Economics 456 Just before my retirement date, my co-workers at Block threw a party for me at O’Dowd’s.
Everyone was encouraged to bring a gift that started with “H”, “R”, or “B”. There were, in fact many nice gifts, including a beautiful clock. The people at O’Dowd’s gave me a sweatshirt and a leather jacket. (There is another long story associated with the jacket, that I will tell another time.)
The jacket is, indeed, beautiful and when I got home and started to take the tags off, I discovered that it was made by Golden Bear, in San Francisco CA.
With that introduction, let me tell this story.
Several years ago a few of us, five individuals and/or couples, formed an organization to market goats and goat products. It was modestly successful; the reason for it’s dissolution is yet another story.
One of our best selling items was goat meat; we would transport the goats to the meat locker and pick them up several days later for delivery to the buyers. It occurred to me that the hides were going to waste, I verified that with the locker, and that we should find a market for them. A few people tanned skins locally but wanted what seemed an exorbinate amount of money, and, in any case, the tanned skins would still have to be disposed of.
I got out some old issues of Fur-Fish-Game and called several of the fur buyers advertising there; in ever case I got the same response: "Sorry no, but do you have any heavy coon skins?". Not wanting to get involved in the raccoon raising business, I thanked them and set to work thinking. “Who sells goat skin products?” L.L. Bean, in Maine, does; they sell a goat skin flight jacket for, at that time, about $275.
Supposing that they did not manufacture there own jackets, I called their purchasing department and asked where they got their jackets. “Golden Bear, in San Francisco”, I was told. 3000 miles away.
OK, figuring these guys in California didn’t raise their own goats, I called their purchasing agent, asked where they got their goat skins, and was given the name of a tannery in Herkimer NY, 2700 mile back toward Maine.
The skins were being transported back and forth across the country in a truck that cost $100K to begin with, with 18 tires that cost $300 each, and driven by a guy who was making about 42 cents a mile.
A quick call to the tannery established that yes, they bought goat skins; no, they weren’t interested in buying them 100 at a time; and that thry had an excellent source in South America where they purchased skins several thousand at a time. How far away is that?
The next time you buy a goat skin flight jacket, remember that the jacket itself would probably cost about $50, if it weren’t for all the shipping involved.
Just about every day Good Lookin and I would get in the truck and go to the bank. I went in if I needed change, but we usually went to the drive-up window. I would transact my business, deposit the previous day's cash, and then the teller would place the receipt and a dog biscuit in the drawer and open it. I would put the receipt in the bag and Looker would eat the biscuit.
That fall when we were on our way back to Columbia, we were driving west on the New York State Thruway. When we came to the toll both in Buffalo I stopped and gave the toll-taker a $10. She reached toward the car with my change and Looker came leaping across the seat, smelling in my hand for the biscuit he knew must be there.
Joan and get got married November 24, 1984. She had a dog named Power (Power to the People, and she had used to have a cat named Antigone. Imagine what the 60's were like for her). In the summer of 1985 we went to a small town near here and bought an Airedale pup, Guinevere. Jenny came home, lay down on top of an air conditioning vent for the summer, and quickly grew to a size where she could deal with Power. The vet said to feed her free choice: "There is no way she can get fat as fast as she is growing."
In the fall of 1995 we bought a small restaurant downtown, "The Works", which we ran for about two years. Shortly after opening some college students came in with a young dog with the usual red bandanna about his neck. It turned out that they had got him somewhere but for some reason were unable to keep him. He was a Border Collie-looking dog of random breeding and they called him Shep. Since we lived on five acres we said that we would keep him and moved him to the country. We kept him from the other dogs for a while, and then they all made an uneasy peace, although until the death of all our dogs but one it was always necessary to feed them separately.
When people asked where we got the new dog I told him that "Shep" was an alias and he wasn't really a dog; he was the Crown Prince of Bulgaria, Miraslav Shepardsky, and he was living with us under the witness protection plan. I didn't really know why. I did know however that he had a sister, Ludmilla, and a brother Good Looking: the Bulgarians having a love for all things American thought about calling him Beauregard but named him with the English translation instead. Good Looking, a soldier of fortune, was last known to be in Salvador fighting with Daniel Ortega.
About this time our blue Ford truck had an engine fire and was totaled. We soon bought a 73 Chevy, green, from Alan Slaughter, who had been on the University police force with Joan, and still was. The truck had a newer turbo 350 engine, I'm not sure what year, and dual glass packs. As Duane, our mechanic, said when he looked it over, "It sure likes gas". It also had a great sound, although it was hard to keep mufflers on it because they were so ill supported. When I would drive home, a neighbors dog would come into the road and follow the truck for awhile, and then cut across the field and meet me in the driveway. He looked a great deal like Shep. He also took to following the truck when I drove down the road, not just for a ways but the whole one mile length of the dirt road we lived on. I would pick him up and put him in the truck and return him to his owner, who would tie him up until I could get away. When I returned he would cross the field and be in the driveway waiting for me.
Pretty soon Joan said to me, "You know, that must be Gook Looking, come to visit his brother".
One weekend we were taking off for Moberly and a goat show, with both the Subaru Brat and the truck loaded with our gear, when I got about a mile and a half down the road and looked in the rear view mirror and saw Looker running after us. We both stopped and I let him into the truck and took off for the weekend. When we got back I went to Mark. the neighbor, and said I was sorry but didn't know how to keep his dog from coming to our place. Mark said, "I don't think it's my dog; I think he's yours". So we had another dog. (Shortly after that we had Jenny bred, and shortly after that we had 13 more dogs. Another story.)
One day we took Looker to the restaurant. Actually we had various animals there often and met lots of animal people. The first person through the door that day was Slaughter, and Looker came up from behind the counter with his teeth bared and growling. Something like, "I'm not sure you belong here". When we said it was OK he went back and layed down.
Joan and her parents had some friends in town one weekend and we were planning to go out to eat. We were driving down the road, in the car this time, when we noticed Good Looking behind us. Not having a great deal of time we threw him in the car, went to Joan's neice's house, and put him in the fenced-in back yard. Three or four hours later we returned to get him and he wasn't there. The neice didn't know where he was. We searched the neighborhood, going into all the open businesses and asking, but couldn't find him. Eventually we went home and Joan called the police to report him lost; the police officer took the report, after asking, "You have a dog named Good Looking?' (Just as you probably have done.) The next morning Linda, Joan's friend, came out to the house, and while she was helping Joan with the chores I got in the truck and went downtown, I drove down the street where the neice's house was, and as I passed the house I looked in the mirror and there was Looker padding down the street behind me. I think that if we had got the truck the night before he would heard heard it and come from wherever he was.
(Much more of this to come!)Did I ever tell you about the time I almost hit Gene Roddenberry?
My wife (now my late exwife) and I were sitting with him in the bar at the Holiday Inn, after he had delivered a lecture and shown the first pilot and the blooper reel.
He had, that afternoon, talked about what got him into writing and the shows he had worked on. I was, being a fan of Richard Boone, especially interested in his work on "Have Gun, Will Travel". There was a quotation used in the show that I asked about: Palladin said, "In the words of Herodotus, man can protect himself from the evil done in the name of evil; only God can protect him from the evil done in the name of good". Or something like that. The next day I read the History from cover to cover and could not find the quotation.
I related this sad tale to Gene, and he smiled. "You weren't paying attention. Richard didn't say Herodotus; he said Heroddentus. I made up that quote."
Life in these United States
I was married, the first time, in the break between fall and winter semesters when I was a second year graduate student. There was no time for a honeymoon since I had to assist at registration four days after the wedding.
After school was out we arranged to spend a week in the Adirondacks, at a deer hunting cabin belonging to a friend of my father. It was fairly isolated, just outside a village with a summer population of maybe 20 people. We did all the Adirondack, things: walking in the woods, painting, trying to bear-proof the garbage. One afternoon as we walked downtown to the small hotel to have a beer, we passed the rail station - one train going south in the morning and one going north in the afternoon. I said, "Can you imaging what it would be like to be station master here?", and we kept on walking. When we entered the bar there were two people there: the bartender and another man at the end of the bar, drinking straight shots of vodka. We had two beers each and, just as we were finishing, the fellow at the end of the bar got up, walked out the door, and walked off the side of the porch and tumbled into a flower patch.
"Who is that?" we asked. "Oh, just the station master".
....just like this one except there are no telephones
Imagine a world.... Peter's flight was 45 minutes late and he was glad he had carried his luggage onto the plane. He had telegraphed Ellen from Detroit and told her he was going to be late, but she still had to work the swing shift as an operator on the Company switchboard, and it had been a week since he had seen or talked to her.
He loved the drive into town from the airport, past all the strip malls and housing developments, but even more the rural areas with the fences and the neat rows of power poles down one side of the road and the lines down the other. He periodically looked in the book for the name of a real estate agent who might have some of this country property listed, but he had never actually looked at any, and refused to answer the e-mails of the agents urging this plot or that upon him.
The first thing he noticed when he walked into his apartment was the bill laying on the hall table, together with the check he had written. "Damn, I meant to put that in the mailbox before I left." He needed to hurry however and so he left it there and jumped into the shower. he got dressed and just as he was about to leave, he noticed something unfamiliar; the bell had stopped ringing.
