One year ago today: March 25, 2017, on a road to Ona.
Five years ago today: March 25, 2013, at the Fair.
Nine years ago today: March 25, 2009, on coordinated songlists.
Random years ago today: March 25, 2012, money, fish, racehorse.
What you don’t see in the parking lot on Sunday morning. Look at this beauty but don’t ask me the year. I wouldn’t know. The only car I recognize before 1967 is the Mustang, except for the Buick Roadmaster. This truck seems to be in regular usage, as shown on this grocery shopping run. Most people are taken by how small these trucks were. I wish they’d start making something like this again but American car people have long since been using weird criteria to produce and sell junk. By now, there is no good reason they can’t build a car that lasts a lifetime. There are reasons, but I specified “good”. And no, the retirement fund of the auto workers union is not in that category. Why? Because I’d pay $80,000 for a car if would last that long.
Next, Lady Nik on the phone. Aha, I warned people about inflation over the things you actually buy. Like myself, she can leave things to the last minute, but my excuse is that I am really busy all the time. Talking on the phone to the grandkids may be important, but it is does not constitute being busy, sorry. She went out y’day to get a music stand. You know those spindly fold-up ones that fall over top-heavy if you clip on one too many pages. The ones that should cost $12.95. Well gang, it’s $60 these days. She called to see if I had an extra.
I do. It’s one of those old clunkers you’d see at a high school band concert, but I used it for years at Jimbos. Yeah, call it my bingo stand, that’s how all that got paid for. It seems word about this gig has really gotten around, so who knows if there will be a following. What, to show up to hear me flop? That’s unlikely, but this gig has several aspects that are more important to me than apparent. I hope it is the last opening night of my life, for one. I’ve got maybe five good years left and I would like them to be spent doing something I think is important and significant.
Leisure is, I can confirm, the single largest consideration of retirement, but only if your finances are in order. I have never associated doing nothing with relaxing. Here’s my relaxation, the Sunday crossword done in a regular pattern. Y’know, to make it extra challenging. I do an average of three crosswords on a Sunday, nearly an hour’s worth. Today, the overhead was on a channel purportedly giving out retirement advice so I was listening out of the corner of my ear. What a joke. While it is true you should have been looking after your own retirement needs for thirty years before you need it, very few people are in such a position any more.
It’s a fact. If you had been alert you would have seen the government waste all those trillions of your dollars buying votes and giving handouts. Now it is too late to undo that, so I’m not saying grab what you can is the best choice, but the only choice. I’d listen totally if they got a real fire-breather on that TV saying brain up, you ignorant clowns. The only way you are going to get anything back is to take it away from the less deserving. I didn’t say undeserving, but less deserving. Do your homework: $140 billion per year of your tax dollars age wasted educating illegals in their own language instead of English.
Grow the balls to cut off that bull donkey alone, and there’s and extra $2,000 per year for each retiree who paid into the system. There are dozens of such programs that could be cut right now and who knows hoe many hundred more once the ball is rolling. That’s your boomer’s only hope to see more that a few pennies on the system they paid into. They did so brainlessly “because it was the law” and I saw it, because they secretly thought everybody having to pay also was hurting them more. Hence, they had no reason to protest. Now they do.
Empty snapdragon seed casings.
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I mean what I said above. These people will have to take away from others before they have a hope in hell of getting a decent income for what they shelled out. There’s what, 70 million boomers, so they could be a deciding edge if they found a leader. I get a laugh at investment ‘counselors’ who proffer advice that even suggest to people over 50 that is “not to early” (they mean “too late”) to make retirement plans. By contrast, when I hit my planned retirement age, I will begin drawing on solid plans I made and followed up on some 38 years earlier. It wasn’t much, but that’s the money that will pay off. The only thing to fear is rampant inflation and this would be the case no matter how you plan ahead.
I’m saying that if it came to the point where inflation brought things to a halt, I could easily adapt to making extra money without re-entering the job market. What a horrible thing that 2/3 of the pending retirees in this country, when surveyed, consider working until past 70 to be realistic. They mean realistic only in terms of the financial jams they have worked themselves into. Nobody, I think, plans to work at that age. I could see some self-employed people whose time is worth more than anybody they could hire, but not some wage-earner. Not me! Before I’d wake up the morning of my 69th birthday and realize I had another year of alarm clocks and dragging my ass into work, I’d start a band or open a hot dog stand or hire out to Uber or give computer lessons or write a book and if none of that worked, I’d think of something.
The picture? That’s unit 31 in it’s shining glory this morning. Hard to believe that car is nearly 22, innit? Yes, that is the original paint job. And it is due to be parked five times as often as it is now, because Tuesday or so upcoming, I get the red scooter back. No more driving to morning coffee in a station wagon and putting 9,000 miles on the car the first five months I own it. Let’s get back to sanity, one does not need a car to do a single load of laundry. So time for me to smarten up.
ADDENDUM
If you are reading this, then I’m on my way to the gig. The all important gig for me this year. I’ve fronted shows before, but they had a number of qualifications. For instance, they were always venues where I’d performed in some capacity previously. This is the first “hard” gig in the sense that it is totally music arranged by my now 30+ year old theory that the best and most versatile sound for an American small band in the post-80 era is a duo consisting of acoustic and bass. It is the first gig for this band and the first gig where I’ll singing entirely in front of strangers (depending on who shows up). I won’t comment on matters until tomorrow, when I’ve had time to mull things over. But I have no apprehensions.
And should this gig be successful, which has a distinct definition in my parlance, it will be vindication of my duo theory. I’ve mentioned a large portion of the faith I placed in Lady Nik was founded on her willingness to take guitar coaching from me with grace where I got nothing but resistance from male guitarists. Believe me, I was within an ace of pulling the pin on her. But then I recalled what Bryne, the Irish naval engineer said to me, “So basically what you want is a guitar player who will do what he’s told.”
I replied this was exactly the attitude guitar players have toward other musicians, so if he feels that way, he is average. The reality is in my band, the musicianship is shared. That’s as fair as it gets, so if a guitar player feels blunted because he’s equal instead of superior, go figure. Naturally he’ll accuse me of dictating because he’s been knocked of his pedestal. While it is not true Lady Nik only does what I say, that is what will happen tonight. She’s had the double task to learn the new strumming method and learn unfamiliar tunes thus has not arranged anything herself yet. So yes, she will be, as Bryne would put it, playing only what she’s been told.
But, but, but, all I gotta say Mike, Eddie, Ron, Ken, Maria, Darryl, Potsy, Earl, Jim, Randy, Billy-Bill, Martina, JZ, Adrian, Shelly, Jo-Anne, Ray, Pat, Brad, and the 17 other guitar players I’ve been through since I moved to Polk County is: She did what I said and now 11 weeks and 4 days later, she’s in a band and you aren’t. None of you. Neener, neener. Here, let me rub that in a little bit. If it doesn’t sting enough, let me slap it for you.
You’re darn rights this gig is important to me.
The question remains, “How did it go?
Like the crossword answer, I’ll make you come back tomorrow.
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