scamming senior citizens

 

It seems that not a day goes by when we hear about another scam that some senior citizen fell for and someone took from them their entire life savings.  I usually have a couple of thoughts that range from: “How could anyone fall for that? And, “They sent someone their entire life savings?  Why not just a few hundred dollars?  Why did they throw away everything they own?”

Subsequently, I remind myself that being a senior citizen myself, could I fall for something like that myself?

And, my answer is always, no.  I would, at least do some investigation before throwing all my money away and I would like to think that if I were scammed I would start out slow and realize my mistake before giving away everything I have.

I think the key here is to do one’s due diligence.  If we get the facts, we are less likely to make colossal mistakes.  It is part of the American character to question and to get the facts before diving into the abyss.

I can’t help but think there were many senior citizens participating in the attempted overthrow of our government on January 6.  I think that because I saw the video and the photos, and a large percentage of the wanna be bin Ladens were people of my age group.  The question I asked myself on that day was why so many of my contemporaries— people who cherish this country, respect the constitution and the flag— were raising hell trying to end our democratic republic?  And using the flag and flagpole as a weapon.  Didn't these people ever hear about flag etiquette?

I think the answer may be that the Scammer-in-Chief was able to convince a large number of addled-brained contemporaries of mine to send him money.  His scam has netted him more than a quarter of a billion dollars so far.

Now, I don’t harbor any respect for scammers, and anyone who would put our country in a state of war to try to bilk the elderly of their savings descends to the lowest level of respect in my book and the sooner he is facing time in the big house instead of the White House, the better.

But, I have to poke these dimwits that fell for this scam.  How could you have been so stupid to fall for this scam when the truth was so easy to find?  How could you have been so gullible? I mean, for the President to take your money, it was like taking candy from a baby.  It is like my fellow senior citizens have no common sense.

Hang your head in shame.  And, quit giving this dope your money and stop trying to overthrow the republic for him.  Stop this crazy stuff and come back to America.  The United States of America was good enough for dad and grandpa, and it will always be good enough for me.

And, we have never been more sure of anything in Jimbo’s world.

so long 2020

 

I remember the day that COVID hit home.  I don’t remember the date, exactly.  It was March 11 or March 12.  I was texting back and forth with my progeny about the Big Twelve postseason tournament and it was the day of the play-in games.  Our team was the number one team in the nation so they weren’t playing for another day or two, but it had just been announced that two of the major teams in the nation—one of which was ours—were not going to play in the post season.  We figured that our team was going to be the favorite in the NCAA tournament so that was a bummer.

 

So the subject of our texts changed from basketball to the announcement that the urban counties, for which we are ex-burbs, were planning to lock down.  I texted my son that we were lucky we were not going to be locked down and his reply was, no, we were going to be locked down, too.

 

It was the first inkling of a lifestyle change, the extent of which we were only vaguely aware.  Life changed that day and it has stayed changed for the rest of the year and it will stay changed until sometime in the new year.

 

However, I don’t think there will be a day next year that we will be able to say, today is the day; the virus is behind us.  I think it will be one of those gradual things like lost love or lost friends where we carry the grief until one day we smile or chuckle about something and we realize that life will go on.  We will get vaccinated at soon as we can but we will still wear masks and social distance and wash our hands.  Maybe someday we will meet someone and shake their hand, or maybe we will never shake hands again.

 

We will bid adieu to this plague, I hope, but it will not be gone on the fifth hour of the fifth day of the fifth month, at an exact moment that we can pinpoint.  It will hang around for a while.  I think that we can be certain when the clock strikes twelve tonight and this year ends, the virus will still be with us. 

 

We just hope that it goes away sometime soon.

 

Until then, our wish is a happy new year.

 

And in Jimbo’s world, we mean it.

ode on intimations of immortality

 

We got the last of our Christmas cards sent out today.

 

Big woop, you might say.  You also might add that you got yours out two weeks ago and then throw in something like, “took you long enough.”  Or, you may say something like, why didn’t you just instant message?  I realize the habit of sending out Christmas cards is becoming a lost art, and mainly we just send out Christmas cards to older people—mostly the people who send Christmas cards to us.  I seriously doubt if our progeny have ever sent out a Christmas card.

 

I will predict that sending Christmas cards will probably die with my generation, if it isn’t on life support already.  Once upon a time, sending cards, and just writing to communicate back and forth, was a way of keeping in touch, much like we instant message today, only much lower-tech and much slower.

 

We received a Christmas card today from a fellow co-worker who mentioned that another fellow co-worker had passed away a little over a year ago.  It is funny how people who were once a daily part of your life fade out of your life, then fade out of your memory and finally a reminder comes that all that is left of them is a memory.  I have seen too many people who were once important in my life fade away and then I hear they are gone forever.  And all that is left is some memory of a good time you had with them, or something silly they did at work.  I know that we will all become just a memory someday, but I wonder too, if our existence is really summed up by something done one great summer afternoon that someone remembers fondly or that day at work when someone broke the stress with some quick phrase. 

 

“Do you remember that project we were working sixty-hour weeks to complete when Jimbo cracked us all up?”

 

Someday, we will all fade from reality and afterward fade from memory.  Maybe, though, we will do something that sticks in someone’s mind.  I hope that thing is good and is remembered fondly and not something that is lamentable.

 

At least that is our wish here in Jimbo’s world.

woody park

Things have changed a lot since I was a kid.  A Coke and a Whistle Orange drink (if they even still make the stuff) cost more than a dime.  A pack of baseball cards doesn’t cost a nickel anymore.  A much smaller percentage of the population is walking around with a smoldering cylinder of paper filled with tobacco leaves in their mouths. 

And, I would like to believe that a lot of attitudes have changed.  Realities change, but people hold on to old habits and old attitudes.  They die hard, sometimes.  Sometimes, though, we just look up and they are gone.  One day we all saw Hugh Hefner wearing a Nehru jacket and we all wanted one.  Fortunately the trend died before I scraped together enough cash to buy one and the style died quickly and uneventfully.

I noticed the other day that a gun associated with a famous trial has gone up for auction and it appears that people have an interest in owning it.  While I would like to think that there are those out there who have an interest in it for historic reasons, I somehow don’t think this thing fits into the same category of Whig campaign buttons and memorabilia. 

One time I bought a fixer-upper in Lawrence, Kansas, that needed some serious rehabilitating and some rewiring.  My father was good at the former and expert at the latter, and he spent some time helping me get the electrical system safe for habitation.  One warm spring Sunday—very much like today—we were working on the house.  He came in from outside and asked me whether I knew that I had black people living in my neighborhood.  I said I did.  Then he asked me if I knew there were a hundred black people a half block down the street at a park called Woody Park.  I said I had seen them.  He asked me why I had bought a house in a neighborhood with black people.

I told him that it didn’t make any difference to me.

Dad had grown up in a time where attitudes were different and he had been born in the South.  He had a prejudice that I didn’t.  I went back to work and he went back outside. 

Later, I had a circuit completed and, although I had a good idea what I was doing—after all, he had taught me wiring—I started looking for him to check my work.  When I couldn’t find him anywhere I asked if anyone knew where he was.

“He’s down the street at the park with a bunch of black people,” I was told.

A half-hour or so later, he wandered back into the house. 

“Where have you been?” I asked.

“I recognized Woody,” he said.  Black guy I work with.  Helluva nice guy.  We drank a couple and shot the shit.  Nice bunch of folks.”

We didn’t say any more about it.  Dad just took his home-made tester—a couple of insulated 12 gauge wires from a piece of heavy gauge Romex stripped one inch on one end and connected to a Bakelite screw-in socket on the other with a 220 volt incandescent bulb in it— poked the bare ends into a duplex receptacle and checked my work.  The bulb lit at half-brightness, indicating 110 volts alternating current, so we were good.

There was no more mention of my choice of neighborhood.  It was okay from then on.  I don’t think he ever questioned the location of my house again.

And someday, there will be no one alive with any idea of what a Nehru jacket is or anyone who would have any interest in owning that gun.

the "pooch"

Yesterday I told you of another of my time travels—one of the journeys I have taken into the past.  Okay, it was a journey I took in the present and didn’t cross any time/space continua.  It was another trip to 44^th Street.  While I was driving up and down 44^th Street, I remember seeing the garage door of a neighborhood house partially open and partly ajar.  It was obvious the door was broken and didn’t work.  I would not open or close because the lower two panels were broken loose from the rest of the door and just hanging there.  I could see into the garage and there was no car there.

But, once upon a time, there was.  And, that is where my story about the pooch begins.

We had a couple of neighbors within a block of our house on 44^th Street who worked at the same place my father did.  One of them was in the large, fancy house at the end of the block, next to the school yard.  He was one of the “big wheels” as my father would say.  The other guy lived almost across the street from the bosses house, but his house was more modest, and, just coincidentally, it was the one whose garage door was both a door and ajar.

If my memory is good (and that is currently at question) the guy who lived in that house was named John, and he was just a few years older than me, but he and my father knew each other really well.  Dad told me that there was a “Pooch” in John’s garage.  I made a quip that I didn’t know John was a dog fancier and why would he keep a dog in his garage?

That kind of angered the old man and he raised his voice a bit and said something like:

“It’s not a dog you dumb ass.  It’s a car!”

Even back then, in addition to being a bit of a smart aleck, I was pretty sophisticated and had already reasoned that there was a Porsche behind that properly-functioning-at-the-time garage door.  Dad and I walked up to see it and it was an un-restored Porsche 356A in somewhat rough condition.  I believe John said he had plans to fix it up when he had the money.

When I drove past that broken garage door the day before yesterday, I probably would not have thought anything about it, had it not been for something I saw on CNBC last week.  They were at an automobile auction, which was to be one of the largest in the United States this year and they showed a Ferrari or some exotic sports car in mint condition that was to bring a price in the multi-millions of dollars.  Next to it was a 1950s vintage Porsche 356A, un-restored and in rough condition.  Robert Frank, who was the guy doing the report said that it was expected—despite its rust and deteriorated seat cushions—to bring $300,000 at auction.

Like Aesop, I need to end this story with some sort of moral, so here it goes.  On the way back down 44^th Street the night Dad and I looked at the 356A, my father made a comment about how John would sink money into the rust bucket and not have anything to show for it.  And, maybe that would be true.  However, if he had the foresight to keep it un-restored for 45 years, it may have been worth something. 

My dad was a wise man, but it is not always easy to predict what the future will bring.  As a matter of fact, I think I may have agreed with him that night.  I am going to be offering some advice tonight and I think I may keep this story in mind when I do it.  When I am asked to predict the future tonight, I will be able to say one thing with certainty:  you just never know.

escape from the old neighborhood

Yesterday I drove back into a neighborhood where I used to live to look at a house I saw for sale and the neighborhood where it is located.  It was more of an experience than I planned on.

First, the house was pretty solid and well built, but it is 75 years old and shows some wear.  I liked the house because it was dirt cheap and the pictures of the house shows it has two marble bathrooms and the interior walls are all covered with hardwood planks and not drywall.  The exterior is stone and it was, at one time, probably something special.  I am guessing someone with money lived there.

The house was two blocks from where my maternal grandmother and step-grandfather lived when I was a teenager, so I had some familiarity with the area.  I am guessing, though, by the events that occurred, I will not be calling the realtor for a showing.

Just before I got there, I saw a half-dozen police cars with sirens blaring and at high speed pass by a block from the house.  I later learned that there had been a double homicide about six blocks away from the house five minutes before I got there.  I continued to hear sirens as I circumnavigated the neighborhood and got a look at the exterior of the house and yard.  When I left the neighborhood, I saw half a dozen more police cars-- sirens on and speeding toward north and east.

I was only a couple of miles from where the North Forty-Fourth Street Sidewalk Surfing Association used to ply their craft.  Since I was a former member and a resident of 44th Street, I figured I would drive by the old homestead.

Forty-forth street has fallen into disrepair, but the trees along the side of the street have matured creating a park-like atmosphere, but some of the houses show signs of being anything but park-like. Our old house is there but it is forty years distant from me.

When I left the area, I had to wait for a light at 47th and Parallel and a couple of gentlemen who were also waiting for the light decided to call each other out and got out of their cars and started fighting. Some young man, who apparently knew one of them jumped into the melee and started swinging and knocked one of the guys to the ground.  Then the kid jumped into his car and left.  It was other-worldly.

As I drove home, I saw a car beside the road that had obviously went off the road and been demolished with a fire truck attending to it.  Another mile down the road, two more cars had collided and there was a tow truck gathering them up.

Two deaths; one melee and two wrecks later I was heading west and back home, away from the old neighborhood and toward the current one.  I guess the current neighborhood is where I will choose to stay.

But tomorrow I will tell you more about 44th street and the "Pooch."

andy pafko

My memory is not good, but I can remember when Andy Pafko died.  Well, it was just this week, so I can remember even with memory loss.  I don’t remember Pafko as a player.  He came up in 1943 and retired in 1959.  I would have been nine when he retired and probably have been collecting baseball cards, so I may have had one of his cards.  I don’t remember.

What I do remember, though, is that he was number one in the 1952 Topps series of baseball cards.  I would have been one year old when that card came out and was probably not chewing gum, yet, so I probably didn’t have one.  I know he was number one because my son collected some 1952 Topps cards when he was young and he and I did research on them.  The Pafko card, in good condition, is valuable because I read that kids that collected the 1952 series usually sorted them by card number and put a rubber band around their stack of cards.  Therefore, the edges of the Pafko cards were worn down by the rubber bands coming on and off and many of them fell into poor condition.

I recently wrote about a trip I took back to Alden Street, where I grew up, and I remember I had a corrugated box from the grocery store that was full of baseball cards when I lived there.  I think I used rubber bands, so I probably messed up some of my cards, but I don’t remember stacking them in numeric order.  I think I sorted them by year of issue and team.

It was popular, back on Alden Street in the 1950s, to trade duplicates of cards to other kids and I remember I was always the youngest kid on the block.  I remember going across the street and sitting on the front porch trading cards with some of the big kids.  I specifically remember one day they asked me to go home and get something and just leave my box of cards.  They said they would watch them for me.  When I came back I remember seeing a bunch of Ford Frick cards in my box that weren’t there before I left.  Frick was the Commissioner of Baseball.  I protested but the older kids told me I was wrong—that those Frick cards were in my box and I just didn’t remember. 

Back on Alden Street none of us had much money and I think that sometimes morality can be equated with poverty.  I think the prevailing morality was that no one was going to steal a card from anyone else, but there would be nothing wrong with trading, say, a Ford Frick for an Elston Howard or Mickey Mantle, if the young kid didn’t know better.

It was survival of the fittest and I was not yet fit.  Although the transactional difference at the time amounted to pennies, the actual cost may have been in the hundreds of thousands of dollars at today’s prices for some of those cards.

We were poor but I had a 20” Huffy bicycle.  I probably had a dime in a good week of discretionary funds and probably spent most of it on candy and baseball cards, but I would take clothespins and baseball cards and make the spokes of the Huffy sound like a motorcycle.  In retrospect, I probably went on a number of $25,000 joyrides, based on today’s prices for those cards.

The most grievous throwing away of money was exactly that—throwing money in the trash.  One of my chores on Alden Street was to take out the trash every night, put it into an old steel 55-gallon barrel and burn it.  When we moved from Alden Street, we had a lot of things that we decided to burn rather than move.  I distinctly remember taking my box of baseball cards and flipping them one-by-one into the fire in the barrel.  After all, I was fourteen years old and too old to play with baseball cards.  If you have the mint condition Andy Pafko card that sold for eighty-some thousand dollars or a Mickey Mantle rookie card that may have eluded the spokes of my bike, I may have helped make you money that day.  If all of us had saved our cards, they would be less rare and less valuable.

No, you don’t need to thank me.  I think there were a number of us who discarded our cards and made the ones that escaped the spokes or the fire that much more valuable.

almost, but not quite, crazy enough

It is starting to play over and over again, like a broken record.

Okay, most of you have probably never had a turntable and spent much time listening to vinyl records whose primary flaw was that a scratch or a bit of dirt caused the styli to skip and repeat the same passage time and time again.  The particular thing I am starting to feel we are hearing over and over again is that someone took a gun, went into his workplace and killed a number of people for no good reason.

We are now starting to hear of the background of the shooter and the picture coming into focus is of a guy with a series of warning signs that weren’t quite alarming enough for someone to prevent this from happening.

He was arrested three times but not convicted of anything, so he had no criminal record.  I can understand that part:  innocent until proven guilty.

The one that concerns me, though, is that he told police that he was hearing voices and that he thought someone was using a microwave machine on him.  He also told police that he had no history of mental illness.  I have a theory about people who are hearing voices in their heads and my theory is that they are crazy.

The one plus I see in this whole thing is that he tried to buy an assault rifle and was not able to because of a waiting period for a background check.  However, he was able to buy a riot gun, instead.  Although he was able to slaughter enough people with the riot gun and another gun he was able to take away from a guard at the crime scene, I can imagine how much more carnage this loony would have been able to produce with an AR-15.  Chalk up at least a small victory for gun control laws.

How many more times will maniac go into a school, a commercial place of business or a workplace and open fire?  This is not a rhetorical question.  I am going to answer.  It is going to happen again, and again.  Unfortunately this time some people knew in advance that the dude was crazy, but, apparently just not crazy enough for anyone to detain him.

The interesting thing about the particular workplace where this happened is that there were armed security people on site, but even that was not enough to prevent the killing.

Wayne LaPierre of the NRA says that the answer to school shootings is to put armed guards at all schools and arm the teachers.  I am thinking that the incident in Washington, DC shows that armed guards are not necessarily the solution. 

To me, armed guards and arming teachers sounds crazy.

Apparently, to some, it must not sound crazy enough.

err on the side of being right

There is one thing nagging at me in this whole Syria situation and that is that we need to see the conclusive evidence that Assad delivered the poison gas.  While he sounds to me like the kind of low-life that would do something like this, the fact that we warned him not to step across that line and he did, anyway, makes me wonder why he didn’t commit suicide in some way where he had more control.  When we warned him not to do it, he had to know that it was not an empty threat.  He seems to be more than able to slaughter his people with conventional weapons, so why did he use the gas?

The assumption that al Qaeda has a role in the Syrian opposition makes me wonder if they had something to do with this.  For example, did they have a way to deliver gas to an area the Syrian government was shelling to make it look like Assad did it?  After all, don’t the al Qaeda guys have a reputation for putting innocent civilians in harm’s way to try to give themselves a tactical advantage?  How do we know they wouldn’t try something like this?

I am pretty sure the President would not jump in with both feet if he was not pretty sure his feet were going to land on the side of being right, but I just have a bad feeling that something just doesn’t add up.  Perhaps it is because there was that thing in Iraq a few years back where Saddam had the weapons of mass destruction and our president at the time was cocksure that he had to act, and, well, you know the rest of the story.

This morning the Red Chinese were using that same argument and when I heard them saying it I figured I had to be wrong, but after weighing it all, I would like to have all of the facts.

If we have the evidence, then let’s throw the Tomahawks at them and then pass that evidence to the Russians afterward, but let’s make sure we have the evidence before we light them up.  Let’s not get dragged into something unless we have clarity.

11,346,595 people like mitt romney

I signed up for a Facebook account this week so I could monitor my granddaughter's daily doings.  Facebook gives me daily suggestions of who I might like.  Today one was Willard Romney.

11,346,595 people like him, which is currently 11,346,592 more than like me.

Needless to say I did not-- and do not-- like him.

I just had to get that off my chest.