I’ll tell you what really pisses me off.  People that don’t know how to drive on an interstate hi way- or don’t know how to drive, period.  Rule number one for interstate driving is the passing lane is just for that- it’s the PASSING lane.  Maybe it’s rule number two.  Probably obeying the speed limit is rule number one.  Shit I don’t know the exact order.  I can’t say me and that speed rule get along all the time, so in my book the passing lane rule supersedes the speed rule.  Get off your fucking cell phone and pay attention to where you are for Pete sakes.  Geezuz now I got that guy behind me on MY ass because you won’t get the hell out of the way so we can both get around you.  You’ve been dicking around in the wrong lane for five minutes you stupid douchebag.

Inconsiderate Dicks Clogging up the Passing Lane

Courteous People Getting Out of My Way

Well, shit, now it’s not just me and the guy behind me, it’s the guy (could be a gal too- don’t get all politically correct on me- I can’t ascertain gender- my rear view mirror gives me only so much information) behind him and another car, and another, and then- holy shit- there’s a fucking cement truck back there bearing down on some poor bastard in a- not sure.  I think it’s an old Volkswagen Beetle.  I didn’t know there were any of those still around, much less one capable of going ninety.  Well, we would be going ninety if the stupid dick in front of me would get the hell out of the passing lane.

I guess I have to be the one to make a move and pass this asshole in the non-passing lane, so here goes.  God damn it!  NOW you move to the regular lane you piece of shit.  You didn’t even signal.  That’s what one of those levers that sticks out from your steering wheel column is for you moron.  Use it.  Now I’m still stuck behind you while all the normal people zip by me in the passing lane.

Wow!  That cement truck. It’s not only a cement truck. It’s tandem towing a trailer full of busted up concrete AND another marked Hazardous Waste.  Whoa!  That thing is wobbling all over the place.  Guess I’ll slow down.  Maybe I’ll get lucky and one of those containers will swerve into the car driven by that prick that’s still on his cell phone.

It was close, but the twit with the cell phone stuck in his ear didn’t get side-swiped.  Time to pull out in the passing lane and finally get around him.  My wife took this picture of him when we blew by him.  Do any of you recognize him?  What a putz.

So this is the kind of crap you have to put up with when driving on the interstate.  I’ve never been able to figure out what all that speckled stuff is in the picture my wife took.  There are three facts of this trip down the interstate I do know though.  First, the speckled stuff in the picture was flying out of the hazardous waste container the cement truck was pulling.  Second, that specked stuff left ugly orange spots on the paint job of my car.  And third, the ugly orange spots on my car would not be there if the jerk on his cell phone had been paying attention and going 90 in my lane like he is supposed to.  Stay off your damn cell phone you piece of shit!

LEFT PIC: sitting l to r:  Leo Miltner, Al Feist, Dennis Kuntz, Roland Eck, Magnus Meier, Frank Hilsendager, Edgar Smith, Richard Schlosser, Dave Schmaltz.  Standing l to r: Rick Schwartz, Dave Bergman, Robert Dostal, Fred Enderle, Terry Lies, Mike Joyce, Ardell Hutton, Tony Sattler, Frank Croal, Al Hoff, Jim Ridley, Dave McGeary, Arnold Senger.  Not pictured in left photo but are in  RIGHT PIC:   Jerry Braxmeyer ( sitting-3rd from left)  Ray Hauck (sitting- far right).  Standing: Ron Goodman (7th from left) Richard Bitz (second from right)

See these?  These are  pictures of my high school class, Assumption Abbey’s class of ’65.  I think we look pretty darned good.  I mentioned awhile back that I would be attending my 50th year high school class reunion this summer.  See my May blog “Pre-class Reunion” if you’re curious.  You’ll  be happy to know it turned out to be a resounding success.  Almost half of our class was in attendance, remarkable in itself when you consider the possibility of grim death for anyone of full retirement age, but for me it will remain a statement of unique friendship locked in solidarity.  Managing to survive even one year at a preparatory boarding school with the strict religious discipline of a military barracks and the constant harassment and hazing from upperclassmen was no small accomplishment for any of us.

As I suspected would happen, many conversations occurred that brought back memories of long ago, some of which I had entirely forgotten.   We had about twenty five attendees, plus spouses, and I know there was no way everyone could mutually engage in all of the discussion  that went on in various groups, so I thought I would attempt to coalesce thoughts and experiences that I overheard and know about.  Of course all of this type of recollection will be more entertaining to my classmates.  But because I have a bad habit of being considerate, I thought I would try to maintain everyone’s interest by interjecting a little game here.  I am well aware  your attention span is just slightly above that of a cabbage. The game I was thinking of is that one where you match something in one column with something in another that has a logical connection.  Right here I call it a game anyway.  Back in high school something similar would be called a test, although you might more accurately have described it as a game as well, but more the guessing kind since you never threw your shoulder into studying much.  I think you’ll get the picture from this example:

1.  Dick Cheney                           a.__ When he was an infant his mother dropped him on his head

2.  Bozo the Clown                     b. __ Before he became a clown he was a U.S. Congressman

I kind of threw you a curve here.  As I am sure you know, one correct answer is 1 matches b.  I’m not so sure Bozo the Clown’s mom dropped him on his head, so maybe both a and b apply to Dick Cheney.  I think there is a good chance of that.

OK.  You get the idea.  Now see if you can match up my classmate with the significant thing he was noted for.  Listed are only a few of the names of students and their pranks, atrocities, and tribulations.  If your name is not included, sorry, but I only have room for a few and my memory isn’t what it used to be.  It probably would have helped if you had been more of a fuck-up in high school.

If you were not one of my classmates, you are understandably handicapped, but just like high school and college you can count on a grading curve to save your ass.  Also, if you were not a classmate, you will undoubtedly think I am making a lot of this shit up.   Though a little embellishment is involved in a couple of instances,  all the stories are true.  Some are the type of typical high school exploits and hijinks, but there are a few that push the envelope of infamy.

1. David Bergman
2. Al Feist
3. Fred Enderle
4. Mike Cummings
5. Edgar Smith
6. Rick Schwartz
7. Mike Joyce
8. Frank Hilsendager
9. Dennis Kuntz
10. Richard Schlosser
11. Ron Wicka
12. Ardell Hutton

a. When he was a sophomore he stole the football jersey of senior middle linebacker Jimmy “The Assiassin” O’Sullivan* and lived to tell about it.

b. When he was a junior, this classmate, so fed up with senior Mike “Mongo”  Johnson’s** penchant of helping himself to any underclassman’s soda,  became an instant class hero by swishing back a mouthful of Pepsi into the bottle and cleverly inducing “Mongo”  to swig the whole thing down- truly an act of both courage and cunning.

c. Notoriously known to be able to fart on demand, this classmate pulled multiple pranks in the Abbey library, but when he found out what all those bunches of paper sandwiched between two ridged pieces of cardboard were, he stayed away from the place.

d. This classmate went on to become a priest.  I am not sure if it means there is some mysterious religious significance to his visits, but once when visiting my home the image of the face of Jesus appeared just outside my front door after he failed to pay attention to the DIY oil change he performed in my driveway.

e. As you remember, this is the classmate that broke his neck after giving a demonstration of just how bad his depth perception is by performing a swan dive into 18 inches of water.

f. After getting shoved down a full flight of stairs, shot in the head with an arrow by a classmate, and nearly drowning in the Abbey Lake when someone pushed him off the floating raft under which he become helplessly trapped,  this classmate’s parents decided the Abbey was probably not offering the kind of education they preferred for their son and he did not return to the Abbey after his sophomore year. Because he was the victim of multiple atomic wedgies, he returned home without any underwear.

g. This classmate was the first recorded freshman to receive knuckled blasts from five different monks on five consecutive school days.

h.  After remarkably remaining conscious during Fr. Richard’s discussion of Longfellows’s poetry in American Lit class, this classmate remained a little over-enthusiastically reminiscent and he “Shot an arrow into the air- it fell to earth,” but in this case he DID know where,  which amounted to the very top of classmate f.’s head.

i.  This classmate occupied third chair in the cello section of the Abbey orchestra.  Initially he held the position precariously, but locked it down after he promised to follow his conductor’s orders to never, under any circumstances, let his bow touch the strings of his instrument.

j.  During his football career at the Abbey, this classmate single handedly administered a school record number of concussions to opponents and teammates alike, an achievement to which I can personally attest.

k. This classmate actually did milk five cows in the morning  and then walk three miles to school and back-uphill- both directions.

l. During our freshman year, this classmate set our class record for receiving the most lashes from a proctor’s razor belt.  It was nearly a school record, but a year later an incoming freshman surpassed it by two lashes.  So our classmate beat the holy shit out of him.  It was a vivid example of pecking order reestablishment.

* and **   I decided to make up some fictitious names here. One of these dudes was border-line psychotic and the other was someone I had similar impressions of so I figured the safest thing to do was protect the guilty in case either one of these non-classmates is still alive and bent on revenge.

I will give you the correct answers on another page.  You’ll just have to be patient.  You probably didn’t do for shit anyway.

I’ll tell you what.  I’ll try and help you out a bit.  I suppose looking at the class pictures above isn’t much to go by.  Lots of us look much smarter in those two photos than we actually were as teen agers.  I happen to have some candid shots laying around that will probably give you a better concept of individual identities.  You should know I was astonished that a good half dozen of the 25 that showed up were actually still alive, knowing what I know about them.  What I will do for you is give you pictures of all twelve of these classmates as they looked back in the 60’s.  It’s about all I have left in the way of photos anyway since I think I left my yearbook back at the Abbey when I was at the reunion.  I bet some dick that never liked me stole it.  Just so you know, I am pretty sure I can narrow it down to 15 or 20 of my classmates.

Ok then.  Go back up to names of my classmates and see if you can put a name on the face.

a.      b.       c.       d.    e.

f.   g.     h..    i.    j.

k.       l.

I hope that clears things up for you.  Anyway, here are the answers:

1. David Bergman (correct photo g.)  Correct answer is “e”
2. Al Feist (correct photo k.)  Correct answer is “i”
3. Fred Enderle (correct photo l.)  Correct answer is “k”
4. Mike Cummings (correct photo f.)  Correct answer is “h”
5. Edgar Smith (correct photo a.)  Correct answer is “a”
6. Rick Schwartz (correct photo e.)  Correct answer is “g”
7. Mike Joyce (correct photo i.)  Correct answer is “b”
8. Frank Hillsendager (correct photo h.)  Correct answer is “c”
9. Richard Schlosser (correct photo j.)  Correct answer is “d”
10. Dennis Kuntz (correct photo c.)  Correct answer is “j”
11. Ron Wicka (correct photo d.)  Correct answer is “f”
12. Ardell Hutton (correct photo b.)  Correct answer is “l”

Well, how did you do?  You probably shouldn’t be too hard on yourself for looking like such a stupid shit.  Heck, I bet half of my classmates mentioned here hardly remember any of the dumb stuff they did in high school, so they probably didn’t do any better than you did.  Don’t beat yourself up.  We can’t all be super stars.  I do wonder how in the hell you got Mike Cummings  wrong though.  Everyone knows that one.

This has been fun, but I have stuff to do.  I hope you now have some insight into typical conduct of the Assumption Abbey’s class of ’65.  No doubt you can’t wait for your 50th year reunion.  I’m not sure you will be alive, but knock yourself out if you make it.  You will be surprised how enlightening the event will be.

8/23-  Do you guys remember the old, non-zip-lock storage bags, the ones that come with twist ties?  Where are they now?  I need some.

Twist Tie

They are cheaper and you get 3 times as many bags in a box, at least.  I don’t always need a zip-lock.  Sure, they are thicker, better quality, and usually do seal up better than those old twist tie type, but many times you can get by just as well with a twist tie.  And a lot of times they are a hell of a lot faster to close up.  How many times have you battled those fucking zip-lock tracks, trying to line them up just right so the bag actually seals.  I bet most of you have had to sponge down the inside of your refrigerator a couple times a year after one of those tracks you thought you had closed tightly really wasn’t and  later you noticed the meticulously prepared liquid you were marinating your chicken in had been seeping out of the bag for three hours.

Refrigerator with No Storage bag Mishap

Refrigerator with Storage bag Mishap

Speed Method Clean-up of Refrigerator Storage bag Mishap

Of course you should never use a twist tie bag to marinate anything in.  That’s just too risky.  It’s going to leek all over the place.  But there are plenty of other reasons to use a twist tie bag.  I just can’t think of one right now.  But that’s not the point.  You can’t find twist-tie bags anywhere.  What I really want them for is to balance out all the spare twist ties I have with no bags to use them on because you can’t find the damn things anymore.  It used to be when you got a box of twist tie bags, they gave you extra twist ties. At least I think so.  I’m not sure because a lot of times I would use one twist tie on two bags.  It was one of my clever ways to economize, and I think somewhere down the line it’s environmentally sound thinking also.  So I did the smart thing and saved all those extra ties.  Now I have a shit load of ties all tucked away in a sandwich size zip-lock bag, and no bags to use them on.  Shit that pisses me off!

8/24- God damn it another light bulb went out in my bathroom.  I have diligently replaced most of my incandescent bulbs with fluorescents all over the house.  I was all set to upgrade to LED bulbs, but have you seen the price tags on those damn things?  Like I do with electronics, I’ll just wait it out till the market gets saturated and there’s a dramatic price drop.  Till then those bastards at GE can just stick those high priced bulbs up their ass.  Did you know those douchnozzels don’t pay any corporate income tax?  I hope they loose their shirts on those damn bulbs.  So I am sticking with my fluorescents.  At least that’s environmentally more acceptable than reverting back to incandescents.  But I’m tempted.  Have you looked at the fluorescent bulb section at Lowes?  There are 2 or 3 width sizes of spiral ones, some short and longer spiral ones, spiral ones that are kind of in the shape of half a tennis ball, some tube type ones, some that are fairly close to looking like a typical incandescent bulb, and some that look like an incandescent bulb that needs to go on a diet.  And then you

Are You Kidding Me?

have to worry about lumens.  Pick up a bad batch of lumens and it throws off your entire lighting structure.  Too many lumens and you have created a space that has the aura of the lobby of a cheap motel.  The trick is to go low with the lumens, I am pretty sure.  If I remember right, stick with low lumens and you get light that’s close to your old incandescents- soft and natural.

8/25-  I’ve finally had it.  I’m off to Lowes to get a new liquid soap dispenser for the bathroom. This will be the 4th one in two years.  Awhile back we had a metal one, I thought it was stainless steel, but I guess not because it stained.  Then I bought a plastic one.  It was cheap, but at least it didn’t grow nasty stains all over it.  But the pump quit pumping after 3 months.  Then I picked up a glass one.  It’s color was not exactly complimentary to our bathroom, but that sort of thing never bothers me.  Two months later  I found it in the garbage, all busted up and shattered in pieces.  My wife says she dropped it, but it looked to me like someone beat the shit out of it.  She never did like it, so I suspect it was just her way of getting rid of it.  I don’t ask questions when she’s in a bad mood.  So I got another stainless steel one, hoping the one I bought earlier was simply of inferior quality stainless steel.  That seems to be the case.  It hasn’t really developed any type of orange hue, but when the soap squirts out, it squirts out at you.  If you’re not paying attention you will have an embarrassing soap stain on the front of your pants.  Who has time to be constantly on the look out for that?  So I am off to Lowes.  I’m going back to glass, and I saw one I like at Lowe’s last week.  I have to pick up some fluorescent bulbs anyway, and I might as well look for some twist tie baggies.

8/26-  I didn’t have any luck with the twist tie baggies, but I think I found a set of bulbs that will match the other three that still work in the bathroom.  That’s another thing.  You have to buy fluorescent bulbs in sets, like boxes of four. That’s why lumens are so important.  If you screw in one of the new ones you just bought and the light it emits doesn’t match the light coming from all the other bulbs in the room, that’s a tip off you probably messed up on your lumens.  You might as well get rid of all the old ones and install all new ones.  I have to get my step ladder out of the basement, so I don’t have time right now to deal with my lumens.  I think I did score with my new glass soap dispenser though.  It looks pretty sweet.  I think my wife will give it a big thumbs up.

8/27-  The new bulbs are shit-blindingly harsh and a total lumen mind-dicking.  And these things are supposed to be saving me money?  Damn it I hate lumens.

I told you this would happen.  At least I think I did, back in a previous blog.  I don’t feel like checking it out.  The thing is, whenever I tackle a plumbing project, it turns into a complete shit storm.  One of my outside shut off valves wasn’t shutting off.  All I needed to fix it was a simple fifty cent washer to replace the worn out one  Shouldn’t be a big deal.  In fact, the leak wasn’t even a big deal- just a tiny dribble seeping from the end of my garden hose that in 24 hours might fill a gallon container, tops.  But that kind of stuff annoys the crap out of me.  The environmental impact is concerning enough.  I know we are fortunate here in the midwest to have plenty of water.  But still,  I see a dripping faucet and I can’t help but think about all the  long suffering people in California.  What I should be doing if I was really on the ball is sending my gallon of water a day seeping from my garden hose out to California.  Those poor people are getting to the point they probably shouldn’t be flushing their toilets but once a week.  If there was a way to ship my gallon of water at no expense, I would gladly start doing it.  I certainly am not the type to profit from another’s misfortune.  But I’ll be damned if I’m going take it in the shorts with shipping charges.  I have financial and  fiduciary responsibilities just like everybody else.  But if someone in California reads this, I will happily send my gallon of water to you if you send me $6.55.* That’s how much the post office guy said it would cost, non-priority.  If you want next day delivery, ok, but that will cost you $12.80.    I want cash or certified check.

*By way of full disclosure, the charge is based on the weight of a gallon of milk.  I was driving by the post office one day on my way back from the grocery store and one of my items was a gallon of milk.  I’de been giving this whole thing some thought and figured since I was right there I might as well bop in and have the post office guy weigh my gallon of milk.  I’m pretty  sure a gallon of water and a gallon of milk weight about the same.  You can see for yourself if you look closely at the pictures at left.  If you’re some fancy pants science dick and want to argue about density and viscosity and molecular weight and all that shit, well you can kiss my ass and go find your water elsewhere.

So I went to my local hardware store in search of the washer I needed.  I had disassembled the valve and took the washer along with me so I could carefully compare it to the one I would purchase. There are over 200 different kinds out there, so that’s just the smart thing to do. Maybe you’re not handy and kind of a dumb shit, so I just thought I would pass this information on to you in case you suddenly have the desire to improve yourself.

I love my local hardware store.  It’s a Westlake Ace.  I guess it’s not exactly local.  Years ago I had three of those places within a four minute drive from my house.  Then Lowe”s and Home Depot  set up shop and well, you know the story.  I haven’t had a real local hardware store for seven or eight years.  But my almost local hardware store is still only about seven minutes away.  That’s not bad.  Lowe’s is ten and Home Depot about twelve.  Here is a picture of Mr Jimmy.  That’s him in the red shirt.  He’s the owner of my almost local hardware store and here he is showing me how to jury rig an electrical circuit.  The person that took the picture is one of his employees, Roxy.  Here is a picture of her right below.  Mr. Jimmy took that picture on the day I bought the nice chain saw you see in the picture.  I already had a chain saw, but Roxy said this one was better.  So I bought it.  And a belt sander.  And a hammer drill and a butane torch and a couple dozen other things she was sure I would need.  Roxy really knows her hardware.

What I really like about my Westlake store is they sell a lot of their stuff individually.  You can buy one or two of something.  In my shop I have at least 500 screws and another 500 bolts and nuts of different sizes.  And it never fails- the one size or type I need I don’t have.  That’s exactly how I came to own 1000 pieces of this type of hardware.  I had to buy a package of twenty from Lowe”s or Home Depot at some point.  That really sucks.  And true to form, my Westlake store has a huge assortment of individual washers and gaskets for faucets and valves.  But as luck would have it, there were none that matched my old one.  I took a chance and bought a couple of  washers that were slightly different in size.  When I got home I spent two hours trying to shave and trim both to fit and seal correctly, but all I accomplished was to make the valve more difficult to shut on and off and I still had my leak.

So off to Lowe’s I went.  I spotted one that looked like it might do the job, but of course it came in a package of five.  After fiddling with that one at least the valve was easier to turn, but it didn’t slow down the dribble much.

You’re probably thinking where in the hell is this all going.   Don’t be so impatient.  That’s the trouble with the youth of America- always in a hurry.  Pay attention here and you might learn something.  All because the manufacturers of these valves won’t provide any easily identifiable 50 cent replacement washers for their products, I had to buy a whole new $7.95 valve.  That kind of shit just plants a rash on my ass.  But that’s only the beginning.  In replacing the valve, the thread on the pipe at the connection point was rusted and snapped.  To reinstall a new piece of pipe, (another $24.50 to have the correct length of pipe cut and threaded) i had to spend a half day outside of my house blindly trying to screw the inside thread into the inside shut off valve that is inside of my house.   To speed up the process, it sure would have been handy to be able to see through building walls.  If I could do that, I could get the whole project done in a half hour.

And if Jake could see through walls, that would have really been nice because he wouldn’t have ended up in jail.  Jake is an old friend from college.   Not only would that have saved Jake, but it would have saved a lot of time for a good two dozen guys who lived on the North wing of the 4th floor of Swanson Hall during my sophomore year.  I bet if all of them could have seen through walls, collectively the group’s GPA would have climbed by a solid point.  That’s because the only thing they had going for them in the way of trying to spot a naked coed through a carelessly left open window shade in the women’s dorm a half a block away was to implement a sorry practice of “dorm window battleship”- so many columns across, so many rows down.  And of course it was imperative to keep a  steady hand while grasping the binoculars.  And you had to wait your turn for the binoculars.  I think there were only three sets of those.  The thing about Jake though was, since he insisted he was the one who thought up “dorm window battleship,'” he should always get to hang on to one set of binoculars.  He simply would not give them up.  A guy we called Homer got so irritated with Jake he thought he would pull a one-upmanship thing by utilizing a small telescope he happened to have laying around, but that kind of backfired on Homer because it was just too cumbersome.  Jake understood right away you just can’t move a telescope around like you can binoculars.  Jake got the last laugh on Homer there.  Of course all of this kind of carrying on is information I am passing on to you second-hand.  I really don’t know for sure how all this worked.   I was at the library studying at the time.   If you don’t believe me here is a picture.Oh, sorry.  That’s just a picture of a subject I had to study while I was at the library. 

The one I meant to show you is over at the right.  That’s me getting all primed for an all-nighter at the library.   An all-nighter for me as you probably know ended at 10pm.  That’s when they closed the library.   I always brought along a full thermos of coffee to see me through.  And I found that a dozen teaspoonsful of  sugar mixed in got me pretty well super-charged for the evening.  Of course now there’s Adderall.  Back in my day, the big thing was Dexedrine.  But as you can probably tell from my picture, I had no need for that kind of crutch.  I was pretty well motivated without any illegally outsourced assistance.

My friend Jake told me he would pop a dexie now and then.  He said they really helped him concentrate.   Here is a picture of Jake studying in his dorm room.   Because he couldn’t see through walls, he spent so much time studying he never went to class.  Between flunking all his classes and a spiraling amphetamine addiction,  he ended up dropping out of school and then went kind of haywire and ended up in prison on larceny and drug charges.  If only he had been able to see through walls.  Some guys just can’t catch a break.