Great hat, by the way. All the way from Bermuda, from The Hog Penny. Did I mention the hat before? If not, wifey bought it for me one night in Hamilton, Bermuda, in The Hog Penny. The Hog Penny allegedly being the model for The Bull & Finch, which in turn, is said to be the model for that great TV show, Cheers.
The hat might've been the cheapest thing on the menu. OK, the cheapest "entree," literally, was a hamburger. That burger was going for $17 American.
Just last weekend we bumped into a guy wearing Hog Penny hat. He was just back from Bermuda, he was also directing traffic in Tunkhannock as folks parked for
the shuttle to the train, the train from Tunkhannock to Jim Thorpe. It was a great trip and I'll have to write some about it soon.This is my home office. I now have two offices, one here, one at work. Funny thing, I never really had an office until I got my present job with the SPCA. Trust me, my office there, at the shelter, is the very definition of modest. I've jazzed it up a bit with personal things, photos, plaques, and the like, but modest it is.
I once had a visitor who was clearly put off by there being animal hair on a chair in my office. The hair was there because a dog had been sitting in the chair moments before. That dog would be Chloe. Chloe has become pretty much the shelter mascot. She's a sweetheart of a Pug. If the hairs weren't enough, Chloe herself popped in while my visitor's face was expressing disdain and contempt for the hair on the chair. Chloe did what she did best; she jumped into the visitor's lap. In turn, visitor-person damned near wet their pants. To say that I was puzzled, and annoyed, is understatement. What in hell do people expect in an animal shelter?
In TV, few have offices, at least in the news department, which is always the largest department at a TV station. Instead, most everyone in sales and administration has an office. Some very low in the pecking order have very nice offices, that's if you work in a department other than news. It's one of the many oddities of the broadcasting business. Those who are the very "face of the station" get lesser treatment than those who push papers around every day.
It was about the same in radio. In my last radio job, at the #1 station in this market, I shared a desk with three other guys and had one(1)drawer in a filing cabinet to stow my gear. Screwed up? Yeah, beyond belief.
Again, this is a pointless post. If you're expecting little, you've come to the right place.
Then there's the heat. Hot is one thing, what we've had the last couple days is close to unbearable, or is it me? Sure, it could easily be me. I do hear others squawking about it, so maybe it's not just me.
Here's a question; where do kids go during the summer months? Really, where do they go? I had this conversation with one of our neighbors within the last couple weeks, she is the mother of four, and she wonders the same thing. I can only assume kids spend way too much time hunkered in front of a keyboard, or too much time playing games, rather than go out and hang around. Another neighbor mentioned that playgrounds are largely deserted nowadays. Often enough, I hear that public pools are likewise empty.
We hung out a lot in summer.
Of course, hanging out was not without its share of complaints from parents. Mine weren't fond of me hanging on Al's Corner most of June, July, and August during at least a few of my adolescent years. Al's Corner was called such because Al had a store there. Al was a nice guy. Idiot kids like me came to appreciate Al as we got older. Quite a few of us came back to Al's Corner to say hello when we were in our 20s and 30s. Al liked that, you could tell. He remember most all of us by name.
The Zummo Brothers were like that, too. Parents didn't seem to mind you goofing off at Zummo's, maybe because it wasn't on a corner, it was in the middle of a block. Maybe moms and pops were OK with it because it was only feet from our church. You could walk out of mass on Sunday morning and into Zummo's inside of two minutes.
Vince and Tony Zummo ran a small grocery/candy store on one side of the building, and shoe repair shop on the other. Tony was the cobbler, Vince the grocer. Gratefully, and it certainly is a huge measure of respect, Electric City Roasting Company now occupies that building and damn if they don't refer to it as Zummo's Cafe. I like that. The Zummos, all of them and their assorted in-laws, nieces, nephews and children, were a nice bunch of people. Oddly enough, Joe Snedeker's wife is the granddaughter of Tony Zummo.
There were other corners we hung on, none of which tickled my parents any better than Al's. Taking up space on a corner and doing nothing of any worth was not what any respectable parents wanted of their children. It's a phase. You do it. You get over it. It goes away.
The memories, luckily, do not.
Being in your teens and doing nothing on hot and steamy summer nights was fun. In my neighborhood, working-class all the way, we had curfews. In an adjoining neighborhood, a little more upscale, most kids did not, they did what they wanted until they wanted. On balance, and through the magic looking-glass of more years than I want to admit, I will say that us working-class dufuses turned out pretty good.
Like mentioned above, this is pretty much a pointless post. It's also pretty much over for now. I do have to tell you about that train trip.
