So I promised to make an update on the weekend camping in the rain, but I never did. I also promised to make an update on my epic struggle with Home Depot, and I never did this either. Events and circumstances conspired against me in fulfilling these promises. The event was an offer tendered to buy our house which has been on the market for over two years. This was something of a distraction. The circumstances were that I occasionally undergo bouts of adult attention deficit disorder, and am also somewhat indolent by inclination. I get to these things when it amuses me to tend to them.
So about that camping trip; it was a blast as I might have expected. I am pleased to report that the rain was mostly intermittent during the weekend, mostly at night after I had taken shelter snuggled in my fifteen degree sleeping bag and reclining in my new Hennessey Hammock. The weekend was a fitting out experience of sorts; both the bag and the hammock were new gear that I was using in the woods for the first time. I found that setting up the hammock for the very first time under a drizzling sky in the middle of the night was probably not the best informed decision I have ever made, but I managed nonetheless. However, I have a confession to make. This camping trip was actually a training session for Leave No Trace (I am now a certified Leave No Trace Trainer, Huzzah!). But during that first night, as the midnight hour drew near and I was fumbling in the dark with the lines on my hammock, I inadvertently set it up directly over a thorny vine (we call these ‘saw briars’ here in the southern heartland). My dilemma involved moving the hammock to yet another set of trees in the darkness (this was my second site) or leaving a trace by cutting the briar. I will leave it to your imagination which choice I made.
The extra-warm sleeping bag I was using for the first time offered its own challenges. Ordinarily I would use a mat underneath a sleeping bag for insulation purposes. Since this was the first time I slept in the hammock, I had not taken the precaution of bringing a sleeping pad on this trip. This was a mistake. For all those campers who plan on sleeping in a hammock in cold weather, if you do not have an insulating pad, you will get cold eventually (even if your bag is rated for 15 degrees). The first night I got cold about 2:00 in the morning and slept fitfully afterwards. The second night I was lucky in that I did not get cold until 4:00 in the morning and slept fitfully afterwards. Fortunately, the rain fly over the hammock functioned like a dream and I stayed nice and dry inside my digs in spite of the overnight showers.
I was also trying out a new rain suit on this trip. The suit was ‘FroggToggs’ and shed the rain quite nicely thank you. I wore a pair of rubber boot all weekend long which was handy since I spent much of the weekend standing about in mud and water above the ankles. They were not insulated, so eventually my feet got cold as the wool socks I was wearing began to get damp with perspiration and condensation. But what would the fun of camping be if not for a few adverse moments?
So what did I learn about leaving no trace? Lots of stuff; more things than I can reasonably relate in a single blog; perhaps I will devote more time to the details in smaller doses as time progresses. The most important lesson from my perspective was a reinforcement of a set of values that I already had. My personal sense of spirituality derives in large part from my love of the outdoors and the environment. Spending a weekend considering the means of preserving that environment unspoiled was a devotional moment; the cold and rain and mud and comradeship of likeminded fellow travelers were nothing less than unique facets on a rough diamond.
But enough of my amystical post neo-pagan views (I have long resolved to keep my religion to myself because I consider spirituality similar to sexuality; personal and not generally a topic for public discussion). I promised an epilog of the door drama, and the epilog you shall have. When last I wrote about my struggles with Home Depot, I was negotiating with the store manager for an alternative installation date. During the middle of this negotiation process, the offer to buy the house arrived and changed our plans somewhat. Originally our family planned to travel to Hometown to visit the Grandparents on the weekend of the 27th, but since the home inspection was now scheduled for that date I asked for the installation to occur at the same time. I could kill two proverbial birds with one metaphorical stone.
It is important in my view always to accentuate the positive when there is opportunity, so I will say that the contractor retained to install the door arrived on time. Also, the door is now fully installed and looks good.
So now that I have said good things about this experience, I feel at more at liberty to give voice to some bitterness I harbor over the installation process. I have two major objections in mind. First, the contractor arrived with the correct size door, but without any of the hardware that goes with a door such as door knob, lock, etc. His strategy was to remove the hardware from the old door that was to be removed, and this would have worked fine had not the original door been kicked in during a burglary. The kick unfortunately damaged the bolt for the doorknob, and in the process of trying to repair it, the contractor lost one of the pieces. He scratched his head and advised me in a down-home folksy sort of way that I would need to make sure the replacement part I purchased at my earliest convenience should be manufactured by Schlage so that it would match the undamaged parts that he had cannibalized and was condescending to install in the new door. Since by this time it was mid afternoon, and I had a ravenous eleven-year old boy with me who was in desperate need of feeding, I let the opportunity for one of my famously caustic replies pass with merely a grim smile. Next, the contractor chatted with me cheerfully about how the manufacturer had sent the wrong sized door on the previous occasion, and how annoying that must have been to drive all the way from Lexington, all the while assembling on my basement floor a large pile of dust, debris, broken glass and scrap wood with bent and rusted nails jutting menacingly all around. It dawned on me fairly quickly that the friendly contractor with such sensitivity to that which is irksome in the customer service process had every intention of leaving this pile behind for me to deal with. To quote Hamlet, “Oh my prophetic soul!” The contractor smiled and waved as he drove away. I didn’t bother returning the compliment; I only gave him another grim smile.
That afternoon I returned to Lexington after feeding Primo at the Old Country Store. The next day I returned to Northern Kentucky (my third trip for this one door installation) to purchase and install the door bolt on the new door, and to clean up the mess left by the Happy Contractor.
Did I mention that I would never do business with Home Depot again?
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
More Drama With Home Depot Disservice
As each day progresses, I am impressed by the ability of management at Home Depot to intensify my dissatisfaction and sense of outraged annoyance with their service. Unfortunately this is not a favorable impression.
When we left off, HD had called me to say that they did not have an actual door to install, which presented a technical difficulty since I had paid for a door installation. I was told that a door had not yet even been built for this order. And as you might recall, since my wife was at that moment taking a vacation day and sitting on the porch of the house an hour and a half drive away in another city awaiting the installer, I asked the next logical question, "how long shall I tell my wife to wait?" "It won't be today" was the reply. So I called her and told her to come home.
Fast forward about 7 hours later, I received a call from a manager at HD who left the message that they now had a door to install (earlier it had not yet been built; I wonder if they bought it at Lowe's). By this time the since of liberation that came when they had compounded their error was wearing thin, and since I have used all my cell minutes plus some working on this problem, I resolved to return their call later. I wanted to give myself some time to cool off.
I received another call from the HD store manager today. Since I was at work and on a call with one of my own customers, I let it go to voice mail. Mr. Manager's message was an invitation to call him back on his direct line to discuss the tragic tale of the wayward door. In addition to his number, he said that I could return his call until 2:00 when he would leave for the day.
My lunch is from noon until 1:00 and since I had already wasted considerable time during my working hours with this (my supervisor has the patience of a saint) I decided to call him back in the last half of my lunch hour; around 12:40. I wanted to keep the conversation short, and I didn't want it to spoil my appetite.
When I called the manager's direct line, it rang about twenty times before a woman answered. I introduced myself and asked to speak to Mr. Manager.
"Oh, he's gone for the day".
It was just now 12:45. "He told me that he would be in until 2:00" I replied. I did not bother to point out that it was not yet 1:00; I presumed she understood this subtle yet crucial point.
"Uh, well I just spoke to him a half hour ago and he said he was leaving for the day".
Given the long sad history of this process, I was not surprised in the least. But wait, it gets better!
"May I leave a message?" I asked in my most polite, professional tone.
Wait for it...
She replied, "well, if you leave a message here with me, it will never get back to the managers". This was a refreshing breath of honesty, even as it was not particularly reassuring. "Let me transfer your call to the back".
Apparently when she said "back" she was referring to the "outback" because I spent the next ten minutes on hold. Did I mention that I had already used up all my cell minutes for this month? Their hold music was not even as entertaining as "The Girl From Ipanema"; it was a loop of advertisements about opportunities to purchase quality products from Home Depot ("just ask any of our associates for details"). When my lunch hour was over I abandoned the call and went back to work.
So now it is 2:20 and I just received another call from Mr. Manager. He left a voicemail. This time he gave me his cell number to call. Unfortunately, by now I have exhausted my cellphone battery along with all my minutes.
When we left off, HD had called me to say that they did not have an actual door to install, which presented a technical difficulty since I had paid for a door installation. I was told that a door had not yet even been built for this order. And as you might recall, since my wife was at that moment taking a vacation day and sitting on the porch of the house an hour and a half drive away in another city awaiting the installer, I asked the next logical question, "how long shall I tell my wife to wait?" "It won't be today" was the reply. So I called her and told her to come home.
Fast forward about 7 hours later, I received a call from a manager at HD who left the message that they now had a door to install (earlier it had not yet been built; I wonder if they bought it at Lowe's). By this time the since of liberation that came when they had compounded their error was wearing thin, and since I have used all my cell minutes plus some working on this problem, I resolved to return their call later. I wanted to give myself some time to cool off.
I received another call from the HD store manager today. Since I was at work and on a call with one of my own customers, I let it go to voice mail. Mr. Manager's message was an invitation to call him back on his direct line to discuss the tragic tale of the wayward door. In addition to his number, he said that I could return his call until 2:00 when he would leave for the day.
My lunch is from noon until 1:00 and since I had already wasted considerable time during my working hours with this (my supervisor has the patience of a saint) I decided to call him back in the last half of my lunch hour; around 12:40. I wanted to keep the conversation short, and I didn't want it to spoil my appetite.
When I called the manager's direct line, it rang about twenty times before a woman answered. I introduced myself and asked to speak to Mr. Manager.
"Oh, he's gone for the day".
It was just now 12:45. "He told me that he would be in until 2:00" I replied. I did not bother to point out that it was not yet 1:00; I presumed she understood this subtle yet crucial point.
"Uh, well I just spoke to him a half hour ago and he said he was leaving for the day".
Given the long sad history of this process, I was not surprised in the least. But wait, it gets better!
"May I leave a message?" I asked in my most polite, professional tone.
Wait for it...
She replied, "well, if you leave a message here with me, it will never get back to the managers". This was a refreshing breath of honesty, even as it was not particularly reassuring. "Let me transfer your call to the back".
Apparently when she said "back" she was referring to the "outback" because I spent the next ten minutes on hold. Did I mention that I had already used up all my cell minutes for this month? Their hold music was not even as entertaining as "The Girl From Ipanema"; it was a loop of advertisements about opportunities to purchase quality products from Home Depot ("just ask any of our associates for details"). When my lunch hour was over I abandoned the call and went back to work.
So now it is 2:20 and I just received another call from Mr. Manager. He left a voicemail. This time he gave me his cell number to call. Unfortunately, by now I have exhausted my cellphone battery along with all my minutes.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
And the Saga Continues...
Anxiety and liberation. Those are the themes for today's blog. Think of these as the metaphorical cousins to "War and Peace".
Yesterday was a day of anxiety for me. You recall that I wrote about my tumultuous dealings with Home Depot and the installation of a door at my house that is for sale (by the way, are any of you interested in buying a house?). St. Patrick's Day was D-Day in this dispute. When I did not receive a return call after leaving two voicemail messages, I called HD's corporate "customer service" telephone number and pretty much read the riot act. Without dwelling too much on details, let's just say that I was not my ordinarily charming self (I was not vulgar, but I was also not pleasant). After a half dozen more calls and spending all my lunch and break time in wrangling negotiations, it was finally settled that my wife was taking a vacation day from work and traveling the hour and a half to Northern Kentucky to sit and wait while the contractor installed the door. (I would have gone myself except that I don't have any vacation time; taking off work for me is money out of our household resources). The installation was scheduled between 9:00 and 10:00 this morning.
It might interest the reader to know that I have twenty years of experience in customer service including experience as a supervisor for a brokerage company. As a matter of fact, my current employment has me working in a telephone call center as an information technology customer service specialist. This is relevant for two reasons. First, I have a keen understanding of what companies should do in order to deliver quality customer service. HD has been the poster child for what not to do. Second, I was busy on the telephone this morning delivering quality customer service to my customer when my cell phone rang with HD's number populating the caller id window around 9:30.
This did not bode well.
Since I was busy with my own caller, I disregarded the call for the moment hoping that they would leave a voice mail. In less than a minute, my phone was ringing again, and again it was Home Depot.
This really did not bode well.
On this second call I saw that there was a voice mail, so I devoted my attention to my customer's needs and wrapped that business up before calling my inbox. This is where the moment of liberation began.
The manager at Home Depot started by saying there was a problem. The manufacturer had built and delivered the wrong sized door. They would need to make other arrangements for installing our door. Sigh.
Some people given my circumstances might have been inclined to lose their temper at such news, but I confess that I take too much satisfaction from being in a position to say "I told you so" to view this as anything but amusing. I called Home Depot back with a sense of calm confidence.
The woman who answered was already familiar with my case, and explained that the manufacturer had built a 36" door instead of a 34" door, and it could not be made to fit. Since there were none in stock anywhere physically proximate to our doorway, other arrangements would need to be made.
I pointed out that my wife had driven an hour and a half this morning to Ludlow and was waiting on the porch for the installer even as we were speaking. I asked the manager how long should I tell her that she could expect to wait today.
"We won't have a door today" she replied. I knew beforehand that was going to be the answer, but I wanted to hear her say it. She went on to explain that they would have to have a door built, and they would be back in contact once they had the correct door in hand. I considered for the moment of suggesting that they call Lowe's to see if they had one in stock, but I decided that they may not view this as particularly helpful. Instead I started to point out all the inconvenience my wife had taken to be at the house and on time for the installation, but the manager hastened to add that there would be compensation for us in the form of a rebate.
And that was all I really wanted to hear from the beginning; a little flexibility on their part.
Yesterday was a day of anxiety for me. You recall that I wrote about my tumultuous dealings with Home Depot and the installation of a door at my house that is for sale (by the way, are any of you interested in buying a house?). St. Patrick's Day was D-Day in this dispute. When I did not receive a return call after leaving two voicemail messages, I called HD's corporate "customer service" telephone number and pretty much read the riot act. Without dwelling too much on details, let's just say that I was not my ordinarily charming self (I was not vulgar, but I was also not pleasant). After a half dozen more calls and spending all my lunch and break time in wrangling negotiations, it was finally settled that my wife was taking a vacation day from work and traveling the hour and a half to Northern Kentucky to sit and wait while the contractor installed the door. (I would have gone myself except that I don't have any vacation time; taking off work for me is money out of our household resources). The installation was scheduled between 9:00 and 10:00 this morning.
It might interest the reader to know that I have twenty years of experience in customer service including experience as a supervisor for a brokerage company. As a matter of fact, my current employment has me working in a telephone call center as an information technology customer service specialist. This is relevant for two reasons. First, I have a keen understanding of what companies should do in order to deliver quality customer service. HD has been the poster child for what not to do. Second, I was busy on the telephone this morning delivering quality customer service to my customer when my cell phone rang with HD's number populating the caller id window around 9:30.
This did not bode well.
Since I was busy with my own caller, I disregarded the call for the moment hoping that they would leave a voice mail. In less than a minute, my phone was ringing again, and again it was Home Depot.
This really did not bode well.
On this second call I saw that there was a voice mail, so I devoted my attention to my customer's needs and wrapped that business up before calling my inbox. This is where the moment of liberation began.
The manager at Home Depot started by saying there was a problem. The manufacturer had built and delivered the wrong sized door. They would need to make other arrangements for installing our door. Sigh.
Some people given my circumstances might have been inclined to lose their temper at such news, but I confess that I take too much satisfaction from being in a position to say "I told you so" to view this as anything but amusing. I called Home Depot back with a sense of calm confidence.
The woman who answered was already familiar with my case, and explained that the manufacturer had built a 36" door instead of a 34" door, and it could not be made to fit. Since there were none in stock anywhere physically proximate to our doorway, other arrangements would need to be made.
I pointed out that my wife had driven an hour and a half this morning to Ludlow and was waiting on the porch for the installer even as we were speaking. I asked the manager how long should I tell her that she could expect to wait today.
"We won't have a door today" she replied. I knew beforehand that was going to be the answer, but I wanted to hear her say it. She went on to explain that they would have to have a door built, and they would be back in contact once they had the correct door in hand. I considered for the moment of suggesting that they call Lowe's to see if they had one in stock, but I decided that they may not view this as particularly helpful. Instead I started to point out all the inconvenience my wife had taken to be at the house and on time for the installation, but the manager hastened to add that there would be compensation for us in the form of a rebate.
And that was all I really wanted to hear from the beginning; a little flexibility on their part.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Home Depot: The Sanctum Sanctorum of Corporate Policy
The Home Depot store located at 500 Clock Tower Way in Crescent Springs Kentucky, 41017 specializes in customer DIS-service. There, I said it; and I meant it.
Last August, some disreputable punk or punks kicked in the back door to a house that I have for sale in Ludlow Kentucky in order to steal the copper pipes from within. This caused about $2000 worth of damage in order to retrieve about $20 worth of copper. I can laugh at these creeps because I would have gladly paid them $50 just to leave my house alone. I guess the joke is on them, isn't it?
By the way, are any of you interested in buying a house?
Anyway, I summoned the police and filed a report, and then went about contacting my insurance company to file a claim. Before the claim could be processed, I needed to have estimates in hand, and since Ludlow is an hour and a half drive from my new home in Lexington, and since about this same time I took a second shift job, the process of obtaining estimates was long and arduous. I had to contact at least a half dozen plumbers before I could finally get one to do the estimate and work.
I made the arrangements for replacing the back door in person at the Home Depot store referred to above during one of my rare return trips to Northern Kentucky. I explained to the salesman my need for the installation of a replacement door, and I emphasized at the very earliest moment that I LIVE IN ANOTHER TOWN AN HOUR AND A HALF DRIVE AWAY; RETURNING HERE IN PERSON IS INCONVENIENT TO ME. It seemed that he understood my point.
It is important to note that the background story to my need to buy a door involved a personally invasive and highly charged emotional experience. I think that the salesman understood this point as well.
To make sure that I was purchasing the correct sized door, it was necessary for the contractor retained by HD to go to my house and take measurements. At first the manager at HD said that it would be necessary for me to be there to open the door for the contractor. I took this opportunity again to emphasize that a round trip of three hours was in convenient for me under the circumstances, and that the house was empty and for sale. The contractor agreed to use the realtor's lock box containing the key to gain entry, and I did not need to make the trip.
When I finally received the settlement check from the insurance company, I first contacted the plumber who gladly came and worked on my house, using the lock box key, at his convenience. I did not need to be personally present in my empty house during this installation, which was great since taking time off work and traveling all that way is such an inconvenience.
Next I contacted Home Depot to schedule the installation of my door. The store first insisted that I pay for the door and service, and after taking my payment informed me that I would need to contact the contractor separately to schedule the installation. I was mildly annoyed that Home Depot did not handle the scheduling, but in my gladness to see a end to this process that was now into its seventh month, I set that annoyance out of my mind.
Within a few days I spoke directly to the contractor, who suggested that the installation could take place between 1:00 and 3:00 on Tuesday, March 16th (yes, that is today as I write this). I said this would be fine, but that since I worked in another city an hour and a half drive away, I could not be there in person. The contractor said this was fine with her.
So I'm thinking this is a done deal. I go away for the weekend to camp in the woods and in the rain and mud for two days. At some point during these two days in the woods, the contractor called again and left a voice-mail.
Essentially her message was that Home Depot had contacted her and advised her that she may not do any work on my house without my being personally present. Recall if you will that I have made it clear at every step in this process that my being present personally is an inconvenience. In fact, it is a hardship. I just started a new job and I do not have the ability to take a paid day off. Attending to this personally means losing a day's pay. Considering that this is a service for which I am paying, for which I have already paid in advance, I do not consider this requirement at all reasonable. But my far deeper concern is that I had already made these arrangements with the contractor who did not object at the time the arrangements were made, and somebody at Home Depot came along afterward and disrupted my plans. The unnamed party at HD who did this acted after I had already paid for this service in advance.
Naturally I saw that the obstacle was at Home Depot, and not with the contractor. So last night I called HD and insisted in a rather urgent and yet professional tone that I was due an explanation and a correction. The manager that I spoke to advised me (get ready; sit down for this)...
...what I was asking for was against company policy.
The rest of this conversation degenerated fairly quickly. The manager claimed that the forms HD uses include a disclosure about having the property owner present during work, to which I replied that they had already waived that requirement by coming out to take the door measurements when I was not there. "Well that shouldn't have happened; against company policy". I pointed out that actually acting in a manner contrary to what one has written down on paper isn't much of a policy, is it? He asked me to (brace yourself) to "work with me" on this. This of course means that I should give in and accommodate their convenience in receiving the services that I have already paid for in advance.
Each passing moment of this conversation intensified my resentment. "I am BITTERLY dissatisfied with the quality of Home Depot's customer service, and I will NEVER do business with your company again" I advised him. "Furthermore, I intend on telling all my friends about my experience, and I have many friends". Now it was his turn to show resentment. He insisted that I was being unreasonable since, after all, this did involve a question of theologically correct corporate policy. And don't forget that the forms had a disclosure and all that.
"The friends I tell won't care or even hear about notes or policies or disclosures" I told him. "They will only hear that I was bitterly dissatisfied, because that is all I am going to tell them".
The idea that I would not act as a fair and impartial advocate on behalf of his employer apparently had not occurred to the manager before I pointed it out, because this was followed by a moment of silence.
"My point in this dispute is that your company took my money and now you are not delivering that which I expect. If your company policy requires you not to deliver what customers expect, perhaps it is not such a hot policy."
This was followed by more babble about taking it to another level of management but it would be to no avail since, after all, this was a company policy and all that. He couldn't understand why I wouldn't agree to driving up after work some day during the week. I pointed out that since I worked until 5:00 each day, a three hour round trip plus three hours of installation time (sitting around in an empty house) would put me back around midnight. Rather than argue, I told him that I could be personally present for the installation anytime next Sunday (incidentally, the reader should take note that I have plans for every Saturday from now until June). Manager said he would investigate that alternative and call me back Tuesday (today; this morning).
A different manager called me this morning. After welcoming me with a "good morning" she advised me that contractors never work on the weekends, especially not Sundays, but that they could make an exception by having someone come to work on my installation on Saturday March 27th. "Will that work for you?"
"No, it won't." Silence. "I have plans to travel out of town that weekend". (Which is true; our family is traveling to Murray to visit the grandparents so that they can celebrate my son's 11th birthday. This has been planned for weeks). There was more silence on the line.
Needless to say, this conversation (during my work hours I might add) did not go any better than the conversation the night before. The only consideration this new manager was able to provide was the telephone number for the corporate offices where I could call to complain (and presumably receive yet another sermon on the sanctity of corporate policies).
In deference to myself (which I think is fair since I am writing this), I have spent the past twenty years as a customer service professional. I demand quality customer service precisely because I deliver quality customer service to my clients.
Several years ago, when I was a brokerage supervisor, I worked for a manager named Dave who I looked to as an exemplar and mentor. Manager Dave once told me, "the customer is not always right; but he is always the customer". I think this is a lesson Home Depot should take to heart.
Last August, some disreputable punk or punks kicked in the back door to a house that I have for sale in Ludlow Kentucky in order to steal the copper pipes from within. This caused about $2000 worth of damage in order to retrieve about $20 worth of copper. I can laugh at these creeps because I would have gladly paid them $50 just to leave my house alone. I guess the joke is on them, isn't it?
By the way, are any of you interested in buying a house?
Anyway, I summoned the police and filed a report, and then went about contacting my insurance company to file a claim. Before the claim could be processed, I needed to have estimates in hand, and since Ludlow is an hour and a half drive from my new home in Lexington, and since about this same time I took a second shift job, the process of obtaining estimates was long and arduous. I had to contact at least a half dozen plumbers before I could finally get one to do the estimate and work.
I made the arrangements for replacing the back door in person at the Home Depot store referred to above during one of my rare return trips to Northern Kentucky. I explained to the salesman my need for the installation of a replacement door, and I emphasized at the very earliest moment that I LIVE IN ANOTHER TOWN AN HOUR AND A HALF DRIVE AWAY; RETURNING HERE IN PERSON IS INCONVENIENT TO ME. It seemed that he understood my point.
It is important to note that the background story to my need to buy a door involved a personally invasive and highly charged emotional experience. I think that the salesman understood this point as well.
To make sure that I was purchasing the correct sized door, it was necessary for the contractor retained by HD to go to my house and take measurements. At first the manager at HD said that it would be necessary for me to be there to open the door for the contractor. I took this opportunity again to emphasize that a round trip of three hours was in convenient for me under the circumstances, and that the house was empty and for sale. The contractor agreed to use the realtor's lock box containing the key to gain entry, and I did not need to make the trip.
When I finally received the settlement check from the insurance company, I first contacted the plumber who gladly came and worked on my house, using the lock box key, at his convenience. I did not need to be personally present in my empty house during this installation, which was great since taking time off work and traveling all that way is such an inconvenience.
Next I contacted Home Depot to schedule the installation of my door. The store first insisted that I pay for the door and service, and after taking my payment informed me that I would need to contact the contractor separately to schedule the installation. I was mildly annoyed that Home Depot did not handle the scheduling, but in my gladness to see a end to this process that was now into its seventh month, I set that annoyance out of my mind.
Within a few days I spoke directly to the contractor, who suggested that the installation could take place between 1:00 and 3:00 on Tuesday, March 16th (yes, that is today as I write this). I said this would be fine, but that since I worked in another city an hour and a half drive away, I could not be there in person. The contractor said this was fine with her.
So I'm thinking this is a done deal. I go away for the weekend to camp in the woods and in the rain and mud for two days. At some point during these two days in the woods, the contractor called again and left a voice-mail.
Essentially her message was that Home Depot had contacted her and advised her that she may not do any work on my house without my being personally present. Recall if you will that I have made it clear at every step in this process that my being present personally is an inconvenience. In fact, it is a hardship. I just started a new job and I do not have the ability to take a paid day off. Attending to this personally means losing a day's pay. Considering that this is a service for which I am paying, for which I have already paid in advance, I do not consider this requirement at all reasonable. But my far deeper concern is that I had already made these arrangements with the contractor who did not object at the time the arrangements were made, and somebody at Home Depot came along afterward and disrupted my plans. The unnamed party at HD who did this acted after I had already paid for this service in advance.
Naturally I saw that the obstacle was at Home Depot, and not with the contractor. So last night I called HD and insisted in a rather urgent and yet professional tone that I was due an explanation and a correction. The manager that I spoke to advised me (get ready; sit down for this)...
...what I was asking for was against company policy.
The rest of this conversation degenerated fairly quickly. The manager claimed that the forms HD uses include a disclosure about having the property owner present during work, to which I replied that they had already waived that requirement by coming out to take the door measurements when I was not there. "Well that shouldn't have happened; against company policy". I pointed out that actually acting in a manner contrary to what one has written down on paper isn't much of a policy, is it? He asked me to (brace yourself) to "work with me" on this. This of course means that I should give in and accommodate their convenience in receiving the services that I have already paid for in advance.
Each passing moment of this conversation intensified my resentment. "I am BITTERLY dissatisfied with the quality of Home Depot's customer service, and I will NEVER do business with your company again" I advised him. "Furthermore, I intend on telling all my friends about my experience, and I have many friends". Now it was his turn to show resentment. He insisted that I was being unreasonable since, after all, this did involve a question of theologically correct corporate policy. And don't forget that the forms had a disclosure and all that.
"The friends I tell won't care or even hear about notes or policies or disclosures" I told him. "They will only hear that I was bitterly dissatisfied, because that is all I am going to tell them".
The idea that I would not act as a fair and impartial advocate on behalf of his employer apparently had not occurred to the manager before I pointed it out, because this was followed by a moment of silence.
"My point in this dispute is that your company took my money and now you are not delivering that which I expect. If your company policy requires you not to deliver what customers expect, perhaps it is not such a hot policy."
This was followed by more babble about taking it to another level of management but it would be to no avail since, after all, this was a company policy and all that. He couldn't understand why I wouldn't agree to driving up after work some day during the week. I pointed out that since I worked until 5:00 each day, a three hour round trip plus three hours of installation time (sitting around in an empty house) would put me back around midnight. Rather than argue, I told him that I could be personally present for the installation anytime next Sunday (incidentally, the reader should take note that I have plans for every Saturday from now until June). Manager said he would investigate that alternative and call me back Tuesday (today; this morning).
A different manager called me this morning. After welcoming me with a "good morning" she advised me that contractors never work on the weekends, especially not Sundays, but that they could make an exception by having someone come to work on my installation on Saturday March 27th. "Will that work for you?"
"No, it won't." Silence. "I have plans to travel out of town that weekend". (Which is true; our family is traveling to Murray to visit the grandparents so that they can celebrate my son's 11th birthday. This has been planned for weeks). There was more silence on the line.
Needless to say, this conversation (during my work hours I might add) did not go any better than the conversation the night before. The only consideration this new manager was able to provide was the telephone number for the corporate offices where I could call to complain (and presumably receive yet another sermon on the sanctity of corporate policies).
In deference to myself (which I think is fair since I am writing this), I have spent the past twenty years as a customer service professional. I demand quality customer service precisely because I deliver quality customer service to my clients.
Several years ago, when I was a brokerage supervisor, I worked for a manager named Dave who I looked to as an exemplar and mentor. Manager Dave once told me, "the customer is not always right; but he is always the customer". I think this is a lesson Home Depot should take to heart.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Greetings Crimefighters
Have I ever told you that I cultivate pet peeves? I’m sure I must have mentioned this before; my sense of annoyance at such things as conspiracy theorists and left lane vigilantes. At the top of my list of pet peeves are liars and thieves, which in my experience are typically two sides to the same creep. Nothing pleases me more than to catch a thief (or a liar) in the act of practicing their sordid little business and personally to lay them low for it. Here is an account of when I busted a particularly insidious thief.
I have a really good friend I’ll call Bear. He is an honest hardworking sort who’s society I have enjoyed through many libations and many adventures. Nearly twenty years ago, when his mother was still alive, I received a call from Bear one night asking me for my help. His Mom had been chronically sick for some time, and she had come to rely on a nurse to help her with her day to day needs such as running errands, fetching her prescriptions and other odds and ends. Among the things Nurse was helping Mom with was keeping her banking records in order, but the arrival of Mom’s most recent banking statement disclosed that not everything was in order. Bear stated that the balance on the statement did not reconcile with the balance in her ledger, and since he knew I was a banker by profession (and that I had attended two years of law school; impressive to someone who barely finished high school), he asked if I would visit Mom and help her straighten out her books. Naturally I was eager to agree.
When I arrived at Mom’s apartment, the first thing I did was to examine her bank statement. This was back in the days when banks still returned cancelled checks with the statements, and I began by comparing each check against the list of checks on the statement. It did not take long for me to spot a red flag. One of the cancelled checks in the returned batch had a serial number that was out of sequence with the others. Furthermore, the check was made payable to cash for an even dollar amount (a hundred dollars). I quickly compared this check against others in the batch and found that the signature on the questionable check did not really resemble the signatures on the other checks. Alarm bells began ringing in my head.
Next I examined the ledger for Mom’s account, and became even more alarmed. Mom confirmed that all of the entries in the two ledger books she had were mostly done by Nurse, who regularly made a habit of collecting her mail, and reconciling her ledger with her bank statements. One of the first improprieties I noticed was that the ending balance on the older ledger did not match the beginning balance on the newer one. The difference in balances was several hundred dollars. I began to expand my research by looking at the bank statements for the previous six months (the period of time that Nurse had been working for Mom). In every single statement, I found examples of check numbers that were written out of sequence. Upon searching through the returned checks in each monthly batch, I found that the checks that had been written out of sequence were all missing.
Next I turned to Mom’s box of blank checks. All of the checks that had been written out of sequence had been removed from the end of the respective book. Upon flipping through the blank check books, I was able to identify almost a half dozen checks that remained unaccounted for either in the blank checkbooks or bank statements.
By this time it was absolutely clear in my mind that Nurse had been defrauding Mom on a fairly routine basis. She was stealing blank checks from the back of blank books, writing them payable to cash for an even dollar amount for anything from fifty to a hundred dollars, forging Mom’s signature, and then covering her tracks by collecting the bank statements from the mail before Mom could, and removing the forged checks from the returned batch of checks. The final step of her cover-up was to make entries into the ledger that conveniently left out the stolen and forged checks.
This made my blood boil. I was determined to burn Nurse for her duplicity.
Now that I had caught Nurse dead to rights in her theft, I recognized my next task as determining just how much Nurse had ripped off from Mom. This was easy enough; just identifying all the checks that were written out of sequence and missing from the bank statements, and adding them up. Mom was stunned to find that the woman she trusted to help her with her finances had stolen almost $900 dollars from her over a six month period of time. Since Mom was on a fixed income of disability payments, this blow was a disaster. I felt a calm sense of controlled anger as I sat explaining these facts to this frail old lady as tears began to drip down her cheeks. Now I didn’t only want to see Nurse in jail; I wanted to get Mom’s money back.
All of the complex little details I had uncovered seemed to mystify Bear and Mom, and I knew that if there was to be any chance of recovering the loss, they would need to have a clear statement of the case. I took a yellow legal pad and began to draft notes in bulleted format; A, B, C, and D. “Here”, I said, “take your banks statements, your batches of checks, the blank check books, and your ledgers to police headquarters tomorrow. Ask to speak to a detective. When you interview with the detective, present these things I have outlined in this order. The detective will understand and know what to do”. I closed by making the sad observation that Nurse almost surely spent Mom’s stolen funds by now, and recovery of the property wasn’t very likely. I left Mom’s apartment late that night, with Mom appearing puzzled and sad, and Bear in a state of cold fury. Secretly I hoped that he wouldn’t go find Nurse and harm her, but as I left I wasn’t so sure he would control this impulse that I knew he was feeling.
The next evening, I received a call from Bear. He thanked me profusely for my help with a glad tone to his voice. The interview with the detective had gone very well. Bear reviewed the evidence and my notes exactly as I had instructed while the detective listened patiently. After Bear was done, the detective only asked a single question; “Do you have Nurse’s telephone number?” Mom gave him the number and Detective gave nurse a call. He politely introduced himself, explained that Mom and Bear were in his office and disclosed the reason why they were there. Detective informed Nurse that she was to have the full amount of the missing funds, in cash, in his office within one hour if Nurse were to harbor any hope of spending that night in her own bed rather than in jail.
An hour later, Mom and Bear left the Detective’s office with $900 in cash.
I have a really good friend I’ll call Bear. He is an honest hardworking sort who’s society I have enjoyed through many libations and many adventures. Nearly twenty years ago, when his mother was still alive, I received a call from Bear one night asking me for my help. His Mom had been chronically sick for some time, and she had come to rely on a nurse to help her with her day to day needs such as running errands, fetching her prescriptions and other odds and ends. Among the things Nurse was helping Mom with was keeping her banking records in order, but the arrival of Mom’s most recent banking statement disclosed that not everything was in order. Bear stated that the balance on the statement did not reconcile with the balance in her ledger, and since he knew I was a banker by profession (and that I had attended two years of law school; impressive to someone who barely finished high school), he asked if I would visit Mom and help her straighten out her books. Naturally I was eager to agree.
When I arrived at Mom’s apartment, the first thing I did was to examine her bank statement. This was back in the days when banks still returned cancelled checks with the statements, and I began by comparing each check against the list of checks on the statement. It did not take long for me to spot a red flag. One of the cancelled checks in the returned batch had a serial number that was out of sequence with the others. Furthermore, the check was made payable to cash for an even dollar amount (a hundred dollars). I quickly compared this check against others in the batch and found that the signature on the questionable check did not really resemble the signatures on the other checks. Alarm bells began ringing in my head.
Next I examined the ledger for Mom’s account, and became even more alarmed. Mom confirmed that all of the entries in the two ledger books she had were mostly done by Nurse, who regularly made a habit of collecting her mail, and reconciling her ledger with her bank statements. One of the first improprieties I noticed was that the ending balance on the older ledger did not match the beginning balance on the newer one. The difference in balances was several hundred dollars. I began to expand my research by looking at the bank statements for the previous six months (the period of time that Nurse had been working for Mom). In every single statement, I found examples of check numbers that were written out of sequence. Upon searching through the returned checks in each monthly batch, I found that the checks that had been written out of sequence were all missing.
Next I turned to Mom’s box of blank checks. All of the checks that had been written out of sequence had been removed from the end of the respective book. Upon flipping through the blank check books, I was able to identify almost a half dozen checks that remained unaccounted for either in the blank checkbooks or bank statements.
By this time it was absolutely clear in my mind that Nurse had been defrauding Mom on a fairly routine basis. She was stealing blank checks from the back of blank books, writing them payable to cash for an even dollar amount for anything from fifty to a hundred dollars, forging Mom’s signature, and then covering her tracks by collecting the bank statements from the mail before Mom could, and removing the forged checks from the returned batch of checks. The final step of her cover-up was to make entries into the ledger that conveniently left out the stolen and forged checks.
This made my blood boil. I was determined to burn Nurse for her duplicity.
Now that I had caught Nurse dead to rights in her theft, I recognized my next task as determining just how much Nurse had ripped off from Mom. This was easy enough; just identifying all the checks that were written out of sequence and missing from the bank statements, and adding them up. Mom was stunned to find that the woman she trusted to help her with her finances had stolen almost $900 dollars from her over a six month period of time. Since Mom was on a fixed income of disability payments, this blow was a disaster. I felt a calm sense of controlled anger as I sat explaining these facts to this frail old lady as tears began to drip down her cheeks. Now I didn’t only want to see Nurse in jail; I wanted to get Mom’s money back.
All of the complex little details I had uncovered seemed to mystify Bear and Mom, and I knew that if there was to be any chance of recovering the loss, they would need to have a clear statement of the case. I took a yellow legal pad and began to draft notes in bulleted format; A, B, C, and D. “Here”, I said, “take your banks statements, your batches of checks, the blank check books, and your ledgers to police headquarters tomorrow. Ask to speak to a detective. When you interview with the detective, present these things I have outlined in this order. The detective will understand and know what to do”. I closed by making the sad observation that Nurse almost surely spent Mom’s stolen funds by now, and recovery of the property wasn’t very likely. I left Mom’s apartment late that night, with Mom appearing puzzled and sad, and Bear in a state of cold fury. Secretly I hoped that he wouldn’t go find Nurse and harm her, but as I left I wasn’t so sure he would control this impulse that I knew he was feeling.
The next evening, I received a call from Bear. He thanked me profusely for my help with a glad tone to his voice. The interview with the detective had gone very well. Bear reviewed the evidence and my notes exactly as I had instructed while the detective listened patiently. After Bear was done, the detective only asked a single question; “Do you have Nurse’s telephone number?” Mom gave him the number and Detective gave nurse a call. He politely introduced himself, explained that Mom and Bear were in his office and disclosed the reason why they were there. Detective informed Nurse that she was to have the full amount of the missing funds, in cash, in his office within one hour if Nurse were to harbor any hope of spending that night in her own bed rather than in jail.
An hour later, Mom and Bear left the Detective’s office with $900 in cash.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Ubiquitous Serendipity
I love history and geography almost as much as I like collecting pet peeves. Anyone who knows me beyond a casual acquaintance will affirm this to be true. After years of observation and study, I have formed the unshakable opinion that these two subjects are complimentary and supplementary in much the same way that math graces science, or mornings go with coffee. An integral part of my pastime of studying history has been to travel to those places where history occurred. This is particularly true with respect to the American Civil War. While I have not visited all major battlefields of that war, I certainly have visited most. During the spring of 2008, fresh from accepting a severance package from a former employer that left me unemployed yet possessing a stream of income, I realized a long held dream of touring most of the Civil War cites in the eastern theater in a marathon ten day camping trip. I started at Gettysburg, and proceeded on to Antietam, Harpers Ferry, Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, Guinea Station, Richmond, Cold Harbor, Gains Mill, Glendale, Malvern Hill, City Point, Petersburg, Five Forks, Saylors Creek, and Appomattox (I left out Manassas because of limited time and I have been there before). This trip included so many fascinating adventures that I could fill a book with them, and perhaps one day I will. Along the way I made a new friend.
My third day on the road found me standing alongside the old Hagerstown Pike on the south west corner of Miller corn field at Antietam National Battlefield Park. Anyone familiar with the events of 17 September 1862 will recognize that this infamous cornfield is one of the most hotly contested and bloody spots anywhere on the North American continent. Immediately next to the old turnpike (which is now a drive through the park; the highway has now been rerouted) stands an elaborate monument dedicated to an Indiana regiment that fought there at Sharpsburg Maryland. I was by the monument as a soft rain began to drizzle down, cursing the fact that the batteries in my GPS were beginning to fail. My self-appointed mission that day was to photograph and collect GPS data for as many of the monuments at Antietam as I could (by the end of the day I had completed this task for about 75 of the 80 or so monuments in the park), but with dying batteries and the prospect of a downpour, I wasn’t anticipating a successful outcome for that day’s work. I was in an increasingly sour mood because of this.
The fields around had been entirely empty that Thursday mid-morning, but suddenly I noticed a middle aged man with a baseball cap walking up to greet me. He hailed me by observing that I looked like I was “really into this stuff”, and then pointed out to me a trail a few hundred yards down the road where a person could hike into the center of the Corn Field and get a really good view of Nicodemus Heights from whence artillery had shelled the position all day long. “You mean Hooker’s artillery?” I inquired thinking he was referring to the Union corps commander who had commenced the battle. “Oh no, that’s where Stuart’s horse artillery was stationed” he replied with a grin. I was embarrassed. Since I fancied myself a historian, I should have known that he was referring to Confederate artillery belonging to JEB Stuart rather than union batteries. My sour mood soured a bit more in annoyance with myself. But my visitor didn’t seem to notice. He continued with friendly banter about the events of the battle for a moment or two, and then introduced himself as Ken.
Since we shared a common interest in Civil War history, and because the causes of my annoyance had nothing to do with him, I consciously changed my attitude and struck up a friendly conversation with him there in the light rain. Ken obviously had a detailed if not encyclopedic knowledge of the Civil War, and he was so enthusiastically gregarious that I immediately took a liking to him. He explained that he was also on a tour similar to mine; to visit several battlefields for a few days before returning to his home in central Ohio. I remarked that my home in Lexington was just a little over two hours driving time from his. Next he worked on proselytizing me to join the Civil War Preservation Trust; an organization dedicated to protecting Civil War sites from modern development. Since I was unemployed, I was not immediately convinced I should make any serious commitments to a non-profit organization while standing by the road next to a corn field, so I was politely non-committal. After a few moments we parted ways. I explained I had to drive back into Sharpsburg to buy some batteries, and Ken stating that he was meeting a licensed battlefield guide for a tour of the southern end of the park.
My circuit of the park generally progressed from north to south in much the same way that the battle of Antietam itself raged like a burning fuse from north to south during twelve hours of fighting. By the middle of the afternoon, I had made my way to the heights overlooking the Rohrbach Bridge over Antietam Creek where General Burnside wasted so much time and so many troop’s lives in a frustrated attempt to force the Georgian defenders to flee (later this was renamed "Burnside's Bridge"). I planned on hiking the Snavely Ford Trail, which is where Burnside would have crossed the creek if he had had any sense at the outset. As I made my return to the parking lot, hot and sweaty from the hike under now sunny skies, I encountered Ken once more accompanied by his guide. Naturally I stopped to chat again.
The guide pointed out an interesting monument nearby dedicated to the memory of assassinated president William McKinley. Soon after his murder in Buffalo New York, this monument was erected to give notice to the military service of the martyred president. However, the guide pointed out that closer scrutiny of the text on the monument discloses that McKinley’s military service at Antietam was as a quartermaster sergeant and included fetching pots of coffee back to the troops where were actually busy in combat. We all chuckled a bit over the late president’s intrepid exploits, and then Ken started once again to convince me of the advantages of joining the Civil War Preservation Trust. I smiled and assured him I would give his suggestion serious consideration, and this time I asked for his address information so I could contact him again later.
The next day I spent exploring the town of Harpers Ferry West Virginia, and hiking a short segment of the Appalachian Trail. Perhaps I will relate the details of this adventure in a later blog.
After Harpers Ferry I proceeded next to Fredericksburg Virginia where I planned on camping for two days. This scenic and historic piece of land along the Rappahannock River is another of those hotly contested pieces of ground of which I spoke earlier. In Spotsylvania and adjacent Orange Counties, no less than four major Civil War battles were fought, in addition to dozens and perhaps even hundreds of minor scrimmages. The contending armies of the Potomac and Northern Virginia occupied this ground for nearly two years.
My first stop was to be the National Parks visitors’ center located at the base of Marye’s Heights in Fredericksburg. I had many stops planned for that day, so I arrived early in the morning as the center opened. As I strolled up the sidewalk toward the front door, I was amazed and pleased to see Ken walking toward me on the sidewalk. “Man! You are everywhere!” I said as I shook his hand. He explained that today he was part of a tour group exploring Fredericksburg, along many of the same areas that I was planning to visit myself. Once again he put in a plug for the Civil War Preservation Trust, and this time I relented and agreed that I would make sending them a check my first order of business upon my return home. I saw Ken several more times later that day, mostly from a distance as his group and I explored the Confederate defensive line along the base of the ridge.
I didn’t see Ken again during the balance of my trip, but I did correspond with him by mail and by email after my return to Lexington. One day, I received an invitation from Ken. He was organizing another tour of Civil War battlefields, this time near my home in central Kentucky. He graciously invited me to join him as my guest, and I gratefully accepted. For three days in October, a group of thirty or so Civil War enthusiasts toured battlegrounds such as Richmond, Munfordville, Bardstown, Frankfort and finally Perryville. While Ken was the organizer of this tour, it was actually led by a fellow named Chris Kolakowski who just so happened to be the chief historian at Perryville battlefield. I was pleased to see on Amazon recently that Chris has just published a book on Perryville. I can’t wait to read it.
My third day on the road found me standing alongside the old Hagerstown Pike on the south west corner of Miller corn field at Antietam National Battlefield Park. Anyone familiar with the events of 17 September 1862 will recognize that this infamous cornfield is one of the most hotly contested and bloody spots anywhere on the North American continent. Immediately next to the old turnpike (which is now a drive through the park; the highway has now been rerouted) stands an elaborate monument dedicated to an Indiana regiment that fought there at Sharpsburg Maryland. I was by the monument as a soft rain began to drizzle down, cursing the fact that the batteries in my GPS were beginning to fail. My self-appointed mission that day was to photograph and collect GPS data for as many of the monuments at Antietam as I could (by the end of the day I had completed this task for about 75 of the 80 or so monuments in the park), but with dying batteries and the prospect of a downpour, I wasn’t anticipating a successful outcome for that day’s work. I was in an increasingly sour mood because of this.
The fields around had been entirely empty that Thursday mid-morning, but suddenly I noticed a middle aged man with a baseball cap walking up to greet me. He hailed me by observing that I looked like I was “really into this stuff”, and then pointed out to me a trail a few hundred yards down the road where a person could hike into the center of the Corn Field and get a really good view of Nicodemus Heights from whence artillery had shelled the position all day long. “You mean Hooker’s artillery?” I inquired thinking he was referring to the Union corps commander who had commenced the battle. “Oh no, that’s where Stuart’s horse artillery was stationed” he replied with a grin. I was embarrassed. Since I fancied myself a historian, I should have known that he was referring to Confederate artillery belonging to JEB Stuart rather than union batteries. My sour mood soured a bit more in annoyance with myself. But my visitor didn’t seem to notice. He continued with friendly banter about the events of the battle for a moment or two, and then introduced himself as Ken.
Since we shared a common interest in Civil War history, and because the causes of my annoyance had nothing to do with him, I consciously changed my attitude and struck up a friendly conversation with him there in the light rain. Ken obviously had a detailed if not encyclopedic knowledge of the Civil War, and he was so enthusiastically gregarious that I immediately took a liking to him. He explained that he was also on a tour similar to mine; to visit several battlefields for a few days before returning to his home in central Ohio. I remarked that my home in Lexington was just a little over two hours driving time from his. Next he worked on proselytizing me to join the Civil War Preservation Trust; an organization dedicated to protecting Civil War sites from modern development. Since I was unemployed, I was not immediately convinced I should make any serious commitments to a non-profit organization while standing by the road next to a corn field, so I was politely non-committal. After a few moments we parted ways. I explained I had to drive back into Sharpsburg to buy some batteries, and Ken stating that he was meeting a licensed battlefield guide for a tour of the southern end of the park.
My circuit of the park generally progressed from north to south in much the same way that the battle of Antietam itself raged like a burning fuse from north to south during twelve hours of fighting. By the middle of the afternoon, I had made my way to the heights overlooking the Rohrbach Bridge over Antietam Creek where General Burnside wasted so much time and so many troop’s lives in a frustrated attempt to force the Georgian defenders to flee (later this was renamed "Burnside's Bridge"). I planned on hiking the Snavely Ford Trail, which is where Burnside would have crossed the creek if he had had any sense at the outset. As I made my return to the parking lot, hot and sweaty from the hike under now sunny skies, I encountered Ken once more accompanied by his guide. Naturally I stopped to chat again.
The guide pointed out an interesting monument nearby dedicated to the memory of assassinated president William McKinley. Soon after his murder in Buffalo New York, this monument was erected to give notice to the military service of the martyred president. However, the guide pointed out that closer scrutiny of the text on the monument discloses that McKinley’s military service at Antietam was as a quartermaster sergeant and included fetching pots of coffee back to the troops where were actually busy in combat. We all chuckled a bit over the late president’s intrepid exploits, and then Ken started once again to convince me of the advantages of joining the Civil War Preservation Trust. I smiled and assured him I would give his suggestion serious consideration, and this time I asked for his address information so I could contact him again later.
The next day I spent exploring the town of Harpers Ferry West Virginia, and hiking a short segment of the Appalachian Trail. Perhaps I will relate the details of this adventure in a later blog.
After Harpers Ferry I proceeded next to Fredericksburg Virginia where I planned on camping for two days. This scenic and historic piece of land along the Rappahannock River is another of those hotly contested pieces of ground of which I spoke earlier. In Spotsylvania and adjacent Orange Counties, no less than four major Civil War battles were fought, in addition to dozens and perhaps even hundreds of minor scrimmages. The contending armies of the Potomac and Northern Virginia occupied this ground for nearly two years.
My first stop was to be the National Parks visitors’ center located at the base of Marye’s Heights in Fredericksburg. I had many stops planned for that day, so I arrived early in the morning as the center opened. As I strolled up the sidewalk toward the front door, I was amazed and pleased to see Ken walking toward me on the sidewalk. “Man! You are everywhere!” I said as I shook his hand. He explained that today he was part of a tour group exploring Fredericksburg, along many of the same areas that I was planning to visit myself. Once again he put in a plug for the Civil War Preservation Trust, and this time I relented and agreed that I would make sending them a check my first order of business upon my return home. I saw Ken several more times later that day, mostly from a distance as his group and I explored the Confederate defensive line along the base of the ridge.
I didn’t see Ken again during the balance of my trip, but I did correspond with him by mail and by email after my return to Lexington. One day, I received an invitation from Ken. He was organizing another tour of Civil War battlefields, this time near my home in central Kentucky. He graciously invited me to join him as my guest, and I gratefully accepted. For three days in October, a group of thirty or so Civil War enthusiasts toured battlegrounds such as Richmond, Munfordville, Bardstown, Frankfort and finally Perryville. While Ken was the organizer of this tour, it was actually led by a fellow named Chris Kolakowski who just so happened to be the chief historian at Perryville battlefield. I was pleased to see on Amazon recently that Chris has just published a book on Perryville. I can’t wait to read it.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
It's a Boy!
I am proud of Primogenitor for many reasons, not the least of which is that he shares my love of the out of doors and sense of adventure. Of of these adventures was a two week long family camping trip through twelve states of the south-west, with a week of camping on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Among the activities we planned for our stay was to take a short day hike with a park ranger down into the interior of the canyon on the South Kaibab trail. Hiking in the canyon during late June can be a warm proposition, so the hike was scheduled to begin at 8:00 so that the group could return to the rim by 10:00 or so. I arose about 6:30 that morning to fix some coffee and breakfast. As I stood by the gravel road running through Mather Campsite sipping on my coffee, a woman walked by, paused, and then said to me, "I just saw the largest elk I have ever seen in my life just down at the end of the road here."
The night before I had witnessed a heard of mule deer migrate quietly through our campsite, and I was convinced she was mistaken. She had seen a muley and not an elk; and I told her as much. However, she insisted that it was an elk and ambled along her way. Naturally I had to take a walk down to investigate.
So I was wrong. About fifty yards down the road was indeed a very large elk, grazing passively in the early morning just along the roadside. Quickly I returned to camp and fetched my camera. I also fetched Primogenitor out of bed to join me in viewing this magnificent animal. We walked back down the road and found the elk still in the same place, placidly munching on grass. After snapping a few photos, I regretted that I had not also rousted my wife and daughter out of bed to see the elk (I had left them behind because I expected the growing crowd around the elk to frighten it off; that it wouldn't be there anymore by the time we returned). I left Primo behind and returned a second time to camp to retrieve the rest of the family.
I should not have worried about the elk leaving because it was in its natural element and was obviously hungry; not going anywhere fast. When I returned again with the rest of our household, I was amazed to see that my son had approached the grazing elk very carefully, and was standing less than ten feet away from it. I snapped a couple of quick photos which have become basis of family legend: Primo the elk whisperer.
After this fun little adventure, Primo and I gulped down some breakfast and coffee and were off on a bus to the trail head for the South Kaibab. This ranger hike was supposed to be three-quarters of a mile down, for a total round trip of a mile and a half. The ranger would stop at various points along the trail and explain natural features such as flora, fauna, and naturally geology. This was all very interesting; for example we learned what a pack rat midden was, and saw one first hand (Google this if you are curious). Once we reached the end three quarters of a mile down, Primo asked me if we could continue further down the trail to the next major point on the trail, Cedar Ridge. This was another three quarters of a mile down. I asked the ranger if this was okay, and she said sure, as long as you have enough water (we each had a full 1 liter bottle).
The day was gloriously sunny, and actually not all that hot considering that it was the desert in late June. When Primo and I arrived at Cedar Ridge around 10:00, a thermometer on the side of the latrine building read about 85 degrees. We offered to snap some photos for a family who happened to be there at the same time, and they returned the favor by taking pictures of us posing in front of the Cedar Ridge sign. We might have stayed there about 15 minutes before thinking of making the return walk back up to the top. At this point Primo asked me, "Hey, where's my water bottle?"
I did not want to hear this.
We made a brief yet frantic search for the lost bottle, but it was nowhere to be found. Rather than wasting time looking for what I knew to be lost forever, I resolved to abandon the search right away and start the trek back up the switchbacks. Thus began the grueling leg of the trip.
The heat and dry desert climate was certainly challenging, but I was surprised that this was not the worst difficulty to overcome. It was the altitude. The south rim of Grand Canyon is around 6 thousand feet above sea level, and our home in Lexington is about a thousand feet in altitude. This means that the top of Grand Canyon is about a mile higher in altitude than I was generally accustomed to. Now here is the deceiving part; since the first leg of this trip was downhill, one does not feel the effects of altitude. But when we turned around and headed back up, we soon found ourselves puffing and winded, stopping every few dozen yards in order to take a drink and catch our breaths. As we struggled to make our way up the hot dusty trail, I was amazed by how many other hikers we encountered on the way down, without water, without packs, without proper sunscreen or suitable foot ware, trotting along as if they were oblivious to any potential danger for sunstroke or dehydration. "You people are going to die down there" I thought to myself.
For a while, I thought I might break down in exhaustion. Luckily we encountered a park ranger who was well fitted out with a bulging pack and plenty of water. He was searching for a hiker reported to be in distress (presumably one of those I had seen earlier casually meandering down the trail to their doom). I asked him if he might have seen our lost water bottle, and when he heard our story, he volunteered to give us a bottle of Desani. To this day I am deeply grateful for this little bottle of water, because we would have been far more miserable than we actually were by the time we returned to the trail head.
Fortunately, the rest of the walk back up the switchbacks to the the trail head was uneventful. There was a faucet at the top and Primo and I fell upon it greedily. We must have drunk a gallon of water apiece. One adventure still awaited us. I let Primo go first, and he wandered off to wait at the bus stop as I lapped the cool water directly from the tap. While I did this, a bus arrived and Primo boarded it. Suddenly, the bus driver started to pull away while I was still at the spout. Primo begged the driver to wait for me, but he insisted on driving off immediately without me on board. Primo quickly dismounted the bus so that we were not separated, and the damned driver drove off leaving us there at the trail head, standing in the sunshine and waiting for another bus.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
I Can See It Coming
Have you ever been able to see disaster coming right at you, with little means of avoiding it?
About a month ago, I signed up for a Leave No Trace Trainer course which will qualify me to conduct LNT Awareness Workshops. I love the out-of-doors; I love camping. I want to help preserve nature for my own enjoyment and for the benefit of my kids (and perhaps grandkids one day). When I signed up a month ago, it was freezing cold and snowing every day. I was looking forward to some fresh springtime weather for a change. And this course involves camping for two nights, Friday and Saturday; gotta like that.
Well, according to the forecast, it will indeed be fresh springtime weather. There is a 60% chance of rain Friday night; 30% chance of rain all day Saturday; and 40% chance of rain on Sunday. I can already see how this is going to work out.
Oh well, I have been camping in the rain before, and no doubt I will go camping in the rain many times after this next weekend. At least the forecast gives me plenty of warning so that I can go well prepared. Tomorrow night after work I am headed for the sporting goods store to purchase a new rain suit. I already have a tall pair of rubber boots in addition to my regular kit of outdoor gear. This is going to be fun regardless of the weather.
Next week I will write about this little adventure and let you know how it turned out.
Speaking of camping in the rain, last July I went out camping in the second worst rainstorm in which I have ever camped. It was the last night of Webelos resident camp (a total of three nights of camping on this trip). All day Saturday there had been threats of rain on the horizon, and my son Primogenitor and I made the mistake of lingering at the camp dining hall a bit too long before beginning the mile long hike up the hill to our campsite on a wooded ridge line.
About half way there the drizzle began. About two hundred yards from camp the downpour started. This was about 10:30 at night and it was pitch black on the trail that wound through the woods in the ravine below our camp. We were fairly damp by the time we got back to the tent (a cabin style tent set up on a wooden platform) and after shooing away a wolf spider about the size of an Eisenhower dollar from inside the tent, we bedded down with a steady racket of downpour hitting the canvass above our heads. The lightning started before 11:00, and for the next four hours there was a constant din of non-stop thunder, with little respite. On the rare occasions when the noise of the thunder wasn't deafening, the roar of the rain was.
Sleep was impossible under the circumstances, and occasionally I would take a peek outside to check on the rising torrent of water streaming through the center of our campsite. The rising flash flood was a bit alarming considering that we were camped on the crest of a ridge and theoretically there should not be a flood at the top of a hill. Fortunately there was the ever-present flash of lightning with an immediate report of thunder indicating an uncomfortably close strike that took my mind of the threat of being washed away in the flood. I was thankful for the wooden platform upon which my tent was pitched because that raised us off the ground by about 8 inches. However, upon my last check outside I found the stream had almost reached the top of the platform. I wasn't interested in looking outside anymore after that.
The storm never lost any of its fury until it suddenly stopped (almost as if someone had turned off a faucet) around 3:30 in the morning. Primogenitor and I finally got to sleep around 4:00 and I let him sleep late the next morning. I have camped out in one other storm that was more relentless and lengthy in duration that this (about 12 hours of steady downpour, the last six of which included galeforce winds), but this thunderstorm was the worst I have encountered as far as near misses from lightning.
The next morning in the cool misty dawn as survivors crawled from their tents to survey the damage and the signs of flotsam left in a trail through the center of camp, conversation naturally turned to each individual's experiences and observations from the night before. One of the adult leaders informed the group that he had monitored the storm's progress on his Blackberry which was able to retrieve weather radar data. Ordinarily storms in this part of the country are oriented north to south and proceed from a westerly direction. This storm, on the contrary, was a series of super-cells aligned on a east-west orientation, but yet still tracking from a westerly direction. Since the storm passed directly over our camp, we were subjected to the terrible brunt of the tempest.
As we stood about chatting, a tree just outside our camp that had been undermined by the flood suddenly came crashing to the ground.
About a month ago, I signed up for a Leave No Trace Trainer course which will qualify me to conduct LNT Awareness Workshops. I love the out-of-doors; I love camping. I want to help preserve nature for my own enjoyment and for the benefit of my kids (and perhaps grandkids one day). When I signed up a month ago, it was freezing cold and snowing every day. I was looking forward to some fresh springtime weather for a change. And this course involves camping for two nights, Friday and Saturday; gotta like that.
Well, according to the forecast, it will indeed be fresh springtime weather. There is a 60% chance of rain Friday night; 30% chance of rain all day Saturday; and 40% chance of rain on Sunday. I can already see how this is going to work out.
Oh well, I have been camping in the rain before, and no doubt I will go camping in the rain many times after this next weekend. At least the forecast gives me plenty of warning so that I can go well prepared. Tomorrow night after work I am headed for the sporting goods store to purchase a new rain suit. I already have a tall pair of rubber boots in addition to my regular kit of outdoor gear. This is going to be fun regardless of the weather.
Next week I will write about this little adventure and let you know how it turned out.
Speaking of camping in the rain, last July I went out camping in the second worst rainstorm in which I have ever camped. It was the last night of Webelos resident camp (a total of three nights of camping on this trip). All day Saturday there had been threats of rain on the horizon, and my son Primogenitor and I made the mistake of lingering at the camp dining hall a bit too long before beginning the mile long hike up the hill to our campsite on a wooded ridge line.
About half way there the drizzle began. About two hundred yards from camp the downpour started. This was about 10:30 at night and it was pitch black on the trail that wound through the woods in the ravine below our camp. We were fairly damp by the time we got back to the tent (a cabin style tent set up on a wooden platform) and after shooing away a wolf spider about the size of an Eisenhower dollar from inside the tent, we bedded down with a steady racket of downpour hitting the canvass above our heads. The lightning started before 11:00, and for the next four hours there was a constant din of non-stop thunder, with little respite. On the rare occasions when the noise of the thunder wasn't deafening, the roar of the rain was.
Sleep was impossible under the circumstances, and occasionally I would take a peek outside to check on the rising torrent of water streaming through the center of our campsite. The rising flash flood was a bit alarming considering that we were camped on the crest of a ridge and theoretically there should not be a flood at the top of a hill. Fortunately there was the ever-present flash of lightning with an immediate report of thunder indicating an uncomfortably close strike that took my mind of the threat of being washed away in the flood. I was thankful for the wooden platform upon which my tent was pitched because that raised us off the ground by about 8 inches. However, upon my last check outside I found the stream had almost reached the top of the platform. I wasn't interested in looking outside anymore after that.
The storm never lost any of its fury until it suddenly stopped (almost as if someone had turned off a faucet) around 3:30 in the morning. Primogenitor and I finally got to sleep around 4:00 and I let him sleep late the next morning. I have camped out in one other storm that was more relentless and lengthy in duration that this (about 12 hours of steady downpour, the last six of which included galeforce winds), but this thunderstorm was the worst I have encountered as far as near misses from lightning.
The next morning in the cool misty dawn as survivors crawled from their tents to survey the damage and the signs of flotsam left in a trail through the center of camp, conversation naturally turned to each individual's experiences and observations from the night before. One of the adult leaders informed the group that he had monitored the storm's progress on his Blackberry which was able to retrieve weather radar data. Ordinarily storms in this part of the country are oriented north to south and proceed from a westerly direction. This storm, on the contrary, was a series of super-cells aligned on a east-west orientation, but yet still tracking from a westerly direction. Since the storm passed directly over our camp, we were subjected to the terrible brunt of the tempest.
As we stood about chatting, a tree just outside our camp that had been undermined by the flood suddenly came crashing to the ground.
Friday, March 5, 2010
There is Only One Conspiracy
I have a pet peeve. Okay, those who know me well will affirm that I harbor a treasure trove of pet peeves much like the miser hordes ducats. But today I am particularly annoyed by my pet peeve involving conspiracies.
My first interest in conspiracies began when a friend of mine (my lawyer) handed me a well worn book and advised me to read it; my eyes would be unburdened and the truth would be known. The book was entitled Best Evidence by David Lifton. (As a footnote here, we later had a bit of a falling out when her fiancé started stalking me, and I never returned the volume to her. If she wants it back now she knows how to sue me for it). The book was about the assassination of John F. Kennedy which at the time was a topic about which I knew very little. Naturally I was intrigued and I consumed the book voraciously.
The first thing that struck me was the unaccountable audacity of the work. David Lifton freely confesses early on that he became so consumed with his research into the crime of the century that he washed out of engineering graduate school. That I would not hold against him, but when he suggested that as a failed engineer he had some superior knowledge in the physics associated with the murder of the president, he began to loose credibility with me. His rambling style of organization and fantastic claims (e.g. body snatchers switched coffins at the airport and performed post mortem surgery on his Excellency’s corpse, making it look like he was shot from behind) cinched the deal for me. While I’m sure his intention was to create conspiracy buff proselytes, I completed the book firmly convinced that he was full of shit. Critical reading will do this for you.
In a way, reading Best Evidence changed my life. Once I recognized what an empty house of cards supported the Kennedy conspiracy, I became emboldened to question the authority of other conspiracy buffs.
I will pause here to express a corollary pet peeve. What in the name of Ford is a buff? Do they not realize this is short for buffoon? I would rather someone call me “Late for Dinner” than to have them call me a buff.
But I digress. My newly found awareness of the brazen mendacity of these self styled “buffs” prompted me to scrutinize all things mysterious with the zeal of an evangelical polemicist. “How about crop circles?” Easiest thing in the world to make with a tent stake, rope and a board. “What about Atlantis?” It’s a fairy tale; grow up and stop believing in fairies. “Have you seen the Shroud of Turin?” The bishop thought it was a fake when it first appeared in 1385; what makes you think it is real now? “Loch Ness Monster?” “Sasquatch?” “UFOs?” “Poltergeists?” “WMD in Iraq?” Without hard evidence that can withstand rigorous examination, it all has lost its mysterious luster in my eyes. They are all jewels of brass.
There is a new breed of conspiracy buffs skulking about the dark environs of the internet now that call themselves Truthers. This is a particularly insidious breed because their preferred cause is the tragedy that was September 11. I am like many others regarding this topic. I harbor my latent anger over this event next to my collection of pet peeves. Truthers assert that the thousands and tens of thousands of victims from that day suffered their loss as a result of a government conspiracy, and not a foreign terrorist conspiracy. They will make claims such as, “even a restaurant busboy can see from the video that the North Tower was collapsed by explosive charges placed in advance by government agents”. Most often such claims are indeed advanced by restaurant busboys or someone with similar authority on matters of engineering and building design. The community of professional engineers understandably distance themselves from such spurious rants.
I hold Oliver Stone accountable for propagating a generation of buffs. He elevated the paranoid ranting of a shameless self promoter (Jim Garrison) to an art form; although I would not suggest it is high art. I have visited Dealey Plaza in Dallas Texas from time to time, and each time there was a collection of buffs milling about the grassy knoll peddling their particular theory on the crime, but more importantly peddling their publication explaining their favorite flavor of conspiracy theory. It’s funny how a presidential murder has become a cottage industry, and I don’t mean funny in the good way. This is the one real conspiracy. Charlatans turning a profit from public gullibility, exploiting a national tragedy.
In the years following my conspiracy epiphany, I have developed creative ways to voice my distain for all things conspiratorial without incurring opprobrium of polite society. I do this through satire. I recall once that I was at a business party, well lubricated with an open bar, and someone brought up the subject of some conspiracy theory or other. “You realize” I said to the chap, “there is only one conspiracy”. He regarded me with befuddlement and asked, “What do you mean?” “Well,” I replied, “all these conspiracy theories you have heard about”; I leaned in close “they are not separate conspiracies. They are all related. There is only one big conspiracy”.
For a brief moment he was uncertain whether this was true or whether I was full of hyperbole, so I plunged ahead. “Sure, it all starts with the Knights Templar. They had to protect their secrets, but when Kennedy told what he knew to Marilyn Monroe, the Freemasons had to eliminate her. Then, they used their connections with Opus Dei to contact the Mafia to get rid of both Kennedy and his brother Bobby. Richard Nixon found out that the Masons were going to hit Kennedy using their contacts at the CIA, and he flew to Dallas that day to try to warn him. This made the CIA retaliate against Nixon by setting him up with the whole Watergate thing. But Nixon was smart; Howard Hughes tipped him off to what the CIA up to, and Nixon shared that secret with only one other person. That was Elvis Presley.” Then I added with a wink, “and you know what happened to him”.
By this time the polite smile had faded from my friend’s (victim’s) face. He shifted from one foot to the other, eyes darting furtively about the room seeking some familiar clique or clutch of revelers to which he could retreat from my onslaught. I decided then it would be much more entertaining to freshen my cocktail rather than to torment him any longer.
“But those that understood him smiled at one another, and shook their heads; but for mine own part, it was Greek to me.”
Casca from Julius Caesar Act I Scene II.
My first interest in conspiracies began when a friend of mine (my lawyer) handed me a well worn book and advised me to read it; my eyes would be unburdened and the truth would be known. The book was entitled Best Evidence by David Lifton. (As a footnote here, we later had a bit of a falling out when her fiancé started stalking me, and I never returned the volume to her. If she wants it back now she knows how to sue me for it). The book was about the assassination of John F. Kennedy which at the time was a topic about which I knew very little. Naturally I was intrigued and I consumed the book voraciously.
The first thing that struck me was the unaccountable audacity of the work. David Lifton freely confesses early on that he became so consumed with his research into the crime of the century that he washed out of engineering graduate school. That I would not hold against him, but when he suggested that as a failed engineer he had some superior knowledge in the physics associated with the murder of the president, he began to loose credibility with me. His rambling style of organization and fantastic claims (e.g. body snatchers switched coffins at the airport and performed post mortem surgery on his Excellency’s corpse, making it look like he was shot from behind) cinched the deal for me. While I’m sure his intention was to create conspiracy buff proselytes, I completed the book firmly convinced that he was full of shit. Critical reading will do this for you.
In a way, reading Best Evidence changed my life. Once I recognized what an empty house of cards supported the Kennedy conspiracy, I became emboldened to question the authority of other conspiracy buffs.
I will pause here to express a corollary pet peeve. What in the name of Ford is a buff? Do they not realize this is short for buffoon? I would rather someone call me “Late for Dinner” than to have them call me a buff.
But I digress. My newly found awareness of the brazen mendacity of these self styled “buffs” prompted me to scrutinize all things mysterious with the zeal of an evangelical polemicist. “How about crop circles?” Easiest thing in the world to make with a tent stake, rope and a board. “What about Atlantis?” It’s a fairy tale; grow up and stop believing in fairies. “Have you seen the Shroud of Turin?” The bishop thought it was a fake when it first appeared in 1385; what makes you think it is real now? “Loch Ness Monster?” “Sasquatch?” “UFOs?” “Poltergeists?” “WMD in Iraq?” Without hard evidence that can withstand rigorous examination, it all has lost its mysterious luster in my eyes. They are all jewels of brass.
There is a new breed of conspiracy buffs skulking about the dark environs of the internet now that call themselves Truthers. This is a particularly insidious breed because their preferred cause is the tragedy that was September 11. I am like many others regarding this topic. I harbor my latent anger over this event next to my collection of pet peeves. Truthers assert that the thousands and tens of thousands of victims from that day suffered their loss as a result of a government conspiracy, and not a foreign terrorist conspiracy. They will make claims such as, “even a restaurant busboy can see from the video that the North Tower was collapsed by explosive charges placed in advance by government agents”. Most often such claims are indeed advanced by restaurant busboys or someone with similar authority on matters of engineering and building design. The community of professional engineers understandably distance themselves from such spurious rants.
I hold Oliver Stone accountable for propagating a generation of buffs. He elevated the paranoid ranting of a shameless self promoter (Jim Garrison) to an art form; although I would not suggest it is high art. I have visited Dealey Plaza in Dallas Texas from time to time, and each time there was a collection of buffs milling about the grassy knoll peddling their particular theory on the crime, but more importantly peddling their publication explaining their favorite flavor of conspiracy theory. It’s funny how a presidential murder has become a cottage industry, and I don’t mean funny in the good way. This is the one real conspiracy. Charlatans turning a profit from public gullibility, exploiting a national tragedy.
In the years following my conspiracy epiphany, I have developed creative ways to voice my distain for all things conspiratorial without incurring opprobrium of polite society. I do this through satire. I recall once that I was at a business party, well lubricated with an open bar, and someone brought up the subject of some conspiracy theory or other. “You realize” I said to the chap, “there is only one conspiracy”. He regarded me with befuddlement and asked, “What do you mean?” “Well,” I replied, “all these conspiracy theories you have heard about”; I leaned in close “they are not separate conspiracies. They are all related. There is only one big conspiracy”.
For a brief moment he was uncertain whether this was true or whether I was full of hyperbole, so I plunged ahead. “Sure, it all starts with the Knights Templar. They had to protect their secrets, but when Kennedy told what he knew to Marilyn Monroe, the Freemasons had to eliminate her. Then, they used their connections with Opus Dei to contact the Mafia to get rid of both Kennedy and his brother Bobby. Richard Nixon found out that the Masons were going to hit Kennedy using their contacts at the CIA, and he flew to Dallas that day to try to warn him. This made the CIA retaliate against Nixon by setting him up with the whole Watergate thing. But Nixon was smart; Howard Hughes tipped him off to what the CIA up to, and Nixon shared that secret with only one other person. That was Elvis Presley.” Then I added with a wink, “and you know what happened to him”.
By this time the polite smile had faded from my friend’s (victim’s) face. He shifted from one foot to the other, eyes darting furtively about the room seeking some familiar clique or clutch of revelers to which he could retreat from my onslaught. I decided then it would be much more entertaining to freshen my cocktail rather than to torment him any longer.
“But those that understood him smiled at one another, and shook their heads; but for mine own part, it was Greek to me.”
Casca from Julius Caesar Act I Scene II.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Beer Machine Bomb
The following story is entirely hypothetical for all you know; and furthermore I would never do it again.
Suppose just for the sake of argument that when I was in college, my fraternity house had an old Pepsi machine from which our brotherhood generated a few extra dollars in revenue by selling beer instead of Pepsi (this alleged college being the only state university in Kentucky situated in a dry territory at that time). And picture if you will that some unidentified person not having the key to said beer machine while yet suffering from a compulsive sense of thirst, smashed off the existing lock to gain entry to the wonderful contents inside. Now later, as the brothers wanted to continue vending beer through the beer machine, but being unable to secure it given the broken lock, imagine that they affixed a hasp to the machine so that it could be padlocked shut. Picture all these things if you will.
Now imagine that later the machine fell into disuse. It was relegated into storage in a glassed in greenhouse room just off the main living room at the front of the house where it sat, sad and lonely for a year or so. Nobody paid it much thought; at least not until finals week in my senior year. Consider a warmer than average spring in an un-airconditioned house, and the subtle smell of putrefaction beginning to permeate the living-room area. Nobody understands from whence the smell of death was issuing until the weekend after finals and someone ventured to open the door of the office. As soon as the door opened, the overwhelming, sickening stench of rotten flesh poured with a vengeance from the glass room. The hapless victim who had opened Pandora’s Box of Stink immediately slammed the door, but noticed that the beer machine had a brand new Master’s padlock on the hasp just before closing the door.
It turns out that this (hypothetical) situation was a grim sort of prank. Some unidentified person had killed some poor vermin in the woods, taken its lifeless carcass, and stuffed it deep into the beer machine, before affixing a padlock for which only he had the key. This course of events was about six weeks in the past by the time it was discovered.
Did I mention that it had been an unusually warm spring?
The situation proved a difficult problem to solve. No one could remain in the glass room long enough either to saw off the padlock, pry off the hasp or attempt to move the very heavy beer machine. And yet as long as the machine remained in the office, we anticipated that the stench would continue to intensify. Isn’t this quite the conundrum?
Someone once said that there are few problems in life that cannot be solved with the suitable application of explosives. This little dictum became our salvation. Picture for just a moment if you will, an anonymous person who owns a CO2 pellet gun, and being a thrifty sort decided to recycle the spent CO2 cartridges by fashioning them into bombs. The process is quite simple if you think about it. Take a nail and enlarge the puncture in the nozzle so that it is large enough to hold a small funnel; pour in an ounce or two of very fine black powder (available at many sporting goods stores); insert plastic coated cannon fuse (also available at many sporting goods stores); and seal it with epoxy glue. If someone were to do such a thing, it would make quite a nice, waterproof miniature bomb.
Let me add here that I have never, ever owned a CO2 pellet gun; for real. If someone else made such a bomb, it wasn’t me. Seriously.
Let’s pretend that on a sunny Sunday afternoon in May, a small group of fraternity boys gathering in the front yard of their house and discussing what to do to get the lock off the beer machine. Brother Boom (you might remember this name from my Cats blog) might have suggested, “Why don’t we blow it off with one of my bombs?” (Ergo the nickname, Boom). To this suggestion, I could have replied, “If we can blow off the lock, I will get the dead animal out of the machine”. There probably was a handy wheel barrow and shovel nearby to facilitate this awful task.
So the group reassembles just outside the glass windows to watch while I and one other brother hold our noses and venture into the charnel house with a roll of duct tape and a bomb in hand. Holding our breaths, we tape the bomb to the side of the beer machine just underneath the lock. Just as my face began to turn from red to purple from oxygen deprivation, I gave a quick flick of a lighter and touched off the end of the plastic fuse, which began to burn furiously. The other brother and I ran for the back door.
By this time the group of witnesses had retreated through a gate and was hiding behind the wooden privacy fence skirting the house, laughing and giggling hysterically. Now about this time, imagine that it was such a pleasant sunny Sunday afternoon that an elderly lady came walking down the sidewalk, on her way to church or perhaps to the grocery. No one noticed that she was passing slowly right in front of the fraternity house as the fuse was lit. We knew that it was way far too late to go cut the fuse, and she was moving awfully slow…
KABOOM!
The bomb detonated just as the old lady was directly in front of the fraternity house, about 100 feet away (imagine a rather large front yard). The resulting blast caused a deafening boom accompanied by the crash of broken glass as shrapnel shattered the windows of the glass room. Fractured steel and broken glass sprayed across the gravel parking lot.
The old lady had stopped frozen in her tracks when the bomb went off. She stared at the front of the house in horrified silence, mouth agape. Perhaps she may have been mystified that a half dozen laughing college boys would have come pouring out through the wooden gate so soon after such an alarming explosion, but if she had lived in the neighborhood for any length of time, this really shouldn’t have been such a surprise.
If of course any of this actually happened; which I’m not really saying it did.
Suppose just for the sake of argument that when I was in college, my fraternity house had an old Pepsi machine from which our brotherhood generated a few extra dollars in revenue by selling beer instead of Pepsi (this alleged college being the only state university in Kentucky situated in a dry territory at that time). And picture if you will that some unidentified person not having the key to said beer machine while yet suffering from a compulsive sense of thirst, smashed off the existing lock to gain entry to the wonderful contents inside. Now later, as the brothers wanted to continue vending beer through the beer machine, but being unable to secure it given the broken lock, imagine that they affixed a hasp to the machine so that it could be padlocked shut. Picture all these things if you will.
Now imagine that later the machine fell into disuse. It was relegated into storage in a glassed in greenhouse room just off the main living room at the front of the house where it sat, sad and lonely for a year or so. Nobody paid it much thought; at least not until finals week in my senior year. Consider a warmer than average spring in an un-airconditioned house, and the subtle smell of putrefaction beginning to permeate the living-room area. Nobody understands from whence the smell of death was issuing until the weekend after finals and someone ventured to open the door of the office. As soon as the door opened, the overwhelming, sickening stench of rotten flesh poured with a vengeance from the glass room. The hapless victim who had opened Pandora’s Box of Stink immediately slammed the door, but noticed that the beer machine had a brand new Master’s padlock on the hasp just before closing the door.
It turns out that this (hypothetical) situation was a grim sort of prank. Some unidentified person had killed some poor vermin in the woods, taken its lifeless carcass, and stuffed it deep into the beer machine, before affixing a padlock for which only he had the key. This course of events was about six weeks in the past by the time it was discovered.
Did I mention that it had been an unusually warm spring?
The situation proved a difficult problem to solve. No one could remain in the glass room long enough either to saw off the padlock, pry off the hasp or attempt to move the very heavy beer machine. And yet as long as the machine remained in the office, we anticipated that the stench would continue to intensify. Isn’t this quite the conundrum?
Someone once said that there are few problems in life that cannot be solved with the suitable application of explosives. This little dictum became our salvation. Picture for just a moment if you will, an anonymous person who owns a CO2 pellet gun, and being a thrifty sort decided to recycle the spent CO2 cartridges by fashioning them into bombs. The process is quite simple if you think about it. Take a nail and enlarge the puncture in the nozzle so that it is large enough to hold a small funnel; pour in an ounce or two of very fine black powder (available at many sporting goods stores); insert plastic coated cannon fuse (also available at many sporting goods stores); and seal it with epoxy glue. If someone were to do such a thing, it would make quite a nice, waterproof miniature bomb.
Let me add here that I have never, ever owned a CO2 pellet gun; for real. If someone else made such a bomb, it wasn’t me. Seriously.
Let’s pretend that on a sunny Sunday afternoon in May, a small group of fraternity boys gathering in the front yard of their house and discussing what to do to get the lock off the beer machine. Brother Boom (you might remember this name from my Cats blog) might have suggested, “Why don’t we blow it off with one of my bombs?” (Ergo the nickname, Boom). To this suggestion, I could have replied, “If we can blow off the lock, I will get the dead animal out of the machine”. There probably was a handy wheel barrow and shovel nearby to facilitate this awful task.
So the group reassembles just outside the glass windows to watch while I and one other brother hold our noses and venture into the charnel house with a roll of duct tape and a bomb in hand. Holding our breaths, we tape the bomb to the side of the beer machine just underneath the lock. Just as my face began to turn from red to purple from oxygen deprivation, I gave a quick flick of a lighter and touched off the end of the plastic fuse, which began to burn furiously. The other brother and I ran for the back door.
By this time the group of witnesses had retreated through a gate and was hiding behind the wooden privacy fence skirting the house, laughing and giggling hysterically. Now about this time, imagine that it was such a pleasant sunny Sunday afternoon that an elderly lady came walking down the sidewalk, on her way to church or perhaps to the grocery. No one noticed that she was passing slowly right in front of the fraternity house as the fuse was lit. We knew that it was way far too late to go cut the fuse, and she was moving awfully slow…
KABOOM!
The bomb detonated just as the old lady was directly in front of the fraternity house, about 100 feet away (imagine a rather large front yard). The resulting blast caused a deafening boom accompanied by the crash of broken glass as shrapnel shattered the windows of the glass room. Fractured steel and broken glass sprayed across the gravel parking lot.
The old lady had stopped frozen in her tracks when the bomb went off. She stared at the front of the house in horrified silence, mouth agape. Perhaps she may have been mystified that a half dozen laughing college boys would have come pouring out through the wooden gate so soon after such an alarming explosion, but if she had lived in the neighborhood for any length of time, this really shouldn’t have been such a surprise.
If of course any of this actually happened; which I’m not really saying it did.
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