So what is it with dogs, anyway? To me, dogs are like kids. I generally like the ones that belong to me, but I’m totally ambivalent about those that belong to other folks.
I watched the movie “Marley and Me” the other day. It is about a newspaper columnist and his out-of-control dog.
I have to admit, I’m partial toward columnists. All of the ones I know, I like.
But I’ve had it with ornery dogs. We once owned one, named Honey. She was the dog from heck.
We adopted her from the pound. We specifically chose her because she was so mellow. While the other dogs were yapping and jumping around, she just sat there, wagging her tail.
We took her to the veterinarian for a checkup, and he said she was sick. He gave her some sort of shot, which cured her.
Big mistake.
She went from quiet and obedient to anything but. She knocked over the kids, killed our chickens and generally laid waste to all in her path.
She chased cars — from the front. I’m not making this up. She would charge from the front until the driver stopped his car.
One time, she cornered a deputy sheriff in his patrol car.
“That dog is out of control,” he told someone who was there. She shall remain nameless to protect the exasperated.
“You’ve got a gun,” she said. “Shoot it.”
Much to the regret of all concerned, the deputy didn’t.
Drastic times require drastic measures. We hired a dog psychologist to straighten her out. The shrink didn’t have a prayer.
“Sit!” she commanded Honey.
Honey stood.
“Shake!”
Honey walked away.
Though the dog blew off the shrink, I noted that one of our kids, who was 5 at the time, followed every command.
I guess the session wasn’t a total waste.
We’ve had other dogs, too. I used to have a malemute, which loved to run. All she needed was an open door and she was off like a rifle shot.
One time, she ran away and I had no idea where she went. I put an ad in the newspaper, and someone called to report that they had found her — on a nearby island. She had either swum there or hitchhiked across the bridge.
She also liked to roll in, well, the stuff most dogs like to roll in. I guess she liked the smell.
Another time, I was patrolling the neighborhood looking for her and finally found her several blocks away. She had managed to shed her collar, too.
I swooped all 80 pounds of her up in my arms, only to get a whiff of I-don’t-want-to-know-what. As I was staggering to the car, a woman leaned out of her front door, suspecting that she was witnessing a dog-napping.
“Is that your dog?” she hollered.
“I’m afraid she is,” I hollered back. The fragrance was making me nauseous. “In fact, come here and I’ll give her to you!”
She didn’t accept my offer.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Latest appliance: the refilerator
The other day we were visiting friends, and one of the kids asked for a piece of paper to write something down.
Our hostess told him to go to the refrigerator and get some paper out of the top, where the freezer was.
Our son looked at her. I looked at her. My wife looked at her.
She assured us that he would find paper in the compartment where the Häagen-Dazs would normally be.
“It’s a long story,” she said. She got up and opened both the freezer and the refrigerator doors. Inside, very neatly arranged, were stacks of paper, bills and other items. It was an office in a box.
Her refrigerator was now a refilerator. The compressor had stopped working, and while she was waiting to get it fixed, she had started using the space for her papers. After a while, they bought a new refrigerator, which they put in the garage, because the refilerator was so handy to have in the kitchen.
We now have a refilerator, too. Our 3-year-old refrigerator gasped its last gasp, and the repair guy told my wife it’d cost $400 to repair.
Good-bye refrigerator; hello refilerator.
It used to be that the life of a refrigerator was measured in decades, not minutes. When I was growing up, my folks had the same refrigerator from the time I was in seventh grade until after I graduated from college, and they had retired and moved.
Nowadays, a refrigerator is a temporary appliance. In fact, it seems like all appliances are temporary. We had a dishwasher that lasted less than two years. I repaired the handle on it twice and replaced a rack once before I gave up on it.
Here’s the thing: it wasn’t a cheapo dishwasher. Nor was our refrigerator a bargain basement special. They just weren’t designed to last longer than the warranty.
Which, of course, aggravates the heck out of me and, most likely, other folks who are stuck replacing appliances on a regular basis.
On a trip to an appliance store, my wife asked why refrigerators don’t last.
“They’re made to be more efficient,” the helpful sales lady chirped. “They have smaller condensers that run nearly all of time but use much less electricity.”
And commit suicide after a few years, I didn’t say.
“Anyway, I save enough on electricity to afford a new refrigerator,” she said.
Wrong answer. How is it more “efficient” to chuck barely used refrigerators every few years? Won’t that just fill the landfills?
The answer is, these new refrigerators are bright, shiny pieces of planned obsolescence.
I’m tempted to keep our refilerator right where it is and just dig a hole in the backyard to keep food in, like they did in the days before refrigeration.
I’m also tempted to convert each appliance into a filing cabinet as it reaches its shelf life and just do without the “convenience” of having to replace them every few years.
At least then they’ll be good for something.
Our hostess told him to go to the refrigerator and get some paper out of the top, where the freezer was.
Our son looked at her. I looked at her. My wife looked at her.
She assured us that he would find paper in the compartment where the Häagen-Dazs would normally be.
“It’s a long story,” she said. She got up and opened both the freezer and the refrigerator doors. Inside, very neatly arranged, were stacks of paper, bills and other items. It was an office in a box.
Her refrigerator was now a refilerator. The compressor had stopped working, and while she was waiting to get it fixed, she had started using the space for her papers. After a while, they bought a new refrigerator, which they put in the garage, because the refilerator was so handy to have in the kitchen.
We now have a refilerator, too. Our 3-year-old refrigerator gasped its last gasp, and the repair guy told my wife it’d cost $400 to repair.
Good-bye refrigerator; hello refilerator.
It used to be that the life of a refrigerator was measured in decades, not minutes. When I was growing up, my folks had the same refrigerator from the time I was in seventh grade until after I graduated from college, and they had retired and moved.
Nowadays, a refrigerator is a temporary appliance. In fact, it seems like all appliances are temporary. We had a dishwasher that lasted less than two years. I repaired the handle on it twice and replaced a rack once before I gave up on it.
Here’s the thing: it wasn’t a cheapo dishwasher. Nor was our refrigerator a bargain basement special. They just weren’t designed to last longer than the warranty.
Which, of course, aggravates the heck out of me and, most likely, other folks who are stuck replacing appliances on a regular basis.
On a trip to an appliance store, my wife asked why refrigerators don’t last.
“They’re made to be more efficient,” the helpful sales lady chirped. “They have smaller condensers that run nearly all of time but use much less electricity.”
And commit suicide after a few years, I didn’t say.
“Anyway, I save enough on electricity to afford a new refrigerator,” she said.
Wrong answer. How is it more “efficient” to chuck barely used refrigerators every few years? Won’t that just fill the landfills?
The answer is, these new refrigerators are bright, shiny pieces of planned obsolescence.
I’m tempted to keep our refilerator right where it is and just dig a hole in the backyard to keep food in, like they did in the days before refrigeration.
I’m also tempted to convert each appliance into a filing cabinet as it reaches its shelf life and just do without the “convenience” of having to replace them every few years.
At least then they’ll be good for something.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
'Macho weather' arrives
I have to admit, I’ve been feeling pretty sorry for myself during the past couple of weeks — weather-wise, that is.
With the snow, freezing rain and icy roads followed by wind that sent trees flopping across electrical wires, rooftops and roads around the area, I felt as though Mother Nature was picking on all of us.
Then I had a phone conversation the other day with a brother-in-law who lives in Fairbanks, Alaska. He had heard about our travails with the weather gods, struggling to get to work and back and taking care of all of the holiday errands in the crummy climate. (Global warming? Bring it on!)
“Yeah, that’s tough stuff,” he said. “It’s hard to get around when it gets cold. It’s been pretty chilly here, too.”
As Ed McMahon would ask Johnny Carson, “How chilly was it?”
“Fifty below,” he said. As in five-zero. And that wasn’t the wind chill factor.
“It’s supposed to last through next week,” he said.
When I was in fifth grade we lived in Fairbanks for a year. It got down to 55 below zero, and I thought I was going to die. The only cars running were taxi cabs, which ran 24 hours a day. Our car, a 1963 Volkswagen camper van, was found in the parking lot with its wheels pointing heavenward. I think it was suicide.
I wasn’t taking it so well myself. We had moved there from Louisiana in November, and my system was in shock already. Add 55-below and you can imagine how a southern boy who had only seen snow a couple of times in his life must have felt.
Things happen at 50-below that you don’t think about in warmer weather. Pipes freeze, furnaces go on strike and cars just don’t work.
Even their tires would freeze with a flat spot where they had been on the ground. I still remember bumping along in a neighbor’s car.
And here’s the kicker. I walked to school in that weather. I often remind my kids of that fact when their mother asks me to give them a ride to school because of inclement weather such as rain or cold.
“Yeah, and it was uphill both ways,” they always chime in.
Later on, when we lived in Minnesota, I’d often get into conversations about the weather. In Minnesota, that’s a main topic of any conversation.
“So, is it colder here or in Alaska?” someone would inevitably ask.
I’d just laugh.
“Hey, when it gets below zero, it’s cold,” I’d say. “It really doesn’t matter if you’re in Minnesota or Hawaii.”
For years my favorite Minnesota radio personality was Steve Cannon, who was on WCCO-AM daily between 3 and 6 p.m. Everyone in the upper Midwest and much of Canada listened to him.
Of course, that’s an exaggeration, but not much.
Cannon had a term for when the thermometer hit 20-below and the wind chill plunged past 70-below.
He called it “macho weather.”
And was he ever right.
With the snow, freezing rain and icy roads followed by wind that sent trees flopping across electrical wires, rooftops and roads around the area, I felt as though Mother Nature was picking on all of us.
Then I had a phone conversation the other day with a brother-in-law who lives in Fairbanks, Alaska. He had heard about our travails with the weather gods, struggling to get to work and back and taking care of all of the holiday errands in the crummy climate. (Global warming? Bring it on!)
“Yeah, that’s tough stuff,” he said. “It’s hard to get around when it gets cold. It’s been pretty chilly here, too.”
As Ed McMahon would ask Johnny Carson, “How chilly was it?”
“Fifty below,” he said. As in five-zero. And that wasn’t the wind chill factor.
“It’s supposed to last through next week,” he said.
When I was in fifth grade we lived in Fairbanks for a year. It got down to 55 below zero, and I thought I was going to die. The only cars running were taxi cabs, which ran 24 hours a day. Our car, a 1963 Volkswagen camper van, was found in the parking lot with its wheels pointing heavenward. I think it was suicide.
I wasn’t taking it so well myself. We had moved there from Louisiana in November, and my system was in shock already. Add 55-below and you can imagine how a southern boy who had only seen snow a couple of times in his life must have felt.
Things happen at 50-below that you don’t think about in warmer weather. Pipes freeze, furnaces go on strike and cars just don’t work.
Even their tires would freeze with a flat spot where they had been on the ground. I still remember bumping along in a neighbor’s car.
And here’s the kicker. I walked to school in that weather. I often remind my kids of that fact when their mother asks me to give them a ride to school because of inclement weather such as rain or cold.
“Yeah, and it was uphill both ways,” they always chime in.
Later on, when we lived in Minnesota, I’d often get into conversations about the weather. In Minnesota, that’s a main topic of any conversation.
“So, is it colder here or in Alaska?” someone would inevitably ask.
I’d just laugh.
“Hey, when it gets below zero, it’s cold,” I’d say. “It really doesn’t matter if you’re in Minnesota or Hawaii.”
For years my favorite Minnesota radio personality was Steve Cannon, who was on WCCO-AM daily between 3 and 6 p.m. Everyone in the upper Midwest and much of Canada listened to him.
Of course, that’s an exaggeration, but not much.
Cannon had a term for when the thermometer hit 20-below and the wind chill plunged past 70-below.
He called it “macho weather.”
And was he ever right.
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