After a few years of selling construction equipment in the Detroit area a decision was made to change jobs. Deb and I purchased a nice little ranch home in Jackson, Michigan. The reason I am sharing a few prices in these blogs is that as I think about them now it is amazing to me at how prices now are so different. The house was $33,000 and the payment was $323 per month and that included the taxes. I am going to look for a picture of it and try to post it. It was a nice place and we were proud of it. I started to learn firsthand that along with some other nice talents Deb possessed was flair for decorating and some fun things she knew how to do in that area. We soon had kind of a cool place. She was finishing up a nursing school (in Detroit) so I lived in the house the first 3-4 months and she would drive to Jackson on the weekends. I can still recall listening for a Volkswagen tooling down the street. Could not wait for weekends.
We had gained some good experience over the past years in Detroit at learning how people from varied backgrounds talked and lived. Deb has never liked jokes that have ethnic flavor. She will once in a while laugh at one I (used to) tell but she soon catches herself and some type of reprimand will soon follow. Over the years I have diminished my inventory of humor that falls in this category. It is true that for some reason one of the picked on ethnic groups of that day were people of Polish descent. I do agree with Deb that if a large amount of jokes about any group of people are told to often it is easy to build up bad feelings.
But this guy that lived next door to me was hard to ignore. He was Polish but he had a huge list of jokes but they were all about Dutch people. I pointed out to him that I thought his ethnicity was supposed to be the chosen “picked on”. He said he knew this but just changed Polish to Dutch in all the jokes and thought they were funnier this way. We did have a nice relationship with them but I did feel at times he could do some stuff that I will put in the “incredibly stupid” category. He had to go to Chicago quite often for business. On his return one night he was telling me that he was in a large traffic jam and could not find a “comfort station” which he needed to find desperately. I asked how he solved this problem he told me that he had elected to pee in his shoe and pour it out the window. I asked him, what shoe? And he told me his left one. I said you mean the one you are wearing right now. And folks this was it. I walked with him out front to where his car was parked and pointed out various ashtrays and containers that could be removed from the vehicle. I am not saying in total desperation and all other options expired I would not do this. I am saying I would retire the shoes and not tell anybody about it.
Have you ever seen the show “Tool Time”? In that show Tim, the main character, has a backyard friend and they meet over the fence and solved life’s problems. I had a guy like that behind us in Jackson. His name was Mr. Blue Mr. Blue was about 70 and seemed a bit frustrated with life. He had owned a company for years and did not have enough to do now that he was retired. Plus his wife was a bit a nag. He was so used to being his own boss at work but he had one now at home. He taught me about wife school. He maintained that all women attended a secret school about 1 year after marriage and learned how not to like some things about men. He had a unique way of expressing himself and I think did not really know many people of my age. Some of the advice he gave was a little nuts but he always had kind of a twinkle in his eye and he did have some wisdom. He also would ask me how I would handle some things and was particularly interested if I had any thoughts on how he could make Mrs. Blue more subservient. Never really sure I was able to help him much on that one. He did have a nice lawn though.
The next time I am going to share with you a time of emotion and sadness that we experienced in our lives. All storm and no humor as they say………..but it would just not be right to not have some recording of those days…..Thanks for listening……..
Thanks Stan! Keep them coming!
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