Eight Feet Deep

 Just a moment ago I stepped out­side and noticed that some sort of frozen pre­cip­i­ta­tion is falling along with the rain. It looks like our first win­ter storm of the sea­son is start­ing to take shape.

 The agency I work part-time for put their employ­ees in this region on admin­is­tra­tive leave begin­ning at noon because of the win­ter storm. That just means we get to go home early. It’s no big deal for me since I was only sup­posed to work until 1:30 p.m. I came home after lunch and took a nap, wak­ing at 1:30 p.m. I know. Life is hard.

 This is the  first time I can remem­ber the National Weather Ser­vice — our sta­tion is out of Lake Charles, La., — actu­ally pre­dict­ing snow since I have been liv­ing back in the Beau­mont area for the last four years. Per­haps they did last year when it snowed on Dec. 11 and I just don’t remem­ber it. But here is how Lake Charles fore­caster Sam Sham­burger prog­nos­ti­cates the snow fall in an updated ver­sion of the lat­est weather fore­cast discussion:

   ” AT THIS TIME…OUR CURRENT FORECAST SNOW TOTALS OF 1 TO
    3 INCHES IN NORTHERN ZONES AND UP TO 2 INCHES IN SOUTHERN ZONES
    STILL APPEARS REASONABLE.”

 Sorry, the CAPS are the weather service’s not mine.

 Now if you live in Min­nesota or New Hamp­shire or Siberia or any other place snow­fall is a com­mon occur­rence, you might won­der what the fuss is about. The answer is that it doesn’t snow — at least in mea­sur­able amounts – very often in Beau­mont, Texas. The fact that it did last year and a mea­sur­able snow­fall is expected this evening is kind of like see­ing a group of Repub­li­cans sport­ing “Raise My Taxes. Please! T-shirts.

 Just how rare are mea­sur­able snow­falls on the upper Texas-Western Louisiana coast? Well, Beau­mont has had 17 mea­sur­able snow­falls since 1895, accord­ing to NWS records. A mea­sur­able snow­fall occurs on aver­age once every 7 years here with Jan­u­ary being  the aver­age month for such an event. I don’t know if this is some kind of record­ing error or not, but these records indi­cate the largest snow­fall on record  being 30 inches on Feb. 14, 1895. Peo­ple back then must’ve thought the world was end­ing. The sec­ond great­est snow­fall was 4.4 inches in 1960, fol­lowed by 3 inches in Jan­u­ary 1973. The lat­ter snow I remem­ber as I lived about 60 miles north­east of where I now live.

 The 1973 snow­fall was fun. I was a junior in high school and this was also the first snow­fall in which I drove. It was quite enjoy­able because I lived in a small town and no one, it seems, ven­tured out on the roads except for fools such as me.

 Last year’s snow­fall, which was the ear­li­est on record and will be beaten out of that title if this storm pans out, was the eighth great­est amount of mea­sur­able snow on record at 1.8 inches.

 I made some kind of remark on Face­book last night con­cern­ing the impend­ing snow storm try­ing to be funny. An old friend from high school scolded me with an emoti­con because she didn’t get the ref­er­ence I made and she was excited about the prospect of snow. I later wrote that I was as well.

 For all the prob­lems snow can bring to prob­a­bly most or a size­able amount of Amer­i­cans who expe­ri­ence it reg­u­larly before, dur­ing and after Win­ter, I feel the rare snow in areas of Texas where I have spent most of my life as a rather cleans­ing event. I don’t mean cleans­ing in a phys­i­cal sense but more in terms of the human psyche.

 In places where snow doesn’t often fall there are kids who get to revel in its charms while older folks get to think of snows past when they were younger and played in it mak­ing snow­men or were engaged in snow­ball fights. Of course, some older folks prob­a­bly had to walk 20 miles in the snow to school and they scowl at just the thought of it. Oth­ers think of snow in terms of magic. And some also remem­ber that they wished some sort of magic was avail­able dur­ing snows  in which they were stuck in it or caught out in it on the shoul­der of some lone­some interstate.

 But snow is what it is and look­ing out­side I see that some of it is now begin­ning to fall, along with the rain and the tem­per­a­ture. Like the song says, “Let it snow … ” I’m off work, inside where it’s warm so, if there is magic to behold then let it com­mence. If it sticks I will post some pics.

 Pres­i­dent Obama has likely added to the list of those who aren’t very happy with him. This time it is the small fry.

 Obama wants kids to spend more time in the class­room. This includes longer school days and open­ing on week­ends to give kids a safe place to go. The idea is that U.S. stu­dents are behind those in other coun­tries because of the fewer hours Amer­i­can kids spend in class.

 Arne Dun­can, Obama’s edu­ca­tion sec­re­tary, pointed out that today’s edu­ca­tional sys­tem is based on an agrar­ian soci­ety and that not many kids are work­ing the fields. While some stud­ies have shown that more hours is con­ducive to bet­ter learn­ing in cer­tain sub­jects, adding hours — and how they are added — is some­thing that is wrapped in mul­ti­ple social and eco­nomic issues.

 It’s true not a lot of fam­i­lies can be found out work­ing the fields these days. Like­wise, not a lot of cou­ples raise a slew of kids just because the extra help is needed in the fields.

 But some fam­i­lies do work the fields both those that are des­per­ate for money and the fam­ily farm­ers who would like to pass their way of life and assets to their offspring.

 Then one must con­sider fam­ily vaca­tions — for those that take them. I can’t recall hav­ing ever taken one as a kid unless you con­sider load­ing the fam­ily up in a pickup one Sun­day and vis­it­ing Hous­ton. I don’t men­tion that with resent­ment because it is sim­ply some­thing I didn’t dwell on as a kid, so I see no rea­son to do so now. That doesn’t mean my sum­mers were void of fun.

 The point is that no one fam­ily is the same and the time schools now give more for fam­ily and stu­dent recre­ation is used in a host of dif­fer­ent ways.

 Speak­ing of recre­ation, I won­der how Dis­ney­world and Six Flags would make out should kids have short­ened vaca­tions? And what about day care busi­nesses if schools days were length­ened? The par­ents might come out bet­ter finan­cially not hav­ing to shell out a lot of bucks for day care. Who knows?

 This is not the first time such a sub­ject has sur­faced. I remem­ber it being talked about more than 40 years ago when I was a kid. I wasn’t the idea’s biggest fan back then. The idea has also been renewed sev­eral times in my more recent years.

 Per­son­ally, I like the struc­ture of classes and school cal­en­dar one finds in col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. I refer to tak­ing classes at dif­fer­ent times of the day with class hours vary­ing in length and days, and hav­ing the abil­ity to either take or not take a vaca­tion, or take one-half of the sum­mer off. I am sure that would require way too many kinks to work out.

 But imple­ment­ing the types of changes Obama is talk­ing about would also require quite a bit of upheaval. The social and eco­nomic ram­i­fi­ca­tion are such that it seems the only way it could be effec­tive would be mak­ing such changes on a national basis. And Amer­i­cans are pretty pro­tec­tive when it comes to local con­trol in school matters.

 While there is merit in more hours of school there sim­i­larly can be great value in time off. Spend­ing time  with one’s fam­ily or just chillin’ and recharg­ing the bat­ter­ies or even play­ing with your imag­i­nary friends thus devel­op­ing a bet­ter sense of imag­i­na­tion can all be worth­while. It just depends on how it all is being done and ensur­ing par­ents are ensur­ing the kids are respon­si­bly overseen.

 The pres­i­dent has got a lot on his plate. This is one area he should leave for the local schools.

Some­where a rea­son or hun­dreds exist why some peo­ple are more mechan­i­cally inclined than others.

Immers­ing myself into social sci­ences dur­ing col­lege quickly affirmed what I already knew about many aspects of life includ­ing the fact that no two peo­ple can truly agree on one big truth. Is the rea­son for X nature and Y nur­ture or is life really like a bowl of chocolates?

No mat­ter what I choose as a rea­son why is why I know that I will be wrong in someone’s eyes. So who cares? I spend three para­graphs talk­ing about rel­a­tiv­ity and rel­a­tively noth­ing, but what the hey, there are worse ways to kill a Labor Day afternoon.

My the­ory is called “The Busted Knuckle Gene The­ory of Mechan­i­cal Incli­na­tion.” Man, woman and child inherit their abil­ity to ably per­form mechan­i­cal tasks. Some do so bet­ter than oth­ers, but most all wind up with a busted knuckle at some time in life.

At the start of this Labor Day week­end I had two mechan­i­cal prob­lems with my 1998 Toy­ota Tacoma. Prob­lem one was the door latch. Yes, that same pesky door latch which gave me prob­lems more than a month ago. Prob­lem num­ber two was that my truck all of a sud­den started run­ning like s**t. I’m sure there are more technically-descriptive terms but I think my descrip­tion hits the engine on the head.

My friend Rick, from Nacog­doches, decided to come to Beau­mont and spend a night, and he promised to help with my door. It would be point­less and in the case of the “vehi­cle run­ning like s**t syn­drome,” some­what embar­rass­ing, to detail what all Rick did or didn’t do to get my truck up and run­ning with the door clos­ing much bet­ter than before. Nev­er­the­less, the mis­sion was accom­plished a lot cheaper what with buy­ing Rick din­ner at Aca­pulco than had I taken my truck to a shop.

Rick, a nurse by trade who has been on a busi­ness sab­bat­i­cal of sorts lately, was also a mechanic at one time. We talked about this mechan­i­cal incli­na­tion thing although we never arrived at any one par­tic­u­lar rea­son why there are those who are, those who aren’t and those like myself who do but shouldn’t get near a wrench.

My Dad was mechanically-inclined. I don’t know why he never taught me mechan­i­cal stuff. I guess part of it was my own lack of inter­est. He did give me a tool box with the basic tools one might need when I bought my first car. I sup­pose he fig­ured I would sink or swim. I have pretty much been sink­ing all along when it comes to mechan­i­cal abil­i­ties though I have yet to drown. I sup­pose that is one bright light.

“Baby you can drive my car … ”

Rick reminded me dur­ing his visit of some­thing I hadn’t thought of in years. Actu­ally, I hadn’t thought of it since he and I talked about it almost 30 years ago. What he told me trans­lates into a corol­lary of my genetic the­ory – of which I have yet to nor will I make a case for in this sit­ting – that would be the per­cep­tion factor.

In the span of five years – 1974 to 1979 to be exact – I expe­ri­enced the fail­ure of my cars to start. Both sit­u­a­tions were the same and the solu­tion to the prob­lems were iden­ti­cal. There also were iden­ti­cal fac­tors involv­ing young ladies that I will not get into because I see no rel­e­vancy in these two cases.

Sit­u­a­tion No. 1. I was vis­it­ing a Navy buddy at Naval Air Sta­tion Merid­ian, Miss., where I had grad­u­ated from “A School” a month before. I was leav­ing the Enlisted Club for a Hojo in down­town dur­ing a heavy rain­storm. My 1972 Pinto (yes, do you want to make an issue over it?) wouldn’t start.

Some­one, I can’t remem­ber if it was my friend Burt or some ran­dom fel­low squid or per­haps even a jar­head, pulled out a can of that won­drous sub­stance known as “WD-40.” The per­son took off my dis­trib­u­tor cap, sprayed inside it, and my car started right up.

In 1979, some­thing sim­i­lar hap­pened with my 1979 Toy­ota Corolla. The sce­nario was sim­i­lar. It had rained like hell and my car wouldn’t start. A buddy from work came over to where I was stay­ing the night and sprayed under my dis­trib­u­tor cap with WD-40. The car started right up.

Per­haps I had been told in 1974 but had for­got­ten the old “WD-40 Trick.” Spray­ing under the dis­trib­u­tor cap after it had been soaked by rain helped dry up the mois­ture or some such. Maybe it was magic. Any­way it worked and I always remem­bered that trick ever after.

Rick reminded me of when I passed along that knowl­edge to some­one and I thus was per­ceived as either mechanically-inclined or a mechan­i­cal genius, both kind of strong terms, and both very erro­neous in my case.

Along the time of the 1979 inci­dent I lived in a small apart­ment com­plex. Two guys lived upstairs from me. One guy named Dave owned a small, older model Japan­ese pickup.

One morn­ing I was going some­where and I saw Dave out­side try­ing to start his pickup. He was hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time of it. I can’t remem­ber if I tried to jump-start his truck. I am pretty sure I had jumper cables as I believe I have always had a set of jumper cables since my first car was a Pinto. Even the new cars I bought, which back about this time my Toy­ota Corolla was new, always had jumper cables tucked about somewhere.

It wasn’t a very long time until I had remem­bered it came a very heavy rain the night before. I thought, well, let’s see if WD-40 will work. Sure enough, it did work. Dave was amazed and from that time on until he moved, each time he had a mechan­i­cal prob­lem I would be the first with whom he would con­sult. Yes, he would come ask me, the mechan­i­cal idiot, what was wrong with his truck.

I was kind of amazed Rick had remem­bered that story. I joked by say­ing: “I’m glad to have some­one around who can help replace the parts of my mem­ory that have gone missing.”

So, peo­ple get their mechan­i­cal abil­i­ties from some­where, per­haps genet­i­cally while some of that abil­ity lies in the per­cep­tions of those around us. It’s all a pretty inter­est­ing psychosocial-genetic wind­storm, per­haps mixed in with a touch of reverse nihilism and a smidgen of eso­teric canin­ism dogma, per­haps even dogpa. Know one can really know.

Some like get­ting their knuck­les busted and some do not. I fall into that lat­ter group. But, I do like the out­come of mechan­i­cal work, espe­cially when I don’t have to spend money on a mechanic to per­form it. Sorry if that rubs you pro­fes­sional knuckle busters the wrong way – which would be, what, lefty loosie? But spend­ing less money is a great way to spend Labor Day, at least in my opinion.

Happy Labor Day to all.