DOES INGENUITY=PROGRESS?

NOTES OF CONCERN…

  …Jack Blair

              Does Ingenuity Always Mean Progress?

One used to buy an automobile, probably from an American company, and it was pretty simple.

Two or four doors. Four wheels. A steering wheel. Roll down windows was the way you conditioned your air, and some people splurged on a radio.

The car salesman made sure your new wheels were gassed up and ready for you to proudly drive it through town. He handed you two keys and the paperwork.

If you weren’t sure how to get where  you wanted to go you looked at a map.

And just to be safe you usually stopped at the local hardware store and had keys made for all the drivers in your household as well as a few to store in case of lost keys. They charge you 25 cents per key.

Oh, and the car probably cost $5,000.

Take a great leap to 2015.

Cars still have two or four doors. Except they have airbags in them, the windows go up and down automatically, your seat moves up, down, and tilts when you touch the right button. They have curtain airbags, they have the highest quality surround sound, they have airbags inside the steering wheel and some of the newer versions even talk to you if you drift out of your lane, your driving too fast or too slow, or someone is sneaking up on you in your blind spot. And if you want to back up, you have a television camera on the rear of your car so you can see everything around you without turning your head. The list of new stuff could be much longer but lets hope I successfully showed you what has changed,

Now a huge percentage of Americans drive foreign cars.

And in what is probably an understatement, your car probably cost you in excess of $20,000.

When you are ready to leave, the salesman does not fill up your gas tank. You probably have enough to get you to the closest gas station.

He does still give you two keys. They don’t look like the old keys because they are filled with computer chips that operate most of the new toys in your new car.

And you don’t stop at the hardware store because only the manufacturer of your special keys can duplicate them. And the cost to duplicate the each key I was given with my car was quoted to be $350.

So I use one set of keys and my wife probably keeps the backup set in the safe. When we travel we always have to take both sets so if we lose one we can get home. Because, they also tell you at the dealership that should you need to have a $350 key made it can be done in California, takes a couple days, and then has to be shipped to you wherever you are. So what was a day trip to see grandma can turn into a week waiting for a key. And of course, you have to have your car towed somewhere while you wait. And if grandma lives in a small one bedroom, you also get to run up a motel bill.

I learned something new about these great new cars a week ago when I was involved in a fender bender and had to take my car to a body shop to be repaired. My insurance company kindly provides me with a rental car to use while my car is being repaired.

I pick up my rental car, a nice little number with fewer bells and whistles, but hey, I have wheels. And they gave me two keys with a sign attached to them saying I would be responsible for a $250 fee for each key I lose.

I didn’t notice until I got home that both keys were on the same keychain and the special keychain was made in such a way that you could not separate the keys. Absolutely no way to put one away and use one.

I was sure this had to be in error so I called the rental company.

No, they assured me it was all part of a plan to keep the keys together. I remarked that would be silly because if I lost my key I actually would have lost my keys, both  of them, and I would owe them $500 rather than $250.

They assured me I had made the correct assumption. In response to my question why anyone would do that, I was told no one had ever asked and they had no idea.

So if you saw me walking more than usual and did not see me driving much during the time my car was being repaired, it was because I worried about losing my keys, both of them at the same time.

Then it came to me. There was a method to their madness. I have to have a car. They rent me a car and charge me a daily fee. I don’t drive the car because I am afraid of the key fine. They get the car back, hardly driven at all, no real mileage, and they get to do it all over again with the next guy who needs to rent a car.

Marketing genius at work.

Never underestimate American ingenuity.

Christmas Challenges

NOTES OF CONCERN…

   …Jack Blair

                  A Merry Christmas You Say?

The holiday season filled with good cheer, happy and pleasant people, shops filled with goodies, children brimming with happy anticipation, decorations in the towns and cities, old Christmas movies you loved from your childhood being reshown and a general atmosphere of good will is everywhere.

Well let me burst that bubble for you.

I will share what the week leading up to Christmas was like for me.

I went twice as far as usual on the coldest day to climb to the top of a mountain to pick a Christmas tree, have it cut and wrapped and bring it home.

How was I to know that people go to see these trees in the summer or fall, buy one and have it tagged and in the cold of winter just drive up with their tag, stay in their warm cars, and someone brings them their tree? How was I to know that all the really great trees I could see at the bottom of the mountain were not for sale. Who knew there was not be one Frazier fir available, our tree of choice.

I bought one and brought the tree home and put it on the porch. It stayed there for five days. Nobody told me to water it. The day we finally put it up in the house it was a good thing we had enough ornaments that people would not notice we didn’t have many needles on our tree. My wife has serious reservations that there will actually still be a tree on Christmas day.

Also the week brought a request from my wife that I paint a number of windowsills. Did you know if you take the color you want to the hardware store and they have to mix it for you it cannot be returned if on getting home you find it isn’t really a good match? So you keep buying until you get lucky.

I said to myself: how hard could painting windowsills be. Well, I hadn’t counted on one side of the sill being glass that is not to get any paint. I did not count on moving along from window to window holding the stain, a brush, a rag and how unfocused one can get in the process.

Who knew I would spill the stain, the entire can, on the floor. And that was a carpeted floor. Who knew stain works through the carpet to the wood underneath? Who should have known that is why people use drop cloths. So in addition to finishing the staining the carpet had to be cut up from the floor and the wood underneath cleaned.

Speaking of painting a painter was called in to do some ceiling work. He has worked for us a long time and is a good friend. It was a pretty minor job but it was a ceiling and he had to stand on a ladder. I should have mentioned my experience of working without a drop cloth as he spilled his paint on my favorite leather chair. Did you know paint cannot be taken off a leather chair without leaving a serious difference in color variations with the remaining leather.

It was clear by then that the week was not going very well.

Finally, I was returning home after dark, coming up Central Street and stopping across from my driveway while cars driving in the other direction were whizzing past me. I saw an opening, took a hard left into the driveway and SMASH. My wife had visitors who had never been to our home and were unfamiliar with the parking places. So they parked their car at the end of the driveway and I drove right into it. Head on. Another wonderful thing about the holiday season is I couldn’t schedule bodywork before January 7^th.

If you don’t see much of me between now and December 25^th it is probably because I am afraid to leave the house, afraid to do anything in the house, don’t have my favorite chair from which to watch television, and my car needs a facelift.

I am finding it a little difficult to utter the expected “Ho Ho Ho” of the season. I am hoping that I have received my share of surprises from Mr. Claus this year and that he will skip my house until 2015.