Existing In BFE

Tomorrow is daughter Mackenzie's Birthday.  Chivalry prevents me from revealing the actual statistics, alas, she has reached "that" age.  They refer to some stocks such as Coca-Cola and General Electric as "Widows and Orphans" stock.  This is due to the perpetual returns you can count on year after year, thus allowing its owners to sleep well.   Kenzie fits that description in a way:  she is solid, smart, reliable and all kinds of things that make me sleep well at night.  She is doing just fine, thank you, and with Norah, they combine for a fearsome, loyal, intrepid duo.      Thanks for all the nights I slept without worry.   And Happy Birthday.

I babysat newborn Norah for a couple of years.  I volunteered to provide the service, free of charge, until Kenzie's sitter situation worked itself out.  Meaning:  she didn't have one and needed one quick.  She had spent some few weeks at home and was back at work and her first sitter quit the business or something, I don't recall.  What I do remember is she called and said something about having to take a leave of absence if she couldn't find a sitter right now.  Of course, the little hairless tyke was pretty much in a carrier all day and besides the occasional diaper change and feeding, she mostly slept.  No real problem.  I could go about my day albeit lugging a basket around with me.   Month after month rolled by and the blob started to actually look human.  Red hair, smiles, tears and yes, the ever looming diaper changes.  Still, not too bad, as these things go.  Crawling beats walking and walking beats running....

On the wall of the office area at the Mary Davis Home almost forever were some Sandburg poems.  Maybe because Sandburg was born there or maybe it was a gift from a grateful family or maybe it was just something an employee found once and hung up there (I'll wager this is an improper sentence), but there they were and there they stayed.  One was Carl's famous poem about fog being like little cat's feet.  That may be true when one of the syph-bitten satanic flea-bags are about to pounce, play, kill, play some more and sleep, but generally they are graceless loud, clomping creatures.  I constantly hear slamming around the stairs, running like its anus is on fire.  In years past when I was surrounded by cat-loving people and more than one of the little bastards it sometimes equalled the noise of Brendan bounding down with his boots and lanky frame more falling than leisurely stepping.    Anyway, in my quest to get the perfect red su...

BFE REPORTER TUESDAY Judy Clayton sent these pictures of something her daughter saw across the state in the Port St. Lucie area.  Judy is my old buddy from Dick Blick and she also has an old car that she shows every once in a while.  Her daughter lives in the Port St. Lucie area and does cable installations. She went to one residence and the owner was quite happy to tell her that he had Harry S Truman's car in his garage.  She asked to see it and this is the car.   I have no way of finding out definitively if his claim is true.  The internet is a wonderful place to research, but I could find nothing about this.  The fellow claims this 1938 Buick was truman's but I have no other details.  Note the gold fender and trim features.  I would also have you look in side in the rear and see the speaker plate on the side.    The famous Buick Valve-In-Head V8 that made them an early power plant innovator....

PART 7 OF THE TAMPA BAY AUTOMOBILE MUSEUM 1933 DERBY Derby was a motorcycle company in 1921 and gradually began making sports cars and race cars.  This is a beautiful sports car that isn't particularly wild in its design or anything, but, hey, they only made 11 of them.  I'm loving that hood ornament.      ==================================================== HOTCHKISS GREGOIRE This French Hotchkiss Gregoire was found in Colorado parked under a tree.  It only had 7000 miles on it but after the tree fell the top had been caved in and the windshield destroyed.  However, the aluminum was still good enough to be straightened and welded.    This is a 1953 Hotchkiss Gregoire's and very few were exported to the US.  This museum has 2.  There were only 252 made. =========================================================== TATRA T97 The Cz...