We Prepare For a Storm

I premise this post by confessing that I would be helpless without my wife. Meredith is good at so many things necessary to navigate this complex and confusing world. I am not. Without her my finances would be a mess, our vehicles would need maintenance, there would be no food in the pantry, the pets would go hungry, the house would be in disrepair and I would be living in unhealthy squalor. My ineptitude is so bad that I have asked her to prepare a list of the essential information I need to know if she was ever incapacitated in an accident. Stuff like where do we bank, where are the extra car keys, how does the dishwasher work, do we own a waffle griddle and where do we store the toilet paper? I would never trade her in on a new model. She knows too much.

Not only is she amazingly competent and organized, but even after so many years of marriage I find she has very few irritating habits. Not that I’m complaining. I am fully aware that I have very few ingratiating habits. In fact, I am one big irritating habit which means that she is the long-suffering partner in this relationship, not me. In my defense, I do get up in the morning and start a fire in the wood stove so the cabin is toasty when she gets out of bed. In my mind, that alone justifies my existence.

Permit me a sideways meander. The odds are that in retirement you and your spouse are going to be around each other a hell of lot more than when one or both of you worked. That introduces a new dynamic into the equation. It is highly likely, no matter how perfect the marriage, that the two of you are going to get on each other’s nerves very quickly. You need to give serious thought to this potential problem before you retire and come up with strategies to prevent yourselves from killing each other. The simplest strategy is to stay away from each other as much as possible. Give each other some space. I call it spouse space. Try to say that three times.

As I said, Meredith has very few habits that irritate me, and those that she has are very minor. One of them is that she absent-mindedly hums to herself as she goes about ensuring my existence. It’s just a low tuneless humming under her breath. It’s not like she’s Ethel Merman going around belting out God Bless America at the top of her lungs. You may think that’s not a big deal, but when you’re trapped inside for four days because of an ice storm and the outside temperature is ten degrees, having the humming nun in the house can get under your skin after a while. Hell, being trapped with the Sports Illustrated swimsuit models for four days would get irritating if they hummed the entire time. Fortunately, I can give myself spouse space by retreating to another room and write this blog or practice my bass. Not a big deal.

Another potential irritant arises from the fact that she is a weather junkie. She pays more attention to the weather forecasts than a nervous ship captain. Before she got her iPhone she watched The Weather Channel and local weather news as avidly as horny old men watch Spanish language cable shows like Sabado Gigante to see voluptuous women in low-cut dresses. When she got her iPhone, her fixation got worse. Now the information is at her fingertips 24 hours a day, and I get hourly weather updates without asking. If I ask her what the weather will be, I get a full extended meteorological forecast complete with words like vortex, jet stream and pressure gradient. Sometimes it’s a bit much for me. I’m looking for the simple forecast: cold, wet, hot, or dry.

But the thing she dearly loves the most is the active radar display on her smart phone. When a storm is approaching I can generally count on getting minute-by-minute countdowns of when the rain or snow will hit our house. Little does she realize that this only makes the approaching weather sound more ominous than it really is. By the time the countdown is under ten minutes, I’m so worked up and anxious I feel like a species-ending meteorite, Armageddon or the Rapture is bearing down on me. If the rain or snow does not arrive precisely on schedule, which is usually the case, she’s visibly disappointed. If it doesn’t arrive at all, we’re looking at outright depression.

With that background, imagine what our household went through when the weatherman predicted a winter snow and ice storm would hit our neck of the woods. We immediately went to DefCon Two. When the governor called a weather emergency for North Georgia, we went to DefCon Three. But the kicker was when Meredith’s smart phone emitted several loud warning buzzes and informed us in that emotionless mechanical voice that scares the crap out of you anyway that the local Emergency Operations Center had just issued a weather advisory. It was DefCon Five at the Yacavone household.

The prediction was for a bad ice and snow storm. We have been told by a number of people that an ice storm is among the worst weather events that can happen around here. Longtime residents say that the power can go out for hours and maybe days and that the roads are impassable. Almost all newcomers to Fannin County have been regaled with tales of the ’09 (or whatever the date was) storm that hit the area. People were shut in for days without electricity and had to survive on graham crackers and wheat thins. It was worse than the Donner Pass party. People ate their young to survive. Yetis came down from the hills and snatched people from their houses. The Grinch was seen. Maybe I’m exaggerating; the stories seem to grow as time passes.

The storm was supposed to hit us at 6:00 PM the next day. I started going down my mental check list of emergency preparedness:

Flashlights. Check.

Batteries. Check.

Emergency generator. Check.

Food supplies. Check.

Duct tape. Check. Just in case I’m trapped inside for days and the humming gets to be too much.

Gasoline, diesel, and kerosene. Check, check, and check. One of these days I’m going to build my diesel fuel stock up to a couple of hundred gallons. You never know when you may have to escape to Montana on your tractor.

Handguns, rifles, shotguns and ample ammunition for the same. Check, check, check, and check. Just in case there is civil unrest, wolves or a yeti or two.

Axes, hatchets, machetes and large knives. Check, check, check and check. I could probably outfit a decent sized Viking raiding party, but I made a note to myself to see if I can pick up a couple of swords.

Alcohol. Check. I’ve never read a survival manual that lists booze as an essential emergency supply, but I include it on the belief that if it is the end of the world, I want to be able to sit back in a comfortable chair with a nice drink and enjoy the spectacle while it lasts.

Satisfied that we were prepared for the next great ice age, I sat back and awaited its arrival. The countdown started at T-minus three hours and counting. I'm sure you can guess where this is going. At 6:00 PM the entire family—Meredith, Mike, me, the dog and the cat—were staring out the kitchen window towards the northeast at … nothing. No snow, no ice, no sleet, nothing. After a few minutes the dog went to lay by the woodstove, the cat curled up on the couch, Mike got bored and disappeared and Meredith wandered off tapping her iPhone and muttering, “I don’t understand it, I don’t understand it.” As for me, I took the high road, bit my tongue and made no comment.

Thankfully, order was restored to Meredith’s universe later that evening when we had some snow flurries and the temperature plummeted to teens. While the storm was not as bad as predicted, there was enough ice and cold to keep us homebound for a few days.

Now, if I could only get this bothersome humming out of my ears.

Hill Blocks View

Fannin County has all the usual road signs that make me think of inane third-grade-level jokes. Signs like “Slow Children” (I guess they can’t get out of the road fast enough) and “Blind Drive” (I thought you had to take an eye test to get a license). But there is one sign that I do not recall ever seeing before. It says “Hill Blocks View.” Maybe I’ve never seen it because most of my driving from the age of 22 until recently was done on the notoriously flat and boring roads of Florida. Perhaps it is a common sign in other places in this country. Regardless, I don’t see the point of the sign.

A couple of things about the sign have me stumped. First of all, it seems so, well, obvious. Of course the hill blocks the view—it’s a giant mound of dirt, rock and vegetation. Any fool can see that. Do we really need a road sign pointing it out? One could speculate that the sign was created and mandated by the same over-cautious bureaucracy that considers us idiots and is bound and determined to put warning signs on everything. Signs like “Caution: Knives Are Sharp” or “Caution: Wood Has Splinters.” Did it ever occur to the mewling wimps who promulgate such signs that if someone is so unaware of his surroundings that he doesn’t realize there is a hill blocking his view, the odds are that he probably is not going to notice a sign that tells him there is a hill blocking his view?

The problem with the theory that the sign is product of a out-of-control namby-pamby bureaucracy is that you would then expect to see a sign that says “End of Hill Blocks View” so that the one motorist in ten million who may not have noticed that a hill was blocking his view will know that his view is no longer blocked. Since there is no such sign, it occurs to me that maybe there a real need for a “Hill Blocks View” sign. For the life of me I can’t think what it might be, and I’ve lost sleep pondering the question.

Someone I discussed this with offered the explanation that the sign is meant to warn drivers that there may be an unseen danger over the hill. If that’s the case, why don’t they warn drivers of a specific danger to be encountered rather than an anonymous one? Wouldn’t it be better if they used a sign that alerted drivers to the exact nature of the unseen danger like “Hidden Drive Ahead” or “School Bus Stop Over Hill”? That way drivers would know what to expect and be able to prepare themselves for it. As it stands now, if the sign is meant as a warning, it could be a warning of anything from a raging tanker truck fire to the edge of the world to a line of protesting marchers waving signs saying, “Have a blessed day.” How do you prepare for a danger when you don't know what it is? Remember, the sign was put up to warn people who can't see a damn hill in front of them. They are probably not the quickest witted drivers and need all the help they can get in preparing for a possible emergency.

Ahh, but that’s the point, you say. There could be any number of dangers lying beyond the crest of the hill you can’t see over. The authorities are simply alerting drivers that there may be a danger ahead that they can’t see because there is a hill blocking their view. 

But that gets me back to my original point. Any reasonable driver should be able to see that there is a hill in front of him that blocks his view of the road and, therefore, be able to reason that there could be an unseen danger ahead. Ergo, the sign is superfluous when it comes to careful and attentive drivers. 

For drivers who are so blind or inattentive that they don’t see that there is a hill blocking their view, then they sure as hell aren’t going to notice the sign. That means the sign is pointless for inattentive drivers. 

And if there are drivers who can see that there is a view-blocking hill in front of them but are too dimwitted to realize that there could be an unseen danger ahead, then a sign that tells them what they can already see—namely, that there is a hill ahead of them that is blocking their view—isn’t going to help them connect the dots. That means the sign is no help with stupid drivers. 

No matter how you look at it, the sign does not accomplish a purpose. There is such a thing as circular logic. This sign is circular idiocy.

Now at this point you’re probably thinking that I sound a obsessive over this sign and have spent way too much time dwelling on it. But that’s the glory and value of being retired and having the leisure to think long and hard about things both great and small. Most busy people would pass by the sign and never give it another thought. But it’s different with old retired farts. We have the time to think our way through things and reach those small incontestable kernels of absolute truth so needed in this confusing and messed up world. And the truth in this case is that a “Hill Blocks View” sign is a stupid waste of taxpayer money.

But the larger point of this post (and it does have a point regardless of what you may think) is that because retired people have the time to think deeply about things in life, the next time an old fart gives you some advice or says stuff like rap music sucks or Babe Ruth was the greatest baseball player who ever lived or God help us if Hillary Clinton ever gets elected president, don’t be so dismissive. The old fart has probably given the matter a lot of thought and may have a point.

Have A Blessed Day

There was a riot at the Walmart in Fannin County last week, but I missed it because I was out of town. It made the national news so you may have heard about it. Like Will Rogers, all I know about the affair is what I have read in the newspapers, but I can assure you that all three Fannin County weekly newspapers covered the story with in depth reporting, multiple photos and big headlines. This was a major news story for sleepy Fannin County.

Here’s the story: Since the new Walmart opened eight months ago, an elderly greeter by the name of James Phillips has stood at the door and routinely greeted shoppers with “Welcome to Walmart. Have a blessed day” and bid them goodbye by saying, “Thanks for shopping at Walmart. Have a blessed day.” Then one customer out of the thousands who shop there complained to the store about being wished a blessed day. Store management referred the complaint up the corporate chain, and an edict came down that Phillips had to stop greeting customers that way or lose his job.

When word about this spread, the proverbial shit hit the fan. Walmart received hundreds of calls from within and without the community in support of Phillips' right to wish customers a blessed day. There was a massive demonstration in front of the store by placard carrying supporters of Phillips. Massive, in this case, is a relative term. At one time, according to the papers, as many as 100 people gathered in front of Walmart in support of Phillips. By Fannin County standards this qualifies as a near riot.

By all accounts it was a most polite and well-mannered demonstration. All the protesters were well-dressed and orderly. No obscenities were shouted. Their signs were spelled correctly and properly punctuated. They made sure not to block the store entrance so people could enter to shop. I've seen more disorder and excitement at a church picnic. This was a protest that Gandhi and Mr. Rogers would have been proud of.

Unlike Ferguson, Missouri, none of the protesters wore masks though several sported knitted caps to keep their heads warm. It is, after all, winter in these parts. A few of the protesters wore hoodies but only to ward off the chill. Also unlike Ferguson, the protesters did not leave ruin and devastation in their wake. In fact, I'm pretty sure they picked up loose trash and left the area cleaner than when the protest started. People are like that around here.

Faced with this protest Walmart quickly capitulated, and Phillips is now free to wish customers a blessed day as they enter and depart.

Based on what I can gather from the newspapers, Phillips is a humble and quiet spoken guy. He describes his job as a Walmart greeter as “the best job I ever had,” and he is grateful for, and perhaps a little bewildered by, the community’s expression of support. He may be the most unlikely and inoffensive agitator in the history of agitation. He’s certainly no Sam Adams or Susan B. Anthony.

The outpouring of support and the possibility of further quiet riots caused Walmart to change its position so quickly that Phillips' supporters did not have time to pick up, much less wear, the t-shirts that they had printed that say, “We support have a blessed day―James Phillips.” They're now on sale as mementos to commemorate the great Blue Ridge protest and demonstration. As the years go by I imagine people will pull them from the back of their closets to show the grandkids that they once stood proudly for truth, justice and the American way of life. Pretty soon as many people will claim they were at Walmart that day as claim they were at Woodstock.

As for me, I don't really understand why the customer complained in the first place. I'm nominating that person for jerk-off of the year honors. He or she has a good chance of winning even in a year when there is some tough competition from Hollywood celebrities, members of Congress, the White House and Al Sharpton.

We don't know who the complainer is or why he or she was offended by the greeting. The person has not stepped forward to explain. That’s probably a smart decision. If it was someone who lives in this neck of the woods, I don’t think there would be any threats of violence, but I’m pretty sure the person would be shunned like an Amish porn star. My bet is that it was a tourist from Florida or Atlanta who was visiting the area.

It's fair to conclude that the person objected because he or she believed the greeting had a religious connotation, but that’s not necessarily the case. The word “blessed” has several meanings according to the dictionary. Some of them are religious, but others are not. One definition is "blissfully happy or contented.” Why would anyone but Scrooge, the Grinch, or a butthead be offended by being wished a blissfully happy and contented day?

There are definitions of “blessed” that have a religious connotation. They are (a) “consecrated; sacred; holy; sanctified” or (b) “worthy of adoration, reverence, or worship” or (c) “divinely or supremely favored; fortunate.” I seriously doubt that Phillips has studied the multiple nuanced meanings of the word so I also doubt he was wishing that Walmart customers have a consecrated day or a day worthy of reverence. I expect that by greeting customers that way Phillips was just being a nice guy and hoping that they had a good day in the most sincere way he knew. Again, why would anyone but an overly politically correct douche bag be offended by that?

But even if Phillips meant it in a fully religious way, as in “have a holy and sanctified day,” why would anyone―even the most militant atheist―object? Look, like most people, I hate anyone who tries to preach to me without my permission, but Phillips wasn’t preaching. He wasn’t trying to convert anyone. He wasn’t telling people that their beliefs or non-beliefs were wrong. He was just conveying the maximum benediction possible according to his beliefs. (Don’t freak out over the word “benediction.” Its primary definition is “utterance of good wishes.”)

The way I see it, if a stone worshipping heathen said to me, “May the great god Bobo bring you fortune,” I’d accept it as a heartfelt expression of care and concern and not as a threat to my beliefs. Plus, given my misspent youth, I figure I need all the help I can get.

Sometimes I feel like the entire world should take a Xanax and just chill out.

My Visit to Civilization

I have finally left civilization and returned to North Georgia after spending three weeks in Cocoa Beach, Florida, assisting my ailing 90-year-old mother. While in Florida I spent some time in the Orlando area and a couple of days at my old stomping grounds in Pinellas County.

I’ll be honest with you. I am so glad to be out of Florida and back to the sparse traffic, two lane roads and a slower pace of life of Fannin County. Returning to Florida for an extended period convinced me that moving to rural North Georgia is one of the best things I have ever done. Even though I sometimes miss many of the things that go with civilization such as convenient Barnes and Noble stores, shopping malls, ethnic restaurants, and 16-screen movie theaters, the benefits are outweighed by the stress and frustration of having to deal with countless traffic lights, endless traffic and crowds of people.

Perhaps my feelings are a function of age. We inevitably grow slower and less capable as we grow older. Our perception and reaction times decay. What once was a thrill is now a danger. When we were younger we lived on the edge and reveled in it, now we are concerned about falling off the edge or tripping over it. Over time the enervating hustle and bustle of urban life becomes vexing and stressful.

I should know this from my experiences as a trial attorney. I once defended an elderly lady who made a left turn into traffic. I asked her how the accident happened, and she replied, “I did what I usually do. I counted five cars and went.” It was funny then, but it’s not so funny now. I don’t know whether she drove that way because her age had made Pinellas County traffic overwhelming or because she just got frustrated and impatient waiting for traffic to clear. I do know that in Florida as I waiting for what seemed an eternity for a break in traffic in order to make a left turn there where several times when I was tempted to say “screw it” and proceed in kamikaze fashion. Who needs that aggravation?

But I really don’t think my feelings about living in a busy and crowded urban environment have anything to do with slower reflexes or diminished perception. To quote Toby Keith, “I ain’t as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was.” No, I think the reason that I prefer the slower pace of country life to the hustle and bustle I experienced in Florida is I have come to appreciate realize that living life at a less frenetic pace allows me to experience life more deeply and fully. To paraphrase the old saying, I’m taking time to smell the roses. I think Jimmy Buffet referred to it as living and dying in three-quarter time.

Obviously, being retired helps. It’s tough to slow down and relax when you make your living as a busy trial attorney. I liken it to getting up every day and sticking your head in a microwave turned on high. But I still think that I would find retired life in Florida to be more stressful than retired life here.

So I have left civilization and returned to paradise. What is paradise like right now? Let me see. It’s raining, the sky has been mostly overcast since I arrived, the temperature is in the forties and heading lower, and we are under a winter storm advisory. Well, no one said the weather in paradise is like the weather in Florida. I guess there’s only one option for me: time to take another nap.

That’s the thing about living in the country… Wait! Are you kidding me? Seattle threw a pass on the goal line at the end of the game with three downs and two time outs and got intercepted? The Seattle offensive coordinator called a pass when he could have run Marshawn Lynch three times? What the hell was he thinking? OMG!

That’s just too much excitement for me. I need to go to bed.