Degraded Youth of America

The other day (Wednesday, November 25, 2009; the day before Thanksgiving) I went to the Canandaigua YMCA to work out in their Exercise Gym (“Wellness Center”).
It’s part of my ongoing feeble effort to keep this 65-year-old bag-a’-bones alive.
And also to keep my blood-pressure down without medication.
About four years ago I retired from the mighty Mezz at almost age 62 because of “episodes.”
My doctors called them dizzy-spells, but I’m not sure that’s exactly what they were.
It felt like my heart had stopped, allowing blood to drain from my head.
My father used to have that; his heart would stop, and he’d keel over.
He finally had to have a pacemaker installed.
After numerous tests, including an all-night heart monitor, a neurologist in Canandaigua named Scott suggested it was probably a side-effect of the blood-pressure medication I was taking, a calcium blocker.
So I stopped taking it. No more “episodes” since then.
He also prescribed physical-therapy at Lake Country Physical Therapy.
The good people there suggested the best thing I could do was get back in shape.
Made sense to me. I was in pretty good shape before my stroke (I used to run footraces), but since then I deteriorated. I still could run, but much slower, and my weight ballooned.
So I started working out there; mainly their treadmill, a step-machine, and a recumbent bicycle trainer. —Lost about 25 pounds.
This lasted about a year, but then I happened to blog a local politician treated there.
The Physical Therapists went justifiably ballistic. I had inadvertently revealed one of their clients, violating a cardinal rule of medical ethics.
I was kicked out, but wanted to keep working out.
So my wife and I visited the Canandaigua YMCA.
They had an Exercise Gym loaded with cardiovascular trainers, all much newer than the Physical Therapy.
We joined, and have been members since.
Since then that Exercise Gym has been remodeled, expanded, and many new machines installed.
The YMCA itself renovated, doubling in size.
Its old swimming-pool was closed, and a new one built.
I try to work out at least twice a week; often three times. Current workouts burn at least 900 calories.
The renovation included a new parking-lot to the southwest; but I can’t get to it easily from the west on West Ave. with the bridge over Sucker Brook out.
So I park in the old parking-lot, the tiny lot the YMCA originally had.
I access it from Greig (“Gregg”) Terrace, as I did before the renovation. The old parking-lot is right adjacent to Greig Terrace.
The old and new parking-lots, at different levels, are connected by a long downhill driveway.
I have to go down that to get to the YMCA’s front entrance.
In so doing I passed a group of teenaged boys atop the driveway with skateboards, etc.
I was being followed by a YMCA janitor carrying a fiberglass extension ladder.
“Move along, fellas. This isn’t a skatepark,” he said behind me.
Suddenly a lady appeared far away, a YMCA receptionist, shouting “You boys have to move along, or we’re calling the Police. —Oh John, I didn’t see you up there........”

Fond memories of my time as a teenager, in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, when a stodgy old deacon of the church I attended told me I and my kind were “degraded.”
His name was Middleswart (“Middle-zwart.”)
I promptly opened the founding chapter of the Degraded Youth of America (DYA).
Sadly, we never got out of northern Delaware — never had more than five members.
Like those malcontents in the YMCA driveway, we were attracted to the force of gravity.
Gravity could be harnessed to provide ultimate thrills and spills.
In our case it was sledding. And I soon discovered I possessed the fastest sled in the entire known universe; the incomparable “Flexible-Flyer.”
It was actually my father’s; about 30 years old. And broken so many times it was way more flexible than intended.
Its siderails had been broken, but they were long breaks, and could be tied back together with circling string.
NOTHING would beat the Flexible-Flyer — not even close.
A fellow-traveler from the DYA went out and bought a brand-new sled, but he got royally skonked.
He thereafter waxed the runners, but still got skonked.
Another gravitational attraction was roller-coasters.
Every summer our church held a picnic at a nearby amusement park. It had a wooden roller-coaster about the size of SeaBreeze’s JackRabbit.
My ne’er-do-well friend would stay seated as the coaster ratcheted up the first hill, and then stand up as it went over the top.
I guess the object was to stay standing the whole ride, but I don’t think he ever made it.
That thing slammed ya around so much in the curves, he’d sit back down.
The Flexible-Flyer was finally destroyed beyond repair when I landed sideways after a jump.
I suppose those youths left the YMCA, because there were no police-cruisers with sirens and flashing lights.

• “Canandaigua” (“cannon-DAY-gwuh”) is a small city nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 15 miles away.)
• The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired almost four years ago. Best job I ever had.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993. It was caused by a patent foramen ovale (“PAY-tint four-AYE-min oh-VAL-lee”), a heart-defect wherein an open passageway between the top two chambers of your heart never closes after birth. I never knew about this, and it passed a clot that caused the stroke. This is the same heart-defect that caused the stroke of New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi (“BREW-skee”).
• “Sucker Brook,” a small brook, threads Canandaigua, and is frequently bridged. “West Ave.” comes into Canandaigua from the west, and crosses Sucker Brook. That bridge is being replaced, so West Ave. is closed.
• Before my moving up to this area (late 1966), my family lived in “northern Delaware.”
• “SeaBreeze is a small amusement park, very old, northeast of Rochester, near Lake Ontario. It has a wooden roller-coaster called “The JackRabbit.”

We’ll See What Happens

Another union-meeting drifts into the filmy past.
For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY. While there I belonged to the local division (“Local 282”) of the nationwide Amalgamated Transit Union. Our local holds a regular business meeting the third Thursday of each month.
Bylaw changes were at issue. It generated large attendence — about 50 instead of 10.
Our union is not in compliance with the International constitution. It has two full-time union officials; a president and a business-agent.
The International constitution combines president and business-agent into one full-time union official.
To make this change our local union membership has to approve a bylaw change.
Also at issue is the number of people on our union’s Executive Board. We currently have 12. The suggestion is eight. Another bylaw change.
Lots of noisy fulminating and breast-beating.
I don’t know why I attend these meetings......
I can’t vote.
And it seems Transit is no longer what it was when I worked there; so my attendence is rather irrelevant.
About all I’m doing by showing up is demonstrating support for my union.
As a Transit retiree, about all that matters is that -A) my retiree benefits continue, and -B) my pension increase with the cost-of-living. It can; it’s negotiable — it’s not fixed.
The madness that Transit has become is no longer something I parry.
It was bad enough when I worked there, and has gotten worse.
At this meeting I spent more time reading a railroad book than following what was happening.
People were foaming about how -A) reducing officialdom would negate checks and balances, yet -B) with two union officials nothing ever gets done.
One “brother” complained reduction of officialdom and the Executive Board was just a blatant power-grab.
Another, an Executive Board member, complained that reducing the Executive Board was reversing their getting representation on it — which was a struggle.
Bylaw changes need a two-thirds majority to pass; 38 for versus 30 against. —They didn’t pass.
By not passing, our union is subject to discipline from the International, I guess.
The International might “trustee” our union and take over.
An International official had been around for a while, and advocated the bylaw change.
But it crashed.
Now we’ll see what happens.

• RE: “Reading a railroad book......” —I am a railfan, and have been since I was a child.

Hot-te-Tott!

Our previous dog serenades some robins. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Yet another bunny-rabbit meets its demise in the jaws of canine death.
We figure this is her fourth bunny-rabbit, or maybe her fifth — we’ve lost count — and we’ve only had her a year-and-a-half.
Our immediate back yard is surrounded by five-foot cyclone fence, to keep the dog from disappearing into the wilderness.
We had one dog, our so-called Houdini dog, who could climb that fence, and one day ran away during a thunderstorm, and disappeared.
We never saw her again.
If a bunny-rabbit gets in that fence, and we let the dog out, that bunny-rabbit is dead meat.
The bunny-rabbits occasionally escape, but usually not. If trapped, they get zapped by our blood-thirsty carnivore.
We could try to discourage her, but why bother?
She’s an Irish Setter. It seems endemic to the breed.
Nearly every Irish Setter we’ve had (this is our sixth) was a hunter.
One wasn’t. She was pretty laid back, but caught a robin once, and used to hunt frogs.
Every filthy quagmire was a hunting-ground. She almost got swallowed by one once.
Our first dog, in the ‘70s, dispatched at least 30 squirrels, despite getting hit by a car, which made her lame.
She learned how to sneak up on ‘em.
The dog we had before this one (pictured above) nabbed a chipmunk despite lymphomic cancer, which eventually took his life.
One dog actually ate the rabbit she’d caught. All that was left were a few tufts of rabbit fur, and a dog plump and satisfied.
My wife got up at 2 a.m. this morning (Thursday, November 19, 2009) to let our dog out.
She thereafter went into our bathroom.
Back onto the porch to let the dog back in, and there’s the dog prancing merrily around the back yard with that rabbit in its mouth, pleased as punch; “Hot-te-Tott. Hot-te-Tott. I got it, and you do not!”
I got up myself, and our garage lights were on, a back-door light was on, and all the back yard floods were lit.
Our back yard looked like an apron at Rochester International Airport.
There’s my wife out in her bathrobe trying to get that rabbit.
She succeeded. I knew because our dog was back inside the house.
But I had a frenzied, dashing monster on my hands, yipping and yowling.
“She’s got my rabbit, Boss. She’s lobbing it into the trash.”
That’s two critters in about 12 hours.
She caught a mole earlier.
I took her to Boughton Park this morning.
Hang on for dear life! A squirrel!

• “We” is me and my wife of almost 42 years.
• Our current dog is “Scarlett;” a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s four, and is our sixth Irish-Setter. (A “rescue Irish Setter” is an Irish Setter rescued from a bad home; e.g. a puppy-mill. By getting a rescue-dog, we avoid puppydom, but the dog is often messed up.)
• “Boughton (‘BOW-tin’ as in ‘wow’) Park” is where I run and we walk our dog.

Gotcha!

As I’ve gotten older (I’m 65), I’ve sworn off some of the maintenance things I used to do; e.g. change the oil on our cars.
Not that I don’t think I still could — I even have a pit designed into our garage.
But our Honda CR-V is troublesome.
Removal of its oil-filter is a guaranteed hand-gash.
Ontario Honda, where we bought it, gives a free oil-change as long as we own the car, so let them do it.
So I was still changing the oil/filter on our Toyota Sienna.
Our pit made it fairly easy.
But LeBrun Toyota, where we bought it, does an oil-change as part of its scheduled maintenance.
It’s not free, but doesn’t cost that much.
So I let them do it.
Last summer my friend Art Dana, like me a retired bus driver from Regional Transit Service, needed to change out the steering box on his hot-rodded ‘49 Ford sedan.

Photo by my wife.

Art’s ‘49 Ford hot-rod. (That’s Art at right.)

Art has fairly severe Parkinson’s, but “You got a pit, BobbaLew.”
Over my pit it went, and we set about tearing out the steering box.
Or attempting to tear it out.
It couldn’t be removed unless a floor panel we didn’t know about was removed.
A friend of Art, who had a similar car, removed it in a jiffy.
“I can still do it,” I said. Overweight and creaky, it involved wiggling around on the floor in front of the front seat to remove a U-bolt that held the steering column to the dashboard.
It also involved pit diving, and getting liberally slathered with grunge.
I wanted to keep trying the next day, but both Art and I were too tired.
“We’re not young any more,” I said to Art.
Yesterday (Tuesday, November 17, 2009) I set about testing the charging on our fabulous zero-turn lawnmower.
I still have my ancient charging-system tester from the ‘70s. It measures amperage to the battery.
I’ve been having to trickle-charge that mower all summer long. It wasn’t self-charging; it was running off the battery.
After a while, it wouldn’t crank.
“Sounds like your regulator is kaput,” said Dan at Leif’s Sales and Service, where I bought the mower.
“They often fail,” he said.
My connections were terrible, essentially fiddled paper-clips.
My first test was backwards. The reading was slight, but negative.
Reverse connections; a slight positive reading.
“I can still do it, I guess,” I said to myself.
I patronize Leif’s today to get a new regulator — it’s solid-state.
The whole joy of these pursuits is “gotcha!”

• The “Honda CR-V” is our 2003 Honda CR-V SUV. The “Toyota Sienna” is our 2005 Toyota Sienna van.
• Both “Ontario Honda” and “LeBrun Toyota” are near Canandaigua. “Canandaigua” (“cannon-DAY-gwuh”) is a small city nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 15 miles away.
• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY.
• Our “zero-turn” is our 48-inch Husqvarna riding-mower; “zero-turn” because it’s a special design with separate drives to each drive-wheel, so it can be spun on a dime. “Zero-turns” are becoming the norm, because they cut mowing time in half compared to a lawn-tractor, which has to be set up for each mowing-pass.
• “Leif’s Sales and Service” is a small garden-tractor shop nearby.

The seed was planted

This morning’s (Monday, November 16, 2009) Composer’s Datebook on WXXI, the classical-music radio station in Rochester we listen to, celebrated a concert given in 1900 in Philadelphia.
It prompted the Philadelphia Orchestra, a symphony orchestra comparable to anything in New York City or Boston.
It was probably the Philadelphia Orchestra that began my life-long love of classical music, they and my piano-teacher Mrs. Dager (“DAY-grrr”).
Mrs. Dager was a scion of local society, and also my church organist. She also directed my church’s choir, which I belonged to as a child.
She wanted me to become a Billy Graham pianist with sweeping piano glitz and glorious chords. But I was more attracted to Jerry Lee Lewis.
The Philadelphia Orchestra was giving Children’s Concerts, and Mrs. Dager arranged for my sister and I to attend.
We had front-row seats. It probably wasn’t Ormandy, but it was the Philadelphia Orchestra.
They played Finlandia, The New World Symphony, and probably “Waltz of the Flowers” from Nutcracker. (I remember the harp.)
The seed was planted.
The resonant horn-blasts of Finlandia were in my head for years — even riding bicycle on the wooded paths of Camden County Park.
I got so I could follow 1812 Overture.
My high-school band-director had it on a Mercury LP — unabridged.
And then I happened to attend nearby Houghton College.
I found a hotbed of classical music, especially Bach.
They had a fabulous pipe-organ, 3,153 pipes, and essentially a baroque organ.
I visited the campus two years ago, and told them if they let that organ deteriorate, they weren’t getting another red cent.
After college was Karl Haas’ “Adventures in Good Music;” a syndicated educational classical music program on WXXI.
WXXI always trumpets its own Simon Pontin (“PAHN-tin”) and recently deceased Richard Gladwell, but I’d say it was mainly Karl Haas.
Thanks to him were Stravinsky, Copeland, and Gershwin.
Even Mozart, who I usually abhorred.
So now WXXI is celebrating 35 years on the air.
They’re asking for suggestions for 35 classical hits.
The Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony. I still recognized it after my stroke.

• “Camden County,” across from Philadelphia, is the county wherein Camden resides in south Jersey. I lived near “Camden County Park” as a child.
• “Houghton College,” in western New York, is from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I graduated as a Ne’er-do-Well, without their blessing. Houghton is an evangelical liberal-arts college. (We live in Western New York.)
• WXXI had two venerable classical-music hosts, Simon Pontin and Richard Gladwell. Gladwell died recently, and Pontin retired. Both were English expatriates.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993.

Employee-of-the-month

Yesterday (Friday, November 13, 2009) I cashed out at the Canandaigua Weggers, while a young girl was celebrated as the employee-of-the-month.
She pumped her fist embarrassedly as people cheered.
Well, I’m glad she received the recognition, but as a fellow employee at a bank-branch kept saying long ago, when her boss congratulated her: “How about a raise?”
And “Oh boss; do I get a gold star?”
For 16&1/2 years I drove bus for Regional Transit Service, and during that time I became one of their favorite employees, all because I showed up on time, never was sick, and was little trouble to management.
Yet I was receiving the same wage as the inveterate scumbags.
A friend recently commented about a proposed dress-down day to improve morale where he worked.
“This is how it works,” he said to his bosses.
“I work, you pay me. And I ain’t wearin’ no silly hat, nor Hawaiian shirt.”

• “Weggers” is Wegmans, a large supermarket-chain based in Rochester we often buy groceries at. They have a store in Canandaigua. (“Canandaigua” [“cannon-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 15 miles away.)
• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.

Photoshop alert

Behold! The winner of the 2009 Irish Setter Rescue calendar.
“Gee, what a great picture! Tasha exploding into a sunset field full of birds fleeing.”
Um, I hate to burst your bubble, guys; but I detect Photoshop® dickering.
Clip Tasha out of a picture of her exploding into a backyard, and paste into dramatic birds-fleeing-at-sunset picture.
Easy as pie! —I’ve done it myself.
Clipped my macho brother-from-Boston off his Harley and pasted him onto a merry-go-round horse backwards, because he noisily insisted merry-go-rounds rotate clockwise (viewed from above).
“I got this fabulous shot of 89 bazilyun birds fleeing a sunset field. I’ll just paste Tasha on it.”
Two things give this away.
—1) The difference in lighting. Tasha is lighted one way, and the sunset another.
Perhaps some artificial light — a flash — was used on Tasha, but it doesn’t look like flash.
It looks like ambient cloud daylight; hardly a flash or a sunset.
—2) No camera will focus a background and a foreground razor-sharp.
-The birds are at infinity, and are razor-sharp.
-Yet Tasha is quite sharp in the very close foreground.
The camera has auto-focused Tasha exploding out a back door.
I’ve submitted photos to this contest myself, but not Photoshopped.
I have a feeling the calendar judges aren’t aware of the wonders of Photoshop.

• A “rescue Irish Setter” is an Irish Setter dog rescued from bad home; e.g. a puppy-mill. Our current dog is a rescue Irish Setter, our third. —By getting a full-grown rescue dog, we avoid puppydom; but the dog is often messed up. Our current dog is our sixth Irish Setter.