This Was the Week that Was...

 This Was the Week that Was…

I really wanted to go for a bicycle ride today, but I’m just too tired and the weather is cold. I also needed a day off. It’s been a crazy week.

Sunday went surprisingly well, considering this is our first time with multiple musical instruments, lots of live songs and several PowerPoint recordings of music, all combined. We had a practice session the week before, gathering up all the microphones we could find and trying to find a good arrangement to pick up all the sounds and mix them for live streaming, recording and the real time program in the chapel.

Since the audience was expected to participate in the songs, I got to coordinate the text verses on the screens as the music played. Due to my monotropic mind, I was afraid I might have trouble working the sound mixer and the PowerPoint computer at the same time, but it worked out once we had the sound board set up the way we liked it.

I learned during the program what I needed to study and practice to make it easier next time. I printed myself another manual for the Behringer X32 Compact mixer board, and by reading that and watching videos on YouTube, I now know how to mute groups of channels with one button and how to control several channels together with one DCA fader.

Muting certain groups of channels was required, because during one song playing on PowerPoint by Dan on the piano, the dulcimers were retuning to a different key for their next number. I had to mute them on their individual channels, which I got done, but it would have been easier to have had them grouped on a single mute button.

The bass dulcimer player had her own amplifier, so we put a microphone in front of that speaker to pick up that sound. Unfortunately, after the program was over, we found that the recorded sound lost her bass part. It sounded good in the room at the time, but we will have to use headphones next time to isolate the sound being picked up on that microphone, since we don’t have a soundproof recording booth.

Monday I went on a follow up visit to my electrophysiologist down in Sherman, TX. Have you ever got a fist bump from your doctor? I did! I told him that in the month since he raised my prescription of Verapamil, I haven’t had even one instance of heart arrhythmia. He said we need to do an EKG to make sure, and I told him I have several with me. Did he want to see them? He laughed and said, “Sure, show me!” So I dug my iPhone out of my coat pocket and showed him the KardiaMobile chart on Oct. 19, when I had my last Premature Ventricular Contraction, and then about four more since then that were all boring Normal Sinus Rhythm recordings. 

He held up one fist and we did a fist bump. I told him I had never had that sudden an improvement after a change in medication, and it seemed a miracle to me. He got a little more sober and reminded me the my heart had already beat thousands of times already that day, and had done that millions of times since I was born. That was the real miracle of God’s creation, he said. I didn’t argue, and I didn’t ask him which God he was referring to. His name is Mohammed, and with the situation in the Middle East right now, I don’t want to have that discussion today.

Tuesday I went back to the church in Denison to retrieve my coat and keys, which I had forgotten Sunday. Marla had called to tell me they found it when they were locking up. I stayed for the Chair Yoga exercise, which I needed. My shoulders are still sore.

Wednesday I took Darlene down to Carrus Hospital in Sherman for an all night sleep study and titration to look for sleep apnea. It was raining, and there seemed to be a lot of trucks on the highway kicking up spray and reducing visibility to nearly zero. The worst part is they were all taking turns passing each other. If they would just stay in the right lane I could get out in front of them, but no chance of that.

Thursday I went back to Carrus hospital to pick up Darlene after the all night sleep study. We drove back home in Oklahoma 40 miles away, and Darlene made me an omelet for breakfast. Then we had to drive back to Sherman, Tx, for a visit with Darlene’s gastroenterologist. They want to examine her for the neuroendocrine carcinoid tumors they are treating her for at Texoma Medical Center. The chemo treatments have helped her pain considerably.

Today I’m tired and it’s cold outside. Maybe I’ll go bike riding tomorrow.

Nobody... Better

 Have you ever been listening to a song on the radio, humming the tune, maybe tapping your foot, because it is an old melody from 45 years ago, and then the lyrics jump out at you like you’ve never heard them before?

This song played on the car radio as I drove back home from the store yesterday. I tried to remember who the singer was - Carole King maybe, or Carly Simon? I always mix them up. I love them both! But this was Carly Simon.

Maybe the radio in my newer Mazda was more HiFi (do they even use that term anymore?) than the radio in that old red Toyota. But the words jumped out in front of the music this time.

“Nobody Does it Better

Makes me feel Sad for the Rest 

Nobody Does it Half as Good as You

Baby, you’re the Best…”

Instantly my memories returned to my wife Carolyn. She and I were lovers for nearly fifty years. She died five years ago with Alzheimer’s disease, and my heart still aches for her. My arms still long to hold her tight.

“The Way that You Hold Me

Whenever You Hold Me

There’s Some Kind of Magic inside You”

This was the theme for a James Bond movie, “The Spy who Loved Me.”

We were living in the backwoods of Western Colorado and never got to see the movie when it came out. Didn’t get a lot of current music on the radio out there in the wilds, either. 

“That Keeps Me from Runnin’

But just Keep it Comin’

How’d You Learn to Do the Things You Do?”

In the spring of 1968 Carolyn had separated from her husband and was staying with her Aunt Laverna on DeanAnn St. in Garden Grove, California, and I was living in an apartment alone a couple of miles north on Chapman Ave. 

Laverna’s husband Don and I had gone to school together at Walla Walla College and we had been long time friends. Laverna made it a point to invite me over for dinner regularly and bragged on how good Carolyn cooked. 

Laverna had met my steady girlfriend Cathy on a visit to Merced once before, but I think she thought I could be enticed away. I missed all the signals then, but I figured it out later. Turned out she was right.

After the dinners Carolyn and I talked and teased each other, and got to know each other better. One June evening as I was leaving to go home for the night, she came outside and asked for a hug. I picked up the hint and invited her to my apartment. She agreed and followed me in her green Oldsmobile as I rode home on my motorcycle.

“And Nobody Does it Better,

Though Sometimes I wish Someone Could…”

We both had a fantastic time that night. We took our time and went slow and easy, making sure that no erogenous zone was overlooked. She swore that it was the first time she had ever felt an orgasm in her life. One wasn’t enough - we did it again before she left. 

“Nobody Does it

Quite the Way You Do

Why’d you Have to Be So Good?”

The next morning, Sunday, I got a call from Laverna inviting me over for breakfast. I rode over and found out that her husband was at work and Carolyn was at K-Mart, learning a new job. We sat around the dining room table and Laverna had made me scrambled eggs, toast, and a glass of Dr. Pepper on ice for each of us. 

She casually asked, " How are you feeling this morning?", and I said I was feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed, or something like that. She followed up with, "Why would you feel that way?" When I told her it must be due to “clean living” she snorted Dr. Pepper through her nose. I knew immediately Carolyn had filled her in on the details of last night and it wasn’t our secret anymore.

In a couple of weeks Laverna informed me that Carolyn was going back to her husband to try to work things out for the benefit of their seven year old daughter, Darlene.

I wasn’t surprised. I had told Carolyn not to get serious, as I already had a steady girlfriend up north in Merced.

For the next several months we lived our separate lives and didn’t see much of each other. I continued to visit my girlfriend up north, and Carolyn tried to revive her marriage with J.T.

Late one evening, it must have been October, I heard a knock on my apartment door. I had been reading a magazine on the sofa, so I laid it down and went to see who was there. Carolyn stood there with a smile on her face and a bottle of Dr. Pepper in each hand. 

I invited her in and she immediately told me that J.T. and she had gotten into a big argument, and he had threatened to leave her and go back to Oklahoma. She said she called his bluff, loaded all his clothes in the green Oldsmobile, and told him to go then. So he was on his way out of the state and out of the marriage for real.

She was ready and I was willing, and we were soon having another hot time in the bedroom. After we were both satisfied, we just lay there and talked for another hour or so. She was amazed that I stayed up to talk afterward instead of just rolling over to sleep. She wasn’t used to that.

Several days later, she called and told me that J.T. had arrived in Oklahoma at his mother’s house, and had called her wanting to come back. She told him no, she had had enough, and just send her the divorce papers.

She invited me over to her house for dinner that night and said I could stay every night if I wished. I didn’t need a second invitation. My brother John got to take over my apartment, as he had found work at the same place I was working, and we were sharing the apartment then. 

After a couple of weeks I told her, “I think I’m falling in love”. She was overjoyed and said she was hoping so. Then she realized I had said, “I think,” and quickly backed up. I let her know that my girlfriend up north had told me she wouldn’t marry me unless I went back to college and got a degree. I was falling out of love with Cathy fast.

Just a few days later I called Cathy and told her our relationship was over, and that I was in love with someone else and I was not coming back to Merced. Of course, she was not happy about it, but I made it clear that we were over as a couple.

On November 18, I gave my solemn vow to Carolyn to love her and her alone for the rest of my life, and she gave me the same promise. On March 15 the next year we got the official license and a small marriage ceremony at a retired judge's house in Orange, California, to make sure there would be no trouble keeping custody of Darlene. Some people are still confused about why we celebrated two different anniversaries.

I know this sounds like I’m bragging, but we both felt the same way about each other. She was the best lover I ever had. God, how I miss her!

“Nobody Does it Better

Makes Me feel Sad for the Rest

Nobody Does it Half as Good as You

Baby, You’re the Best.”

October 27, 2023

Don Rogers

©

The Song, “Nobody Does It Better” was the theme for the James Bond 

movie “The Spy Who Loved Me.”

Lyrics by Carol Bayer Sager

Music by Marvin Hamlisch who also played the piano for the recording by Carly Simon in 1977.

Vichy in America

 

Vichy in America

This is going to be a hard one to write. Many, if not most of my close friends are people with college degrees. Many are teachers, from elementary, high school and university level. Most don’t realize how they are seen by much of the rest of the country. 

I just finished reading an essay in Medium by Andrew Tanner that rang some bells and resonated with me. He is convinced that Trump will win the next election, even if he rules from his home in “house arrest.” 

“Why,” you ask. “How could that happen?” 

The answer lies in the questions you ask.

Here is a quote from the article:

“All Trump or any right wing voice needs to do to win… is present themselves as the defender of the common American. Associate Biden and the Democrats with smug college elitism and he wins. In America very few people like the teacher’s pet, but this is now the default identity for most leading voices on the fading left.”

Last night I went to a Democratic meeting and fundraiser at a local Italian restaurant here in Durant, Oklahoma. For two days I had been following the news that President Biden was going to join the strikers from the United Auto Workers on the picket line. I was wondering if he actually would, or just make promises, as Democrats tend to. 

Sure enough, just before the meeting, I found video of him on YouTube surrounded by strikers, and defending the workers demands for much higher wages and benefits on a bullhorn!

I’m eighty now and tend to get overly emotional. I got tears in my eyes listening to him talk. I have been a union member for nearly fifty years, both with the Teamsters Union, and then the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers for the last forty or so.

As I went into the room and sat down to listen to the State level Democratic speakers, I waited to hear of the historic event that transpired just this day in Detroit.

I ate, and I waited. It was like nobody cared. Nobody even mentioned it in passing. 

After the speaker finished the Bryan County Federation of  Democratic Women started their own version of fundraising, called “Cheers!” Each person can pledge a dollar amount cheering some event that they feel needs recognized.

I could not let this go by. I raised my hand and loudly announced that this day the President of the United States, for the very first time in history, had stood with striking workers in solidarity on a picket line. That was worth a twenty dollar cheer to me!

I got loud cheers and a handshake from a State Representative on my left. The meeting continued onward. There may have been a couple of us who understand why this is so critical to Biden’s re-election.

Here is another quote from that article:

“Trump’s main power is rooted in the fact that a majority of Americans now feel systematically looked down on by those with a college education.”

If you believe you are going to convince a voter to change to a Democrat because of logic and reason, you just made another MAGA voter.

They are so disgusted with “college elites with degrees” they no longer believe in doctors, vaccines, or climate change. It has nothing to do with facts - it is purely despair and fury by the forgotten ones.

The article is a long one, with what I thought were many questionable assertions and assumptions, but he does make some great points. I believe Trump has a better chance than most people give him.

I also believe he will never see the inside of a jail cell. The powers in the present government don’t have the guts to do anything but rattle the keys. They know it would just get him more die hard followers.

Here is a link to the article:

https://medium.com/@andrewmtanner/when-vichy-comes-to-america-2e5a9699bc2a

The Great Oklahoma Turkey Chase

 I was almost six years old. I know this because it happened on my brother John's first birthday party at Grandma Gove's house out on South Bear Creek Drive. Baby Johnnie was a cute little roly-poly guy and we used to have a photo of him sitting on a blanket behind a clown face that was propped up beside him with a big open mouth to throw the ball through for a point. Everybody called John "Punkin" then. We had cake and peach pie if memory serves me.

When the party was over, Mom picked Baby Johnnie up and went in the house with the rest of the adults. Billie must have followed along, because I don't remember him in the rest of the story.

I stayed outside tossing the ball through the clown face by myself. I suddenly became aware of a black wall moving toward me from the hen house. Big black turkeys! They were gobbling loudly and didn't look friendly at all. I was near a tall fig tree on the east side of my Grandma's house and I lost no time climbing up the knobby tree until the turkeys couldn't reach me.

Those turkeys surrounded the tree and just stayed there, gobbling among themselves and looking evil end very menacing. After some number of minutes stuck up in the tree, I started yelling for help. Nobody heard me inside the house. After some more minutes, I began wailing and bawling, convinced that my fate was to be eaten by the turkeys.

After what seemed like a very long time, my Grandma came out of the house. She immediately saw the problem, picked up a stick from somewhere and chased the turkeys away. I climbed down and went inside and stayed in the house for the rest of the day, I think.

Here it is September 9, 2023, over 74 years later. Early this morning I was riding my bicycle south on Newberry Creek Road only a mile from my house. There is a steep rise in the road, maybe 10 feet or higher, but it is steep enough to slow me down and make me shift gears. As I came over the crest of the hill, from a driveway in front came a stream of black turkeys, heads down and attacking. They are very territorial and not at all shy like some people think. I started pedaling faster and got out in front at about 20 miles an hour. They chased me for at least fifty yards.

Since I started wearing these cycling shorts with bare legs exposed, I feel like I've got two drumsticks for legs when the dogs chase me down the road. If they are too big to outrun, I've found it best to stop and order them back to the house. Amazingly, they always do, because they just want to chase - they don't know what to do when the rabbit stops!

I'm not at all sure that will work with turkeys. I think they would just peck me to death if I stopped. Now that I know where they live, I'll have an extra burst of speed coming up that hill from now on.

Adventures With an old GMC motorhome.

 Adventures with an old GMC motorhome.

I bought the GMC RV 36’ Kingsley from a coworker and friend in Winnemucca. He loved it, but his wife hated it. She called it a “Twinkie” - thought it was ugly. I think I may have saved his marriage by buying the motor home. The year was 2003.

I bought it especially to carry my mother to Kansas City to visit her twin sister, whom she had not visited in about 12 years. She had a heart condition and couldn’t fly on planes, and trains took too long and didn’t go just where she needed to go. Our car was too little and cramped, so I figured the motor home would be the best bet. She could lie down for the trip, and a bathroom was just down the hall, as was the refrigerator.

I knew the GMC was getting old, and I was expecting some trouble mechanically, so I carried enough tools for an engine overhaul if necessary.

(That’s only a slight exaggeration.) 

After getting all luggage onboard, we left Winnemucca heading west. The motor home rode smooth as silk on the air bag suspension, and the 455 c.i.d. Oldsmobile engine had lots of power. I had to be careful of speed limits, as it wanted to cruise at about eighty if you didn’t pay attention. The cruise control wasn’t working when I left home, and I let it go, since I was in a hurry to get on the road.

The first night we parked in an RV park in Moab, UT. I plugged in the power and everything worked fine, lights and everything. Except the water had a leak when I hooked up a hose. Obviously freeze damage last winter, and I skipped the water hookup and advised that baths would be at the RV park bathing facility. The water was leaking from under the water inlet, so at least I knew where to look when I got a chance to fix it.

The next morning we stopped in Nucla, CO, where we had lived for nine years and visited with our friends there. 

While I was there, I unscrewed the water inlet pressure reducer and found the back of the device had split off, so I needed a new one. On a machine this old, it may be hard to find.

The first engine trouble was near the top of Monarch Pass at nearly 11,300 ft. Elevation. At first I thought it might be vapor lock, since the engine was stumbling and cutting out. It finally just quit, and I had to carefully back down to a wide pullout and park it. Since the vacuum assisted power brakes were marginal with the engine not running, I really had to stand on the pedal to keep it from rolling back too fast. When I got off the road, I put the selector in PARK, hauled back on the hand brake, and after I carefully left off the brake pedal and it didn’t move, I got out and found some big rocks and chocked the wheels.

When I opened the engine cover I was surprised to hear the gasoline boiling in the carburetor and see the vapor spewing out. It was scary dangerous for an explosion, and I didn’t think the little extinguisher by the driver’s seat would be adequate if it lit off. I’ve seen carburetors percolate before, but never like this. The only thing we could do is open the doors and windows and try to ventilate as much as we could. Then we waited for the engine to cool off and the carburetor to normalize again.

I noted on my mental list to check that the carb heat valve was working correctly when I got a chance. Little did I suspect that they didn’t design this engine to even have a carb heat valve. They must have totally depended on both exhausts balancing equally. One small leak or one small dent on an exhaust pipe and the channel under the carb becomes a path for hot exhaust gasses to pass through.

This was not engine overheating. No coolant was lost and no coolant was boiling. It was just the carburetor that got hot due to the steep climb and the high elevation, and the deficient design of the intake manifold. 

After about an hour, I decided to attempt a start. The engine started immediately, and I let off the hand brake, put the gear selector in low, and drove over the top of the pass, which was only a couple of hundred yards away.

I left the selector in low as we came down the east side of Monarch Pass toward the town of Salida. A few years earlier a school bus lost its brakes coming down that side and crashed and killed the whole football team. If you have lived in Colorado you soon learn how to safely drive over those mountains. 

We stayed overnight in Colorado Springs, and the next day we were having no more trouble with the engine. When we gassed up in Colorado Springs I calculated the mileage at 11.34 mpg, which is the highest of the trip. Of course, it was all downhill! Most of the trip it was 6, 7, or 8 mpg.

We were making good time when we stopped in Goodland, Kansas, for refreshments. I noticed the brake pedal dropped a notch as I pushed it down. I tried it again and felt the same thing - the pedal stopped where it was supposed to, but in a second or two of steady pressure, it dropped to a lower level. 

I stopped at a NAPA parts store and got out and looked for a leak on a wheel. There were none. I took the cover off the master brake cylinder, and as I suspected, the front reservoir was full and the back one was low. Bad master cylinder doing what it is made to do. Half the brakes still work when a fault occurs somewhere in the system.

 I went inside the store and asked for a master cylinder for a ’77 Oldsmobile. I knew they wouldn’t carry one for an old motor home, but I was hoping for one that fit. 

I was in luck! They had two of them, but different. So we studied the one on the RV, and I picked the one that looked to be a match. They sold it to me, along with a self bleeder kit and a can of brake fluid. It took me about a half an hour to change the cylinder and bleed the brakes. Soon we were back on the road to Kansas City to meet Mom’s sister.

Frankly, if you are going to drive a 25 year old motor home across the country, you should carry lots of money, lots of insurance, or be a good mechanic. I was in the third category, but there were times I wished I was in the first category and could just hand the work to somebody else.

When we got to Kansas City, (actually Independence, Missouri) we stopped first at my cousin Jim Russell’s house, where they all were waiting for us. We had a great family reunion, and they all wanted a tour of the motor home. So we led them through from one end to the other, and they were very impressed at the lovely interior. Back then, even at 25 years old, it still looked pretty good. I didn’t go into the mechanical problems so far.

The plan was for Carolyn and I and Melissa, our granddaughter, to leave Mom to stay and visit her sister for a week or so and we would drive down to Oklahoma to visit Carolyn’s family. We stopped in Oklahoma City to visit her Aunt Laverna, then went on down to Durant, her hometown. 

Carolyn had a large family in Durant, and when they did family reunions, they had to rent a pavilion out at the county fairgrounds. 

At this point we had just over 2000 miles on the road, and no further troubles came up.

After a week visiting family in Oklahoma, we drove north to pick up my Mom. It was the Fourth of July weekend, and was pretty hot. We stopped in a really nice RV park in the town of Peculiar, Missouri, on the night of the Fourth. At sundown we were alarmed to hear explosions all around us. We went out side and it looked and sounded like a war. We found out that since we were near the border of Kansas and Missouri, the citizens of both states spent the night trying to outdo each other with fireworks displays. I don’t know how many thousands of dollars they blew up that night, but it was impressive!

After picking up my mother, we came back south to Gentry, Arkansas, where Aunt Mary Detweiler, my Dad’s sister was living on an Adventist school campus and still teaching in her eighties. We had a wonderful visit, reminiscing over the years right after WWII when all the Rogers kids (my Dad’s siblings) got out of the military and got married. 

We continued on back to Durant, where Mom got to meet Carolyn’s family, and then traveled on south to Keene, Texas, for a short visit with Darla, Carolyn’s cousin, who also taught at a school there. 

We started home again, the long way around, to visit our granddaughter Chandler in Arizona. We cruised through Monahans, Texas; Roswell, New Mexico; to Phoenix, Arizona. After a visit with Chandler’s mother Tonya, we picked up Chandler to stay with us for the summer. Then we drove north to Flagstaff to visit my brother John and his wife, Carolyn.

As we climbed the mountain into Flagstaff, we had some trouble with the engine overheating. We stopped a couple of times to let it cool off.  We were carrying water to replace the lost steam in the 35 gallon tank in the back. Since this just started, I was pretty sure it was related to the thermostat, but if I drove slower and didn’t push it up any hills, it was OK. I drove the rest of the trip through Las Vegas and Tonopah, Nevada at night to keep things cool.

When I got home at the end of the 5000 mile trip, I unscrewed the cover on the thermostat and found it stuck half open. Wouldn’t close, wouldn’t open more. That was strange - I’ve never seen that before or since. Usually they fail either open or closed. That was an easy five minute fix.

For the rest of July, 2003, I took off the carburetor, and then the intake manifold, looking for the source of the boiling carburetor. That’s when I realized the engineers who designed this engine skipped any provisions for stopping exhaust gasses from shooting through the manifold from one side to the other, roasting the paint and boiling the gas in the carburetor. I heard later from other GMC owners that sometimes the manifold actually cracked from the heat and had to be replaced. I’m sure some GMC’s burned to the ground from this design flaw.

When I removed the intake manifold, I found a huge ball of crispy carbonized oil hanging under the warped sheet metal cover over the valve train. It weighed several pounds, and I carefully lifted it out of the motor, trying not to break off and drop any pieces into the engine. I picked up any loose pieces I could see on top, then drained all the old oil out of the pan and flushed it with solvent from the top down. 

I took the intake manifold to work and in my spare time, clamped the manifold to the milling machine with the left side indicated level above the table, then I carefully machined a 1/8 “ step around the exhaust port on that side only. I made a rectangular block to put in the manifold to completely block all exhaust gasses from that side. I left the right side open so some hot gas could heat up the choke heat tube and keep the automatic choke working normally.

While I was fixing manifolds, I noticed that both exhaust manifolds were leaking, which may have been a factor in the unbalanced flow through the intake manifold. I took both of them off and using a carbide tool on a fly cutter, machined them .005’ at a time until they were flat again. There are not nearly enough screws holding them on, and they were bowed over .030” between screws. With new gaskets all leaks were gone and the engine was much quieter and cooler

I got everything back together and running fine within the month, and then we planned a trip to Oregon for Chandler’s birthday the next month, August.