CHRISTMAS INTERLUDE

This year for me the holidays involved closing on the house - thanks to my status as a 1099 contractor and the current state of the credit markets this turned out to be the single most difficult business transaction I have ever been involved in, bar none.

The rest of my Christmas break - the past couple of weeks - involved The Big Move; lifting furniture up and down stairs all day, Wifee's pottery operation (work benches, spinning wheels, boxes full of clay that weigh about 50lbs each, and not one but TWO kilns), all of my tools and work benches, the boat, the tractor, lifting and unpacking a thousand boxes and one of the most dreaded activities known to Man - hanging curtain rods.

Still it's all been worth it; we're in a FANTASTIC property in a GREAT location and as an added bonus this is the ONLY Christmastime where I have LOST ten pounds, versus the usual ten-to-fifteen weight gain.

Somewhere in between all of the above and a million trips back and forth to Lowe's, Daughter #1 and I were tooling down the road in the Fahrvergnügen;

"So, like, I friended him on Facebook and I let him friend me and then I downloaded some freewear and a bunch of share tunes on my iPod and then I checked in on My Sims and . . . blah, blah, blah . . ."

Suddenly a Close Encounter of the 70's Kind . . . a rare relic from the Decade of Disco:

"Excuse me Daughter, please direct your attention to the car in front of us."

"What . . . IS . . . it?"

"That, young lady, is a Dodge Dart. 1973 or 74, I'd say, judging by the tail lights."

"It . . . it . . . has no . . . STYLE."

"Au contraire, Little Lady - it has nothing BUT style. Look at that trunk . . ."

"It's HUGE."

"It's small, actually, by the standards of it's day. Look at that bumper."

"It's . . . it's . . ."

"It's chrome-plated, 8-gauge Detroit STEEL is what it is - not like the $2500 piece o' plastic they've got on these things we're rolling around in nowadays. You bump into that bumper, it'll TALK to ya . . ."

"Woah."

"225 cubic inch, slant-six, three on the tree . . . "

"You can tell all that just from looking at the TAILLIGHTS ? ? ? "

"Actually, yes I can."

"How . . . how can you DO that, Dad?"

"Because, Little Lady, that was back when cars were REAL . . . and I was THERE."

The 70's - what little of it we can remember . . .

. . . we don't even TRY to understand.




.