There are many wonderful things from the past that I really miss, like  drive-in movies and Hudson Hornets.  Today I would like to address the decline of the amusement park.  Now they all seem to be theme parks, slick soul -less fun factories designed to  offer a completely sterile, plastic experience in return for loads of dough.  Hell, I probably wouldn’t even pass the dress code to get into Disneyland, not that I would want to.  This blog is about one of my fondest memories, Willow Mills Park. 

It was a small park, only a few acres.  The roller coaster was modest, not real high and none of this upside-down stuff you get now.  But it was made of wood and it creaked and swayed in a most satisfactory manner.  I’ll never forget that “clank, clank, clank” as the car slowly went up the incline for the first drop–zoom!  Wow!

Much more sedate was the carousel.  It was a dandy–the horses were hand carved (and they weren’t all horse, there were unicorns and sea lions and dragons), and some of them went up and down.  Music was provided by an honest-to-God mechanical band which tootled and drummed and just generally made a wonderful sound.  What’s more, there were tantalizing artifacts of still another, earlier day–the carousel used to have one of the brass ring things–you know, grab the brass ring and win a free ride–that had gone by the wayside before I ever started going to the park, but the big wooden box shaped like a clown’s head was still in evidence (you threw the brass rings into the clown’s mouth).

The park also had a shooting gallery–a real one, with real rifles that fired .22 shorts.  (I don’t know if you can even get .22 shorts any more, it is a real puny cartridge, but still lethal at close range.)  I am sure the liability insurance trolls would never allow something like that to go on today, but it was great.  I loved hearing the sharp crack of the rifles, and the smell of cordite in the air.  Oh well–given that our society is infested with violent nut cases (many of whom hold high elective office), maybe it is just as well that shooting galleries have gone the way of the passenger pigeon.

My favorite ride was this affair  that looked sort of like a windmill with no vanes. Small airplanes were suspended from the top by cables, four or five of them spaced evenly.  At rest, they hung  closae to the building a few inches above the deck, located at about the heigth of the second floor on a normal building.  You’d get into the planes. the electric motor powering the porps would rev up and they would start moving.  As their speed and centrifical force increased the planes would swing out over the lake that the park was sited next to.

My second-favorite ride was the speedboat, a wonderful teak and brass Chris-Craft model, which they probably stopped making 40 years ago.  As it zoomed around the lake, it threw up sprays and left wakes that were, to eight-year-old eyes, of Biblical proportions.

But my very most favorite thing was the penny arcade.  There was one machine which vibrated your feet for 2 cents–very refreshing and invigorating.  There was an indoor shooting gallery thing with a rilfe that fired beams of light at a photocell on a mechanical bear–hit the cell, the bear would roar and wave its arms.  They had Skee-ball, too, and some other ways of winning tickets, which you would redeem for prizes.  Getting anything decent required about seventy gazillion tickets as I recall.  Then there were the vending machines–put two cents in and get a post-card sized ;icture of a jet plane or a sports car or a scantily clad lady.  I bet those cards are worth some bucks now. 

Hershey Park used to be great, until they screwed it up, themed it to death, and  ran the name into Hersheypark.  Stupid.  And they don’t even let you tour the chocolate factory any more, thanks again to the foul minions of the insurance industry and the greed of our litigious society.

I was telling Kathy this touching Xmas story out of the Phillipines , about how 200 dogs destined for the Xmas stewpot were rescued by authorities who detained  five miscreants at a checkpoint and confiscated the tail-wagging cargo of three vans.  Anyway, this led her to observe, perhaps tongue in cheek, that it sounded like someone’s religious freedom was being violated.  She added disingenously that this religious freedom stuff is only for certain religions, to which I replied, well, duh!  When the Pilgrims came over here, they didn’t give a shit about anyone else’s religous freedom.  No way, they were “Hey, we didn’t cross a fucking ocean and give up everything we had just to let some asshole worship a false fucking god on our dime.  We may be religious nuts, but we’re not crazy.”  For some reason, Kathy wanted me to post it.  So here you are, and Merry Xmas.

I am a bit of an Anglophile.  I was an English major in college, studied and acted Shakespeare in college, went to England on honeymoon in 1969 etc.  And despite the fact that there are those who say the Brits now are little more than a pathetic bunch of inbred butt-fuckers with bad teeth and no cooking worth eating, a bunch of Yahoos who are infatuated with their past, having a present that sucks and no future to speak of, still they have had some good ideas.  Like citrus to prevent scurvy.  And now and then, I read something that makes me think that maybe the “take up the white man’s burden”  bit was  not such a bad idea.

Take Swaziland.  Please.  This is a country of some 1.1 million souls, maybe the size of one of our less important states like Connecticut, and ruled (?) by the last for-real king in Africa.  This knucklehead had a national budget of $51 million.  There are massive famines in the country and half the people int he whole place are hungry.  So what does this addled African do?  He spends about $25 million on a fucking  private plane!  Is this nuts, or what?  Then again, politicians from time immemorial have lined their pockets and swelled their coffers at the expense of the common weal.  This poor ignorant slob, whose name I am not  bothering with because it looks like a typographical error, just hasn’t learned how to more discreetly fuck over the public.

Now for something completely different!  A blog from moi that is actually positive!  Yep, today I’m going to talk about things I like–foods, products, companies, and especially knives.  So you may find a helpful consumer hint or two herein.

Frozen foods:  Plush Pippin brand frozen apple pies are wonderful!  Brush an egg glaze on the crust, stick it in the oven, and prepare yourself for the best apple pie you ever tasted (or second best, if you are lucky enough to live with a prize-winning cook).  It is way better than Sara Lee or Mrs. Smith.

Then there is Coca-Cola.  After all these years, I still think it is the best sody pop on the planet. (Vernor’s Ginger Ale used to be better, but they ruined it when they went national–when you could only get it in western Pennsylvania, it was sublime.) It has a crisp clean taste that has stood the test of time and fended off pretenders like New Coke. (When that stuff came on the market, I stockpiled the good stuff–at one point, I had six cases of cans and a couple dozen liters in plastic.)  It was probably even better back in the halcyon days when it contained cocaine, but what the heck, it’s still the best.

Car insurance:  Thank God for Geico.  I have no idea how their service, but their rates are the best.  I hate mandatory car insurance.  Our cars put together are probably worth less than the collision deductible many people have on theirs.  Geico at least lets us drive legally, unlike most everyone else I know out here.

Knives:  I love Swiss army knives.  Here is the inside scoop on them.  There are two companies that supply knives to the Swiss army, Victorinox and Wenger.  Victorinox was first by a few years, but Wenger knives tend to be more innovative and better engineered, especially the scissors (Victorinox uses a spring that always breaks; Wenger uses a torsion bar that doesn’t) and the can opener blade.

You want a really good mid-price knife, look for ones made by CRKT, the Columbia River Knife and Tool company.  You may have never heard of them as they do no mass market advertising that I am aware of.  Their Mirage and S-2 models have been discontinued and if you can find them, you should be able to get a great deal.

For low-end knives that are decent (by low-end, I mean around $20 or so), you can’t beat Master Cutlery/Jaguar.  They have extremely innovative designs, plus they aren’t above making good copies of more expensive knives.  They also make some of the most outrageous fantasy knives around.  Beware of outrageous mark-ups, however–I recently saw a knife that wholesales for less than $8 for sale at a pawnshop for $40.  Don’t ever buy a knife at a pawnshop unless you are a very experienced collector.

Next:  I dunno.  Maybe more of the usual vile bile, maybe not.

I hate Wal-Mart.  It is one of the last bastions of corporate paternalism, it is a company that unabashedly endorses greed and cut-throat marketing, and it grossly exploits its workers.  Some time ago, Wal-Mart got some deservedly bad press when it came out that the company was buyinh term life insurance on its employes, but not telling them.  Cute–they don’t let their workers have union health benefits, then they profit when their workers die.  Yea verily, Wal-Mart sucks big time.

Another thing  I hate about Wal-Mart is the insensitivity and utter hypocrisy of one of their feel-good corporate ads.  You may have seen it, this stupid looking cartoon character zooming around the store and lowering prices, accompanied by a bouncy and strangely familiar tune.  The tune is “Workin in the Coal Mines,” a song protesting workers’ exploitation.

Wal-mart was in Rotten news twice today–in an editorial comment, the Rotten folks said they hadn’t planned it, it’s just that Wal-Mart is so evil.  One store threatened to file criminal charges against an employe–her heinous crime?  She’s a volunteer firefighter, and used her employe discount to buy about $1000 in toys for her fire company to raffle off.  Hey, nice community spirit, you Wal-Mart assholes.  In the other story, a nice upper-middle class woman (her hubby’s a doc) dropped off a roll of film to be developed, and the store assholes called the police.  Why?  Seems there  was a snapshot of her 3-year old’s bare bottom.  Horrors!  Wal-Mart, you can go straight  to hell.

(And yes, I do hold my nose and shop there, even though I am one of the small retailers Wal-Mart has vowed to wipe out.  Oh, and one more thing–don’t look for a Spyderco knife at Wal-Mart–they violated so many Fair Trade agreements that Spyderco no longer does business with the bastards.)

Every now and then, a politician accidentally tells the truth and gets in trouble for it.  Case in point: Trent Lott.  In case you managed to miss it, the pinhead in question was at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party and gave a ringing endorsement  to Thurmond’s 1948 presidential race–Strom had one plank in his platform–segregation.  Lott said that he was proud to have voted for Strom and proud that he carried the great and enlightened state of Mississippi.  Of course he carried the state, the assholes who ran the state wouldn’t let black people vote.

Now I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid.  I realize full well that Amerika is a rascist society.  Heck, I’m more or less rascist myself–as a half-breed Indian, I loath and despise white folks in general.  And when I’m runing my stand, I tend to give warmer greetings to non-whites than to whites.  (Except for Indians from India.  That is a totally fucked-up country, they tend to be pains in the ass as customers since they come from a culture where dickering is the norm, and I think they are probably the  ugliest bunch of people on the planet.  Lank black hair, shit-color skin, livery lips. . . yuk.  But I digress.)  And I am always a tad surprised and saddened when the non-whites act as stupid and non-evolved as the whites.  Sure, that is irrational–there is nothing rational about rascism.

But what really prompted me to write this was a little story in the paper today.  From time to time, I read about scientific studies which prove what anyone with two brain cells to rub together could figure out.  Like the study that showed that rich white men were the happiest demographic group in the country.  Well, duh!  Another recent study indicated (shock!) that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  Still another study has come out which showed that black folks were (gasp!) discriminated against when being considered for entry-level jobs.

The study worked like this.  They sent out a bunch of fake resumes to potential hirers.  Some had white-sounding names, some had black–everything else was  equal: education, age, and so forth.  The resumes with white names were much more likely to be called in for interviews than those with black names.  That was true for the males, there wasn’t much difference with the females.

Which brings me to another thing I wonder about.  What is it with black folks and naming their kids with names that look like typographical errors?  I used to think it was because they were just illiterate, or maybe under the influence when they names their kids, but Kathy (SuSu) tells me they do this deliberately.  It seems counter-productive to me.  Someday, when Amerika is no longer rascist, names and skin color will not matter.  But I do not think there is a chinaman’s chance of that happening.

I’ve been thinking about security lately.  By many standards, we don’t have much.  After all, we have no health insurance, no life insurance, no homeowners’, and no collision on our cars, only the state-required extorted minimum.  Being self-employed, I have no real idea how much I might be making in any given period–I earned maybe $50 so far this month, may earn nothing more the rest of the month.  Still, I now feel more secure than I ever have, even back when I had a cushy gummint job and more money than I knew what to do with (I mostly pissed it away–like one weekend with nothing else to do, I flew to Iceland.)  Why?

For one thing, Kathy and I own three dwellings (humble but pretty much fit for human habitation) and a couple acres of land, so I know that I will pretty much always have a place to stay.  We have a pantry full of canned goods and several cords of firewood in the yard.  Then there’s domestic security.

I kinda snicker when I see a show set in a big city and people have deadbolt locls on their doors.  We do not have a lock on our front door.  Lock?  Hell, we don’t even have a doorknob, just an old tea towel stuffed into the doorknob hole.  One of our cats can open the door, for Pete’s sake. (She never shuts it properly, however.)

Thing is, there is almost always someone here and awake.  If anyone could magically get into our yard or in the house without our dog Koji giving us plenty of warning, the foolish hypothetical intruder would have to deal with 70+ pounds of very protective doberman/husky/whatever.  Anyone who survived the dog would next face Kathy or Doug, who would be armed with a .357 magnum or a 12-guage shotgun.  Anyone who got past them would finally face me–I’m the guy with the .44 magnum loaded with 300-grain Hornady copper-jacketed hollowpoints.

Another nice thing security-wise, is  that there is very little traffic here (except for summer, of course, when we get a few tourists wandering around).  As a rule, only two vehicles go by and we can distinguish them by the sound.  Just to give you an idea of how sparse it is out here, there are exactly  7 businesses within an 8-mile radius of home.  That works out very roughly to one business per 30 square miles.  We consider the owners to be neighbors and friends, for the most part, now that the carpetbaggers from Colorado sold out.

The general store in Talkeetna has a sign that says that one of the nice things about living in a small town is that if you don’t know what you ought to be doing, someone will.  I might add it also means you never have to bother with turn signals when driving, since everyone who sees you will know where you’re going.  More than that, there is the small-town security of knowing that if you get in a jam, someone will be there to help you.

One of the bumper stickers on my car says “they’re lying.”  Sometimes people see it and ask me who “they” are.  I reply, pretty much everyone.  The latest liars are Big Pharm.  It seems that back in 1997, the feds let drug makers advertise directly to consumers on TV.  Now a significant number of people are telling their doctors what to prescribe to them.  I’m not sure that is such a good idea, being that most people are pretty stupid, probably somewhat more stupid than the average M.D.  Even so, this might not be so bad, except that the druggies are lying in their commercials.  So far, the feds have cited Schering, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, and Pfizer for lying through their corporate teeth about the efficacy and/or side effects of their products.

The feds say the ads are “misleading.”  I say they are lies, damned lies.  Is the gummint doing anything about it?  Oh yeah–they recently changed the rules so that it would take a whole lot longer to nail these lying bastards than it used to.  As a result, big corrupt drug companies can advertise any kind of lies and fantasy they want to, serene in the knowledge that by the time the feds try to make them stop lying, the ad campaign will have already run its course.