Radio Free Dogpatch first “aired” in November 2005, then promptly swirled down the Loo of History. It’s back now, God help us all.
Herself and I have been enjoying a spirited round of “Spin the Pickle” with the pirates at Anthem Blue Cross-Blue Shield, a Borg-like amalgamation of drones, robots and faceless voices that has shown a distinct lack of interest in paying our dental claims, though we notice it cashes the premium checks with no lack of alacrity.
We’ve had three valid claims denied this year — one for Herself, two for me — and generally by the time we jack-hammer the last one through the series of wormholes they jovially call their “customer service” system, it’s time for the next appointment. Makes a fella really glad that his dentist isn’t the dude from “Marathon Man.”
So, since (a) it’s too cold for a ride, (2) I’m sick of harassing the fuckers via phone, email and Twitter, and (c) I would rather do just about anything other than ride the stationary trainer, it seemed a fine day for potting up the volume over at Radio Free Dogpatch.
Nov. 22, 1963, may have been the day when I first realized that all was not as it seemed.
I was sitting in front of my fifth-grade class at Randolph AFB outside San Antonio, reading aloud to the other kids (yes, even at age 9 I had the mellifluous speaking voice we have all come to know and love), when The Authorities announced via loudspeaker that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.
That was it for school. Stunned, confused, we trudged home and, with the rest of the world, watched on TV as the young president was buried and Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson sworn in to replace him.
Yeah, right. Replace Jack Kennedy. Like that could ever happen.
Forget everything you’ve learned about him since. For a 9-year-old Irish-American, JFK was as good as it got. Like my old man, he’d been in the war; like me, JFK was a swimmer. “PT 109” sailed well ahead of “The Ten Commandments” in my personal mythology, and “Profiles in Courage” may have been the first work of non-fiction that I ever read.
JFK wasn’t some baldheaded old warhorse like President Eisenhower, or a sweaty, shifty-eyed rodent like Richard M. Nixon — he was young, and brash, and when he went eyeball to eyeball with the Commies, guess who blinked first? Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, that’s who. Made it a little easier to crouch under the desk during duck-and-cover drills, knowing that Jack had our back.
Then, in a wink of an eye, he was dead. Gone. And some jug-eared Texican was calling himself the president. LBJ used Randolph as a landing strip whenever he had a hankerin’ to visit the ranch, and we went to see him a time or two, but it felt like bullshit to me. This guy was the president? Says fuckin’ who?
In the October-November issue of AARP The Magazine, Bob Schieffer recalls covering the assassination as night police reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He likens the transition from Eisenhower to Kennedy to a key scene in “The Wizard of Oz.”
Remember how the movie started out in black-and-white, and then Dorothy opens her front door into this vibrant Technicolor? That’s how I think of the Kennedy administration. He brought style and grace, and inspired a generation to do something for their country.
I’ll carry that a step further. The assassination of John F. Kennedy revealed to some of us, for the first time, that there is a man behind the curtain, a shadowy, furtive figure that warrants our close and undivided attention, no matter what the Wizard says up front.
And while the Wizard loves to work his magic in rich, warm colors, the world often shows itself to us most truly in stark black and white.
• Editor’s note: As you might expect, Charles P. Pierce has some thoughts on this subject, too.
A delicious pot of pintos with chipotle and other good stuff, including (of course) bacon.
Cold weather sends me straight to the kitchen, every time.
This afternoon, as the temps dipped into the teens, I whipped up some bacon-potato cakes from “The Feed Zone Cookbook.” This evening it was a big pot of pintos with chipotle from “The Santa Fe School of Cooking Cookbook.” Herself contributed a large, cast-iron skillet full of cornbread and a green salad.
Meanwhile, a couple Ziplocs of frozen Anaheim and New Mexico chiles are thawing in the fridge, and we may just have to have some bean-and-potato burritos smothered in green chile tomorrow.
That should help keep the hawk out there in the wind where he belongs.
Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. A guy can’t expect to go rolling around Colorado in shorts and short sleeves all the doo-dah day. Not in November, anyway.
Looks like it’s either poop or a chance of poop for the foreseeable future, with plenty of wind to keep things interesting. The ol’ crystal ball shows a trainer ride in my future, along with the spirited use of various synonyms for “poop.”
Riding the Rock Island Trail east, I found this sign, and the temptation proved overwhelming.
New bicycles are like strange dogs. Most are friendly, but occasionally you meet one that wants to bite you in the ass. Or worse.
While planning a minor expedition to inspect the flood-damaged southern end of the Pikes Peak Greenway, as a prelude to logging what the Adventure Cycling Association folks call a “bike overnight” before the snow flies, I put the Bootleg Hobo into the workstand for a quick chain-lube yesterday morning.
Imagine my surprise when I found a link ready to pop. I could’ve broken the chain right there in the stand using the ol’ opposable thumbs and a finger or two, no chain tool required.
I thought I’d heard an occasional clicking sound while riding the Hobo the day before, when I snapped this photo. But the thing was a demo bike that arrived with shifting issues, and I’d been dicking around with the barrel adjuster in hopes of shutting it the fuck up, so I figured it was probably a tight link somewhere. Thus the workstand, and the chain lube.
One of the washouts left over from the summer’s flooding.
So, yeah, duh. Good thing I didn’t pop that bad boy while standing to climb a hill, as I had been doing. I rarely carry a chain tool on rides, and almost never pack an extra set of testicles.
Long story short, back in the garage went the Hobo and out came the Co-Motion Divide Rohloff, which doesn’t have a chain to break. And the ride was swell, though the trail was in pretty poor repair in spots, as you can see in the other photo.
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