Belly Up
I don't get around to updating this blog very often. I think I'll fold it into my main blog, here.
We Love Our Kids and are Crying
There were nine of them. They were best of friends. They were all girls. They were all graduates - class of 2007, Fairport.
Before going their separate ways for the summer, and then off to this or that college, they'd planned this one last outing. One of the girls' parents had a cottage on Keuka Lake. A great place to lounge and relax and swim and sunbathe for a day or two. They traveled in two cars; five in the first and four in the second.
Was it the vehicle? Was it speed? Was it inexperience? Was it distraction? The lead car swung into the oncoming traffic lane to pass a slower vehicle. That done, it swung back to its own lane. Then - for whatever reason - it swerved again into the oncoming lane, and smashed head on into an oncoming tractor-trailer. Both vehicles exploded and the flames reached 50 feet, burning through cable and telephone lines. The second car stopped at once, but no one could get near for the heat. They could only watch.
As word of the 10 PM crash spread, nearly 100 classmates and family gathered at Fairport High School. David Paddock, the school principal said they watched the sun rise together. "The sun came up," he said. "I'm not sure we all thought it would." The next night several hundred people gathered for a candlelight vigil. "It's a community nightmare....I'm personally devastated," Paddock said. "Our hearts are broken. We love our kids and are crying." Several thousand attended weekend calling hours at the school gym (four of the five had been cheerleaders).
By chance, Governor Eliot Spitzer was in town to chew out state senators for skipping out of Albany for the summer, leaving important work undone. But the local senator, Senator Alesi, would not be chewed out. He cited the tragedy: "I think it would be insensitive to get embroiled in petty partisan politics at this point." Spitzer had beat him to it, however, condolence-wise: "We are suffering with the emotional agony of the tragedy of the students. It just does make your blood run cold. It makes you appreciate every day you have with your children. Our condolences go out to families and those who are touched by this — our hearts go out to all who are touched by this."
Stories and follow-up stories ran for days and days and aren't done yet. The local paper questioned why the vehicles should have erupted in flames; maybe they should have been designed better. Had they been, and had passengers been belted, maybe some would have survived. This, at a combined head-on crash speed of 120 MPH!
Bloggers blogged for days, just like I'm doing now. "Why did God have to take our girls?" one person asked. "We needed these angels here on earth!" And somewhere, without a doubt, some preacher was offering exactly the same hollow "comfort": God was "picking flowers," and He needed the best.
To Joe Jeanette
They buried a great fighter today,” reported the Jersey Journal. “….a warm friendly man….we shall not see his like again in our time.”
Well, not exactly today. It was July 7, 1958. But he was family. So we keep track.
Boxing experts called in the most inhuman fight ever staged. Early last century, in 1909 Paris, Joe Jeanette [Jennette] slugged it out with Sam McVey for 49 rounds. Jennette pounded Sam into the canvas 11 times. McVey returned the favor 27 times. Nonetheless, Jeanette triumphed, for when the 50th round began, McVey refused to budge, crying “this man ain’t human!”
They were four of them: Joe Jeanette, Sam McVey, Sam Langford, and Jack Johnson. They were heavyweights. They were black. They were evenly matched. They mostly fought each other. White boxers rarely fought blacks, and so the World Heavyweight Title was a white title. But one of the four, Jack Johnson, tailed and taunted world champ Tommy Burns around the globe. Finally, in Australia, 1908, Burns agreed to a match. Jack thrashed him soundly and so became the first ever black titleholder. Thereafter, Johnson himself refused all challenges from black fighters.
Was Jack Johnson the greatest of the four? Or was it his tenacity, hounding the white establishment until he got his shot at the title? One can make a case for any of the four. “Many experts believe Joe [Jeanette] would have eclipsed all fighters…. if he had not injured his right arm early in his career,” said boxing writer Jack Powers. Jennette himself gave the nod to Sam Langford. And it was Sam McVey that went the 49 rounds with Jennette in Paris. Of course, Jack Johnson captured the title.
“If you want to know which was the toughest of the lot, I’ll tell you,” Joe said in a later interview. “It was Langford. Jack Johnson? No, sir. Not Johnson. Look, I fought them both, not once but many times. Sam would have been champion any time Johnson had given him a fight. There is no question about it. I wouldn’t wonder if Sam could have beaten any man that ever fought….Johnson was a good fighter. No mistake about that. Very clever, and he could hit, too. But Sam would have taken him. I know. But Johnson wouldn’t have any of us after he won the title. Smart man. He was plenty scared of Sam. I don’t blame him. I was too. Boy, how that boy could hit. Nobody could hit like that.”
In 1906, Joe Jeanette married Adelaide Atzinger, a white woman from a modest farm family in upstate New York. She was my great aunt, so I know the history.
They wed in secret, for her family never would have agreed to it. Back then, one did not marry outside one’s race. It was not done. Afterwards, our entire family was ostracized in the community, as if they were all complicit. Adie’s sister Mary was so harassed at school that she quit in the eighth grade and found work in a silk mill. She made $2.50 a week.
Soon such sentiments died down among the local folk. People liked Joe. He carved himself a respected place in the community. But it was not that way with strangers. Years later, his light skinned daughter Agnes would bring home dates to meet her folks. Some would take one look at Joe and disappear. She and her brother Joey later married, but neither couple had children. They wanted to spare kids the same prejudice they had faced.
As for the rest of the family, we read about Joe the fighter, but we remember Joe the man. Uncle Joe retired from boxing in 1918 and went into business. He’d made serious money from fighting, and his wife, by all accounts, knew how squeeze a nickel. He built a three story brick building, which still stands, on Summit Ave in Union City, New Jersey. It sported a gym on the second floor, a garage/showroom on the first, and three apartments. For a short time, Joe housed all my relatives: Gram and Gramp on the top floor, my great uncle and aunt on the second, he and Adie on the first. Union City later named a street for him….Jeanette St. It runs behind the building.
Later in his career, Joe turned to renting limousines. He always liked fine cars, and the first car Gram ever saw, which scared the wits out of her, had Joe behind the wheel.
By the time my father was born in 1921, Gram and Gramp had bought a nearby farm. As Pop grew up, visiting Joe and Adie was a big deal. Times were hard then financially, and you never knew when Joe would spring loose with a quarter! Pop would wander up to the gym…Joe didn't mind…and slap around the punching bag.
Ron Howard’s 2005 film Cinderella Man includes scenes from Jeanette’s gym. Much was cut from the final movie, but appears in the deleted scenes segment of the DVD, with Ron providing voiceover commentary. Actor Ron Canada played Joe.
Joe was a warm, animated man…a favorite with all the young cousins. “Look at the birdie!” he would cry, looking up. They’d follow his gaze, but it was a trap! As if still in the ring, Joe would move in quick with a tickle, much to their delight. When Gram came down with the Spanish flu in 1918, Joe would visit every day to read her the newspaper. He died at home in 1958, in his 52nd year of marriage. “They buried a great fighter today,” said the Jersey Journal, quoted at the outset. “Jeanette was a warm friendly man to his intimates….we shall not see his like again in our time.”
In the innocent naiveté of children, my cousins…their lives overlapped Jeanette’s by about ten years…didn’t realize Joe was a black man. Nor did they think he was a white man. He was just Uncle Joe. But one day they saw black people in the newspaper, the caption said they were black people, and they looked like Uncle Joe. Yes, their mother confirmed, Joe was a black man. But it made no difference to them…why would they care?
Older relatives, though, witnessed Jennette’s lifelong fight against racism. He fought it with graceful dignity, aided by his amiability, his boxing and business sense, and no doubt the fact that he could pound the stuffing out of anyone had he taken it into his head to do so. Gram, a stolid farm woman, was sensitive to racial injustice throughout her life. And Pop imagines the day when nobody cares about their roots, and when people intermarry so commonly that it can’t be told who’s who. Then, he figures, racism will end.
It’s family history. Because of it, I was raised in a home where racist remarks were never heard. I was slow to imagine that any white family might be different.
Tombaugh Quits: A Blow for Science
The Carriertom Into-Wishen Research Institute sadly announces the departure of Tom Tombaugh, it’s most prominent (and only) staff scientist, whose most notable credentials consisted of a claimed relationship to Clyde Tombaugh, founder of the disgraced wannabe planet Pluto. His resignation leaves the institute top-heavy with religious nuts.
It was top-heavy before. That’s why it was common knowledge that Tombaugh felt increasingly out of place among the pious ones. Did they even speak the same language? Tombaugh would sit in the lunchroom and long for intelligent conversatin on some learned matter of science, for example, how boisterous belching or earth-splitting flatulence evolved over the eons, since our ancestors who didn‘t carry on in that way failed to scare away predators, and got eaten, but his lunchmates would attribute it all to Adam and Eve and our fall into sin! Or he’d tell us the latest scientific research, like how scientists succeeded in placing a person in a state of suspended animation by gradually lowering body temperature five degrees per hour , all the while carefully monitoring vital signs in real time hyperstasis homeovention….and kept him in such a state for up to 25 years…. and, amazingly, that man still did not lose his government civil service job….and these holy characters would nod at each other knowingly and quote some scripture about laziness, maybe this one from Prov 26:14.….A door keeps turning upon its pivot, and the lazy one upon his couch….. or they’d utter some pious intonation about how sloth is a sure sign we’re in the last days!
So he’s gone. The prestige Tombaugh leant the Institute cannot be overstated. Three years ago he presented groundbreaking research on the socially embarrassing phenomenon of sock-eating shoes, for which he was awarded the No Bell prize. Ignorant ones have long supposed this self-esteem deflator (the socks, not the prize) to be caused by defective socks sliding deeper into the shoe with every successive step, but Tombaugh proved scientifically that such was not the case! Using scientific methodology far too complex to be revealed here before you, mere dunces who are thoroughly unqualified to understand it, Tombaugh established the prime determinant was the viscosity of the individual foot, some persons and professions being naturally more slippery than others.
The No Bell scientific competition, though inspired by it’s better known homonym, has procedural rules more akin to TV’s old The Gong Show. The contestant presents his research before the judges, and if he doesn’t get “gonged,” well….he has won the prize. Our boy didn’t get gonged, and he’s been crowing about it ever since.
The Institute’s religious members urged Tombaugh to start his presentation with “Everybody knows that….” but Tombaugh would have none of it. He insisted on using the scientific method. Normally, we wouldn’t care, except we knew his financial resources and so we knew that the study groups and control groups would all be various permutations of us! Yes, we would be the guinea pigs and it would be a major pain trying to research God with this character sneaking up behind to apply double blindfolds, seemingly at random, as far as we could tell, and placebos. Nor were our fears unfounded. In hindsight, it seems beyond dispute that, when we showed up at the Judge First, Ask Questions Later religious convention wearing mismatched socks and sneakers, somehow deemed essential for his stupid research, the judges were so distracted that they completely overlooked our very worthy discoveries, namely, the Gospel of Howard and the Acts of the Pioneers. Some other clown, since recruited by the Institute, captured top billing for research on the exothermic nature of hell, research that has been embroiled in plagiarism controversy ever since.
On second thought, we’re all glad he’s gone.
Eliot Spitzer and the Garbage Plate
Hickey Freeman was not enough! Elliot Spitzer has selected another Rochester icon to usher in his inauguration day this Monday…the Garbage Plate. Seems when he was in Rochester his wife sampled this bit of local cuisine just after or before Mr. Spitzer bought his new suit, and decreed it must be on the Big Day Menu. If she ate the whole thing, she’s 20 pounds heavier now. A “gut-busting” local favorite, it’s a hot dog or hamburger under home fries, macaroni salad, baked beans and meat sauce. It’s a Rochester legend, as is Nick Tahou’s, the restaurant where it was invented.
When the old man (Nick) was alive there was just one restaurant, open 24 hours, in the rugged part of the city. Sheepandgoats worked in the suburbs during the B shift, and rubbed shoulders with all the suburban wannabe toughs who maintained that they were tough, and as proof, cited that they were not afraid to venture into the city, at night, to grab a Garbage Plate at Tahou’s! Of course, it wasn’t really that big of a deal. Sheepandgoats, who for many years lived in the city and consequently, to a mild degree is "streetwise", did not consider a nocturnal visit a test of manhood, but such was the reputation.
When our buddy Derrick ran the 5K race, he finished, more or less, last, but we were all proud of him on account of the effort. We went to celebrate at Nick Tahou’s ordering Garbage Plates all around. They needed cranes to get us out of there.
Mr. Spitzer’s new Hickey Freeman suit provides Rochesterians with an early warning of his intentions, but not necessarily his ability. Now the Garbage Plate has come to the rescue! If Mr. Spitzer wears his Hickey Freeman suit, which he said he would do, subject to assorted disclaimers of my previous post, and he eats 3 or 4 Garbage Plates, which he must do to make us happy in Rochester, and he does not slop any of it on his new suit, then he can do anything! Everything will indeed change, as he has promised, the only possible exception being his unspotted suit!
Spitzer watch here.
A tearjerker goodbye
To my Rosewood customers:
I have taken another delivery route, which fits in better with my circumstances, and so today is my last day on this route. Although it’s a bit sappy, I’ve gotten attached to “my people,” and the loyalist in me says not to quit this (or any other) assignment. Of course, life is not that way. Everything changes.
Your new carrier starts tomorrow. He will have two or three days training, but there is a learning curve. Help him out by calling in with any significant complaint, so he will have feedback. Of course, don’t nitpick.
Even though I will be somewhere else, when I draw up newsletters, they can be found at carriertom.typepad.com/our_carrier_tom As well as some other nonsense. And occasional pontificating.
Naturally, I will be continuing my education. A Batchelor of Science in Newspaper Transport Technology is not enough. I am pursuing a doctorate in the same subject. For my thesis I am developing a unique method of delivering papers via heat-seeking grenade launcher. All the customer need do is leave on a pilot light on the stove or furnace. Management loves the idea because it is more efficient and they will be able to sack half their workforce. Beta testing is going on at present and, until recently, looked very promising. Unfortunately, the Water Authority sent an early morning welding crew to repair a break in the area. No customers received a paper that day and three of the repair crew died of newspaper pummeling. I’m up to my ears in lawsuits now, but not to worry, the stockholders will bail me out.
Many of you have been very generous with your tips and kind words regarding my messages and cartoons. I am very grateful to you.
Stay well,
Carriertom
Elliot Spitzer's New Suit
You would think the Messiah was coming. “On Day One, Everything Changes!” pledged the campaign ads. Voters loved it, because it was Elliot Spitzer and he’d made a ruckus on Wall Street, sending some rich people to jail. He trounced what’s-his-name to become New York State governor. They swear him in January 1, amidst high expectations. But can he keep his promises?
Politicians don’t always keep promises and when they don’t you can’t necessarily conclude you‘ve been lied to, though that always possible. Sometimes, once in office, they learn new things that cause him to reflect how ridiculous their promise was in the first place, and so they change it. Or their heartfelt promise dies when they go toe to toe with some fathead who has promised just the opposite and there’s no guarantee your guy won’t get outmaneuvered. But with Mr. Spitzer, there is a canary in the coalmine, an easy-to-keep promise that will reassure us as to his future intentions. And it will actually happen “on day one.”
Just after winning, Mr. Spitzer visited Rochester, where Sheepandgoats lives. He met with the mayor, said some nice things, and toured Hickey Freeman. Hickey Freeman manufacturers men’s suits, expensive ones that are sold on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Rochester used to have a lot of such manufacturers, but they’ve all moved or gone belly-up. H-F updated their facility in the city’s depressed sector and stayed. We admire them. The state must do more to accommodate business, Spitzer said, and then he bought a new suit, and promised he’d wear it on inauguration day (Day One). Many heard him say it. It was in the newspaper.
So we’ll soon know. If he wears it, all is well. If he doesn’t….well then…like the Who…we got fooled again.
Of course, we must be careful not to quickly jump to conclusions if he doesn‘t wear it. Maybe he will spill taco sauce on it, just like I do on my suits, and so it will have to go to the dry cleaners who won’t get it back on time. Or maybe he will kiss a baby, the way politicians do, and that baby will puke on him. Indeed, at the Kingdom Hall, you can often spot a new Dad by the puke marks on his suit, but would you show up for inauguration like that? You would not. So Mr. Spitzer has some wiggle room.
Still, early signs are troubling. The Democrat and Chronicle’s staff writer Joseph Spector covered Mr. Spitzer’s Hickey-Freeman visit and reported he said (November 16th D&C issue) he’d wear the suit. But now I see a friendly blog from Andy [Spitzer’s Day One] who reports Spitzer said he will likely wear the suit! And the original D&C link is now dead.
Uh oh.
Xerox and Erasable Paper
Rochester’s own Xerox Corporation just came up with a great new invention: erasable paper, for those you-only-have-to-read-it-once messages. Within a day, the paper erases itself and you can reuse it! Thrilled, the cutesy Rochester Democrat and Chronicle used a fading headline to announce the innovation. No, they’re not going to sell it right now, it will take a few years to get to market. But when it does, just think of all the paper it will save!
There was a time when a more naïve Sheepandgoats would have lapped up every word of this hype, but no more. Weren’t PCs supposed to bring about this same huge paper saving? Yes they were, and, spurred on by anticipated savings, companies which once distributed documents only to those two or three who needed to see them instead sent an e-copy to every employee who could read, only to find that each recipient promptly printed out a hard copy.
And what about the internet? Wasn’t that also supposed to conserve paper? Alas, starry-eyed scientists discovered too late that there is no joke too asinine, no story too sappy, to not copy and paste and send to everyone in your address book, each of whom also must print a hard copy.
Sheepandgoats predicts that this invention too will squander paper, not save it. Exactly how he can’t yet say, he just has faith in man’s infinite capacity to screw things up. Perhaps, as with PCs, the new paper will spur ever more messages. Why not, since the cost is negligible? “So-and-so is going to the bathroom.” No announcement will be too trivial! Then, after messages have proliferated, some recipients will complain that they’ve missed some, since not everyone reads incoming drivel right away, but puts it aside till they get a minute, which may come days or weeks or months later. Missed messages! We can’t have that. The obvious solution: don’t use the newfangled stuff, but use good ‘ol chop-a-tree-down paper that doesn’t go belly up on you.
That’s not all. There‘s no end to potential abuses. Already, that lazy lout Tom Pearlsandswine has exploited the new technology, and its not even out yet. He bought a few reams of blank paper, distributed it via office mail to coworkers and supervisors alike, claimed to have done a ton of work, and, when informed he’d only sent blank sheets, blamed a defective beta version of the new erasable paper, which wiped out his work prematurely! But we’re all wise to that skunk by now. His incoming phone call was traced to the golf course.
Indeed, the only permanent customer Sheepandgoats can envision is the Impossible Mission Force, (IMF) which will use the new paper to give Tom Cruise his assignments.
Weapons of Math Instruction
Whereas religious experts are a dime a dozen at the Carriertom Into-Wishen Research Institute, there really is only one science and math authority: Tom Tombaugh. And even his credentials are modest: he claims to be a distant cousin of Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of disgraced wannabe planet Pluto. Nevertheless, he’s all we have, so if he doesn’t show, it really creates a void. Truth be known, Carriertom keeps Tombaugh around to counterbalance Tom Sheepandgoats, Tom Weedandwheat, Tom Wheatandweeds, and Tom Fishandchips - religious nuts who otherwise drive him up a tree.
The Institute had a recent staff meeting and Tombaugh didn’t show. Of course, Carriertom made a thorough search, only to find that he had been stopped at the border on his return trip from Krukordistan! A concurrent news headline told it all:
NEW YORK - A noted researcher for the prestigious Carriertom Into-Wishen Research Institute was arrested today at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule and a calculator.
At a morning press conference, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement.
He did not identify the man, who has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction. "Al-gebra is a problem for us," Gonzales said.
"They desire solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute values. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as ' unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.
Ah, well. So much for our science division
[the news report is not my writing. I wish it were. My best efforts to trace it led here, but in stripped form, it has been around even longer.]
New Digs for Carriertom
When prospective clients visit the Carriertom Into-Wishen Research Institute they are not impressed. They see the long folding tables covered with pizza cartons and sports pages, and they begin thinking they’ve stumbled into the Home Depot break room, not the office of a prestigious thinktank. Of course, our people are real smart. But to reel in the new business, they and their surroundings have to look smart.
That’s why the Carriertom Institute’s CEO, Carriertom, decided to do some extensive remodeling last year. Razzle-dazzle clients: that was the goal! Say goodbye to bargain wood paneling! Out to the curb with the moose head! Say hello to a sleek shiny showroom replete with smart touches: a chess set with fancy glass pieces, for example, to sit on the coffee table. Smart people do nothing but play chess. And other items:
A deluxe globe, so that visitors can see right off we’re no dopes who can’t locate Europe or Uranus on the map.
And of course, a prehistoric skull. Nobody here’s falling for that “Adam and Eve” rubbish. Let Tom Sheepandgoats of the Institute's religious wing cry all he wants. Business is business.
At this year’s annual meeting, participants were heartened by progress made to date. We commended the entire team, for they had all made sacrifices. For instance, you should have heard them scream when they thought they’d have to give up Yahtzee, Sorry, and Chutes and Ladders! And give it up for chess, no less, which is a hard game. But they jumped to conclusions! They can still play their favorites. Just in the back room, out of the public eye.
Purchasing a new globe, too, went without a hitch.
The only significant cost overrun involved the prehistoric skull, and ironically, it was occasioned by an effort to save money. Sometimes you should just pay up and be done with it. Our purchaser didn’t really buy his skull from an established scientific supply house, because they want…..well….an arm and a leg. But there was this fellow in an alley who offered a deal too good to pass up. Our man didn’t pass it up, but he should have. It turned out, his newly purchased skull wasn’t prehistoric at all, but belonged to a party in last year’s West Bogbottom triple axe homicide case. So not only were we out the skull, but the ensuing legal costs to beat an accessories charge were astronomical!
This killed the budget, and we thought we wouldn't be able to afford that necessary touch, stocking the Institute showroom floor-to-ceiling with fat books. (tomes) Smart people never speak on TV without tons of books behind them. Some of the staff offered to donate moose heads and antlers, but we knew these would not do. We’d just carted those things to the curb!
Ingenuity saved the day! They sell “book” wallpaper at WalMart for just a fraction of the cost of actually buying books. We grabbed a few rolls. Then, for 3-D effect, employees brought in old phone books. When you cover them with cloth dust jackets, they look impressive enough. We stack a few of these on the coffee table, between the globe and the chess set.
Now if we can just teach our staff to walk slo-mo, like they do on TV. That's cool!
