The Square Peg - Hooha... Hooey!

Hooha.. Hooey!
Copyright S. Bradley Stoner

I just got a notice from the bank. The Hooha State Bank down on the main drag. I get them every few months. When I do, I get depressed... or angry. Or both. Maybe I shouldn't, but I do. The notice tells me that the interest and principal on my note is due. Then they have the unmitigated gall to tell me wheat a pleasure it is to have my business. They even thank me! At least they don't tell me to "have a nice day." I'd go berserk if they did that.

A little history. I needed money a few years ago (what writer doesn't?). I heard the radio ads. Hooha was "your friendly bank," the one that wants to get to know you. It sounded like the place to go. I went. I rue the day. At Hooha State Bank I met Alfie. Alfie was the loan officer. Alfie was nice, there wasn't anything he wouldn't do for me. I liked Alfie. I couldn't understand why my neighbors used his name as a swear word. Alfie gave me my money. I was happy. Alfie was happy. Hooha was happy.

It went fine for a long time, then something soured. I am still not sure what happened, but somewhere between my May payment and my November extension, the friendly Hooha State Bank got unfriendly. Alfie lost his elevated status in my eyes and turned into a juice-man. Maybe it was the economy. But I don't remember assuming thirty percent of the national debt being in the contract I signed. By the way. can anybody out there explain the term "variable interest rate" to me?

Do you know what it's like to have to go down to the bank and plead for just a little more time? Ten times in a row? I'll tell you what it's like. Degrading. That's what it's like. Did Alfie greet me with friendly sympathy? Not a chance. How can anybody sit there impassively while a grown man is reducing himself to a total wreck before your eyes? It's horrible. I think Alfie must have been trained by the KGB. Just when you think it's all over and you'll have to go find a hole to pull in after you, he relents. He shoves a little piece of paper across the desk at you after you've given him your last dollar, and says, "Sign." You sign. It gives you another three months to come up with the balance.

Well, I just went down again. Hooha was still on the main drag. None of the other businesses were there though. Hooha had called in their loans. I went through it all over again. I pleaded. I sobbed. Alfie was unrelenting. "Take anything, Alfie... anything at all. Just don't take away my means of making a living. Don't take my Selectric."

Alfie took my car. Alfie took my suit. Alfie took my shirt. I walked home in my Fruit of the Looms to await the moving van Alfie was sending for whatever else I have of value. I think I got to him, though. I don't think he'll take my trusty old typewriter. I think I'll get to keep that.

The moving van just came. There go my tools. There goes my furniture. There goes my goldfish bowl. But, I've still got my Selectric. I'm still hammering away at it. I still have a way to make a liv....

The Square Peg - Multilevel Marketing

Multilevel Marketing
Copyright S. Bradley Stoner

Harold stopped by today. He's into everything. He likes to call himself an "entrepreneur." Loosely translated, that means unemployed most of the time. When I saw him coming, I tried for the door. I didn't make it. "Hey," he sang out, "wait up! Boy, have I got an investment for you!" Harold talked in exclamations most of the time. I gave him points for general enthusiasm.

I groaned. The last time Harold had an investment for me, it was in soybean futures in Bora Bora. "It could've worked out," he told me later, "if only the jungle hadn't grown faster than the beans." Harold's schemes are mostly like that. The small investment and the huge profits generally go to the same place. I'm not sure where that is, but you never see them again.

Harold invited himself in. He made himself comfortable. I don't know how he does it. I was doing everything  in my power to make him uncomfortable. He asked if he could have a cup of coffee. I gave him one. Mostly in his lap. "That's okay," he chirped cheerfully, "I didn't want a whole cup anyway." Right then I thought I was in trouble. He opened his briefcase. I KNEW I was in trouble.

Harold shoved the plants on my coffee table aside and laid out his brochures. They were impressive. Color and everything. I could make a second income of a million bucks in six months.  Working only part time. I asked him why you would want a first income when you could make a million bucks working part time. He bobbed his head in agreement. "You have a point!" he returned enthusiastically.

He continued with his pitch. It was impossible to stop him. I know... I tried. He pointed to a picture of a man in a plaid sports coat. "See this guy?" Harold asked. "He made four million in two years and retired to Miami!"

 looked at the picture, "Looks more like Bermuda to me."

"Better yet!" Harold practically shouted.

I don't trust millionaires that wear plaid. I asked Harold how much he had made so far. "Well," he explained, "I'm just getting started. I expect to be rolling in it soon!"

"How much?" I repeated.

"Well, I'm ahead a clock radio and a VCR." That's how you started out, he told me. You got products for signing up your friends. Later when you had signed up ten friends and they had each signed up ten friends, you got a commission. Now when the ten friends of the ten friends had each signed up ten more friends and..."

I told Harold I was getting the picture. "What is the name of the company? I asked.

Harold looked at the back of the brochure and proudly pointed to the large triangle with printing in it. "Giza Enterprises!" he pronounced with a broad smile.

"Harold," I said.

"Yes," he answered, wetting the end of his pencil and taking out a contract the size of a book.

"Get out... NOW!

The Square Peg - Car Talk

Car Talk
Copyright S. Bradley Stoner

I don't like new cars. There are several very good reasons for this. New cars are "high-tech. They have brains. They talk. That's okay for TV shows, but there's something fundamentally wrong with a vehicle that complains. Dulcet tones or no, I don't like a car that tells me to, "Fasten your seat belt." A dashboard speaker that informs me that, "You're exceeding the speed limit." A tape recorder that gives the alarm, "You're following too close!" A mechanical device that nags, "You're low on fuel." God invented Emily for that, and she does it so much better.

Another thing, have you ever tried to work on a new car? Who makes those things anyway? Better yet, who designs them? The engine compartment is shrink-wrapped. Only a factory trained leprechaun can work on the "power plant." Old cars have "motors" that anyone with half a brain and a socket set can tinker with. You don't tinker with "power plants," you adjust them. You fine tune them.

These new cars aren't cars at all. They're "precision engineered automotive transportation." This is German-Japanese-American double talk which in reality says, "Do-it-yourselfers, touch this and it will self-destruct." These people don't want you to work on your own car anymore. They want you to sit in the waiting room of a "Service Center," stare blankly at the Game of the Week, and smile as some technician parts your hard earned dollars from your worn out wallet.

Not me. I own a dinosaur. A '66 Cad Sedan de Ville. You won't see my passengers sucking their kneecaps. No sir! It understands the loving touch of my old socket wrench set. It has nuts and bolts, not "fasteners." And if one of them is stubborn, a little gentle persuasion with a 26 ounce ball peen hammer won't reduce it to German-Japanese-American-Silicon Valley rubbish.

My Caddy has a MOTOR. A big motor. It can do 120 on the open road without even straining. It smokes sometimes, but then so do I. We both remember when regular was 27.9 cents a gallon. Emily leaned over and looked at the speedometer. "You're going too fast," she said. De Ville and I remember when cars were king and Detroit was a servant, not the other way around. The Toyota on the horizon was getting closer. "Is your seat belt fastened?" Emily asked. We bore down on the sub-compact, an evil gleam in de Ville's headlights and in my eyes. "You're following too close!" Emily screamed. God love ya, Emily... this one's for you Detroit!

-End-

The Square Peg... how the column got its name.

Howzat?
Copyright S. Bradley Stoner

Fred lives down the road. Occasionally he stops by on his weekly walks. He claims he's "just checkin' the water." His water flows through irrigation ditches on my land. I saw him out there, inside my fence, standing beside my trees, leaning on his shovel.

"Hi Fred," I yelled. "Whatcha doing?"

"Howzat?" he asked. Fred is not hard of hearing. Nobody who can overhear gossip a half mile away is hard of hearing. He just wanted to get me closer. "I read yer column last week," he said. when I got there. I was flattered. Fred is not known for reading much of anything outside of the weather report.

"What'd you think?" I asked.

"Dunno." I was deflated. I bit down on the stem of my pipe. He spit and looked at the sun. "Hot, ain't it?"

For a while I thought Fred had petrified. Then he startled me by speaking. "How'd ya come to call yer column 'The Square Peg?'

I made a mistake. I thought Fred really wanted to know. So, I proceeded to explain. "When I was a kid, I was raised in the city," I told him. "I liked riding horses. I liked raising animals, even though I was restricted to the mouse-sized variety due to lack of acreage. I liked hunting, but didn't dare shoot off my gun at home. The neighbors had a strong dislike for flying missiles and an extreme fondness for their own health. I did try a bow once, but my Mom took it away when I dead-centered the roof on a house two blocks away. I liked to fish, and I didn't even mind cleaning them. I didn't mind pooper-scooper chores. I just pretended it was horse manure."

Fred watched a small cluster of pine needles swirl down the ditch. "Then I grew up," I continued. "I went to college and got a degree. But, I still liked the idea of the country, so I moved to Montana. Now, I like to read a lot. I buy books... lots of them for that reason. I sit inside and write when it's nice outside. Willie Nelson is okay, but I like Bach better. The rodeo is fun, but I'd like to see a good play instead sometimes. See what I mean," I concluded. "Sometimes I feel like a square peg in a round hole... you know, out of place."

Fred shifted his grip on the shovel and mopped his brow. I allowed him time to digest the meaning of my words. Finally, he looked up blankly and said, "Howzat?"

I looked deep into his eyes. There wasn't anybody home. I spit. "Hot out, ain't it?" I said.

A Blast from the Past

It's been a while since I posted on this site. Okay... it's been a YEAR since I posted. I've been busy. I've been writing. Just recently I ran across a set of column articles I wrote (and never published) entitled "The Square Peg" while I was living in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana in the early 1980s. Somehow, a lot of them still seem relevant today, so I thought I'd share them with you. I'll try to post a couple each week. Here's the first one. I'm sure some of you out there can relate.

A REAL JOB
Copyright S. Bradley Stoner

My brother came over last week. My brother is a lawyer. He makes good money. His wife is a lawyer. She makes good money. Together, they make REALLY good money. I am a writer. I don't make really good money. A lot of the time, I don't even make good money. That's how it is sometimes. I don't mind it. They do. "Dale" (not his real name) keeps asking me when I'm going to get a REAL job. My sister-in-law hopes I find my niche.

"What have you been doing?" was Dale's first question.

"Working," I responded. I told him how I had put in a minimum of twelve hours a day for the past month. Sometimes fifteen or sixteen. And that's on top of trying to keep up the thirty acres, feeding the animals, and building an office to work in. He folded his arms, frowned, and harrumphed. I didn't take it personally. Lawyers do that a lot.

"Where are you working?"

"Right here. I'm writing"

He scowled. Lawyers do that a lot too. "Are you making any money?" I was afraid to answer. He took that to mean exactly what it did. "What you need, he said, "is a real job."

He isn't the only one. I get strange looks from almost everybody when I tell them what I do. Some think I'm crazy. Some don't believe it. Some just look at me for a moment then break into paroxysms of laughter. I couldn't figure out why one particular neighbor of mine kept looking at me like I'd lost my mind. I stopped by his house yesterday and understood immediately. He had one book in his house. It's on the coffee table and it has no more than two hundred words of text. Nice pictures, though.

He has a real job. He makes good money too. He keeps offering to "have a word with the foreman" so I also can have an honest to God REAL job. I said, "No thanks." It's not that I'd mind the money, but every time I see him, I get the willies. He works at the sawmill. He credits the mill with all he has today. He has one eye that wanders off on its own ever since he got hit in the noggin with a block and tackle. He's missing three fingers and his left big toe because he "got a little friendly with the trim saw." He has a back that won't bend because it got smacked by a runaway log. He has insurance. It's a good thing.

I got a call from a friend in Chicago just the other day. After all the preliminaries, he asked me what I was doing. I thought fast. I thought about telling the whole, naked truth and decided I'd better not. I didn't need any more advice. I told him I was keeping busy working my ranch. What with the animals and all, it kept me pretty doggone busy. I was trying my best to sound like a REAL rancher.

"I thought you were writing," he said.

I broke down and confessed. I told it all. I told about the novel. I told about the features. I told about the fillers. When I paused for breath, he said, "When are you going to get a REAL job?"

-End-

Recharge those batteries!

Ah, sweet respite! I have taken a break from editing and writing for the past week. I did mundane things like mow the lawn, clean the garage, putter in the gardens, and (gasp) read a few books. It's been WONDERFUL! Don't get me wrong, I love to write, but when one writes day in and day out and edits others' writings, well let's face it, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. I needed to play hooky for a while. Smell the roses... soak up some sunshine... go fishing... you know, stuff like that.

Taking a mini-vacation from any kind of work can recharge your batteries.  And to be completely honest, my batteries were so low they were almost flat. To a writer that is deadly.  Sure, you can still write... it's the discipline... but most of what you write with flat batteries is probably destined for the round file. It generally lacks punch and joie de vivre. There's nothing worse in my book than laboring over a passage half a day, only to look at it later and know that what you have produced is crap.  It was time to quit wasting my time... time to "tiptoe through the tulips," as it were.

Sooo, I spent some time in the Texas out-of-doors. I talked to my furry and feathered friends that frequent my back yard. I have a pair of eastern cottontail rabbits that blithely ignore me as I wander about the yard doing whatever it is that needs to be done at the moment. One is an adult female, Babbit, and the other is still in bunny stage... about half the size of Babbit. But, bring out the mower and pffft! they are gone.

On our Texas sage one can often see Ruby-throated, Calliope, Black Chinned, and Broad-tailed hummingbirds vying for the nectar in the tiny crimson flowers that cover the bushes. That is when they're not fighting over the blooms on our Ceratonia (carob bush) in the front yard. A pair of Lesser Goldfinches have appropriated one of our small fountains as their personal bathing facility.  The female particularly enjoys her "spa time," splashing about and sending water flying in all directions.

A mated pair of Mockingbirds has declared the backyard their domain as well.  They are particularly drawn to our Pride of Houston bush that has already flowered and is producing tiny green berries that will turn orange when they ripen. This, of course, is why the Mockingbirds have staked their claim.  It's their winter food supply, and woe unto that errant bird who tries to steal even one berry.

And then there's our cadre of bees and wasps that simply adore our Morning Glory bush.  Yep, I said bush.  It's from the Yucatan and it gets to be over twelve feet high before the end of the growing season.  It just started producing the giant white bell-shaped flowers the little stingers find irresistible. The thing is, after visiting the plant, the little buzzers get downright mellow and fly funny. Now I know the Maya used the plant's sap as a poison for arrows and its root to extract a hallucinogen, and I'm starting to wonder if the bees and wasps weren't getting a bit of a different kind of buzz from the pollen.

Come to think of it, I'm feeling pretty mellow tonight.  I think my batteries are nearing full recharge.

I'm baaack!

I've been gone for a while.  I suppose that's one of the hazards of being a writer and not a blogger.  Ah well, such is the stuff of life. My last few months have been spent completing a work I co-authored under my given name with my friend and colleague, James Essig.  It is a foray into the world of relativistic rocketry... extreme relativistic rocketry. It is, I suppose, a subject that will interest few, but those it does may well hold the hope for the long term destiny of man... or at least the hope for mankind's ultimate survival.

No, the end is not near.  At least I hope it isn't... but eventually planet Earth will die.  It could happen in any number of ways, but barring a major asteroid strike, a collapse of our magnetic field, or a comet smashing into us, Earth should be around for a few billion years yet. So, not a concern, right? For this, and a few generations to come, perhaps, but forward thinkers all agree that the best hope for the long term survival of our species lies in exploring the universe and finding habitable planets elsewhere. If we don't, then eventually humans will be toast... literally.

At some point in the future our sun is going to die.  When stars die, they don't just go out like a light bulb... well, maybe like an incandescent one where its death is preceded by a last flash of energy. This will be caused by the rather sudden expansion of its outer layers as the sun's fuel is depleted. That will be accompanied by a contraction of the core. This is usually termed the "red giant" phase... and it will overtake the inner planets (remember we are the third rock from the sun) and fry them.  If we're still here... well, adios amigo.

But that isn't the only reason people think about space and traveling the cosmos.  There is something more basic, more primal in humans that drives us to look beyond ourselves and our confines.  The urge to explore... to see what's over that next hill.  The universe is a huge hill and we have not even scratched the surface.  The stars you see every night may, or may not, actually be there.  It takes their light millions, even billions of years to reach us, so what you are looking at in the night sky is the past.

In writing our previous book, The Cosmic Wanderer, we wanted to look at ways to achieve high, near the speed of light velocities, and high gamma factors - that's complicated, but basically it deals with something called the Lorentz Transformation - time dilation and length contraction.  Basically, Hyperphysics. The book proposes multimodal rockets, specifically hexamodal rockets to achieve this, incorporating concepts such as solar sails, pellet runways, fusion drives, electromagnetic and electrodynamic drives (think rail gun), and so forth. Pause for breath...

In this book, we consider extreme configurations, including spacecraft built of theoretical bulk materials - those that are extremely dense - and some pretty exotic rocket fuels, like matter and antimatter (hey, even NASA is playing with that idea). The idea is to lay out some possible road maps on how to get from Earth orbit to billions of light-years distant in a very short time (from the spaceship's perspective). We take a tour of current and near term technologies, and then extrapolate to the possible.  We discuss crew survivability and considerations for spaceship design.  It's been quite a trip writing the book. Look for it on Amazon in both hard copy and Kindle sometime in the next month or so, and explore Cosmic Horizons with us, won't you?