My Other Cars/Motorcycle

My 2^nd car was a 4dr white 1962 Chevy Impala, 327 cu with a 4-speed factory installed floor stick shift.  This car was in good condition, everything was factory installed so no backwards shifter to worry about.  My uncle Clarence found this car from a customer at his station and it had new tires on it as well.  It had a little rattling noise coming from the transmission when you downshifted but I got that was fixed by the mechanic at my uncle’s station.  This was a great car and pretty fast but I didn’t like the color so I saved some money and got it painted all black which turned out well for a cheap paint job.  This was a fun car to drive because it was a sleeper, which looked like a family car because it had 4 doors so it surprised others when they saw it had a 327 cu with a 4-speed.  I had special exhaust installed so I could run straight pipes in case I got to take it to the drag strip but that never happened.  I sold this car when I went to basic training in the Army.

The next car I bought was when I came back from my 6 month training with the Army National Guard.   I bought a 1969 Dodge Charger 383, automatic, which was the same as the car from Dukes of Hazzard (General Lee).  It was a really nice looking copper colored car with a vinyl roof.  I had this car until I got married and sold it when I noticed it had transmission problems.  It was a highly sought after car which I found out when I received almost 30 calls responding to the ad in the local paper to sell this car.  If I had been in a better financial position this would have been the car to keep and enter in car shows today.  One guy even had the hutzpah to tell me he wanted it and warned me not to sell to to anyone else, but I told him first come first served.  At least I didn't have to negotiate the sale price.  On a side note the guy that gave me the warning did not get the car. 

I also had a Motorcycle that I bought new (185cc Suzuki), I think it was a 1973 model.  My Dad was not thrilled about the purchase, I guess it was because he had a bad experience with a riding a motorcycle himself.  It was a street /trail bike that I ended up driving to and from work after I sold my Dodge Charger. There were a few off-road trails where I could ride which were fun.  I used to lock my motorcycle to a big light post with a heavy chain and padlock outside of our apartment complex we lived in after I got married but one morning I woke up and found that the chain was cut and the my motorcycle was gone.  I received an insurance check and shortly after that I received a call from a salvage yard in St. Louis telling me that they had my motorcycle.  I told them the insurance already paid me but I would come down and look at it in case I wanted to buy it back.  The salvage yard told me there was 2 weeks of storage charges over $400 on it.  What the Hell! I didn’t understand how that could be, so I passed that on to the insurance company but they seems to be uninterested.  I went to the Salvage yard in St. Louis to check it out but they would not let me in the yard to see it.  I had to look through the fence but I could easily tell it had been wrecked but I wasn’t sure how badly, it was hard to tell from 30 feet away.  The attendant was not the warm and fuzzy type.  It just seemed like some unscrupulous types owned this business.  The whole scenario seemed to scream Scam, Scam, Scam.  I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble in dealing with the Soprano salvage guy and I didn't want to end up wearing cement boots so I just left.

I also owned a Ford Pinto, then a Mercury Bobcat, a couple of Subaru’s, 3 different trucks.  Interesting side story on one of my trucks when I was at work I explained to a co-worker (Ken E) that the engine seemed to be revving faster than the truck was moving so I went to the parking lot to show Ken.  When I started it, he told me to put it in 1^st gear and let the clutch out which I did but instead of lurching forward it just idled.  The clutch was really bad, so I knew I needed to take it in to the shop asap, but while driving home that night I noticed it was getting worse and it didn’t make the drive home so I ended up walking down Highway 40.  I blame that partly on Ken because if he hadn’t discovered the problem maybe it would have gone another couple of miles.  You know how it works once the problem is uncovered it can’t be ignored, thanks Ken.  The one positive out of this was that I knew I had gotten the entire life out of that clutch. 

The next fun car was my 1970 MGB Convertible, which is a whole story by itself.  I will cover the MG stories later in a separate article. 

Tattoos

Tattoos are very big these days, people express their style, commemorate a loved one, military symbols and some are meant to be inspirational, the list goes on and on.  I have seen many elaborate and detailed tattoos as well as some that look like someone scribbled on their arm but these are personal choices so it’s up to you.  I understand and appreciate it's just another form of self expression.

The most common are symbol tattoos that are associated with a lost loved one, organizational/military tattoo basically any tattoo with a picture or symbol which I get but I’m confused by the inspirational message tattoos and the especially rare facial tattoos.  I love inspirational messages I always have and probably always will but there are a lot of inspirational messages many of which I have saved in my computer.   I also have calendars with inspirational messages but I've never had the urge to write them on my arm, leg, neck or shoulder.  I have seen sports stars with inspirational writings on their forearms, which they could read, before they serve, shoot or hit a ball so maybe that seems to make some sense to me.  Of course it’s your prerogative to have inspirational messages tattooed on your body but how can it inspire you if you can’t see it.

Here’s a fun idea, if you want to have something really useful written on your arm, why not have a bucket list or grocery list tattooed on your arm, it would not only be useful but also a conversation piece.  Think of it, if you had a bucket list tattoo you could have a checkmark tattoo added every time you completed an item on you list.  That would be awesome!  I know you could have a bucket list on your smart phone but having it on your arm would make it more accessible.  A grocery list would be even more useful because you of the frequency of use, however the checkmark tattoo should probably be done with a magic marker.  It would be easy to strike up a conversation at the grocery store if you had your grocery list on your arm and it might make someone smile. 

When I wrote this I thought this bucket list tattoo was an original idea that I had but just yesterday I discovered on the Internet that someone had already did this in a much grander style by putting a map of the world on their back and coloring the countries they visited.  I saw a photo of his back and it was well done also read where a women did a similar thing but put red dots on the map for cities she visited.  So my idea may not be that unique but a bucket list can be more than travel locations so maybe my idea still works.  I have not seen anyone with a grocery list tattoo yet, so you could be the first.

Tattooing something on your face completely boggles my mind.  It definitely limits your job opportunities and makes others look at you with wonder.  Unless you’re a tattoo artist or a Hollywood celebrity it’s probably not a wise move.  I’ve seen a few photos in the paper about someone that committed a crime that had a tattooed face.  I realize that some eyewitness reports can be unreliable but I’m betting identifying a person with a tattoo on their face would eliminate any doubt.  “Just Saying…”

Puppet Shows

When we were young kids we sometimes made our own fun and used our imagination to keep entertained.  Of course we were influenced by what we saw on TV although that was limited.  I remember mainly cowboy shows (Lone Ranger, Sky King, Roy Rogers, etc.), Our Gang (Little Rascals) or Captain Midnight one of the first science fiction TV shows.

We found many ways to entertain ourselves and one stimulated our imagination more than others.  Frank, Reinhard and myself used to put on puppet shows.  We built a stage with curtains (had some help from parents).   The puppets we used were string puppets: 1 Pirate, 2 Sailors, 2 Maid Marion's, which I now store in my wine cellar. 

String puppets for those that don’t know are also called Marionettes, which are suspended and controlled by stings, attached to the legs, arms, hands and feet of the puppet to give them movement.  Before I had a wine cellar I would hang the puppets in my sons (Patrick) closet over the clothes rod.  I did this to keep the strings from getting tangled but there is a funny side story, which I have to tell you.  Mimi (my wife) sometimes watched our nephew Andy when he was a toddler, well one day Andy (age 4) was playing in our son's (Pat) room when he came running out in a panic exclaiming that there were little people hanging in the closet.  Mimi tried to calm him by telling him they were puppets but all Andy could see were little people.  So instead Mimi took this opportunity to teach a valuable lesson to Andy, saying "That's what happens to little kids that don’t mind".  Andy seemed to avoid that closet from that time on and he was always a good kid at our house.  Was that wrong?   Dr. Suess could learn a thing or two from that story. 

When we were doing puppet shows my friends and I would let my chicken (Peep Peep) the baby chick (see my story about Peep Peep the City Chicken)  flounder around on stage with the puppets.  Well, maybe not floundering that wound be a fish but roaming around on stage. Maybe that would now be against animal rights laws. 

We had no experience with choreographing. We always played “Won’t you come home Bill Bailey” by Jimmy Durante and Eddie Jackson (33 Record) until it got broken.  I think all our shows were free but it didn’t matter because we had fun.  I also had a Jerry Mahoney Ventriloquist Puppet, which I still have today as well.  I played with it so much my parents told me it caused me to mumble all the time.  I guess I never got the hang of throwing your voice, I just learned the art of mumbling.

I still get together with my old buddies around 3 times a year and play poker at Frank’s house.  Last time we got together for poker Frank said he had a surprise for me.  He clicked on the stereo and he had the song “ Bill Bailey” by Jimmy Durante and Eddie Jackson, playing which he bought off of ITunes the funny thing is that I had also downloaded Jimmie Durante’s “Bill Bailey” from ITunes the month before. That just shows I'm not the only one that misses those simple but fun times.

One more thing when my kids (Maureen & Pat) were young (6 & 3), I made a puppet stage for them to play with their hand puppets.  The billboard on the stage was Marno & Patrak which was Pat's pronunciation.  They enjoyed playing puppets as much as I enjoyed making the stage for them plus it gave a small boost to their imagination. 

Interesting Family Facts

Many people these days are using sites like Ancestry.com to research their genealogy charts.  It seems like a fun and challenging hobby.  Up until a few years ago I never gave it much thought but as you get older your ancestry becomes more interesting.  With the Internet today future generations should have a boatload of information about today’s ancestors readily available, but looking for records of past generations can be challenging and I accidentally discovered why, at least in my family.

My mom’s name was Genevieve Corrine well that's what we were told but she preferred Corrine so she had her driver’s license state she was Corrine Genevieve.  I guess when you got a drivers license in 1934 they didn’t ask a lot of questions.  Apparently she wasn’t that fond of the name Corrine all that much either because she went by Sissy and my Dad (Henry) went by the nickname Sonny sometimes Hank by some of his friends from work.  Nicknames are common so that's no big surprise.  But it was a big surprise for us to find out after she passed away at age 90 that Mom's name wasn’t Genevieve Corrine and it wasn’t Corrine Genevieve either.  Her birth certificate showed my Mom’s (Sissy) given birth name as Geneva Cora.  Did she even know that?  I guess back in the day if you didn’t like your name you just changed it as many times as you liked.  My sister and I thought this was going to be a big problem for the life insurance and for the sale of her home because every important document in her name was Corrine Genevieve but no one even flinched which leads me to believe this was a fairly common occurrence many years ago.  

When I was in high school I took a Spanish class and one of our first lessons was to learn the days of the week in Spanish.  For so unknown reason I really liked the sound of Miercoles (Wednesday) so I decided that would be a cool alternate name especially if I ever lived in Spain.  I also liked the name Diego which roughly translated to Jim.  So from that time on my alternate name was Diego Miercoles.  Remember the show Dragnet, one of the detectives was Joe Friday, so I guess the name Diego Miercoles (Jim Wednesday) wasn't that unusual.  I didn’t really have much opportunity to use my alternate name but I was ready if an occasion arose.  Later in life when I took up wine making as a hobby I would use my alternate name (Diego Miercoles) as the vintner name.  I thought this was fun to choose a different name but little did I know at the time my mom had done this years ago apparently a couple of times.  So maybe renaming yourself is hereditary.

I also used my alternate name (Diego Miercoles) when I made a video about “Making a Banana”.

My sister Rose also had another name she preferred for herself which was Katie O’Brien.  Did I influence her to pick an alternate name or is that something all kids do?  Our heritage is German, Irish and French so at least my sister followed our heritage lines when she picked an alternate name and our Mom only changed her first name but did it numerous times.

Hmm, maybe I should check my birth certificate!

Adios

Diego Miercoles