On the Road Again or “Old Yeller” and Occam’s Razor

I am not dreadfully mechanically gifted. I got by repairing farm machinery for 40 years on basic common sense, a lot of luck, and a large vocabulary of curse words! But when it comes to car engines, I am totally clueless. And sadly, I generally have to drive older cars. Fortunately, here in the late innings, I have two grandsons who are pretty gifted mechanics.

In June of 2023, I bought a 2000 Xterra SE. Grandson #2 found it on Facebook and recommended that I buy it. It was love at first sight – even though I would have never considered buying a bright, canary yellow car! The car had only had 2 owners and was in immaculate condition, inside and out. The young man from whom I bought it had received it as a 16th birthday present and had taken very good care of it. The love affair was sealed when I realized I paid about $1,500 under book for it! The painful, bright yellow didn’t look so bad after all!

So “Old Yeller” and I spent the summer on the back roads of Western Pennsylvania, running errands, driving some Amish friends around, and enjoying summer. I was pleased as punch with “Old Yeller”. I thought it was the start of a beautiful relationship.

One evening early in October, about 40 miles from home, when I went to start her, she was idling rough and couldn’t generate enough power to move more than a few feet. I finally got “Old Yeller” to a safe place and called Triple A. I figured Grandson #2 could “pull a code” and get me back on the road.

Grandson #2 pulled a PO325 knock sensor code. Some research and shopping led us to a sensor that could be mounted on the firewall, eliminating a day’s labor required to replace the original. All done – no improvement – same damn code. He tried everything that he could think of and got disgusted. I was very proud of him when he said, “Grandpa, I just can’t figure it out.”

It takes a pretty big man to accept his limitations and Grandson #2 is becoming quite a man!

So, following Grandson #2’s capitulation, the boys towed the car to the more modern of our small town’s garages. I left it there in the fall of 2023 (with instructions to “take a look at it when you have a chance”). I’m easy.

Fall faded into winter, and winter finally gave way to spring 2024. “Old Yeller” sat there on one flat tire, month after month (maybe not a good omen!). I was recovering from ankle fusion surgery and wasn’t too amped up about getting her back on the road. Trout season opened, graduation came and went, fireworks celebrated Independence Day – like Little Boy Blue’s toys, “Old Yeller” sat “in the same old place, Awaiting the touch of a little hand, the smile of a little face.”

“The touch of a little hand”. Sometime as summer began to drift off, the garageman had a chance to look at “Old Yeller”. Following the computer prompts, he decided that “Old Yeller” needed a new computer, and he wanted no part of it. He also suggested that his electronic gizmo was suggesting a grounding issue. As he didn’t charge me for storage or labor – I was OK with him not wanting to go further. Like I said before. I’m easy.

So, I had the Grandsons drag poor “Old Yeller” down to the less modern of our small town garages. Left her there with basically the same instructions – “the other guy says it’s the computer” – “when you get a chance, mess with it.” So, I bought a computer for her (30 day fully refundable, I was born at night, but not last night). Guy replaced the computer – no change, rough idle, no power - PO325 code. I returned it and got my money back. The boys dragged “Old Yeller” back to Grandson’s place and time kept moving on.

I kept thinking about the “grounding issue” that the first mechanic mentioned. Xterra forums on the Internet repeatedly suggested checking and improving all of the grounds on the vehicle. As I said at the start, I’m not mechanically gifted and this seemed like a daunting task. But a chance encounter with a half-drunk, old guy led to a possible solution.

This fellow suggested running a new ground to a tight clean place on the frame. Simple, elegant, logical – I wondered why we hadn’t thought about this earlier.

As the winter of ’24 drifted toward the spring of ’25, I decided that we’d try one last round of “fixes” and then sell her if we couldn’t make her run. I challenged Grandson #2 to wire a new ground. If that didn’t work, we’d try a new distributor. And if that didn’t work – we’d give up.

There comes a point in time where the wise man has to admit that he has to give up.

One rainy, cold day in late winter, Grandson #2 pushed “Old Yeller” into the shop again and started tinkering. While he was running the new, heavy-duty ground, he decided to pull a spark plug – basically just to have something to do. And there it was – a totally worn out, about 20,000 miles over due for replacement, worn out spark plug.

A new set of plugs and wires, a thorough cleaning of the distributor cap, and a new air filter – the old one was so bad it had folded up and was letting unfiltered air through – and “Old Yeller” is finally running! Grandson #2 has driven 2 tanks of gas through her on back roads without her missing a beat!  A new set of tires and we’re off into summer!

The moral of the story is this: You can’t totally rely on computers and technology, you have to rely on common sense, too. Or, maybe there are several morals to this story. Another one might be; you can’t judge a book by the cover (or, the car by its exterior). “Take care of the little things and the big things will take car of themselves.” And maybe “Occam’s Razor” comes into play; “when faced with multiple explanations for a phenomenon, the simplest explanation is likely the correct one.” (Or, simple is always good!)  Whichever comes closest to the reality, I really appreciate Grandson #2’s hard work and creativity and I hope you’ve enjoyed the story!

But, I really do wonder why neither garage man thought to look at the sparkplugs?

There was the sheep killing Red Dog – and then there was Nothing

 

We moved to that hilltop farm northwest of Charlottesville, Virginia in November of 1955. Now, of course, I don’t remember that. I was only 2 and a half years old at the time, and the prodigious mental powers that have propelled me through life were extremely nascent in 1955.  (I’ll call “BS” first. There may be some small debate as to those prodigious mental powers, but my memory back in 1955 wasn’t much better than it is now – and it has not improved one little bit since!)

But there are some things that a man remembers – no matter how flawed his memory is – his first love, a particularly pretty sunset, his first car, shooting his first gun, the sun rising over the Canadian prairie on the morning of September 11, 2001. . . And one of the things that I remember, as clear as if it was this morning, was life with “that sheep killing red dog”.

Dad rescued Red Dog shortly after we moved to Charlottesville. As I remember the story. Red Dog was a stray, running the streets in town, who had been trained to terrorize blacks. In the segregated South, certain people trained their dogs to chase and attack black people. Sometimes, some of these dogs became so vicious that they had to be put down. Dad brought the dog home and for all the years that he was with us, Red Dog never showed any aggression toward anyone.

Back in those days, at least in Virginia, there were 2 “County Agents” – agricultural advisors from Virginia Tech agriculture college - in every county. Due to segregation there had to be a “white county agent” and a “Negro county agent”. Dad developed a very strong working relationship with Mr. Butler, the “Negro county agent” in Albemarle County. They worked together to improve the hog management skills of the Negro farmers. Dad thought that improving the farm profits of the black farmers was an important step in improving things in the area. Mr. Butler would take help from any source to help his people. Mr. Butler was a frequent visitor at the farm – and I have snips of memories of Dad and Mr. Butler sitting in the shade in the yard with Red Dog laying down between them. Red Dog wasn’t any more of a “white dog” than I am a ballerina! It was a bad rap, but it got Red Dog his “forever” home – as the cliché is today. I’ve wondered sometimes if Red Dog’s owner conned Dad into “rescuing” the dog. Being a “damn Yankee”, that Gerow fella wound be an easy mark for saving Negroes from a “white dog.” Whatever the real story, Red Dog was a perfect fit for us.

So, Red Dog plays into all of my memories of the early years on that hilltop farm.  He was a big, gentle, loyal dog. He loved Mom and was very protective of us kids. He stayed with us kids when we left the yard to play in barnyard, the orchard, and the close in pastures. There were strict limits to how far we were allowed to go away from the house. I remember Mom walking us around the boundaries of the yard to show us where we could play first. Our first outside world was bounded by the chicken house and out-buildings to the east, the white board fence to the north, the orchard fence to the west, and the tractor road and garden to the south. We could play there – anytime – as long as we told Mom that we were outdoors. Going outside those boundaries would have resulted in Mom using the wooden spoon on us and then Dad giving us a lecture.

The lecture was a helluva lot worse than the wooden spoon! The wooden spoon stung, but the lecture always left all 3 of us in tears. Dad’s lectures always ended with, “Now, go apologize to your Mother.” The Man was good!

But I’ve wandered off down a different trail here.

We hadn’t had Red Dog too long when the Game Warden, Grayson Johnson, came to the house.  He told Mom that somebody had reported a big red dog chasing and killing sheep on the Wingfield place.

Mom told him that it couldn’t be our dog, that he was always in sight of the house and that he was too old to chase sheep. Things didn’t get out of hand until Grayson Johnson said something about taking the dog. Then, I guess, all hell broke loose. Mom started crying and big sister lost control of little brother and me and the 2 of us attacked the Game Warden! I guess that we threw our selves at his legs and were hitting him and trying to bite him – remember now, we were probably 3 and 4 years old. Finally, Grayson Johnson started to back away and the end of the conversation was, “Mrs. Gerow, I wouldn’t care if there was a dead sheep right over there! Ain’ no way I’m messing with your damn dog!”

Now, to fully understand this, there’s a couple things that you need to know. At the time this happened, Red Dog was an old dog. Dad would put him out at night when he went to bed – 10ish or so, and the dog was always in the yard when Dad would go to the barn at 5 in the morning. The pastures at the Wingfield place were almost 3 miles away through some of the roughest, steepest country in the county, covered with some of the thickest trashiest woods you’ve ever seen. There wasn’t any way that old dog could have trekked to Wingfields, run down a flock of sheep, killed some, and made it home in time to meet Dad at 5 in the morning. He never had blood on him and never looked like he traveled that rough country at night. He didn’t kill sheep, but that became the joke – “that sheep killin’ red dog”.

The story doesn’t end there, though. About a dozen years later, we were at church one Sunday, when Mom introduced me to a newcomer to the church. It was the former Game Warden, Grayson Johnson! As we shook hands, he looked at me and said, “You aren’t gonna try to bite me again, are you?”

Nothing lasts forever. As John Knowles wrote in “A Separate Peace”, “Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence.” We don’t know that when we’re children. Children think that whatever is happening is the way things are always going to be. I’m not sure that we accept the finality of things in one big learning step. Maybe we “learn” it once, but only accept it in steps through time as different parts of our lives end. Thinking back on those endless summer days of childhood – sunlight and shade in the yard, cows grazing the tall grass on the hills, Mom and Dad – I thought they would never end. But, there came a time when no cows grazed the hills and there came a winter when Red Dog started having trouble with his hips and shoulders. I don’t remember how it started, but in my memory, by summer the dog couldn’t get up without help. He’d go outside of the yard fence and then not be able to get back until we could find him and help him to his feet. Mom was terrified that he’d go off, get down, and die alone. Mom and Dad made the tough decision to put the old dog down.

Of course, I don’t remember, but I’d like to think that Red Dog left this world surrounded by his people and I have no doubt, that he was waiting at the Pearly Gate when Mom got there.

“Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence,”, not even the grief of losing a great dog. And life on the hilltop farm went on, different without Red Dog, but it went on.
High summer was coming, and Dad was gearing up for the barley and wheat harvest. Dad hired one of his hunting buddies to combine the grain with his bigger, self-propelled combine. Now, Pete Walker was a Virginia back country original. He did a little “shirt-tail” farming in the low country east of Charlottesville. He was a good plumber and electrician when he wasn’t in the woods. Pete and his wife lived almost off the grid, long before it was cool.

They lived in a big, old plantation house that hadn’t seen any paint and few repairs since before Lee surrendered to Grant. The outbuildings around the house were in various stages of collapse and chock full of machines, parts of machine, cars in various stages of construction – and deconstruction, a few sows and piglets, and the ubiquitous flock of feral chickens. The only orderly things at Pete’s place were the huge garden, and the range marking stakes reaching out from the back porch to the woods a quarter mile away. Pete’s wife Mary used these for shooting deer from the back porch. These folks lived off the land and “them dam’ deer keep eating the garden”! But Pete Walker had one heck of a bird dog! If there was a turkey within a day’s walk, that dog would find it. My Dad and Pete Walker walked many miles following that dog through the Louisa County woods. I’m not wandering down another rabbit trail of memory here, nor butting my head against the sky, Pete Walker and his bird dog are an important part of this story.

Shortly after we sent Red Dog home, Pete Walker showed up one morning to service the combine before going to the field. He rolled into the barnyard in his well – used Nash Metropolitan. He called kid brother Jeff and me over to the car. He opened the door and handed us a white puppy with a black ear and a couple of black spots. This odd-looking puppy was out of his incredible bird dog.

“Here,” he said, “he mightn’t come on to be a bird dog, but he’ll sure as hell be a good dog for you boys!” he started up the Nash, and rattled off to the field, leaving us with a puppy that we weren’t expecting. After licking our faces and waging his whole body at having us, he squirmed and wiggled until we set him down. He sniffed around. Learned his first lesson about barn cats. Lapped up a little of the cat’s milk and ran back to us with that sideways run that puppies do. Jeff and I headed to the house with the puppy trying mightily to keep up with us. We had to pick him up to carry him into the house – he couldn’t make the steps by himself. Mom was sitting at the dining room table when we burst through the door.

“Mama! Mama!” we yelped, “Pete Walker just gave us a dog!” We set the puppy on Mom’s lap and he proceeded to do all the things that puppies do to make us fall in love with them, licking at her hands and face, snuggling up close, and wagging his tail a mile a minute. Mom burst into tears and said, “That’s not a dog – that’s nothing!” And so, it was that Nothing Dog got his name, his own “pack”, and his first “for-ever” home.

And so it was that Nothing became part of the ever changing tapestry of the Gerow family. He never really replaced Red Dog; he made his own very unique place in our lives. The “sheep killin’ red dog” and Nothing were as different as night and day, but each was loyal, fiercely protective, and a source of unending, unquestioning love and devotion. Maybe there are some of the things that we are supposed to learn from dogs – that we each have an endless capacity to love, that no two objects of our love are ever exactly the same, and we shouldn’t try to replace a lost love, but rather we should build on those earlier experiences.

We will leave that hilltop farm of my long ago childhood – for now. If you’re out that way, drop by and set a spell. It doesn’t take long to make coffee and I’m sure there will be stories yet to tell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No Fiscal Responsibility At All

 Now that the House of Representatives has passed a “debt limit” bill and the Senate has followed suit, maybe we will get to see how badly skewered we are again. For all the absurd talk about “defaulting on debt payments” and the collapse of society as we know it, there never was any doubt that the spending addicted politicians would do whatever necessary to keep the federal spending hydrant gushing away.

Gotta keep trying to buy those votes don’t you know!

There is a dark, twisted irony to the title of this farcical piece of legislation – “The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023.” The only factual thing in the title is the year 2023. The is nothing “fiscally responsible” in this wad of smoke and mirrors. The first failure of this monstrosity is that it increases how much money the Government can borrow. It is just like giving a junkie another needle. You know, and I know, that by the time the next president is inaugurated, the nation will be right back where we are now – facing a “crisis” of about “defaulting on debt payments” and the collapse of society as we know it. The only “fiscally responsible” way to deal with the debt ceiling would be NOT to increase it and force this and all future administrations to become much better stewards of our money

I start laughing when I hear the Republicans talking about this being the biggest “spending cut” in history. You know, and I know, that the federal government will spend more in 2024 than they will here in 2023. I’ll bet a steak dinner on it. Oh! The Democrats will whine and cry at the “draconian cuts”, but the dirty little secret in “wretched hive of scum and villainy” is that if they spend less next year than they wanted to, it is called a “cut” and they will use that “cut” to bash the hapless Republicans. 

There will be no debt relief in this bill and no real cut in spending. The American people get sold a bill of goods and the politicians keep wasting and spending this country into ruin.

The funniest thing that the Republicans are trying to slip past us is that they have stopped Ol’ Sleepy Joe from hiring those 85,000 IRS agents. I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night and Ol’ Sleepy Joe will have every damn one of his armed “Storm Troopers” – and Lord have mercy on those reprehensible liberty loving Americans! Those 85,000 gun toting thugs are NOT going to be chasing the billionaires – they are going to chasing us.

So the political games go on in the nation’s capital and nothing changes – government will continue to borrow and spend and lie about their oh! so virtuous “patriotic” efforts. Don’t let the smoke and mirrors fool you folks! No matter how they spin it – they all got what they want and you and I, our children, and their children will pay dearly before it is all over.

Welcome!

For more than 10 years I wrote a column in our small hometown newspaper. It was a popular column, sharing my iconoclastic, somewhat wry, view of local happenings, politics, and world events. I had only written for technical journals before and in the “Near Common Sense” column, I found my “writer’s voice.” The dictionary defines “writer’s voice” as “the way the writer’s personality comes through on the page, via everything from word choice and sentence structure to tone and punctuation.”  Like all other writers. my “voice” was uniquely mine – flavored by an Appalachian childhood, many, many great books, some formal education, and a lifetime of listening.

Maybe more important than finding my “writer’s voice” through the column, I found an identity. Before the column, I was a man in his 40’s with a pretty long, depressing record of setbacks. I had lost my kids, 2 wives, and the farm. A work injury messed up my back and I was learning about physical limitations. I was a rudderless ship drifting wherever the wind blew me. You may have heard of “a man without a country”, or “a rebel without a cause”, I was a “man without a clue” as to who I was.

I became the “guy who wrote that column”. People here in the Redbank Valley knew me – or at least the knew the writer. I found an identity that I was comfortable with. And there was a side benefit to this – I became another one of our small town “characters”. Now every small town has 1 or 2 town characters; but New Bethlehem and the Redbank Valley has a whole bunch of them! They are locally famous (or infamous) simply because of who they are. They are the jokesters and the butt of jokes. They add flavor and color to small towns across the country. Some are funny. Some are sad. But they all add to the very unique tapestry of each small town’s life. They are unique, molded by the individual genetics, life experiences, and the small towns that they call home. The town characters and their small town become intricately entwined.

For the first time in my life, I had a “hometown”.

The local paper and I parted ways in 2009 after the rather “progressive” publisher took acceptance to my suggestion that Moslems were incompatible with the American way of life and that they should not be welcomed. My publisher considered this as promoting violence – I saw it as common sense. With the perspective of time, I might say that it was even prescient. I have not apologized for the words. They were the truth as I saw it then. I will take my chances before the Throne on Judgement Day.

Or, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, “don’t ask me nothin’ ‘bout nothin’, I just might tell you the truth!”

I tried to write some after that, but it simply would not work. The words that once flowed so easily were forced. The wry humor was gone, replaced with angry frustration. There was not any joy in doing the thing that had defined me for so long. It was not that the words, nor the talent, that was gone. It was the “voice” that was gone.

It came to me in the wee hours of this morning, waiting for sleep to return, that the reason that the “writer’s voice” from the Near Common Sense era was gone, was because the man who used it was gone. Oh! John Gerow is still alive and well and haunting the Redbank Valley, but he is a different man than the man who penned that long ago column. 14 years of living has wrought some profound changes in the man I used to be. Fourteen years of relocating, changing jobs, living in different towns, being saved, 4 heart attacks and a near fatal bleeding ulcer, adapting to new physical limitations, and a great granddaughter should bring profound changes to one’s life. If they do not, one must be only partially aware. I will never be content with my writing again as long as I am trying to write in the voice of a man long gone. I have to rediscover the writer in me again and free his voice\.

So, let us see where his experiment leads us. In the late innings here, there are stories yet to tell, random thoughts to be shared and some questions to be posed. Is there still the magic of laughter, memories, and thoughts in the words? Can the writer find his voice again? Stick around and find out.

Welcome to “Just a Thought or Two”.