tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80913129718325298572024-02-20T07:23:51.922-08:00Life StoriesDave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.comBlogger78125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-80505153223202996862023-12-31T17:18:00.000-08:002023-12-31T17:18:01.595-08:00Thanksgiving Dinner<p>In the 70's I was working as a truck driver making weekly trips from Iowa to the San Francisco bay area. Almost every trip while going through Nevada I would stop at a diner in the small town of Carlin to have coffee and a sandwich.</p><p>One time I was going through Nevada on Thanksgiving day when I stopped in at the diner. I wasn't really hungry, so I just ordered coffee. The young guy who owned it urged me to have a turkey sandwich. He was really persistent so I finally relented and ordered a turkey sandwich.</p><p>After about 20 minutes he came out with my "turkey sandwich". It was a complete Thanksgiving dinner with roasted turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, and pumpkin pie. It was really delicious! </p><p>When I went to pay, he wouldn't take my money. He said, "Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for being our customer."<br /></p>Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-71868761745048162622023-03-22T11:08:00.001-07:002023-03-22T18:04:19.372-07:00Vapor Lock<p> I attended Officer Candidate School in Ft. Belvoir, VA which was located not far from Washington D.C. One weekend one of the other students, Roland, asked if my friend, Jake, and I could take him with us on our regular trips to D.C so he could visit his sister who lived in there. We were happy to oblige.<br /></p><p>We dropped Roland off near his sister's apartment but when we went to leave, my car wouldn't start. It was a hot afternoon and my old Ford had a tendency to vapor lock when the engine was turned off on a hot day. The only thing that could be done was to just wait for the engine to cool down so the car would start.</p><p>Jake and I were standing next to the car trying to decide how to kill time until the car would start when we were approached by two prostitutes. They assumed that the only reason two young white guys would be in that all black neighborhood was to avail themselves of their services.</p><p>Jake and I explained we were just waiting for the car to cool down so we could leave after dropping our friend off at his sister's apartment. We chatted with these "working girls" for about a half hour and then said, "It looks like the car has cooled down so we can go now." They laughed and apologized for incorrectly assuming why we were and said, "Thanks for stopping by."<br /></p>Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-31093319162101423072023-03-22T10:41:00.001-07:002023-03-23T09:39:18.600-07:00Walking<p> I've enjoyed walking for most of my life. You see many things you would have missed otherwise and get to meet all sorts of interesting people.</p><p>In 1968 after I finished Officer Candidate School, I was attending Intelligence Officer's Training at Fort Holabird Maryland located on the outskirts of Baltimore. During my training I was staying in an apartment in Baltimore that was near downtown. One Monday evening around 9pm I decided to go for a walk around that part of town.</p><p>It was a warm night with a mild haze coming off of the Chesapeake Bay which gave the streetlights a slight halo effect. I hadn't been walking for very long when a young boy about 9 or 10 years old appeared out of the shadows and started walking beside me.</p><p>He looked up at me and said, "Hi mister. Is it OK if I walk with you?" I said, "Sure, I'd enjoy having some company. By the way, my name is Dave, what's yours?" He said, "Mathew."</p><p>Mathew and I walked together not saying much, just taking in the ambiance of a big city at night. After about a half hour Mathew said, "Thanks, mister. I gotto go now." and he faded back into the shadows.<br /></p>Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-10070478670133634562023-02-25T10:52:00.000-08:002023-02-25T10:52:29.062-08:00Mad Magazine and Mom<p> When I was about 11 years old we lived in a house on Butterfield Rd. in San Anselmo, CA. One Saturday morning I was out in the garage pouring over the latest issue of Mad Magazine with my friend, Dale, from across the street. That issue had the usual "Spy vs Spy" episodes along with Dave Berg's satires on suburban life. It also included my all time favorite, "Horrifying Cliches".</p><p>When my mother came out to the garage to check on the laundry she saw us reading Mad Magazine and assumed it was some kind of smut. She came over to us and said, "What are you guys reading? Let me see that!" She grabbed the magazine from us and started looking through it.</p><p>As she was reading it, she slowly started to smile. Her smile grew to a grin and then she laughed out loud. She handed the Mad Magazine back to us and said, "That's pretty funny, isn't it?"<br /></p>Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-46382079091966721282021-08-25T17:53:00.007-07:002021-08-26T12:19:55.337-07:00Boogie in Walsenburg<p> In 1971 after I got out of the Army, I drove out to Trinidad, Colorado to visit my brother, Chuck. He was living with a couple of his friends in a geodesic dome house that they built themselves. After I had been there a couple of days, Chuck said, "Tomorrow is Saturday so we need to check out Boogie in Walsenburg. It's only about 40 miles north of here" </p><p>Apparently there was a commune of hippy musicians living in the hills outside Walsenburg, Colorado. They would come to town on Saturday evening to play music in one of the bars there. <br /></p><p>We arrived at the bar where the music was supposed to happen at about 8:30. It was a long older building that was fairly narrow with high ceilings, wooden floors, and several neon Coors signs decorating the walls. Six slowing turning ceiling fans made a valiant attempt to keep the place cool. A long bar, well worn from many years of supporting elbows, lined the first third of one wall. In the back of the room there was an old, slightly out of tune, upright piano.<br /></p><p>Around 9 pm the hippy musicians started arriving. They moved some tables out of the way to make room for their instruments, speakers, and amplifiers and moved enough tables to make a small dance floor. While they were setting up and getting tuned up, the customers started wandering in. A little before 10 pm when they were ready to start playing, there must have been about 70 people in that bar.</p><p>They started out playing Jimi Hendrix's "Red House" followed by numbers from Pink Floyd, Cream, some old blues standards and a couple of their original songs. They did an expecially nice version of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb".</p><p>After about an hour of playing they stopped to have a beer and take a break. While they were taking a break, a middle aged woman with grey hair sat down at the piano. She started playing a really smokin' 12 bar piano boogie. The guys in the band put down their beers and joined in.</p><p>People in the bar moved some tables out of the way so there was more room for dancing and for the next 15 minutes, that place really rocked! When they finally stopped, the woman playing the piano, the guys in the band, and those dancing all broke out in raucous laughter. </p><p>The band good naturedly took requests from the people there and managed to play every request well. One middle-aged woman whose father had recently died, went up to the band and asked if they could play "Amazing Grace" for her. A woman standing near her offered to do the singing.</p><p>The woman singing was apparently part of a local church choir and had an amazing contralto voice. I've heard "Amazing Grace" many times before and since, but never like the way it was done that night. By the time they finished I don't think there was a dry eye in the place. The woman who requested the song went up to the band with tears streaming down her face and thanked them from the bottom of her heart.</p><p>Later in the evening, a man about 70 years old walked up to the band carrying a violin case and asked if he could join in. The guys in the band said, "Sure, just start playing whatever you like and we'll join in." What followed was about 30 minutes of great blue grass music with a killer fiddle player.</p><p>That night I heard everything from blues to blue grass. I'll always be grateful to my brother for introducing me to Boogie in Walsenburg. It was America at its most tolerant, inclusive best.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-71316842315579920582021-05-08T15:26:00.002-07:002021-05-15T14:44:01.693-07:00Finding Queers<p>Years ago I was living in Omaha Nebraska and working as an over the road truck driver. I spent about a year hauling a load of pork every week from the Rath meatpacking plant in Waterloo Iowa to a meat wholesaler in Ogden Utah. Later, after I got married, I got a job driving a gasoline tanker for Mobil Oil delivering to gas stations throughout the greater San Francisco bay area.</p><p>One evening, about 9pm, I was delivering gas to a station on Van Ness Ave in San Francisco when a family in an Oldsmobile with Iowa plates pulled into the station. The driver, a man in his late forties, got out of the car, walked over to me, and asked, "Where do we have to go to see all the queers?"</p><p>I said, "You might try Waterloo Iowa. There used to be a notorious gay bar there just outside the entrance to the Rath meatpacking plant."<br /></p>Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-78504073210028384342020-08-30T13:35:00.001-07:002020-08-30T13:38:11.800-07:00Itemized Bill<p>When I was in high school my father told me about a town in Nebraska that had a sewage treatment plant that wasn't working correctly. None of the people tasked with operating the plant could figure out what was wrong.</p><p>Finally in desperation the town called in a consultant in the hopes that he could solve the problem. When the consultant got there, he spent about an hour walking around the sewage treatment plant checking everything out. He then picked up a big hammer from a workbench and walked over to a large steel <a href="https://wosupplycatalog.blob.core.windows.net/media/012202.jpg">gate valve</a>. He gave the valve a big whack with the hammer and the plant started working again almost immediately.</p><p>A few weeks later the city received a bill from the consultant for $10,000. That was real money back then and the mayor was incensed when he found out. He said, "All the guy did was walk around the plant for an hour and then he whacked one valve with a hammer. Why should we have to pay $10,000 for that? Send that bill back and demand that it be itemized!"</p><div style="text-align: left;">Several weeks later the town received this itemized bill from the consultant:</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>One whack with a 24 oz. ball peen hammer - $1</li><li>Knowing what to whack - $9,9999</li></ul><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">The town paid the itemized bill. <br /></div>Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-23936484621711580152020-07-14T13:34:00.000-07:002020-07-14T13:34:24.060-07:00Elevator SearchWhen my friend, Jake, and I finished Officer Candidates School, we both went to Military Intelligence school at Fort Holabird in Baltimore Md. The course lasted 4 months so we rented an apartment on the fourth floor of an older building in downtown Baltimore.<br />
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The apartment had an elevator, but it was an old elevator that didn't have modern buttons to select your floor. It had a nice old elevator operator who would start and stop the elevator manually. The elevator had a big handle which he would push forward to go up and pull back to go down. To stop he would put the handle in its default middle position. There was a lot of lag between where the handle was moved to and how the elevator responded. He rarely ever managed to stop right on the target floor. If he was too high he would go down a bit. If he was too low he would go up.<br />
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This back and forth would go on until he got it right or just gave up and said, "Please step up or please step down." Jake and I would regularly place bets on how many tries it would take for the elevator to stop at our floor.<br />
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It was an elevator variation on the <a href="https://www.tutorialspoint.com/data_structures_algorithms/binary_search_algorithm.htm" target="_blank">binary search.</a> Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-92136187586853333242020-04-12T14:15:00.000-07:002020-04-18T14:39:28.551-07:00Skirting the issueWhen I worked for Juniper Networks, the office of the founder, Pradeep, was in the same area as our group of engineer's desks. Rafaella, an attractive Italian woman in her early 40's, was his administrative assistant and was very good at her job. She always wore very classy, office appropriate attire and always wore slacks.<br />
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One morning I met her in the hall near the breakroom and saw she was wearing a very nice dark gray skirt that went almost to the floor. I said, "Rafaella, what's the special occasion you're wearing that nice ankle-length skirt for?" She said, "When I was in Pradeep's office a couple of days ago he complained about me always wearing slacks. He wanted to know why I never wore skirts. So," she said with a mischievous smirk, "I'm wearing a skirt today."Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-61473880979140557812019-11-14T16:31:00.000-08:002019-11-14T16:31:28.347-08:00Loading Dock BalletOnce I had to deliver a load from Iowa to a large warehouse in Los Angeles. The warehouse loading dock was almost half a block long with about 20 trucks in the process of getting loaded and unloaded. I backed my truck into the dock and waited for my turn to get unloaded.<br />
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While I was waiting, I watched as a man in his fifties went about loading and unloading trucks using his electric <a href="https://www.yale.com/assets/0/72/74/90/205/56a28878-c805-4101-8de7-f51204f549d8.png" target="_blank">pallet jack</a>. He moved with a casual grace shifting his body from side to side as he maneuvered pallets in and out of the trucks and the warehouse. He had a serene, confident look and moved with a gentle rhythm.<br />
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It was almost as though his moves were choreographed to music that only he could hear and I was watching a loading dock ballet. Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-26665657843542255542019-02-12T15:11:00.001-08:002020-05-08T13:42:25.632-07:00On TargetLast night I was doing the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen while chatting with my wife, Lan, who was relaxing in the dining room. I was about finished and had just put the kitchen garbage can in the middle of the kitchen floor when Lan stood up. She wadded her napkin into a ball and threw it right into the garbage can in the kitchen.<br />
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She got a sly smirk on her face and said, "Not bad for an old lady, right?" Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-33048236813358066152019-01-18T17:11:00.000-08:002019-01-18T17:11:15.643-08:00Happy NewsLast week my wife, Lan, and I were watching a Vietnamese TV channel when the commercials came on. At the beginning of the first commercial the voice-over announcer enthusiastically proclaimed, "Tin vui! Tin vui!" This was followed by the rest of the ad.<br />
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At the next break a completely different commercial started with the same, "Tin vui! Tin vui!" I was curious so I asked Lan, "What does tin vui, tin vui mean anyway?" Her face took on a somewhat bemused look and she said, "It means bullshit, bullshit."<br />
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Tin vui actually means "happy news" or literally "news happy" since in Vietnamese the adjective usually follows the noun.<br />
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After almost 42 years of marriage, Lan still manages to surprise me with her dry wit and sarcastic sense of humor.Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-66077609743600484372019-01-12T05:02:00.000-08:002019-01-12T05:02:42.516-08:00Nice Way to DieMy wife, Lan, has an old friend that just died. We've known Loan and her husband, John, for many years and they've always been very sweet together.<br />
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A few days ago they were sitting together on the couch when Loan told her husband that she was really tired and wanted to lie down. She stretched out on the couch with her head in his lap and went to sleep. Less than an hour later she died.<br />
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We all have to die sometime, but that was a really nice way for her to die.Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-2000284566531251492018-07-16T14:23:00.000-07:002018-07-16T18:29:01.639-07:00Good News Bad NewsI used to drive a gasoline tanker for Mobil Oil delivering to stations throughout the bay area. Our main terminal was the Southern Pacific Pipeline in San Jose where we loaded the trucks. The pipeline had several loading racks and the tankers had to wait in a staging area until a rack was available.<br />
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One Monday morning several of us were standing around talking in the staging area when Gary from King City pulled in. When he got out of his truck we saw that he had a large bandage on his left thumb. When asked what happened, he said that he bought a table saw a couple of weeks ago and managed to cut off the end of his thumb while using it over the weekend.<br />
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My friend, John, said, "Well Gary, I guess you could say you have good news and bad news. The bad news, obviously, is that you cut off the end of your thumb. The good news is you can now use that thumb if you're hitch hiking and only want a short ride." Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-38403356281072055482017-12-13T15:53:00.000-08:002018-09-18T18:28:25.305-07:00Cowboy Club ProtocolIn the spring of 1976 I rode my Triumph out to the Washington D.C. area to take in the summer long celebration of our country's bicentennial. I stayed in a small motel in Alexandria Virginia and rode into D. C. every day to check out the festivities. I spent the better part of one week just wandering around the Smithsonian Museum.<br />
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A couple blocks from my motel was a huge country and western night club. One evening I decided to walk over there and check it out. When I got to the door, the bouncer said, "I'm sorry, but you can't come in. You're wearing Levis and that's not allowed." I said, "Do you realize how bizarre it is to not allow people to wear Levis in a cowboy bar?" He thought for a minute and then said, "You're right, that's pretty fucked up. Go on in."<br />
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Inside I found a bandstand with a large dance floor and two large groups of tables. Most of the guys were wearing cowboy hats, string ties, and boots. The women favored big hair, heavy makeup, and lots of jewelry. It was a safe bet that the only cow most of those "cowboys" had ever seen was on TV.<br />
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I was just standing there taking it all in when one of the two women at the table near me asked, "Are you new here?" I said, "Yes, as a matter of fact I am." She said, "Let me explain the setup. This side of the room is for people that are just here to dance. The other side is for those that are here to get laid."<br />
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"Is that posted somewhere?"<br />
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"No, but everyone knows about it."<br />
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"Well, thanks for explaining the protocol." <br />
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It felt like I was in some kind of Twilight Zone episode. I wandered around a bit more and then headed for the exit. The place was just too weird even for me. <br />
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Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-37163300883361283702017-09-24T16:15:00.000-07:002018-07-19T18:16:21.900-07:00Peterbilt Air TracIn 1972 I worked for Pacific Provisions in South San Francisco driving a Peterbilt truck hauling produce to the mid-west and meat back to the west coast. The truck had what Peterbilt called an Air Leaf suspension on the drive axles. This consisted of an quarter elliptic spring for each wheel with one end anchored to the frame and an air bag mounted on the other end attached to the axle.<br />
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I noticed while watching the suspension in my mirrors that every time I turned, the drive axles would get quite a bit out of alignment with the frame. I also noticed that the springs would wind up when accelerating or braking. I was not in the habit of driving in such a way that I would break springs, but on this truck I was breaking them fairly often.<br />
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I was in the San Francisco Eng Peterbilt dealership getting another broken spring replaced when I wandered into the office of one of the salesmen. I told him I had broken another spring and explained to him why I thought it was happening. The axle alignment issue along with the springs winding up was what I thought was the cause.<br />
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I said what the suspension needed was a panhard bar going from each axle to the frame to keep it in alignment along with a torque arm parallel to the spring to keep it from winding up. I drew the whole thing out on a piece of paper for him. This wasn't any kind of radical insight on my part. This was a very basic way of controlling a rear axle used in many race cars.<br />
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A few months later at a big truck show, Peterbilt introduced their new air ride suspension called Air Trac. This was exactly the design I had drawn out in the salesman's office.<br />
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The next time I was in the Eng Peterbilt dealership for service, I went to the salesman and asked him how Peterbilt happened to introduce the same suspension I had drawn for him.<br />
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He said, "I took your drawing along with your explanation of what was happening down to the factory in Newark, CA. They liked the idea and wanted to know if you had any other suggestions."<br />
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I never received any money for my idea, I gained something even better. I gained the satisfaction of seeing my design widely used in Peterbilts all over the country for the last 45 years. <br />
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Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-49037041844767794102017-09-24T14:37:00.000-07:002017-09-24T15:05:05.905-07:00Piano LessonWhen I was about 8 years old the song, Davy Crockett, was played often on the radio. I figured out how to play it by ear on our piano and played it constantly. It didn't take long for my father to get really tired of hearing it.<br />
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One afternoon after I had played that song for the umpteenth time, my father sat down next to me at the piano and said, "Let me show you how to play something that's even better than Davy Crockett. Let me show you how to play boogie." He then played a few bars of boogie on the piano. He taught me how to play the three chord progression which is the basis for blues, boogie, and most early rock and roll.<br />
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I was hooked and my father never had to listen to Davy Crockett again.Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-69222868952862899452017-08-21T13:43:00.000-07:002017-08-21T18:45:19.855-07:00Cake DefrostingWhen I was young, my mother did a fair amount of baking. One day she baked an angel food cake and covered it with a nice thick butter cream frosting. After frosting it, she put it on top of the refrigerator to cool.<br />
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While the frosted cake was cooling, she made a big mistake and went next door to the neighbors.<br />
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My younger brother, sisters, and I kept checking out the cake on top of the refrigerator. The frosting was so thick that we thought we could scrape a little off and our mother would never notice.<br />
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We pulled up a chair and took turns scraping off some frosting with a table knife. We were careful to keep turning the cake and smoothing the frosting so it would look even and unmolested.<br />
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There was only one problem with this plan - we didn't know when to stop. When my mother came home, the frosting on the cake was so thin it was almost transparent.<br />
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She was NOT amused.Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-28616601370460093552017-08-10T14:21:00.000-07:002017-08-10T14:27:18.095-07:00No SportsWhen I was in high school in Pawnee City, NE I went out for football and track through my Junior year. I was very good at both of these in a small town that lived vicariously through the high school sports teams.<br />
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In the summer I worked for local farmers putting up hay for $1.50 an hour. Two weeks before the beginning of my Senior year, the football/track coach, Clyde Voltz, called to tell me that I had to report for football practice the next day. I didn't like his attitude and besides, I was still doing a lot of farm work.<br />
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I told him, "You're wrong. I don't have to report for football practice tomorrow because I'm not going to play football! You can forget about me going out for track as well."<br />
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It didn't take long for word to spread around town that I refused to play football. It was bad enough that I wouldn't play football, but the whole idea that I wouldn't play even though I was really good at it made local heads explode.<br />
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For the next several months I was a real pariah in town.<br />
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In this high school, you were awarded a letter sweater when you did well in a sport. I thought the whole thing was somewhat stupid and never wore mine until I decided to not participate in any sports. After that I wore it to school almost every day. Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-42701872341182682922017-05-22T10:55:00.000-07:002017-05-22T18:08:34.251-07:00Fire DrillWhen I was about 9 years old, we lived in a big two story house in Hutchinson Kansas. My father worried about us being able to get out of the house if we were upstairs and there was a fire. He bought a long rope, tied big knots in it every 12 inches, and then tied it to the bed post next to the window. He had us practice throwing the rope out the window and then using the knots to climb down to the ground.<br />
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My 7 year old brother, Chuck, and I thought this was enormous fun.<br />
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In the summer, the neighborhood kids would roam from yard to yard unencumbered by the fences that are so common now. One summer afternoon while my mother was at the house next door, the neighborhood swarm of kids ended up at our house. My mother came home to find my brother and me along with half a dozen other kids conducting fire drills by climbing out of the upstairs bedroom window and going down the rope.<br />
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<br />Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-78553711198662211032017-03-06T10:33:00.000-08:002017-03-17T19:11:18.568-07:00NeighborsOne time I had a load of seed corn to deliver to a grain elevator out in the middle of nowhere Kansas. When I got there, I couldn't find anyone around. There was no one at the elevator and no one at the house next to the elevator. The only other house anywhere around was a small house across the road. I went over and asked the nice old couple sitting on the porch if they knew what was going on.<br />
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According to them, the guy who ran the elevator lived in the house next to it and had probably just gone into town. They expected him back soon and invited me to join them on the porch while I waited.<br />
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I spent the next couple of hours drinking tea, eating homemade cookies, and chatting with Henry and Martha about their grand-kids. When the elevator manager finally returned, I thanked them for their hospitality and walked across the road to get my truck unloaded.<br />
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Jim, the manager, apologized for making me wait, but I said, "That's OK, I had a nice time chatting with Henry and Martha across the road." He explained that Henry was the elevator manager for more than 30 years and was forced to retire when he turned 65. He said, "Henry was really upset about being forced to retire. He and his wife haven't spoken to me since I took over for him."<br />
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Here were two nice families who were neighbors living out in the middle of Kansas, 20 miles from any other people, and they weren't speaking to each other. Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-46702519673075864382017-02-13T18:59:00.000-08:002017-03-02T15:15:10.625-08:00Car BargainingAbout 6 years ago, Lan's car was due for replacement. It was almost 20 years old and parts were starting to become hard to find. One afternoon when we were coming back from the market in Sunnyvale, we decided to stop at the Ford dealer.<br />
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They were having a sale on the Ford Focus, Lan likes small cars, so we thought we'd check one out. We talked with a salesman who took us for a test drive. We didn't like the Focus at all, but decided to have some fun.<br />
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We went into the salesman's cubicle where he started the car salesman's pitch. He told us we could buy the car for only $19,800. We countered with an offer of $18,900. He went back to the salesman's secret room to, "Check with his manager."<br />
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When he came back, he said we could have the car for only $19,500. We countered with an offer of $18,200. Every time he came back with a new offer, our offer went down another $500 or $600. After a few iterations of this, he said in frustration, "You can't bargain that way!"<br />
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We said, "You bargain your way and we'll bargain our way."<br />
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When we got back to our car, we both burst out laughing. We didn't buy a car, but we had a lot of fun bargaining. Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-90144078568045135042017-02-13T18:40:00.000-08:002017-02-15T12:23:12.597-08:00Title Company FunWhen you buy a house, the last step involves the Title Company. Here you have to sign-off on about 20 pages worth of disclaimers and warnings before turning over your cashier's check and getting the deed .<br />
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The last time we bought a house, the Title Company's charge was $1,600. Lan and I decided that we would try to get our money's worth.<br />
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Most people quickly scan the documents and just sign each page in a process that usually takes about 20 minutes. For us, it took an hour and a half. We read each section carefully, discussed what was meant, and asked the Title Company rep, Megan, for clarification on each point.<br />
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When we got to the bottom of each page, there were two places for signatures. As we had planned, Lan signed first and then I signed below her signature. After about an hour of this, Megan was starting to get visibly annoyed. When we neared the end, she turned to me and asked, "Why does your wife always sign first and then you sign below her?"<br />
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"Isn't that the way everyone does it?"<br />
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The look on her face when she realized how we'd been messing with her was almost worth $1,600. <br />
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<br />Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-71063224623748877712017-02-01T16:28:00.001-08:002021-06-02T17:05:18.548-07:00Bottled WaterA few days ago, as I was leaving Safeway, I saw a pony-tailed, gray-haired man take 2 empty 5 gallon water jugs from the back of his Volvo
station wagon and put them down in front of the "Pure Water" vending
machine.<br />
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I watched as he put one of the jugs in the
machine, put his quarters in the slot, and started filling the jug. I
went over and offered to show him where his water was coming from. I directed his attention to the water faucet that was about a foot from the vending machine. It had a copper line that branched off the faucet and went to the back of the machine dispensing "Pure Water".Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8091312971832529857.post-86997480774148760712017-01-11T18:22:00.000-08:002017-01-12T11:41:22.089-08:00The JeepDave Marsh and I went through almost all our army training together including Officers Candidate School. When we finished OCS, I went to Intelligence Officers school and Dave went to Helicopter Pilots school. We both ended up in Vietnam at about the same time.<br />
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When Dave got out of the army, he went home to L.A. and bought a new yellow Jeep CJ5. He took the Jeep from the dealer's showroom directly to a shop in L.A. that specialized in Jeep engine swaps. They replaced his Jeep 6 cylinder engine with a Chevy V8. At the same time he installed four wide tires on alloy rims.<br />
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About a year later Dave was on his way to Indiana when he stopped in Aurora Neb to say hello to my parents. My mother was blown away by Dave's yellow Jeep with the Chevy V8, wide tires, and loud exhaust. There was nothing like it around there and she thought it was the coolest thing she'd ever seen.<br />
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In 1972, Jeep came out with a factory V8 option for the CJ5. My parents bought a blue one about a year later with a roll bar and a black top. I bought them a set of wide wheels and tires to make it complete.<br />
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My mother just loved that Jeep. Guys would stop and stare as she blasted by with her gray hair flying under the roll bar, a big smile on her face, and the Jeep's top safely at home in the garage.Dave Kunkelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496731579342580893noreply@blogger.com0