Anyone Else?

...pleased with the video footage coming out of Miami Beach of people on spring break congregating and having a good time (not the ones causing damage or violence) and not wearing a Mask Of Oppression? I know I sure am, and I'd be a little jealous except for the fact that is how I live (minus the street party). The local politicians are trying to crack down with curfews, and I hope they get a giant collective "FUCK YOU!!"

First Official Ride of Spring

Because the winter riding season that was very limited this year IS OVER!!

I got out on "The Beast" for a couple of hours this afternoon. Bright sun and blue sky with temps in the low 60's. I did a loop on two lane state roads through Windham and New London counties. RT. 44 to RT.101. Then south on RT. 169 ( a well known scenic biker road) through Brooklyn, Canterbury, Lisbon, and into the Taftville section of Norwich. From there I started back north on RT. 97 (another well known scenic biker road that runs all the way up into MA.) through Baltic and Scotland and then some twisty back roads I know through Chaplin towards home. I was streaming iHeart70s Radio on my cell phone plugged into the audio port of the Goldwing's sound system and had the sound at a pleasing level to me in my helmet (meaning it was cranked up!) I ended up doing about 65 miles which is fine since no one else was able to join me. I can't bust their balls though, because my adventure was truly spur of the moment/last minute. I did invite my wife to go, but she declined. I can't say as I blame her, since the food and ice cream stands aren't open yet and I didn't actually have a destination. That and the fact it is not 80 degrees out yet, its still a little cool for her.

Life Imitating Art

The other night I streamed a South Park episode on my ROKU from Comedy Central using my DISH Network login credentials. It was Season 24 Episode 3 called "Vaccination Special." While there were a couple of side stories about pranking the female teacher to look like she soiled herself having her period, and nutty Q-Anon group, and the return of the openly gay teacher Mr. Garrison, the main story made fun of the whole frenzy over getting vaccines. In this episode, only the elderly were supposed to be eligible. The vaccine site is a Walgreens that is set up like a rave nightclub with security at the door only letting in the old people that are on the "guest list." Everyone else waits in a line off to the side. Once the old folks got their shot they act high and mighty, and in one scene they roll up to Billy in a Cadillac convertible and make fun of him because he still has to wear a mask. The old guys laugh and say they're going to a bar to get some pussy. Then Cartman and the boys dress up and pretend to be healthcare workers calling themselves "Kommunity Kidz" taking old people in for their jab because they can't do it on their own. It is of course a scam to get the South Park gang into the clinic. Hilarious. There's much more funny stuff in the episode, so stream it if you can, because the YouTube versions kinda suck.

Anyway, last night we got together with another couple for dinner we frequently see in total violation of the isolation diktats (about separate households) as we have all year long. The wife works at Hartford Healthcare and since she isn't medically trained, acts as an observer at the vaccine clinic in Hartford. Her job is to watch people for 15 minutes after they get jabbed to make sure they don't keel over. She told us stories of the things at the vaccine clinic that actually parallel that South Park episode. People lining up at the end of the day hoping to get any leftovers that were prepared but not used. Young ineligible people being snuck in ahead of others to get their jab. She told us of four college age males (wearing their obligatory UConn logo face diapers) hanging around the clinic area. One was the son of a nurse giving the jab, and the other three must have been his buddies. My friend turned around and they were gone, and she did not know where they went. A little while later she saw the four of them leaving the clinic. Obviously mommy hooked them up with a jab ahead of all the others waiting in line for leftovers. 

An another item not related to the South Park cartoon, comes from the husband we saw last night. He is retired and has been volunteering a couple of days a week at the food giveaway at Rentschler Field in East Hartford. He told us of people in brand new expensive luxury cars and SUV's going through the line not once, but several times in a row loading up with the free food. So much so that he has personally placed 32 pound food boxes into vehicles that already have 3 or 4 from a few minutes earlier. I won't say what he told me about the ethnicity of those that are doing this, but I think you might be able to figure it out for yourself. Hey, reparations and payback for all that white privilege, you know (although I keep wondering where all my supposed white privilege is). His theory is that the free food is being sold, either on the street or in small markets or bodegas. He brought a leftover box home once, and they said one box was almost more food than they could use. We discussed what kind of shitty mindset or personality must you have to do this kind of thing. He said those people taking multiple boxes never speak or even acknowledge the volunteers, whereas the people taking food because they need it are thankful and engaging with the volunteers.

An Interesting (and Sentimental) Find; Part II

After finding the key to my grandparents apartment front door, I remembered I had a box on the shelf above my workbench with another goody from the old house. It was the crank door bell. It was mounted in the center of the heavy wood front door to the house, and when you spun the knob on the outside, the bell on the inside clanged like an old style wind up alarm clock.

Both pieces with decades old multiple layers of paint. The inside of the door was white, so the bell was painted to match. The outside of the door was brown. It will all be stripped back to bare brass.

Detail of the inner workings with the gong removed. The inner and outer halves were connected by a square shaft. The mechanism is worn and stripped and in need of my magic touch to work again.

Also in the box were keys. I immediately recognized what they were for. First is my Papa's well worn house front door key. I know it was his because of how worn the head is. He carried his keys (unless he was dressed up in a suit), on his belt like I do. My Nana had hers either on the shelf in the kitchen, in her purse, or in the car ignition.

You can't see it in the photo, but the worn spot in the middle once said "Russwin"

Finally, the skeleton key to my grandparents apartment back door. It was smaller than the one for the front door and shows very little use. The house had a an interior back staircase and there was a door to enter the apartments on each floor. My great-aunts and uncles and my grandparents mostly used the back stairs to go between apartments. The back entry door to the house was always locked and only opened from the inside to go out in the backyard, so the back apartment doors were never locked. That door had a deadbolt, a throw bolt, and a bar across it to ensure it would not be opened from the outside. Initially this key was left in the door, until the time when I was about 5 years old and thought it was funny to lock my Nana out of the apartment in the back stairwell. After that the key came out of the door and was in a glass with other important little things in the pantry.

My plan is to strip off all the paint, restore the bell to working order, and mount it on a nice piece of hardwood like it was on the door. The front door keys will be mounted on the front side, with a nice brass plate engraved with the address and the years my grandparents lived there. The back door key will be mounted on the back side, maybe with another engraved brass plate with my great-aunt and uncles last name and Apartment 1, and my grandparents last name with Apartment 2. I have had this stuff for almost 12 years, I think its high time I get busy on this little project.

An Interesting (and Sentimental) Find

While puttering around in the basement earlier taking the gun photos, I came across something from my childhood I didn't know I had.

My mother's side of the family lived in a house built in 1886 in Chicopee Falls, MA. It was a typical house built for the population that all worked in the mills. My great-grandparents, that emigrated from Auschwitz, Poland in the early 1900's and bought it for $1 from the owner that was desperate to unload it. It was a 3 story single family home and my grandmother was one of 15 children. Three rooms on the 3rd floor, 4 rooms and a water closet on the 2nd floor, and one bedroom and the common areas on the 1st. Heat was by coal stoves and later gas stoves on the first and second floors, with a heat register to get heat up to the third floor. Back in the early 2000's, they asked me to put in a motion sensor light on the front porch. The easiest way to do that was to tie into the front hall light circuit. That was when I made an interesting discovery. The wires were in a conduit? Oh no... my grandfather told me. Those weren't conduits, they were the old gaslight pipes. When the house was electrified, the easiest way to run the wiring was to use the pipes as conduits.

Anyway, in the 1940's the second floor was converted to an apartment where my grandparents and my mother lived. This is the key to their apartment front door.

The skeleton key to Nana and Papa's house

They never took the key out of the house when they locked the door to leave for fear of losing it. They had a wardrobe in the corner of the large landing at the top of the stairs. In the wardrobe was an old dark green woman's winter coat with a fur collar on a hanger. The key went in the left pocket of that coat. They had a key to the lock on the front door of the house on their car key ring.

They have all since passed on. The house was a probate nightmare, because it was still in my great-grandmother's name. She died in 1942, and there were countless descendants that had a claim to the house. Nobody wanted it, but if one person did, it would cost a fortune in attorneys fees to get it. When my grandmother (the last one living there) left to move in with my parents, my mother ceased paying the property taxes on it, and told the city to just take it. They did and it finally went to auction after a few years sitting vacant. A woman that buys houses to fix up and rent as an investment bought it. I stopped in to visit with her workers when they were working on it. They completely gutted it and rebuilt it to be a real nice 2 story duplex. I was able to answer some questions they had about things they didn't understand about the house. It came out real nice. I have decades of memories of that old place.