Here is my Father’s Day thought. I wonder what my Dad would have thought about the World had he lived to be 96 next week instead of passing way too early just about this time 26 years ago? Would he have been on the Internet? God help us! What would he have said about a black president? Well, he was of old school East Texas cracker stock, but Pops would be the first one to shoot the barber the finger if that pencil-necked, hair-trimmer asked incredulously why I (my Dad’s son) would dare grow my hair long. My father told the barber, by the way, “(he grows his hair) because he f***ing wants to.”
For all I know, my Dad might have thought like me that Sarah Palin and most of the present Republican Party — he was an old-time FDR Democrat who hopped freights during the summer to civilian military training and a make-work program like the Tree Army to get the economy going — a bunch of silly SOBs. But my Dad wasn’t too supportive of the peaceful Martin Luther King or the less than peaceful Black Panthers. He was from a different time, after all.
It’s hard to say how my father would have survived this day and age socially even though he might have done so physically. As someone who is 55 and in pain a good deal of my time, though, it’s hard for me to imagine what it would be like having to live on and on when pain wracks your life like it does mine. That is no matter how much you love your wife, your kids, and grandkids as my Dad did, while watching the tall pine trees go by on an East Texas country-road drive.
My Dad’s Day message is simple: Appreciate your fathers while they are here and that they were here. Appreciate being a father. And have a happy Father’s Day this weekend. Stay cool.
For the last 10 or so years that I have sported the shaven-head look (Yul Brenner, Kojack, Vin Diesel, Shaq and any number of professional basketball players and young cops) I have pondered the use of a hat that would appropriately accompany my dress casual clothes such as for work.
I first seriously thought about that when I covered a fire that seemed to go on and on and on, on a hot, cloudless Central Texas day. When I called the city editor that day from the scene to tell her that the building was about to erupt into one big, spectacular ball o’ fire, I asked her to send me a couple of other reporters to work the crowd and local businesses, and for someone to bring me some water and a cap.
Yeah, the service can be a “ruff” life. All you can do is put on your boonie hat and let it ride.
I wear ball caps all the time with my non-work clothes. I can see about eight hanging from a clothes rack, looking across the room, as well as a GI “boonie hat.” Hats have been kind of a passion of mine ever since I was a little kid. I have had all kinds of hats, some of which I still have in storage. Although I didn’t wear it often, I treasured a blue-striped engineer’s hat that a fellow firefighter at the time gave me just because I liked it. Ed Ivy, who would wear the cap sometimes when not wearing a cowboy hat off duty, died in the line of duty a couple of years ago from a heart attack. He was a fire captain when his untimely death occurred and a damned good cowboy.
But alas, it took vanity to push me into the step of finally buying a hat to wear with my bidness clothes.
On Monday I busy shaving my head and I got this peculiar thought: “You know, it sure has been a long time since I cut my head shaving.” It seems like I could feel with the very next movement of my razor the sensation of flesh ripping apart. Sure enough I cut my head leaving a wound about six inches long. Thankfully, it was a very superficial wound. As much as it burned like taking a jalapeno shower, I was able to quickly stem the bleeding with my stypic pencil.
Later in the day I was in a discount store and I instantly found a straw hat that I thought looked decent with my work clothes. I bought it and put it on as soon as I got outside.
It is kind of difficult to explain the type of hat it is. Some might call it a Panama hat, although it was made in China. Of course, the best Panama hats actually are made in Ecuador. That is what my longtime friend Rene’ told me when he gave me a Panama hat probably 30 years ago. The brim of my new hat is somewhat wider than a Fedora and of course, straw and not felt, even though there are straw fedoras. Perhaps my hat is a Chinese Panamanian fedora. Or, considering China’s Communist background, maybe it is a Panama Red hat. The last refers — for those of you too young or too disposed to doing other things way back when — to a potent type of marijuana hailing from Panama as well as a 1973 song of the same name by New Riders of the Purple Sage.
Panama Red? No sir, Panama Harry wears a Panama hat especially made for him by Stetson.
I have already looked at some Web sites with hats for sale and I see myself spending more money, that I really shouldn’t spend, on better quality hats. Perhaps a fedora or two for the cooler days, and maybe a real Ecuadorian Panama hat. I remember the one Rene’ gave me, I don’t know what happened to it, felt really well on my head.
Right now, I’m just happy to keep the hot Texas sun off my head and, of course, hide my stupid shaving scar.
“From Boston this is Dan Dominguez, on the Action 5 News Horse.”
Or how about a news zeppelin?
It makes about as much sense having a news zeppelin as it does having Palin Kool Aid drinkers making history fit her words. Isn’t it bad enough that the almost one-term Alaska governor completely makes up something that seems to be made whole cloth from a NRA advertisement?
Palin and Gov. Rick “Good Hair” Perry — with his fantasy Texas is permitted by U.S. law to secede — need to team up. They could be the Never-Never Land Party Candidates.
To be perfectly frank, I don’t really know what these bird-brains were thinking, what it was they would accomplish by changing Revere’s story in Wikipedia? The source, Wikipedia, is a great one as a directory of sorts but I would never trust anything of substance from the site without checking other sources, or unless I wrote the entry. Even in the latter case, I would be ‘a checkin’.
I likewise can’t understand all the attention given the Palin “mystery” bus ride. She is playing a game with the media with a wink and hardly a nod. The media people eat it up and I want to upchuck just thinking about it.
It makes one wonder what kind of history Palin will make (up) this week.
Thankfully, there are some days when I don’t have to write too much to prove a point. That is true today. I will give the basics, present a link to read and then it’s up to someone else. That sounds good to me on this day when I just want to kick my feet up and maybe watch a little news or indulge in some other diversion.
My point concerns a 16-year-old Jersey girl (not of the MTV kind) named Amy Myers who has challenged U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann, a possible GOP presidential contender, to a debate on the Constitution and American History. I saw Amy on Lawrence O’Donnell’s MSNBC show and she certainly seems as if she could go head-to-head with the loopy Minnesota congresswoman.
The story linked above tells about how a backlash came from this story with “thugs” who support Bachmann or Sarah Palin or their ilk. These are people who leave very nasty comments about Amy and her family just because she is brave enough and intelligent enough to stand up for what she believes is right. Some people have even looked up where Amy’s dad works and have decided to harass him as well. Some of the threats are violent although likely the vast majority are those chicken s**ts who say all kind of nasty or racist or threatening things about people but don’t leave their name because they sure as hell wouldn’t want to have to stand up to some one who challenged them.
A bad, even terrible byproduct of the Internet is exposing the rampant cowardice that pervades our nation. Yeah, you heard me right! Cowards. When I wrote for a newspaper I used to get all kinds of calls from people who would be raising hell about this or that. But for the most part, the conversations would have a civil tone because we all identified ourselves. But these “thugs,” as the writer of the linked story puts it are content to let there yellow streaks do their work for them. Some of those comments being left are of the type that the normal person would want to harm these gutless wonders who dare insult or threaten their daughters or granddaughters.
I don’t use my name here on this blog because I don’t feel the need to call attention to my life, at least that which I choose not to write about. If you read this blog, you will find that I choose to write about a lot about my life. It also isn’t very hard to figure out who I am if you don’t know. Not that I am prominent. You ask me who I am and I will probably tell you. I say probably, it depends on why you want to know and how you ask. It’s all pretty simple.
In no way am I expressing pity for Amy Myers. She made a big decision to stand up to a congresswoman and ask her to debate the Constitution and history, especially since Bachmann is an attorney (although I am not sure of the standing in the law community of graduates from Oral Roberts University, where Bachmann received her law degree. I would bet they have to have great oral arguments. You thought I was going to say something else, didn’t you? Dirty mind!) It takes guts to do what Amy did and is doing. Too bad she can’t be an inspirational figure for all those who disagree with her.
Why am I exceeding my data limit on my broadband card? I’m sure I am not the only one to ask this question. I intend to find out though. I didn’t have this problem with my previous computer. I told the guy from HP that I guess I will have to sell this one to get my Dell computer fixed. It’s ridiculous. But I will be sparingly using the computer this week until I find out what the problem is and when the data cap is reset this weekend. I got a free Norton utility for year when I bought this computer. It may be one of the problems. Perhaps it’s a vast conspiracy! I kid, but more nefarious things have happened. Well, that’s it for today.
