General Ike

If you took Nassau, Suffolk, the five counties of NYC, Westchester and MAYBE Rockland and Putnam counties out of NYS, the remainder of the state is no different than all the flyover states in the country.  Millions of families in agriculture, manufacturing, shipping, etc., that are handcuffed to the liberal ideals of the coastal and lower hudson valley mentality of "give it all away and tax the piss out of us for it".  There are 62 counties in NYS, and no more than 9 control the absurdity of what is going on there.  If you break it down further and look at urban vs suburban/rural parts of the state regardless of county, the parts of the state populated by the folks that produce and deliver goods and services are red.  The parts of the state that are controlled by the overwhelming majority of consumers are blue.  So the mentality in NY (or any other state including California) is who gives a damn about the people that make the crap I use or bring it to me, just give me what I want, and I'll give your stuff away to people who didn't work for it.  Remember the government cant give anything away that it didn't take from someone else first.

Please don't confuse someone who is good in front of the teleprompter as someone who is an effective leader.  Obama is/was one of the best public speakers that our country has ever seen.  His domestic policies and foreign policy was awful.  Obama care was a bust.  Keep your doctor and save $2,000+ per year.  More like lose your doctor and see your healthcare costs go through the roof.  He handled Putin, Kim Jung and Assad with kid gloves and look where that got us.  There was another great speech giver from Germany in the 1930's and 1940's that almost brought the world to its knees and ended the lives of millions of innocent souls.  The democrats adding pork to the stimulus bill and then saying that the President wasn't responding to the healthcare crisis is a typical smoke in mirrors tactic that they use.  Trump referring to Cvd-19 situation as the "democrats next hoax" was contextually connected to Russia, the Mueller report, the garbage with his former attorney Michael Cohen, as well as the fake dossier, Comey, McCabe, Lisa Page, etc.  So the democrats were using Cvd-19 as their next version of what to pin on him.  Its not working.  His response has been praised by Cuomo himself.  Even Ilhan Omar says his response have been terrific.  Fact of the matter is that the US has never seen something like this before and to blame anyone directly would be irresponsible.  Remember, the left said George W. Bush let down Louisiana after Katrina.  Fact of the matter is that he begged for areas to be evacuated and offered to take over law enforcement and government officials were slow to act and declined to let the feds help with law enforcement.  Smoke in mirrors pointed the finger at him when the response from local government was anemic at first.  Now lets look at welfare reform.  The left likes to say that Bill Clinton was its champion.  Farthest thing from the truth.  The republican controlled house and senate put the welfare reform bill on his desk and they had to twist his arm to get him to sign it.  Plenty of good and plenty of bad on both sides of the isle.  The left just likes to point fingers and mix up the facts using their bench team, the media, to do their dirty work.

I am always full disclosure with folks I meet about how I grew up.  Stay with me here.  I live in a nice house, in a nice neighborhood (Winter Park Florida) surrounded by doctors, lawyers, and money managers.  I grew up the same way in Chappaqua, NY.  I was however, and continue to be a complete and total contradiction of life to my childhood and current friends.  I have my parents to thank for that.  Mom and dad were raised in the Bronx by my off-the-boat Irish grandparents.  Dad cleaned toilets at the A&P bakery after school and mom took the subway to St. Vincent's in lower Manhattan and worked as a nurse's assistant.  Dad was an Eagle Scout and graduated top of his class after putting himself through Manhattan College.  Served our country as a Marine.  He worked good jobs as a CFO but never lost sight of his humble upbringing.  Never let myself or my older brother get full of our selves or the yuppy lifestyle that surrounded us.  Taught us how to fish, hunt, do carpentry, plumbing and electrical repairs.  He had a diesel Mercedes.  When the glow plugs needed to be replaced or the valves needed to be adjusted it didn't go to the dealer, we did it in the garage.  New tires?  You bet they got put on in the driveway using a rubber mallet, soapy water and a few really big flat head screw drivers.   So when I got older (teens) I started serving as a volunteer and eventually working part time as a firefighter.  It was tough.  Had to work twice as hard to gain everyone's trust in my skill just because of my address in town.  I don't regret it for a moment though, and I eventually had the pleasure of serving them as a senior line officer.  My friends never really got it.  They simply couldn't understand why I knew or why I bothered to fix things or perform tasks that they had grown up seeing their parents pay for.  The other day, my 12 year old shot a lacrosse ball at his goal in the front yard and it hit off one of the posts and ricocheted 50 feet into the neighbor's garage window.  Guy wasn't pissed, just said that he'd get a glass company out on monday to fix it and he would send me the bill.  I said no.  Went to the hardware store, they cut me a $4 piece of glass and I had the broken one removed and the new one installed caulked and ready for paint within the hour.  He couldn't believe it.  Thought I wasted my time and that I could have been playing golf instead.  Unbelievable the way people think.

My story or rant above is not to judge a book by its cover.  Most of the time people are judged because they are homely, uneducated, poor or for some other negative reason.  Most people judge me because I pull out of the driveway in a nice car wearing a suit and tie each day so they think I'm a complete idiot when they walk past the house on the weekend and find me on a 28 foot extension ladder repairing trim around an attic window that was damaged by a falling tree limb.

Now back to the outhouse portion of this discussion.  Until a few years ago my family and dad's best friend's had a hunting and fishing camp on a lake in the back bush of Quebec.  We sold it when dad's buddy died three years ago, as dad had passed in 1998 and we just weren't getting enough use out of it.  It had an outhouse.  Took several friends there over the years and it took getting used to for them to offload in a wooden box with a bucket full of stove ash sitting next to them.  I however miss being outside with the door open as the sun comes up, on a brisk morning in the fall, cup of coffee to the left, bucket of ash to the right, roll of toilet paper on the floor looking across the lake at the trout, bass, and pike jumping, knowing that as soon as my hangover subsided that I would be catching dinner. 

Here it is.  Its shaky from my cell but when I pull it back out on Saturday to clean it up, I'll get a buddy to ride the officer's seat and post some better stuff.

For those who don’t remember (it’s been a while), I own Mack B85F1242, a 1957 B85F that spent its entire firefighting career with the Gettysburg, PA fire department. While in college I was a firefighter there. I had the honor of driving and riding the officers seat to this rig’s last actual fire and it’s last alarm (a false alarm nonetheless). This truck stood by for President Eisenhower when his helicopter landed at the family farm in Gettysburg and was nicknamed and dedicated by the President as “General Ike.   I bought it with my father-in-laws help six years after it was retired in 1998 (bought in 2004 or so). We restored it and unfortunately it has sat for about 8 years. I replaced the batteries, flushed the fuel system and fired this old boy up for the first time today in 8 years. The 6V53T that it was repowered with in the 1970’s ran like a champ. The Allison auto never missed a beat. Drive it 20 miles home from the storage facility where we keep it during rush hour in Orlando and it got tons of thumbs up. It’s dirty and will be washed at my middle school son’s car wash fund drive on Saturday (I’ll be washing it while the kids wash cars). I’ll post pics and a better video that doesn’t include the stress and shakiness of driving a 60 year old truck in rush hour traffic on Saturday.