don of all trades

Useful stuff you need to know to be a grown up…

Posted on January 30, 2013 by donofalltrades

With school funding being cut and parents becoming bigger douchebags about accepting the fact that their little Jimmy or Suzy is a fucking idiot and didn’t even deserve the C they got, let alone the A that mom and dad are demanding on that last test, it’s a wonder we can get anybody with half a brain to sign on to be a teacher anymore.

Where there are some resources and parents who care about their kids, the system is just fine. My daughter’s public school teachers have been fan-FREAKIN- tastic! We knew her first grade private school teacher was a dingledick, but we didn’t realize she was a TOTAL dingledick until Ace switched to the public school in second grade. The difference was astonishing. Great teachers make all the difference!

I had some great teachers growing up myself, but there were a lot of lessons I was never taught that had nothing to do with teachers. There are some things that I feel everybody should learn at some point before venturing out of their mom and dad’s basement to begin life on their own. Parents, you have the responsibility of making sure you don’t send a useless dolt out into the world because you didn’t teach him or her how to be a real grown up.

Most of this is aimed at men, but much of it is for the ladies too. It wouldn’t kill a gal to be able to rotate her man’s tires for God’s sake.

In no particular order, here are some things that young people should be learning:

Some sort of shop class – I graduated college with a double major, but if my future employment had been based on being able to chose which of the below items was the mitre saw, I’d still be making change for crackheads buying Slurpees and Slim Jim’s at 7-11.

Except for VERY minor tasks around the house, I am completely at the mercy of people who know how to use tools properly. While I’m not completely inept, I certainly don’t trust myself to take on any sort of electrical work around my own house, or plumbing, or carpentry or drywall repair or anything that can’t be done with a hammer or the above tool shown on the right…the turny thingy. Kids should be learning how to tend to minor problems around the house like what to do if the toilet is running or they should at least know that those filters in the furnace need to be changed more than once every five years.

You don’t have a job so you probably shouldn’t have a credit card – Shame on college campuses for allowing the credit card companies to litter campuses with credit card applications for every unemployed, starving, thirsty for booze 18 year old to get their hands on. And they APPROVE these applications! My first card was a Discover Card (still have it!) with a $1000 credit limit! Are you freaking kidding me? That was a lot of jack at my disposal. Having credit meant no more tossing around sofa cushions to find enough loose change to be able to go chug domestic draft beer at Ron’s Lounge for $4.50 a pitcher. Ron’s didn’t have one of them thar credit card takin’ deevices. Nope, having credit meant I was pissing in the tall grass at Applebee’s, sucking down bloody marys and glasses of fancier, nondomestic draft beer that were just as expensive as my entire pitcher of beer at Ron’s!

Go ahead and use me, you can always pay later!

Balancing a checkbook and budgeting what little money you have – This can be taught along with the credit cards will ruin your life, if you’re not careful course. Little Johnny needs to learn that if he has a $50 a week allowance, then he probably shouldn’t be spending $150 a week on designer jeans made to look worn, online porn and shots of Jaegermeister. Learning to balance a budget will come in handy when little Johnny is an adult with a family trying to calculate the cost benefit and feasibility of leaving his wife, Little Suzy, because she never learned the value of not abusing credit cards and is putting the family in the poor house. Johnny and Suzy should know how to balance a checkbook long before they open their accounts at the bank and say “what’s that?” when the bank employee hands them a ledger along with their book of beginner checks.
Pleasing that boyfriend of yours – This is probably going to have to be a college class since I have a daughter and am staunchly anti-sex before marriage and even then only to procreate. Still, some college kids will no doubt find themselves butt ass naked in the sack with some stranger at some point or another, wondering what in the hell the other person expects them to do in order to get the whole ordeal over with so they can pass out in time to make their poorly scheduled 8am Zoology 101 class in the morning. If you’re a woman, just take off your shirt and bra and jump up and down a little. He’s a 20 year old boy for God’s sake, he’ll jizz all over himself and your work is done. If he’s not that hammered, you may have to touch his pecker. Go ahead, just touch it…he’s done now, right? That sticky crap comes off with soap and water, so just go wash your hands and make him cuddle with you so he’ll not want you to do that again for days.
Where’s the clitoris? –This class is for you college men who think pleasing your woman entails jamming two fingers into your lady friend’s peehole and working the old fashioned saw the log motion on her until she tells you it hurts, please stop. You have to find something called the clitoris to please her. Here’s what it is –

clit·o·ris

[klit-er-is, klahy-ter-, kli-tawr-is, -tohr-]

noun Anatomy .

the erectile organ of the vulva, homologous to the penis of the male.

Now, you have to take the class to figure out what the fuck vulva and homologous to the penis means.

Figuring out what it is is only 32% of the battle. Next you have to find where it is. I’d do you a solid and tell you where it is, but I don’t have a goddam clue! I’m certain that it’s in a different spot with every woman. I think I dated a gal whose clitoris was in her ear and another whose was between her shoulder blades. It’s totally random. I’m still looking for my wife’s and I’ve loved her for 17 years now. It moves every time she has a baby or something. If you’re pleasuring your lady and she’s till reading her magazine or texting her mother, you’ve probably not found it yet. When she starts talking about God or dropping the F bomb, you’re in the right area, buddy! Good luck!

Learn to work on your car – Maybe related to shop class, but maybe not. Everyone should be able to do minimal maintenance on an automobile, from changing oil to rotating tires to replacing brake pads. Save yourself some money and earn cool points from your friends and potential mates by learning some basic car repair skills! The class should include what sorts of cars to avoid as well, like my 2004 Chevy Venture minivan. The Venture requires 14 different things be taken out of the engine just to reach the fucking battery. It’s a real tribute to American automotive ingenuity. Nice work Chevy engineers…pricks! While you’re at it, do the extra credit and learn to drive a stick. If you’re a grown man and you can’t drive a stick, you’re a little bit of a pussy.
CPR – Why are we not teaching our young adults what to do in an emergency?? They cause more accidents in this country than anybody else, don’t they? The least they can do is know how to minimize some of the damage done during one their Jackass mimicking stunts by tending to a sucking chest wound or knowing where to cut the cord when their bastard child is born in the back seat of mom’s minivan. While they’re cutting umbilical cords, teach them it is not ok to put the baby in an alley dumpster! Please make sure your promiscuous angel knows where they can take unwanted babies should they find themselves with one. Seriously.
Old Fashioned 101- Drinking Jaeger bombs and buttery nipples like the rest of your buttfucking fraternity brothers makes you just another douche. Don’t be a douche! Learn how to drink something cool like scotch on the rocks or an Old Fashioned. It’ll take the whole semester to acquire a taste for it, so don’t skip any classes.
Home Appliances Usage – I have grown man friends who have no idea how to operate a washing machine or dishwasher. This is incredible to me. I understand that your mother may have done your laundry for you until you turned 30, but surely you watched her push the buttons, right? Men and women both should be learning how to use the things that will come in a new house when they finally live on their own.
Outdoorsy crap – A mom or dad should be able to teach their kids how to hook a fishing pole or put up a tent without impaling themselves. Along with this, boys and girls should know how to start a fire and make sure the fire they finally get started doesn’t spread to the nearest city and burn it down to the ground. It’d also be nice to know what things in the woods can be eaten and what will kill you or make your genitals itch really badly. You’ll need this stuff after the Apocalypse.
Cooking – I fancy myself an adequate cook and learned everything I know by watching Foodnetwork every now and then and being able to follow a recipe. Not that difficult, but some folks can’t seem to figure it out. If the wife’s not home, your dumb ass shouldn’t be ordering pizza or feeding the kids Kit Kats and Cheetos for five straight nights.
Throwing a punch without looking like a bitch – Ever see professional basketball players throw punches at each other? These are incredible athletes and they look like little girls having a fucking tickle fight because they all have posses and never learned to fight for themselves. Learn how to throw a punch, protect your face or better yet, talk your way out of a sticky spot that your mouth got you into.
Swim – I’m astonished at how many grown ups don’t know how to swim. I don’t mean swimming a breaststroke, I mean people who can’t even keep their asses from sinking straight to the bottom of a water hole they’re so incompetent in the water! Learn to swim before you embarrass yourself by dying in four feet of water.
Geography – No lady is going to be impressed with your lies about eating fresh pasta in Naples, if you’re pointing at Australia on the map while telling the story. Italy is the one that looks like a boot, asshole. Learn where places outside of your shithole hometown are so you can fake being cultured and maybe get a date.
Eat with chopsticks – No. you know what? Eating with two sticks is fucking stupid. Use a fork like God intended.
Parallel parking – If you’re going to drive in an urban area, you’ll be doing yourself a favor and opening the number of available parking spots to yourself immensely, if you can put a 20′ car in a 30′ opening. It’s not that hard and it’s part of the fucking driving test. You’re supposed to know how to do this anyway, if you have a valid license. If you have a uterus, pass on even trying this, you’re exempt.
Gambling – I very much dislike having to turn down any occasion that involves drinking, but when the event is poker, I have to politely decline. I have no clue how to play and it’s one of my greatest shames. What beats what again? What the fruck is a frush?? Yeah, that’s me and it blows. Don’t let that be you too.
Ironing – When I was in the police academy I was a single man. They gave us two shirts to wear for 5 days a week of classes. That’s not enough time to have shirts dry cleaned, so in order to look nice, you needed to iron your shirts yourself. I don’t iron. The ex marine next to me in line at inspection was good at ironing. While I was berated for smelling like a brewery in my wrinkled ass shirt every morning, Sanchez was high fived for looking all crisp and polished. Well, 14 years later, Sanchez is no where to be found. Apparently, being good at ironing doesn’t equate to being good at police officering. Still, it’s a handy skill to have.
Eat out properly – Look, if you don’t have money to tip 20%, then go to Wendy’s and pass on the places where a waitress has to serve your cheap ass in order to make a living.

Holy crap, look at all the stuff that you should be learning! My wife just asked me if I’m writing a book, so I’ll take that as a cue that this post has gone on too long… I’m much too beat to continue writing any more anyhow, and I’m sure that, other than my wife and mother, nobody else is reading this anymore anyways. But quickly, here’s a list of other stuff to learn as well.

to tie a tie
a foreign language
sew/hem your pants
speak in public
clean up a stain properly
drive in the snow
accept and give compliments
home security techniques
play chess
tell a joke
hold and change a newborn baby
identify and pick out produce
dress all by yourself
make a kid laugh

I’m sure there’s a whole ton of other stuff…whatcha think?

Posted in Humor, Uncategorized | Tagged growing up, life lessons, life skills, Living on your own, schooling | 21 Comments

A time i met a really nice, semi-famous guy …

Posted on January 27, 2013 by donofalltrades

Back in 2004, when the Democrats were desperately trying to topple that evil genius, President George W. Bush, Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry, he of marrying rich ketchup lady fame, was in St. Louis as part of some silly train ride west to press the flesh with commoners along the route who apparently hadn’t decided who they were going to vote for yet (yeah, morons).

As is the case whenever anybody semi-important comes to town, police officers have to disrupt their regular routines to babysit and protect these folks from the very people they think love and adore them.

On this day, there were maybe 15,000 people at St. Louis Union Station listening to this blow hard lament the plight of the homeless and the poor as though somebody with his wealth and means can relate on any level to what a homeless, poor or even middle class American goes through in everyday life.

Fortunately for me, every single one of these people was in the back of Union Station while I was positioned alone in the front. It may have been the easiest detail I’ve ever had!

I was standing there alone in the heat, when I noticed a lone stranger across the street rushing from out of nowhere. He was pulling a luggage type bag on wheels and looked like he was clearly lost.

This guy finally reaches me and I see that he’s frantically talking into a phone . After a few seconds, he removed it from his head and looked at it disgustedly for a moment.

While he’s staring at his phone, I’m looking at this guy and trying to figure out where I’ve seen him before. He looked VERY familiar. He finally looks at me and puts what today I recognize as a Blackberry in my face and asks me if I can help him to get better reception for his phone. Back in 2004, I didn’t know a Blackberry phone from my ass, quite frankly.

Really asshole, I’m thinking to myself. Can I help you get better reception? Do I look like a fucking cell phone tower? What kind of question is that?

He showed me his phone with its fancy keypad and screen and said that he was having trouble hearing his pal on the other end. He was supposed to meet his pal and was running late. I looked at his phone for a minute and said to him “well there’s your problem, that there is a calculator not a telephone.”

He looked at me like I had two heads (who the fuck is this guy, did I go to college with him?) and says, “You’ve never seen a Blackberry before?”

“Huh”, I said.

“It’s a phone and so much more; you don’t have one?” my familiar stranger said.

I laughed and said that I was a police officer with a wife and child, so no, I don’t have nice things.

I asked him if he was from St. Louis and he said no, he lived in Los Angeles. He said he was in town for the Kerry nonsense (he probably called it a gala or something, nonsense was my word, of course).

I told him he looked familiar and he sort of gave me a wry smile.

“Have I seen you on tv or something?” I asked.

“You may have,” he said.

“Hmmmm, I can’t place your face and it’s making me nuts,” I said. “But don’t tell me, I’ll figure it out.”

Meanwhile, he asked me again about getting him better reception for his fancy phone device.

“Come closer friend, let’s see if this works,” I said.

He stood next to me and I told him to hold his phone over his head. Unbelievably, he did and I started to manipulate the metallic badge on my shirt as though I was reflecting invisible phone beams from outer space directly to his device. After a good 20 seconds, he finally said, “You’re playing with me aren’t you?”

“Ha! I was not playing with you, sir. I was screwing with you. I doubted that was going to work, but it was all I could think to do and you never know if you don’t try.” I said.

He smiled and we ended up talking about our kids, Los Angeles and St. Louis among other things for a few minutes. This man I couldn’t identify was a nice guy, whoever he was.

He said he had to go and asked if I’d figured out who he was yet. He wasn’t being pretentious or anything. I told him I had not, but that I would, without him having to tell me.

“Ok,” he said.

I pointed him towards the back lot, where the Kerry party was underway. He walked off and when he was about fifty yards away, it hit me.

Hey, I’m all grown up now!

“GOONIES!!?” I hollered his way “You’re that kid from Goonies!! Right?”

He turned and laughed and gave me a thumbs up before continuing on his way.

I busted out my flip phone, which was getting reception just fine, and called to tell my wife that I’d just met one of the Goonies kids. The ring leader. Goonies is one of her all time favorite movies.

“Sean Astin?” she asked.

“Yes!” I said. “He was a really nice guy, too.”

“You know he was in Rudy and is in the Lord of the Ring movies too, right?” asked wife.

Well fuck! No, it had not occurred to me that he was in those movies and I felt like an idiot for only recognizing him from a movie 20 years earlier and not the more recent ones that I’d actually seen (I’m not a big movie watcher).

I’d have liked to have talked to him knowing who he was. I’d have probably let him use my flip phone to find his pal had I known he was Rudy and that Hobbit fellow.

Even if he was apparently a Democrat.

Posted in Humor, Police Stories, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Customer service, i miss you dearly…

Posted on January 25, 2013 by donofalltrades

Back when there were mom and pop stores run by families who depended on customers returning to stay in business, good customer service was a real thing.

When there were choices as to where to spend your money, businesses competed to make sure you were a happy camper. This is becoming less and less the case everyday.

Last week I was at a big chain grocery store (the only one in town) and the checkout girl got huffy with me because I stood there and refused (passive aggressively) to bag my own fucking groceries.

While I understand that there are stores where you’re expected to bag your own shit, with the trade off being that the prices are allegedly a little lower than the store down the street where they have baggers, this was not such a store. This place has baggers!

I noticed that the people in line before me happily bagged their own groceries and went on their way. Maybe they were in a hurry or get a kick out of bagging groceries. I don’t know, but I wasn’t in a hurry and I bagged groceries in high school…been there done that.

While G$ kept me busy by handing me every fucking pack of Trident, Tic Tacs and Chap Stick that this place could stock at a child’s eye level (I think they call these bins by the checkout lines impulse bins) Polly Pinkhair was just standing there staring at us.

Me: “Is there a problem? My card went through, right?”

PP: “Yeah, I’m waiting for someone to bag.”

She said it in such a way that I heard “Hey fatfuck, can you bag your groceries like everyone else does and get out of my line?”

This gal was maybe somewhere between 20 and 25 years old. I can’t really guess ages so well anymore. I do know for a fact that she wasn’t cripple.

After she finally half assed and very meticulously (slowly) started to put my crap into plastic bags, just to be a total douche, I told her that I’d prefer paper please. She was kind enough to sigh and roll her eyes a bit before tossing my bread into the bottom of a paper bag.

There were two kids farther down the way bagging groceries for some other, more attractive cashiers. I sort of chuckled and said

“Things don’t change sometimes”

PP: “Wha?”

Me: “20 years or so ago, when I was bagging groceries in high school, we used to always bag for the prettiest checkers first and then make our way to the mean older ones as we could. Rarely should a pretty checker have to bag groceries”

PP: “Yeah, these baggers suck.”

Ah, subtlety, it was completely lost on Polly.

In another bit of customer service, do it your fucking self gold, Six Flags has decided that it’d be a neat idea to let customers basically do all the work required to process a season pass.

After two and a half hours waiting in line outside (yes, with all three kids), we finally entered some little hut type room where there were computers all over the place. The reason for the wait was immediately obvious as it was incumbent upon the guests to enter the information for each pass into a computer all by themselves before making their way to an actual employee who takes the picture and prints the card.

 This would be fine and dandy were Six Flags St. Louis not visited almost exclusively by thousands upon thousands of urban and rural inbred retards every day! Every third guest is either a tooth missing or gold tooth having near brain dead dolt. Their love of MMA and roller coasters is apparently mutual.

I mean some of these fucktards were literally poking the computer monitors with their fingers like they were smart phone touch screens. Oh my God, “THE FUCKING MOUSE AND KEYBOARD! USE THE MOUSE AND KEYBOARD!”

It was painful to watch and hard to keep quiet. Things would have gone more smoothly had they put my three year old in charge of entering everyone’s data. One guy in overalls told his “old lady” that he made a mistake and started shaking the monitor like it was a goddam etch-a-sketch! Are you serious, Jethro!??

Brutal.

Posted in Humor, Uncategorized | Tagged bagging, customer service, do it yourself, Grocery stores, shopping, six flags | 2 Comments

The big v…and I don’t mean vegas.

Posted on January 24, 2013 by donofalltrades

Warning – this is not a well thought out post so it’ll probably suck and I may talk about my pubes. I’m definitely going to mention my balls though, so stop now if that makes you squeamish.
—————————————–

I’m not sure who’s responsible for doling out fetuses from the heavens, but I’m fairly certain it’s done randomly and with little oversight or forethought.

My guess would be that Mother Nature, the Virgin Mary or a like situated woman is the one in charge of sending the stork along its way to deliver babies. I say this because the process is so fucked up and random that surely there’s a woman running the show.

I’m not saying that she gets it wrong all the time; that’s certainly not true. There are just so many fucked up, drug addled, alcoholic, no job having people out there getting babies while so many loving, decent couples, who want a baby in the worst way, wait in limbo. It makes little sense to me.

The wife and I were ready and willing to receive our first two babies. Well, not ready I guess, nobody is ever really ready, but we weren’t going to do anything to keep it from happening at the time. We put it in the hands of God and whichever woman he has in charge of this mess, I guess you could say.

She and I conceived Ace on October 22, 2002, just a bit over a month after our wedding! Yes, I said conceived! I have no clue why I remember this. We were at the Schlafly Taproom downtown pounding Oatmeal Stouts with our friends Matt and Joe the night we made the beast with two backs and were blessed with Ace. That’s a Shakespeare’s Othello reference for my less cultured friends and those of you who think I’m all tits and giggles!

I have no clue when Cdawg was conceived, but he came to us in 2009.

We had our hands full with me being in law school and both of us working full time, that’s why there are nearly six years between Ace and Cdawg. But, he eventually came to us and we had our perfect little family.

When you’re given a boy and a girl or a girl and then a boy, that’s God’s way of saying you’re done having children. Well, he’s saying you should be done having children.

Alas, depending on who you ask, we were either done (wife), or still considering whether or not to be done (yours truly). While we were still “considering”, Mother Nature’s dumbass, directionally challenged stork came back to our house with G$ and we suddenly became a family of five.

While I knew there were ways to prevent said stork from visiting, I had always been reluctant to be the one to make that commitment. Those with balls know why.

Women like to bitch, moan and groan about giving birth and their monthly vistitor and yadda yadda yadda, as though any of those things compare to ball pain! They don’t!

In fact, ball pain is so bad that a strike to the genitalia (balls) by a police officer with a weapon is considered deadly force! That’s true in many jurisdictions!

Anyway, at some point a man has to decide if he wants to pass on the big V and never have sex with my wife again, or suck it up and avoid becoming a chronic masturbator all over again.

I chose to suck it up and it wasn’t so bad. Had I known how simple the procedure was, I may have looked into it while I was much younger! The key is to find many other men you trust who’ve had the procedure and are willing to tell you that it’s not as bad as you think it is.

I guess I expected there to be needles and knifes and what not all up in my man bits, but that wasn’t the case at all.

Here is how my procedure went for those still on the fence.

The doctor has you remove your pantaloons and lie on the little dental chair looking thing with your legs all spread apart (I have much more empathy for ladies who go through this nonsense with their lady doctors now).

Doctor and pretty 25 year old looking female assistant enter room while you remain positioned in your awkward, vulnerable position sans pantaloons. Doctor lifts the sheet that I had put over my private parts and both doctor and lovely assistant gaze at said privates for uncomfortable amount of time before speaking.

Doc: “You did a nice job shaving yourself, Mr. Don”

Me: thinking geez, not even a hello first? “Thanks Doc, I’ve been practicing on my face for two decades. You told me to shave there really well before I came in so I was just following doctor’s orders.”

Doc: chuckles… “You don’t shave there often?”

Me: “Uh, no sir, never…I’m in my thirties, I’m straight and I don’t compete in swimming or biking or bodybuilding so, no. Do most men?”

Doc: clearly he’s easily amused because he’s chuckling again, “I’d say it’s 50/50”

That’s fascinating to me. I’ve never been taught that a man should keep his private areas trimmed, but if this is something that half the men in the world do, then I guess I need to teach at least one of my two boys how to do this.

So the doc is going about his business and says that he noticed I worked for the police department while mentioning, simultaneously, that he just recently got a speeding ticket.

 Well fuck, this can’t be good, I think to myself. I quickly mention to him that I’m an attorney, not a police officer! We then spend the next ten minutes talking about what douches some police officers can be. Wonderful!

The doctor was actually very understanding and pro-police officer, but he thought he didn’t deserve a ticket since he was rushing to perform a non-emergency big V at the time. There’s something slightly awkward about making small talk with a man who’s touching your balls with a scalpel, let alone talking about something you aren’t in agreement with.

Well, the good doctor didn’t take his ticket frustrations out on my boys, and for that I was appreciative.

With a little ice and rest, the boys were back in business in just a few short days and we’ve remained a family of five.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged birth, children, conceiving, doctors, kids, Vasectomy | 8 Comments

Stan the man…one of the good guys.

Posted on January 22, 2013 by donofalltrades

In a city where baseball is king, and baseball tradition runs deep, there is no greater baseball legend than Stan Musial. That’s saying a lot in a city where Bob Gibson, Lou Brock and so many other great players played baseball.

Musial was adored by our grandparents and parents who got to see the greatest Cardinal ever play in person, and he was beloved by even more people, like me, who’ve never seen him play in person, but can imagine having been in the stands through stories told by older Cards fans, former players and by listening to old broadcasts from KMOX.

Good luck, Mr. Pitcher.

The common theme in all the stories told is that Musial was, by all accounts, a great ballplayer and an even better person.

Willie Mays touched on the sort of man Musial was by talking about how, during baseball’s ugly integration of minorities into the game, players like Musial helped reach out to black ballplayers by attempting to reassure them that they belonged and trying to make them a part of the team.

His numbers are staggering. There’s no doubt that Musial is one of the top ten players in the history of baseball. I’d argue that he’s one of the three best to ever play, and had he played in New York or Boston or Los Angeles, there’d be many more folks making this same argument. That he wasn’t a drunk or a womanizer or gambler or addicted to hookers or whatever was cool back then, probably played a part in retarding his popularity on a national scale.

As it is, he played his entire career in St. Louis. He grew into a St. Louisan and became one of the great ambassadors on behalf of the city. He was married to the same woman for 71 years! That’s as incredible as hitting .325 or whatever he hit for 22 major league seasons.

I met Musial one time, when I was a college student working at Grant’s Farm during the summers.

The Cardinals used to have an annual get together at Grant’s Farm, back when the team was owned by Anheuser-Busch.

I don’t remember what it was called, but the Cards came out to the Farm and they all ate and drank with fans who probably paid a bunch of money to cavort with their favorite baseball players.

One of the train drivers at Grant’s Farm, Charlie (driving the Michelob train) gave me a ball and asked me if I’d have as many Cardinals sign it as I could. He was on the train all night, so he wouldn’t be near the players like I would be. It was something he wanted to give to his grand kid.

I told him that I’d be glad to do it and he drove off.

One of my duties was to show some of the VIPs where to park their cars. The first car to pull up was Mr. and Mrs. Musial. I don’t recall what they were driving, but it was something like a Town Car. It wasn’t a Bentley or Cadillac or anything else you’d expect Stan The Man to be driving, that’s for sure.

Anyway, I had the ball that Charlie had given me in my hand and didn’t even realize that I was holding it as I opened the door for Mrs. Musial. She sees the ball in my hand as she’s getting out and says in a snotty old lady voice that “He’s not signing autographs for people tonight…”

Well la di freakin’ da lady! I didn’t ask! I really had no intention of asking him for an autograph, and to be honest, I probably wasn’t going to ask anyone to sign it because that’s tacky. I was working and asking for autographs didn’t seem right.

Well, Stan Musial doesn’t even think twice before he asks me to toss him the ball and signs it. He had his own pen that I guess he carried around on nights when he wasn’t going to sign autographs. Besides that, he asked my name, shook my hand and introduced me to his wife. She turned out to be a pretty pleasant lady and I was sorry that I had considered her to be an old bag after she first opened her mouth.

The Cardinal team circa 1993 consisted of such superstars as Ozzie Canseco, Ray Lankford, Bob Tewksbury, Gregg Jefferies and an aging Ozzie Smith, among others. Yeah, you’ve never heard of most of them, if you’re not a Cardinal fan. There was no way that any of them was going to be signing a ball that Stan Musial had just signed. Those guys were fine players, but not anywhere near the player Musial was (Ozzie Smith was great though).

Anyway, like an asshole, I gave the ball back to Charlie and explained to him that there was only one signature because it was Musial’s signature. He was clearly unimpressed since he was looking for quantity over quality, but I managed to refrain from punching an old man in the face over something so stupid.

From time to time I sort of regret not asking Charlie if I could keep that ball. In spite of losing the ball, I will always remember how cool the greatest player I’ll ever meet in person was to a 20 year old stranger on that summer night at Grant’s Farm.

Posted in The not meant to be funny stuff, Uncategorized | Tagged baseball, Cardinals, grant's farm, hall of famer, Stan Musial, Stan the Man | 11 Comments

Backwash, it’s what’s for breakfast?

Posted on January 16, 2013 by donofalltrades

In another life, I was a patrol officer in an urban area. I did it for about six years and haven’t done it regularly since 2003 or four.

Even though the story like the one below is very pedestrian to me and is most certainly pedestrian to police officers still doing the job, I find that folks who have never done the job are fascinated by these silly run ins.

I thought it’d be fun to share a few of my mundane tales from time to time, in part to amuse the two or three people they’ll amuse, but also to have for later in life, when my kids ask me if I was really a policeman at some point in my life.

Like the one below, they’re not really meant to be funny, but as is often the case with real life, they sometimes are amusing.

—————————

I was on patrol one pleasant Sunday morning when I came upon a gentleman rooting in and around a trash can that was placed on the sidewalk outside of what was then a bar called Killebrew’s.

Killebrew’s had a license to stay open until 3am and was in a good spot just south of downtown St. Louis, so it was a pretty hoppin’ joint on most Saturday nights.

I noticed that there were beer bottles standing upright on the sidewalk as well as on the trashcan lid, in the middle of which, there was a hole overflowing with bottles and garbage crammed into it by folks leaving the bar at three in the morning.

The guy was probably in his forties or early fifties. He was wearing a pretty ratty looking trench coat and some sort of faux rabbit or other critter type trooper’s cap that was completely unnecessary on what was a pretty warm morning. He had a ten speed bicycle with him that had seen better days and I noticed that there were plastic grocery bags tied very securely to the handlebars.

I had pulled my car over for something unrelated to this guy, but he caught my attention by being the only other human being out and about yet.

I was still a fairly new policeman, and admittedly naive in the wiles of much urban behavior. My assumption was that he was simply looking for empty cans to recycle. That’s not uncommon in this area as there is a recycling facility not too far away.

My new friend picked up one of the empty beer bottles, swirled it a little like a brandy snifter and studied it for a few seconds. He reminded me of a chemist looking at a test tube to see if some reaction had occurred.

When he put it to his lips and sucked down the backwash from the bottle left by some drunken person the night before, I nearly wretched all over my own lap. I’m sure I had been drinking the night before, since it was a Saturday night and I was a young lad sans children. That didn’t help my stomach’s disgust at what my eyes were seeing.

When he dropped his bottle and shattered it all over the sidewalk, I decided to chat with this fella about breaking glass all over the sidewalks where there would be a fair amount of pedestrian traffic in just a couple of hours.

When I approached him, it was obvious that his was not the only bottle that had broken on the sidewalk; there was glass everywhere.

Before I said a word, he said he was sorry for the broken bottle and that it was an accident. “It just slipped.”

That seemed reasonable enough to me, I told him, and asked what he was up to. He mumbled something or other that made no sense while picking up another beer bottle.

Fearing that he was going to smash it over my skull, I stepped back a little bit and asked him to put the bottle down. I think he put two and two together, laughed and said that there was still beer in the bottle, and that he was just going to drink it, not waste it.

Ugh, I assured him that if he took a drink from that bottle, I was going to vomit right then and there, possibly on his trench coat.

He laughed again and started pouring the aftermath of what was no doubt once a delicious, cold Bud Light into a one liter plastic Sprite bottle.

I noticed that he had no less than five of these one liter bottles in the plastic bags hanging from his bicycle and they were filled with beer and alcohol that this man had found here and there. Mostly it’s left over from bottles like these that he finds in boxes outside of bars (returnables) and around trash cans like this one, he said. Not all of it was from last night either. He collects it where he can find it and drinks it when he feels like it.

“That’s disgusting,” I said, mostly to myself.

He looked at me with a face that said “look, you piece of shit young policeman, are you going to leave me be or what?”

I’m sure he’d been doing what he was doing for years, and in his mind it was no business of mine what he drank. He was right, I guess. Other than the broken glass, which I don’t think he did on purpose, he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Still, I was disgusted enough that I offered to give him $10 to toss his bottles out and go buy fresh beer.

He was clearly torn. He said that the place where he buys beer didn’t open until 11am, and it wasn’t even nine yet.

Jesus, I thought, you can’t wait two hours not drinking some douchebag’s cigarette butt infused backwash?

I semi-begged him to pour out the bottles of backwash that he no doubt worked many hours to fill, and he finally relented.

It was a sad scene watching him pour his hard work into the grass. It was really killing him. It reminded me of the time my fingers nearly bled from opening dozens of cans and bottles of beer in college once. Somebody was having a hotel party and we were busted before a single beer was enjoyed. The cop made me (why me, I don’t know since there were other people there) pour every last beer down the bathtub drain. Uh, I’m 21 for God’s sake! Didn’t matter in Podunk, IL apparently.

Anyway, I sort of felt this guy’s pain, but at least he was getting some jack for his troubles.

After my buddy poured the last of his nastiness out, I gave him the $10 and told him to enjoy his COLD beer. He said he could use a sandwich too and looked at me like I was an idiot.

So, since I was an idiot, I gave him another $5 to get a sandwich.

While I’m quite sure he didn’t spend a dime of that money on a sandwich, Jack in the Box tacos, White Castles, a slinger or any other food item, I felt better knowing that for at least one day, this man was going to get drunk on something that would hopefully only give him a bad hangover and not herpes or influenza or whatever else lurks in the backwash of randy beer remnants.

Posted in Police Stories, The not meant to be funny stuff, Uncategorized | Tagged alcohol, beer, drinking, homeless, police | 10 Comments

Drunk driving, lawn darts and other fun stuff my kids won’t enjoy.

Posted on January 15, 2013 by donofalltrades

While stopping at the liquor store on my way home from work a couple of weeks ago, my three year old asked if he could stay in the car and continue listening to his beloved Laurie Berkner Band songs (not as intolerable as most children’s music!). I assured him that since I was leaving his little brother in the car, that yes, he was not only staying in the car too, but he was in charge of the both of them. Being deputized the boss must have made him feel pretty proud of himself because he gave me a great smile before I went off to fetch my 18 pack of Bud Light Lime.

Hells yeah, I’m in charge!!!

Same scenario just a couple of days ago, but the store was Schnuck’s (and it was food I was after instead of beer, it’s not always beer, people!). Schnuck’s, for my non-midwestern, USA friends, is a large, local grocery chain, typical of Kroger’s or Albertson’s or whatever you have where you live. It’s the anchor store in a plaza having several smaller stores, so there are a lot of people coming and going . Whereas, in the liquor store, I can see my car at all times and I know exactly where to go to get what I’m after, the grocery store doesn’t provide that same comfort. There are no circumstances under which even I could imagine leaving the boys in the car while I ran into a place like Schnuck’s.

I don’t know where I draw the line at such decisions, I guess it’s just a feeling more than anything. I mean it only takes a second for somebody to snatch your kid, so it could realistically happen at the liquor store, even though I lock the doors. Can you imagine? Suddenly you’re on tv holding an 18 pack of beer trying to explain why you left your missing kids in the car to go into a liquor store in order to buy an effeminate beer product for yourself. You’re not going to make yourself sound good explaining your way out of that one.

As I thought about it (I think about this sort of stupid stuff a lot), it dawned on me that these tough decisions didn’t affect my parents when we were kids. There was no gray area as to when it was ok and not ok to leave the kids in the parked car; we were just left in the car ALL THE DAMN TIME! It was as though when our parents needed a break from us, they simply went to some store and left us kids in the car just to get away. These weren’t for three minute runs either. They left us while they went to do the shopping for the entire week’s worth of food.

I know we weren’t the only ones, because we used to see other cars filled with kids as well. Sometimes, when the kids became too restless, they were outside of the car, running after each other in the crowded parking lot. Large parking lots everywhere were ripe to devolve into Lord of the Rings circuses, but for the fact that the adults always returned…eventually, normally right before my brothers and I could muster the courage to pull the door handle to escape the Cutlass.

Nowadays, you almost can’t leave your kids in the car for any reason (other than to run into a suburban liquor store, of course). Fuck, if you want to have a conversation with a policeman, just leave your dog locked in a car for more than thirty seconds in almost any urban area and somebody will make the arrangement for you. This is especially true if it’s over 60 degrees outside. Try it!

I’m not really sure when society became so different (pussified?), but it got me to thinking about some other things that my kids probably won’t experience. The examples are certainly not exhaustive, or even the best of the best, but they’re what popped into my head first and this post is already longer than it needs to be.

Back in the day, while parents were escaping their kids, they could go ahead and smoke in the grocery store. Remember these things? Yeah,

Yep, smokin’ and poopin!

that’s a cigarette ashtray right there in the shitter. They had them in all of the bathroom stalls for those who couldn’t wait the duration of their piss or shit to light up. Not just in grocery stores either, they were ubiquitous. Kmart, Venture, McDonald’s, airplanes…doesn’t it seem like it was another lifetime ago when people could pretty much smoke wherever they felt like it? It wasn’t that long ago!

Good Lord, Mrs. Sally Twopacksaday used to lean right over the heads of lettuce with a cigarette dangling from her lips, ash ready to fall right onto the produce, and nobody gave two shits. If someone lights up within 150 feet of a food store now, a minor panic is likely to ensue. Managers will be notified, 911 will be threatened; it’s crazy, and I don’t even smoke.

Speaking of healthy choices, it was only around 1981, while Ozzie Smith was still manning shortstop for the Cardinals, when the Surgeon General decided to share with everyone that drinking during pregnancy was probably bad for the fetus. WHAT?!! That’s appalling news to potential baby carrying women everywhere. I guess people had always figured that drinking gave us wicked headaches, and since the fetus wasn’t being carried in the brain, near the head pain, it must be ok to get hammered for two. It wasn’t the uterus that felt like shit after a night of drinking, right?

Fortunately for my mom, she was done child producing by this time and was unaffected by any potential guilt associated with having to decide whether or not to “just have a little bit of beer” or none at all during pregnancy. Her consumption was 100% guilt free.

They drank, got pregnant because they drank, continued to drink, had the baby and kept on drinking. There was no “well it’s ok to have four ounces of wine after your second trimester every now and then” bullshit. First of all, they didn’t drink wine, it was pregnant ladies, pinkies up, holding Busch Beer for this classy family. How we didn’t all come out of the uterus riding in the back of a short bus is a medical miracle by today’s standards (I’m aware that it’s debatable whether or not I’m retarded, but let’s move on). Somehow, I seem to be at least as capable as most people around me of forming complete sentences, and I generally don’t throw my own feces at strangers in response to conflict. Those are good signs, right?

Another drinking related no-no today is drinking and driving. You are almost more likely to do jail time because you had a few drinks after work and drove a car than you would if you bought a gun, put it into some stranger’s face and demanded his wallet. That’s sad, but it’s not completely untrue.

This was not always the case. I like to joke that I flunked my first driving test because after the instructor told me the test would take about 15 minutes, I cracked open a 40 ouncer and said “15 minutes? Then this should do it”. Remember 40 ouncers?? You can still get them outside of the City limits. I can rarely resist buying one when I see them for sale cold.

Anyway, she got all in a dither about my having beer in the car and I told her that I had never seen a car operated without the driver holding a beer between their legs. I honestly didn’t think a car would start without a beer resting in the crotch region of one’s lower body! Having a cold one at the ready was as necessary as putting gas in the tank of the car, as far as I knew.

It wasn’t whether or not to drink a cold one that adults in my life pondered while they drove me where I needed to go, but rather how many. The number was directly related to the time it’d take to travel from point A to point B. A trip to baseball practice at church was a simple one beer drive, but more complicated calculations had to be performed to figure out how many beers would last a person for longer, less familiar trips.

I assume drinking and driving was illegal back then, since even George Bush got a DUI in 1976. I’d have liked to have seen that encounter. I imagine you’d have to have been really really drunk and obnoxious to get a DUI in 1976. St. Louis is in the shadow of what was once a great American brewery, so it’s possible that beer related crimes were, uh, well they existed on the books anyway.

While being toted around town by semi-drunken adults, we also never sat in car seats or booster seats. What a racket this crap is. I think, technically, kids in Missouri up to 80 pounds or so are supposed to be in a car seat, and over 80 pounders still have to be in a booster seat. 80 pounds!!? Holy crap, I think I weighed 80 pounds in 7th grade! Good luck looking cool for the ladies in your booster seats male jr. high schoolers of America. No wonder fat kids are more popular than they used to be.

No, not only did we not ride in car seats, we rarely rode in the back seats, or in the seats at

WHoooo! Ridin’ dirty 70’s kid style…

all. The best location for truckers to see you trying to get their attention so they’d blow their horns was always safely nestled in the area right at the rear window on that back dash. It was normally where speakers played music from too, so that was a bonus as well. We traveled back there, probably blocking mom’s view of everything behind her for miles and miles of our childhoods.

Children in suburbia with giant pointed darts…what could go wrong?

Another favorite of ours was lawn darts. We used to have a lawn darts game that we’d break out from time to time. Lawn darts, for the too young to have ever gotten the chance to play with them crowd, were basically large, metal tipped darts with a handle on the opposite end for tossing. The target was a piece of shit plastic tube that connected into a circle that you placed on the ground.

Each player got three giant darts that you were supposed to throw towards the plastic circle target, sort of like an aerial shuffleboard game. It was much more fun, however, to just chuck them over houses or see who could throw them the farthest, especially blindly over mounds or trees towards other human beings.

None of us was ever impaled, and I doubt very much that had we been, that suing somebody for our own stupidity was ever going to be an option.

I also had a chemistry set as a kid that had actual chemicals and complicated instructions. I think the toy was meant to dissuade those kids who couldn’t figure it out from going into what is, no doubt, a difficult field. I personally couldn’t figure out any of the experiment instructions so I wound up throwing lighter fluid all over the box and all of its contents and just lighting it on fire all at once. There were some pretty wicked colors and a nasty stain that still exists on my old man’s concrete patio. The “toy” worked though, as I never once considered going into chemistry because I was clearly too stupid.

Today’s kits are called “Science Kits” and there is nothing dangerous inside any of them. They are meant to encourage kids, rather than discourage…even stupid kids, into believing that they can be a scientist someday. I doubt they’d burn like my old kit did, and they’re probably why, at least in part, most other countries have long passed us in scientific achievements.

One last thing that I just became aware had disappeared are high dives at my local, public pools. As a kid, I distinctly remember the thrill and danger of ascending slippery, wet ladder steps to get to the high dive platform. The jump was nothing compared to the climb! Apparently, there are no more high dives at the pools I frequented as a lad.

That’s sad.

Posted in Family, Parenting, Uncategorized | Tagged childhood, drunk driving, dui, kids, lawn darts, Parenting | 5 Comments

Thank god we didn’t eat at Hooters!

Posted on January 10, 2013 by donofalltrades

One thing I’ve learned over the years bumbling my way through parenting is that these little bastards are watching you, even when you don’t think they are.

They soak up their environments and, if you’re lucky, throw it back in your face in the form of an unsolicited birthday card to their Pawpaw from his five year old granddaughter.

Yes, we were having as much fun as that picture portrays.

Be nice in front of your babies. They’re watching.

Posted in Family, Humor, Parenting | Tagged bars, beer, funny kids, kids, Parenting, things kids say | 7 Comments

The night grandma was a dick…(please please please don’t tell grandma i said that!)

Posted on January 10, 2013 by donofalltrades

You know what’s not funny? Getting a lottery scratch off ticket as a gift and believing you’ve won “Mountains of Cash”, only to find out that you’ve just been made to look like a gullible jackass in front of your family and friends.

Mountains of cash, my ass!

On the night I graduated the academy, sometime in another life (February of 1999) we went to a local eating and drinking establishment to celebrate my “accomplishment”. I say that derogatorily only because you really have to be quite an exemplary dumbshit or screw up to not make it through, but that’s for another post.

Anyway, we went to Milo’s On the Hill, because we’re Italian and we like to drink for any reason we can. Most of my family was there, as well as my girlfriend (now my wife) and some other friends as well.

I scratch this stupid ticket off, sort of off to the side of the group on my own (it’s not like a birthday party where there were gifts and we all sat around watching me open them, but some people were kind enough to bring cards) and I’m seeing that I’ve won $10,000! Now that’s not a sum of money that’s going to allow anyone to retire, but for a 25 year old living on his own, it’s a nice chunk of change! Shit, I’d piss myself today, if I won ten grand.

So after I study the little hammers or gold bars or whatever it was that lay hidden under the scratchy offie material, I realize that I’ve really won! It’s not a mistake. I’m not blind drunk yet; I’m really seeing three matching hammers or gold bars or whatever. I jump up and down and start hootin’ and hollerin’ like your typical grade A jackoff when I notice that the fine print says:

“To claim your prize, present this ticket at the Bank of Yo Momma.”

The Bank of Yo Momma? Well that doesn’t sound very professional at all.

Sorry, deary, I SWEAR I thought it was real…

Well, grandma can barely contain her smile behind the long neck bottle of Bud Light she’s holding, and I realize that I’ve been duped.

Duped by a 70 year old woman.

Duped by a woman I’ve loved as much as I’ve loved any other person in my life.

Duped.

Before too long, grandma felt like a heel and we were both miserable, so we drank and drank until we didn’t care anymore.

While I’m sure she only barely remembers duping me that night (no, she’s not senile), I remember it vividly. I’ve never been so happy and then suddenly so let down in such a short period of time. It really is a douchebag gift to give to somebody (I can’t believe I haven’t given them out), especially if you’re grandma and nobody expects that sort of gag.

Well played, grandma. Well played. Let’s hope for your sake that I’m not involved in choosing where you live when you do become senile…Bwahahahahahahahahahaha!

Posted in Family, Humor, Uncategorized | Tagged fake lottery tickets, family, grandma, jokes, lotto, tricks | 3 Comments

Drinking. yeah, I do that sometimes…

Posted on January 9, 2013 by donofalltrades

A few years back, well, I guess it’d have to be five years or so since Ace was in preschool, Grandpa Dutty (dad) and I went to do some Christmas shopping a couple of days before Christmas.

Because he was unable to find anything suitable for his lovely wife (my mom), his wad of cash had not been depleted and it was burning a hole in his pocket. The exhaustion of dealing with right before Christmas day mall type people all afternoon, plus the remaining wad of cash in dad’s pocket led us to the (inevitable) solution of going to happy hour.

Happy hour for us used to consist of a few buckets of beer and some appetizers. On this occasion, and I’d be lying if I said it was unusual, my then four year old daughter, Ace, joined us as well. She enjoys eating out and playing pull tabs is one of her favorite activities. We drank bucket after bucket until our wives came, cut us off and drove us home.

The next day, my wife informed me that as she was talking to Ms. Mary (teacher) while dropping Ace off at her little Catholic preschool in the morning, suddenly, Ace began pulling beer bottle caps out of her pants pockets and started handing them to Ms. Mary.

“The red ones are Pawpaw’s and the blue ones are my daddy’s!” she proudly explained.

I still chuckle as I imagine the mortified look on momma’s face as her precious little girl was pulling bottlecap after bottlecap from who knows where and kept handing them to her teacher. Apparently, there were a lot! “Oh my, these are all from yesterday?” Ms. Mary asked.

Don’t you judge us lady!

Luckily, Ms. Mary was a good sport, and I’m pretty sure a hearty drinker herself. I believe it may be a prerequisite for Catholic school teaching, in fact.

That was a long time ago, because I don’t really drink the Bud Light anymore unless it’s in a pinch. I’m a Bud Light Lime man (oxymoron?) now, so momma’s humiliation would look more like this nowadays.

Daddy drinks green ones now!

Aren’t children delightful?

And Ace isnt’ the only one in on the fun. Cdawg thought he could hang with daddy on the beach recently and was totally put in his place after only being able to take a couple of drinks before passing out like a lightweight.

Fun in the sun!

Cdawg is really more of a liquor man anyway.

Hurry, before mom sees us!

Good Lord, do you see a trend here?

Those days are long behind us now, as the third one, G$, has all but obliterated any shot I/we had at a social life. Happy Hours have been replaced with extra work shifts needed to feed and diaper these monsters, and when I do get a chance to drink (which by a normal persons’ standards is still frequently) it’s almost always at home, on my couch. I can take the $12 hit of a 12 pack much more easily than the ginormous bills we were racking up by going out to drink. Happy hour prices, indeed! Still a rip.