Monthly Archives: November 2013

My dad and another thief … “that’s rude.”

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Readers of my blog recall a post of mine back on October 30, 2013 that was entitled “My dad, the ‘Fred G. Sanford’ of the neighborhood and his onetime CSI investigation.” It was an excerpt from my unpublished memoir, “Muckville: Farm Policy, Media and the Strange Oddities of Semi-Rural Life” and it dealt in part with an apparent theft of an entertainment center he was selling along side the road near my house.

Link: https://muckville.com/2013/10/30/my-dad-the-fred-g-sanford-of-the-neighborhood-and-his-onetime-csi-investigation/

Folks … it has happened again!

Yesterday my dad put up for sale in the same spot an old battery charger that somewhat works. His target price, $50. Now for a couple of weeks he had a pile of crap there of mostly stuff my brother-in-law unloaded before he moved tot he state of Florida. It wasn’t for sale, there was a big sign that said “free” next to it.

But that wasn’t the case with the battery charger. Dad: “I had the “For Sale” sign with my number.

Sometime between 3-5pm, in broad daylight, someone took the battery charger. My Dad: “That’s rude, that’s just rude.”

So my dad in response once again, just like last time, put up a sign pronouncing shame upon the thieves and offering a reward for info on the theft. Me: “What’s your reward?” Dad: “Half of the money if we get the charger back.” The problem, you really couldn’t read the sign.

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Of course the first thing I had to do about this was to Tweet about it:

https://twitter.com/ChrisPawelski/status/401324276403273728

My Tweets get automatically posted to Facebook and in response my intrepid and faithful FB friend and neighbor Claire posted the following information and clues:

Claire: “damn thieves!… if it happened btwn 3 & 4; there was a white, double cab, maybe duel wheelie, blocking 1/2 your barn drive; figured he was on the phone…. from now on I’m going to listen to my gut; now where the heck is my tire iron…….”

Me: “That had to be who took it! What sort of plate? Did you see how many people in the truck?”

Claire: “NY…dark windows…. think it had one of those silly narrow beds with the outrigger fenders…..”

Me: “Hmm … I don’t recall seeing that around too often … do you?”

Claire: “no…. but I’ll start paying closer attention, gonna start keepin my ol’ 3 iron in the car….”

Two facts must be mentioned at this point:

1. You don’t mess with Claire
2. You are very thankful that she is on your side.

All day my dad has been muttering about the theft … “it’s rude … I don’t believe it … it’s rude ….”

I told him that no one could read his sign so he enlisted me to fix it, which I did.

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He then proceeded to walk to the road so as to drill it to the last piece of free furniture that no one wants sitting now for weeks on the side of the road.

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I asked him why he was ruining the piece of furniture by drilling the sign into it and he said “no one wants it, I’m gonna burn it.”

As he stepped away from his sign he pointed to it and said “look, there is the ‘For Sale’ sign on the back. How can you miss that? You can’t. That’s rude.”

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Now the question remains … will he “catch a thief?”

My friends, this is what I experience virtually every day on the farm. 

Our meeting with Vice President Al Gore’s soft buttery hands and how I once got Paul Harvey to issue a semi-correction

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The following is another excerpt from my yet unpublished memoir, “Muckville: Farm Policy, Media and the Strange Oddities of Semi-Rural Life.” It deals with our brief meeting with Vice President Al Gore.

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In late 1999 our good friend Pat O’Dwyer arraigned for Eve, my brother and I to meet with Vice President (and presidential candidate) Gore at LaGuardia Airport. Now, I thought we had a friend in Gore because a few months earlier I had done him a solid favor. You see, Paul Harvey, in an October broadcast, reported that the Vice President at a White House ceremony, while presenting a national award to a Colorado FFA member, was told by this FFA member he one day planned a career in production agriculture. The Vice President, according to Harvey, then told this FFA member that there was no future for them in that career path, for production agriculture is being shifted out of the U.S. to the third world, thanks in no small part to a Vice President-assisted U.N. initiative known as Agenda 2000.

When I first heard this story my initial reaction was “urban legend.”

So, I started researching it and kept calling various publications and organizations that were supposed to be the source of this story. Bottom line, no one could verify it. It turned out to be an unsubstantiated and unverified tall tale.

I called the Vice President’s office in the afternoon of October 22, 1999 to ask about this story and if the Vice President had any comment about it. After 5:30 p.m. a woman from the Vice President’s staff called me back. She said Gore denied the story to the Iowa media on Wednesday and then faxed me a little press release concerning his denial of this really weird tale.

On October 27, 1999 I called Paul Harvey’s staff. I told them why I was calling, concerning that Gore story. Right away his staffer put the blame on Agri-News, identifying them as the source. I told her that yes, I contacted Agri-News, and then their source, the Wyoming Wool Growers, and bottom line, neither could provide any credible evidence or substantiation for that story. I pointed out that not even a date for the event can be provided. I asked her if she realized that the story prompted a denial on the part of the Vice President. She said that the Vice President’s office in fact did call them (SURPRISE SURPRISE) to deny the story and was supposed to send them something but never got back to them. I told her they got back to me and asked her if she would like a copy of what they sent me. She said she would. I told her how this story circulated like wildfire, thanks in no small part to Mr. Harvey, and I know some people that actually called their Congressional representatives  and Senators in outrage over it, who now look a bit like idiots. She kept saying what a shame it was.

When I sent the fax I wrote, in part, the following: “To Paul Harvey’s staff person, Here is what I received from the VP’s office on Friday. I’m sure if you call Ms. Ratcliff she could provide further details. I look forward to hearing Mr. Harvey’s retraction and apology to the VP for reading that story.”

Surprisingly, during his October 29, 1999 broadcast Paul Harvey commented that the Gore comments to the FFA students that was reported in AgriNews was denied by the Vice President. The Vice President thinks there is bright future for people in agriculture. Harvey took no responsibility for broadcasting misinformation. He only reported that Gore denies the comments as was reported. This still leaves folks with the opinion that Harvey’s report may have been factual and the Vice President was merely changing his story. But, it was the closest that Harvey would come and I later heard the Vice President’s team was very pleased with the work I had done with regard to this. I also published all of the details regarding this incident on a number of farmer related websites and discussion groups.

So, I thought we had a friend in Gore. When we met him at LaGuardia I actually got some press to cover it, including RNN news

The Vice President’s advance team were floored that the press was there. We had a whole bunch of information for Gore, including ways in which to fix the crop insurance program and legislative language for our disaster aid. We also gave him information how the Administration could give us our aid directly via discretionary money available in the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC). We had maybe 2 or 3 minutes with him. I still remember how soft his hands were, like butter. And Eve and I both noticed how “fresh” he smelled. Quite fresh. My brother Brian used a joke I gave him when he reached to shake his hand. My brother said:

“It’s an honor and privilege to finally meet the man … that was once Tommy Lee Jones’ roommate (actor Jones and Gore were roommates at the University of Tennessee).

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It caught Gore off guard for a second, then he burst out laughing and said it was his “claim to fame.” I wanted to say how the years have been far kinder to him than they have to Jones, but thought better of it and bit my tongue. When I started to go into our problems and what help we specifically needed he put his hand up to cut me off and said something to the effect that we would discuss it another time and implied he would get back to us.

We never heard from Gore again. But, we did get some awesome pictures out of the meeting.

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The McTrip from Hell

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The following is another excerpt from my yet unpublished memoir, “Muckville: Farm Policy, Media and the Strange Oddities of Semi-Rural Life.”

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The McTrip from Hell

In late February of 2010 I had a 3 day trip down to Washington, D.C. and Capitol Hill. Because of an approaching blizzard I canceled my meetings for the final day and I switched from a 4 p.m. train to the 9 a.m. Acela, so as to maybe beat the snow and get home ahead of the blizzard. So far so good. About halfway home, just outside of Philadelphia we came to an abrupt stop. Yes, we stopped. This was a first for me, after taking the Amtrak train back and forth over the last three years or so.

After 10 minutes we started moving … backwards. The conductor then announced that someone was hit, a “trespasser” was the term she used, on the tracks. Not by us but by a southbound train. So we had to go back to a junction and switch tracks. And then eventually we would go forward again. But first we sat a half hour or so … and it started to snow heavily … tick tock, tick tock.

The conductors on our train were not exactly forthcoming with information so I called Eve on my cell and asked her to find out what the hell was going on. Eve called Amtrak and found out not one but two dummies were hit by the southbound train. Two young girls, 10th  graders or so, who decided to skip out of school and walk on the train tracks to get to wherever they were skipping to. He said to Eve “we can’t travel anywhere near the speed we’d like to because of stuff like this that happens.”

Hmm … one wonders how often “stuff like this” does happen? He told Eve there are now five  or six trains, not sure if he meant all were northbounds, were sitting and waiting until the tracks are cleared by law enforcement. Because now it was a crime scene, thanks to the two young “Darwin Award” winners, though I wasn’t sure at that point if they had died or not. I know that sounds cruel, but why would anyone walk on train tracks for a very active, commuter train line?

After close to an hour we were finally on the move forward. We were on restricted speed for 3 miles then we finally made it to the Philadelphia station. I asked Eve if the two girls had died and she said “what do you think?”

Finally, a couple of hours late, I made it to Penn Station in NYC. I then hopped on a connecting train to the new facility at Secaucus Junction. But, thanks to the delays, I missed all of the early Metro North trains from Secaucus Junction to my stop in Harriman, New York. So I called my parents and told them I would be getting there late, probably close to 6:00pm. My parents agreed earlier to pick me up, because Eve had to stay home and watch the boys. My dad said to me when I called him to tell him when I thought I would get to Harriman, “it’s a blizzard, you know.” I replied, “I know, take my Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer, it’s got 4 wheel drive.”

When my train finally arrived in Harriman it was a full blown blizzard. The roads were heavily covered with snow. I had gotten on a 9:00 a.m. train and now it was 5:30 p.m. and snowing like crazy.

In normal conditions, at least a 30 minute drive from home. But, this wasn’t normal driving conditions. I’m not talking about the snow, I’m talking about my ride with my parents.

My parents were all set on eating at Wendy’s on the way home.  White out conditions, a foot and a half of snow with more falling but we must stop. Well, when we pulled into the Wendy’s in Chester, it was closed. My mom said “how strange.” I replied, “what are you, Nanook of the North? It’s insane to expect them to be open.” My mom said in reply, “I suppose.” But then she stretches her neck and exclaims,  “Hey McDonald’s down the road looks open.” And off to McDonald’s we went.

Did I mention it was a blizzard?

Yes, we must stop and eat at the McDonald’s in Chester. We are the only lunatics there and they are closing once we leave. As we stop at the napkin and condiment island my dad says, in his best conspiratorial voice, “you know these cups for ketchup are smaller here than at Wendy’s” “I did not know that” I replied We sit and eat as quickly as possible, though my dad isn’t eating quick enough for my mom’s liking. “Look at him” she snarls, “eating one French fry at a time. HURRY UP!” she demands. I thought she was going to throw one of her French fries at him. Then she said to me “wait till he starts picking his teeth with his straw.” My dad got the hint from mom and quickened the pace and soon we were crawling on the back roads to home. If I died on the way home at least I would have had one last dining McExperience.

This entire fiasco was chronicled, live, on Facebook. As I posted after we left McDonald’s:

“UPDATE: we are sitting stuck on the Florida-Chester road. I’m stuck with two lunatics. We have no idea why traffic isn’t moving but at least we ate our f*#+ing Happy Meal at McDonalds. You cannot make this sh#t up.”

I then looked at the dash and I saw we had less than a quarter tank of gas. The possibility now loomed we could run out of gas on the way home. I posted on Facebook: “I will be impaling myself with my straw if we don’t start moving soon.”

After about 20 minutes we were finally on the move. But the bad news, my parents started fighting. Or, my mom was fighting and my dad was taking a verbal walloping. I wish I could share it all but it was far too much material for me to chronicle. I literally couldn’t keep up. And it must have been 150 degrees in the truck. I wanted to bail out or be put out of my misery.

Once we were about two to three miles from home I texted Eve to have the bourbon ready.

At about 9:00 p.m. I finally arrived home, 12 hours after I had left Washington, DC. Truly a trip from Hell.

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My new Kickstarter campaign has officially launched!

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Well, it is official … my new Kickstarter campaign has officially launched.

Link:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1176629437/muckville-a-memoir-of-the-public-policy-life-of-a-0

Since my failed previous campaign I have hooked up with a professional editor eager and willing to intensively edit my manuscript. She edited my Kickstarter project and it was an intensive, line by line edit.

Like the other handful of people that have seen all or part of my first draft she is very excited about it and its potential. She thinks I’m a very good story teller and is very excited to work on it.

That’s where you all come in … her proposal to do the project is very reasonable (I’ve gotten other offers the past few months from other editors across the country) and she is excited about the work. But I simply do not have $5,500 to pay her.

I wish a time traveler would give me winning Powerball numbers but that simply has not happened yet. Until it does I need your help. If you can contribute … fantastic … if you could spread the word among your social networks … even better.

In the meantime check out the new verbiage and video … AND THANK YOU!

Kickstarter campaign!

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I’m launching another Kickstarter project in the next couple of days to try and raise funds for an editor for my unpublished memoir, “Muckville: Farm Policy, Media and the Strange Oddities of Semi-Rural Life.” I’ve met a professional editor via Twitter and she wants to edit my work. She edited my Kickstarter page and did a great job. She has worked with authors who have gotten published.

She has read part of my memoir already and has said, and I quote:

“I haven’t gotten very far – I am only up to the part about farm workers and the Amen Industry. You are a very good storyteller. If you are willing to put in the work required, I think you have really got something here.”

I hope you can all spread the word once it is launched.

Another meniscus tear ….

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Back in 2008 I noticed a funny thing going on with my left knee. Every time I would kneel on it and put pressure on it it felt as if I was kneeling in and grinding my knee in broken glass. It would also burn and hurt when I worked the barn forklift by the end of the day. After delaying for months, hoping it would get better on its own, I went to a fantastic local Orthopedic Surgeon, Dr. John Juliano.

http://www.crystalrunhealthcare.com/Find-a-Doctor/Doctor-Profile.aspx?docID=96

He had an MRI done and sure enough, I had a meniscus tear. In late December, when Eve started her break from work, I had arthroscopic surgery done on my knee and within a couple of months, well before the start of the new growing season, I was totally back to normal … or as normal as I typically get.

Fast forward to this year … I’m chasing our one cat around, Bauer, and I go to my knees to try and catch him under the bed and …. YOW!

Once again, once I kneel on it it feels as if I’m kneeling in broken glass.

In October I scheduled an appointment with Dr. Juliano again

(I brought him two red onions)

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and he ordered another MRI. In my follow-up visit (which this Thursday will be 2 weeks ago) he said that the MRI was not 100% definitive but it appears I have another tear. He suggested I try a steroid shot in my knee and see how that worked. If after the shot the pain is reduced I could skip the surgery but if not I could get the surgery.

Ever see the size of those needles they use to inject the steroid into your knee? I never had either, until like an idiot I made the mistake of glancing at it as he thrust it into my knee.

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Holy crap, that was a needle! I’m not one that gets squeamish around needles, but did I mention, that’s a huge friggen needle?

And my knee actually hurt for 4 days afterward. Even after the shot discomfort subsided my knee still felt weird. So much so I reduced the weight I placed on it all week as I worked the forklift and bundled the boxes as we graded onions.

(like you see demonstrated here)

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That compensation, favoring my right leg and side over my left, led to me horribly screwing up my back this week. So much so I had to see my friend at a local therapeutic massage establishment to work on my back and neck this Saturday. She is a wonderful healer, and her work on my back Saturday helped, but it’s still messed up.

So, what do I do? Do I get the surgery or not?

I can stand the pain. That doesn’t bother me. And it isn’t often I am on my knees while doing my various farm tasks over the season.

One exception, when I sit on the back of the planter, as demonstrated this spring when Caleb and I were on the back of the planter as we planted a field of my dad’s onions.

As I told Dr. Juliano, I don’t mind the pain. My concern is this, what happens if I do nothing and then in the middle of my growing next season my knee tears even worse, requiring surgery then? What do I do then? I can’t afford to not be able to work April-October.

It’s now a week and a half after getting the steroid shot and I still feel the “kneeling in glass” sensation when I kneel and put pressure on it. The shot didn’t change that at all. Also now there are times during the day it throbs or I have minor discomfort that I didn’t notice before. And it hurts pretty significantly at the end of the day when I operate the forklift all day.

So what say you? What should I do? Get the surgery or not?

Here are some interesting links on this:

http://www.orthogate.org/patient-education/knee/meniscal-injuries.html

http://www.miamisportsmedicine.com/MeniscalInjury.html

http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Orthopedics/peculiar-knee-pain/show/415976