Opening day at Plainsman Park. Derek Varnadore struck out 11 and Creede Simpson, the only returning starter in the field for Auburn, had this RBI double late:
He also forced a walk-in run. The Tigers got the season started off right with a 5-2 win over visiting Missouri. Tomorrow’s game is already a rainout. Maybe they’ll play two on Sunday.
Dinner at Momma Goldberg’s, fighting the crowds of freshmen and others who don’t yet understand the implications behind “Who hasn’t ordered? Can I take your order please?”
Walked down to the Arena to watch the gymnastics meet. Auburn, on a losing streak, welcomed second-ranked Florida. They’ve hosted three teams from the top six in the country so far this season, but the Tigers are getting better every meet.
Auburn had a season high in three of the four rotations, making a new season high final score and the second best score in school history. Even still, they came up just short to Florida 196.875-197.500. I can’t tell you the all-around winner because a bizarre new SEC rule prohibits acknowledging individual accomplishment at the meet. And the university release doesn’t include any Florida scores. (Who needs completeness?)
More pictures from today will be here on Sunday. Be sure to come back for those.
Tomorrow? Rain. Rain. More rain. We’re getting up to 2.50 inches in the next couple of days.
The use of email has plunged by more than 30% in the last year among consumers under the age of 24, owing to the increased use of texting and Facebook to stay in touch.
[…]
A primary activity among wired individuals since the arrival of the Internet, email use in the last 12 months fell by more than 30% for those under the age of 24 and stayed absolutely flat among those aged 24-44, according to the audience measuring service. As illustrated below, only those aged 45-54 are pecking out more emails today than they were a year ago.
Twenty-two percent of the remainder is in my inbox. Six percent spam, eight percent meant for someone else.
I’m presently inundated with emails from seemingly every agency east of the Rockies that ships cars. Someone is intent on shipping their Volkswagen Jetta from Philadelphia to Chattanooga. The going rate, I can confidently say, ranges between $400 and $550. And the car transport people? They are big on correspondence.
Shipped off the headlight lamp that was supposed to fit my car, but did not fit my car. I clicked the buttons on Amazon, printed the return file, put everything back in the original boxes and carried it to the UPS store. That’s where you can buy UPSes.
The door just about pinched my finger off going in. The two guys working there feigned a mild concern. They were helping a young lady on crutches. She had all of their sympathy. Even the pre-existing injury on my finger didn’t win the day. I didn’t mind. The thing I printed meant I didn’t have to pay for shipping.
Amazon gives you several reasons to return your purchase. Some of them are very nuanced reasons, but some of them mean the difference between you paying a restocking fee, a shipping fee or nothing at all. Fortunately my reason to return the thing meant the seller was footing the bill. And that’s the first thing in the car drama that has worked in my favor.
Snuck in a few quick miles on the bike this evening. It is February, but it is finally turning cold. I could tell on my ride. Still nice and mild when I left home, but about two-thirds of the way through the ride I found myself in the shivers.
Tomorrow we’ll have big winds and maybe the 40s. I’ll just have to wait that out and pile it on Sunday afternoon.
If they edited trailers like they do today Rock Hudson would have been a total scene stealer, John Wayne would have punched someone and the love interest would have been slipped in at the end. And then Rock Hudson would say something like “Finding ourselves outnumbered is a fact of life we’ve gotten used to!”
That’s just before the conversation between Hudson’s fleeing rebels and the soon-to-be assaulting Mexican bandits. Their detente doesn’t go well. The bad guys attack. They are turned back by the confederates and then ambushed twice, first by Wayne’s calvary and then by Wayne’s adopted son’s friends.
Later a Juarista general double-crosses Hudson. After a speech, an execution, dilemma and then a running gunfight that takes place in a barely controlled horse stampede we reach the conclusion. And there it is hard to picture a colonel and family man, in the next-to-last scene, having a toast with the man who’d previously held them all hostage.
There had to be at least 100 people shot and killed in the movie, which held a G rating.
Which is better than three percent of the email currently sitting in my spam folder.
Best story I read today, Robert Johnson spent a night in a homeless shelter. Johnson is a journalism grad student at NYU. He tried to get into a shelter in New York, but was turned away. Wondering what they had to hide he found his way into an Atlantic City facility.
The pictures alone are worth seeing.
Seven PR tips from the Komen experience. We’ve been talking a lot about this and the more I listen and learn the more it seems to me that the public relations problem has been the biggest error in the ordeal.
Also, Poynter ran a piece on how the reporter got the scoop on Komen reversing course. It seems that the Dallas Morning News called a PR practitioner at Komen and that person sent him a press release. Riveting stuff, there.
Defense lawyer Mike Shores said his client had taken great pains that night to shield the children from the fact he had just killed their mother. That showed Johnson has redeeming qualities deserving of a sentence just above the 20-year minimum in this case, Shores argued.
The judge didn’t buy it and sentenced the defendant to life in prison.
So. The car. You might remember the recent fun. Took it late today to a shop as the first mechanic recommended. Remember, I’d already been there once, so that’s two people I’ve seen about this.
I bought aftermarket parts because the factory stuff is an incredibly expensive, cost-prohibitive and officially sanctioned rip off.
Dropped off the car, returned home. We’d made it inside and done precisely one chore — cleaning up the snowmen since spring is temporarily here — when the phone rang. Seems the part I’d purchased was wrong, despite it being right. (The site had a search function which verified the model!)
Jerry, the man at the body shop was great, though. He took me back, explained it all. We discussed it again. He’d appraised it on the first visit, but apparently something about saying exactly the same thing clicked differently today. All of this, the aftermarket stuff, the expensive parts, the third visit to see a mechanic, remember, is for a headlight. Nissan deserves my thanks. And you deserve this tip: When you shop for cars, investigate the headlights.
So Jhe decides, over the course of a detailed conversation about chemistry, electronics, standing water and the importance of being earnest, that we should just plug in one of the new headlights and see what happens. I agree. Jerry goes back to speak with the actual guy who’s doing the work — this process has involved dropping the bumper, which he’s done, reattached and now must remove again, poor guy — and has the bulb installed.
A bit later he comes back and says “This just isn’t your day.” Seems the new bulb doesn’t work either. So it is either the new bulb, which is pristine, or the headlight ballast module.
Jerry can’t tell for certain, though. He suggests I go back to see Rick, who sent me to him. Rick, Jerry says, can test the ballast module in much the same way you might take a voltmeter to test something around the house. I called Rick, because it was past closing time. He happened to be in the office and so I explained all of this to him. We set up an appointment for next week.
Making the fourth different attempt to try and resolve the issue. A headlight.
(To be fair, they could have fixed it that first day if I was willing to pay almost $900 for it. Even the guys working in the service centers agree this is obscene and have been very decent about trying to find some cheaper resolution.)
I have a busted headlight. Moisture somehow got into the plastic headlight assembly and apparently the teardrop of a mosquito means doom for the bulb. I tried last week to replace the bulb myself, but I drive a Nissan, which means you must remove the fender well from the bumper to access the headlights. Even then, there would be problems. That wouldn’t remove the moisture, so we’d be right back here in two days.
So I bit the bullet to see about getting it done professionally. (The next time you are on the market for a car, add this to your list of things to investigate.)
After a few conversations with Rick, the nice manager of one of the local service centers I learned that I had picked up the wrong bulb. So, you know, good thing I didn’t replace it myself.
“The bulb you need” the moisture hating xenon bulb, “would cost $180” he said.
He offered to install an after market bulb, but estimated those would run about $120. But there was still the moisture problem. He found a place where I’d been dinged in a parking lot. It was his considered professional opinion that perhaps that introduced the moisture. He suggested I take a repair estimate to my insurance agent and get them to fix it. I’d be out the deductible — which is not cheap — but if I bought the new headlight assembly it would be around $800, he said.
So I talked with Rick’s colleague Jerry. He asked who my insurance is with and said he’d write it and I could fight it. That’s all you can do, right? To fix the damage that Rick pointed out, which was small and simply an means to the end of getting the headlight repaired, he estimated it at $1,700 or so of work.
They should make sure you’re sitting down, have a loved one with you and a complimentary nitro pill for such news.
I came home and did what I do best: I found brand new after market parts online. I called Jerry who said he’d put my parts on for a minimal fee if I brought them to the shop. Returning to the computer I bought all new moisture-fearing xenon bulbs and a driver’s side headlight assembly. It still wasn’t cheap, but it is going to cost around half of my deductible.
I long for the days of removing two bolts, removing and installing a new bulb in 10 minutes for about $7 of bulb. And this is why you should ask about the headlights when you are car shopping.
And now a gymnastics story.
I started going to gymnastics meets with my lovely bride when we first met, so that’s about six years of season tickets. We watched the great Alabama gymnastics team for four years, while we were both in grad school at UAB and then while in the PhD program at Alabama. During that time we also caught an SEC championship meet and the national championship one year. This is our second year attending meets at Auburn.
There’s never been a more exciting meet than tonight’s.
Look at the ladies in the background of that picture. They shared a giddy, explosive, relevatory feeling running throughout Auburn Arena where the 16th-ranked Tigers had Alabama on the ropes. The Tide has beaten Auburn in their last 103 meets, which may be the entire history of gymnastics at the two schools. Tonight the juggernaut Alabama squad was fighting for their life. The announced crowd of 7,299, a gymnastics attendance record for Auburn, was electric as the tension and energy grew through the last routines.
Alabama was Alabama, but one more slip from the defending national champions and Auburn would claim a huge upset. That Auburn team is young and talented — a true freshman is anchoring the floor routines — and they’ve won the crowd. They’re so, so close. Tonight they were 196.325-196.250, close. It was a great thrill to see.
An email conversation spent me on a late evening genealogy search. My known family tree only goes back so far, it seems. Some people aren’t interested in doing the research. We have common names. We are from a typically inconspicuous rural lifestyle, so there aren’t a lot of newspaper mentions.
I haven’t done any real genealogy research, the extent of my primary searches have come from old digitized newspaper copy, but I do enjoy digging through the hard, good work of others.
So in this conversation today I realized there were names I’d forgotten and names I couldn’t recall ever knowing. I started searching. I got back an extra generation and found two new surnames. I also found the obituary of my great-great grandfather. He was a World War I draftee, and died in his home. He was survived by his wife and four children, including my great-grandmother.
(Update, from several years later … In digging this up to search out one key point, I now think I was wrong about the people in the family tree. I can’t find the original thread anymore, and later clicking and surfing has given me other names. So I’ve put a strike through the parts below that now seem erroneous. Still, one side of my family was Dutch, though.)
These were the ads on the obituary page of The Alabama Courier (Athens, Ala.) on Thursday, February 28, 1946. (The Courier was established in 1892 and merged with the Limestone Democrat in 1969. They’ve been publishing as the News Courier since.)
Miss your loved ones? Bury yourself in work! The nuts and bolts of the Army Air Corps will see you through! The coveralls are free, but you’ll earn the stripes.
This is from the Ads You Don’t See Anymore department of the newspaper:
I couldn’t find any mention of the Clem Brothers Gin, but I’ll ask around. The closest thing I can find is a lumber concern over in Georgia.
Ahhh, a glamorous night out on the town. You’ve put on your best coat, your wife is wearing that beautiful dress. And the maitre’ de can set you up at the best table! “We’ll take the milk. Christopher’s.”
“Garçon! This is from a different dairy. Please take it back.”
I can’t figure out if this was the local logo or something that died out before the muscle car era, but here’s the Dodge ad:
A man named Robert Mills had worked at Draper Motor Company for about a year when this ad came out. After a decade on the lot he bought the dealership in 1955. It stayed open at least until he retired, in 1979. Can’t find anything about the place after that.
The Plaza Theater was on the square in neighboring Athens:
The movie, West of Pinto Basin, was released six years before, in 1940. My how the world changed in between. The IMDB blurb for the movie: “Three cowboys fight a saloon owner who is trying to grab up all the local land by engineering stagecoach robberies so an irrigation dam can’t be built.”
Can’t miss, right? It is a durable plot. Shows up in a lot of westerns.
Here’s the Zorro serial, in full:
Three people are killed and a stagecoach crashes off a cliff into a creek in the story’s first two minutes, before the first word is spoken. They do a great cliffhanger at the end of the episode, too. (You can watch the entire story at the Internet Archive.
And, yes, the title says Zorro, but the character is Black Whip. Released in 1944, the serial was meant to capitalize off of a 20th Century Fox remake of The Mark of Zorro. Republic couldn’t get Zorro, and so this was how they solved the problem. (See? Hollywood has been out of ideas before.) The serial is set in Idaho and the main theme is a fight to prevent and ensure statehood by the villains and heroes respectively. You wonder if other territories had other Zorro spinoff franchisees. A different color, a different weapon and some hero could pay a few royalties to the Big Z and save the day, and probably a few Hollywood production companies, too.
One last thing on the Zorro serial: James Lileks has a theory that projects from this period always have a Star Trek tie. So I ran the entire cast and crew through the Star Trek filter — it zooms along at warp speed don’t ya know … — and found exactly one match. Tom Steele was a stuntman on Black Whip. He started in 1932 and worked until the mid-1980s. He appeared in Bread and Circuses as Slave #2. He has the best stuntman bio ever:
Stuntmen are often selected because of their resemblance to the star they are doubling for. In contrast to this, many of Republic Pictures’ western stars in the 1940s and early 1950s, such as Allan Lane, Bill Elliot, Rex Allen and Monte Hale, were selected in part due to their resemblance to Steele, who would do their stunts.
The Added Joy? It was a cartoon short from 1937, back when Mel Blanc was uncredited.
But I digress. The Plaza opened in 1939 and sat 340 people. (The city itself had about 4,300 at the time.) In 1954 a newspaper ad said the theatre would be closed temporarily starting in June, but it never reopened.
Here’s where the theater stood:
Last year, the Courier reported that a non-profit community organization that prettifies the downtown area asked the current owner of the building, a pharmacist, to improve the façade of the old theater. The dilapidated stucco came down, the brick underneath was still in good condition.
BABY CHICKS – The KIND THAT LIVE. As opposed to the chicks that, you know, die.
It verily screams out at you on the obits page.
Anyway. In my paternal grandfather’s family I gained an extra generation — Smith’s are tough to trace at a casual glance — dating back to my great-great-grandfather.
Now, my paternal grandfather’s mother? She told me when I was very young about some uncles who fought in the Civil War. I was young enough to be enthralled by this, but not smart enough yet to ask if she knew any details. If she were still here I might be able to tell her a few things after this bit of reading.
It was her father’s obituary we started discussing here. I picked up a thread on rootsweb that allows me to go back 13 more generations. Assuming these various people’s hard work is correct (I see a few logic errors in chronology in some peripheral details, but let’s assume the big stuff is accurate) we can go back to a man named Eltekens, in 16th century Midwolda, Groningen, Netherlands.
The Hendricks family, again I didn’t even know this name until today, came over to the New World in 1662. (In my mother’s family a young man came over on the Mayflower, so my roots are fairly deep, it seems.) Albertus Hendrickssen became Albert Hendricks. He was a house carpenter, owned land in Pennsylvania and was a constable and a juror.
This would have been his land around the turn of the 18th century:
Albert’s particular son that matters to this story, Johannes (or John), was a shipbuilder. His second wife extends the chain a bit closer to my family. He had two children in Philadelphia before dying in 1709. It was John’s son, James, that moved the family south. He found himself in North Carolina in the early 1740s. He had nine sons and “several unknown daughters as he left no will.”
James Jr. changed Hendricks to Hendrix. He is believed to have fought in the Revolutionary War. James Jr.’s son, Larkin, moved the family to Alabama in 1830 or earlier.
Larkin’s son, William, and grandson, Joseph, lived through the Civil War — though I don’t know if they fought. Joseph also read about World War I and the Great Depression in the local paper. He was a farmer, and he died in 1933 at the age of 88. His son was James, the World War I draftee, my great-great-grandfather at the beginning of this post.
At least one branch of my family tree has been in that county for nine generations and 180 years. It’s only been a county for 196 years. (They should really own more property don’t you think?)
All of this is more than you wanted, of course. But when you do this sort of thing it is good to write it down and make good sense of it all. That way you can bore your friends endlessly at parties.
