Impatience

My wife has zero sense of humor. Back in the dark ages before there was a local Wal-Mart, we did much of our shopping at K-Mart. Once when one of our kids had a bad sprain, I drove Carolyn to the store so she could find a hand-held massage unit for him. She had never used one before and was a little confused as to what to buy, so she asked me what she was supposed to get. I tried to explain just what it was she needed, and she finally said she would ask for "one of those vibrating things". I was becoming impatient and said "Yes, just ask for a vibrator and they will know what you are talking about." She went into K-Mart and in about 15 minutes she returned to where I was parked. I noticed she was not toting a shopping bag, but she did look like she was carrying vengeance in her heart. I also saw that she wasn't going around to the passenger side to get into the truck, but her eye was evil and set directly on me. I had sense enough to lock the door and roll down the window just a bit to be able to talk through it. After trying unsuccessfully to get to me, she calmed enough to put her mouth in high gear. When she is riled, my precious is one of the premier world experts at using four-letter words to get her point across. Seems like she went in and asked a male clerk where they kept their vibrators and he offered to take her to the stockroom and show her. That's when it hit her that she was supposed to be asking for a massaging machine and exactly what it was that she had asked for. All this was blamed on innocent me. It is one of those times that when we are talking about the good old days, I do not mention. I hope she has forgotten it, but I feel that some day and some way I am going to pay for my impatient mistake.
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I am overcome with such an enormous empty feeling on Christmas Day each year. All (most) of the online retailers have stopped their daily cramming my email inbox full of "last minute gift ideas for under $100" ads. I have a special email account set up for this kind of stuff, but some always finds their way to my other addresses where I have most of them diverted directly to the spam folder. Tomorrow I will again catch capitalistic hell.
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Father Christmas in the photo was painted by my friend Steve just before he suffered a stroke and was forced to give up creating his art. He died a few years later.

Rumblings

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Arcade Barber Shop 1981 ... now demolished


What a gloriously frigid day, and tomorrow promises to be more than glorious with daytime temps staying in the twenties and Friday will be a piece of Heaven with a high of twenty-two degrees. Hit me with your best shot Old Man Winter 'cause I know Spring is nipping at your heels!
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Ah! There is a wonderful cat fight going on in the Tennessee legislature. The Republican majority isn't getting its way and is in a snit! I love it!
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Rumor says the city's only K-Mart Super Center is closing its doors. It was built in 1994, and Carolyn did construction cleanup there before it opened.
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The old Snap-On Tools building has been purchased by a Michigan company and will be used primarily for distribution of marble counter-top products manufactured up north. Few locals will be employed.
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Here is another negative side to living in a small city: Ritz Camera has closed its doors in the JC Mall. Hopefully it will relocate to one of the strip malls, but it is doubtful. There are no other dedicated photography stores in the area as far as I know.
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The Johnson City Development Authority (JCDA) is looking for more tax payer money to waste on "revitalizing" downtown. They are up in arms and saying downtown has a reputation of being an unsavory place for people to visit and shop.

A few thoughts:

• JCDA has had decades and plenty of dollars to address this "problem"
• Why would anyone want to visit downtown ... there is little to see and even less to do
  
• Some of the most historic and interesting buildings (the Arcade building and the Majestic Theater) have been demolished to get rid of "undesirables"
• JCDA cannot seem to finish any project in a timely manner
• The projects JCDA does finish were useless from conception to completion and wind up unused or underused
• JCDA's crowning glory is the gaudy public library and it needed to be built a lot less extravagantly and in another location
• The core problems that JCDA was created to address have been given little consideration except for a lot of money wasted on "studies"
• JCDA hires many outside consultants but ignores all but the ones that tell them what they want to hear
  
• JCDA's highest priority is making nothing from something
  
• JCDA is downtown's and the city-in-general's biggest problem

Carolyn has a couple of accounts downtown, and one of them has been with her for 11 years. She or one-or-more of her employees are in downtown five nights each week, and over all these years, she has had no serious problems. They once heard a gunshot; they were once approached by a panhandler, and one time they saw a man taking a leak outside a tavern. Gun shots can be heard in any part of any town at just about anytime; I've been approaced by panhandlers in front of the mall and elsewhere; external tavern walls make wonderful urinals; it is life!

JCDA needs to be done away with, and the city needs to either make a commitment to fixing what is left of downtown, or to bulldozing it under.

Amen
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