(Notes from a Quiet Street consists of observations that aren’t worth all the words for a full-fledged blog post. On the other hand, some blog posts don’t merit all those words, either.)
In these chaotic times dominated by demagogues, I suggest all of us learn to play bridge, or learn to play it better. For in playing bridge we may find relief from current controversies and fears because Bridge is a land of no-trump.
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Wife Nancy got a new car the other day. If I drive it, it recognizes my face and moves the seat and mirrors where I like to have them. And then it puts them back in her positions when she gets back in.
It’s white, the most visible color except in a blizzard, and it doesn’t show dirt as much as darker cars do.
The quick guide to it is 150 pages. The full owner’s manual runs to 537 pages. We’ll probably finish reading about all the bells,whistles, and foghorns sometime in February. We might learn the rudiments of the touch screen by Thanksgiving.
How odd that in these days of concern about distracted driving, new cars have touch screens that the driver has to look at to do everything but serve hot coffee and so many buttons on the steering wheel that the driver has to look down to make sure their finger is touching the right one. No wonder the thing has systems to keep the car in the right lane and to keep it from shortening the car ahead.
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My first car had three on the tree, the headlight dimmer button on the floor for the left foot to work, an AM radio, and hand-wound windows. I turned a key to start it, turned a key to lock and unlock it, had bumpers, a bumper jack in case of a flat tire (and tires that did go flat), and a full-sized spare that had to be checked for its air levels from time to time. It alsos had a steel dashboard, real glass windows that were deadly to go through, no seat belts to keep you from hitting your head on the metal dashboard or going through the glass window in a crash, a rigid steering column that would be deadly, and an odometer that was all zeroes after 100,000 miles.
Air conditioning was the wind coming through the window that evaporated the sweat on hot days.
And the car didn’t recognize my face.
No, it did not have a crank to start it.
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The baseball playoffs are underway. I have no idea who is playing. Sometimes I wish I cared. Not often, though. I’m probably not alone. It’s football season, after all. I remember a lot of years when the World Series was over by now—back in the days when television didn’t run the sport.
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That first car was dark green on top and light green on the body. Cars came in white, black, blue, green, or red. Nowadays they’re pearlescent snow white, metallic Mediterranean blue, mocha, Sequoia Green, Arrow Gray, Purple Sector, Thundernight Metallic—
How much do the geniuses get paid to come up with these names?
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Speaking of colors:
Did you know that Crayola makes an Ultimate Crayola Collection that includes 152 colors? Among the more recent are crayellow, timber wolf, cool mint, oatmeal, jazzberry jam, purple mountains’ majesty, manatee, outer space, aspa
ragus, and Granny Smith Apple.
That would be a great question: “Where will you find—?” A Crayola box.
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And finally, a story that fell out of the blue—
We want to pay tribute to Dorothy Hoffner who died last Monday at the age of 104. Only a week earlier she had set a new record by being the oldest parachutist in the world. Guiness hasn’t certified the record yet, but she did it.
The Chicago newspapers reported she left her walker on the ground so she could walk away from her landing site.
It wasn’t her first time. When she was only 100, she was strapped to the back of a professional jumper and had to be pushed out of the plane. This time she insisted on being the jump leader, strapped to the front of a certified parachute instructor. She jumped from 13,500 feet and floated to earth seven minutes later. “Delightful, wonderful, couldn’t have been better,” she said.
She died before her next great adventure could be accomplished.
She wanted to go up in a hot air balloon.
Some people live a life. Other people devour it.