Snake in the Dryer Vent

      No, not a real live snake.  Settle down.  No need to shiver and get the chills.

     It is a  sewer-cleaning snake. 

     The story goes back a few years.  (Hard to believe, but we are coming up on ten years of living in this house.)

     The washer and dryer are in the basement.  The dryer vent runs up inside a wall, takes a turn, or maybe two, and between floor and ceiling, heads to the outdoors.  The horizontal section of the metal vent pipe is at least twenty feet.

     Every year, as farm activities slow down, I think, “I’ll clean that dryer vent pipe this fall or winter.”  This spring, I really did go after the lint in that vent pipe.  I think a lot of house fires start when lint, highly flammable, builds up in the pipe and some malfunction of the dryer allows it to keep running and heating even after the clothes are dry.

      Under ordinary circumstances, the lint is so wet you couldn’t ignite it with a torch.  But when it is dry, it makes a good fire-starter.  Try using some to start the blaze in your fireplace or wood stove.

      Anyway, I moved the cabinet nestled between the washer and dryer.  I moved the dryer away from the wall so I could get to the flexible connection from dryer to vent pipe.  No easy task, since the dryer is "two-story." There was plenty of lint in the flexible pipe.  It was easy to use a rag to remove the lint from it.

     Now for the metal pipe disappearing into the basement wall.  A drain-cleaning sewer snake would be perfect, at least so I thought.  I tied a rag to the little coil spring on the tip of the snake and ran it into the pipe. 

      It was sort of successful.  I got a lot of lint out.  My idea was to run the snake all the way through the pipe, tie a rope to the end of the snake and pull it with the rope in tow back through the pipe.

     Problem:  the snake is only fifteen feet long.  It was then I calculated the length of the vent pipe.  It must be between twenty and thirty feet long.  Revise the plan.  I had to go from both directions, from the outside termination of the pipe as well as the from the dryer side. 

     If it was indeed thirty feet of pipe, the fifteen-foot snake should cover the entire length.  To gain access to the vent pipe from outside, I had to remove the metal, hooded flapper mechanism. Worthless flapper, I should add, because the flapper valve never closes after a little lint gets into the hinge side.   The idea is for the flapper to close when the dryer is not running.  Once the lint gets into its hinge, the flapper never closes.

     It took a little effort to get rid of the flapper assembly.  Screwed to the exterior wall and a rather tight fit, it came out reluctantly.  I ran the snake and rag as far into the pipe as I could from the outside.  I got some lint out, but it wasn’t satisfactory.  I needed a longer snake.

     I didn’t want to buy one, so I went to Home Depot where the only light snakes were electric powered ones that look like an electric drill attached to a sewer snake.  It was $30 for 4 hours to rent it.

     I had another snake at the farm.  No need to rent one.  I bought a plastic dryer vent termination assembly which is much more efficient than the metal one.  The plastic one has three little flappers that aren’t too badly affected  by the lint, and they are easy to clean if they do get stuck open.

      It was a bit of a problem to get the plastic one through the wall and connected to the metal pipe because the metal pipe had no support and sagged when I removed the old flapper assembly.  I got it in temporarily and resolved to finish the job after the next trip to the farm.

     All was well for a few cycles of the dryer.  But one day, the dryer ran and ran and ran.  I opened the door.  The clothes were still quite wet.  Hmmmm.  Did we need a new dryer?

    I went outside and discovered that there was virtually no air coming through the vent pipe when the dryer was running.  Back down the stairs, I pulled the flexible pipe off the metal vent pipe, and the warm wet air gushed out.  I left the dryer run with the hot air venting into the laundry room.  In about fifteen minutes, the clothes were dry.

     Conclusion:  nothing wrong with the dryer.   My cleaning attempt had had the opposite effect; it plugged up the vent pipe so that no air could get through it.

     I didn’t have a shop vac, but that was my first idea.  Stick a hose in there and see if I could remove any of the lint that way. 

     We do have a central vac in the garage that has never been hooked up.  It seems to have been used to vacuum vehicles and the garage floor once in a while.  It has a twenty-foot hose.  It wouldn’t reach the dryer vent.  I took the hoses from the central vac and hooked it to the Kenmore vac and ran it as far into the pipe as I could.

     It sort of worked.  The vacuum hose would grab a slug of lint and plug up.  I would pull the hose out, unplug it and repeat the operation.  I eventually had a trash bag full of lint.  And the dryer worked a little better, but the air flow wasn’t as robust as it should have been.

      I still needed something to go through the entire length of the vent pipe.  I had remembered to bring the other sewer snake from the farm by this time. Attempts to connect the two snakes together by sticking one in from the basement and the other into the outside opening were unsuccessful.

     And now, the problem.  I decided I should hook the two snakes together and try driving them in that way.  I should be able to get all the way through the vent pipe with the two hooked together.  You have probably already figure out what happened.

     My connection was a dismal failure.  I got one snake about twenty feet in, it got stuck.  When I tried to pull it back, my feeble connection broke and about five feet of the second snake came tumbling down out of the vertical section of vent pipe. 

      The other snake has taken up lodgings in the dryer vent pipe.  It remains.  Attempts to remove it from either end of the vent pipe have been unsuccessful.

     I returned to the vacuum cleaner.  This time, I ran the dryer on air flow—no heat--while I ran the vacuum hose into the vent as far as I could from the outside.  Using that and the sewer cleaner, I managed to remove a bushel, no exaggeration, of lint.

      When the vacuum came up empty, I ran the snake in there and snagged big chunks of sopping wet lint.  Not much danger of fire, unless it fermented! 

     Alternating vacuum and snake, I succeeded.

     Unless you consider the resident snake in the vent pipe. 

     The first load of clothes that went into the dryer got dry in record time.  So it wasn’t only a safety issue.  It was a step for energy efficiency.  When I get my report from the power company, maybe my electric usage will be closer to my energy-efficient neighbors.  (Except I’ve had to run the air conditioner more this year than ever before, but that’s another story.)
     Brother John suggested attaching a leaf blower to the vent pipe.  That makes a lot more sense, but I don’t have a leaf blower.  I could rent one but . . . . .

     I will have to try to get the snake out of the dryer vent  someday, but for now, I’m content with “let sleeping snakes lie,” or something like that.      

Living With Dementia II – Lost & Found

 

            There it was, right on the dog’s bib. 

 

      Not too long after getting the ID bracelet, it went missing.  Not surprising.  Things go missing all the time.  Peanut butter jar found in the dishwasher.  Underwear in the trash can. 

     For a person who has always believed in, “a place for everything and everything in its place,” and for whom “Look for it!” is inflammatory,  it has been a tough time.  Nothing gets put in its place.

     But I am learning.  I must have multiple items.  Can’t find it?  Get another.  The lost one will eventually turn up.  About a year ago, I couldn’t find the dandruff-preventing shampoo.  I looked and looked. 

      On a visit several weeks later, Tisha came upstairs carrying the shampoo.  Where did she find it?  In a basement closet full of sewing and quilting material and other junk.

     Conventional wisdom is that the person living with dementia won’t change her ways, so I must change mine.  What I discover is that losing things bothers me.  A lot.  That characteristic is why I quit carrying a pocket knife decades ago.  I couldn’t keep track of it.  Them.

      When I lose things, I have to find them.  If I had all the time back that I wasted looking for things that weren’t in their place, I would only be fifty-something.  Though I try, old habits die hard.

     So it was that when the new ID bracelet disappeared after less than a week, I looked and looked, even though I knew I should not.  I need more than one.  So I returned to the website I had ordered it from, RoadID, and ordered three more.

     One day, I picked up the cute little mechanical dog to see if it would help to calm stormy waters that were arising.  There it was, the bracelet on its red band somehow nestled into the dog’s bib.

      While waiting for the new bracelet nameplates to arrive in the mail, I had jerry-rigged a label on one of the spare bands (I had ordered six total, but only one nameplate) because  I found it difficult to leave the house unless the Goodwife was wearing an ID bracelet.

    In less than a week, the new nameplates arrived.  Now I have multiples and wait for the lost to find themselves, like Little Bopeep’s sheep.

      This time, I saved the packaging.

              

    Note:  the original red bracelet has gone missing again.  It’s been AWOL for 4 or 5 days.

 

 

      

 

Living with Dementia I

      A visit to the ladies’ room.  It should be safe.

     I started getting worried about ten minutes after that decision.

     We were at The Ranch taking in the RV show.  Time was when we could spend an easy two hours looking at campers, motor homes, fancy trailers.  We had to see how cleverly the manufacturers used the small space to create all the conveniences of home to take on the road.

      This time, we weren’t there over twenty minutes before I started hearing, “Let’s go.”  Or “Don’t we need to be going?”  A-D-D on steroids.

      We didn’t enter any of the displays.  We walked among them.  We went outside to walk among the really big ones.  I thought there might be an exit out there.  No, no exit, so back inside we went.

      We had a similar experience at the Home and Garden show in Island Grove Park.  We made it almost thirty minutes, because we stopped to talk to a few vendors, and one vivacious fellow who carried on with the Goodwife with his banter.

     Most of the time, I am greeted with blank stares as the stranger struggles to hear and make sense of what the Goodwife says.  Oh well.  I’ll never see them again, maybe.  Exception:  the lady following a Doberman Pincer.  She did her best to give us a wide berth after the first encounter.

     Meanwhile, back to The Ranch.  We had to return to the main building to find an exit.  Then it was we came across the  concession area including the restrooms.

      The Goodwife entered the restroom.  I stationed myself nearby.  After a couple of minutes, I decided I just as well take advantage of the chairs and tables across the walkway.  I sat and waited.  And waited.  Did I miss her coming out of the restroom?

      As ten minutes stretched into nearly fifteen, minutes, I really started to worry.  What should I do?  I couldn’t go into the ladies’ restroom without getting arrested.

       She had no identification with her.  Our propensity for leaving anything she carries anywhere we go has led to me never leaving home with it, purse or wallet, that is.

      I had just about got up my courage to flag down a passing lady and ask her to check into the restroom when I heard the public address start up.  “We have a person who has lost  her husband.  Her name is Patti,  her husband is Steven.  She apparently has a bit of dementia and can’t tell us her last name.”

     I was all ears by then.  The male voice continued, “If you are Steven and are looking for Patti, please call 911 or come to the east entrance.”

     I was off like a shot, well a 70+ year-old-shot.  The east entrance wasn’t too far.  It was the one we had exited to try to find a way out. 

     I walked through the doors into the foyer and saw:  The lady named Patti was sitting on a bench wearing a huge smile.  A little girl, maybe three or four years old was wrapped around her protectively.  On the bench next to the entwined pair was the woman I assumed to be the girl’s mother.  Milling around were two older siblings and what I assumed was a grandmother of the children.

     As the Goodwife signaled her recognition of me, the mother arose, approached me and gave me a big hug.  I thanked her, but I was too flustered to ask about the details of where they found Patti.  The mother disentangled the little girl from Patti and the family, the older two kids getting restless, moved on.

      My attention was on the two cops, who were quite satisfied that they had found their man.  One quickly departed and I visited with the remaining man.

      He was very polite, and I thanked him profusely, too.  I explained that I had watched her enter the restroom, but I never saw her come out.  How could I have missed her, or how could she have missed me?  Was there another entrance / exit for that restroom?  He didn’t know about that.

     I apologized for her not having any ID.  I guessed I would get her a necklace.  He did have an opinion about that.  He suggested a bracelet instead.  I said it was too easy for her to remove (or lose) a bracelet.  He countered with the difficulty of accessing a woman’s necklace. 

     He didn’t say it, but I immediately realized his point.  A male cop trying to get to a woman’s necklace could easily become a nightmare.  Especially in Loveland, in the current environment.  (male cop, currently serving time in prison,  manhandling an elderly lady with dementia accused of shoplifting from Wal-Mart, just in case you have forgotten)    

      Our conversation with the cop concluded, we found the exit and headed for home.  I immediately began a search for proper ID’s.  Dementia Together to the rescue.  Based on the experience of other folks who have gone before us on the “journey”* of living with dementia*, they recommended Road ID. 

     Dementia Together also strongly recommends that the care partner have an ID in case something happens to that person and the one living with dementia is left unattended.

      So, I Googled Road Id, I looked, I chose, I ordered--a bracelet with spare bands for the Goodwife, a dog tag-like necklace for me.

     I have also found some simple “Alzheimer” door locks from a place called “AlzStore”, the Alzheimer’s Store, online.  I ordered one and installed it on our front door.  It works great and has saved my many worries, particularly at night.  I have ordered three more and will probably order two more.

     The bracelet, bands, and necklace arrived in about a week.

 

      Road ID endeared themselves to me with the disposal instructions on the mailer package:  don’t try to brush your teeth with this mailer, and a second one I don’t remember, and the third one I can’t forget, “Don’t use this package as a suppository”!  Nothing like a little satire to accompany your order!

     The wrist band has worked so far, though we haven’t had to use it as such.  I ask the Goodwife to show folks her new bracelet.  They read it and they understand.

     A few people act like they have seen a rattlesnake, but most are quite kind and understanding.  We are blessed with a group of friends and relatives who totally understand.   

     The journey* continues.

 

*Phrasing acceptable for those of us “living with dementia”—also acceptable phrasing!

Amazon Hack

 

     Monday morning, I had just sat down, guitar in hand to strum a few chords and try to keep my fingertip callouses in shape, when my cell phone buzzed, or dinged, or whatever that sound is.

     It was Amazon calling.  I don’t remember what the guy said but my reaction was, “Why don’t you people (might have been an unprintable adjective or two) get a real job instead of trying to rip people off?”

    The guy was unphased.  He told me, in his foreign accent, probably Indian, I had an order for a thousand dollars (I don’t remember the exact figure, which he gave me) made from my phone number using a name, which he also gave me, which also sounded Indian.

     “Yeah right!”  He kept going.  He knew that the Goodwife and I had separate Amazon accounts.  The clincher was he had the last four numbers on both credit cards I have stored on my Amazon account.

       I took the time to check my credit cards, and sure enough, he had accurate last four numbers.  I hovered between gullibility and suspicion. I forgot that “Amazon will never contact me by phone.”  I decided I had better play along.

     “Why can’t you just cancel the order, since I obviously didn’t place it?”  Oh no, he couldn’t do that.  It was a “pre-approved order” so he didn’t have the authority to cancel it.  Suspicion arose again.

     The call took 11 minutes and 55 seconds according to my cell phone record.  He couldn’t cancel my order, so he was turning over to another department.  The other department?  The FTC!  Wow! Did I feel important!

        There would be no waiting on hold for an FTC rep.  They would call me!  He insisted I take down the phone number the call would be coming from.  I wrote it down.

     Sure enough in about five minutes, I got a call from that number, with the same area code he had called from.  It was from the FTC!  Julia somebody. 

     She had to call three times to get a decent connection.  When we finally got to have a conversation, one of the first things she asked me for was my social security number.  What a surprise!  “Yeah right,” I said.  She either hung up or the feeble connection let loose.  She never called back.

       The fact that the crooks had so much information about my Amazon account was alarming.  I waded through the Amazon system to find a place to report fraud.  I did that.  I decided I had better close my Amazon account. 

     Because I reported the fraud, my account was locked and I had to contact customer service.  Getting through the canned voice to a real human was somewhat of a chore.  Finally I did, and the guy sort of downplayed the whole thing, saying just ignore the call.  Tell them this or tell them that but don’t give them any information.

      He did email me a link to cancel my account.  I got off the phone an onto email.  Closing the account was a bit complicated.  Among other things I had to scroll through all the neat things I would be missing if I didn’t have an account with Amazon, along with assurance I can open a new account without much trouble, probably a lot less trouble than it took to close the existing account.

     The first time I filled out all the required information and finally got to “Submit”, I got a message that there was a problem and I could not close the account now.  Try again later, it said.

      I went back to the email with the link and started all over again.  This time, it worked.  Except it would be four or five days before the account could be closed.  I felt like a fly on a pest strip, trying to get loose from Amazon.

     The experience took over two hours of my precious morning hours, when the Goodwife is asleep and I can get things done.  It kept running through my head all day.

    On Tuesday, I decided I had better close the Goodwife’s Amazon account, too.  I knew better than to try to use the same link I had used for mine.  I would get into the squirrel cage and go ‘round and ‘round with that link.

     The decision expedited a process I started two weeks ago, deleting over 186,000 emails in her Gmail account, some going back to 2012.  I went back to Amazon customer service, went through the paddle line until I reached a live human.

     This time I had some things to say beside requesting help.  The only place the fraudsters got the information they had was from me or from Amazon.  They didn’t get it from me.  It had to come from Amazon.

     The lady didn’t deny that Amazon has had a breach of security.  She gave me the same spiel, ignore, don’t give the fraudsters any information, etc.  I insisted that Amazon needed to do something about their security.  Oh yes, they take fraud seriously, etc. etc.

     Back to the purpose of my call.  Because of the attempt to get into my account, the Goodwife’s account was locked.  I had to get into the account to close the account. 

     The lady was very helpful.  She insisted I get into the account and start the closing process while she was still with me.  It took a lot less time to close the Goodwife’s account than it did mine.

      Except, it still hasn’t been closed.  The process takes four or five days, she explained.   Yes of course.

      I won’t be surprised if I get an email (not a phone call) requiring me to confirm that I really do want to close the account any time now.

      The real price of the convenience of shopping on the internet.  About four hours, I think. 

     I also reported the phone numbers on the “report phishing” website.  Later, I regretted that.  A reverse phone number revealed that the original phone number belong to some female.  It was no doubt spoofed.  Now some innocent person will have their number listed as suspicious.

     Just for kicks, I tried calling the “FTC” number the guy gave me.  The voice answered, “Hello.”

I said I was trying to reach the FTC.  “This is the FTC,” he said.  Who do you wish to talk to?”

     I responded that I was checking the validity of the phone number.  He hung up.  I went to the FTC site and filled out all the stuff it required.

     It’s been nearly a week.  I just checked into my Amazon account.  It’s still open.  I got the same error message I got on my first attempt.  The account cannot be closed at this time.  Please try again later. 

     I tried again.  Same message.

     I am still stuck to the fly paper.

     Moral(s):  Think twice before opening an account with any of the big tech firms, Amazon, Google, etc.

     Moral 2:  Keep an eye on your Amazon account and your credit card accounts. 

     Moral 3:  There are two types of internet accounts, those that have been hacked and those that will be hacked.  Caveat Emptor!

 

 

’57 Ford

      I don’t know all the details of the trip, just that mother, brother, and sister took a rather hurried trip to Arizona, first riding the train from La Junta to Arizona (Kingman? Not even sure of that) then driving straight through back to Colorado, with one person driving and the other two trying to make sure the driver stayed awake.

     The Ford was Aunt Margaret’s car, a '57 Ford they bought brand new.  It was probably the cheapest version available.  There must have been some Scott’s blood in the Thistlewood family.

      It was the same year as Pete and Liz’s, but had none of the bells and whistles.  It had a three-speed standard transmission.  It arrived in Arizona from Detroit without an air conditioner.  By design?  Uncle Orrie soon installed an air conditioner.

     Like Uncle Pete, Uncle Orrie was very good with electronics and anything mechanical.   He built the first pickup-mounted camper I ever saw.  According to Aunt Margaret,  she was always bugging him to “build a little cabin on the back of the pickup.”  He did it.

     The pickup was a ’52 Ford, white as I recall it.  The camper didn’t extend much above the cab, but it had everything in it, bunks, a small “kitchen”, everything but a bathroom.  They travelled a lot in it.

     Installing an air conditioner in the '57 was no problem at all for Uncle Orrie.  In Colorado, the Ford became a college car.  It suffered a dent or two in a college trip.  I wasn’t involved and don’t know the details of that.

    It eventually went to Wyoming where it served as transportation for Uncle Ricky to commute to his job on the Wind River Reservation.  Two anecdotes I recall:  Uncle Ricky pulled into a parking lot and drew pointed attention from a mother and daughter.  He struck up a conversation with them.  It turns out that their husband / father had a nearly identical car and it really embarrassed them when he drove it publicly.  When they saw him, they thought their man had escaped in the car while they weren’t watching.

    The second story involved a -50-degree morning when the Ford refused to even turn over.  Uncle Ricky got under the car with a coffee can, in fifty-below weather, and pulled the oil drain plug.  The oil oozed out like really cold chocolate syrup into the coffee can.  He replaced the plug and took the coffee can inside and sat it by the wood-burning stove.  

     When the oil warmed sufficiently, he poured it into the engine and tried the starter again.  This time it started.  The old Ford probably wondered what an Arizona car was doing in a Wyoming winter.

     I think the Ford returned to the farm after Uncle Ricky left Wyoming.  It became a piece of real estate that went through two or three different owners without ever moving.

      Life sitting outdoors on the farm isn’t easy.  The cottontails chewed the spark plug wires down to nubs on both the plugs and the distributor cap.  Needless to say, it never ran after that.

      Though I encouraged subsequent owners to do something with it, it never moved and it became a “somebody-should.”  People who drove into the yard looked at the old Ford, saw that it was still intact, still had all its glass and, remarkably, no mouse damage to the interior.  They would say “Somebody should restore that.”

      The farm is rife with “somebody-shoulds.”  In her day, the Goodwife could spot two or three years of “somebody-shoulds” in a ten-minute visit to the farm.

     Unfortunately, “somebody” never showed up.

      Several visitors expressed interest in buying it, including a guy delivering a farm implement to me.  He was sure he could find a buyer, if not buy it himself.  After a few contacts, he never returned my calls.
      The REA guys replacing power poles expressed an interest, as did the siding crew who replace the siding on the house.  “If you ever want to sell that. . . . .”  Push never came to shove.

     Until this December.  As I sat in the local barbershop waiting my turn in the chair, I picked up a copy of Mile Saver Shopper and leafed idly leafed through it.  There was an ad for a guy looking to buy old cars from farms.  I called.  He called back. 

      With the warm weather the last week of January, we were both able to meet at the farm.  He pulled a trailer that would hold two cars.  He was serious.  He took the old Pontiac in the bargain.

 

     The old gals have moved to a “yard” (salvage or otherwise?) near Pueblo.  Maybe “Somebody” will finally get their chance to restore at least the ’57 Ford.

      

Vernor L. Peterson

     His name was Vernor L. Peterson, but no one ever called him anything but Pete.  To us, he was Uncle Pete.

     I learned early on that he didn’t care too much for kids.  He and Aunt Lizzie had no kids, and I think for the most part, they were happy about that.  I remember a conversation between Pete and my mother where she was encouraging him to have children.  Pete said soto voce with a devilish smile, “But Annabel, I’m trying, I’m trying!”

     Nevertheless, we were always happy to have Aunt Lizzie and Uncle Pete visit, which they did every year or two.  Considering that they usually drove from California where they lived in a suburb of San Francisco, Redwood City, their visits were fairly frequent.  Grandma Thistlewood was still going, so Lizzie liked to call on her as often as she could.

     I remember a couple of visits when they were driving a new, at least on the 1957 visit, Ford.  Beside the fact that it was new, it seemed remarkable because it had seat belts! 

      In another visit, they drove a Karmann Ghia with the name “Pete” printed on the left side of the “trunk”, probably the engine hood on that outfit, and “Liz” on the right side.  In retrospect, that couldn’t have been a very comfortable trip.

     Pete was a pilot and he always talked of flying into Stapleton and renting a “small bird” as he called it and flying to Limon.  That excited me since I was fascinated by flying and airplanes., but that trip never happened.

     Pete was a WWII veteran, and I think it was in the service that he and Aunt Lizzie met.  She was in the WACS, I think.  Somewhere we have separate pictures of Pete and Lizzie in military flight caps.  I’m not sure what role Pete played.  I don’t think he was a pilot.

     I do remember a slide show once when we went to Denver to visit them at the Olson household.  I can’t remember much about the slide show because as I often do when things are on the big screen, I went to sleep.  But I do remember one of the slides was a picture of Pete standing by the open door of some kind of military airplane in flight.

    Pete worked at the Hiller Helicopter factory.  He was very handy, knowing a lot about electronics.  I remember him working on our television.  He bravely, in my view, took the back off and started meddling around with wires and tubes.  When he replaced the back, the TV worked great.

     I remember him telling Dad that whenever you were digging around among the tubes and wires, always keep one hand in your hip pocket.  That way, if you did run into 110 volts, it wouldn’t  cross your heart and kill you, maybe. 

     Pete looked askance at any of us who used a pair of pliers on a nut or bolt head.  “Anyone who used a pair of pliers on a nut at Hiller Helicopter would get fired,” he declared.  Well, nobody got fired at the farm.

     Pete was a great jokester, both the teller of jokes and a practical joker.  One of the jokes he told was of a Native American who came home from a hitch in the navy with a bad case of dysentery.  Things hadn’t changed much on the reservation and in the middle of the night when the young man had to visit the outhouse, he had a bad accident due to being unable to see in the dark.  Having been an electrician in the navy, he headed to town the next morning and bought the supplies to bring power to the outhouse.  He installed a light therein.  Thus, he became the first Navajo to wire a head for a reservation.

    That joke is dated, as no one now wires anything.  Cell phones for that job.

    Pete had a favorite liquor store that had jokes on cards, cartoon-like.  I remember two, one showing a deer hunter squatting beside a bush with his pants down around his ankles.  He was squeezing and trying to get  his business done.  On the other side of the bushes was another hunter on full alert.  The caption read, “Shh!  I thought I heard a buck snort!”

     Another one was in four panels.  In the first one, a guy is sitting in a chair holding a newspaper, with alarm and disgust on his face.  His big dog has his leg raised on the front of the couch.  In the next panel he is leading the dog to the park.  In the third panel, the guy, with his back to the viewer, is obviously urinating on a tree in the park. He is gesturing to the dog, this is where you do it.  In the last panel, the guy is once again in his chair with all kinds of alarm on his face.  The dog is standing upright on his back legs, like a man, taking a leak on the couch. 

     On the practical joke side, Pete had a sort of arrow with a U-like wire separating the tip from the feathered end of the shaft.  He could put the U on his body or head and it looked like he was impaled with an arrow.

     Many times, we kids were called on to assist him with his practical joke.  I remember one time when he wanted an old, short pencil that was dispensable.  He cut it in two and used adhesive tape, the white kind in the medicine cabinet, to wrap the cut ends.  He got the thickness of the tape just right so that he could stick the taped ends into his ears and keep them there.  It looked like he had a pencil sticking through his head.   

     Another time we assisted him, he asked for a piece of cotton.  He wetted it and tucked it out of sight into the joint of his little finger on his right hand.  He picked on a kid who wasn’t privy to the cotton wad.  He used the first two fingers of his right hand to be a bunny rabbit looking for something.  He crawled up the thumb of the unsuspecting victim, then the index finger, and on, always looking for something but never finding it until it came to the tip of the pinkie.  At that point, he squeezed the cotton wad and heaved a sigh of relief.  The water trickled down the poor kid’s hand and Pete exclaimed that that was what the little bunny was looking for!

    One of the reasons Pete liked to come to Colorado was what he called “Colorado Kool Aid,” a bottle or can of Coors beer.  In those days, Coors was pretty much confined to the state of Colorado.

    I suppose today, Pete would be classified as an alcoholic.  He would drink beer all afternoon and have a Seagram’s 7 & 7 in the evening and never show any signs of inebriation.  In Pete’s defense, it was his vacation when we saw him.

     The last time I saw Pete, we stopped in San Francisco on our way back from visiting Mother-in-Law in Hawaii.  He and Lizzie both had to go to work during the day.  He insisted we drive his brand-new Oldsmobile to do the tourist thing in San Francisco.  I really tried to resist, but I lost.

      I wanted to go ride the street cars around town, but they were out of the service at that time, so we drove around town trying to follow the sea gull signs that marked the tourist routes.  I was terrified that I would put a dent in his new car.  I didn’t, but it wasn’t a whole lot of fun for me.  It included a wrong turn and a trip across the bay to visit Oakland.

     Pete had a bout with colon cancer.  I don’t think he ever fully recovered from that.  His flying and travelling days were over.  We never saw him again.

     I had a lot of “favorite” uncles, and Pete certainly was one.

Three Minutes of . . .

     Was it ecstasy?

      Or was it excruciating pain?

     It was a funeral, or the  more politically correct, Memorial.  I didn’t know the lady well.  She was the wife of one of the older barbershoppers.  I had met her.  After the twenty-five minute eulogy delivered by a granddaughter, I realized I didn’t know her at all.

    She was a music lover, a dedicated member of the local Sweet Adelines chapter.  She planned her own memorial, so it was filled with music.  The ceremony began with “I Believe” sung by her husband’s quartet recorded many years ago.

     That was followed by the church choir singing “Precious Lord.”  Then came the local Sweet Adelines chapter with “What a Wonderful World.”  A quartet from that group sang “Chord Buster’s March”.

     After the pastor’s brief message, a lady from the church choir sang solo, a capella, “His Eye is On the Sparrow.”  Then the granddaughter was up with her eulogy.

     I saw that the last thing on the program was “Jerusalem”, but I never thought any more about that than I had any of the other songs on the program.  The choir director and the young man accompanying him, the same one who played for the church choir, took the stage.

     By this time, we were past one hour for the service.  I was ready for a break.  Our electronics age has conditioned us to expect a new activity every few seconds, and while there had been a good variety, I was ready for it to come to a close.

     The pianist lit into the accompaniment and the soloist sang:

 

Last night as I lay a-sleeping

There came a dream so fair

I stood in old Jerusalem

Beside the temple there . . .

 

     I suspect my hackles arose.  I closed my eyes to stop the tears.  I come from the generation where it’s unmanly to shed tears.

     When I closed my eyes, I immediately had a mental picture.  I saw my mother at the piano.  My dad stood there with a 3 x 5 note card in his hand that he always used when he sang that song because he couldn’t depend  on his memory to get all the words.

     I was taken back 60-70(?) years.  The pianist flawlessly played the catchy lefthand runs throughout the song. 

     The vocalist wasn’t exactly Dad’s voice, but the piano accompaniment was exactly what Mom used to play, or close enough to the same, to keep the painful (or joyful) memory alive in my imagination for the duration.

     The song finished, I surreptitiously blew my nose and dried my eyes.  The preacher blessed us and released us row-by-row.  We met the soloist in the hall and I stopped him long enough to tell him what his rendition did for (to?) me and thank him.

    How long has it been since I heard the folks sing / play that song?  When was the last time I heard it?  I can’t answer that, but I understand once again why Mom and Dad answered so many requests to perform it at funerals.

    What was mostly a courtesy call to show respect for a fellow barbershopper will probably be a funeral that I will remember for a long time.

     I still don’t know if it’s pain or joy.  Whichever it is, it lingers.

 

 

A U-Tube performance of “The Holy City”:

 

https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=589420358&rlz=1C1SQJL_enUS892US892&tbm=vid&sxsrf=AM9HkKlHSL4WAunibNvEtXUIcgpSgrK8xQ:1702144653091&q=male+vocal+solo+with+piano+accompaniment:+Jerusalem&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjIjJ379oKDAxVMIzQIHdJ9CzQQ8ccDegQIDBAJ&biw=1536&bih=715&dpr=1.25#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:c70c3bd7,vid:EGoCiiSBs-k,st:0