On Target

Last 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.

She got a sly smirk on her face and said, "Not bad for an old lady, right?"

Happy News

Last 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.

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."

Tin vui actually means "happy news" or literally "news happy" since in Vietnamese the adjective usually follows the noun.

After almost 42 years of marriage, Lan still manages to surprise me with her dry wit and sarcastic sense of humor.

Nice Way to Die

My 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.

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.

We all have to die sometime, but that was a really nice way for her to die.

Good News Bad News

I 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.

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.

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."

Cowboy Club Protocol

In 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.

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."

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.

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."

"Is that posted somewhere?"

"No, but everyone knows about it."

"Well, thanks for explaining the protocol."

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. 



 

Peterbilt Air Trac

In 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

 

Piano Lesson

When 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.

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.

I was hooked and my father never had to listen to Davy Crockett again.

Cake Defrosting

When 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.

While the frosted cake was cooling, she made a big mistake and went next door to the neighbors.

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.

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.

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.

She was NOT amused.

No Sports

When 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.

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.

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."

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.

For the next several months I was a real pariah in town.

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.

Fire Drill

When 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.

My 7 year old brother, Chuck, and I thought this was enormous fun.

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.