"There's sore decline in Adam's line ...

... if this be spawn of Earth."

Having just learned that a fellow blogger (bloggess? :-) shares a love for Kipling, I declared his The Ballad of East and West as my absolute favorite.  She introduced me to his The Female of the Species ("is more deadly than the male" - well worth looking up).

I've become quite fond of the poem below (from whence came the title of this post), and believe that Barack Obama could be thusly described.

How good is the fit?  Well, what do you think? ...

TOMLINSON
    by  Rudyard Kipling  1891

Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley Square,
And a Spirit came to his bedside and gripped him by the hair—
A Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far away,
Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar of the Milky Way:
Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way die down and drone and cease,
And they came to the Gate within the Wall where Peter holds the keys.

"Stand up, stand up now, Tomlinson, and answer loud and high
"The good that ye did for the sake of men or ever ye came to die—
"The good that ye did for the sake of men on the little Earth so lone!"
And the naked soul of Tomlinson grew white as a rain-washed bone.

"O I have a friend on Earth," he said, "that was my priest and guide,
"And well would he answer all for me if he were at my side."
—"For that ye strove in neighbour-love it shall be written fair,
"But now ye wait at Heaven's Gate and not in Berkeley Square:
"Though we called your friend from his bed this night, he could not speak for you,
"For the race is run by one and one and never by two and two."

Then Tomlinson looked up and down, and little gain was there,
For the naked stars grinned overhead, and he saw that his soul was bare.
The Wind that blows between the Worlds, it cut him like a knife,
And Tomlinson took up the tale and spoke of his good in life.

"O this I have read in a book," he said, "and that was told to me,
"And this I have thought that another man thought of a Prince in Muscovy."
The good souls flocked like homing doves and bade him clear the path,
And Peter twirled the jangling Keys in weariness and wrath.
"Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought," he said, "and the tale is yet to run:
"By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer—what ha' ye done?"

Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and little good it bore,
For the darkness stayed at his shoulder-blade and Heaven's Gate before:—
"O this I have felt, and this I have guessed, and this I heard men say,
"And this they wrote that another man wrote of a carl in Norroway."

"Ye have read, ye have felt, ye have guessed, good lack! Ye have hampered Heaven's Gate;
"There's little room between the stars in idleness to prate!
"For none may reach by hired speech of neighbour, priest, and kin
"Through borrowed deed to God's good meed that lies so fair within;
"Get hence, get hence to the Lord of Wrong, for thy doom has yet to run,
"And . . . the faith that ye share with Berkeley Square uphold you, Tomlinson!"

The Spirit gripped him by the hair, and sun by sun they fell
Till they came to the belt of Naughty Stars that rim the mouth of Hell.
The first are red with pride and wrath, the next are white with pain,
But the third are black with clinkered sin that cannot burn again.
They may hold their path, they may leave their path, with never a soul to mark:
They may burn or freeze, but they must not cease in the Scorn of the Outer Dark.

The Wind that blows between the Worlds, it nipped him to the bone,
And he yearned to the flare of Hell-gate there as the light of his own hearth-stone.
The Devil he sat behind the bars, where the desperate legions drew,
But he caught the hasting Tomlinson and would not let him through.

"Wot ye the price of good pit-coal that I must pay?" said he,
"That ye rank yoursel' so fit for Hell and ask no leave of me?
"I am all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that ye should give me scorn,
"For I strove with God for your First Father the day that he was born.
"Sit down, sit down upon the slag, and answer loud and high
"The harm that ye did to the Sons of Men or ever you came to die."

And Tomlinson looked up and up, and saw against the night
The belly of a tortured star blood-red in Hell-Mouth light;
And Tomlinson looked down and down, and saw beneath his feet
The frontlet of a tortured star milk-white in Hell-Mouth heat.

"O I had a love on earth," said he, "that kissed me to my fall;
"And if ye would call my love to me I know she would answer all."
—"All that ye did in love forbid it shall be written fair,
"But now ye wait at Hell-Mouth Gate and not in Berkeley Square:
"Though we whistled your love from her bed to-night, I trow she would not run,
"For the sin that ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one!"

The Wind that blows between the Worlds, it cut him like a knife,
And Tomlinson took up the tale and spoke of his sins in life:—
"Once I ha' laughed at the power of Love and twice at the grip of the Grave,
"And thrice I ha' patted my God on the head that men might call me brave."

The Devil he blew on a brandered soul and laid it aside to cool:—
"Do ye think I would waste my good pit-coal on the hide of a brain-sick fool?
"I see no worth in the hobnail mirth or the jolthead jest ye did
"That I should waken my gentlemen that are sleeping three on a grid."
Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and there was little grace,
For Hell-Gate filled the houseless soul with the Fear of Naked Space.

"Nay, this I ha' heard," quo' Tomlinson, "and this was noised abroad,
"And this I ha' got from a Belgian book on the word of a dead French lord."
—"Ye ha' heard, ye ha' read, ye ha' got, good lack! and the tale begins afresh—
"Have ye sinned one sin for the pride o' the eye or the sinful lust of the flesh?"

Then Tomlinson he gripped the bars and yammered, "Let me in—
"For I mind that I borrowed my neighbour's wife to sin the deadly sin."
The Devil he grinned behind the bars, and banked the fires high:
"Did ye read of that sin in a book?" said he; and Tomlinson said, "Ay!"

The Devil he blew upon his nails, and the little devils ran,
And he said: "Go husk this whimpering thief that comes in the guise of a man:
"Winnow him out 'twixt star and star, and sieve his proper worth:
"There's sore decline in Adam's line if this be spawn of Earth."

Empusa's crew, so naked-new they may not face the fire,
But weep that they bin too small to sin to the height of their desire,
Over the coal they chased the Soul, and racked it all abroad,
As children rifle a caddis-case or the raven's foolish hoard.
And back they came with the tattered Thing, as children after play,
And they said: "The soul that he got from God he has bartered clean away.

"We have threshed a stook of print and book, and winnowed a chattering wind,
"And many a soul wherefrom he stole, but his we cannot find.
"We have handled him, we have dandled him, we have seared him to the bone,
"And, Sire, if tooth and nail show truth he has no soul of his own."

The Devil he bowed his head to his breast and rumbled deep and low:—
"I'm all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that I should bid him go.
"Yet close we lie, and deep we lie, and if I gave him place,
"My gentlemen that are so proud would flout me to my face;
"They'd call my house a common stews and me a careless host,
"And—I would not anger my gentlemen for the sake of a shiftless ghost."

The Devil he looked at the mangled Soul that prayed to feel the flame,
And he thought of Holy Charity, but he thought of his own good name:—
"Now ye could haste my coal to waste, and sit ye down to fry.
"Did ye think of that theft for yourself?" said he; and Tomlinson said, "Ay! "

The Devil he blew an outward breath, for his heart was free from care:—
"Ye have scarce the soul of a louse," he said, "but the roots of sin are there,
"And for that sin should ye come in were I the lord alone,
"But sinful pride has rule inside—ay, mightier than my own.
"Honour and Wit, fore-damned they sit, to each his Priest and Whore;
"Nay, scarce I dare myself go there, and you they'd torture sore.

"Ye are neither spirit nor spirk," he said; "ye are neither book nor brute—
"Go, get ye back to the flesh again for the sake of Man's repute.
"I'm all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that I should mock your pain,
"But look that ye win to a worthier sin ere ye come back again.

"Get hence, the hearse is at your door—the grim black stallions wait—
"They bear your clay to place to-day. Speed, lest ye come too late!
"Go back to Earth with lip unsealed—go back with open eye,
"And carry my word to the Sons of Men or ever ye come to die:
"That the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one,
"And . . . the God you took from a printed book be with you, Tomlinson!"

-

I've often felt that The One is perfectly described by that empty soul.

And that's when I'm in a charitable mood towards him. :(

-

Just 50 years ago today ...

... I celebrated my 19th birthday, on 25 May 1961.

It was a Thursday, and I was an A3C (Airman 3rd Class - E2 grade in 1961 ) in the USAF, stationed in New Haven, Connecticut, at Yale University's Institute of Far Eastern Languages (having just arrived there the previous month).

I don't recall if I treated myself at Sid's Diner; where a lot of the Airmen stationed there ate (because it was close and relatively cheap; as we weren't on a base and had no access to mess halls, in addition to our normal pay (pitiful) we were given a per-dium allowance of $2.58/day -- real money in 1961 -- and they were happy to cash our paychecks. Most of us had tabs there.), or more likely, went over to Tony's Pizza for beer and pizza (where I was first introduced to pizza).

If I went to Tony's, it would have been a quiet celebration, just for me. The minimum drinking age in Connecticut at that time was 21, and while I've sometimes been guilty of appalling stupidity (see The Anvil of Life ), I'd like to think my instincts for self-preservation would have kept me from jeopardizing the license of my favorite watering hole by openly celebrating being two years underage.

So, what was 1961 like?

Well, I got my first airplane ride.

A few years prior, our family left San Antonio and moved in with relatives in rural Arkansas to make a new start.  My feelings towards Arkansas cannot be expressed here unless I put an "Adult Content" warning on my blog.

Occasionally I would walk about a mile down the road to state highway 22 and flag down a Trailways bus for a twenty-mile trip into Fort Smith, to catch a movie or just to see what sights the town had to offer, returning by bus in the evening.

In mid-January of 1961, on one of those trips, I happened to come by a USAF recruiting office and walked right in and signed up.  My parents were not thrilled at the news I delivered when I got home, but I was old enough to enlist on my own, and there was really nothing they could do about it except to give me a ride back to Fort Smith and the recruiting office the next morning.  It would be my ticket out of that damned state.

From there, I was put on a bus, with some others, for the trip to the induction center in Little Rock.  After almost a solid day of exams (physical and otherwise; I don't recall ever dealing with so much paperwork in my life ), they took our group to the airport and sent us by a commercial flight down to San Antonio.

This was January 1961 and the airline (TTA - Trans Texas Airways, sometimes known as "Tree Top Airways" (they later became Texas International Airways, before eventually being absorbed by Continental - think I've digressed enough now?)) was still using the Douglas DC-3.

Trans Texas DC-3  -  Drawing by Bob Engle

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/trans-texas-airways-dc-3-bob-engle.html

(Check out his site; he has some truly amazing work there.)

From Little Rock to San Antonio is a bit under 600 miles as the crow flies, but that's if the crow flies a lot straighter than that flight did.  The flight swung down into Louisiana, and I'll swear it made about as many stops along the way as a bus would, probably not making much better time.  It seemed like every time it got airborne, it was already making its descent towards another field.

It was already late in the evening when we took off from Little Rock, and about 3 or 4 in the morning when we got off in San Antonio, to be bussed to Lackland AFB (where all USAF Basic training was conducted then (and still is, as far as I know).

In "The Anvil of Life" (linked above) I touched a bit on my time there, so I see no call to repeat it here.

So, for other things about 1961...

The # 1 hit record in America was "Runaway", by Del Shannon (If you ever saw the TV series Crime Story (1986-1988), you heard it as the theme music played over the opening titles -- "As I walk along, I wonder what went wrong...")

Other hit singles...
  "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" - Elvis Presley
  "Crazy" - Patsy Cline
  "Hello Mary Lou" - Ricky Nelson
  "I Fall to Pieces" - Patsy Cline
  "Mother-In-Law" - Ernie K-Doe
  "Spanish Harlem" - Ben E. King
  "Stand By Me" - Ben E. King
  "The Comancheros" - Claude King
  "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" - The Tokens
  "The Wanderer" - Dion
  "Town Without Pity" - Gene Pitney
  "Apache" - Jørgen Ingmann

Popular LP Albums (remember them) were by...
  Harry Belafonte
  Joan Baez
  The Kingston Trio
  Johnny Cash
  Chet Atkins
  Carlos Montoya
  Bob Newhart (what that guy could do with nothing but a telephone as a prop).

Addendum - It's Wednesday, 08 Jun 2011 and on the TCM channel I'm watching a documentary, produced by Clint Eastwood, entitled "Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way". It's not yet available on DVD, but I sure hope it will be soon. Dave Brubeck should have been among the names I listed above.  His experiments with time signatures (The LP Album "Time Out", featuring "Take Five" & "Blue Rondo à la Turk") were already underway then.

Showing at the movie theaters then, among others...
  "Pocketful of Miracles"
  "Judgment at Nuremburg"
  "The Absent Minded Professor"
  "The Comancheros" (John Wayne, Lee Marvin - worth checking out just for Marvin).
  "The Guns of Navarone"

How about TV shows?

Tons of Westerns...
  "Maverick",
  "Lawman",
  "Gunsmoke",
  "Have Gun, Will Travel",
  "Wagon Train",
  "Rawhide" (with this newcomer named Clint Eastwood),
  "Bonanza",
    many others.

In other genres...
  "Peter Gunn" (the theme music became a hit and put Henry Mancini on the map,
                       although he'd already been around for years. The theme from
                       "Peter Gunn" was almost as iconic as the theme from "Jaws"
                       would become 14 years later.) ,
  "The Twilight Zone",

AND -- for the cherry on top -- "Rocky and Bullwinkle";  the "Simpsons" of its day.  If the Soviets truly wanted to attack us, the best time would have been whenever that show was on, as the cream of our defenders would have all been in the rec rooms ready for the latest round of silliness and rotten puns.  If they only knew...

 Natasha Fatale, Boris Badenov, Bullwinkle J. Moose and Rocket "Rocky" J. Squirrel

( from  notanothernewenglandsportsblog.blogspot.com )

Ok. How about cars, then?

Absolutely the sexiest car on the planet in 1961, bar-none...

Jaguar E-Type - Photo cropped from image at www.conceptcarz.com

After half a century, I defy anyone to even try to improve on that.

At that time...
   Minimum wage was $1.15/hour.
   Average yearly income was $5315.00 (a bit over $100.00/week).
   Gasoline was around 27 cents/gallon.
   A new Volkswagen Beetle went for somewhere around $1300.00
   Some of the less expensive U.S. cars started at under $2000.00
   As for that Jaguar above, a Wikipedia entry mentioned "The test car cost £2097",
   suggesting a price in the neighborhood of $10000.00 -- very difficult to pin down.
   In some parts of the country, you could rent a house for $50.00/month.

In 1961, the U.S. launched the unsuccessful invasion of Cuba, at the Bay of Pigs.

The Berlin Wall went up later that year.

Vietnam was not that big a deal then, although we already had advisors there.  Laos was the hot spot that had many of us concerned;  a civil war having just erupted then.

On 12 April 1961 Soviet Cosmonaut Major Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, completing a single orbit and then returning to Earth.

 Yuri-Gagarin and Vostok-1 - from www.newshawker.com

A few weeks later, on 05 May 1961, U.S. Navy Commander Alan B. Shepard became the first American to go into space, but not into orbit; the Redstone rocket he rode (essentially an updated version of the German V2 ) simply didn't have the power for that.  An American orbital mission (John Glenn's) would have to wait for the not-yet-man-rated Atlas rocket to become available.

 Alan Shepard Postage Stamp         -         from www.spacetoday.com

They issued this three weeks ago, on 04 May 2011 (50th anniversary)

To take some of the sting out of always seeming to follow the Soviet's lead into space, on that 19th birthday of mine, 25 May 1961 (although I didn't hear about it until a couple of days later), President John F. Kennedy made a speech to Congress about what we could and should do about our position in space, vis-a-vis the Soviets.

It included this item which would personally affect me eleven years later, making possible Adventure of a Lifetime, which in turn led to The Adventure - Continued, the events in which would eventually lead to a whole new career and a complete change in my life. ...

"First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."

"No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

Democrats were surely a different breed then.
-

When not even Ian McShane can save your movie...

... Boy, have you got problems!!!

I absolutely loved the first three Pirates of the Carribean movies, whose audacity at using a Disney World theme park ride as inspiration proved that it ain't the idea that's important, but what you do with it.

While none qualify as perfect, the combination of actor Johnny Depp and director Gore Verbinski (whose latest piece is the wonderful Rango (2011)) was a made in Heaven marriage, making the films quirky original fun (although they all could have stood a bit of trimming) .

Verbinski's first major hit was The Ring (2002) (a remake of the Japanese horror film Ringu (1998); an extremely rare example of a remake that is actually as good as the original).  He's a more commercially successful version of Terry Gilliam; our first encounter with Depp's character, Jack Sparrow, in Davy Jone's Locker (in the third film) is pure Monty Python.

Unfortunately, Verbinski has apparently tired of repeatedly visiting the same well, and the fourth film in the series ( Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) ) was helmed by Rob Marshall, who directed Chicago (2002). While I loved that musical, it's not even in the same universe as the Pirates films.

That was a major uh-oh for me right there; Verbinski's as warped as the Coen Brothers  (I suspect he lives in a padded cell when he's not working), and Marshall's as normal as they come.  That did not bode well for a continuation of the inspired lunacy of the first three films.

On the other hand, giving me a bit of hope was the addition of this man to the mix...

Ian McShane (looking a bit like his Deadwood charcter, Al Swearengen)

- from twitchfilm.net

... to play the role of Blackbeard...

(From The Hollywood Gossip website)

Now this is a guy I have worshiped ever since Deadwood; an actor of Shakespearean competence, almost incapable of ever being boring.

But, no matter how good he is, he cannot get the job done all by himself!!!

First problem:  The writing.  In addition to the original team of Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, the IMDB lists at least three others, making this art by committee.

Second: as a director Rob Marshall was great doing Chicago, but an action movie with supernatural overtones just ain't his element.

So, is the movie terrible?  Just plain bad?

Far worse;  it's just there.  Appallingly average.  Verbinski didn't always succeed at what he shot for, but at least he took the shot.  I can't see that Marshall even tries.

The most heart-breaking thing about this movie is the lost opportunity; the feeling of what could have been.

I went to the movie ready to give it a chance, eager  to love it.

Bottom line: Save your money.  Sigh. :(
-

It's Friday, the 13th all right!

Wednesday, May 11, I had some repair work done to my car.

That night, I banged out, very quickly, an impromptu post ( $446.99 ) about it and published it.  I felt really good about it, thinking it a fairly decent piece of work.

This morning, looking for it got...

Page not found
Sorry, the page you were looking for in the blog Paul In Houston does not exist.

WHAT?!!!

When I tried to sign in to my account, I got a message that Blogger.com was in read-only mode while they were trying to fix some issues and to check http://status.blogger.com/  for the current status, which revealed...

Blogger Status
Friday, May 13, 2011

We’ve started restoring the posts that were temporarily removed and expect Blogger to be back to normal soon.

Posted by at 06:07 PDT 

To get Blogger back to normal, all posts since 7:37am PDT on Weds, 5/11 have been temporarily removed. We expect everything to be back to normal soon. Sorry for the delay.

Posted by at 04:25 PDT

At the moment (15:45 CDT,  13 May 2011) my little labor of love has just reappeared on my blog, minus a comment it had already received.  Hopefully, that too will be restored soon.

We'll see.

That link above, for blogger.com status, is a nice thing for people who use this service.

Just save it somewhere else for when you may need it though.  Depending on finding it here would be all too reminiscent of an IBM commercial of not too long ago, wherein an employee is telling her supervisor, "Oh, by the way, the email system is down. I sent you an email about it." 

(There truly might be something to this Friday, the 13th business after all. )

From Blogger Buzz: Blogger is back ...
Update (5/13 7:46PM PST): Nearly all posts since Wednesday are restored, now bringing back comments from last couple days. We expect the comments to be back this weekend or sooner.

Update (5/14 5:37 PM PST): We're making progress restoring comments, some blogs with a lot of content are taking a little more time. Thanks for bearing with us.

Update (5/15 10:55PM PST): Blogger should be back to normal for the vast majority of people affected by this issue -- if posts are still missing, please check your drafts (you may need to republish). We are in the process of restoring comments made during the affected period from 7:37am PDT on 5/11 to 1:30pm PDT on 5/12. If you still have other issues, please contact us via the temporary form we’ve set up for this particular issue. Thanks again for bearing with us, we’re deeply sorry for the inconvenience we caused. We’ll share an incident report later this week.

(I'm still  awaiting restoration of the missing comment I mentioned above.  Also, I don't know why they keep saying PST in those updates; I'm pretty sure it's Pacific Daylight Time over there.)

My own update - 20 May 2011, 23:12 CDT -  The missing comment (for $446.99), which was still missing a couple of hours ago, has now reappeared.  Everything I had lost has been fully restored. Took a solid week.  Wouldn't be at all surprised if they were still working on other accounts, but I'm good. :-)
-

$446.99

OUCH!!!

A few weeks ago, the water temperature gauge in my car started to rocket into the danger zone. I added some water to what turned out to be a very low radiator, bought a jug of 50-50 pre-mix, and decided to keep an eye on it.  So far, so good.

Then, yesterday, it did a repeat.  I added coolant and swung by the place where I get most of my car maintenance done and scheduled an appointment for today.

Today, they wound up pulling and replacing the radiator, for the amount I used for a title.

 (If you like gory details, clicking on this image will get you a larger one).

To keep things in perspective, that amount equals about 60% of a month's rent of my apartment (versus 100%  of a month's rent that the blown head-gasket emergency mentioned in Adventure of a Lifetime cost me).

In my current part-time job of grocery cashier, I often encounter large shopping carts loaded with over $400.00 in groceries, whereupon I'm apt to reveal my age by noting that the amount would cover both of my first two used cars, with some change left over.

Back in those prehistoric days, I would have handled the problem by pulling it out and replacing it myself.  I've had quite a bit of experience working on, and even rebuilding engines, and eventually got pretty good at it (my first effort left something to be desired, not then having a torque wrench, or even an understanding of how important it was and what a difference it made to a successful overhaul, but after a while I learned).

In 1975, I blew the engine of a 1967 Volkswagen Beetle ("blew" sounds more dramatic than it actually was; it was more of a "clunk") resulting in an engine that was suddenly transformed into junk.  It swallowed a valve:  meaning that an exhaust valve crystallized from too much heat, its head broke off and fell into the cylinder to be met by the top of the piston in which it blew a hole the size of a quarter, spraying aluminum shrapnel into the crankcase.

In other words, an unholy mess.

Having no viable alternative to fixing it myself,  I pulled the remains of the engine out, cleaned up everything as much as possible, spread a tarp on the living room floor and moved the mess into my apartment where I could work in air-conditioned comfort.

Fortunately I was well stocked with tools.  Needing a lot more expertise than I possessed at that time, I was lucky enough to come across...

How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive; A Manual of Step-By-Step Procedures 

for the Compleat Idiot, by John Muir.     -      Photo from daveswhiteboard.com

To this day, possibly the finest do it yourself manual ever printed, first because it is by someone who has been there and done that, and secondly (and most important), instead of beginning a procedure with "Using Volkswagen Special Tool #", he considers that you very likely do not  have such a thing, and then tells you how to get it done with what's at hand.

With that, and a few hundred dollars for which I bartered my soul to Household Finance, I got the necessary parts from a Volkswagen dealership and spent a week putting together a rebuilt, upgraded (from 1500cc to 1600cc) engine and re-installed it in the car.

Of course, it worked.  In 1975 I was only 33, still indestructible and capable of anything.  Never any doubt at all.

A couple of weeks later, I was driving that car to Florida, for my third trip to the Cape (to watch the liftoff of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, mentioned in passing in  The Adventure - Continued  ).

As the rebuilt engine was still in the break-in stage, at my first motel stop I slid under the car, popped the valve covers, and checked the valve clearances. While right on the money when I left Houston, they were now way too tight, a condition that may have contributed to the engine blow-up that started all this in the first place.

This is critical on the exhaust valves.  Intake valves get cooled when they open and cool air laden with gasoline is drawn in.  On the other hand, when exhaust valves are opened, it is to let extremely hot combustion gasses out.  The only cooling they get is when they are closed and heat is conducted away by contact with the valve seat.  Get them too hot, and the metal crystallizes and becomes brittle.

Having puzzled out a mistake I made in installing the rocker-arm assembly that works the valves, I pulled it and put it back they way it was supposed to be.  No further problems after that.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that VW is still running today; but I'll never know, as it was stolen in 1977 and never recovered.

At 33, I thought nothing of diving underneath a car and fixing whatever needed fixing.

Hell, a dozen years earlier, my second car (a 1953 Ford) had some teeth broken off of first gear in its manual transmission.  I and my brother went to see a guy who had a junked Ford in his field, with a good transmission, and we crawled under both cars, pulled the transmissions, and swapped them out right there and drove back home using the replacement.

When you're in your twenties and thirties, nothing is too much trouble to handle.

If I tried crawling under a car now, I'd very likely need help just to get up afterwards.

So, when presented with what needed to be done to my Honda, and how much it would cost, all I could do was give in to the inevitable and say, "Do it!".

That car is just too vital to me in my current circumstances.

On the other hand, it could have been a Hell of a lot worse.

Update - 14 May 2011 - My brother commented, after looking at that invoice, "...you got a pretty good deal".  I agree.  In my second paragraph above,  I refer to the outfit as "the place where I get most of my car maintenance done".  There's a reason for that; they typically cost about 3/4 of what a dealer would charge and they do damned fine work.  So, they are definitely a keeper.

If I'm going to say nice things about them, and recommend them (which I do, highly), I reckon a link to them might be in order.

Okay, then...   http://mymechanichouston.com/
-

Vindication

-

"When the loudest critic of your policies achieves his greatest success because of them"

This poster is on numerous websites.  I have taken the version published on Wizbang (by author Rick, May 6, 2011 - 8:18 PM) and doubled its dimensions.  Click on it for the full-sized version.

Wizbang found this at Gateway Pundit, under the same "Vindication" title I'm using.

They got it from an article by Jim Geraghty ( A Motivational Poster for George W. Bush's Library ) on National Review Online.  An unknown (or undisclosed) reader sent it to him.

My sole contribution is doubling the dimensions of the poster.
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An advantage to RSS and Google Reader

A few days ago, I decided to blow away a post of mine that I had gotten tired of and had seemed to attract no interest in any way.

When I took a look in Google Reader, it was still there (and will probably remain there as long as Google Reader endures).

So...

"It DOESN'T!!!"...

...roared the CIA Records Keeper (Ernest Borgnine) to operative William Cooper (Karl Urban) in response to Cooper's observation, "I never knew this place even existed."

Ernest Borgnine and Karl Urban

That's from the movie RED - See WANTED!!! -- For stealing these movies... to know what that's about.

In that movie, after an encounter with his target that did not go well at all, Cooper confronts his superior, "This is no retired analyst!  He's a very experienced field operative. What else have you been keeping from me?".

So he gets sent to meet the Records Keeper, in a vault deep in the bowels of CIA Headquarters, in which are kept what records exist of things that are never talked about because they simply never happened -- prompting Cooper's "I never knew..." statement.

In the Records Keeper's two-word response is the very essence of security.

Some of the coverage of Sunday's announcement about the death of Osama bin Laden had a lot of speculation about the U.S. Navy's SEAL Team Six, supposedly the ones who carried out and executed that attack (and bin Laden).

The very name of the outfit is a masterpiece of deception.  Supposedly, when the unit was first formed, there were only two SEAL teams (SEAL = SEa, Air, and Land) in existence, and the new commander (Richard Marcinko) supposedly named the unit as Team Six in order to confuse Soviet Intelligence as to just how many teams we had in operation.

It was to be one of two Tier One counter-terrorism and Special Mission Units.
(What's the other one?  The U.S. Army's 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta -- better known as Delta Force).

In the late 80's, the team was supposedly dissolved and replaced by a new unit called Naval Special Warfare Development Group, sometimes shortened to DEVGRU, but still called SEAL Team Six (almost certainly for disinformation, or "confusion to the enemy" reasons).

You may have noticed that I've been using the word "supposedly" as frequently as Obama's economic team uses "unexpectedly" in their reports of how the economy is doing.

This reflects on how much (or how little) is actually known, vs rumor, speculation, and deliberately planted disinformation.  If something is big enough to make it impossible to be kept completely secret, then adding tons of bulls**t to the mix can frustrate those trying work out the details.

One common theme in speculation on how these units function is their being outside of the normal chain-of-command structure and rarely (if ever) keeping records of their activities.

That last part sounds as if it makes sense; to refuse to comply with a Senate Investigation Committee's request for documents risks a firestorm, and to destroy such documents is probably a felony.

But, what do you do if such records never exist in the first place?

Problem with that notion is that records are kept for very good reasons; CYA probably being chief among them, but also to keep track of what worked and what didn't, for future use.

Finally, for all the romantic speculation about these units being outside of the normal chain-of-command, they are still a part of the United States Navy and the United States Army (in the case of Delta Force); two of the mightiest bureaucracies on the planet.

A bureaucracy without records?  Right!!!

You wouldn't write that as fantasy, because even fantasy should be plausible on some level.
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About Sunday's news...

I'm really not gonna have much to say about this, as so many others have far more information and insight on it.

I'll just note that an article on Wizbang, ( On The Passing Of Osama Bin Laden ) has a title evocative of a bowel movement, which makes probably the ultimate comment on his elimination.

Other sites mentioned that his body was disposed of, AT SEA, eliminating any chance of his burial site becoming a pilgrimage mecca for his worshipers.  There is some skepticism of that being done just yet (as there are so many things they might wish to learn from a proper examination of his corpse), but the reasons for doing so remain sound and I've no doubt of that being its ultimate destination if it is not already there.

A good friend's reaction to the news was an ironic "Allah akhbar!"

To which, I could only respond, "Amen!".
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Would you indulge my curiosity, please?

Do some of you read my posts on RSS without visiting the blog?
(I think that's the purpose of RSS;  ain't it?. :-)

I ask because several times I've I had friends mention in their emails how much they enjoy my blog, but when I see no trace of their visits on my site-meter, I figure they're just being polite.

I may be misjudging them.

A blogger mentioned getting the entire post on RSS, and the site meter suggests that she only visited the blog itself so she could leave a comment there.

So, if that is what you normally do, would you let me know?

GOD!!! - What a tender and insecure soul am I (as I remarked to that blogger).

(I can just imagine some of the replies now...
  "Paul, we're in the 21st century now; you don't know about RSS?!!!"
  "Is your computer steam powered?!!!" 
  "Paul, I reckon you figure correctly."  :-)

Thanks.
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"Two is a ridiculous number and cannot exist."

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It would seem that I write like Mario Puzo...

...at least, according to I Write Like

Check which famous writer you write like with this statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them with those of the famous writers.

Any text in English will do: your latest blog post, journal entry, comment, chapter of your unfinished book, etc. For reliable results paste at least a few paragraphs (not tweets).

So, I shoved in the text of my previous post WANTED!!! -- For stealing these movies...  , and this was the verdict.

I write like
Mario Puzo

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

Who'da thunk it?

It's been ages since I read The Godfather (1970 actually; I'll bet some of you weren't even born then), but I still  have a copy of his The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions  (a collection of articles and essays he wrote about the making of the movie, and about other things) which certainly may have influenced me a bit.

Check it out if you're curious;  the link is at the top.

How seriously should you take it?

Well, ... you might also check out Viral Writing Analyzer Offers No Solace For The Literate.

But seriously, I Write Like is not without its quirks. Written by Russian programmer Dmitry Chestnykh, IWL appears to have little to do with actual writing style.
 ...
Chestnykh admits that the software is based on email spam filters, and as such is keyword-based; you could write exclusively in bullet-point lists, and be judged a Shakespearean poet. 

Oh well, it felt good while it lasted.
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WANTED!!! -- For stealing these movies ... UPDATED 24 JUL 2019

There are cases where a movie is absolutely loaded with top-notch talent, working at or near their peak, and a lower-level character actor or relative newcomer comes in and makes it his own.

I'm going to give you three examples; ALL of which are worth seeking out and renting.

First up, in our rogues gallery of thieves...

    Wilford Brimley as James J. Wells - Photo from MovieActors.com

Absence of Malice (1981)

Paul Newman, Sally Field, Bob Balaban, Melinda Dillon, Wilford Brimley.

A local prosecutor (played as a real weasel by Bob Balaban) is getting nowhere in his investigation of the disappearance of a union leader. He decides to put pressure on Michael Gallagher (Paul Newman), the son of a long-dead bootlegger and gang boss from Prohibition days.

Michael is straight, and has had nothing at all to do with his father's activities, but the prosecutor reasons that "He either knows something, or he can find out. We're going to make him want to find out."

To accomplish this, he leaks a false story, about an investigation of Michael, to reporter Megan Carter (Sally Field) to cast a shadow over him and compel him to cooperate.

As a result, some very private information about a close friend of Michael is made public, with tragic results.

Michael learns of this prosecutor and decides to exact some justice by turning the wolves on each other, resulting in a major scandal that becomes front-page news.

This can be considered the flip side of All the President's Men (1976), and was written by former Detroit Free Press reporter Kurt Luedtke, about the unbridled power of the press to be able to destroy anyone with near impunity.

There's a wonderful scene in there, after the blow-up, when Megan's editor is doing damage control, telling her "Davidek filled me in.  We're not gonna retract anything, but we've got a lot of explaining to do.  Sarah's going to write the story, and we'll handle it the best way we can."

Sarah is a reporter that Megan has been mentoring, and when Megan looks around to her, Sarah raises her head and looks back, and for a brief second you get the feeling that a shark has just noticed that you and it are in the same body of water.

All of the people in this movie are first-rate, but then Brimley shows up in the last twenty minutes of the movie and completely steals it.

"Well now. Let the record show that I'm James J. Wells, Assistant Attorney General for the Organized Crime Division of the United States Department of Justice.
    ...
This is the damnedest story you ever read.
    ...
Tell you what we're gonna do.  We're gonna sit right here and talk about it.

Now, if you get tired of talkin' here, Mr. Marshall Elving Patrick there will hand you one of them subpoenas he's got stuck down in his pocket and we'll go downstairs and talk in front of the grand jury.

We'll talk all day, if you want.

But come sundown, there's gonna be two things true that ain't true now.

One is that the United States Department of Justice will know what in the good Christ -- excuse me, Angie -- is going on around here.

And the other is I'm gonna have somebody's ass in my briefcase."

He's one of those guys who easily manages to be believable as whatever he's playing.  On his role in John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), both Carpenter and Kurt Russell remark (in the DVD commentary) that he's "just the real deal; nothing phony about him at all". "He sure ain't selling oatmeal there!", one of them laughs when Brimley goes on a tear in that movie (In reference to the commercials he's been known for lately.)

24 JUL 2019 - He is STILL with us (will be 85 on Sep 27) and STILL working. Trivia: Was a bodyguard to Howard Hughes.
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Next up, we have...

Dennis Farina as Ray Bones - Photo from Aveley.com

   Get Shorty (1995)

John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Rene Russo, Danny DeVito, Dennis Farina

Miami loan shark Ernest "Chili" Palmer (John Travolta) goes to Hollywood to collect a gambling debt from a runner who has collected a large amount of money in an insurance scam. From a person who helped point the way to the runner, he also takes on collecting another debt from Hollywood producer Harry Zimm (Gene Hackman).

Being a movie-lover himself, Chili decides to use the money he will collect from the runner to invest in one of Harry's films, IF he can get yet another set of loan sharks off of Harry's back.  He offers to do so, being something of an expert in that field.

To make Harry's project feasible, he needs to get movie star Martin Weir (Danny DeVito) on board.

ALL of this is dependent on getting hold of the runner's money; making a career change possible from loan shark to movie producer (if that is a change).

Complicating things is the fact that Chili now has a new boss, Ray "Bones" Barboni (Dennis Farina), who is very old-school about collecting gambling debts and is just not the connoisseur of films that Chili is.  All he wants is his money, and he's totally ruthless about getting it.

Here you have a cast of veteran talent doing their best work in ages, and ex-Chicago-cop turned actor Farina is mixing it up with them and totally holding his own.

He can be funny as Hell, and then scary as Hell, within a heartbeat, telling a surviving witness of a shootout (surviving only because he would be getting money that Ray wanted)...
"I was not here.
 I was never here.
 And if you say otherwise, I'll come back and throw you right through that window."

The thing about Farina is that he is so believable when he says something like that. I don't recall ever seeing him in a movie where I didn't totally believe the character he was playing; he has this authenticity about him.

He got started when director Michael Mann made his first feature movie, Thief (1981), using "retired" jewel thief John Santucci as a technical advisor.  For some of the police procedures, Santucci suggested to Mann that he bring on board Farina (who may have helped to "retire" him).

Farina wound up with a small part in the movie, as a gunman working for the chief bad guy, and apparently decided that this work beat Hell out of freezing his ass off in stakeouts, nourishing himself with cold pizza slices and lukewarm coffee.

Most people know of Hannibal Lector from Anthony Hopkins' portrayal in Silence of the Lambs, but he actually appeared five years earlier (played by Brian Cox) in Michael Mann's Manhunter (1986), the first film version of Thomas Harris' Red Dragon.

In it, Farina plays the character of Jack Crawford (played by Scott Glenn in Silence) and has a very nice moment when his underling has requested that an FBI fingerprint specialist check the bodies of a family that had been slaughtered, over the protests of the local examiner ("We've already checked and there's nothing!"). When he (in the presence of that examiner) gets a call from the specialist, telling him of recovering a partial thumbprint from the eye of one of the victims, he looks at the examiner for a second with a very quiet smile that almost seems to be saying, "This is what the grown-ups can do."

Finding Farina to be a natural actor, Mann cast him as Lt. Mike Torello in Crime Story , running for two seasons (1986-1988).  Since then, he's been in countless movies (never boring) and has yet another TV series in the works.  Stay tuned.

24 JUL 2019 - He left us on Jul 22, 2013 (pulmonary embolism, at age 69).  He will be missed.
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And, finally ...

Karl Urban, as William Cooper - Photo from Newsarama.com

RED (2010)

Bruce Willis,     Mary Louise-Parker,     Morgan Freeman,     John Malkovich,

Hellen Mirren, Brian Cox, Ernest Borgnine (YES! You read that correctly. That

man is ninety years old now, and doing just fine), Richard Dreyfuss, Karl Urban

Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is a retired CIA "black ops" operative (flagged RED -- Retired;  Extremely Dangerous) making his lonely way through the tedium of life on the shelf.

He's engaged in what amounts to a telephone romance with Sarah Ross (Mary Louise-Parker), a lady at the department responsible for his pension checks, using any excuse he can find just to be able to talk to her.

One night, his home is invaded by a team of professional assassins intent on taking him out.

After dealing with that, he realizes that he must have been under surveillance, his phone monitored, and that his calls to Sarah have probably put her in danger as well. He handles that problem in typical Frank Moses fashion; kidnapping her to get her out of the line-of-fire while he sorts out who is after him and why.

Figuring that he could use a little help with this, he calls on old colleagues Joe Matheson (Morgan Freeman) -- now in a retirement home, and Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich; as crazy as ever, but this time his character is paranoid for very good reasons.)

They also enlist the help of Russian spy and former adversary Ivan Simonov (Brian Cox - "I haven't killed anybody in years!", he sighs sadly) and that of retired British SIS operative and sharpshooter Victoria (Helen Mirren - You have got to see that lady work a .50 caliber machine gun).

With the help of Marvin's files, they determine that Frank had been involved in the cleanup after a massacre in South America, brought on by a panicked young officer that was the son of a powerful Senator. Years later, that officer is running for a very high political office, and anyone knowing of his past has been marked for elimination.

That politician has a powerful friend, Alexander Dunning (Richard Dreyfuss), who had helped to spirit him away from the massacre. Dunning has the resources to hire the hit teams, and to manipulate a corrupt CIA officer, who tasks operative William Cooper (Karl Urban) with the job of eliminating Frank.

Cooper has been told that Frank is a traitor and a threat, but Cooper (sort of a modern day version of Frank) has this disturbing habit of thinking for himself, and is getting very leery about the particulars of this operation.

Unlike the previous two, Karl Urban is already becoming a major star. He's a (relative) newcomer compared to the rest of the cast, but just look at that cast.

Not one of them has to apologize for his/her work here, but whenever this Kiwi shows up you cannot take your eyes off of him. He's one of the most amazing imports from New Zealand since Russell Crowe.

Although he's been around longer than that, I think most of us first noticed him as Eomer, in the 2nd and 3rd installments of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He was the assassin Kirill in The Bourne Supremacy (2004), and in Star Trek (2009) he played Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy as if he were channeling the late DeForest Kelly (who was the original McCoy).

In Presence ... I took a shot at defining what presence is in a movie actor. Urban is a terrific example; it's what makes him dominate whatever scenes he's in.  I doubt that he needs any selling by me;  he has the ability to do anything that Harrison Ford has ever done, and the potential of becoming an even bigger star.

24 JUL 2019 - At 47, he's just getting STARTED.  I stand by EVERYTHING in the paragraph above! :-)
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Well, so much for past and recent history.

Is there anything at all worth a damn currently (Wed, 27 Apr 2011) showing?

I highly recommend The Lincoln Lawyer (2011 - So named for the Lincoln Town Car within which he sometimes does business). In it, Matthew McConaughey has decided to try acting again (instead of merely showing up as he has done in all too many of his later films), giving us the guy who was so damned good in Lone Star (1996) and Frailty (2001).

It's still on a few screens now. and might (or might not) be there the coming week.
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Of all the reasons to FIRE "The One"...

... the Birth Certificate crap ain't one of them.

It is a trap, and Donald Trump seems Hell-bent on walking right into it.

AJStrata  has just posted the last word on this, My Final Post On Birther Madness.

The "money" quote (emphasis mine)...

The point about Obama’s citizenship has been and will always be about who his mother was, not where she was. She is an undisputed American. Therefore her children are natural born Americans (location has nothing to do with it, just ask any American born in international waters, international air space or in foreign countries). Obama is an American because of his mother – end of story.

And, as I see nothing to add, end of post.
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Rebuttal...

My previous post, Oh, Great!!! :(, concerned an article on Yahoo that suggested that my latest obsession (blogging) was greatly increasing my risk of a heart attack (because of too much sitting).

I contend that the increased risk comes from actually reading some of the stuff one discovers when surfing the web.

Let me offer a beneficial side effect to my obsession.

In one of my earlier whines, Dark Night of the Soul... Indeed!, a commenter (who signed herself as Rachel in Atlanta), asked

  "Do you have anyone at all to talk to?"

Well, of course I do.

You!

And the dozen or so others who will eventually read this.

It is a tremendous release to be able to share things with you and, on occasion, to vent as well.  Much better than just keeping it bottled up inside. (A hell of a lot cheaper than therapy, too. :-)

In this particular instance, the Yahoo article mentioned in the previous post inspired that post, and then this rebuttal. That is fun!

If I have succeeded in connecting with any of you, without boring you to death (and while my site-meter wont tell me who you are (although I can sometimes infer it from other data), it will tell me if someone has such curiosity), then know that you are helping to keep my very soul alive. If that goes, how long would the heart last anyways?

Contrary to the title of the article, I truly believe the most dangerous thing I could possibly do would be to stop. Whilst dealing with getting by in an utterly soul-killing job and existence, you readers have helped so much to keep me (relatively) sane.

So, Thank you.

(And, YES! I know I could benefit from some of the tips in the article without giving up blogging. I think you get the drift.)
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Oh, Great!!! :(

Now that I have a new obsession in life (for 18 months now), I'm informed that it's probably killing me.

Shouldn't be that big a surprise. Isn't it an immutable law of the universe that if you like it, it's bad for you?

The latest "rain on my parade"...
  The Most Dangerous Thing You'll Do All Day

I suppose the next thing will be the EPA calling for the outlawing of chairs.
  ("OMG Paul!!!  Don't give them ideas!  Ok?")

Will it ever  end?!!!
  (Well, in truth, the article suggests that it will. :-)

"No matter how I struggle and strive,
  I'll never get out of this world alive."
   (~Hank Williams, "I'll never get out of this world alive")

Addendum 1/2 hour later - Now that I've vented (couldn't resist) I have to admit that the article actually makes sense and contains some rather decent advice. That honest enough for ya? :-)
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"My name is Boyd Crowder...

You can come after me if you want, but it will be the last thing you ever do. I promise you that."

Walton Goggins, as Boyd Crowder

(Photo by Robert Zuckerman, from Los Angeles Times, March 2010)

(Updated at end - now on Tuesday nights, instead of Wednesday)

Thusly does one of the most interesting characters, in the absolute best TV show currently on the air (Justified , Wednesday nights on the FX channel introduce himself to one of a bunch of miscreants who, after being relieved of excess cash, threatens, "We will find you, a**hole!"

During that intro, he was holding a revolver instead of that Bible, but his delivery was very quiet and soft, which somehow made it even more menacing.

The show is actually supposed to be about this guy...

Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens

(Photo from Eonline.com )

... Deputy U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens, reassigned from Miami back to rural Kentucky (from whence he came, hoping he had left it forever), after a "justified" shooting of the lieutenant of a Miami drug kingpin.

First thing he runs into is his old friend/rival/whatever Boyd, who's often been rather casual about which side of the law he was on (he had an earlier hobby of using smuggled in RPG's to bust armored trucks).

Boyd is still what he is, a very multi-layered character, of whom it's difficult to believe that he was originally meant to be killed off in the very first episode.

But, Walton Goggins was so amazing with what he was doing with the character of Boyd, that that idea was quickly scuttled, and he will most likely endure as long as the series (which has already been renewed for a third season).

Is Goggins' Boyd Crowder up to the level of Ian McShane's Al Swearengen (Olyphant's nemesis on his previous hit series, Deadwood )? Well, no -- but who the Hell could be? That dude was Shakespearean.

But Goggins will get there someday. He reminds me of a young Bruce Dern, with the same crazy edge to him, making his characters seem capable of almost anything.

Seemingly doing nothing special at all, he manages to come across as dangerous as a rattlesnake, giving off a vibe of, "Son, you do not want to mess with me!" (as I said of actor John Hawkes in another post).

Somewhere near the top, I described Justified  as the absolute best TV series currently on the air.  I'm saying that again.

If it's not on your "must see" list, put it there!

Olyphant and Goggins are just the icing on a very wonderful cake. There are numerous other fine actors and characters in this series, and if you don't get hooked, well I'm going to wonder, "What's WRONG with you?!!!"

Update - Tuesday 31 Jan 2012 - The opening 3rd season episode "The Gunfighter" was broadcast Tuesday, the 17th at 10e/9c on the FX Channel. Tuesday will be its regular night this season.

That episode was a doozy.

Some fascinating  new characters.  Ava demonstrating that you do not want to mess with her any more than you would with Boyd ...
   Arlo: "You didn't have to do that".
    Ava: "Of course I did.  Otherwise, I wouldn't have done it."

After dealing with a particular problem almost as neatly as The Joker's "Disappearing Pencil" trick in "The Dark Knight" ...
   Raylan: "Sorry about your tablecloth."

This opener suggests that the third season will be every bit as good as the first two.  If you don't become a regular watcher, well;  your loss.  I tried.

Update - 1840 CST, Friday, 04 Jan 2013 - The fourth season begins Tuesday night, 08 Jan 2013, on the FX Channel. What more needs saying?
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Well, THAT was interesting...

On Wednesday, 30 Mar 2011, about 09:35 AM, my soul-killing part-time job as a grocery cashier was enlivened by an armed robbery at the Wells Fargo branch within the store, about 40 feet away from me.

I heard a commotion and shouting behind me, turned to look, and saw a tall guy in a ski-mask waving what appeared to be an AK-47 clone, shouting at everyone to get their hands up while his two buddies went about collecting from the bank.

He was the only one that appeared armed and what I did was to try not to get his attention in any way while trying to note and memorize what details I could.

I suspect that some of those details weren't all that consistent, because much later on, I seemed to remember things I had denied seeing when questioned by a Houston Robbery Division detective ("Did you recall seeing any caps on anyone?" I didn't at that time. Later I thought they did have caps, but I distrust that memory; sometimes your mind fills in things that you thought you should have seen.)

Fortunately nobody (including the gunman) did anything stupid and it was over in just a few moments.

In the aftermath, they set up counseling for those who were too affected by this. I got some extra hours filling in for one of the cashiers who just had to leave.

It didn't bother me all that much. Not being macho at all; it was just the fact that the weapon was never pointed at me (and I tried my level best not to invite that attention).

I have had that experience, a long time ago.

In 1977 1975, when my car was laid up for a bit, I was walking home late one night when a car pulled up alongside me. I thought it was someone asking for directions until I saw a guy in the back seat pointing an old war-surplus rifle at me while another guy in the front passenger seat just said "Hand it over".

And, that was all there was to it; they took the wallet (with the magnificent sum of $20.00 in it) and left.

BUT, this was 1977 1975!.

In Texas, at that time, there was a moratorium on executions and standard operating procedure in a robbery was to shoot the victim (because, "What more were they going to do to you?").

You don't get over that very quickly (I can still see that old green Pontiac with the crescent-shaped tail-lights, and the guy in back with what appeared to be a Mauser rifle), and I truly feel for the bank personnel involved.

Nobody was hurt, at least physically, but some of them are going to be scarred inside for a very long time.

Correction - 01 Oct 2011 - When I first wrote about the long-ago incident, I thought it had happened in 1977.  But I've had several periods when I had to go without a car for a while.  The time span of the Texas moratorium on executions (which was in force at the time of that robbery) makes it much more likely to have occurred in mid-1975, during the time of the blown-engine episode I mentioned in $446.99.
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