Updates

The new job is magnificent, even if it leaves me little time for blogging. I dealt with my first experience as a vet tech during examination and, luck of the draw, I got an 18wk old male black lab who had apparently never experienced the least little bit of discipline. I had been cradling his head in the crook of my arm, sort of a relaxed headlock, butwhen I tried to hold his muzzle so the vet could feel his lymph nodes he started screaming and thrashing. He did the same when the doc put the stethoscope to his ribs, so I didn't feel nearly so bad.

The car is running now. I picked it up from the shop, a tarpaper island amidst a sea of rusty Beetles and Things, just as Ivan was starting to do his damage to Atlanta. I don't think the windows have been cleaned since the Reagan years, if the brown stuff I cleaned off is any indication. And, to make matters worse, my windsheild wipers were flopping helplessly at the bottom of my windsheild within ten minutes. It was raining too hard to get out and fix them, so I drove the whole 20 miles home with my driver's window rolled down, elbow resting on sideview mirror, furiously pumping the wiper up and down my window.

Sharon was supposed to drive in front of me, slowly leading my crippled Ghia home. But she got through a yellow light that caught me, and then went the wrong way on the interstate ( I found that out later in this whole mess.) Did I mention 17 of those 20 miles are freeway miles? Anyway, the guy in front of me coming out of the ramp was only doing 30 and had his flashers on! I just followed him for about 5 miles until he got off at an interchange, leaving me with nothing to follow.

Until a Honda that had been doing a nice clip up behind us whipped over and flipped its flashers on, dropping it down to... 30 mph. I thought Sharon had arrived in the nick of time, but when I got to read the liscense coming under a bridge, it wasn't her. I figured it was coincidence until I watched him exit a few miles down the road, only to be replaced by a third stranger from behind. I followed him allt he way to a traffic jam that stretched forward past my exit. I just took that nice and easy, still pumping away a ahlf hour or more later.

I was going to blog about this that night, but lost power. It was a minor miracle, me getting home. Today I fixed the wipers by merely tightening two screws. I went ahead and cleaned the windows and applied a sheeting agent on the exterior of the windows and an anti-fog agent to the inerior.

I have two Jensen speakers to either side of the rear "seat" but am not sure I have located the wires. I want to install a radio, but those wires are neccesary. I also put the stock gear shift knob (a black "button") back on, where a previous owner had installed a burlwood shifter.

I think when I redo the interior, rather than rechrome the interior trim I will marlinspike all the it. Marlinspike is an old nautical skill intended for rigging on sailing vessels, but quickly adapted also to decorating in places where brightwork was undesirable for whatever reason. It is similar to macrame, though a Bosun would whup you for saying such a thing. Since I am doing the interior in black, I can use black nylon landscapers or mason's twine to do the knot work. That's the same stuff you use to tie rosaries at www.rosaryarmy.com. In black it is readily available at home fix-it stores. The few "flat" peices, like the door handles and front heat register in the floor, I will paint black (matte or gloss, depening on function). Install a cheap black carpet kit and some model and year specific seatcovers, plus a new dash pad and a new dash facing (faux wood grain is stock, but I bet I could make my own from a black plexi kind of material.) Viola, a black interior for a little effort.

Anyway, those are the updates, such as they are. I'll be trying to blog at least twice per week as time allows, but learning a new trade, I am making no promises for the time being.

1968 Karmann-Ghia by Volkswagen. Interior needs a complete restoration. Engine is being replaced this week.

Storytime

My daddy and his twin brother once got an unbelievable deal on a VW Beetle, but first I must fill in some details about their brother in law, from whom they got this steal of a deal.

My father's only sister, who needs your prayers as she faces lung cancer, got in the family way when she was a young woman and my grandmother, over everyone else's vociferous objections, made her marry the fellow what done it. I mean everybody. Her sons still at home, her husband, everyone was against this for the simple fact that the man was a psycho with a capital PSY. A brutal sadist is what he was. So bad that when he committed suicide, he arranged things, intentionally, so that his 6 or 7 year old daughter would find his rotting corpse two weeks later. Such people make it difficult to believe we are all reflections of God.

Anyway, while he and my Aunt were married, he had bought a brand new Beetle, late 60's vintage, and drove her for about 2 years before she "just died" on him. Wouldn't crank for nothing. So he bought a new car and offered the VW to my daddy and his twin for $100 if they'd come to Atlanta and haul it home. They got a C-note and a flatbed trailer and headed right up.

While they were looking it over before they loaded it, they found what they suspected was the problem. They paid their bro-in-law his $100 and loaded it up. They then stopped at the first gas station they came to, bought some distilled water and poured it in the bone dry battery cells. Popped the clutch as they rolled it off the trailer and one drove the perfectly running VW home while the other drove the truck.

A few years later my Uncle rolled the car, claiming he hwas swerving to miss a dog. Everyone always suspected that he was actually frightened after a run in with the Sentinel gaurding the doors of the Masonic Lodge, but thats a whole other Storytime.

Into each life a little...

It came up a cloud last night, figuratively speaking. I found a 1968 Karmann-Ghia that seemed to be in fine mechanical shape, but on the drive home the engine died. Probably a thrown bearing, as she still spins, just not fast enough to catch at all.

Anyway, found a VW specialist outside the city with his own rebuild shop and junkyard. ALL AIR COOLED VWs, nothing else.He wants a little over a third of what I paid for the car to replace the engine with a warranteed rebuilt. Says he can have it done by the end of this week.

So far, the fellow I bought it off of has been a gem. Said to let him know what the engine costs and he will split that with me, as he presented her as a good running car. I thought he was an honest guy when I bought the car and I am glad he hasn't done a thing yet to disprove that judgement.

Anyway, I just have to remind myself that $3,000 isn't a steep price for a Karmann-Ghia in good shape with a new rebuilt motor. I'll still come out ahead, even if this seems like an inconvenience. I'll try to get a picutre of the car up sometime today.

WOOHOO!!!

It'll be steak tonight in my house!!!

Continuing my streak of never being turned down for any job I have interviewed for, I am now a Veterinarian Assistant for Buckhead Animal Clinic, beginning Wednesday morning at 8am sharp!

Thank you all who prayed for me. It has been much appreciated. But please don't stop just because I have work. I still need prayer for my ongoing spiritual conversion.

Crumpler's Horn

Someone has written to ask about two items in my comments on Sen. Zell Miller.

First, a sugar tit is a terrycloth rag which had been tied up into a small package with a butter and sugar mixture inside for calming fussy infants and toddlers. We did not have pacifiers in our neck of the woods. We had the sugar tit.

Now on to "bore a hole in crumpler's horn." It is a little ditty to amuse small children. With an index finger you make a lazy spiral in the air, slowly growing smaller as it also closes in on the child's belly. While doing this you recite the following...

"Bore a hole in Crumpler's Horn
And there I'll tie a string
And lead him to the river bank
And there I'll THROW HIM IN!!!"

On "thow him in" you tickle that little belly with all the gusto you can muster. The rhyme itself is a bastardisation of a much older song, from 17th C Britain.

"Bore a hole in Crummel's Nose
And there I'll tie a string
And lead him to and fro the town
For murdering Charles the king."

Crummel there would be Cromwell, who led the roundheads against King Charles and his cavaliers. This ditty is one of many holdovers from my culture's very Scottish, very cavalier origins. Many of these quirks hold no signifigance any longer, but they are still fiercely clung to. Another example is always passing your spirits over your water glass whenever you make a toast. This originally signified toasting "The King Across the Water", as the Stuarts-in-exile were called.

Storytime

We've added a new feature here at Scribblins. From time to time, I would like to spin a yarn about my family. Please keep in mind that all of these stories are about a protestant family of mixed Scottish and Cherokee ethnicity in rural northeast Alabama, the foothills of Appalachia. They are often violent or crude, but they are a large component of who I am because they explain where I come from. Some of them may be shocking to well-bred city folk, but I am not ashamed to re-tell them here. So this is the Inaugural Storytime...

When my father was a young man attending college, he was apparently quite the ladies man and this sometimes led to trouble. Now, please do not misunderstand. He was not a cad or a lecher, he respected the virtue of the girls he dated, but he seemed to enjoy the company of every girl he met, usually over a plate of hash and an orange bellywasher. Since he wasn't doing anything to be ashamed of, he sometimes didn't ask prospective dates the proper questions beforehand.

For example, "Are you engaged to a very large linebacker for a national championship college football team?"

This one young lady decided to use my father's interest to make her fiancee jealous. And mercy, was he a big boy! After their third date, she called her hubby-to-be to let him know she was keeping company with my father. Well, this fellow wasted no time in coming to the JSU campus the next Monday and tracking my father down to administer the requisite whuppin'. As luck would have it though, he found, instead, my father's mirror-image twin brother, Ricky, and worked him over like cubesteak.

My Uncle Ricky was not one to take such things graciously, and so on Tuesday he found my father's latest interest to tell her that her fiancee had whupped the wrong twin. He had to produce a driver's license to convince her, but convince her he did. Of course, she proceeded to call her dear lug and tell him he had made a mistake and would have to come repeat the task. (Why do some women enjoy seeing bloodshed over such things? I guess I may as well ask how many licks to the center of a tootsie-pop, but I digress.)

Anyway, the linebacker returned on Friday to finish the task, but my father had been given warning by a friend of the girl in question. Being an honourable fellow from a hillbilly family but blessed with an intelligence that exceeded his brawn, my father kept a very low profile throughout the day. Around 4pm, thinking it safe, he decided to stroll out to the parking lot to return home from school. As he rounded the corner, he walked right into this very. large. and. muscular. chest.

The linebacker for the Crimson Tide proceeded to lift my father off the ground by his lapels, saying , "I got you now, fellow!" As I said, my father's wit was abundant, so his immediate reply was something along the lines of "Oh no you don't. You whupped me once already and if I have to find a two by four, you won't do it again!" The fellow set him down, dusted him off and apologised profusely, inquiring as to where he might find his prey. As luck would have it, Uncle Ricky was crossing the parking lot at that time and so my father pointed and quickly blurted out, "There he is!"

After being worked over a second time for his brother's indiscretion, Uncle Ricky had had enough. My father was the athletic one of the twins, so how best to exact revenge? As luck would have it, Uncle Steve, my daddy's youngest brother, was home from Georgia Tech where he also was a starting ballplayer. So Uncle Ricky paid his very large and over-muscled kid brother ten dollars to lure my father into the back bedroom and get his pound of flesh. End result? Three cracked ribs.

Proving out that family loyalty of which we hillbillies are so proud, they all quietly worked together to sneak Daddy out the bedroom window and off to Summerville, GA, for emergency services. They slipped away into the night and kept their secret so well that my grandmother only learned of this story when they were all married with children of their own, swapping tales and reminiscences over turkey at Thanksgiving. Maybe catholics from large families can understand how beating on one another is a natural way of bonding for brothers? Maybe it isn't so odd as it often seems to the people to which I have told this story in the past.

(If you like this new feature let me know. If you don't, still speak up. It won't impact whether or not we continue to post the yarns, but feedback is appreciated nonetheless.)

Good News!

After 30+ hours without power and learning that my truck was totaled in the accident I blogged about, I have some good news to share.

Theseveral months worth of meat, purchased whenever there was a sale at the various local grocers, was still mostly frozen when the power returned. Deo Gratias!!!

Without any haggling on my part, the insurance company is cutting a cheque large enough to pay off what I owe on the truck with enough left over to purchase an air-cooled Beetle in very good condition. (I have a Karmann Ghia which needs some interiro work in my sights, but that itself is not a lock.)

While I am still unemployed, I have an interview with the best small animal vet. clinic in the city this afternoon at 5pm. That isn't a job, yet, but it is a step in the right direction.

My recently rediscovered uncle in Orlando came through Frances with only some landscaping damage, nothing more.

All in all, Deo gratias. And also allyoufolkswhoprayedforme-o gratias as well!

Sen. Miller unloads

I just want to thank the good senator for answering questions long unanswered. I have always wondered why my father remained a dedicated democrat eventhough he never once voted for a Democrat at any level beyond Sheriff. He had to register as a Democrat in order to vote because ALL local elections back home are decided in the Democrat primary and its run-offs. I understood that. But I never understood why he would call himself one. And he'd say it with a pride that was galling to his Reaganite offspring. He campaigned for Goldwater in 1964, long before he could vote, but would still proudly call himself such a vile thing! Unbelievable.

But now I know. Well, I knew all along, but now I understand. I knew, long before Sen. Miller strode forth the other night, that Scoop Jackson, Harry Truman and (arguably) Jack Kennedy were VERY different democrats than the ones I've seen my whole life. But thats the thing I understand now, to whatever degree. I look back and cast a scornful glance at the democrats of the 20th Century, even the good ones, because I grew up in a political climate where Democrats walk hand in hand with evil. My Daddy, and Sen. Miller, did not come of age in that climate. Theirs was very different.

And I suppose I understand this because it came from a man like me, to whatever extent. A Reagan Democrat from Detroit could never have expressed this in a way I could understand. But Young Harris, GA, while 4 times larger than Gaylesville, AL, (the town nearest the homestead back in New Moon) is still very much like it. Senator Miller and I both hail from a very specific Southern subculture, Appalachian Hillbilly. I'm sure we've both helped make sorghum and tilled hilly feilds with rocks the size of a man's head. I bet he's had to beat the dawn to scrape hair off a scalded hog carcass and I bet he's "bore(d) a hole in Crumpler's horn" for one of his grandbabies.

In fact, the major difference between he and I, the reason I lean republican (I've always been more of a third-party libertarian Classic Liberal, but that is changing as my conversion takes root) and he is a staunch democrat is because he was raised up during the reign of Eugene Talmadge and I was still taking a sugar tit when Ronald Regan finally sent Jimmy Carter oacking back to south Georgia.

On Mr. Hudson

The National Catholic Distorter's article is up. I think it is a prime example of the sin of detraction and am not going to link to it. It is prominently linked on their website though.

Now, before I begin offering my opinions on this subject, let me confess a few personal details. I am currently pursuing an annulment from the Metropolitan Tribunal of my Archdiocese. I married when I was 18. By 19 we had agreed on an "open marriage" and then separated when she found a girl she liked better. I spent the next several years going from one girlfriend to the next while picking up the cheapest of street hookers on a weekly, sometimes semi-weekly, basis. I've had torrid romances with married women. I've seduced drunken girls in bars frequented by sailors. My current fiancée Sharon, did not know I was married until we had been dating on and off for several years. I didn’t inform her, or file for a divorce, until I was in Catechesis and desiring a Sacramental Marriage with her. There are even worse things, far more illegal things, I am not going to disclose.

Now that that is out of the way, let us move on to Mr. Hudson. What he did was a disgusting breach of trust, an abuse of his position as a professor. Inexcusable! But as with all such things, it is also forgivable. Mrs. Hudson can forgive him. The student he harmed can forgive him. God can forgive him. None of the rest of us has anything to do with it. It simply isn't any of our business.

(Note Bene: There have been rumours that accusations of a more recent vintage can be made. These are just that, rumours. I don't engage in gossip, so let's leave it at "This blogger knows rumours abound, but gives no credence to unsubstantiated rumours.")

Now, the important question is, does any of this invalidate anything Mr. Hudson ever wrote? Maybe. I am not familiar with his every utterance, so I will clarify my qualifier. If he has ever written that he is a paragon of virtue, or said as much, that's invalidated. But when he writes that certain actions, or certain positions, are sinful the fact that he has sinned does nothing to invalidate his remarks. Notice I haven’t addressed his resignation or political ties. I don’t really care about them. I may support Bush over Kerry, but I do not care to sully myself in politics too much. It once held a great thrill for me, but as it is formulated in Modernity, there is no way to engage in politics in a truly honourable fashion. I want no part of it, nor do I want part of those parts that do.

There seems to be confusion in our culture at large, and even among Catholics who should know better, over the distinction between a hypocrite and a sinner. A hypocrite is one who holds himself to a different standard than the one publicly proclaimed. A sinner merely fails to uphold his proclaimed standard. A hypocrite says adultery is wrong while making the mental reservation “this does not apply to me, of course.” A sinner says it is wrong, knows it is wrong, and still does it, for whatever reason.

In my estimation, Deal Hudson is a sinner, a repentant one. He is no hypocrite, so far as I can tell. Pray for his victim, pray for his family, pray for him.

And also pray for me.