McHuston Booksellers

Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: Books and Bistro (Page 84 of 92)

It’s tough being Vintage.

August 3, 2013 /

“Upgrade,” they urge. “Upgrade!”

“Up your nose,” I reply, “with a rubber hose.”

Well, I don’t really say that. But sometimes the sentiment crosses my mind. Bigger. Better. Faster. Smaller. Quiet. Louder. It’s all the latest. Upgrade! The one you have is old.

Old = no good, in their book.

I’ve just never felt that way. If you could see my collection of junk, you’d probably note my appreciation for the status quo.

For example: I drive a red Firebird that I have owned for more than a dozen years. I still enjoy tooling around in it, although I wish the air conditioner would heal itself. Beside me is an acoustic guitar I bought in Kentucky just after my high school graduation. Obviously, it’s almost old enough to draw its musical Social Security. (Only a slight stretch there…) Some things were better-made back in the day. They lasted longer.

When my Sony digital camera (the one probably found in the Smithsonian as the very first digital device, it’s so old…) – when it up and died, I bought another on eBay. An identical camera, with the ancient technology and dinosaur-size. It worked great and did everything I asked of it. I never wished it would do something that it couldn’t. Didn’t need to store 6,000 pictures or have it slip comfortably into my shirt pocket. I liked it. I replaced it, with an exact replica.

The death of my cell phone wasn’t the fault of age or technology. I sent it to a watery grave, despite hearing an ominous Thunk! when I loaded the washing machine (the same washer I bought twenty years ago, still working fine, thank-you-very-much). Should have investigated the Thunk! further, but I didn’t. The phone-in-laundry-waterproof test failed. Dead as a hammer after the spin dry cycle.

The cell is nice to have, even if I don’t use it all that much. So I visited the Sprint store, where my powers of invisibility kicked in at the worst possible moment. Pinched myself, held my breath, prayed to the god-of-digits hoping the young woman would be finally be able to see me standing there. Alas. To no avail.

I don’t frequent phone stores much and maybe the clerks all sense that, like dogs smell fear on me when I draw near them. When my pleading look did not even rate eye contact, I gave up and left for that electronic retail experience, diving headlong into the internet waters in hopes of finding a replacement phone.

The word “Upgrade” came up right away. I’ve been with the company for more than a decade (much more) and my contract expired years ago. My Sprint website password is as old as my car.

Andre, the Sprint guy: You should be seeing a link at the left for your options.

Me, after clicking: Those phones look like they came over on the Mayflower.

Andre, the Sprint guy: You could Upgrade instead of replace.

Some of this exercise is just lost on me. I asked Andre to subtract twelve from his age and think about where he was at that time. He admitted he wasn’t driving yet. That’s how long I’ve been a paying customer of his company. But for me to get the latest, greatest cellphone – completely free of charge – I have to become a new customer with another company. My drowned phone is no longer offered. I guess it was a lemon that got squeezed out of the lineup. I had just figured out how to Bluetooth it, too.

Sprint won’t extend me an offer for a Snazz-phone. Can’t get the next great thing. No smart phone for this dummy.

Oh, sure. I can get a sort of retro-looking flip-flop if I sign a two-year deal. The nice phones? Nah. Those are reserved for New Customers. It’s like Andre was pawning me off on Verizon or AT&T. Maybe a WalMart no-contract deal. Hey! I just want a telephone to go along with my monthly bill.

After nineteen-and-a-half minutes (I asked Andre how long we had been talking, and I guess he was timing it. Accurately.) – after that time, I felt guilty thinking he probably should have closed the sale in that length of time. I told him I’d look over the website more closely and call back when I was better informed.

Of course, I went straight to eBay.

Samsung Exclaim, with the Qwerty (fun typing there) keyboard, up for auction in several colors and varying-degrees of abuse. I place a bid. Checked it this afternoon. Won it. At this point, no six-hundred dollar smart phone for me. No upgrade. Just a twenty-dollar replacement version of the drowning victim.

Of course, to get it activated, I’ll have to visit the Sprint store.

Where I am invisible.

I’ll see you right away, if you – Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main Street, Broken Arrow OK!

Forty years? Can’t be that long ago…

July 29, 2013 /

It may have been the approaching anniversary date that prompted it, but a week or so ago, the Tulsa newspaper This Land published a first person account of a prison riot. If you’d told me it happened forty-years ago, I wouldn’t have believed you.

You: It happened forty years ago.

Me: What? I don’t believe you!

And there you have it. I told you I wouldn’t believe it if you told me. That’s because parts of it seem like yesterday.

The Tulsa World published a book of front pages some years ago, and a copy of it just came in this afternoon. I was thumbing through it and Bam! There is the front page from July 28, 1973.

STATE PRISON INMATES SEIZE GUARDS, reads the headline, SET BUILDINGS AFIRE.

Here’s what I knew then: Not much.

Here’s what I found out later: It could have been a scary deal. Sure, it was scary enough for a lot of people back then, but I was just out of high school, living in a little cracker-box rent house with my buddy Faron Kirk.

There was smoke pouring out of one of the buildings, and rumors pouring out of most mouths in McAlester. Remember, a lot of folks had jobs at the prison, or had family members or friends working there. It was big news. Really big.

We wanted a better look, so Faron Dean and I climbed up on the roof of the house for the bird’s eye view. It wouldn’t have mattered much if we’d had the dog’s eye view: there was nothing in between the Oklahoma State Penitentiary and our little frame abode.

While we were up-top sightseeing, a highway patrol car rolled up and the trooper put it into park and opened up his door. He rose up from his seat just enough to holler at us over the window frame.

“Could get dangerous out here,” he called out. “You boys need to get home.”

“We ARE home,” we called back, from the rooftop.

“Then you need to get to someone else’s home,” he answered, in an official tone.

We thanked him, and after he drove off, Faron and I took a vote amongst ourselves and decided we’d stay right there, mostly since we were young and foolish. Didn’t want to miss anything.

The Tulsa World page says the riot was started by “five white inmates ‘who were doped up on something.” They were quoting prison spokesman John Graham.

In truth, even from our front row seat, there wasn’t a lot of action visible to us. The morning paper rattled us, though. I recall reading this (also on the front page of the World):

At one point, some two dozen Highway Patrol troopers doubletimed toward the prison’s east gate, where an estimated 50 to 100 inmates were attempting to crash through to freedom.

Oops. That’s the gate that was nearest our rent-house. Probably one of those doubletiming troopers had been the one who warned us we ought to skedaddle.

When we finished reading the newspaper account of what had happened just across the way from us (the only way we could learn anything), the store owner put us to work in the meat market. We had an assembly line working back there, digging into loaves of Holsum Bread, lining up the slices to be slapped with mustard, a slice of bologna, a slice of cheese, closed up and stuffed into a sandwich bag.

We did that for hours. I don’t know how many people we were feeding, or which side of the wall they were on. I assumed all the sandwiches, potato chips, and such were going to law enforcement and prison workers. It wasn’t so important to me then. Those were about the most exciting bologna and cheese sandwiches I ever made, though.

It seemed calmer Saturday evening after work. We didn’t bother getting up on the roof. In front of the door was a little square of concrete that was too small to call a porch, but we were sitting on it like it was one. Dusk was drawing near. One of those hot July evenings that only get comfortable when the sun finally drops out of sight.

About then, when the sky to the east had already gone dark, and a quiet had settled over the prison and its activities, there came a lone voice. A man’s voice. Could have been a guard in a tower, could have been an inmate in the prison yard beyond the chain link.

Summertime, he sang out. Nice voice, really. Acappella. Right on tune.

“Summertime,” he sang, “and the living is easy.”

So many summers ago, but I still get the eerie-chills when I remember the way that song carried over the walls as the last of the sun slipped away. Back when the living was easy.

Come visit! (No singing required.)

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main Street, Broken Arrow, OK

Ah. The commercials explain it all.

July 27, 2013 /

‘Splain it, I should say. But they also make me realize things I didn’t know I needed to know.

I don’t have one. Do you? I mean – truly – I didn’t know I was supposed to have one. But here I stand (actually, I’m sitting…) having just been ordered by the person reading the television commercial: Ask your rheumatologist.

My rheumatologist?

Not even sure who those people are, or what a rheumatologist does. But, Phil Mickelson has one. He’s the star of the commercial, if commercials have stars. He spends his on-camera time talking about how dealing with pain is part of his golf-game. Apparently, Mr Mickelson suffers from what we used to call arthritis. My grandparents probably just called it aches or pains. At some point in my lifetime, it went from simple arthritis to Rheumatoid Arthritis.

Oh, the folks suffering from it never said that. There was no “Gracious, my rheumatoid arthritis is kicking up a touch. Perhaps I’ll have an aspirin.” Nah. It was more like, “Agh. Darned arthritis,” if anything would be said at all. I believe folks of my parent’s generation would have just endured it with minimal complaint.

Times were different then.

Now, in our age of gotta-have-air-conditioning-or-I-might-die, and our increasingly abbreviated speech, that old ailment is just too long to be spoken. Rheumatoid arthritis is now: RA. Our mouths just don’t work like those of previous generations. We can’t say things like “medication.” Our dogs take pet “meds.” I suppose we humans do too. If I’d had my “meds” I probably would not be writing this blog. Blog. Used to be a “web log,” but that took too long to say, so it was shortened to “blog.” That’s okay, I guess.

‘Kay with you? (Saved a full syllable there. Okay?)

You know when to be taking your meds, by taking your temp. That’s the thing that used to be “temperature” but it was just too difficult to voice. Temp. Meds. RA.

As a kid, I suffered the effects of asthma. Of course, if it recurs at this point of my life, I’ll need meds for A. Two syllables are just one too many.

Another question-posing commercial asks about your financial “number.” People are seen walking around with a large red number in their hands. There are no three or four digit numbers in any of the commercials. I’m not sure there are even any six digit figures. What is the number? It’s the amount of money we should have salted away for retirement. Not a hundred-thousand dollars. Not eight-hundred-thousand dollars.

The commercials all show actors carrying around one-million-dollar-plus retirement numbers. That’s the amount we’re supposed to have stuffed inside the mattress over time to take care of bills in our golden years.

Regrettably, my golden years will be closer to fool’s-golden. Somewhere along the line I failed to stash away a big enough percentage to have that Sweet-Million set back for the post-work good life.

Of course, based on the today’s pared-down style, I’m just keeping with the times. When the RA creeps up on me, I’ll just take a hard-earned D and buy an A. (D: dollar. A: Aspirin, for those of you my age. The rest of you already knew that, I know.) I don’t have a million set back, but I have the abbreviated version. The Really-Abbreviated-Version.

And, of course, when I feel the pain of RA, I’ll consult him or her. You know…

My rheumatologist.

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main Street, Broken Arrow OK!

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