The value of experience

Do you know what this is?

45 year old Greenstamp cuckoo

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If you are getting older like me, you start to wonder when the world passed you by. We were driving north today when we drove past the truck scales in Miranda. One of my CHP friends is the local truck cop. I noticed that he had four big-rigs and a bob-tail truck parked at his truck inspection point. I made the comment to my wife: “Wow, Brian sure has them cold-decked today”. She said: “Has them what? I said: “cold-decked”. She said: “What’s a cold-deck”? I said: “A cold deck, like where they back logs up at a sawmill by stacking them in decks. The newcomers call them log decks but the old-timers called them cold decks”. She said: “How the heck would I know that, I was born in San Jose”. I said: “sigh”.

“Cold decks” were the logs that the mills saved through the summer, so they would be able to make lumber in the winter. “Hot decks” were the logs that were fed into the mill for immediate sawing. I’m telling you that, just in case you were born in San Jose or one of those other far away and exotic places.

I was moving some parts in the shop the other day and ran across an oil can opener and pour spout. I put it in a box to take home, because I change the oil in my rigs at home. It occurred to me that they haven’t put oil in cans for years and that I wouldn’t need the spout. So, what did I do with it? Throw it out? Oh No! I kept it to see how many kids would know what it was. One of the kids that work for us at the store, who is quite an accomplished mechanic in his own right, had no idea what it was. He is 28 years old. Crap, Did the world slide by that fast? I was just using that darn oil can opener a short time ago.

We have a Cuckoo Clock that my wife got with S&H Green Stamps about 45 years ago. It needs a little adjusting from time-to-time to keep it accurate. When it stops all together, I take it apart and clean it. I take the mechanism out of the back and blast it clean with a can of WD-40 with a spout on it. I call it “giving the cuckoo a WD-40 enema.” I wipe it dry again, and it runs as good as new. As the clock got older it would stop ticking due to wear on the gears and shafts. I found that by adding just a few washers the winding weights, it would run just fine. That was about three years ago and it has kept fairly good time ever since.

Now, some people probably wonder why I would keep an old cuckoo clock running, when I have a smart phone in my shirt pocket that has completely accurate time. Well, I guess that it falls in the same category as many other incredibly stupid things that people do. The only answer that I can give is to act as smug as I can be, and say: “If you have to ask, you will never understand”.

When I was working on the clock the other day, it needed a timing adjustment, I asked my wife if she still had any S&H Green Stamps. She said, “Sure. They are in the chocolate box in the kitchen shelves, where I keep all of that kind of stuff”. I grinned and asked her if she got a lot of use out of them. She looked a little blank and walked off. That’s her way of dealing with an uncomfortable question. Being a firefighter, I was trained that every communication requires an acknowledgement. Walking away is not an acknowledgement. So, fools rush in where wise men fear to tread. I insisted that I see the collection of “Green Stamps”. Barely stifling a snicker, for her having saved those worthless Green Stamps, I remembered that I couldn’t throw away the cuckoo clock that she bought with them. Then I remembered the oil spout that I couldn’t throw out. So, I sobered-up my face and started digging though the chocolate box. It was a real trip back.

She had full books Green Stamps, and full books of Blue Chip stamps, still unredeemed, and now, unredeemable. I remember how hard she shopped and worked to fill those stamp books, to try to get us something nice as newlyweds. Our toaster was purchased with Blue Chip stamps. Our silverware came from Betty Crocker box tops. There were a few coins in the bottom of the box. Some old wheatstraw pennies, and some Mercury Head dimes that I had gotten from the pump of an old washing machine that I was repairing for sale in our Appliance store. Along with the stamps and coins were some old Betty Crocker box tops, with the price on them. I remembered when every grocer had a grease-pen that they used to mark the price on the packages. The Betty Crocker Marble Cake mix was 56 cents. Was that a good price back in the early 70s?

I got to thinking how rich and widely diversified our lives were back then. Nowadays, it seems like everybody’s life revolves around a smart-phone. If their phone breaks, they go into apoplexy. What are they going to do for memories? Their lives are digitized and compressed into MP3 files.

We had real music to listen to. The kids today don’t know what good music sounds like. MP3 files only give you 5% of the music, the rest is deleted as un-hearable anyway. However, even with my bad ears, I can hear the degradation. If you really want to hear some good music, you need the listen to a vinyl record with some good earphones. Choose a record like “Black Water” by the Doobie Brothers. Now, that was music.