Bargains? When Did This Stuff Get So Expensive?

When I was a kid it fascinated me to hear parents and grandparents lament the cost of most everything.   It seemed as if these stories of complete dinners costing $1.49, homes less than $5,000 and cars being driven off showroom floors for hundreds not thousands of dollars were pure apocrypha.  Never would I be caught complaining of the bargains "in my day" to whipper snappers in my future.

Well, here I am with seventy years of road behind me and almost daily the cost comparisons of what seem like only a few years ago and today slap me upside my old grey head.  Some prices appear to be in line and a few items--if memory serves--have become real bargains.  Clothing, for example, seems reasonable.  No doubt this is because most of what we wear is manufactured in international backwaters where labor is cheap.  On the other hand I do believe most of us who have attained "senior" status find that cars and hotel/motel rooms loom large in the "when did they get so expensive?" department.  My first house cost $27,500 in 1973 and today that won't snag a halfway decent car.  Of course automobiles today are light years superior in all respects when compared to 1973 tin .  Motels and hotels?  Debatable.

Motel $50

Motel 6 was Motel 6 because it cost $6 to stay there in 1962 when the first one opened in Santa Barbara, California.  That works out to roughly $50 in today's dollars and for whatever reason that doesn't appear to make sense.  Depending on where you are, the average bill for a motel or hotel with the basic amenities (see indoor plumbing) runs around $100 per night today.  Naturally cities like New York and L.A. are considerably higher and destinations such as Cat's Ass, Nebraska, Frozen Monkey, Montana and Cain't Read, Kentucky far less.

It's mere conjecture on my part but I do believe, because we largely travel by air these days, that hotels get more of our business than motels.  Motels hark back to the days when the only kind of trip most of us took was by car as we traveled to see relatives or to maybe to get to a vacation destination.  In rural and small town America there were many mom and pop motels along the main roads that often advertised their free TV (black & white) and magic finger beds that, for a quarter, would massage away your road weariness.  

"Look kids!  This motel even has a playground!"

Car travel with my parents was always contentious.  My father insisted on "making good time" and wanted only to stop for gas.  Mom, on the other hand, preferred a leisurely journey and wanted to stop frequently for meals and potty breaks.  She would grumble as she made and packed sandwiches for the cooler dad would jam into the backseat to separate my brother and me.  The fights over snacks and sandwiches between the two of us invited threats to pull over and "fix" the problem by the man in the driver's seat however "making time" was paramount.  He kept his foot on the accelerator, fired up another Camel and rolled on.  As the sun began to set there were increasingly insistent requests from mom to find a "nice motel" for the night.  Dad would turn up the ballgame and flick on the headlights as he said, "Don't worry.  We'll find a nice place soon...a really nice place."  Mom would point out that there were more and more NO VACANCY lights coming to life as we passed another motel.  I always knew we were in trouble when dad started paying attention to potential places to stay with a worried look on his face but, by then, it was usually too late.  We'd wind up at some motel that had a broken Coke machine, rusted metal lawn chairs in front of every room or, worse yet, consisting of some rustic "cabins" that hadn't been refurbished since the Truman administration.  Dad would always try to punch it up by pointing out how good the beds looked and how lucky we were to have that "sanitized for your protection" strip deployed over the toilet seat and bathroom glasses that were wrapped in some kind of paper.  Mom bought none of it and would give him the death stare until mercifully sleep overcame us all.  Well, most all of us...

I wonder if there are still any sandwiches left in the cooler?  If Steve snagged the last one he's getting clobbered!

"Hey, this one has a vacancy.  We made good time! Great price too."

Buy Ya Books, And Buy Ya Books...

(the following is a re-post from Father's Day 2017)

"Act like a man!"
"Act like you mean it!"
"You did a half way job!"
"Don't take a lazy man's load!"
"Buy ya books and buy ya books and STILL you don't remember."

I heard those admonitions from my dad throughout the years I remained under his roof.  Did I listen? Of course not.  I had to learn everything from experience or "the hard way" as he often reminded me. The truth is I learned almost NOTHING before messing up at least a couple of times and have remained a semi dunce for most of my life.  Fortunately for me there was a future in broadcasting, a natural destination for those of us who prefer to hang at the corner of Lazy and Stupid.

Dad's was a thankless job.  He raised a couple of goofball sons who resented nearly all of his good advice for, no doubt, the same reasons he probably failed to heed the guidance of his own father.  It's testosterone poisoning.  Young men are so completely full of themselves they become their own worst enemy.  That's why good fathers were invented.  Lucky lads have a dad with the grit and manners to prevent their spawn from going off course and into the ditch of life.  It's love designed to save a boy from the extensive pummeling the world is waiting to administer.  (see ass kicking)

Like most of the Greatest Generation, my dad came home from "the big war" ready for some peace and a slice of the American dream.  He and his tribe were exhausted by the cosmic hand they had been dealt by the Depression and World War II and naturally wanted their sons and daughters to have the peaceful and happy lives that they themselves had thus far been denied.  Of course we Boomers didn't appreciate any of this sacrifice at the time.  Nope, we, for the most part, thought them incredibly un-hip and square.  Rules?? We couldn't live by their rules!

What's the old saying?  "Too soon old; too late smart?"  I'm sure that if you look it up there is a picture of me and my brother right next to the definition.  Neither of us appreciated the tough love meted out by the old man until, well, after he was gone.  He died when we were both well into adulthood and, though it was never openly acknowledged, both of us had the impression that in his final days our dad was fairly well satisfied with how we turned out.  We weren't in prison and we weren't hitting him up for money.

This Sunday, Father's Day, would have been dad's 100th birthday.  (It was always convenient that his birthday fell either on or close to Father's Day as it meant only one card and gift.)  He lasted most of his 76th year which, frankly, seemed a whole lot greater an accomplishment in 1995 than it does now that I am 70.  Naturally I wish he were still around to thank him for his good advice and guidance; also for not killing me when nine out of ten juries would have acquitted him if he had.  He was a good man and an excellent father.

Though we never said things like, "I love you", I often think about the final words my father said to me.  My wife and I were leaving my parents home in Illinois heading for the airport in St. Louis and a return to our San Diego home.  Suddenly dad, who was suffering from a host of maladies including dementia, walked over to our rental car to apologize for not recognizing me on several occasions during our stay.  Through the haze of Alzheimer's he said, "Sorry I didn't know who you were.  You looked just like a man."  I told him not to worry about it.  A simple "I love you too dad" would have been the better and more honest reply.  To be "a man" was always the highest goal he set for his boys.  Achieve that and the rest would take care of itself.  I'd like to think that with this farewell he was telling me that at age 47 I had finally gotten there.  It sure felt like the best thing he ever said to me.  Years later I recall his words when my natural inclinations tempt me to default to the mode of immature and irresponsible.  Being a dad is easy but being a good one is a job for a man like he was.  Somewhere I hope he knows that I think he did a good job.

Stop The Insanity, I'm Buying...

Former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindel recently penned a Wall Street Journal opinion piece suggesting that, like smoking, alcohol should be banned from all commercial airline flights.  His thesis being that drinking passengers cause most of the unfortunate airborne incidents that seem to grow more prevalent by the day.

I beg to differ!  What's the rule for pilots? As I recall it's "twelve hours from bottle to throttle" demanded by the FAA for the men and women who fly today's Greyhound buses of the air.   Although I'm fairly certain that a full bar in the cockpit might alleviate some of the tedium, it's probably a good idea for someone to be sober enough to find the correct airport when fuel is low and it's time to land. (Make it O'Douls for breakfast flight crew!  Don't worry, you'll pee just as much.)  For the rest of us trapped in too small seats with too little air the humane thing would be to provide an open complimentary full-tilt boogie "all you can drink" BAR.  It's the least the pirates of the sky can do after we've been forced marched through TSA check points (Thanks terrorists!) and the colossal cluster f*&k  referred to as "the boarding process."  "Here, let me help you cram that refrigerator into the overhead bin you moronic old moon bat."

I'm senior enough to remember when flying was kind of fun.  People dressed up to take a flight and--I know this is unbelievable--CHECKED their bags, walked onto the plane and settled in to a seat wide enough for the admittedly smaller American ass of yore and enjoyed a nice ride to Dysfunction, Ohio or wherever the "friendly skies" were bound.  These days the typical traveler looks like they were busy power washing the garage and said, "Screw it, I think I'll fly to Buffalo."  They also are sporting the ever expanding "orca sized" American butt now responsible for sinking boats on the water rides at Disneyland and Disney World.  (True! Look it up.)  It was props instead of jets in the good old days but you had plenty of room, were fed actual meals, other passengers were acquainted with bathing and the wobble water was free flowing.  Often I found myself not caring who landed the plane but who was going to land me.

Wait a minute!!  I just had a horrible thought.  What if this jug headed Jindel proposal got some traction?  You could at some point find yourself stuck between two wide-load losers with no means of escape!  As the late author Jim Harrison once opined, "there is no nastier experience than being trapped between two bores with an empty glass." The man was pure genius.

Next stop, Dysfunction, Ohio

It's bad enough that political correctness--a commie invention all the way--has taken the scalp of humor and honesty.  We can NOT EVER let the fun police take away our right to fly the freak flag at thirty-thousand feet.  Bobby Jindel and his nitwit no booze on airplanes ideas must be fitted for cement shoes and drowned in a vat of Gentleman Jack and pronto.  Now, if you'll excuse me, the drink cart is coming and I'm prepared to take out the two fat guys between me an sweet airborne oblivion.  Make way for Maker's Mark!

Don't Worry, It's Not YOUR Fault!

(This is a re-post from June 2013.)

Thank God!  It's not my fault.  That adipose tissue orbiting my equator is the product  of a DISEASE according to the nation's largest physician organization.  Obesity is now officially NOT YOUR FAULT!  See your doctor and let the American Medical Association assume the guilt, but save some for your parents.  As we all know, parents are responsible for just about every problem life tosses our way

Looks like it needs mayo.

I couldn't help noticing the curiously juxtaposed story about doctors declaring yet one more modern problem a "disease" as I opened the paper a couple of mornings ago.  There was the report of actor James Gandolfini, TV's Tony Soprano, dying of heart failure after eating a whopping big meal of fried foods and copious amounts of booze while he vacationed in Italy.  It was just above the story of the AMA's declaration proclaiming gluttony as an illness.  REALLY??

Is there nothing to save us from ourselves?  Who is going to prevent us from picking up that double-decker ham sandwich?  No way to make us simply drop that fork, pass on the pie, and put the ice cream back in the refrigerator?  It must be that damn disease talking!

How did we get from a society that took on the responsibility of saving the world from Hitler, Tojo, and a variety of nut jobs in the Kremlin to one that can't wait to point the finger toward any vice, foible or offense and say, "Not my fault."  Everybody is a victim.  We no longer control our own destiny.  Maybe I'm being judgmental, but I can't help it.  It's my parents' fault, damn it!

I'm no doctor, but I play one on this blog and it is my considered opinion that a disease is an illness you are born with or contract by accident and cannot control.  Drinking too much and eating too much are physical and psychological addictions that can be overcome through something we used to call willpower.  When we want to look and feel our best it is within our abilities to simply put down the glass or knife and fork and get "WELL".

In the words of Dean Wormer:  "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son."  If our doctors are no longer willing to call us "Tubby" who is going to stand between us and that plate of fries?

Oh, who cares!  Is the crash cart ready?  I'm goin' in!

Help yourself.  It's a disease!

But Wait, There's More...

I guess it shouldn't have surprised me to hear from a few of you with additions to last week's observations regarding the major gulfs in behavior between the sexes. Being fresh out of ideas for a new rant and in the mood for a three day weekend, here are some of your contributions to the battle of the sexes.  To protect the guilty, confidentiality is paramount.

-Women recall every infraction ever committed by a boyfriend or husband.  It can be ten or twenty years in the past but a woman can pull it out of her quiver of "gotcha" and wield it like a machete.  "My mother heard you call her an old bitch under your breath on Christmas Eve 1988!  Don't deny it!" Never mind that it's 2018 and she's upset about you inviting some pals over to shoot pool and they maybe spilled beer on the new carpet.

-Men go to see a doctor only after they've noticed that the left side of their body has been numb for about three weeks or that they have been seeing double for a month and no longer like the taste of whiskey.  Women are on the blower to a sawbones if they have a hangnail or if they think they might be getting a zit.

-Women cannot swear.  Oh, they can but, as Mark Twain once remarked, "the words are there but the music is missing."  Men on the other hand begin practicing their "Dad" words early and become quite proficient and articulate as they form taboo vowels and consonants around the bar of soap mom has popped into their offending maw.  Practice makes &%$(*# perfect!

-Men, when explaining who someone is, will go to boring lengths to tell you that "Joe is the guy from the hardware store who has red hair and an overbite.  You met him at the Henderson's picnic."  Whereas a woman uses only the first names of people a man has either never been in the same zip code with or maybe met once 15 years ago while inebriated and wishes he hadn't.  If you're male it's important to nod frequently and just let her talk.  It'll never make sense anyway.

-Great vacations for men involve fishing, hunting, boating or a ball game and a chance to take a little respite from all that shaving and other hygiene.  The gals want a suite at Four Seasons and daily sessions at the spa.

-While watching an old movie on television, in the interest of edification, a guy will go to great lengths explaining that a certain character actor was in over two-hundred films and once had a fling with Doris Day, suffered from IBS and died drunk and broke.  A woman will say, "Shhhh, please be quiet.  I'm trying to watch this!"

-Men don't know where the hamper is and women conspire to never ever gas up the car.


 -Women understand that opportunity knocks once.  For men, temptation leans on the doorbell.

Have a great holiday weekend boys and girls.

The Difference Between Men and Women...

A while back a friend of mine posited that women are crazy because men are stupid.  Care to guess the gender of the person who laid down that philosophical nugget?  I guess it all depends on your definitions of both "crazy" and "stupid".  It did seem a little CRAZY to me.  But what do I know? I'm on team stupid!

Let's consider some of the evidence:

-If an invitation to a social gathering states that dress is "casual", a woman will fuss for hours in an attempt to come up with the cutest most perfect "outfit" for the event.  Her clothes will actually look stylish.  With no guidance, a man will arrive in the same duds he wore that afternoon to wash the dog.

-If lost, a woman will not hesitate to ask for directions.  A man NEVER asks for directions!  It simply isn't done!  Of course women don't understand that men have a built in compass and gyroscope enabling us to always get to our destination...eventually.  Women have become so distrustful of this innate ability that they have conspired with car manufacturers to install a disembodied female voice inside the dash of most new cars.  "At your earliest convenience perform a legal U turn and point your stupid ass in the other direction!"  (pure evil)

-Women know how to pack for a trip.  A guy will load snacks, some old National Lampoons, a couple of t-shirts and some blended whiskey cleverly disguised as Listerine into his suitcase but forget underwear, a toothbrush and his razor.  (I'll give you gals this one.)

-Females of all ages will go grocery shopping with a list.  A male goes grocery shopping listless and sporting an appetite.  Come on ladies, where's your sense of adventure??

-Women travel light when it comes to cash.  They never seem to have any long green on their person. A fella will not leave home without some real dough in his pocket as it's impossible to determine when the opportunity to get a bet down, roll some dice or buy a round for some degenerate pals may arise.

-At the end of the day women hang up their clothes; men shed their attire on the way to bed.  Following discarded clothing all the way to the bathroom the next morning saves time and energy, not to mention offering the chance to see if the discarded duds can pass the sniff test and be pressed into another day of service.  (This is bottom line thinking at its finest.)

-Women remember birthdays, anniversaries and the ages of their children.  Men aren't certain that they have children let alone know how old they are, but they do know that Mickey Mantle had a .298 lifetime batting average.

-Women like soup.  All guys know that soup is a beverage and never a meal.  It's also always too hot for human consumption.  Soup is promoted to boys by their mothers who promise toasted cheese sandwiches in return for ingesting tomato or chicken noodle soup.  We have never been fooled by this  and try to avoid guzzling soups of all kinds once out of mom's striking range.

-

NOT a food, soup is a beverage.  May be improved with vodka.

It is becoming apparent as I begin to sort through these very real differences between the sexes that we may have only begun to scratch the surface of this problem.  Perhaps it's even stupid of me to try to reconcile this vast gulf in attitude and performance.  Maybe some real food (no soup) will help?  Yes, that's the ticket!  Some steak should enhance my thinking.  I don't suffer from stupidity.  I'm enjoying every minute of it.  We guys may be morons but our food is far better, our lives simpler and we kind of enjoy being the catalyst for crazy.  Viva la Y chromosome!

Real guy food.  Just say NO to soup.

Thanks Mom...

For some unknown reason I have trouble remembering the date my mother departed this planet.  I often resort to getting out the memorial card from her funeral that is stashed in a cubby of my roll top desk.   I also am stumped for a logical explanation for my few musings about our relationship.  She was a great mother and of course I loved her.  Maybe it's because she was always there and unfailingly helpful in seeing me through my formative years, especially the teens, when dad wanted to kill me.  I can't begin to count the number of times she would meet him in the garage to soften him up before hitting him with my or my brother's latest shenanigans.  Don't get me wrong, he was a good father who merely wanted to keep his sons from the natural male inclination for boneheaded choices designed to put us on the fast track to prison.

With Mother's Day approaching I have begun to recall some of the times she went to bat for me.  When I was in kindergarten I developed the habit of fleeing  school whenever the teacher let the class out for recess.  I would head for the school playground with the other kids, then with a quick look over my shoulder would cut through the teachers parking lot and make my escape.  Our house was only a few blocks from school but my getaway required me to cross a city street and cut through a park before dashing across U.S. 127 to get to my hideout behind our garage.  My plan was weak in that telling time was not yet in my skill set thus requiring me to show up at our front door only when I thought school was out.  My plan worked flawlessly for a couple of weeks until one day our class was sent to recess almost immediately after roll had been taken.  The teacher was a major dingbat and had wanted the time to get herself organized for the day.  (The fact that for a little over two weeks she had failed to notice that I never returned from recess speaks volumes.)  I showed up at home before my dad had even left for work.  Busted!  Luckily mom was there to calm the situation.  After sending dad on his way to work she returned me to school where we met with the principal and succeeded in getting me placed in an afternoon class with a teacher who invariably conducted a post recess count.  Nice save mom!

There were to be many scrapes and broken rules on my way to being 18 and mom was always there to cool down the situation.  Her work was solid unless I had done something so horrific that she began to cry when trying to defuse the situation.  If the damn broke I knew dad's belt was coming off and my ass would soon be warm.  Dad would always preface my tanning with "You made your mother cry!  Shame on you!"  Of course he knew that he was in for a zero fun evening when the tears came and, after a hard days work,  there was a little extra zip in his spanking delivery.  Breaking windows with my pal Phil Brown, getting caught with smokes, cutting clothes lines with my new knife, sneaking the car keys to drive the car when I was eight and sampling dad's whiskey were just a few highlights in my body of work when mom failed to save me.  All of this before age 13! Nonetheless, she tried.   She would always tell me post spankings that my dad was really a nice guy and that I should talk to him more and try to get to know him.  Of course she was right but I remained pig-headed until I became a father myself.  At that point I wanted to give him a medal.

Mom has been gone now for nearly seven years.  She died just a couple of weeks shy of her 90th birthday and, sadly, because of dementia, was not really herself at the end.  I think of her frequently and she has even begun to make a few cameos in my dreams, always wearing the green dress I thought so beautiful when I was small.  She was a wonderful mom who no doubt deserved  more well behaved sons.  I hope she's been busy softening up dad for me.  My brother is on his own.