The Coffee clatch gang.

Making new friends?

Yesterday I realized that I miss the companionship and fellowship of my male friends, so my wife ordered me out of the house until I found some cronies to hang out with.
She is the one who used the word "cronies", I did not!

Her thinking was;young guys have friends, old guys have cronies.
I qualify as old.  You may qualify as old if the hair in your nose and ears grows faster than on your head.  In fact, I nearly lopped off my ear last week trying to trim my ear hair, but that is another blog.  Let's not get off topic here.

So, here I was, quicked out of my own home by the Little French Lady... searching for a spot to meet my crony friends.  I thought I might give the Starbuck's down the street a try. I had packed my Man gear.  My GPS, my binoculars, my Ipad, my Mental Floss magazine, I put on my Mental Floss T-shirt (The one that says, "I would give my right arm to be ambidextrous"), my wrap-around sunglasses and my sparkling wit.
I was off.

Upon arrival to Starbuck's I ordered my latte and my danish.  I gave the woman with the spanish name my $20 bill and she asked if I wanted change back.  I said, " of course!!!"
She returned a quarter, a dime and two pennies.
Huh!...oh well,  I shall commence to making friends now.

I sat a table with a nice looking young lady. She had her MacBook out and was typing like a person possessed.  She paused.  I said, "MacBook?..I have a MacBook."
She looked up and glared at me.  I figured I better straighten her out so there was no misunderstanding.
"Oh.....I'm not flirting with you.  I'm here to meet men."  Something didn't sound right about that statement.
She glared.  I looked around.  Everybody was in their own little world.  One guy was reading the Sunday New York Times. (It was Thursday).  One woman was doing a spanish lesson on her computer.  "Como esta Usted?"  I kept hearing her say that.  Finally I hollered out, "Muy Bien, Gracias!!"
More dirty looks.  It was like I pooped on the table.  People started complaining to the spanish waitress.  I guess her name was senorita Barista, she didn't look spanish.

Finally, out of desperation, I took out my Ipad.  I emailed my wife, "Can I come home now? Everybody hates me at Starbucks."  She emailed me back and told me to try a different location.  I got up to leave.  I said, "Adios, everyone."
I received a standing ovation.

I walked for about 15 minutes in the opposite direction.  I noticed this place called "Jimmie's Hole in the Wall."  written on a theater marquee above the establishment.
The parking lot was full of pickup trucks with rifle racks in the rear windows, or confederate flags on the antennae.
I walked to the clerk and ordered a cup of coffee.  "That will be 30 cents."
Wow, I like this place already.  I noticed a bunch of guys standing around a round table talking.  I walked over and found an open spot at the "round table".  They were actually talking to each other.  They all said, "How yawl doin?" I looked around.  There was no one behind.  They were talking to me!!!!  I loved this place.

The floors were kind of quirky.  They were at an angle, very much like an old movie theater.
"Where yawl from?" a guy named Joe Willie asked.  I said I lived a few streets away off ocean Blvd.
"You lie!!!!!!" Joe Willie hollered.  That brought huge laughter to the rest of the group. Shoulders were convulsing, many were snickering mixed in with a few tee-hees and guffaws.
One guy, named Marko,  raised his hand and everyone stopped laughing immediately.  "What Joe Willie is saying is that you don't sound like a native of South Carolina."
"Oh,...I am originally from Vermont."
"Vermont?...Isn't that where that Jewish Communist Congressman lives?..Burley Sanger!"
"Do you mean Bernie Sanders, Joe?"
"Yeah, That's the guy. The Communist Jew guy."
"Bernie's a socialist, Joe."  I answered.
"Yeah, well...He is still a jew. How do you expect me to trust him.  This guy has high regard for Moses. Yeah...Moses.....The guy who wandered around the desert for 40 years.  He wouldn't man up and ask directions after God parted the Red Sea.  Would I follow this guy?  No way!!!  and to compound matters he had a bunch of people behind him and nobody tapped Moses on the shoulder and say after about 13 years, 'Moses, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.  What's your plan?" "

Hmmm...this guy, Joe Willie has some valid points; he has obviously thought about Bernie and Moses quite a bit.

Marko,  (the guy who had everyone stop talking when he raised his hand) was held in high regard by the people at the round table.  He talked fondly about his travels on the Appalachian Trail and his frequent trips to Argentina to visit his soulmate and fiance.
He seemed quite puzzled by the Catholic religion.  He understood the concept of heaven and hell.
Heaven good, hell bad.
Marko was thinking about switching to Catholism for his fiance.
He was mystified by the other places located in between...
Heaven, Hell, Limbo, Purgatory and Bridgeport, Connecticut.
I have been to Bridgeport.  If I die and end up there....hmmmmm. It ain't heaven.
Marko, Bubba, Joe Willie, and Billy Jeff seem like a bunch of nice guys.  I enjoyed listening to them.  They are a funny bunch.  The coffee taste great, the price is right.
I will email my wife and tell her I have met some new friends and I am on my way home.

"See Yawl tomorrow."

My Personal Rogue's Gallery.

Friends, Family and other malcontents.

We all have them, don't we?
Oh, you know who I am talking about.  It might be Uncle Percy, who collects ear wax and makes religious statues out of it.  It could be the neighbor who borrowed your riding mower and sold it on ebay.  Maybe it is Uncle Wally who has a pet duck that he walks on a leash every day.
They are colorful characters in your personal history.  Some of them are fun, a few weirdos, an equal number of crooks and psychos.

I will start with Uncle Leonard, the low talker.
Uncle Lenny is a small guy.  I am a talking "small".  He makes Barney Fife look tall and beefy.  That may be his problem.  He overcompensates.  He can drink like a man that is 7 feet tall.  Lenny is 5' 1".   He drives a huge truck.
When he drinks he acts like he is 7 feet tall.  He gets belligerent.  He picks fights with big people. Fortunately everyone knows about Lenny, and they act accordingly.  Usually they just put their hand on Lenny's head and he swings wildly until he tires.
If the big guy grows weary of Lenny's swinging, he puts his thumb and index finger together and flick him in the chest, very much in the same style that someone would flick an errant booger from their fingers ... and Uncle Leonard would go flying.

Uncle Lenny had a way of exacting his revenge.  He was a low talker. He was also an accomplished mumbler.  You had to lean very close to him, bend down and say "What"? He could say things to people and they would look at each other and ask, "Did he just insult me?"....Nah!!!  This was when he was sober.  When had a few extra samplings from the brown bottles he talked incomprehensible gibberish.

I heard rumors that he was a faux Navaho code talker during the cold war while he was in the army.  His commanding officers would give him a six pack and then they would write up bogus messages for Lenny to transmit verbally.
Apparently there are sixteen nations still trying to decipher the code, including ours.
My Uncle Lenny.

Then there was my former friend, Quisling Von Heussen.  Even back in the late 50's he was strange.  He was Swiss.  He had relatives in Zurich.  He was always saying nice things about Hitler.  He would say things like Hitler was better looking than Churchill.
He said Hitler could run faster than Roosevelt and Eva Braun was better looking than Eleanor Roosevelt.  He also stated that Hitler could dance better than Joe Stalin.  It really aggravated me because I could not disprove his argument.
I did point out that Hitler did make some major social blunders.  Quis didn't really want to talk about that.  He preferred to say how well Hitler trimmed his mustache an how shiny his boots were.
I grew tired of Quis.  That last time I saw him he was handing out brochures for the Tea party.  He had shiny boots and a little Charlie Chaplin mustache.

Then there is my friend Miguel Heraldo.  He liked cars.  I was a very good friend.  He came to me and ask to borrow $1500 so he could get a car.   I had been burned by him before, but it was a small amount. I said I couldn't do it.  His wife said, "I'll make sure he pays it back if you co-sign for him".  I finally caved in and I cosigned.  He made two payments.  The bank started calling ME!  I went to his house and asked him about the payment.  He said he had paid it late, and not to worry about it.  I should have been suspicious when I saw the U-haul truck in the driveway and the boxes in the living room.
He moved to Georgia the next day.  I was left to pay his bill. I learned a lesson.

A few years passed and he found my email address somehow and he wanted to be my buddy.  I never answered his email.  He went to a mutual friend and asked, "What's the matter with Jonathan Hemlock?  I email him and he never answers".
The mutual friend and I had a conversation and I said I would answer Miguel.  I did. I questioned his honesty and integrity.  He answered that nothing like that ever happened.  I was lying, where is my proof?  He remembers nothing of that. He verbally attacked me to my friends.  He said I was a liar.  I wasn't really surprised.  5 years go by.....I moved on.
Now, He wants to be my Facebook friend. Yikes!!!
What a World. This is the Casey Anthony Era.

Then we have my Cousin Lonnie Hemlock, the collector.
Lonnie is a bright guy.  He is good at fixing things.
A few years ago you could drive your own garbage to the landfill and drop it off.
Lonnie's problem with the landfill was that he would bring home more than he would drop off.  He was actually making more space in the landfill for people like me. While most people, referred to it as "the dump",  Lonnie called it "the Mall".

I went to his house one day to do some type of family business.  I climbed over various car parts, bike parts, old air conditioners, carcasses of various vermin and other sundry products and made my way to the front door from the porch.  I knocked on the door.  The door tilted at an angle and fell into the kitchen.
Cousin Lonnie was in the kitchen.  I think it was the kitchen.  Hard to tell.  I couldn't see a sink.  I did see a refrigerator. Three actually.
"Come in! Come in.  Hmmm! I'll have to fix that one of these days. How about a cup of coffee?"
I looked around the room.
"Thanks anyway, Lonnie, I have to be somewhere else in 10 minutes." (Anywhere else! please!!) "I'll just sit on this beanbag chair since all your other chairs have stuff on them."(Beanbag chair in the kitchen?)
"Oh..that isn't a beanbag chair, that's a bag of garbage."
"Oh?" I was impressed.  He actually had some garbage in bags. I got out of there as quick as possible.
Sadly, a couple  of years later the town burned the house to the ground.  Strangely, it is the second one of his houses they had to burn to the ground.  I am sure many little critters died a fiery death.  I believe they invited the national guard and a reserve unit to shoot the rats as they were fleeing the burning building.

Moving on....

I met my friend Agatha on the beach a few weeks ago.  She just won't give up. She had to vent or spew her opinions once again.
She is always talking about "the blacks". Obama, the black, not Obama the president.  The blacks are taking over the country.  They are ruining it. They have insufficient brain matter to run this country. We are doomed.
She listens to such intellectual heavyweights as Rush Limbaugh, Homer Simpson and Glen Beck.
These are her happiest moment in her life. She is in her element when she is criticizing a democrat, a black, a foreigner (Kenyan?).... Obama.. JACKPOT!!!.. bells and whistles, patriotic music.  Flying spittle and excitement.  I think she just had a political orgasm.
Is that possible?

Finally...one day I just looked at her kind of funny and she said, "What?"
"Your one of us, aren't you?"
Agatha was dumbstruck. "Wha..What too hell are you talking about?
"You're...a black, aren't you?...one of us."
"You're not black, fool!! You're as white as me."
"I mentioned before that I am Obama's cousin. We are black Irish. Uh..huh..look at your skin. Is that the skin of a white person?"
Agatha sits in the sun every day.  She has a deep tan.  Is that tan all from the sun?

"Don't deny it.  I will not ax you to dance or dunk a basket or spell incarcerated.  You are a black.  Just like me."
I gestured for her to give me a high five.  She ignored it.
"You're crazy!!!" she snorted as she ran off the beach.
I turned to the little French lady and said, "I think we have resolved this issue."
We did the high five.

I have a lot more weird friends.  They are interesting people. But I don't want you to think all my friends are weird, just most of them.

I was born in a house I helped my father build.

A TRIBUTE TO A FRIEND

In my youth, my best friend, Andy, began to write his autobiography. He was eighteen at the time. He must have known something was amiss. His first sentence was: I was born in a house I helped my father build. I thought that was profound. Weird, paradoxical, impossible and profound. I knew what followed would be humorous and it was. He was a funny guy.

We would go out drinking.We would have heated discussions. He would play the bad guy and I would play the good guy. We would start out discussing a subject and he would always take the unpopular view. He would make outlandish statements like: Adolph Hitler wasn't such a bad guy. We would discuss, harangue, argue with each other, not giving any ground. Finally a little smirk would come on his face. He would be testing your convictions. He would make you think outside the box. He would make sure you knew what you were talking about. He would look for the weakness in your argument.

His whole bad guy bit was just an act.

He occasionally got a little carried away with his act. He would often mention what a wonderful country Germany was. He would refer to it as the "homeland." It was his idea of making himself interesting. The fact is: He was part Swiss and part Norwegian. He had relatives in Switzerland. Everyone knew he was not German. He knew that everyone knew. No matter..he had fun with it.

He always had German Shepard dogs.

They would have German names like Shultz, Max, Gunther, Gretchen. He would take particular delight when a little French Poodle would walk near his dog. " My Shultz could chew your little French poodle to bits". (kinda like the start of WWII.) The fact is: most of his German shepards were really sweeties. Nice dogs.

He only had one that made me nervous. I think he named him Heinz. He would not hurt you as long as you didn't move. If you blinked or breathed he would probably chew your face off. He was sit about two feet from you and stare. A blink would make him show his teeth, a breathe would make him growl. The only movement I probably would not be able to avoid was a bowel movement. This dog scared the shit out of me. Thank God, Heinz was not around for very long.

Andy was a man of the arts. We both were. We were both very pretentious about it.

We both liked Jazz for about a week, I think we liked Art for two weeks, Opera-four hours, Classic Literature was good for about three weeks, Classical music lingered for about three months. We both tried to learn Spanish one summer. (We had flashcards)

We couldn't put a sentence together but we knew words. We were men of the arts

We both liked sports. I actually was the one who played organized sports. He was the intellect. However.....anytime we competed against each other in sports, I found it difficult to beat him. He was very competitive. We liked to make our competitions interesting. We played Croquet. This sounds like a very genteel and refined sport. Wrong!!! We did not have the manicured flat lawn. NO! This was laid out like a par 90 golf course. We had hills, holes, water hazards, deep grass, and building on our course.

If we could have found an alligator, it would have been on the course. There was a lot of good natured cursing, throwing mallets at each other, fist fights all in good fun. Andy's wife usually started the fist fights.....She's feisty.

Any game we would play, we would add our own twist.

He liked to write poetry. One was called "A cat with two tails". It was about a constipated cat. You get the picture. funny!

Andy liked horses. Andy liked beer. Andy actually owned two race horses. They were really hay burners. One was a thoroughbred, one was a trotter. He brought the trotter to the county fair grounds and entered him into a race. He had a friend who was a professional driver. It was not pretty. after the race the driver said, "Run? this horse can't even walk right." The horse became a pet after that.

Andy use to like to go into town and have a beer or two/three/four. He was losing his vision due to diabetes. He couldn't drive any more so he road the horse to town. He would tie the horse to a post outside the bar right next to all the cars. Andy would bring a beer out to his horse if it was a hot day. I guess the horse liked it. It did have grain in it. I guess the horse was either very smart or an alcoholic. One day Andy went to town with the horse. He wanted to push on a little further to the next bar which was about 300 yards down the road. The horse stopped at the first bar and would not go any further. No matter what Andy did the horse would not budge. He stayed at the first bar.

My friend Andy's life was cut short. He loved his beer. This is a bad thing when you have juvenile diabetes. He decided he was going to live life his way. He tried to adjust his beer intake with insulin. It was not a good plan. He once told me he would not live to be forty.

The wheels started to fall off. His vision started to go. His kidneys started to go. After both vision and kidney's were pretty much gone he moved closer to the hospital for dialysis. One day I drove him to the hospital in a blizzard. I was scared, if he could have seen what I was driving in, he would have been scared but he kept boosting my morale and encouraging me. I made it to the hospital then I had to watch his dialysis.

I drove him back home later in the day. whew!!!

Andy finally got a kidney transplant from his brother. He had lost a couple toes, his vision and his kidneys. He never lost his thirst for learning. He learned how to be a ham radio operator. This is mind boggling to me. One of the criteria is that you have to be able to read and transmit morris code. Can you imagine learning dots and dashes and making words out of it while you are blind? Amazing!!!

After a couple of years the transplant rejected. He was waiting for another transplant when he passed away. He was 39 years old.

Something good did come out of this. Andy's wife was his caretaker for many years. She was not a high school graduate. But she went to a vocational nursing school and became a certified nurse. this is good....but not the end of the story. She continued her education. She received her bachelor's degree and her masters degree. she is in charge of the intensive care unit at the hospital where Andy spent many days. she is an amazing lady. Donna.

Andy, You were a great friend. I still think about our fun times. You are missed.

When I meet are common friends(we had many) we always talk about you. We often laugh and sometimes we get a little misty eyed. Didn't we have fun!!!!!

Life Philosophy update: BREAKING NEWS!!!!!

With the recent success of "Slumdog Millionaire", NBC headquarters in the GE building has announced the return of the highly successful series " Friends".

This is great news for the network that has been languishing at the bottom of prime time ratings.

It will be a little different this time however. It has been outsourced to India. The actors will work for almost nothing and the quality of there production is...ummm..acceptable. It is kinda like Information Technology in North America.

I called NBC in New York to get more information. They put me on hold for thirty five minutes but now I am talking to someone named "Jessica". I cannot understand many word she is saying. I asked her where she was located. She said Bangladesh.

I will get back to you with details as soon as I get them.