Sunday Stealing: the best thing

irrational

Once more, Sunday Stealing is purloining from How Far Will You Go?

1.    What’s the best thing to inherit other than money?

Good health, I suppose. I would say a long life, but if one’s health were awful, that wouldn’t be so great.

2.    What one thing would you most like to happen tomorrow?

I’d like to write a blog post. I’m falling behind and my reserves are rapidly shrinking. What should I write about?

3.    Who is the person with whom you’ve been most infatuated?

I wrote a whole blog post about this in 2008. And I’m sure there were others, not to mention the ones I knew personally; we won’t get into THAT!

4.    In what part of the day does time go slowest and fastest?

It ALL goes pretty fast. My list of things to do doesn’t seem to shrink.

5.    Whose thoughts would you most like to read?

djt. What’s really going on there?

6.    Who is the person you’d least like to touch?

Odd question. What are they, lepers? I suppose the person others think they ought not to touch would be the person I would be most compelled to touch.

Genes

7.    What is the best quality you inherited from your parents?

My father had a good musical ear. My mother was very kind.

8.    Who is the friend you most often disagree with?

There is one, who I am not going to name. This week, I shared what I thought was an interesting upcoming musical release but it was pooh-poohed. Whatevs.

9.    What’s the best ritual of your daily life?

It’s playing Wordle (485-game streak) and Quordle.

10.    What is the most useful job you’ve ever had?

I’ll pick working at FantaCo (May 1980-November 1988), a comic book store/publisher/convention place that became a “third place” for many patrons. I balanced the checkbook, helped order products, wrote and edited a few magazines, et al. A lot of things I learned were useful in being a business librarian (1994-2019).

11.    In which year of your life did you change the most?

Lessee, 1972. Or 1974, 1977, 1978, 1983, 1991, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2004. If pressed, I’ll pick 1978. 1977 was the year I bounced from New Paltz, NY to Charlotte, NC to NYC, and back to New Paltz to Schenectady, NY. In 1978, I got a job I liked at the Schenectady Arts Council in a metro area I have lived in ever since.

12.    What’s the best thing you’ve ever gotten for free?

A trip to Barbados, courtesy of the game show JEOPARDY! It wasn’t totally free in that I had to pay taxes on the value of the trip; the trip’s value was $2100, if I remember correctly.

13,    What is the thing you are best at?

I can connect numbers with events, such as those years in question 11.

I can walk under ladders

14.    What was the luckiest moment in your life?

I don’t know about THE luckiest, but I thought of this event recently. As a college student in New Paltz, NY in the 1970s, I often hitchhiked from my hometown of Binghamton to school and back. Once, I walked just outside  New Paltz village and found a white and orange metal sign with 17 on it. To get home, I would take NY-299 W to US-44 E to NY-52 W to NY-17 W to Binghamton. I put up the sign, and about five minutes later, a guy from the CIA picked me up and dropped me at Exit 72 just above my grandma’s house in Binghamton.  BTW, the guy was from the Culinary Institute of America, not the Central Intelligence Agency.  

15.    What is the single most important thing you have ever learned?

People are irrational, motivated by factors they don’t always understand themselves. This week, a person in my neighborhood drove past a Road Closed sign. They must have thought, “Surely, if I can drive past the sign, I should be able to get down the block.” Nope, the road construction was at the end of the road. They had to turn around in someone’s driveway and return to the main street. I got just a soupçon of delight from this.

Hitching a ride QUESTIONS

The Kunstlercast podcast talked about something called “slugging” which is a currrent organized hitchhiking experience in the metro Washington, DC area.


I was listening to a podcast called the KunstlerCast a couple of weeks ago. Writer James Howard Kunstler was talking with Duncan Crary about hitchhiking. Made me all nostalgic, but I thought, “I just talked about the topic a few months ago.” Turns out it was over a year and a half ago. And I didn’t ask YOU any questions.

First hitchhike: in 1970, from Binghamton to New Paltz, NY to visit my girlfriend at the time. One starts on a major highway (Route 17), but then take a series of lesser roads (Route 52, Route 209, Routes 44/55, then finally to Route 299)
Last hitchhike: In 1979, discussed previously. And by 1980, I was working regularly enough to afford the bus.
Easiest: discussed.
Scariest: ditto.
Hassled by the police: a few times. The one time that sticks in my mind was hitching from New Paltz to Philadelphia, maybe in 1976. I got stopped by the police in New Jersey and they asked me for my ID. As it turned out, and I didn’t know it at the moment, I had lost my wallet in a previous car I had ridden in. The one cop said he could arrest me for not having identification. I repeated that I had had ID but I had evidently left it in someone’s vehicle – even as my inner dialogue was saying, “Gee, officer, What do you want me to DO about it? I don’t have it, dammit!” Naturally, my outer voice was MUCH more polite, and they let me go. BTW, I DID get the wallet, mailed back to me, intact.
Who tended to pick me up: usually guys about 10-20 years older than I was. They often had hitched themselves, and most of them had been in the military, a few from Vietnam, but mostly Korean war and other post-WWII soldiers. Frankly, I was always surprised when women picked me up, at least one with children in the back seat.

Have you ever hitchhiked? What were your experiences in terms of when, where, and why? Did you ever pick up hitchhikers, and what were your experiences?

The aforementioned podcast talked about something called “slugging” which is a current organized hitchhiking experience in the metro Washington, DC area. People need rides because the train stops are too far apart. Car drivers need riders so they can get to work faster, on those lanes designated for cars with multiple passengers. Voila – using GPS and cellphones, people make a mutually beneficial connection. Very civilized.

I used this before, but here again, is Sweet Hitch Hiker – Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial