by Kathy Brasby | Sep 30, 2019 | Humor, Stories
I’m not really a hoarder but what do you do with that stuff you’ve been saving for a long time in a box you just discovered at the back of the closet?
Aha, you relate.
Theory A says that, if you haven’t seen the contents for a long time, just throw the box away and be done with it.
I’m way too curious for that.
It’s like Christmas inside such a box, only with things that are dusty and grimy. Other than the dirt, new treasures.
who knew I had saved a keychain from Union Station in Kansas City?
What does one do with keys that you can’t identify? Throw them away? What if they are needed for a lock someday and I threw away the key?
On closer examination, I’m pretty sure one of the keys is to the office door where I worked before I was married. Maybe it could go.
I found two keys that looked like they opened a safe deposit box. Since we don’t have one, I suspect we had to pay a big fine to get the box opened a long time ago since I couldn’t find the keys. And I’m going to throw them away and waste that fine?
Then there are the paper clips. The bottom of the box was layered with paper clips. It feels wasteful to throw all those away.
Oh, boy, more keys melding with the paper clips. Do they multiply into clip keys?
There’s a single white Lego brick with a blue cone stuck on the top. Ah, memories of the little boy who built mansions with Legos. He’s out of college now, so maybe the brick could go.
Why on earth are there so many pen refills? I love a good pen but, since keyboards have invaded my life, I apparently don’t use pen ink much.
I already know to throw away the membership card to some club I forgot I ever belonged to. And the participation ribbon to some event that I neglected to record on the backside.
Business cards? To keep or to pitch? Most went in the trash, but I found one from a friend who is now deceased. Stays. And another from my brother. Stays.
I have a big box of brass plated fasteners, those brads that push through punched holes and then you bent the ends to hold papers together. I use a stapler these days, but I apparently am a collector of vintage supplies, so there’s that.
Oh, I just found two needles for inflating balls. In the office supplies. That could explain some things about our flat basketballs.
I also uncovered the combination to the padlock I used for four years of college. I still remember the combination. Well, after looking at the paper. No, I don’t know where the padlock is but think of the memories.
It gets worse: erasers, especially the ones that fit on the end of pencils. I don’t use pencils. A guitar pick. A marble. More keys. Another key ring.
Fortunately, I am not a hoarder. But if you ever need a pen refill, I’m your girl.
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by Kathy Brasby | Sep 16, 2019 | Family, Humor, Stories
In those carefree BK (Before Kids) days, I imagined baking cute birthday cakes for future kids. My mom used to make little train cakes with gumdrop windows. The train cars perched on licorice rails with a green coconut base. So cute. I knew it was in my blood.
I bought a puppy cake mold before I had kids. My first cake using that mold was a pile of crumbs that I shaped like the foothills of Colorado. Drizzling icing on top was supposed to mimic snow. I hoped nobody would notice because I didn’t have time to bake another cake.
One first-birthday cake was supposed to be a bright soccer ball but looked more like an egg that had fallen from the second floor.
Before Pinterest Fails were a thing, my cakes were trailblazing the way.
As some of the kids got older, they didn’t ask me for cake decorating advice. They invested time in 4-H cake decorating units. Kids can be wise sometimes.
One daughter learned how to decorate a one-layer cake for her first project.
She baked her show cake the afternoon before it had to be entered at the county fair. When the edge of the cake wouldn’t release from the pan, she solved the problem by cutting away the perimeter.
Most of the entered cakes were 8” round, but hers was more of a 5” lumpy. She slathered on icing, but it was like trying to hide Mount Everest under an ice cream cone. No champion ribbon that year.
Another daughter was the creative sort who felt stifled by the rules for the unit. When she was required to form a mat of frosting stars, she didn’t understand why the cake couldn’t show through. It would be like hiding the tuba in the marching band.
No blue ribbon that year, either.
Our son, at age 10, signed up to learn cake decorating and even went to a workshop where he and 25 girls learned the fine art of placing dots of frosting on waxed paper. This, of course, made no sense to him until he licked clean the frosting after the workshop.
We found out later that he signed up so that he could be in charge of the family birthday cakes. He figured if he’d finished cake decorating, I’d let him make the cakes.
Maybe to up his game with the frosting. Many family birthday cakes had a finger lick on the side before we got to the candles.
I never caught him in the act, but I suspect this had been a goal for his life since he was four.
His show cake came together on a hot summer day with frosting that needed a lot more sugar than he put in the bowl. Imagine a lava flow sliding across his design.
The lava-icing flow continued until he got the cake to the fairgrounds. His frosting border was supposed to be a circle but resembled the outline of Texas.
No blue ribbon that time either.
But his father bought back the cake, took it home, and served it to our family. Oh, yeah, everybody ate a piece.
We haven’t had any cute train cakes in our house, but one good thing has come from all this cake-decorating training: along as there is plenty of frosting, our family is content with a pile of cake crumbs.
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by Kathy Brasby | Aug 27, 2019 | House rehab, Humor, Stories
I am beginning to embrace the unique vibes of retro nerds. Retro isn’t necessarily my jam but you gotta try new things, right?
Besides, those sweet people are passionate about their favorite retro item, and I might be able to use them. Er, learn from them, of course.
I’m talking about CRT TV nerds. For the rest of this post, TV equals CRT TV so don’t be thinking of today’s refined thin TVs.
My sister, Ann, and I do some property management, so occasionally we get to empty out a house that was abandoned by a tenant. This doesn’t happen much, but we have cleaned out a lot of junk over the years.
Junk including those TVs. It almost seems required to leave old TVs behind.
When tenants move out under less than great circumstances, they leave behind TVs like crumbs or mouse droppings.
One house had four TVs left behind, ranging in size from 16” to 60”. Do you know that a 60” TV can weigh over 250 pounds? How on earth do tenants get those into basements? The narrower the stairs, the more TVs in the basement.
I assume they bought beer for the entire fraternity.
We lugged all four TVs out of the basement with help from two high school boys who overestimated their muscles. They needed a fraternity, too.
Perched on my pickup bed, the TVs looked kinda like Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear on my pickup bed.
I am told that there are nerds who love old TVs. Playing games like Super Mario All-Stars is fantastic on a old TV. Watching VHS is also a rush, too, I guess.
Woohoo.
We didn’t know any retro nerds, though. We considered leaving the TVs on my pickup bed until someone stole them, but that was only one of we. The other considers our town’s people way too honest for that. Or too smart.
So we went to Plan B. We could haul them to the county landfill.
Off we went with the TVs and a few other choice items: a table with a broken leg, a floor lamp that didn’t work, half a couch.
The attendant at the landfill gate directed us to the area for broken furniture and then to the building for electronics. Um, who was there to help us? Nobody.
So we had a 250-pound VW Bug TV and just my sister and me to unload it. One of us wanted to use leverage to push it off the pickup bed. Nope. The other we said we had to unload it gently or we’d have broken glass everywhere.
So we broke out all our load straps and wrapped them around the TV. Then Ann found a plastic stand and pushed it into place behind the pickup bed. We planned to lower the TV onto the stand and then onto the floor.
She was in charge of guiding the TV onto the stand. My job was to release the straps bit by bit. Quit laughing. This is a serious story.
We managed to get the TV to the plastic stand. The TV settled on the stand, which immediately collapsed.
The TV crashed to the floor. Huh. No broken glass.
No wonder those retro nerds loved these TVs. They’re indestructible.
“Are we going to leave it there?” Ann said, studying the crashed TV.
“Unless you know a CRT nerd, we’re out of here,” said the other we. I won that time.
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by Kathy Brasby | Aug 20, 2019 | Humor, Stories, Travel
Our family has had some fantastic travel opportunities over the years, including spending a week in Cuba. Imagine that we took two teenagers and loads of video equipment into Cuba and didn’t lose anything. Although you could debate that.
All week we had seen El Morro lighthouse and castle across the harbor from Havana, and finally, we found time to visit.
From our hotel, we hailed a government-approved taxi which drove us in a cute little Russian car to the parking lot of El Morro. The uniformed driver promised to return in two hours to take us back to the hotel.
Promised. No problemo.
The tour went great. The hosts inside were friendly and helpful.
We bought a few trinkets and then headed out to the parking lot to wait for our promised taxi driver.
We knew the chances of him returning weren’t great, but we’re polite Americans, so we waited.
Three young Cuban men approached us. “Do you want souvenirs?” They pulled out a silver coin. “See? Che Guevara.”
“Not interested.”
So the three men stepped away. I suppose stretching your neck and looking far down the street is probably a universal signal. They quickly figured out we were waiting for a car.
“Do you need a ride? We have a car. Cheap ride. Only $10.”
We’d paid $6 for the taxi ride over so my husband wasn’t paying $10 to these guys. They tried to negotiate but finally agreed on $6.
The windows of the driver’s car were all down, and the driver rushed ahead to open the door. We thought he was helpful.
He was but only because there were no outside handles. I know, I know. Red lights should have been flashing in our brains.
We climbed in and buckled up. There were no liners on the door panels, and we could see all the rods running to locks and windows. We kept our hands to ourselves.
The little car scooted down the highway and then dropped into a tunnel under the harbor. As the car began to descend, the driver pushed in the clutch and turned off the engine. We coasted to the other end of the tunnel.
I’ll bet he saved a tenth of a gallon of gas with that trick.
He started the engine once gravity threatened to stall him, downshifted, and sailed right through a stop sign.
In Cuba, taxi drivers needed special permits to serve foreigners. Our driver had no taxi permit and no permit to take us anywhere. I think his idea was, once you break one law, you might as well break a bunch.
I don’t know what the speed limit was. It seemed irrelevant to our driver. Might as well break another law. We did stay on all four wheels.
He cruised up to our hotel, double-parked in the narrow street, and shut off the engine again. Another tenth of a gallon saved and another law broken.
He jumped out to open our doors because apparently, the inside latches on the doors needed a secret twist before they’d open.
We paid him. In that country, he may have just made half a month’s wages.
We’d just taken an unlicensed taxi ride with an illegal driver in a foreign country and we lived on.
But I gotta be honest. We came away with our possessions and our teenagers, but I think we left our minds somewhere on that lighthouse.
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by Kathy Brasby | Aug 12, 2019 | Family, Humor, Stories
In the days before I had much money or sense – OK, I was still in my 20’s, and that’s the best explanation I have – I got myself a poor person’s cruise control for my car.
This was back in the days when you could drive a dinosaur or, in my case, a Volkswagen Rabbit.
My Rabbit had a red racing stripe down the sides, but it was no sports car. You’d think a Rabbit would be fast, but this one was a hatchback. Not fast.
And who names a car Rabbit anyway? Volkswagen, obviously.
My brother is a mechanic, and so I sweet-talked him into installing a throttle lock. Cost me some chocolate chip cookies, as I recall.
The system had a gadget attached to the gas pedal and another line attached somehow to the brake. When you engaged the button, the gas pedal was locked into place. Pressing the brake released the lock.
It seemed safe to me. All I cared about was if it worked. And it did. My brother was good.
I don’t think you can buy them today. They might be a tad bit perilous now.
I thought I was brilliant at the time. Because the area where I generally drove was flat, the system worked adequately. I’d reach cruising speed, lock in the throttle, and relax. My pace would change with any slight rises or drops in the road but not much.
I was now in league with those fancy-schmancy cruise controls at a fraction of the cost. Cost of the throttle lock plus chocolate chip cookies was less than $100. Sweet deal. What could go wrong?
So, one day, my sister and I took off for Denver in my Rabbit. I don’t remember why she was driving, but we had a good-sized hill to clear on the route.
Those of you who know Wiggins hill on I-76 can visualize our trip.
Whenever I drove, I disengaged the throttle lock when I got to a long incline.
My sister didn’t.
So up the rise we climbed. Gravity being what it is, our speed dropped.
Cars overtook us. Semi-trailers whipped by. Snails pulled ahead. Sloths waved as they left us behind.
We chugged our way to the top like the little engine that could.
We took a long breath at the summit, like a mountain climber surveying the ridges after an arduous climb.
And then we started down. Gravity being what it is, the Rabbit transformed. Once progressing at a turtle pace, the Rabbit turned into a rocket.
We zoomed down the hill, shooting past the sloths. Racing by the snails. Whizzing past the semi-trailers. Cars were quickly a blur in the rearview window.
“Those people think I’m crazy!” my sister wailed.
It didn’t really matter because we never saw any of that fleet again on our trip.
I’ve been thinking about that car, though. It could be faster than a speeding bullet and more sluggish than a lumbering sloth. Volkswagen called it the Rabbit but maybe a better name would have been the VW Chameleon.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jul 29, 2019 | Country life, Humor, Stories
A long time ago, back when farmers plowed fields with dinosaurs, and spare parts were chiseled from rock, I worked at a tractor dealership.
There were only two women in the shop, the secretary and me. What can you say about working with a bunch of guys who have oil stains on their elbows and grease under their fingernails? It was like having 12 brothers.
That time has given me some great stories to tell. So no regrets. The secretary, on the other hand, might have a few.
The secretary was deathly afraid of mice. We’re talking leap-over-chairs-on-your-way-to-the-parking-lot kind of fear. This was not a good thing to reveal to our crew.
One of the guys came back from vacation one year with a foam rubber animal attached to a thin wire. You could wiggle the wire and make the fake animal squirm along on the floor.
Our secretary almost moved her desk to the front sidewalk that day.
I wasn’t overly fond of mice myself but wasn’t going to admit. I had grown up with brothers, so I knew that you never admit weakness. Bluffing is better.
But the tractor crew still tested me. I was in charge of checking in shipments – large and small – at our business and so one day found a small plastic bag on my desk. This wasn’t unusual, and I flipped the bag to check the shipping tag.
A dead mouse was stapled inside the bag.
I dropped the gift and looked up to see our service manager and parts manager peering around the corner, eyes big like a toddler hoping for a cookie.
The service manager threw his hands in the air. “It wasn’t my idea!”
And the parts manager put his hands up, too. “I didn’t put that bag on your desk.”
Because I had learned how to ignore my brothers, I ignored these guys, too. It’s a good strategy if you can grit your teeth for a little while.
It worked. No more dead mouse came to my desk.
But one day the secretary came back from lunch to find a brown paper bag on her desk. It was stapled shut and shuddering with mystery.
The secretary ran screaming to the break room, positive that the guys had placed a live mouse on her desk. She refused to return to her office, and the boss came wandering out to see what the commotion was about.
He really needed the secretary to get back to her phone-answering and bookkeeping. So he went in search of the service manager.
Under instructions to “take care of that,” the service manager brought the lunch bag outside. Way too many curious eyes followed him. We all watched as he sliced the top off the bag and dumped out a frog.
So the secretary got a freshly-scrubbed and sanitized desk, courtesy of the service and parts managers.
And every time they thought about another mice trick, they just sat down until that thought passed.
You gotta be tough with brothers around.
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