21 May 09 08:55, Roger Nelson wrote to Roy Witt:

 RW>> C4 attached to a cell phone should do it. :o)

 RN> Yes, it would, but then there'd be no more Roy or the back end of the
 RN> 18-wheeler and the collateral damage would depend on the amount of
 RN> nearby traffic.

Not that much C4! It's like Brylcream, a little dab'l do ya...

 RW>> That's too bad. He would probably have wanted you to be there.

 RN> I think he's still upset I couldn't fly there for his graduation.
 RN> His mother couldn't go, either, but sons are more likely to be upset
 RN> with their fathers than mothers.  After all that kid has been through
 RN> in Grenada and Beirut and Israel and then rotating back to the
 RN> states, you'd think he'd be over it. Funny how he doesn't stop to
 RN> realize how I must have felt.

There's your opening shot to get it straightened out. Son, I apologize for
not being able to make your graduation, but let's let by-gones be by-gones
and get over it.

 RW>> When SD was just a small Navy town, it was a great place to live. I
 RW>> loved every minute of it. Then big industry came to town and it grew
 RW>> bigger.

 RN> Aside from the Navy, I would have thought the biggest industries
 RN> there were the Padres and Chargers.  Not having been there, that's
 RN> the mental image I had of SD.

Truth be told, many San Diegans would say 'good riddance' if they ever
left town. There are better things than that in SD. Scripps Institute of
Oceanography is a small college that has always held my interest. They've
got a great salt-water aquarium that's right on the beach. I used to get
super filtered salt water for my aquarium there. In by-gone days, there
was the El Cajon Speedway, a 3/8s mile oval race track, the Carlsbad Drag
Strip, which died from the effects of industrial expansionism, the many
beaches one can swim or surf at, the many, many car shows throughout the
year all over the county. Heck, one weekend we spent a night and half the
day camping in the mountains and then the afternoon at the beach. When
you're hard up for something to do in SD, yeah, you can take in a ball
game, there you can get a nap.

 RW>> Most of that industry left and the Medical Field moved in and that's
 RW>> when it got to be very crowded. I used to live in Clairemont and
 RW>> drove to work at Solar on the bay front using old highway 101 (about
 RW>> 15 miles). It was a busy drive, but not as busy as it was after they
 RW>> built I-5, a 4 lane, each way, freeway.

 RN> When I lived in Metairie (Jefferson Parish), it was a 14 mile drive
 RN> into N.O. to my job.  Easy going in the morning, but hectic after
 RN> work because of the bottleneck at I-610 where 4 lanes coming off the
 RN> expressway from N.O. became 2 lanes with merging traffic to our right
 RN> from the east!  I'm sure I wasn't alone while sitting at a dead stop
 RN> to dead-slow-ahead in my car wishing I could get my hands on the
 RN> people who designed that particular section of roadway, which turned
 RN> into I-10 west.  It was a nightmare after
 RN> 17:00 hours. And to top that off, the first black mayor of the city
 RN> proposed an extra tax on people who worked in N.O., but lived out of
 RN> town. It failed.

BTW, so did the 5 tax increase propositions in California on Tuesday. What
a screwed up state.

 RW>> Six months from now should cover that.

 RN> It should.  Also, I should have known SOMETHING was different Monday
 RN> morning when I had a problem getting out of bed because the lumbar
 RN> area of my back really hurt and my knees were killing me.  Those
 RN> three areas are better weather forecasters than any meteorologist.

That could also indicate a need for more excercise so you can continue
bowling.

 RW>> Actually, it's been brewing for decades. If GM brought it upon
 RW>> themselves, they only had to get rid of the unions to get out of it
 RW>> before this.

 RN> That's one of the reasons I would not work in a dealership with their
 RN> car lines ever again.  As early as 1980, I told management at the
 RN> Chevy dealership I worked in Houma that they (GM) were pricing
 RN> themselves out of business.  The guys at the top there didn't seem to
 RN> care.  They may be caring right about now, but I think what will
 RN> happen is that they'll drop the American car line and go with a
 RN> Japanese or other car product.

In spite of the O'bama stupidness, Texans aren't going to give up their
trucks very soon. What's even more interesting is that the TX legislature
wanted to raise the gas tax so they can build more and better roads. What
they ended up doing is giving cities/counties the power to raise the gas
tax in their area, which won't affect the entire state. Now, if they'd put
that on the ballot as proposition, people driving these so-called crowded
roads in Dallas can vote them in or not. Vote them in and you get better
roads, vote them out and you drive the same old roads until they become
dirt again.

 RW>> RN> You'll have to get in line, podnuh.  (-:[

 RW>> I hate bloody seconds. :o)

 RN> Who does?  Wait!  Don't answer that!  (-:

:o)

 RW>> I recall a Texas Ranger shaking his fist at me, from across the
 RW>> freeway with no access for miles from his side to mine. :o)

 RN> I didn't think the Rangers bothered with traffic, but a cop is a cop,
 RN> I suppose.

That was then, today, there's an agency like California's Highway Patrol
called the DPS (Department of Public Safety) with black, unmarked cars
patroling the roads. Some of them have a Texas star on the door, but it's
faint.

 RW>> I guess he never heard of Motorola.

 RN> The ones here did.  They used their Motorolas to setup a roadblock
 RN> for me and got me near where Jayne Mansfield was killed.  That's when
 RN> had I souped up my '57 Bel Air.  Funny I can't remember what the fine
 RN> was or if there was one.  I think we got out of it somehow.  Maybe it
 RN> was the disbelief on the trooper's face when I told him we were going
 RN> about 137MPH (clocked). With drum brakes of the time, would you
 RN> hazard a guess how far I went before coming to a stop?  Keep in mind
 RN> I wasn't naive enough to stand on the brake pedal, but pumped it.

Without a power booster those brakes were about as inefficient as dragging
your foot. Back in their day, there were plenty of Tri-5s that ended up
crashing because of them. It's a good thing Chevrolet made a lot of them,
because they'd be as rare as hen's teeth today if they didn't. Just like
57 Fords. (which out-sold Chevy that year)

 RW>> You're not supposed to drink salt water. :o)

 RN> Yeah, I know, the plankton will kill you -- not the saline content.
 RN> I wanted to bring a sample of it home to show my friends and
 RN> coworkers that the Gulf Stream was a different color than the
 RN> Atlantic Ocean.

Isn't the Atlantic is a different color because it's deeper?

 RW>> Funny you should mention P.I. and Florida in one sentence. I just
 RW>> finished reading 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to Private
 RW>> Investigating' by Steven K. Brown, who's firm is based in Orlando, I
 RW>> think.

 RN> Never heard of him, but I have cultivated an intense dislike for
 RN> Florida ever since I've had to drive through it.  If not for the fact
 RN> that my sister lives there, I'd avoid it like the plague.  All
 RN> attempts to get her to move back to Louisiana have failed.

Kinda like my sister and BIL have failed to convince me to move to
Illinois or Wisconsin, so I could suffer the cold with them.

 RN>   She likes it there.  She's been living there for about 50 years (a
 RN> rough estimate) and is now 80 years old, so the only place she will
 RN> be moving to is her final resting place.

Kinda like leaving home after that long.

 RW>> This was one of several downtown street cops. At the time, we had
 RW>> two one way streets of about 8 blocks linked by two one way, one
 RW>> block streets at each end. If you made the sequenced traffic lights
 RW>> on green, you could drive non-stop around that loop (and that was
 RW>> the cruiser hangout for licensed driver-kids in the day). The rest
 RW>> of the city was patroled by squad cars.

 RN> Many of the traffic lights in Houma are that way, but lately they are
 RN> setup to stop you at every one in the sure and certain hope that
 RN> you'll have to stop more frequently for gas.

That's what I think about the stupid traffic lights at two major
intersections here.

 RW>> Ever been pulled over because the cop wanted to admire your new car?

 RN> Just that one time by smokie radio because they couldn't catch me.
 RN> (-:

I out-ran the smokie who was chasing me in my Corvette. He got lost, while
I ended up sitting in his favorite sitting spot.

 RW>> April, 1965, I only had this car two days, a 1965 Malibu SS, 350hp,
 RW>> 327 w/4spd in Glacier Gray (almost a grayish/blue)...Had he waited
 RW>> two more blocks, he could have inspected it in front of the bank,
 RW>> across from the cruise spot at the court house. :o)

 RN> Yeah, IF he knew you were going to end up there.  I've given up
 RN> waiting for the Nova SS to have an engine put in it and the interior
 RN> work done.  I'm now faced with two choices:

Three.

 RN> 1. pay about $1 large to replace the suspension parts on my Mark VIII
 RN> (I should tell you what the local Lincoln dealer's estimate was) and

Too much, but go on.

 RN> 2. buy my ex sil's 2000 Merc Grand Marquis.  The two ex-Lincoln
 RN> mechanics I met earlier in the week told me I'd be better off with
 RN> the Merc.  Ask your friend what he thinks, if you don't mind.

I already have. Last weekend, he ended up driving a customer's 1998 Crown
Vic because he didn't have the part required to get a fix on the turn
signals. I asked him if that Ford CV was the same as the Merc GM and he
said they were almost identical cars, with some minor differences. Both a
good choice, he said.

BTW, my Rodeo is for sale. (3rd choice) A little small for a 6'4" frame,
although a very good vehicle.

                R\%/itt

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