Eight Feet Deep

A few quick obser­va­tions before I head for an overnighter in Hous­ton later today.

Geez lady, chill out! Oh, sorry, that’s chill out ma’am.

The U.S. Navy has relieved of com­mand undoubt­edly its worst cap­tain of the year and it is a woman skip­per. Or is that a skip­per woman? Just skip it. Though I won­der if she ever heard of Prozac?

Where there’s smoke: Part 1

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to Colin Cowherd on ESPN Radio all morn­ing while dri­ving out in the woods on busi­ness. The talk today is all Ben Roeth­lis­berger. The two-time Super Bowl-winning Steel­ers quar­ter­back once again finds him­self in scald­ing hot water with Geor­gia police look­ing into alle­ga­tions he sex­u­ally assaulted a 20-year-old col­lege co-ed. This isn’t the R-Man’s first rodeo when it comes to sex­ual mis­con­duct com­plaints. You have to begin won­der­ing, you know … ?

Where there’s smoke: Part 2

Dri­ving down a Texas Farm-to-Market this morn­ing I did a dou­ble take when I saw a sign adver­tis­ing a car­ton of Marlboro’s. Only $49. Forty-nine dol­lars! Is that some kind of a joke? Since I quit smok­ing — 10 years ago this Octo­ber — I haven’t really kept up with cig­a­rette prices. Well, that’s not entirely true. I have to do so as part of my part-time job, but I record the price and go on. After all, I don’t buy cig­a­rettes. Well, I bought some for my ex-girlfriend a cou­ple of years ago. Note: Ex. Any­way, I know that taxes and all have made cigs go through the roof. But $49 a car­ton? You could buy a nice din­ner with that amount. I never bought car­tons. Well, when I was sta­tioned on a ship and we could get cheaper smokes out­side of the U.S.A. waters, to the tune of $2 a car­ton (this was 1977–78) but I hardly bought car­tons dur­ing the rest of the years I smoked because they tended to make me smoke more, or so I ratio­nal­ized. But gosh almighty folks. Holy smokes, or rather, unholy smokes. Quit before you go broke.

Deja vu log truck

I had a flash­back this morn­ing, back to mid-teens when I took dri­vers edu­ca­tion. Actu­ally, the very first day that I drove in dri­vers ed. My instruc­tor and I drove a back­woods dirt road in East Texas to pick up another stu­dent. As I came around a curve, which had a huge cul­vert in that curve, a fully-loaded log truck came around from the other direc­tion. It was my first test under fire, so to speak. I did fine. I just eased off the gas, moved a bit to the right and let the big honker pass. Out of the cor­ner of my eye, how­ever, I saw my instruc­tor almost stomp his instructor’s brake through the floor board. That was fol­lowed by the teacher down­ing what looked to be a whole roll of Rolaids. The same hap­pened this morn­ing on a dirt road in East Texas. Well, my instruc­tor has been dead for a num­ber of years and I’ve been dri­ving legally now almost 40 years and I take Prilosec for acid reflux. But this big honker of a log truck came around the curve and we all man­aged to coex­ist. I did later fear for my safety as some young woman came fly­ing around a curve on that same dirt road going faster than she should have been going.

Time to skedaddle.