Friday Notes

Reality Bites

It was a very embarrassing revelation. This week the Valdosta Board of Education revealed its vote to replace the open slot caused by the resignation of John Klimko. The Board gave votes to only two of the three candidates. Local Dentist Jeff Newburn (disclosure, he's the dentist for my sons, Tristan and Robin) came up with the big goose egg. And he thought the only place he could get bitten was at work...

Sunday Drinking

The figleaf for drinking in public on Sunday continues to be the "right to have a glass of wine at a meal." This ignores the fact that any decent bottle of wine should be drunk after opening. That's more than a glass.

It follows naturally that any ordinance that allows for drinking at table should also require that there be enough adults at table to finish off the entire bottle with each adult getting two. My calculator for a standard 750Ml bottle tells me that you should have a minimum of four adults receiving two glasses of 3.25 ounces of libation each for 6.5 ounces total which contains just under one ounce of pure alcohol.

Of course, we then have to deal with the pitchers of margaritas and beer containing a good old American 48 ounces. A good ordinance should require that four adults can put away a pitcher only if there someone at least sixteen years old at the table who can help them all get into the car and drive them home.

Mathematical silliness aside, the true reason for wanting to have alcohol sold on Sunday is the fear of ridicule. Yankees drive in here off I-75 and get all snotty when they find out there's no hoots to be had. I thought we Southerners had outgrown caring a flit about what Yankees think about us these days, but there you have it.

My position remains thus: people who drink should have at least one day where they do it at home with their family and a good meal at home beats the heck out of any restaurant meal you care to eat.

A New Retirement Plan

In the 1880s, Otto von Bismarck crafted Europe's first pension plan. He had to pick an age at which people would be too feeble to work and therefore eligible for state support and entitlement. Bismarck picked 65. In that year, the life expectancy in Europe and the United States was only 45. Extrapolate that out to today's life expectancy and you get retirement at 115. Now that would make Social Security solvent!

Another Railroad Overpass?

After this week's piece on waiting on the train on Gornto, my friend Johnny Dukes proposed that we start pushing for a railroad overpass. One end would start just before the Y. My candidate for the other end would be the house on the corner of Gornto and Meadowbrook whose owner hacked off the neighborhood when announced he was going to turn his house into a convenience store as soon as the road widening was complete. Hey, we'll name the overpass after him.

The Train Boss! The Train!

I was sitting in a long line on Gornto Road the other day waiting for the train to finish passing when I noticed that the line was moving forward while lots of cars were going away. When I made the big curve at the Y I could see lots of people giving up and going the other way.

Where in the world were they going?

I mean, the train cuts Valdosta in half. You can head up the street to Baytree Road and just get into another line. I wasn’t there, but I can imagine there were people giving up and heading towards Gornto to try their luck.

Or, maybe they were just going to give up getting to the other side of Valdosta and going to the mall, back to work, or to a bar to to exercise their right to smoke. The only decent route I can come up with is rolling out on I-75 and heading north to exit 26 and then back to Valdosta down North Valdosta road. You can’t really call that progress as the train could end up any minute and you’ll get to the other side of town to see that car that was ahead of you in line already parked somewhere.

I guess even the illusion of going somewhere is better than just sitting in place to some people.

Necessity does breed entrepreneurial ideas like walking down the line selling generic Prozac from Canada. If I was the proprietor of “Old Timers” bar right at the start of the line, I think I’d change the sign to say “Why Wait in Line for the Train? Come in for a drink!”

Me? I just turned up the stereo and cranked up my Palm for a nice game of FreeCell. When you are nudging along at feet per hour, you can drive with your knees while trying to find a way to get those pesky Kings out of the way to release some Aces. My FreeCell string is up to 100 wins in a row and I’m considering changing the winner’s name to Norfolk Southern.

Safe? Sure, at least I’m not driving and talking on the cellphone…