Super Bore, Part two

I mentioned the big football game that will be played in six days without mentioning the name of the game. Some businesses beat around the bush trying to tie in to the game and sell more stuff even though they are not No Fun League partners, thus not allowed to mention the name of the game.

The most common way is to say “Big Game”. Another is to have generic pictures of things associated with gridiron such as footballs, football fields, or goal posts. (It’s just a happy coincidence that Wally World’s price displays happen to look like goalposts. The foam plastic over them is not.) Pepsi and Frito Lay are sponsors so they can use NFL logos, including those for the big game, in their display advertising. It’s not a coincidence that even the smallest store will have extra displays this week. Since our local Wally World is in Chiefs territory and the Chiefs happen to be playing this week, extra Chiefs merchandise is everywhere this week. If the Chiefs win it will stay there the rest of the month.

Exceptional is not a good thing

For what seems like forever we are in an extreme drought. This is just above exceptional drought, the driest status. We are getting some precipitation, but not enough to make up the deficit. The spring by my house is back up, but only flowing at a gallon a minute. That is a quarter to half the normal range. More rain is expected next week, but a half an inch to an inch doesn’t put much of a dent in the dry soil.

Super Bore

In just 10 days, the final NFL game of the season will be played.* I haven’t watched since the Bendover Bills did their best colliwobbles imitation and managed to lose four of these games in a row. Even if I were so inclined, there is so little media coverage that most people don’t even know the game is happening. The bars here close Sunday and Monday so watching the game there is out of the question. The last gridiron games I watched caused me to take a nap.

* I hesitate to mention the name of the game because the NFL loves to enforce its trademark and I don’t need the hassle.

Shitty Smitty

I spent sixteen years living near downtown Phoenix and met some characters who never should be forgotten.  Here is Shitty Smitty’s story.

Shitty Smitty was a hustler.  He had a TV and radio repair business, but hadn’t fixed a TV since they replaced tubes with transistors in the 70s.  He mostly sat outside the dilapidated shack he rented and sold prescription painkillers and the occasional junk car or other merchandise of usually legitimate origin. Somehow he found someone desperate enough to live in the shack and fix the TVs and radios that came in..  If Smitty attended church, he was there to take money out of the offering plate. 

Most Blacks who came to Arizona before World War Two came because they weren’t wanted in Texas and most of the rest came because they were wanted in Texas.  A few moved to Arizona from Mississippi because any place had to be better than Mississippi.

Some of Smitty’s ancestors moved to Phoenix from Mississippi. As a result, he was the butt of Mississippi jokes from his neighbors who were from Texas. He laughed at the Texans because he felt it was better to give than receive a hard time. That may have been the only time he felt that way.

Smitty learned to fix radios in the Army during World War Two. He never went overseas, spending most of his time in Mississippi. The most important thing he learned in the Army was to never go back to Mississippi again.

One of Smitty’s hustles that worked well until it didn’t was selling junk TVs to Mexico. At some point the Mexicans stopped buying his junk and he ended up with a shack full of TVs he could not get rid of. Smitty would sit in a chair outside the building especially when the landlord collected the rent each month. The building had no windows so no one could see what was inside. Imagine the surprise the landlord was going to get when Smitty died and didn’t pay the rent.

Inconvenience Store

A few months ago, the Jump Start convenience store chain sold three area store to Pumpin Pete’s.  Pete’s does not sell newspapers so getting a breakfast sammich, drink and a paper isn’t happening.  The Pete’s in Indy is hard to get in and out of, so I have been getting gas at another convenience store.  This morning, I had to get gas and decided to check out Pete’s.

Pete’s in Indy is in the middle of remodeling.  The remodeling spreads out in the already too small parking lot.  I go in to check out the breakfast sammiches.  They don’t have any.  Pete’s carries hot breakfast sammiches, but Indy didn’t.  The clerks neither knew nor cared when or if they would carry them.  I grabbed something that looked like sausage off of the hot dog roller and got the last hot dog bun and paid for the gas.  I noticed that the sign at the door said Pete’s was looking for help and was paying $13 an hour to start. 

I don’t think I will come back again until they finish remodeling.

High School Bowling

Bowling is a high school sport in Kansas. Most of the schools that have bowling teams are large urban schools. This year Chanute started a bowling team. I just can’t wrap my head around a rural school having a bowling team. Finding a bowling alley is hard and has gotten harder in the last ten years as two of our three Bowling alleys have closed and the other has very limited hours.