Saturday, July 30, 2011

Memories from Beck Drive: Going To The Drive-In

Out of all of the fond memories I have of the years we lived on Beck Drive - and I have a plethora of them, trust me - one of my favorites just has to be going to the drive-in. This was when then drive-in movie theater was in its heyday, although we as 6, 8, & 10 year old kids had no way of knowing that; all we knew was that it was fun, we enjoyed it, and we all looked forward to it. And now, looking back on it as a parent who went through the lean years of raising small children on a very limited budget, I also understand that it was an inexpensive way for the family to go out and have a good time.

At the time, we didn't know about that, nor did we care - we were blessed with the ignorance of the very young, and we were too busy having fun to think about it anyway.

In those days my father was working at the Hygrade's Meat Products plant in Richmond, Virginia, and he worked 6 days a week from 6AM until 6PM. Every now and then he'd come home from work on a Saturday, we'd eat dinner, and then he and my mom would spend the next twenty minutes or so in the kitchen making popcorn. They'd make enough to fill one or two paper grocery bags, after which they'd shake some salt into the bags onto the popcorn, roll the bag closed, and then shake it to distribute the salt. While all this was going on my sisters and I would go change into our pajamas, after which we'd go get the two inflatable rafts we always took to the lake, blow them up, and put them in the back of the Ford Falcon station wagon after my father had folded down the rear seat. My sister Cindy and I would climb into the back on the air matresses, and my sister Dorothy would ride up front between my parents in the front seat. The popcorn would be safely tucked away up front, because if not Cindy and I would have started in on it as soon as we got in the car. Then it was off to the drive-in to see a movie!

Once we got to the drive-in my father would find a place to park the car on those little mounds that ran the width of the lot so the nose of the car was pointed up to the huge screen, then he'd roll his window up just enough to hang the heavy metal speaker on it. The sound quality was bad, tinny and scratchy, but it was better than nothing. We'd get there just about the time it was getting dark, and we'd watch the other cars pull in and set up just as we had. Then the previews would start and the popcorn bags would appear, and shortly after that the movie would start. My sister Dorothy stayed up front with my parents while Cindy and I lay on the air mattresses in the back, watching the movie over the back of the front seat and between the shoulders of my parents and Dorothy.

I can't even begin to guess how many times we did this when I was a kid, but I can tell you how many times Cindy and I actually managed to stay awake through the whole movie.

That would be NONE. Not a single one. I can't recall ever seeing the end of a single movie when we went to the drive-in, but I can recall waking up as the car was moving out of the theater, the outside being dark and the inside of the car being illuminated with the moving shadows caused by the headlights of the cars behind us as they all made their way out. And I don't remember arriving back at the house and going inside but once, so I'm guessing that my father carried my sleeping form into the house most nights.

I also couldn't tell you the movies we saw either, with one exception. I remember very clearly a movie we went to see called "The Glory Guys," and I remember it because it was a cavalry movie set in the old west. I didn't remember squat about the movie's plot, just the title, and somewhere along my travels into adolescence and then adulthood I decided that one day, somehow, I was going to see that movie just for the heck of it.

And about ten years ago I finally had a chance to see it on AMC. I was thrilled to death when I saw it listed on the schedule, and I made it a point to be available to watch it.

It was one of the WORST movies I've ever seen in my entire life! If you were to ask me what were the three worst movies I've ever seen, that one would come in at #3 behind "Laserblast" and "The Thin Red Line." ("Thin Red Line," by the way, is the only movie I've ever gotten up and walked out on.)

But the quality of the movie didn't take away from the experience nor the memories, and those trips to the drive-in remain some of the most pleasant memories of my childhood that I have. And I love my parents to death for giving them to me.

IHC

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Random Thoughts on a Tuesday Morning

Just some things running through my head today...that's what happens when I have too much time on my hands!

So, here we go...

First and foremost, would someone please explain to me why the Federal government funded a program to study the effects that a homosexual man's penis size has on his sex life? Excuse me, he's a homosexual, isn't that enough? And we wonder why the Federal government is going broke...

Is Representative Lee an idiot, a racist, or both? Let's see, we have a white President who can't get congress to agree with him, and nobody throws the race card; we have a black President who can't get congress to agree with him, and all of a sudden it's a "racist" thing and a black member of congress throws the race card - with nothing to back it up, of course. Why is that?

Three days ago NObama placed the blame for the deadlock in Congress about the debt ceiling squarely on the Republicans; yesterday he comes out and says he'll veto the "cap and cut" bill the Republicans are proposing if Congress passes it. So who's to blame now, Mr. President?

Why won't people pass a police car that is going 5MPH below the speed limit?

If a company opens up a "chat-style" forum in an effort to "improve communications" and encourages people to use it, do they have the right to be upset when people say things in that forum they don't like? Hmmmm...

So now the Space Shuttle program is officially ended, leaving America with no active space program...wonder how long it's gonna be before NObama and his band of merry idiots close down NASA in order to "save money?"

And if the Federal government starts to go broke and needs to make cuts, shouldn't they start with the salaries of Congress rather than with Social Security, Medicare, and the military payroll?

Just what do you think the chances of that ever happening are, really? Can you say, "NONE?"

November 2012 can't get here fast enough.

Off to work.

IHC

Saturday, July 16, 2011

NObama's Debt Talks Speech - What You DIDN'T Notice

So did you happen to catch NObama's speech on the stalled debt ceiling talks in Congress a few days ago? I was home for lunch and happened to catch about five minutes of it or so, and what I heard both disgusted me and turned my stomach at the same time. And the surprising thing is, no one else heard what I heard and caught what NObama said. At least, the news networks aren't talking about it, and that kind of surprises me.

First, let me say this about the debt ceiling talks and who I think is to blame, just to set the record straight.

The President of the United States, regardless of who he is, is NOT the one who is responsible for creating and approving the budget in any way, and this includes the current debt ceiling talks. The Congress of the United States is the body that is charged with creating, drafting, and approving the budget; the President merely finalizes it and puts it into effect by signing it. But it is CONGRESS who bears ALL responsibility for the budget. Sure, the President can veto it as he can veto any bill that crosses his desk, but in the case of who's responsible for drafting it to begin with, that dubious distinction belongs to Congress and not the President.

Therefore, it is my humble opinion that the Congress of the United States is responsible for the budget issue and the impasse that is going on right now. And please note that I said CONGRESS is responsible, and I mean Congress as a whole. Not the Democrats or the Republicans, but ALL of them as a sitting body - both the House and the Senate, both Democrats and Republicans alike share the blame for the mess that we're in with the federal budget.

I may not like NObama, but you should know by now that I'm not going to blame him for things he didn't do or things that are not his responsibility. I do try to be fair, after all.

Both parties are equally at fault, because both parties refuse to budge on their stands and make any concessions to get the debt ceiling fixed. Both parties think that their solution is the only viable one, and both parties think that the other party is full of crap.

The reality of it is, BOTH parties are full of crap, and if they'd all put the best interest of the nation as a whole first and not their own petty agendas, under the table deals, and special considerations, maybe they'd be able to get something done.

But they won't do this, and they're all responsible for it.

Here's where the President and what he said comes in.

It's the responsibility of the sitting President to lead both the nation and both parties of Congress in a fair, impartial manner. The President may be a Democrat or a Republican when he or she is running for office, but once the election is over and that person is sitting in the Oval Office, they should stop being either a Democrat or a Republican, and be a President and an American. The President should put his or her political party opinions aside and lead BOTH parties in a fair manner to resolve issues as they come up.

This is where NObama screwed up a few days ago, and I'm still shocked that no one caught it and has plastered it all over the news.

It was during his speech a few days ago when he was talking about the impasse in Congress when he proved to both me and the nation that he is NOT a fair, impartial leader; rather, he is a biased, one-sided, one-dimensional man who refuses to put the good of the nation over the good of his party. He is nothing more than a charlatan, a wolf in sheep's clothing, and he proved this to me and anyone else who was paying attention during his talk.

So just what did he do, exactly? Well, it's simple - he said flat-out that it was the Republican's fault that the talks were stalled. Not the Congress as a whole, but the Republicans. JUST the Republicans. He laid NO blame and NO responsibility on the Democrats at all, just the Republicans.

So much for a fair, impartial leader - or a leader at all, as far as that goes.

Then he turned around and made it worse by what he said next. He was talking about how both sides of the Congress needed to come together, and said something to the effect of, "whether you're a Progressive or a Conservative..."

So, is the term "Progressive" the new term for a Liberal? Or is NObama just trying to put a positive spin on a party that the American people are becoming increasingly more disgusted with?

This play on words of his also slaps the Conservatives in the face, because it implies in a very clear manner that he thinks the Liberals are the "progressive" force in America, and that the Conservatives are holding the nation back.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since in the previous breath he had just laid full blame on the Republican party for the mess with the debt ceiling talks.

I cannot recall when I have been so disgusted with the performance of a sitting President. For this man, this charlatan, this Great Pretender to blatantly take sides like this on this serious of an issue, and to insult the Conservatives in America by labeling us - that's right, US - as being bad for America by not being "progressive" in nature just shows the incredible lack of insight, intelligence, and professionalism this man has.

I truly believe that this man is the worst President our nation has had in the past 150 years, and I am counting the days until he is referred to as FORMER President NObama.

November 2012 can't come fast enough!

IHC

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

NObama Fires the Second Shot

Did you notice? NObama has fired the second shot in his war on your Second Amendment rights.

Oh, you missed it? Well, I’m not surprised – the timing of his second shot was carefully planned so as to get lost in all of the media frenzy and the public outrage over the Casey Anthony trial, and I must say that it appeared to have worked. But there are those of us out there, the “Sheepdogs” among you, who ARE paying attention, will NOT be distracted by ‘parlor tricks,’ and will do our damndest to both enlighten the public and prevent The Great Pretender from eliminating our right to protect our lives and the lives of our families.

So here’s the second shot: NObama has stated that he will make some kind of “executive decision” and issue some kind of “executive directive” on the topic of “commn sense” gun laws. In addition to timing the news release so it would get overwhelmed by other events in the nation, NObama tried to sugar-coat it by adding that one of the things he says needs to be done is the gun laws already in place need to be enforced more stringently than they have been.

Well, excuse me, Mr. President, but isn’t that the responsibility of YOUR Attorney General?

Anyway, that’s what our Fearful Leader said last week. And as usual, he and the idiots in the Brady Bunch are singing the same tired, old song that these new “common sense” gun laws will protect you and make you safer. And, as usual, that’s all nothing but pure bullshit; nicely packaged and attractively wrapped, of course, but when you get past the wrapping and the packing, it’s still nothing but a box of bullshit.

There are three things wrong with what NObama said, so allow me to spell them out for you in plain English so anyone can understand them.

First: There’s no such thing as an “executive decision.” It’s a fancy, made-up term to describe a decision that the President makes, and one that is used to fool the unknowing public into thinking that the decision carries more weight and authority than it actually does – which is ZERO, by the way. If that’s the case, then ANY decision the President makes is an “executive decision,” including whether to have fries with his Five Guys burger or not.

Second: The President – ANY President – does NOT have the authority to make laws. That power and authority is vested solely in Congress for a specific reason, and any “executive directive” that The Great Pretender or any other President may issue that requires the states to follow certain rules or face punishment is acting as a law; since the President does not have the power to make laws, the directive is unconstitutional and therefore illegal. That means the individual states can wipe their butts with it and there’s nothing the President or his minions in the Justice Department can do about it.

Third: There’s no such thing as “common sense” gun laws for the simple reason that what may be “common sense” to one person may not be “common sense” to another. The use of this phrase is a Brady Bunch trick to fool the people into feeling guilty about opposing whatever nonsense they want to impose by labeling it as “common sense,” thereby ensuring that the people in our nation who have a conscience will not oppose it. The great flaw in this line of thinking, however, is that people who have a conscience are not the problem; the people who do NOT have a conscience, the ones we call CRIMINALS, are the problem, and this line of thinking does nothing to address that. It lays the guilt of criminal acts committed by criminals with guns squarely at the feet and on the conscience of law-abiding gun owners, thereby relieving the criminals of responsibility, accountability, and punishment.
And that’s nothing but WRONG any way you look at it.

When NObama first took office I had a conversation concerning his views on gun control with a very close friend of mine, and way back then I said it was my opinion that NObama would wait until he’d been in office for around two and a half years before he made a move on the Second Amendment. I said then that I thought the reasoning would be that either he’d be such a success as President that no one would dare criticize him, or he’d be such a failure and his popularity would be so low that he’d know in his heart he stood zero chance of getting re-elected and would have nothing to lose. Either way, I said he would wait for about two and a half years before he did anything.

Well, it’s two and a half years later and he’s made his move on the Second Amendment just as I said he would. And with his broken promises, failed programs, and an approval rating at an all-time low and dropping steadily, you tell me why he made the move.

So for all of you who voted this charlatan into office, lemme ask ya again: How’s that “hopey-changey” thing workin’ for ya?

IHC

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Memories from Beck Drive: Pocahontas State Park

I think most every kid - or every grownup who still remembers what it was like to be a kid - has one special place they remember out of their childhood, the one special place that they and their family used to go where they had nothing but a good time, and for me and my family that place is Pocahontas State Park just outside of Richmond, Virginia. I remember many, many trips to the park, and out of all those trips I don't have one single bad memory out of them - not one. My sister Cindy can't say that, but I'll get to that directly.

From the time I was around six or so until we moved to Highland Springs in 1966, sometimes on the weekend my family would take trips out to Pocahontas State Park. In the summertime my parents would tell us to put our bathing suits on under our church clothes, and every time they told us to do that the whole morning would take on a different meaning. Sure, we'd still go to church at St. Luke's and we'd still have fun - except for the part where we had to sit through Father Hendrick's sermon, which was torture for a six year old - but we couldn't wait for church to let out so we could head for the park and the lake.

As soon as the service was over we'd pile into the Ford Falcon station wagon and go, and once we got there we'd take off our church clothes and pull out the flip-flops, the inflatable rafts, the lunch baskets and the beach chairs, and we'd troop down the root-strewn dirt path that led to the lake, careful not to step out of our flip-flops along the way. My mother and father would always carry the ice chest down the path, each of them taking one side of the handle, and the rest of us would carry the remaining gear. Once down there we'd blow up the rafts, set up the beach chairs, and then it'd be a race to see which two of the three kids could lay their hands on the two inflatable rafts first. (I don't envy my parents having to referee that particular fight, lemme tell ya.)

Remember what I said about Cindy and a bad memory at the park? Well, it was on one of those summertime Sunday afternoon trips to the lake that she and I were running to get to somewhere in a hurry, and Cindy tripped. She fell face-first down into the sand, mouth wide open, and came up with a mouth full of sand. Not dirt, mind you, but sand - the public lakefront was sand, and Cindy got a mouthful of it. My mother grabbed her up and took her over to the bath house where the water fountain was and spent the better part of twenty minutes helping Cindy rinse the sand out of her mouth.

I bet she was crunching sand between her teeth for a week after that.

It was during this time period that I first encountered something that would stick with me the rest of my life, a certain kind of food that to this day I enjoy just as much as I did when I was a six year old kid sitting on an inflatable raft on the lakefront sand, eating the lunch that my mother had made specifically for the trip the day before. I introduced this Southern delicacy to my New Jersey-born and bred wife more than 37 years later, and now she loves it almost as much as I do.

And that Southern delicacy is cold fried chicken. If you've had it, you know what I'm talking about and no further explanation is necessary.

If you haven't had it, you should - tomorrow. Make the chicken tonight, put it in the refrigerator, and have it cold for lunch tomorrow. Then you'll understand.

One of the things that sticks out in my mind about those trips to the lake is the snack bar, specifically one of the songs that was playing over the public address system the first summer I remember us going there. I don't know if it was released that summer or not, but I do remember that I heard it playing all the time that first summer. The song was "Dang Me" by Roger Miller, and to this day if I hear that song I'm instantly transported back to the lakefront in Pocahontas State Park in the summer of 1963 or thereabouts. (And no, I don't hear that song much anymore.)

In the fall and spring when the lake was closed we'd go to the park in the afternoon and hike the nature trails. My sisters Dorothy and Cindy were both in the Girl Scouts, and one of them had a wicker open-topped backpack that they used with the Scouts. My parents would pack our lunch in this backpack and take it with us, and the girls would take turns carrying it around. I think I carried it once or twice, but I'm not sure about that. In any event my parents still have that wicker backpack, damned near 50 years later.

Anyhow, I remember hiking the trails in the fall, the air just chilly enough to be slightly crisp, just cool enough to where my father and I wore jackets and my mother and sisters wore sweaters. I remember on one trip my father wore his cowboy boots, work pants, a green suede leather jacket with knitted sleeves (that I later inherited and wore until my stomach and chest outgrew it) and a Stetson "Open Road" cowboy hat like LBJ wore. We took a camera with us that day, and somewhere in my father's vast collection of color slides from all of the trips we took is a picture of us standing next to a stream, with my father wearing that green jacket and Stetson hat.

And one of these days when the time is right, you can bet your ass that I'm gonna get me one of those hats, too. But not right now.

Once we moved out of Central Gardens and off of Beck Drive to New Avenue in Highland Springs the trips to the lake and the hiking trails stopped; I guess it was a combination of it being too far away and us kids growing up and developing our own separate interests. I first found the Boy Scouts and then the Civil Air Patrol to occupy my time, and my sisters both found their own interest.

But that doesn't change the fact that we did it, we had a ball, and I'll always have the memories of hot summer afternoons at the lake with Roger Miller singing in the background, and me sitting on an inflatable raft in my bathing suit, eating cold fried chicken and thinking that life just didn't get any better than that.

IHC