For Old Guys Only

[2door]

Char and I go out to eat a lot; probably three times a week at least. I love it when we get the same server at our favorite resturants. Once they get a good tip, 25 to 30% they remember and the service just gets better and better. They know where the gravy is and they'll go well above and beyond to please.
We're on a first name basis with several servers and when we walk in, we get treated like royality.

But then there are the ones, like X had, that are just there for a paycheck. "Yep, Ye reaps what ye sows". They're lucky to get 5%, if that. I have a memory too.

Tom

 

[Allen_Wrench]

Hey Tom, it works that way with the local Domino's Pizza over here. I used to work in food service and deliver pizza too, so I know what it is to work for tips. When we had a driver make our large order the first one on his route we tipped him 30%. Each driver we had after that, came out pretty quick. Soon, our name became well known in the kitchen too from what we heard.
Payday Friday is often pizza night here too. And our pizza is always the very best, and always HOT. My sub is always meticulously made. Our order is thoroughly complete. They make sure we know about special deals on things we often get. Our local Domino's really bends over backward. Now, they're only about two miles away, but once, we even got a three pizza order, plus soda, sub, & chips, in exactly 25 minutes from order placement. Tips and basic politeness work absolute wonders.

 

[Mike B]

I require little service. Just gimme a menu, take the order, deliver the food and notice when I push the plate away and bring me the check.

It's just me.

Very seldom do servers mess this up. I have walked out of a few places because either nobody noticed me standing at the door, or nobody brought me a menu.

Maybe 'cause it's just me?

Dunno. I do know that lots of people have fear of dining alone and a table of 1 is pretty rare. I'm quick & easy. Just dish it out, I eat it and leave. It's not like I have anyone to talk to.

Maybe they think I'm waiting for a "to go" order?

 

[Moto pope]

Put this under the label "they don't make em like they used it." This evening, I was in the back yard helping my two granddaughters fly kites. I spent more time trying to keep these cheap little plastic things together, than the girls did flying em. Little,plastic tubes for a frame, a little thicker version of Saran Wrap for the fabric, and string the size of sewing thread. Any of you old geezers remember Hi Flyer kites? They had some different paper in odd colors with pine boards for the frame, and the string was actual twine. As long as they didn't get wet or in a tree, they lasted pretty good. Ah, the good old days!

 

[xseler]

My favorite kites were the "Bat Kites". If memory serves this evening, I believe they were made by Gayla.

 

[2door]

I always thought 'box kites' were cool but never had much success flying them. The old triangular Hi-Flyers were always the best.
I have a fabric stunt kite that uses two lines. I haven't flown the thing for years but it's very manuverable and once mastered will do tricks you can't do with one string.

Recently I had ridden one of my bikes to the library and in the adjacent park were two peope flying giant kits. It looked as if it was all they could do to keep the kite from dragging them across the park. These things were huge, eight feet across at least and most of the time the people flying them sat on the ground with their feet propped against stakes they'd driven in the grass. At my weight, I'd end up in the nearby lake, or maybe Wyoming.

Tom

 

[Otero]

We used to get the rolled up stick kites for a dime at the corner candy
store. If you didn't have dime, you notched the ends of 2 stick and made one
with glue and news paper. There were always the latest headlines hanging
a a neighborhood tree come spring.

 

[CTripps]

I used to fly twin-line stunt kites with my Grandad on the waterfront in Toronto.. Mine was red, about 3' from center line to wing tip (close to 6' tip-to-tip) with a (blue) center tail aboutn 30' long and a pair of slightly shorter tails (20 or 25') off the wingtips.. Used to spend hours looping and 'chasing' seagulls with it... Somewhere here I still have my winder/spool of single line cord, I think I have about 500' wrapped on it.. Hmm.. now I feel the need to get out and fly a kite.

 

[fasteddy]

One day someone told this guy to go fly a kite. He did. He lives north of where I do and near where CTripps does. Put it on full screen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=E69flRylQRo

Steve.

 

[Allen_Wrench]

We used to get the rolled up stick kites for a dime at the corner candy
store. If you didn't have dime, you notched the ends of 2 stick and made one
with glue and news paper. There were always the latest headlines hanging
a a neighborhood tree come spring.

*sniff* Memories. I remember making newspaper kites in cub scouts and, having payed close attention then, many times after. The hardware store, Connely's, was a long bike ride away but they had the best strips of wood. Spruce I think it was. And I would swear the newspapers were bigger and a bit thicker back then. You could make a really grand kite with the comics section and pocket change.
Hmmm...maybe it'll be windy this weekend. Maybe the kids would like to learn something from old dad.

 

[KCvale]

Back in the 70s, in south Florida, we used to play a game called, 'Find the Airport'. Each contestant was given a set of instructions that, if you followed them precisely, would take you to a particular little field.

I have worked from home my sons entire life and when he was in grade school I used to set up treasure hunts around the house and property for him.

If I recall it started with an Easter egg hunt when he was like 8 or so.
I got a bunch of those plastic easter eggs and his easter basket had just 1 egg in it.

Inside was clue to find the next egg, for example 'Look in place you should put your dirty clothes' and the next egg was buried in his dirty clothes hamper.

That next clue might be 'Look where you might find solid water' and that egg was in the freezer with the next clue.

4 or 5 of those that eventually led to his real candy laden easter basket usually in a closet or something so he didn't inadvertently find it.

As he got older he got wiser to where the 'prize' might be and go look there first so I had to make it more complex.

I don't remember the birthday, 14th maybe, I spend an entire day setting up an elaborate 14 step treasure hunt and it started with a birthday present, a small box with a compass and the first clue.

It took him less than 1/2 hour to find the X-box in the car truck despite all my all false eggs that said simply said 'Not Here, Look elsewhere''

As of 2 months ago he is a 23 year unemployed junkie con on parole living in our house sponging off of us with next to zero respect or household help.

He has a $3K check coming from my dad's estate.
His birthday is in 3 weeks.

If I can get my way with my wife I am going to take that envelope and create the most elaborate treasure hunt I can spanning the whole city with clues at places like employment centers, drug rehab and meeting places, a police station, businesses hiring, and finally ending up at an apartment complex he can afford with a job.

In short, a compass, map or GPS won't guide your direction in life, but darn handy to get from one place to another geographically and my goal is to move my son back out of my geographically located home!

 

[CTripps]

*sniff* Memories. I remember making newspaper kites in cub scouts and, having payed close attention then, many times after. The hardware store, Connely's, was a long bike ride away but they had the best strips of wood. Spruce I think it was. And I would swear the newspapers were bigger and a bit thicker back then. You could make a really grand kite with the comics section and pocket change.
Hmmm...maybe it'll be windy this weekend. Maybe the kids would like to learn something from old dad.

That is a fantastic idea!

 

[AssembleThis]

lol did the same thing lol wow would we go through cards and balloons lololol

 

[Buzzard]

Back in the mid 80s a buddy and I were scrounging in a military surplus store and found 2 long boxes US Navy Kite printed on the box. The guy at the store let us open them up and take a look. They were a diamond shape kite measured about 6x8 with parachute material sewed and seamed with aluminum cross bars. Asked the guy what the Navy did with them he said he thought they flew them off ships for target practice. We bought them for $10 each. We set them up thought we'd try to fly one. We didn't know what to use for cord because these kites weighed about 3-4 lbs. We ended up using hay bailer twine we knew it was pretty tough stuff. We took it out into the field and tried to get it airborne but there wasn't enough wind and we damn near broke it up trying to get it up. We knew we had to try something different so we loaded the string on an old garden hose reel and C clamped it to the tail gate on the pick up. Went back out to the field for another attempt the wind came up about 35mph we knew it might get dark before we could get it airborne so we installed 2 bike strobe lights. Let out about 50yds of cord, 2 guys holding the kite one guy on the back of the pick up and a driver at about 15 mph it caught air and up she went. Let out more line we had a flier. It was getting dark so we decided to keep it up all night if the wind would hold it. You could see those lights up about 1000 ft or more and the cord was like a fiddle string. We kept her up there, about 1:30-2:00 am when we got visitors from the air force base they said they had calls of a stationary flying object and they picked it up on radar. Told us to get the thing down or we were all going to jail for no permits bla bla bla. So we reeled it in and we never flew it after that.
buzzard

 

[2door]

So, Larry, what did you guys do with those Navy kites? They're probably collector items today, worth more than $10.


Back in the 70s I was big into radio control airplanes. I found some smoke generators used by the HVAC industry to trace air duct flow. They make a lot of dense, grey smoke. They looked like giant firecrackers, about six inches long and one inch in diameter. I rigged one onto a bomb drop mechanism on one of my planes and lit the fuse and took off. It really worked well; made great smoke trails in the sky. The one I used was supposed to make smoke for five minutes. I watched the time and decided to jettison the thing before I landed the plane. Unfortunately it fell off into a parking lot of Florida International University, which bordered our flying field.

The problem was that it kept making smoke after it hit the ground. And it kept making smoke long after the supposed five minutes.

It didn't take long. Here comes the university security guys along with a Dade county sheriff wanting to know "who was dropping incendiary devices on university property".
We all played dumb and said it must have been some kids we saw in the field next to their parking lot. I don't think they believed us but they went away.
I never dropped another one.

Had that been today I'm sure 'Homeland Security' would be involved. I'd have been guilty of a federal offense and of being a terrorist.

Tom

 

[Otero]

In the mid-60s a bunch of us kids belonged to the National Association
of rocketry. (chptr. X) We flew out of an open field not terribly far from
a military airfield. Our rockets had an ejection charge that would pop
the nose cone off to open the recovery chute. Most of us were airforce
brats. Just to keep the guys in the tower on their toes, we used to put
shredded aluminum foil into the tubes atop the charge on our last launch
of the day. On radar that looked like a herd of UFOs.

 

[2door]

Getting old just sucks.
I just got a call from an old friend to tell me that another old friend had checked out. Pancreatic cancer took him, two months after his diagnoses.

He was four years younger than me. During the conversation I learned that another friend, an old girlfriend actually had passed a year ago. I didn't know about her. We were a thing, before I met my wife. Now, she's gone too.

I feel like I'm dodging bullets here. Too many old friends are just, going away.
I remember a comedy routine by Bill Cosby where he talked about his grand dad reading the obituaries and saying, "well, guess who died yesterday". It was funny back then. Now, it isn't so humorous. This just sucks.

Tom

 

[Allen_Wrench]

It does suck Tom. I have people waiting for me on the other side too. A couple of them are a former fiance and my first child. Nothing on Earth is forever. (I know, that probably doesn't help much.) All we can do is, if we really appreciate someone or like them as a friend and care about them a lot, don't wait to tell them. Say what you gotta say when you have the chance.
I waited a couple times. Still hurts.

 

[Mike B]

Bummer dude. Yup, sucks.

I put Pops inna ground last month. He outlived Ma by 7 years. My wife died 3.5 years ago. WTF is up with this stuff? The women are supposed to outlive us. They are better adapted to handling this stuff too.

But Pops was 92 and I kept him out of the "home" for all but the last 6 months. We had a good time together. He is with Ma now and I'm here all by myself.

But at least I'm gonna be retired at the end of the month. I can't work anymore. Not gonna spend anymore time doing stuff that other people want me to do, just gonna do what I wanna do.

It's just me now everyone else is dead.

 

[2door]

Thanks, Allen. I think I'm going to spend some time on the phone in the next few days and catch up with some of those who mean something to me but who I've lost touch with for whatever reason. Today's news just sort of hit me hard. Bob and I had been very close back some years ago, shared a lot of time together and I haven't talked to him in two years. Now it's too late. Rats!

Take the time, guys. Pick up the phone or make a drive and connect with some of those who might not be around if you wait. I'm really sad at this latest event. It just doesn't seem fair.

Tom