My parents took my two widowed aunts on a trip around the country in the late 80’s, sort of a bucket list of places my parents had been on their many RV trips. The trip is legendary for a family trip. One of the stops was at Mount Rushmore.

My Aunt Bettye Kate Hall sent me the below post card.

i think it represents the kind of humor both sides of my family loved:

Well, it’s been a while and i need a good rant. So this is for marketeers and the PR experts, those folks who sell a product or cause to just about the entire world, or rather they try to do that.

Folks, i thought you might want to know you ain’t getting to me. In fact, your efforts to sell something nearly always has the reverse effect on me.

i’m sure this will make absolutely no impact on the marketing/PR folks as i am not statistically relevant. i find that very assuring, sort of like having a life and not being a number.

For example, Maureen and i enjoy watching professional golf. Some brilliant marketeer sold the golf media folks, “Playing Through” was a neat and new idea that would sell a lot of product. So while i’m watching golfers play golf, over half the screen becomes a commericial, complete with sound. The golf picture is then so small, i have no idea of what is happening on the course, the golf course. Well, i make a note of all the companies in the commercials and vow never to buy any of their products again.

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And for all of you who must know more than me about selling prescription drugs. i hope you are getting to some docs because you are turning me off. i rely on my doctor to prescribe what i need (oh sorry, the insurance folks now want me to call him primary care). Since i had to have a VA primary care doc to make myself available for the VA services, i now have two. i know which one is my primary doc, but you see, civilians, the veteran administration, and Navy medical are not allowed to talk to each other so i have to double or triple up on my communication. i’m pretty sure it has something to do with money.

But back to these prescription ads. They generally make me nauseous, if not ill. And if you might actually make me think about your ad, that qualifying stuff — i’m sure included to avoid law suits from ambulance chasers — at the end of each commercial snuffs out any attraction your ad might have.

And every time when i see one of those commercials after i turn the sound to mute, i wonder how much money was added to the cost of the prescription.

And who the hell are these folks you have on your commerical…and how much are you paying them to push your product? i can’t imagine anyone afflicted with what your product will supposedly cure would actually try to get your product with all the bad things could happen you reveal at the end.

And once again, if i do have a choice in what prescription i will take it won’t be any i’ve seen or heard or read on these ads.

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And i would be much happier, if all of you folks selling stuff, would just tell me about your product or service, not how bad all the others are, not making me laugh and think it will make me buy it. Or have beautiful people that have no resemblance to me to buy your ad. And i’m damn sure i’m not going to buy it if an admired athlete or movie star is pushing it.

Once upon a time i was a a business development manager for a military contractor. A former employee who had been in my position asked a friend and fellow employee if we were “still selling smoke.” Sadly the answer was yes.

And it seems nearly every product or service is selling smoke. i guess those statistics these folks use in which i’m not relevant it sells their products. Not to me. Sorry. Oh, i enjoy some of the commercials when i fail to mute them or fail to record the program and fast forward through things that make all the sports i watch at least an hour longer than they should be. Some are funny. Some are touching. Some are interesting. But i ain’t buying. Sorry.

Now if you want to add a little box at the bottom of the screen that tells me you are the sponsor and what product or service you have and an objective point as to what it is, and let me watch whatever i’m watching, or listening, or in the case of the internet, reading, then you might have a chance with me.

But i know. i know that isn’t going to happen.

It is sometimes really enjoyable being a grumpy old ranting man who is irrelevant.

Dark clouds, heavy, angry, threatening cast their gloom over the coming dawn: a foreboding of the coming year?

First light, first day of the week, first day of the year. Four score of those years behind me.

i don’t fear that foreboding. In fact, i laugh at it. As bad as the world seems in dealing well with other countries, factions, religions, political parties, any thing different from them, i am beyond that. Those four score years have earned me the right to choose to be beyond. Folks, people i have run across in my life are my concern. i wish to treat them right, equally. And i wish to live well for as long as i can live.

This idea has been percolating for a while. It burst out into the open Christmas Day.

The decorations are down and stored. Christmas is over. Not so with some neighbors. Their choice. i’m ready to move on.

i was introduced to new word on the day after Christmas: Saudade. It is of Portuguese in origin. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament.” i can relate to that. i have always wanted to go to Portugal. Since early on, i have found it intriguing, dark, mysterious, with an understanding of life. Perhaps, this is just an illusion of mine, but i would like to find out.

The word fits my illusion, i think.

i gave my bride a Native American wedding vase used in many Southwest tribal marriage ceremonies. Brilliant, i must say. i stumbled across the idea of such when i wrote my short, short story ending with a poem, “Take Me Up on the Mountain.” When the old man marries a Kumeyaay maiden, they held two ceremonies, one Catholic, the other Kumeyaay. researching my trusted, non-academic Wikipedia, i read the Kumeyaay, a local tribe in the Southwest corner used such a vase in their ceremonies:

The Wedding Vase is used in the traditional (Kumeyaay) wedding ceremony. The two spouts represent the bride and the groom with the bridge between them uniting the two. Water blessed by the medicine man is poured into the vessel. During the ceremony, the bride and groom each drink from their side of the vase.

and

…Each spout represents one member of the couple; the handle in the middle of a wedding vase represents the unity as they come together on their wedding day. The space between the handle and the two spouts is a representation of the couples’ circle of life.

i added: “I am old enough to no longer need presents even though i enjoy them as gifts from you and your lasting love. That love is the greatest gift i have ever received in my life.I am old enough to longer need presents even though i enjoy them as gifts from you and your lasting love. That love is the greatest gift i have ever received in my life.”

Maureen gave me a card with a gift i had spoiled again this year. She sees something i want or need, orders it, wraps it, and then i say i need this or that and start out to buy it. So she tells me not to buy it. i won’t relate what the card read. Maureen is much more discreet and private than i am. It makes her even more alluring, of course. However, i can inform you her card to me had almost identical thoughts as my card to her.

Now, Maureen and i aren’t always alike. For example, she doesn’t like Tennessee Pride Country Sausage. i’m not particularly fond of gussied up chicken. But there are a lot of things in which we are alike. Most importantly, our core thoughts and beliefs are about as close as a twosome could have. That’s what i discovered in a talk we had 43 years ago. The important stuff. It’s still the same.

i am a lucky man. Never won a lottery. But i am lucky in a different way.

So dark clouds with your ominous projection of the coming year, disburse. Go away. Already in mid-morning, the sun is shining.

i hope all of you have a wonderful, prosperous, and healthy (one of the more important facets of living at my age) 2024 and the wide-spread trend of inhumanity towards others at least subsides a little bit.

One of the many projects i created for myself, enough that i will not ever complete most of them, was scanning photos from mother’s and aunt’s albums. i began rather well, but it has lay fallow for quite a while. So here we go, from Aunt Betty Kate Hall’s 1948 photos.

And once again, my futility in arranging graphics is abysmal. So to hell with it. i had the photos arranged on the draft, but when i published the photo numbering was jumbled. i think you can figure it out. i quit.

This highlights a Photo 1 is my Aunt Evelyn Orr with my cousin Tim. It is in Orlando, Florida in 1948 long before it became another metropolis of entertainment and Navy, back when they orange groves, not thrill rides. Photo 2 is my Aunt Bettye Kate Hall (these came from her photo islands) with cousins Butch and Tim Prichard. The Orrs and Halls were visiting my Uncle Bill and Aunt Colleen Prichard. Photo 3 notes the names. Uncle Pipey Orr and Uncle Snooks Hall are included. Photos 4 and 5 are the likely reason for the visit: Cousins Bill (Butch) and Tim Prichard. Photo 6 is cousin Bill with his mother in the background. Aunt Bettye Kate noted “See bird” at the top: i’m thinking the predicts Bill’s later love for quail hunting. Photo 7 is Aunt Colleen with Butch. Photo 8 is the Prichard family at the time. The family grew to eight, three boys and three girls. Photo 9 is in the backyard of our home on Castle Heights Avenue with Butch about to run over Tim on my tricycle. i am in the background going up the back steps. This is a rare photo of our house before it was added on in 1956 (i think). The back porch was a wonderland for playing when it rained. The door in the center led to the basement. Great memories.

It was a crazy day.

A trip with Maureen, ostensibly to go to Balboa Park and use our new park pass to see some museums we don’t often visit, prefaced with a trip to a sewing machine shop and a tailor for Maureen began mid-morning. Her sewing machine developed a problem when she had attempted to put in a button hole on a high end fabric for a beautiful jacket she had designed.

The sewing machine visit developed into a machine assessment, adjustment, and repairs if needed. Now folks, this ain’t my mama’s Singer pedal-powered sewing machine of the past. These suckers cost more than the national debt. The repair was worth it.

We then went across the street to our tailor who announced she could create the needed buttonholes.

We were happy, and headed off to the park.

i turned onto the exit to normal path up a hill to the park only to find a line of cars all the way up the hill, probably a half-hour if not an hour to get to the parking, which was likely full. i did an illegal u-turn, tried another way and found the same thing with all entries to the park.

We decided to just go to one of our favorite digs for lunch. The first one had many folks waiting to be seated, and no parking was nearby. We went to the second, and it was closed for the holidays. We went to the third and the wait was until sometime next Wednesday. We searched for the third and fourth on unfamiliar routes and had to double back about…oh, a half dozen times.

i shall not tell you what i said, but we headed home. We stopped at a brand new place in route for take out Mexican fare of a beef stew (birria) on a corn tortilla and a shrimp taco.

We felt better.

Hell of a day. In its own strange way, it was fun.

We spent our afternoon with our own projects and settled down in the family room for our evening.

i turned on the television. Football. The think-of-the-name-of-a-corporate-advertiser-with-a- really-stupid-logo-name Cotton Bowl. Good teams: Ohio State, Missouri. Good game except for listening to announcers who wished the world to consider the game equivalent the next world war. Ugh.

As i watched a pretty decent athletic contest marred by about two dozen unsportsmanlike penalties ignored, i looked up the scores of other bowl games. That’s when it occurred to me there as a fitting quote.

Violating my usually very loose rules for what to include in my posts, i stole this from today’s “Writer’s Almanac.” It is a quote of William Gaddis, an author in the middle of the last century who wrote two apparently noteworthy novels: The Recognitions and J.R. Not only have i not read them, but i didn’t even know about them until this morning, adding them to my “to read” list which will require me to compete with Methuselah for the longest living man to read all on my list.

But William Gaddis said, “There have never in history been so many opportunities to do so many things that aren’t worth doing.”

And sitting here tonight i thought this applied to every post season playoff game of any sport.

Then i thought Gaddis’ quote applied to most damn near everything today except for my relationships with good folks.

And you know what? Those relationships are enough.

i hope you all have a bountiful and healthy 2024.