Monday, June 08, 2009
Neverending supply of things to worry me
Ben Beagle
The aging, semi-hysterical retired reporter rides shotgun with the greatest station wagon driver of them all down the rocky road of life. Mondays and Wednesdays, steady as she goes.
Recent columns
Just after somebody told me that it wasn't healthy to spend a lot of time dreaming of forming a Let's-Get-Rid-Of-Tom-Cruise-Once-And-For-All Society, I realized that the French door still needed caulking.
I don't know if you know an awful lot about caulking, but I'm here to say it's almost beyond human comprehension.
My daddy, who was a premier house painter, used to mispronounce it as "corking," but he was very good at it all the same.
I can safely say that I have never caulked anything that didn't look like my dog did it in his spare time.
I have thought for some time that the caulking industry is out to get me. Not to mention the plumbing people.
And then -- before I ever got the cartridge into the gun -- I came to realize that there other things aside from Cruise and caulking to worry about.
Missed fire
Enter here the greatest 1998 Oldsmobile Intrigue driver of them all.
General Motors informed us that her engine might catch fire under the hood, and I'm glad that didn't happen in the Kroger parking lot.
This would have embarrassed the driver right much, as we used to say in Radford.
In this case I couldn't help wonder why it took General Motors 10 years to figure this danger out.
And you have to wonder if there are any ladies who got singed when their cars caught on fire in Kroger parking lots.
Or in the lot outside the Olde We-Care-About-Your-Hair Shoppe or in the parking lot at Wal-Mart.
Anyway, General Motors agreed to fix this interesting flaw for free, and Hart Motors did this very graciously and quickly.
Before that, we were advised not to park the Intrigue in the garage or a carport in case it goes boom.
That was OK. Ours would merely have burned to death on the driveway, which needs repaving anyway.
Right. We were sure that Persephone, the sweet, nearly deaf neighborhood dog, wasn't anywhere near the conflagration.
Stimulated spending
And you don't have to worry anymore about the recession.
We got our Social Security stimulus checks at the same time the washer and dryer went bad.
Let's just say that consumer spending figures must have improved somewhat.
The new dryer doesn't dry like it ought to, but we're glad to be a part of the stimulus and we wonder if that counts when we buy groceries and pay the water and the electric bills.
If it does, we'll be out of the recession by Labor Day.
If we can afford the gasoline.
Ben Beagle's column runs in Monday's Extra.
