Mr. Natural

A few days of beautiful weather lately.

We were able to open the house to the air

for the first time this year which makes us look

forward to the desert spring, short as it can be.

I drove the Pocket Rocket to a nearby town

the other day to have lunch with a friend and

while in traffic a lady in the lane next to me was

leaning across her car while driving taking pictures of the 

Pocket Rocket with her cell-phone. 

 I am driving a celebrity!

A true family legend.
Einstein would walk, he never drove,

every day back and forth from his little house in Princeton
to the Institute of Advanced Study on the Princeton University grounds.

My father at the time was working at a concrete plant on the far side of Princeton
 in what was called Princeton Junction, NJ.
To get to his plant in 1950 there was only one way,
take the one main road through Princeton.
Einstein's walk and my old man's commute would match up
going to work in the morning's.
Traffic would back up
every other car would slow down to ask
Einstein, as he walked,
 if he wanted a ride, which he always politely refused.

So my old man is trying to get to work,
traffic is backed up with everyone trying to get the
honor of giving the 
most famous, most intelligent man in the world
a ride to work and what does my father do?
He leans out of the car and in the best NJ tradition
berates everybody including Einstein for "being fucking idiots"
and making a guy late for work.

It's not everybody who can claim
that his old man called Einstein an idiot.

I am still considering the Braun T-1000 

Shortwave radio I had found last week in a local antique shop.
The shop owner has sent it to a guy(?) who repairs radios locally 
to see if the SW reception can be fixed?
At the moment I consider this radio's status as UNSUB...
Turns out however that i was correct in determining that 
the Short Wave element was non-functional.

This week's karma did provide me with another

mini-boombox, again discovered on Amazon at a reasonable price.

A Panasonic RX-FM-40.

AM-FM radio with a single cassette player the 

FM-RX-40 is a version of the

reduced size boombox trend of the 1980's.

I prefer a box with a single cassette function rather

than the dual tape to tape design.

If you examine the stock photo's you can

observe a rather large bass port on this model just below the cassette door.

I now have two small boomboxes in route to me  through the mail
for my collection and use.

The previous blog mentioned Sony CFS-1000 and now the

Panasonic FM-RX-40.

Both sellers stated that their units functioned normally

and physical abuse limited on these boxes.

It is so extremely hard now to find any cool

collectible tape items that are priced reasonably.

People with extremely disposable funds have snapped up

any cool boombox inflating the prices beyond the reach

of a normal human such as myself.

I do what i can by purchasing what i can find...

in the best condition i can find....

at the lowest possible price.

Not for an investment or for resale but because I like them,

and enjoy listening and using them.

I also ordered this book used:

The Boombox Project is the only
book written about the Boombox Phenomena of the 70's and 80's.
It is reported to contain beautiful photography on multiple boxes
as well as a history on this particularly bizarre focus of mine.
I'll review when received next week....

Attack the Garage

Since completing the painting of our living-room and dining-room

I have stepped up to my next project which is the

cleaning and re-organizing of our two bay garage which is

situated facing our back alley.

BEFORE:

I did manage to take a before photograph this time

displayed below...

We were just never able to organize this space

since moving in--I'm sure that readers can

understand how garages,much like a murder mystery,

can get completely outside of the lines or normality.

1/2 AFTER:

I have at the moment 14 working hours into this project 

and as a result I currently have one garage bay cleaned and organized.

I created a workbench as well as clearing an area to park the 

Pocket Rocket.

We used an old damaged oriental rug to park the Pocket Rocket on

is a nice touch I think? I like it anyway!

I have remaining bay area to clear, clean and organize.

It is the toughest area but no matter....

What I am discovering is how great it is to have

the ability to work a few hours a day on a long term project

and know that you will be able to bring it to completion.

A by product of aging is, I suppose, a re-examination of one's

religious background from childhood?

I have been thinking on and off lately regarding my Catholic upbringing.
What it means?

A child of the east coast, in my area growing up the Catholic religion predominated.

I never ran into any prejudice about being Irish Catholic

until I met my first wife's grandmother who would

refer to me as "The Papist". 
That of course was a clue regarding the entire relationship that i 
failed to pick up on until it was too late!

The singular thing she was correct about however

is that being Catholic is sort of like being a Mason,

you do feel as if you are a member of a secret society.

Being a Catholic is a once in never out circumstance, like being a made guy in the mafia,

who by the way, probably stole that concept as

their rules being familiar with it, since who in the mafia is Protestant for fucks sake?

You are never not a Catholic anymore no matter what you do or say....and it's weird.

The other truly weird thing about being Catholic is

when confronted by a Protestant or Baptist Fundamentalist or an Evangelical 

the first thing they do is to quote the bible.

A real, normal east coast Catholic doesn't know shit about the bible.

That's what the Priest is for, he tells us stories out of it--Catholics don't read the Bible or

study it the way Evangelicals do---

The priest sort of translates out of it what you need to know.

A religious Cliff Notes sort of thing....

The other reason we Catholics really don't need the Bible is that we

have the Green Berets of Religion;

We have Saints---

A specific Saint to pray to for any reason or to solve any problem.

Not to mention, confession--which is like Catholic witness protection,

statues galore, Jesuits,

candles, robes, the whole nine yards...

Therefore actually knowing what's in this Bible thing

would get in the way of the process.

Go to confession, light a couple of candles to the correct Saint and life is good you know?

We Catholics also do not take to being screwed with

very well either---

We sort of invented the whole Holy War thing...

I'm not trying to raise any shit here,

I've just been thinking on being, I guess what's called a lapsed Catholic,

since i was 14 or so----now that i am old.

I had actually thought for a brief moment about

maybe going back one Sunday just to see how i felt about it--now?

Perhaps just going to a Catholic church to sit in the quiet---
that was--

until i remembered--

Religions just want to tell you what to do and think---
I've fought that throughout my life

and if they really wanted me there,
they would have a smoking section in the back.

"I think you create your own Hipness."

Peabo Bryson