The House on the Rock, Section 2: Monsters of the Deep, Automatic Orchestras & The Congress of Animals Carousel

Posted on June 3, 2015 by admin

The House on the Rock is popular. A lot of people were there on Saturday, but since it’s so large, it seldom seemed crowded. One thing I noticed was a distinct lack of spoken German, Japanese, French and other popular non-English tourist languages, though we did cross paths with a Russian-language tour group (very likely from Chicago, not Russia) and I thought I heard a German couple.

Go to the Art Institute of Chicago or a Frank Lloyd Wright structure or even some popular site on Route 66 and you’re going to hear those languages. The House on the Rock is missing a marketing opportunity to international travelers. All it needs to do is persuade German guidebook editors to include it; JTB to offer guided tours that visit the attraction; and maybe trickiest of all, some prominent French public intellectual (I hear there are such) to pronounce it the most authentic American thing since Jerry Lewis. Then tourists with their euros and yen would show up in quantity.

The first rooms of the second section start off modestly enough, by The House on the Rock standards: paperweights, stuffed birds, antique guns and coin banks. One of the smaller animatronics of this section — labeled only, “The Dying Drunkard, British RR Station 1870” — featured an old man lying in a bed. It’s perhaps two feet high.

Insert a token and his arms move up and down, and various apparitions emerge from under his bed, inside the grandfather clock, and out of the closet. A ghost, a demon, and a skeleton, I think. Or maybe Death himself. That was all it did. If it really does date from 1870, it probably took a penny or a ha’penny to operate originally. Entertainment for Victorians.

At this point, I noticed that even the bathrooms include displays of stuff. The first men’s room in the second section includes model trains. I understand that the women’s room includes glassware and small statues. Other bathrooms were similarly adorned, and the small cafeteria near end of the second sector sports large advertising banners for Carter the Great. I had to look him up later.

Next is the Streets of Yesterday. It’s probably the most conventional display, and assortment of artifacts, at The House on the Rock. It’s a display-oriented re-creation of a 19th-century street, complete with various businesses and their equipment: doctor, dry goods merchant, livery stable, apothecary, and so on. I’ve seen the approach in a number of other places, including the Museum of Science and Industry and the Henry Ford Museum. It’s nicely done in The House — especially amusing are the signs that promise opium and worm cakes and the like for sale — but it isn’t the kind of eccentricity the place does so well.

Not to worry: at the end of the street is a two-story calliope. The “Colossal Gigantic Calliope GLADIATOR” by name.

Don’t be fooled. Those figures are life-sized, and they move when the thing plays.
Soon afterward you come to the Heritage of the Sea. It’s no museum with nautical equipment or displays about brave ocean voyagers along the lines (say) of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. It’s an enormous room that’s home to an enormous diorama of a sea monster — a whale-like creature — posed in a mid-fight with a partly submerged squid, though its creepy squid eyes are visible. Neither of the figures are particularly well illuminated, and there’s no sense of rhyme or reason about the damned things. Alex Jordan wanted giant monsters of the deep, and so it was done. The whale’s about three stories high, and as The House web site points out, “longer than the Statue of Liberty is tall.”

Pictures were hard to take because of the dark, and simply because the diorama was so big. But I tried. The mouth of the Leviathan reaches above the second level of the building.

I was so flabbergasted by the thing at first that I forgot to read the sign describing it, which might have told me what the figures were made of and who actually built it. Or maybe I wouldn’t have learned those things. No matter. I’d started to notice by this time that, except for the Alex Jordan Center, The House on the Rock isn’t particular keen on exposition. Some things are labeled, some not. Some labels only have the name of the object, a few provide more information. Curated, the place isn’t.

That was especially the case for the model ships in the room. Along the walls of fighting-sea-monsters room are walkways that slowly spiral upward and around the monsters, so that you can view them from many angles, and eventually look down on them. Also on display along with walkways are numerous model ships and nautical gear and other items in glass cases.

Many famed ships are represented, and so labeled: Bounty, Victory, Constitution, Mayflower, Santa Maria, Golden Hind, both the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia, and the Titanic, helpfully complete with an iceberg at its side. The USS Wisconsin is depicted, and it occurred to me that if Harry Truman had been from Wisconsin, that’s where the formal surrender might have taken place on September 2, 1945, instead of the USS Missouri (both are museum ships these days). Some ship models I had to guess at: I think I saw Bismarck and Yamato, to name two Axis vessels. Other ships are unlabeled and it’s hard to guess their identity.

But wait, there’s more. Of course there is. After the nautical display, I seem to remember a display of cars and model cars and a “Rube Goldberg machine” and other things leading up to a small cafeteria decorated by re-created Burma Shave ad signs and the aforementioned Carter the Great.

Beyond that are a series of music rooms. Amazing contraptions, these. For the cost of a token, most of them spring to life for a few minutes and play mostly late 19th-century tunes. Unless the music is piped in — which one source I’ve read asserts. That wouldn’t be out of character with the maybe-fake maybe-real dynamic of The House on the Rock, but on the other hand, it doesn’t matter much. The effect is remarkable anyway.

The Blue Room, whose walls are dark blue, but which looks mostly gold-colored, features an automatic orchestra.

The Blue Danube, at two stories, fittingly enough plays “The Blue Danube”

Other automatic music rooms include the Red Room, which (besides instruments that play “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies”) includes a canopied sleigh drawn by a flying lion and a tiger; Miss Kitty Dubois’ Boudoir, a New Orleans fantasia room that plays Boots Randolph’s “Yakety Sax”; and the Franz Joseph, a mechanical orchestra nearly 30 feet tall.

My favorite room-sized automatic music device is The Mikado. To quote from the postcard featuring it: “At the heart of this astounding music machine pulses a Mortier pipe organ with 118 keys. The Mikado features two imposing and life-like Japanese figures, playing kettle drum and flute.”

“They are accompanied by crashing cymbals, rattling snares, jingling temple bells and tambourines. The installation is lit by a constellation of red, hooded hanging lanterns.” Yes, indeed.

By this time, you’d think second section would be over. No! There’s more! Such as The Spirit of Aviation, with model aeroplanes hanging from the ceiling, plus an impressive collection of Seven-Up memorabilia in the same room. Why? Just because.

Finally, section two does end, at The Carousel. It’s another behemoth machine that Jordan and his staff built over the course of a decade. Is it a real carousel? According to the Chicago Tribune, it “actually turns on rollers because, as built, it was too heavy to turn on a central axle, the way true carousels do.” Ah, but again, who cares? If not a carousel, it’s a monster of a lighted whirligig.

The House on the Rock asserts that it has over 20,000 lights, 182 chandeliers and 269 handcrafted carousel animals (none of which are horses), along with other figures here and there, including naked or near-naked women (if you look closely enough, you begin to see a fair number of those at The House). The carousel is 35 tall, 30 feet wide, and weighs 36 tons. The dark figures you see hovering over it are winged figures — angels? Fallen angels? Mythical winged people? Weird scenes inside the gold mine.

The thing isn’t for riding. It’s for watching it go round and round. Somehow that emphasizes how tired you are by that point.

The House on the Rock, Section 1: Alex Jordan’s Odd Man Cave

Posted on June 2, 2015 by admin

The Alex Jordan Center is the first building of The House on the Rock you encounter after the ticketing building. Reached by a walkway through an “Asian garden” (an odd mix of Chinese and Japanese elements), the center is essentially a museum devoted to The House creator, Alex Jordan Jr. (1914-1989), with information about him and his lifelong obsession with building the complex, and filling it with stuff.

There’s more information on the walls of the Alex Jordan Center than is easily available elsewhere, especially online (as Wiki puts it, “published information on Jordan’s life is scarce”). Much of what’s written about the place follows the Roadside America school of reportage: Wow, what a wacky place! Look how wacky it is! Can you believe how wacky this place is?

The House on the Rock is wacky. Ah, but so much more. My impression is that Alex Jordan was something of a ne’er-do-well whose parents supported him until he lucked into a way to support his obsessions: charging people admission to see his stuff (that, and maybe farm subsidies). Once it got up and going, the place grow’d like Topsy. Except not quite: Jordan spurred the growth. Whatever the character of his obsessions, he also clearly wasn’t stupid. I was astonished to learn that he oversaw the design and construction of some of the automatic music machines, which look as fantastically complex as any of the Disney animatronics.

Here’s a smaller example of a kind of animatronics I’d never heard of before, one of which, with information, is in the Alex Jordan Center: “In the early 1980s, Alex traded with California collector John Daniel for a collection of Baranger motions…

“Baranger motions are mechanical animations manufactured by the Baranger Company of South Pasadena, California between 1925 and 1959. The animations were rented to jewelry stores as window displays; they were shipped to the stores periodically on a rotating basis so that there was always something of interest in the store window… The House on the Rock has the world’s largest collection of Barangers on display and in storage.” (The Pollack Advertising Museum in Mesa, Ariz., reportedly has more.) The pictured eggman, a Humpty Dumpty Baranger, is only one of 14 in existence, according to one source.

Jordan must have also had a dash of P.T. Barnum in him. Why else would you have a three-story sea monster built for the world to see? On the other hand, I was happy to learn that The House on the Rock doesn’t particularly gouge its visitors. Admission for three adults and one child, bought at a discount on line, was less than $90, and certainly worth it. The gift shop was tourist-priced, but not excessive. One small example: postcards were a quarter each. I seem to remember that cards of Taliesin were more, maybe a dollar. The place doesn’t charge Buc-ee’s prices, in other words.

The House on the Rock is formally divided into three parts. The first part begins after leaving the Alex Jordan Center, and includes the original structure: a dimly lit collection of rooms snaking around the side of the hill. At least, that’s what it felt like. Without a map, or an aerial view of the complex, it’s hard for a casual visitor to tell how it’s all put together. Not that that matters. Once you’re into the groove of the place, passing through twisting corridors and crossing pedestrian bridges and climbing staircases and wandering along footpaths through mildly claustrophobic tunnels, and even taking in an occasional view of the outside, it’s just one thing after another. Quite literally.

The first section was also the only part of the complex that remotely resembles living quarters, featuring (among other things) a simple kitchen looking about 40 years old. Other rooms included pieces of furniture, such as couches and tables, and one has a large fireplace: elements of an elaborate man cave, to use a term more recent than The House. With some stress on cave. Rock formed the basis of most of the walls, the ceilings were low, and much of the color scheme involved brown.

Most of the rooms weren’t so ordinary. Jordan’s fascination with collecting dolls, especially Japanese dolls, and Tiffany lamps, or Tiffany-like lamps, is apparent in many places.

The first section also included a handful of the automatic music machines that would show up in such quantity later in the complex. This looks like a painting of such a device — in fact, an homage to a famous painting I can’t quite place — but actually the device is behind a hole in the wall made to look like a frame. Insert a token and it makes music.

At one point the tour trail takes you outside to enjoy the view. Even though last Saturday was overcast and rainy, I saw the appeal of the vista, off into the rolling green hills of southern Wisconsin.

The signature room of the first section is the Infinity Room. In its terse way, The House on the Rock web site says, “The 14th room of the House, completed in 1985, this engineering marvel extends 218 feet out over the scenic valley and 156 feet above the forests [sic] floor. The Infinity Room has 3,264 windows for walls that treat guests to a truly spectacular view.”

I wasn’t able to take a picture of the Infinity Room exterior that wasn’t obscured by trees, but there are some images on line.

Looking toward to end of the room, you see this.

As far as you can go into the room, you see this.

Dead ahead from there is a window in the floor that allows you to look down toward the tops of the trees. I can only hope that Jordan hired competent engineers to cantilever the thing safely, and that inspectors from Iowa County periodically take a look at it. The room’s been up for 30 years, so presumably it’s fairly sound. Still, Yuriko was unnerved by entering the room, and didn’t stay long, and she wasn’t the only one. Another woman visitor voiced her disquiet and turned around mid-way to the end point. Her young daughter went on (as did mine). The lure of infinity wasn’t to be missed.

The House on the Rock

Posted on June 1, 2015 by admin

Here’s a list of some of the things we saw at The House on the Rock on Saturday. It’s only a partial list, and most of the categories represent a large number of individual items: books, Tiffany-style lamps, dolls, Japanese dolls, Japanese lanterns, musical instruments, self-playing musical instruments, stained-glass windows, stained-glass panels, paperweights, stuffed birds, antique guns, dueling pistol sets, rifles, coin banks, model trains, suits of armor, swords, faux crowns, Fabergé-like eggs, 19th-century doctor, barber, and pharmacy equipment, scrimshaw, model ships, nautical equipment and ephemera, cash registers, model airplanes, bottles, mounted newspapers, brewery equipment, cheese vats, bells, doll houses, cannons, and circus miniatures.

The House on the Rock is also home to an enormous calliope; what’s asserted to be the largest carousel in the world (and it could well be); and a 200-foot-long model of a sea monster, about three stories high, poised in mid-fight with an enormous squid.

The self-playing musical instruments were many, some small and maybe from the golden age of such devices, the late 19th century (it’s always a maybe at The House when it comes to authenticity), and others were room-sized and created for The House. Most were operated by nicely designed gold-colored tokens that were available for four for a dollar. I kept one as a souvenir, and used a handful of others to play the automatic tunes.

All of these items are housed in a complex of buildings built on hill in rural Wisconsin. It’s a successful tourist trap, quasi-museum, psuedo-antique gallery with some possibly valuable items mixed in, a remarkable piece of outsider architecture, a monument to a highly energized eccentric collector named Alex Jordan Jr. who might have his own cable show were he living in our time, and most of all a mass agglomeration of stuff acquired according to the idiosyncratic lights of Mr. Jordan, dead now more than 25 years, but maintained as all of these things (and a viable business) by a successor he picked. I’ve never been any place like it before.

Actually, I have. Once or twice a year, I have a phantasmagoria dream, usually involving my passage through a street or a cityscape or a tunnel among a constantly shifting complex succession of images and things. Usually these are good dreams, but sometimes there’s an edge of anxiety, such as the time I passed through the phantasmagoria trying to remember where I’d parked my car (I woke relieved to realize my car was in my driveway). The House was no dream, but as you walk through, it’s for sure a complex succession of images and things.

Back on August 4, 2007, when we visited Taliesin, which is a few miles away, we talked about a return trip to The House on the Rock someday. That day turned out to be May 30, 2015. Yuriko, Yuika, Ann and I set out by car for Madison on the afternoon of the day before. We spent the night in a motel there, and the next morning drove the 50 or so miles to Spring Green, Wis., and then the few more miles to The House.

On the 29th, we arrived in Madison in time for dinner. I picked La Taguara on Washington Ave., a Venezuelan restaurant I discovered via online search. I’ve been to many kinds of restaurants, but this was a first for me, and everyone else. I can report that it satisfied our need for a good dinner, as well as my periodic urge for food novelty. I had the Pabellon a caballo, which the menu called the Venezuelan “national dish”: black beans, white cheese, shredded beef, rice, deep-fried sweet plantain pieces, and an arepa — flatbread made of ground maize dough — along with a fried egg. We had fried yucca for an appetizer, and I had passion fruit juice to drink.

Since it was still light after dinner, we made our way to downtown Madison by car, and eventually on foot to Monona Terrace, a meeting and convention facility that happens to have a rooftop terrace with a fine view of Lake Monona. The last time I was there, ice covered part of the lake. A late May view is a lot more pleasant. The opposite direction from the lake included an equally fine view of the capitol catching the day’s dying light.

After leaving The House on the Rock in mid-afternoon on the 30th, I drove a slightly out-of-the-way route back home, by way of Mount Horeb, New Glarus, Monroe, and Beloit (everyone else was napping). I did a driveby look at New Glarus, a town founded by Swiss settlers, and which includes the Swiss Historical Village, an open-air museum and something else in Wisconsin to see someday.

But on this trip, everything besides The House on the Rock was just a bonus. That was the focus of the 27-hour, 400-mile trip. It didn’t disappoint.

The Flight of Excalibur IX, 1975

Posted on May 31, 2015 by admin

Pictured: Bill and his little brother Dick on the grounds of Woodridge Elementary School in San Antonio on May 22, 1975. I hung out with Bill mostly during our junior high years, which were about to come to an end when I took this picture. For a few months, I helped Bill launch his model rockets, such as the one he’s setting up here: an Excalibur brand rocket.Next, he’s doing final preparations on the launching pad, which was made of wood planks nailed together, fitted with a guide wire for the rocket, sticking up like a spindle. We called it Excalibur IX because this was the ninth time we’d launched this particular rocket.

That was a lot of launches for a rocket like this, because there was always the risk of never seeing it again. One time I remember the wind catching one of the rockets after its parachute deployed and taking it far into the neighborhood around the school; we jumped on our bicycles to chase it, and found it at the edge of a street somewhere. Another time we set out to look for a rocket we never found. And yet another time, the parachute failed and the rocket came crashing to the ground, wrecking it.

Off it goes. I don’t remember if this was a successful flight. I kept detailed notes on all the flights, but I don’t have them handy — I think they’re on some closet shelf somewhere at my mother’s house even now. In this case, I decided to take pictures too.

I do remember that the last of these flights — an attempt, because the engine fizzled on the pad — was on July 4, 1975. For whatever reason, I didn’t participate in rocket launches with Bill after that.

People of the Bean

Posted on May 28, 2015 by admin

As tourists pro tem in Chicago on Sunday, it seemed inevitable that we’d end up at the Bean, and so we did, just ahead of rain. “Cloud Gate” hasn’t lost its appeal since our last look-see in ’11. A lot of other people were there too.

This was the first time I’d ever seen anyone actually using a selfie stick.
Just a guess, but it looked like members of a quinceañera showed up, probably by limo, to be in the presence of the Bean.

About this fellow: 1981 called, and wants that hairstyle back.

I wonder about the longevity of the style. I don’t ever remember having the urge to style my hair in a way that was popular a decade or two before I was born. Guess he wanted to express his non-conformity in the same way that so many others have over the years.

The Last Days of Ed Debevic’s

Posted on May 27, 2015 by admin

Word is that Ed Debevic’s, at least at its current location, is going to disappear later this year. I can see why: the land at the corner of Wells and Ontario in River North is much too valuable in 2015 to be home to a single-story eatery, regardless of how popular it is. In 1984, when the restaurant was founded by famed Chicago restaurant idea-man Rich Melman, that wasn’t the case. An apartment tower will soon rise on the site, like the one near it.

Ten years ago, I described Ed Debevic’s as “a faux diner that serves decent food, intense milkshakes, and entertainment in the form of the wait staff dancing on one of the counters.” That was the last time I went there. The description still holds. This time, four of the wait staff danced on the counter to “Car Wash,” a song older than any of them.

Clearly the place is hated by food snobs, such as this vitriolic fellow. That by itself doesn’t add to the quality of a place, but it does make me more favorably disposed to like it. (Ah, so much wisdom in de gustibus non est disputandum. The Japanese have a maxim along the same lines: 十人十色, juu-nin to-iro. Literally, ten people, ten colors. More figuratively, to each his own.)

I’d put Ed’s squarely in the middle of restaurant experiences. It wasn’t even my first choice on Sunday, or second, but a lot of places downtown are closed on Sundays. Yuika, who had never been to such a place, seemed to enjoy it, and the burger I had — one with blue cheese — was tasty indeed. So I’ll put in a kind word for the Ed’s, even if it doesn’t serve burgers made from fair-traded, sustainably raised cattle who were allowed to roam and graze in Alpine pastureland, prepared sous-vide for 72 hours and served with boletus mushrooms and heirloom chioggias.

Chicago Amble

Posted on May 26, 2015 by admin

On Sunday — which on a holiday weekend, feels like a Saturday — we went to the city and spent some peripatetic hours showing around our niece Yuika (and first cousin of our children). She’d never been to Chicago before. We took a water taxi from near Union Station to the dock under the Wrigley Building, headed north on Michigan Ave., east through River North, eating there, then south again along State St. and eventually to Millennium Park.

It was absolutely nowhere new for me, except for a shop on Michigan Ave. that wasn’t there until recently, and a newly remodeled interior of a hotel we ducked into, to use the lobby bathrooms. Yet I enjoyed the walk. Part of it was walking with someone who’d never seen any of these streets or any of the changes over the years; someone for whom Chicago was previously just the name of a large city. Besides, the city was very much alive with residents, tourists and service workers, despite it being a Sunday.

I’m glad to report that the statue of Nathan Hale, which stands in front of one of the Tribune Tower entrances, decided to participate in whatever consciousness-raising a red rubber nose is supposed to promote.

I had only the vaguest notion of it. Anti-poverty, I think. It would be so very easy to look it up, but I’m going to pursue willful ignorance in this case, since it smells of something invented to show off celebrities as much as to further a worthy cause.

In the northern section of the Tribune Tower is the brightly colored Dylan’s Candy Bar, which apparently opened earlier this year.

It’s the latest of 10 locations nationwide, with others in New York, Los Angeles, a couple of airports and some other places where the retail formula Make Something Simple Elaborate works well. There’s a certain genius to that approach, after all, as the foundation (for example) of the Starbuck’s empire.

Further north on Michigan Ave. was Gold Gurl.

Gold Gurl is not, I suspect, one of several exactly like her, but the only one, though across the street another character standing on a platform moved to the beat periodically, as Gold Gurl did after standing perfectly still for a while. I had Ann drop a 50-cent piece in Gold Gurl’s collection bucket. Busking needs to be supported in this city.

A Forgotten Thread About Florida, Remembered

Posted on May 21, 2015 by admin

Posting again on Tuesday. Memorial Day’s a little far ahead of Decoration Day this year, but because of the flux of the calendar, Memorial Day will drift back to May 30 next year (and in ’22 and ’33, just to look ahead). I didn’t realize it until recently, but Sen. Daniel Inouye was eager to return Memorial Day to May 30, introducing resolutions on the matter repeatedly until his death.

Warm again after a couple of ridiculously cold days. It wasn’t freezing — that would be beyond ridiculous, into the insane — but I could see my breath yesterday. Today I sat on my deck in the pleasantly warm air.

I don’t look at Facebook constantly, but when I do, odd things pop up sometimes. Today the system reminded me that “Six years ago, you posted this.”

My first thought: I’ve been using Facebook for more than six years? Tempus fugit.

The comment I posted then, along with a small scan of a postcard I’ve reposted here, was: “The best fried oysters I’ve ever had, at the Apalachicola Seafood Grill, Apalachicola, Florida, May 2009.”

My old friend Dan, a resident of Birmingham, Ala., these days, replied: “The Grill has been there for as long as I can remember. I can remember going there 40 years ago. And, as I recall, if you like flounder, they do an incredible job with it as well.”

It’s still there, if reviews on Yelp, Google+, Urban Spoon and the like are to be believed. Good to know.

I answered: “I need to explore Miami more, but I’ve pretty much decided the panhandle’s my favorite part of the state.”

Geof Huth then chimed in: “Hey, that picture reminds me of a postcard I received recently.”

Dan: “By comparison, Miami is soulless.”

I’d say Miami has a really different kind of soul. Pending further investigation.

One more comment from me: “Postcard? What a coincidence. Rich F. got a card just like it, too, since he used to serve discount oysters to me at an oyster bar in Nashville.

“Miami Beach sure was interesting, but you have to like art deco.”

Dan: “and shell pink…”

I might still have that postcard. I have a box of Places I’ve Been Cards, started more than 10 years ago. Back when I worked downtown, I had my own office — an increasingly retro concept; I’m glad I don’t work in an open floor-plate office — and I thumb-tacked a few cards on one of the walls, a couple of places I’d recently been. Then I put up a few more. And then even more. The only commonality was that I’d been to the place. It got to be a few dozen eventually.

When I had to leave that office, I took all the cards down and boxed them. Since then, I’ve added to the collection with cards upon return from a place, mindful always to have a few extra, and with cards I find at a resale or antique shop representing places I went before I stared collecting cards.

The Great Grill Collapse of 2015

Posted on May 20, 2015 by admin

The dog, she is fond of newly cut grass. I didn’t manage to get a picture of her rolling in it, but I can assure you she does.

When moving my grill to mow the grass under it, I heard a pop and one of the tripod legs had snapped completely. Chalk it up to old age. The ovoid tumbled to the ground, narrowly missing my foot.

The grill and I, a Weber by brand, have a history. Eight years ago, I wrote, “We visited our friends near Coal City, Illinois, on Saturday, and down that way a subdivision was hosting dozens of garage sales at the same time. So naturally we went, and the prize catch was a black ovoid grill for $5. Not new, of course, but in much better shape than the one we’ve been using since we moved here in 2003. A leg fell off of it a few days ago, fortunately when it was cold. Its bottom is partly rusted out, too.”

Here are pictures of the grill in action, when I had a mind to burn parts of our 2009 Christmas tree: “It took a little doing to get the tree alight. I needed to use a piece of paper as a starter. But once it got going, it created a fast-burning needle fire with some cool popping and crackling sounds to go with it, plus the unmistakable smell of burning evergreen.”

I don’t feel like learning soldering or welding — not sure which of those it would take — to fix it, so it’s time for a new one. Doubt if I can find one for $5. That was just luck.

The World’s Most Accurate Watch

Posted on May 19, 2015 by admin

During a recent conversation with Ann, something I said suggested absolute uselessness to her, and she came up with the following: “That would be about as useful as a watch that only said NOW.”

That would be useless for telling time, I agreed. But guaranteed to be the most accurate watch ever made.

During the same conversation I also introduced “useful as screen doors on a submarine” to her. Someone has to pass down the wisdom of previous generations to the rising one, after all.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling