though to agree with that saccharine sing-song sentiment. That's what I wanted to write about today after a late-night, tear-jerking, hand-wringing, Kleenex-crumpling session with the wyfe over recent events six months old that seem more like ten years ago, with regard to one wayward daughter and broken family ties. Boy, how that real-life 'adult' stuff... stinks! I put no stock in foretellers of events but if somebody'd shown me a crystal ball twenty-two years ago I'd have bolted like the proverbial rabbit in my all-white... What was I wearing on my feet at the time? Had to be after the red three-stripe Adidas were retired but before the advent of Nikes... or was it? Anyway, I'd have raced away down Beaver Street in downtown York by the Central Market House where my Dad had come to pick up his camera at the camera shop and I was dragged along after dropping the Mustang at the Ford dealer for a badly needed brake job. Nah, I wouldn't have listened anyway. Too busy running toward trouble without recognizing it despite the best efforts of kith and kin. (What exactly is 'kith' anyway?) Besides, if we all had that ability or opportunity, to rewind or redo, there'd be no intriguing stories about 'What if...?' and 'Man goes back in time...'. The Butterfly Effect, never seen it, and Family Man, which made me actually like watching Nicholas Cage, and so on would never be written.

  The thing is, once you make a change to undo all the untoward events you'd like to wish away, >poof!< all the swell, heartwarming stuff goes right with it. That's why that kind of fiction only works in fiction. Because the people that have actually done it don't remember it! That's my supposition on the matter at least...

   But the bitterness, for me anyway, has abated somewhat today even thought the reality of the situation hasn't changed. I guess that's what made me think of Jody's song. If I 'opened up my heart to let the sun shine in' it might find some hard ground, a too-tough shell, kinda scabrous and scar-tissued in spots, to do any good. Maybe I'm kidding myself, maybe I'm too nice a guy- the opinions of some may differ - to be a heartless bastid, unfazed by the motives and actions of others. At any rate, I've more or less decided- as much as I make any decision in stone, which is to say, not many and not very hard and fast - not to expect too much good from most people and that way not be disappointed. And I guess that makes me officially a borderline cynic. Or over the borderline. For today at least. Maybe tomorrow I'll let the sunshine in...

   Y'know, I wonder now if maybe it was the Brady Bunch kids that sang 'Open Up Your Heart...'...? Or The Archies?

 

Silence of the Yams

...chirp, chirp... chirp,chirp... That's the crickets chirping, indicating silence and stillness in the woods. And in my little diary, er, journal. Been a while or at least it seems like it has been a while. So what's the difference between a diary and a journal anyway? Is a log the same thing? Or is that only on a ship? What if you carry your diary on a boat... Does it become a log then?

  Speaking of yams... No, I got nothing about yams. I just wanted to use 'silence' in the title and that's what came out.

So, I picked up my new mandolin this past week. Very pretty, tinkly little sounds it makes. I recalled one or two melodies I had learned and figured out one or two more. That's all I can do though, chording on the thing eludes me. The percussive 'chop' that's called for in the bluegrass style is beyond me. I have a video though that my son's guitar teacher, a man of all strings it would seem, loaned out to me. I'll have to break down and try and follow it, see if I can learn anything. But I have fun fiddling around with it anyway, something different. Somewhere I have Led Zeppelin IV, gotta break that out and take a stab at The Battle of Evermore. Isn't that the mandolin thing on there? I think so... Plus every time I hear Stairway to Heaven on the radio, rare these days, I'm reminded that I never learned the lead guitar part, always been content to do a fake three-finger-pick version of the verses, though I can never remember all the lyrics and the order they follow. I remember when a guy named Tim Moore- I think he played bass in a local country rock band at the time, I don't know where he is today. At one point he shotgunned the crazy husband of some woman he was running around, I don't remember how that worked out... -showed me the first few chords way back when. I was so excited, they were strange, twisty little con-finger-ations, not like the two-finger power chords I'd learned  the week before at all. Plus it was Stairway, dude! Now, post-Wayne's World, you gotta be embarassed to play it in a guitar shop. Not that that stops me...

Speaking of musicians: My pal Jim Lenz, late of Waysted Sylence(shudder!) reports his latest musical group, Pheonix Rizin, has gone belly up. Their guitarist had some kind of work-related accident which impacted his forearm/hand and maybe ended his playing days altogether(double shudder!). Last I'd talked to Jim, his wife, not a big fan of the scene at all, had come out to a show and afterward told him this was the best band he'd ever been involved with and if they decided to go on tour he should definitely give it a go. So it's a real drag for him, I know. I didn't get out to see them but Jimmy says they were hot, hot, hot. He even started taking bass lessons so he could step up his skills to keep up with the other musicians. Who knows, maybe it'll all work out...

Got in some baseball this past weekend, much preferable to the big, squishy softball for hitting. But then the ball moves faster in the field too, not so great for one largely sedentary of late. Man, my lower extremities have been like wooden sticks all week as a result of all that running and dodging around, argghh!

Toted me Mum to the foot doctor yesterday for a little corrective surgery on a pair of toes, so she's hobbling about in a ski boot with a metal skewer sticking out of one toe, prohibited from driving or doing much of anything but hanging around the house for two, three weeks. So I'm filling in that lawn mowing job again, yay! I got a late start today but had a great time anyway. Green grass, big sky view out back, bunnies running here and there. There's even a Wendy's close by so when I have to stop to pee- Hey, it's two and a half hours of bouncy Grasshopper ride on some bumpity, hilly terrain! And you gotta keep yourself hydrated... -I can get a Frosty to cool down. "Mmmm, a delicious soquid you eat with a fpoon!" Ahhh, the power of advertising!

You know, that's just the kind of conversation Jim and I might have had about the nature of a Frosty and the implement you use to eat it. Though we more often brainstormed actual menu items given his considerable experience in food service and my considerable experience in, uh, food consumption. Things like "SpudGhettis"- spaghetti served over mashed potatoes -and fried chicken delivery(everybody delivers pizza. Who delivers fried chicken?!? Uh, no one!)have been Jim's pet ideas for years. My big ideas have been (A) the Chicken/Whopper sandwich, possible trade name, "The Chopper"- a Whopper, yes, but with the addition of a grilled chicken breast on top of the burger! Brilliant! and (B) "The Quarter Mac" - a Big Mac, yes, but made with two Quarter Pounder burgers instead of those slivers of burger which are overpowered by lettuce in the 'standard' sandwich. Have it your way, indeed! That's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. It's late and it's been a long, long day; hard to recall all the fast food genius that's been like water under the bridge.

  Well, if I had anything more of little or no importance to record, I've forgotten it. You know, I think of stuff all the time- usually while driving from one end of the county to the other -and never manage to remember it when I get over here. The screen's like a blank slate and I end up with... well, what you've got here. And now you're stuck with it! Ciao, baby!

Tangible memory

If you've been paying attention, the last entry copied over a survey I completed on a mailing list about toy collecting in general. I mentioned the last lone vestige of my boyhood toy stash, not a 'toy' so much but an artifact nonetheless of that bygone era when men in tights and capes were all the rage on Wednesday night TV: a white Batman mug. I remember having it early on in my collecting days- shortly before the first big-time WB Batman movie with Michael Keaton hit screens there was so much buzz about it and I remarked to a workmate how as a wee lad I oft imitated Adam West as the Caped Crusader with a towel around my neck. Said workmate turned up a few days later with a Starlog magazine featuring an interview with Mr. West and a set of super photos, real eye-poppers in living color, all navy satin and purple tights. Man, how I loved that suit! That mask! Those swoopy painted eyebrows! It was the impetus for the onset of my second childhood and I began hunting and hoarding 60s era Batman artifacts in earnest not long after -but I can't recall where the white Batman mug got away from me. I'm sure in a rare day lacking sentiment I traded or sold it away for some other souvenir that seemed for the nonce more enticing somehow.

    Well, naturally after stirring that recollection for the survey I had to go and make a search for one. Snagged an nice example from the mighty eBay for a few measly bucks, all the way from Medford, OR, no less, and I'm watching the mailbox for it in the next few days, yay! I'm imagining hot chocolate tasting so much better served in a glass mug emblazoned with Batman on the sides. Though I'm more tea and hazelnut cream these days; the cocoa beverage is mostly reserved for snow days after shoveling out the cars. My wyfe stirs it with a stick of cinnamon, makes for a snappy tingle on the tongue, a little bite on the edge of the soothing warmness... Mmmmm-mmmm...

Survey said...

Here's a little aside from my Captain Action eMail group... Filler?... maybe... Well, I find it interesting anyway...

captainaction@yahoogroups.com writes:

Cool, Roy! A questionairre to fill out... I needed something like this to fill some free time...

1. What is your favorite item in your collection?

   This might sound goofy given the overreaching obscurity and costliness of our plastic pal, Captain Action, but it's likely my '66 Whitman Batman coloring book(s). I recall spending a LOT of time coloring in the laundromat as a kid, it is a powerful sense memory; dryer exhaust and crayoning Batman scenes.

  2. What is your least favorite item in your collection?

   Hmmm, tough question. Does this question really mean, 'What am I embarrassed to display or show off to visitors?', right? Well, I'm fairly shameless about the 'girl dolls' like Jane West and Xena dressed in a Captain Action outfit... So, I'd have to say Jay West. My boy loved him best of all the Marx dolls but I just never had much real interest in him. Plus his skinny little forearms break if you even look at them too hard.

  3. What is the rarest item you own?

  I have a toy buddy who swears it's the purple Captain Action suit but I'm of the opinion that's just the result of fading, nothing more, and thus not 'rare' at all. Am I wrong?!? Given that proviso, it's probably a simple cardboard box that housed a Bonanza figure and horse from one catalog outlet or another, I don't even know. It has a wood texture drawn on it and the words 'Bonanza Storage Chest', that's it. It was pretty much given to me by another Bonanaza aficianado who just didn't care to display it because it was so dull an object. But I've never seen another one so it seems pretty obscure to me.

  4. What is the rarest item you would like to own?

   Dr. Evil's Sanctuary, hands down, no doubt. I have a friend who has one and I keep offering to store it for him, keep it safe, y'know? And he just doesn't see the sense in that. Some friend!!!

  5. What is the most expensive item you own?

   Hmmm, I'm notoriously cheap so this is  a hard question too. Most expensive? Most I PAID for something? I guess my boxed Dr. Evil. It was a super-duper, under-the-radar eBay deal- and I bid without thinking I had the proverbial snowball's chance of winning -but still a lot of moolah to me. And I'm happy I went for it. Same deal with my Action Boy with box, I needed that little plastic boy doll to make my life complete.

  6. What is the least expensive item you own?

   We're talking 'least' versus it's 'perceived value', right? It'd have to be the first Captain Action I 'collected'. Bought from a little old lady who ran a baseball card/comic shop, complete with box for 25 clams. I bought my first Action Boy- never had one as a kid -at a yard sale for two dollars and fifty cents- '"That's old.", the woman said. -but I'm not sure I still have that one so it doesn't count.

  7. What item do you still have from your childhood?

    Sadly, nuthin'. When I collected 60s Batman in the late 80s I still had my white Batman mug but it got lost somewhere along the way. Waaahhhhh....!

  8. What item did you have in your childhood that you would like to get back but cant find?

   Gosh, I have more toys at forty-something than I ever dreamed of owning as a child! I can't think of a thing. Besides, it would show up on eBay tomorrow if I could remember something...

  9. What Item is the last thing you would ever part with?

   I've bought and sold my toy collection down to the barest of bare bones at least three times since I began collecting in earnest so it's all expendable when the kids are barefoot and hungry! I've managed to keep that twenty-five dollar Cap though and I always buy back the Batman and Robin Soaky bottles first. And the Batman Viewmaster set. So that's four things...

  10. What item would you burn before someone else gets it?  ie. through divorce.. etc..

   Hahahaha, you mean somebody in their right mind would actually WANT this stuff?!? You gotta be kiddin' me...

Hey, thanks for lettin' me run on. And on.

Wes


Wes McCue
The Classic Plastick Toy Company

News

   Music news: My wyfe knows I've been wanting to replace my mandolin- victim of a horrible household, ah, accident -and so an otherwise routine visit to a small local music emporium, RLH Guitars, became an excuse to blow some money better spent on other things. Like food and electricity. A little wifely arm-twisting and >ouch!< we put a chunk of change on a sweet little instrument expecting to finish off the balance at the end on the month. As always, the best laid plans went aglee, I came up fifty bucks short after I paid the bills, dratters! So maybe next week I can bring it home. That's okay because Randy said he'd throw in a soft case for it and that hadn't come into the store yet. I dunno, I like to go the cheap route and buy instruments- eBay, pawn shop, auction -but this one  normally sells this one for X dollars and he sold it to me for almost half X dollars, so the sales pitch went anyway. But it's all dressed up, inlays, bound edges, solid carved woods and so forth so it oughta hold it's value. Now all I have to do is learn to play it! I've forgotten most all the licks I learned for it! But, what else could I do? She practically made me buy it...really!

   The store had a truckload of vinyl albums somebody had traded on a guitar so we had fun nosing through those too. Picked out one or two for son-boy- he's all vintage music-inspired lately to go along with his muscle car fascination of the same era, I suppose -Pink Floyd, Lynyrd Skynyrd. I held back from buying any for myself seeing as how in the great unloading of  possessions preceding the move I gave my phonographic stereo away. But I was sore tempted by Helix, Van Halen. Okay, okay, I did break down and buy one, just one Kiss record, Creatures Of The Night. I gave it to the same kid I gave the stereo and asked him to tape a copy for me so I could learn a riff or two. Only Kiss record I ever owned way back when because it had one super neat guitar intro to the title song as I recall. Don't remember much else about it. Except that my mother almost had a conniption when she saw my younger brother had converted me to his awful rock music, oy! Especially that awful Kiss!

   I've got that last dimestore acoustic I bought still needing a trip to the guitar repair dude to replace a tuning gear, two electrics sitting about missing strings and one that I just got outta the case today for the first time in three months, maybe more... So I need another instrument like another hole in my head I guess. I think it's a sickness, really. Like some women buy shoes, I wanna buy stringed things. It's worse than the old playthings even. They take up more room and reqiure more care! They snivel and cry in the dark when you don't play them enough...

   Other news: A lovely topic- The aforementioned poison nastiness has pretty much dried up and blown away, thanks to the miracle of modern pharmacology. Steroids be praised! Funny, I don't see any attendant growth in muscle tissue, hmmm, different kinda steroid I thinks.... 

   The birds out back are eating me out of house and home! We had a regular little clientele of sparrows and wrens, tiny little fellows, at the last residence. I could fill the feeder and watch birds all week... Here we got big black fowl, lots of 'em. Cackling and clawing, they'll devour a feeder full of fruit, seed and nut mix in half a day! I think their overbearingly determined demeanor keeps the cardinals and the turtledoves at bay. Not to mention the red-winged blackbird. I haven't seen him since the first day I set the feeder out... 

    Street rods are in town this weekend. York Expo Center, formerly known in a simpler time as York Fairgrounds, home of the Great York Interstate Fair, hosts a huge gathering of vintage vehicles of all shapes, sizes and colors, all tricked out in paint and chrome and so forth, every year. The town becomes a virtual traveling custom car show as they roll in and around town, round the downtown 'loop' and out the highway round town. People line up in lawn chairs along the thoroughfares where trains of shiny antique and custom cars parade by one after the other, day and night. I've only taken a passing interest through the years, once a coupla the cars and their owners stayed at my folks' when they offered bed and breakfast in their Log House. It was interesting watching them coming and going at a snail's pace over the stone and dirt driveway. I guess when you spring thousands of dollars in paint you are pretty careful about small stones and dirt flying up and potentially dinging or denting said paint. Anyway, we drove by the fairgrounds today and could look through the fences at some of the gathering cars, I thought son-boy would give himself a whiplash, swiveling his nugget to and fro exclaiming, 'Sweeet! Sweeeet! Suh-weeet!!!', like a mechanically obsessive teenage mantra. If the weather cooperates we might find time and place over the weekend to situate ourselves for a while and watch the procession along with the rest of the car nuts...

   One last thing: I finally added the rest of the photos of the East Prospect Walking Tour to my online photo albums, both those from the original go-round and some newer shots featuring some great springly color, blossoming blossoms and neat stuff like that. Am I repeating myself? Repeating myself? I hope not, seems like I wanted to mention that here but didn't... Anyway, I guess I should think about making a space for Dover color now that I'm planted here, I just don't know much of the surroundings yet to think about what there'll be to show...