On 15 May 2006 14:27:07 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote:

Save the feet. Hang em up in a warm dry place..then paint the toenails
bright red Varnish well and make a set of earrings for your wife.

Hm. I've met his wife, and she doesn't seem like the kind who would
wear such earrings. In fact, I can't recall any woman I've met, ever,
who would wear earrings like that.

My mother actually had a set just made that way. She wore em to
parties that needed a little icebreaker.

Wow.

Mom was..unique.

Past-tense noted. Knowing you, she must have been a remarkable woman.
I mean that in the best possible way.

She was indeed. Graduated from Michigan Tech as an aeronautical
engineer. Dad had graduated from there as a civil engineer. (Both
were natives of the UP). Early bohemian types.

I grew up on a diet of classical music, Billy Holiday, Chad Mitchell
Trio and so forth. Dad wore a beard and a flat topped GI ball
cap..looked just like a young Fidel Castro. Mom was a tall rawboned
Finn, who dressed well when appropriate, yet could be found stabbing
the motor mount bolts as Dad lowered the engine in his old WW2 jeep.

I grew up in a house filled with late night parties comprised of
college professors, freshly returned Korean War vets and business
owners, free thinkers and beatniks, seasoned with the odd handful of
Jesuit teachers. Then Dad started traveling doing road and harbor
construction..so we moved a lot. sometimes monthly. The late 50s and
early 60s were an interesting time to be a kid. Buck Rogers, Crusader
Rabbiit, smoke filled kitchens filled with interesting people
discussing and solveing the worlds problems, engineering issues and
the problems of business.
And humor..god they were funny. Mom had a marvelous sense of timing,
and Dad has this huge delight in the absurd. Well known for putting
on a preachers collar and going to the bar and playing pool. The local
sweeties loved him and would come up and hug and smooch him..tourists
would be aghast...and ask him what the hell he was doing..

"How can you warn against the wages of sin, if you have never sinned?"
followed by some of the funniest routine you have ever heard.

My sister is of the same mould. She got 2 degrees from Tech.

The family is an interesting bunch. Me..Im just a plodder.

Gunner

The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose
and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

In the past few decades, a peculiar and distinctive psychology
has emerged in England. Gone are the civility, sturdy independence,
and admirable stoicism that carried the English through the war years
.. It has been replaced by a constant whine of excuses, complaints,
and special pleading. The collapse of the British character has been
as swift and complete as the collapse of British power.

Theodore Dalrymple,