Story Time

My wife and I were both at a garage sale in the cul-de-sac kitty-corner behind us, where an elderly couple with a lot of history between them were lightening their load.  I snagged some very cool hand reamers in sizes I will probably never use, but they were so cheap, and some also very cool extension points for my lathe tailstock in graduated sizes, so I went away happy.  When you work with machine tools all your life you get where you just like to handle them and admire their precision and heft, all the more enjoyable knowing you don’t have to sweat and grunt over a T handle and actually use them.

My wife came home with a stack of old cookie tins, some quite faded and scratched up.  “Whatever possessed you to buy these?” I asked.  “Don’t you already have more than we need up on that shelf in the kitchen as it is?”  She laughed.  “You can’t have too many cookie tins, you know, and, besides, these have a cool story!  Apparently, they were among the residue of our elderly neighbor’s equally elderly Great-Aunt, who emigrated from the Old Country, and they’ve been kicking around ever since she passed.  She’s never even opened them, and some of them have stuff inside!”

I picked up the biggest one and shook it.  There was something inside, all right, but the lid appeared to be sealed with wax, and was resistant to being opened.  I took it out to the shop and clamped it down to the milling machine table with angle clamps, then proceeded to warm the rim with a heat gun until the wax liquified and I was able to gently pry the top off to reveal a very old, hand lettered diary, the text of which I now reveal to the world:

Jack and the Beanstalk:  After the Fall

Jack Spriggins is my name, and the following is a true and forthright account of what happened to me after I became famous following the chopping down of the giant beanstalk and resultant death of the giant himself, for which I was held liable.

I gotta be honest.  Some of those story-telling types made me out to be some kind of hero, where I called for my mother to toss me the axe, then chopped the beanstalk down just in time to throw the giant to his death.  Actually, I got away with the golden harp clean, and he didn’t find out it was gone for some days after I got home.  What happened was, I was outside one morning the next week, and I noticed that the beanstalk was shaking a bit on a regular basis as some very large feet were stepping carefully down what to him must have been a very shaky ladder.  That’s when I knew I had to chop it down, and it took most of the morning and into the afternoon, because the base was so thick.  The neighbors sawed great lengths of it for lumber, later, and when the giant fell he landed in the next county, so I wasn’t there for that.  Squashed a barn, he did, and two horses inside.

The beanstalk itself, as you would imagine, caused a lot of damage when it landed, wiping out fences and roofs for miles in a straight line.  When the shirriff followed the trail of destruction back to my place, there I was, with the axe in my hand, figuratively.

So a lot of the gold coins I got away with went to patch up the neighborhood, and a fair bit of it seemed to fall off into the hands of the various councilmembers and politicians in the process, but that was hardly a shock.  I did get to keep enough of it to pay off the farm and set my mother up for the rest of her life, and allow me to keep a wife and raise a mess of children over the years, so I guess you could say it worked out well.  I had to hire a team of soldiers to beat off the constant stream of shirt-tail relatives, scheisters and thieves, all coming at a run with their hands out, but that died down after a few of them lost parts of their bodies in the process, like the ones above the shoulders.

Then the Duke heard about the harp, and word quickly came to me that it would be a very good idea to grandiosely donate said harp to the Ducal Endowment for safe-keeping, which worked out well for him, until the Earl heard about it, and thence for him until the King got the story.  I was out the harp in any case, with no return beyond a few minutes of fame at a feast at the palace where I told my story in the short version before being escorted out the back door during the performance.  I was glad to leave with both ears.

And, of course, the Goose that laid a Golden Egg was not.  Not a Goose, that is.  It was a hen.  So the eggs were maybe a tad bit smaller than you would think they should be if it really was a goose.  Most of those were sold on the sly to a French family, the Faberges, and I never heard what they did with them.  I did get some pretty good money out of them, anyway, at least until the hen stopped laying, because it turned out she only did because they were feeding the chickens Golden Corn, and once that supply went away and the gold in her system was used up, the eggs were just decent brown eggs, like any other.  So one day we got hungry, and that’s what hens are for when they stop laying, right?

So, all in all, you might say I did all right because of the adventure.  I can’t help thinking about that place up there, and all that Golden Corn.  The giant must have had some relatives, because I understand one of them passed himself off as Jolly, and started a food company, but none of them have come looking for me, and that’s the way I like it.  :-{)}

Quora Question

What is your perception of Harley Davidson, Harley Riders, Harley owners and the Harley Culture?

Alan Brittenham, former Journeyman Machinist (1973-2014)

Answered just now

Me and my buddy Griz were standing outside a tavern on a warm summer night one time. Now, I’m a reasonably big dude, but Griz, well, he come by that name honest. He was a total cream puff, of course, with a heart of gold, but he did have a tendency to look the part. Black t-shirt, black leathers, black beard, big burly biker. Both our Harleys were parked on the sidewalk there.

So these two young guys came out of the bar to their bikes, a couple of Honda 750s, parked right close to us. One of them turned to us and said, “Hey, could I ask you a question? What is it about Harleys? I mean, everybody knows they’re slow, and heavy, and expensive. Why do people buy them?”

I took a slow breath as I formulated my answer. “It’s not about speed, or power”, I was gonna say. “It’s about how they make you feel when you ride them. There’s something about that big old engine, with two coffee cans going up and down one after another inside those huge barrels, that just comes out right. You can’t spin ’em too fast, and you don’t want to push ’em too hard, and they will carry you around like an old horse for years, and feel good all the time. And you can fix them yourself!”

“On the other hand”, I was gonna say, “there are so many levels of parts and expertise out there you can take any Harley and make it into one that your friends will recognize in the middle of that giant field outside Milwaukee in 2003, you can make it something that is yours, and yours alone.  You can make a show bike, restore an antique, pop wheelies, whatever you want!  

And ignore that shit about the “Harley Fraternity”, it’s not like that. What happens is, you get some time on the road, you run into some folks who ride similar bikes, you get to know them at the bar, you show up at a few meetings, you go on rides together, and before you know it you’re part of a brotherhood. You can’t do it on purpose. You have to earn it.”

That’s what I was gonna say, but, before I could get a word out, Griz took a step towards the young guy and growled, “Fuck You! Get on that piece of Jap Crap and get out of here before I kick your ass!” Both young guys did just that, amazingly fast.

I’m like, “Gawdammit, Griz, that was a reasonable question! You’re only pissed because that 750 will run circles around your shovel! I coulda talked them into showing up at the next Chapter meeting, maybe! You just gotta stop running off the young guys, or we turn into a bunch of old farts reminiscing all the time.”

Griz laughed. “Yeah, but fuck it. Let’s go back inside, have another beer.”

And so we did. And that’s how that shit happens. :-{)}

Attitude

They paid me for the holiday

And then they let me go.

It’s not as if I’ll starve to death

Thank God that doesn’t happen anymore.

But a working man without a job

That’s got to be the saddest thing I know.

And if I don’t get killed with kindness

It takes a lotta nerve to say I told you so.

With these two hands

And what I know

I earn my daily bread.

I never have that much to show

But I always keep my family clothed and fed

But these days it seems

I got to work

A whole lot harder just to stay ahead

And if I don’t get killed with kindness

It takes a lotta nerve to say I told you so.

It makes me mad

To see those fat cats

Living off the land

It makes me mad

To have them tell me

That I’m not a man

Well, one of these days

I’m gonna get my gun

And make my final stand.

And if I don’t get killed with kindness

I’ll show a little class and say I told you so.  :-{)}

That Sinking Feeling

Our kitchen sink faucet gave up the ghost the other day.  It started with a tiny drip, and grew from there into an annoying drip, the kind that shows up unannounced and hits the stainless steel sink with an audible thud that my wife can hear from the next county, or in her sleep.  It’s almost as bad as when I forget to turn off the air compressor in the attached garage, and it comes on with a basso profundo bray around 3 AM, and I get the elbow in response.

So I went down to McLendon’s, first, as usual, and bought two complete new cartridges, since I wasn’t quite sure which one was the leaker, brought them home and installed them.  That’s when I realized that I could have just bought a seal kit for one third the price. Ah, well.  The leak did not stop.  Consternation ensued.

The decision was made to toss the old one and buy a brand new faucet, the kind with the graceful swiveling neck like a swan with a funnel for a beak and a handle on each side, and a spray nozzle in its own socket over on the right.  There was nothing wrong with our spray nozzle, other than a minor tendency for the thumb lever to detach itself without warning, but a new one was part of the kit, so there you go.

I assured my wife that, despite my retired status, my assembly skills were still sharp as a tack, then shooed her off to work while I contemplated the Rosetta Stone instructions, which taught me everything I needed to know in three languages.

The hardest part was getting down under the sink and working overhead on my back in a tight space.  This would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, if I had not been attending yoga classes at Michelle Peterson’s Aspiration Community Yoga for the last few years.  The second hardest part was pulling all the stuff out from under there.  I got my son-in-law to hold everything steady while I tightened the nuts on the stems underneath and attached the hoses where they went.  Piece of cake, really.

Then, when I got up to test run the new faucet, I noticed a strange thing.  The two handles were reversed.  When I would reach for the cold tap, for example, it opened with a counter-clockwise push, rather than the pull I expected.  The same thing happened on the hot side!  Very interesting.  Must be a new design feature, I decided.  All the package said was that the spout swiveled 360 degrees, but not a word about opening the valves.

Anyway, I checked for leaks underneath and declared it good.  I decided I rather liked the new configuration, and hoped she would as well.  I announced the completion in a text and got on the next project, out in the shop.

My hopes were impetuous, as it turned out, along with my logic.  The first words out of her mouth were, “Why did you put it in backwards?  Look, the handles have a C and an H on them, and the C is on the left!”

“In the first place,” I replied, thinking fast, “You have to think outside the box here.  See this instruction book?”  I held it up.  “It is in three languages, one of which is French.  That C could also be for Chaud, which means Hot in French, does it not?  And the H could also mean Hrim, with is an Old Norse word in the Norman dialect for “Cold as the Icy Heart of a Landlord at the end of the month, could it not?”  She elevated an eyebrow.  “And furthermore”, I continued, “those letters are on little caps that can easily be transferred to the opposite sides if you insist.  But why not try it for a while?  I like the fact that while I’m rinsing dishes they don’t have a tendency to knock into the valve handle and turn the water cold this way.  But I’m willing to agree, for the sake of harmony, that, on the face of it, a good case could be made that I did indeed install the faucet backwards.  I assure you that that was not fully in my mind at the time, and I would be happy to put it back the other way, but first, why don’t you try it for a few days and see what you think?”  She grudgingly assented.  “Yes, Dear” and “Ok, Fine” work both ways.  Besides, I do all the dishes.

So I think I may have skated on this one.  My only concern is that she might decide that all the other sinks in the house should be reversed, for consistency, but I’ll deal with that if and when it happens.  It looks like the sprayer is powerful enough that I can mostly hit the dogs’ water dish on the floor next to the fridge without having to pick up the full dish out of the sink and place it on the floor and not spill too much, so that’s a bonus.  Kitchen innovation is a never-ending opportunity, I tell you.  :-{)}

Travels with Dog, pt. 2

I think I have a new favorite road, now.  As usual with these sorts of things, an accidental happenstance leads to a discovery.  When you are on the road for whatever reason, you are also on an adventure, and should be open to new experiences when they present themselves.

In this case, we were on our way home with the dog, Nash, or Fuzzbutt, as I call him, from the National Specialty show for the Bouvier des Flandres breed, held this year in a suburb of St. Louis at a facility owned by Purina Farms, maker of Dog Chow and so much else.  The factory resembled the place where Soylent Green was made, to me, but the show facilities were top-notch, even air conditioned, a rarity in the Dog Show world where local fairgrounds are the most common venues and rustic is the most common description. It turned out we were right close to Route 66, the Mother Road, and I spent some time retracing its path as I explored the neighborhood.

We were running a day late because we had gotten caught on the east side of the Continental Divide when a big storm blew down from Canada and blanketed the Great Plains with an unseasonal early snow from Alberta to northern Texas and I-70 was shut down for miles west of Cheyenne, Wyoming, forcing us to wait it out in a Hotel in Kearny, Nebraska.  This was far from the worst case scenario, given that the Seahawks were on the tube in London and the local beer was fresh and good.  We seem to have finally arrived at the way things were back before Prohibition was enacted, with small breweries in every town making great beer for the locals, and travelers lucky enough to find them on their way through.

We finally got back on the road on Tuesday morning in sub-freezing weather, but clear skies and dry pavement supported the decision, and we made good time after that.  Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, and most of their neighbors have a 75 or 80 mph speed limit on their freeways, which helps gobble up the miles.

On the morning of the last day we woke up early in our hotel in Evanston, Wyoming and beat feet out of town in the shivering darkness on Interstate 84.  I have found that when you hit the road early and wait a while before breakfast, it tastes extra good when you finally find it, as if your body is celebrating the realization that you weren’t actually trying to starve it to death after all.

We blew through the last of Wyoming and a good chunk of northeastern Utah before we stopped for lunch in the very cool small town of Baker City, Oregon.  This is an old Western town (1874, with movie-set buildings to back it up) tucked into a valley where the burnt scrubland hills of Eastern Oregon give way to trees and sheltered dales with cultivated fields and small-town cafes like the Oregon Trail, where we sat at a booth and relearned that banana cream pie is a universal language.  Okay, okay, I will stipulate any kind of pie, but banana cream is the one for me.

Of course, after lunch my wife had to get the dog out for a walk before we left, which caused all of the servers  and at least one customer to abandon their posts for a look-see.  A purebred Bouvier in full show trim is a rare thing in these parts, apparently.  You have to admire their innocence.

We finally got back on the road and drove through town admiring the architecture and the old houses, only to discover that the onramp to Interstate 84 was closed and locked with a padlocked gate!  There were no signs, and nobody standing around explaining matters as a steady stream of cars and trucks were detoured back through town to state highway 30, which at that point had become a parking lot.  We skipped back to the original offramp we had taken to get in, only to find it also locked down!  The busy freeway was as empty as a politician’s heart at tax time.

In the old days I would routinely stop at a hardware store in these small towns and buy a Metsker Map of the county, which always had all the back roads, paved and unpaved, on it, a useful source of information and a pleasure to read later and mark the roads you had taken while setting aside others for next time.  Nowadays, I just pulled out my phone and hit the Google Maps button.  It seemed to show me that State Highway 203, otherwise known as the Medical Springs Highway, which started right at one of those closed-off onramps and seemed to head straight into the surrounding hills in the wrong direction altogether, actually wandered about through those hills and came back down to 84 some 35 miles down the road, which should have bypassed whatever problem was happening on the freeway.  So that’s the way we went, up into the hills in search of another way home.  What we found was delightful.

As we later learned from an Oregon Department of Transportation tweet, “I-84 closed in both directions between #LaGrande & #BakerCity due to a roll over crash involving a semi tractor-trailer hauling cattle. ODOT attempting to round up cattle. No detour at this time. Extensive closure possible.”  Some poor cowboy bought the farm out there, along with several of the cows he was hauling to market, while we were having our lunch.  The rest of them wandered the freeway until people arrived to round them up again.  I hope a few of them escaped to live an outlaw life hiding in the canyons and gorges that populate that country.  If they only knew where they were headed, they would have all run for it.

But for us, the closure led us to this old back road that twisted and turned up and down the scrubby hills outside of town for miles, until it picked up and ran alongside Catherine Creek before coming to the town of Union, which is where we picked up I-84 again, well past the chaos caused by the accident.

There is a town called Medical Springs, out there in the middle of nowhere.  Blink twice and you’ll miss it.  It reminds us that, back in the late 1800s, most of our ancestors lived in those small towns scattered all over the West.  Baker City was a pretty big town for the times, and the idea of a Portland or a Seattle or a San Francisco was too much to think about.

The State Park on Catherine Creek was beautiful, and empty on that particular day.  Nash got to take a long walk on his leash, out over the bridge to look down at the creek, and wander through the trees.  Here’s some pictures:

Our restful interlude in a beautiful little park out in the country by a creek was the high point of a day spent flogging our new van through parts of four states toward a home that was all the more desirable for the twelve days we had been away.

The best part of any journey is the homecoming.  That, and the little adventures that soothe your soul along the way.  :-{)}

Found Objects

I’m espousing a new theory, or maybe an old one dressed up in new clothes.  It’s called, “Found Object Bracketing”.

I probably can’t claim this as my own invention, as I’ve seen many examples of the idea on motorcycles on the street, especially in places and at times when many of them gather, such as the Isle of Vashon TT, but I like to think I’m advancing the cause whenever I can.

Back in the day, which feels good to say if you’re old enough to remember it fondly, having forgotten all the bad stuff, the members of the motorcycling world, mostly including the chopper guys, were of necessity handy with tools and able to come up with ideas in solution of problems that arose.  It started with the obvious ones – drill out the rivets on that hinged rear fender and relocate the tail light to the hand built sissy bar – and proceeded from there to the far-our unrideable custom creations of today that reveal their true value when they go up for sale years later with very few miles on them.  Somewhere in the middle of that are some fancy but useful pieces that add value to a bike in the eyes of a knowledgeable viewer.

For me, it started on a road trip one time back in the ‘70s.  A few of us were headed out through Winthrop towards Glacier Park when we ran out of daylight somewhere east of Omak and decided to pull off the road by a small creek and set up the tents.  We traveled light in those days and had the capacity to make and break a good campsite, cook food, and build a small fire to sit around afterwards.

In the waning moments of daylight, I went for a wander through the adjoining field, where I spotted the hulk of an old car out by the barbed wire fence and strolled over for a closer look.  The big square bodied four door had the look of something out of the late ‘20s, early ‘30s, with the balloon fenders and the upright noses of evolved carriages.  I stuck my head in through the glassless side door and saw that everything was in the advanced stage of decomposition by rust, which had already evaporated the floor boards and most of the firewall.  But there, sticking out under the dash in the center by where the shifter would have been if there was a transmission under it still, was a hand lever that appeared to be in perfect condition, not a scrap of rust visible on its gorgeous Art-Deco style.  I reached out and pulled it loose with little effort from the remnant of the vent flap that it used to open and close and took a closer look.  It was hard, and strong, and intact, and appeared to be made of some form of cast metal with enough chrome to make it rust proof.  The mounting end had a couple of screw holes in a bent bracket.  I found a place for it in my saddlebags and drug it all over the country and back home again, where it wound up in the tub with all the other catch-alls and remnants that tend to pile up when you do things.

Some years later, that handle turned out to be the perfect choice for a hand shift conversion on an old Harley Shovelhead chopper.  All we had to do was bend the mounting end a bit to get the proper angle and weld it to that steel cover that activates the shifter on a Big Twin four speed.  So off that old vent flap lever went to a new life on the road, where it may still be, for all I know.

The idea is that every part, no matter what it is used on, contains material and labor, which gives it value.  If that part is scrapped, it only returns the value of the scrap metal to the owner.  If, however, that part can be put back into service somehow, it can return double the value, both because you already had it, so you didn’t have to go buy one, but also because you preserved the value that was already in it and enhanced that value with a new use for it.  Taking that idea to the extreme, you turn that piece into a work of art that not only works well, but looks good doing it, which thereby reflects positively on your own ingenuity and mechanical skills as a bonus.  I saw a Triumph once with top motor mounts made from modified Craftsman box end wrenches that was a perfect example of this.

On my FXR I wanted to run a Supertrapp exhaust, but the outlet for the only headers that would fit with my police floorboards was 2” diameter, and the inlet for the only muffler that would work in the back was 2 ½”, so I had to manufacture a split collared bushing out of aluminum on the lathe to take up the difference.  It is nice to have a machine shop in your garage for this kind of stuff.  Then the remnant bin churned itself and spit out two ideas, one of which, a piece of slotted flatbar with curled edges for strength,  was the perfect length and shape to bolt to the muffler, and the other was a stout length of forged square stock that needed just a slight bend in exactly the right spot with a few drilled holes that allowed it to tuck in behind the muffler and tie in to the bracket on the transmission with the use of a coupling nut from McLendon’s.  I got the exhaust pieces at the swap meet for around $60, and the coupling nut was a couple of bucks, compared to a whole new system for $800+, and this Found Objects philosophy begins to make sense.

On my Guzzi, I got a heckuva deal on new PIAA driving lights, the downside being that they came with a switch, but no mounting brackets.  The remnant bin coughed up an old solid brass bathroom towel rack that I cut the curved sections out of and put to new use under my headlight to hold the lights where I want them attached to the lower triple clamp.  All it took was a couple of strategically drilled holes and some saw work.  One side tended to loosen up, so I tied them both together with a part that looks like some form of track lighting bracket but fits in under there like it was meant to be.  For the switch, I discovered a bracket in the tub that was miraculously perfect to tuck in under the top triple clamp which I attached with a couple of Nut-Serts.

Of course, you must disregard the value of your time in a situation like this.  When you can sit at your computer and look at Ebay and Craigslist, not to mention all the facebook pages dedicated to motorcycle and parts sales, you realize there are few problems that can’t be solved by throwing piles of money at them electronically.  It may cost a bundle, but it will save time compared to the hours you may spend digging through piles at swap meets looking for the right piece.  So it’s a matter of what’s important.  Time is getting short for some of us, and getting the project done sooner might be worth more to us than the money.  But if you have the luxury of time to wait for the perfect found object to pop up in your remnant bin, you can get that extra little thrill that comes when you find something that you can turn into a work of art and solve a problem at the same time.  That’s why we rarely throw any of that useless crap away, and usually come to regret it when we do.  :-{)}

Order amid Chaos

My dad was an organized man.  He was an electrical engineer by trade, and a woodworker by avocation who in his later life produced many fine pieces of furniture that the family has kept among us.  After he passed, we found notebooks that listed every individual tool he ever bought at Sears, where we used to go as a family on Friday nights.  We would park out back in the lot where they later built the annex, and walk in the back door by the loading dock.  Mom would head over to the clothing sections with whichever kid was next on the list for new clothes, or browse for fabrics or household stuff.  There was always something on the list when you had seven kids.

Dad would head up to the second floor where the Craftsman tools were on display, and I would follow up the escalator until we got to the motorcycles, where I would peel off and spend the entire time sitting on the mopeds and pretending I was cruising down the highway (or the sidewalk), or drooling over the scooters or the big black beautiful Allstate 250, which really was an Austrian-made Puch with two exhaust pipes coming out of a single two-stroke cylinder, a “twingle”, as it was known at the time.  I think I was ten or eleven at the time, but I already knew I was born to be wild.

It was a simpler time, when a set of ¼” drive sockets from 3/16” up to ½” would be listed in the book as costing $1.95 in 1963.  The family soon learned to send my brother to collect me on the way out the door, where we always stopped by the famous candy counter back at the foot of the escalator around the corner from the exit, a place of magic where you could buy Chick-O-Sticks by the pound, and the drive home would be quiet other than the sound of chomping and the smacking of lips.

My dad was a wise man.  He knew that, when you’re in the middle of a project, and you need a particular screw for a task, it made sense to acknowledge that if you needed it once, you will probably need it again sometime, so he always bought a few extra.  Over the years, the collection of tools and hardware got bigger and bigger, which posed its own problem:  How do you find what you want when you want it?  Stuff needs storage, and storage costs money.  It’s that simple.

Storage also costs time, and thought, and organization.  In his shop, he lined the wall above the work benches with a series of hand made cabinets, all with doors made from pegboard for airflow set in birch frames.  Some of the doors would open to reveal a particular set of wrenches, say, each in its own slot or hanging from its own hook.  Often there would be a few pullout drawers in a special frame inside the cabinet that held smaller wrenches, or related things like sharpening stones in the cabinet where the planes were stored.  Like was stored with like, and the bench was always clean, other than the tins that held the parrafin-soaked rags with which he wiped down each tool every time he put it away at the end of the night.  You can see the same tendencies in mechanics in the shop.  You’ll notice the ones who lay everything they need to do a job on a handy cart to start a job, and carefully replace them in their proper place at the end of the shift, cleaned and wiped and ready for the next day.  Often, the trend continues to personal appearance, and I suspect a link between the ones who keep their coveralls clean and neat and the ones with the well-organized toolboxes.

Around the corner in Dad’s last shop, at the place they built in Port Angeles, were a series of free-standing shelves, crammed to the top with individual plastic boxes, each subdivided into sections with inserted plastic walls.  One would be full of pop rivets, another of cotter pins, another of washers of all sizes and types (I snagged that one).  You could literally stock a hardware store with his lifetime collection, but none of us were ready to take on that responsibility at the time, so we sent the entire pile off to the auctioneers, where they may very well have done just that.  They were all individually labeled with peel-and-stick labels you spit out of a squeeze gun.  All the spare belts for the lawn mowers and the string for the weed eaters, and the various lube oils and spare parts that you need to have around so you can fix anything that breaks on the spot were on those shelves, for many years in some cases.

It’s a certain type of person who can appreciate that level of organization as something to strive for and be proud of, and I think I inherited some of that from the old man.  My mother must have known when she gave me a name the letters of which can be re-arranged to spell “anal”.

And yet, much to my dismay, I discover that these values are not universally shared, even among the closest members of my own household.  When I mildly point out that, in order to get the most life out of those bath towels and extend the time before they deteriorate to the point of becoming “dog towels”, which are stored on a completely different shelf in the closet, it behooves us to carefully sort them when replacing the ones that just went in the laundry basket so the next one up is the one that has been sitting on the shelf the longest.  And if I go on to point out that the best way to accomplish this goal is to take all of them out every time and put the ones on the bottom of the pile on the back of the shelf on the towel racks in the bathroom, then replace the towels-in-waiting back on the shelf in the same order, well, would not a reasonable person conclude the obvious value of such a system?

But no, what I get instead are eye-rolls, and sneers, and snorts of derision!  I don’t understand it.  My suggestion to use post-it notes to date each towel as it went back on the shelf was rejected outright.

And look at the plates in the dining room!  Would it not make perfect sense, I ask, to always replace the currently washed plates on the Bottom of the stack, thus ensuring that each plate gets used once in turn, and no plate gets overused?  You would think they would be grateful for such insights, and eagerly agree to adopt such a system!  Especially since I do all the dishes!

But no, instead I get snarls, or amused chuckles, depending on the climate.  It’s enough to make me go out in the garage and work on sorting nuts and bolts.  I’m getting the stainless steel ones separated from the Allen heads, which are sorted differently than the cap screws, which are sorted by grade and length.  It’s gonna be great!  :-{)}