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One of my walking trails is right by the police station in Brookfield, CT. The parking lot for the police station abuts the parking lot for the walking trail (by the Still River which often floods into the trail). Once in a while after a walk, I get in my car and leave the walking trail to head home and immediately a police vehicle, evidently going on shift, leaves their own parking lot and slides in behind me. What to do in this situation? The roads leading back home are in either 25mph or 30mph speed zones. Ridiculously low speed...

OK, when I saw this photo of Scott Wagner, the CEO and chairman of DeSantis's Super PAC, busy working on a 1,000 piece puzzle in the critical days leading up to the Iowa Caucus (this photo is from January 9), I just had to laugh. It's not like he was working on this during lunch breaks either. He apparently spent hours a day working on it. But even if it was only during breaks, the optics of it is just terrible. This is such a humiliating and sad way for a once promising presidential campaign to end. And yes, it...

This "60 Minutes" piece is now nearly 35 years old. Grand Central in 1990As a daily Grand Central commuter for ten years now, this video is both historic and contemporary. The station itself is much the same, except many less commuters are looking for information at the booth (we have apps for that now). The homeless are still around and still getting rousted, however not as brusquely as seen in this video. The bar carts are now shut down but you can still bring alcoholic beverages onboard the commuter trains for the way home. Grand Central is now triple the...

"Great potatoes Mrs. Green."Nice try, Patrick. Women marrying up have it comparatively easy compared to men. If women are pretty and show a desire to dutifully keep house and bear children for their socioeconomically superior husbands-to-be, they are generally accepted into their higher status family. Even if they do not have a dowry to bring to the table. However, it is much different for men Men marrying up is usually seen as a defeat for the woman with regard to her affluent family. A man of inferior socioeconomic status must really impress in order to be accepted. Being a regional...

Those in the Northeast had a very weird sunrise this morning in that you could look right at the sun for over an hour after sunrise without hurting your eyes. As I was driving to my train station this morning in Westport, CT, I opened my windows and I could actually smell the smoke. The cause was the wildfires in Canada that caused the sky to have an eerie, milky appearance for most of the day. It was even noticeable in New York City. Coming home tonight, it seemed like a partial eclipse of the sun driving home. It's very...

This is a song from 55 years ago. Only older Freepers will remember it as it has not gotten much airplay since. But I think this is the best Animals song of all. Eric Burdon on the vocals. Very underrated singer and band. This was a "protest" song of the Vietnam song at the time. But it is a timeless song and a masterpiece. I linked this particular video due to the WW2 images. Animals - Sky Pilot

Being a boat owner is not all it is cracked up to be. Most people have their first experience with boats as a passenger on somebody else's boat. A hot summer day on a New Hampshire lake, for example. They board a cabin boat of an acquaintance with a cooler full of alcoholic beverages early on a Saturday morning in Meredith, NH by Lake Winnipesaukee. To them, it is a fun experience. Once out on the lake, cruising around Governor's Island, they enter a state of bliss while they crack their third can of beer, sitting on their deck chair...

And just like that, the COVID scam has gone down the memory hole. As the swimming pool in my over 55 community gets set to open on Memorial Day Weekend, there is absolutely no mention whatsoever of having to be "vaccinated" in order to not only use the pool but to be in the clubhouse period. Just a year ago, the little old ladies in my community (with some nervous old men) were all up in arms over the fact that "unvaccinated" people might be in their presence during swimming pool activities. So rules were made and signs were posted,...

Haven't seen this posted yet but Tucker just gave a two minute monologue on Twitter. Sounds like he's rested and ready for his next chapter.

Before the band Pink Floyd went into the stratosphere with "Dark Side Of The Moon" in 1973 (half a century ago!), they released an album called "Meddle", said to be a soundtrack for a non-existent movie, in 1971. Dominated by the PF classic "Echoes", which takes up the entire Side Two of the album (back when albums had sides), there was sort of a throwaway track called "Seamus" at the end of Side One, that was mostly sung by a dog. The record executives were horrified by this track and did their darnedest to get it removed from the album...

Maybe if his name was something a little flashier and show-business friendly like Billy Thunderman, Bill Quateman might have been much bigger than he was. What if Elton John stuck with his original name Reginald Dwight? Would he have been the star that he was? Sometimes it's all in a name. Anyhow, fifty years ago at this very time, the spring of 1973, a 21-year-old singer named Bill Quateman burst into the Billboard HOT 100 with a song called "Only Love". Bill Quateman - Only Love (1973) Discovered and signed to a recording contract by Clive Davis, then the president...

Most gas stations these days have a convenience store attached to them, where you can get a dirty hot dog that has been spinning on steel rollers in a heated compartment for who knows how many days. You can pull that hot dog off the steel rollers with tongs that have not been cleaned since the day the store opened. Underneath are drawers that contain slightly stale rolls that do occasionally get changed out by the 19-year-old clerk who is usually reading a magazine on the counter during slow periods. Which occur often in the dark hours of the night....

Fifty years ago this week, "Delta Queen" by British pop singer Don Fardon, rocketed onto the Billboard HOT 100 chart, receiving significant airplay in several U.S. markets. This is haunting mariachi-tinged song that centers around a man's love for a lonely young woman down in New Orleans who is apparently some sort of singer, with only one pair of shoes, who is called "Delta Queen." The song would eventually climb to number 86 nationwide in the early spring of 1973 but it should have been at least a Top 20 hit. Don Fardon is still alive and kicking today at...

It has happened more times than I can count. The doors slide open on a train car full of half-occupied pairs of seats. As the newcomer enters, we all set our features to maximum stoniness, flick the dimmer switch behind our eyes. New Guy picks his way awkwardly down the aisle. He is praying for an empty row to suddenly materialize, a resentment-free zone rich in the traveler’s most treasured resource: space. No luck. He comes closer, closer. Here he is. Here is his stupid bag being stowed against my feet. Here is his stupid arm on the armrest. Here...

"Sultans Of Swing" by Dire Straits is almost the perfect song. NOTES FROM THE SUPERMARKET Buying produce at the supermarket can be a dicey thing. You never really know how fresh it really it or where it has been. I like to buy blackberries to swirl in my yogurt, blueberries too. In both cases, the package tells you to rinse the berries before eating. But does rinsing really clean them? How do you know all the germ came off by rinsing? The fruit looks no different than before you rinsed, except wetter. Maybe all the water really did was splatter...

Stealer's Wheel - Stuck In The Middle With YouHalf a century at this time, March of 1973, a song by a band called Stealer's Wheel began climbing the charts with a song called "Stuck In The Middle With You". Written by Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan, the song would peak on the Billboard Hot 100 at #6 on May 12th of that year. Not too shabby. 19 years later, the song would get another surge in popularity by being featured in the Quentin Tarantino film "Reservoir Dogs." Although the scene it was featured in, in which a policeman is brutally...

Perhaps the best song the Bee Gees ever put out. Not a big single in America but it would have shot to number one had it been promoted here. Bee Gees - Spirits Haven Flown (1979)

This is one of my favorite weekends of the year - the weekend we get to turn the clocks ahead by an hour and thus regain the hour of sunlight that we lost back in October or whenever it was we had to move those clocks behind, thus plunging ourselves into early darkness every afternoon. It seems like whenever we do that, it starts getting colder each day. That hour of sunlight really makes a big difference, in my humble opinion. So it is no coincidence that as we get our extra sunlight back starting on Sunday, it will start...

Commuter trains are how most Americans commute in the really big cities. The top three commuter train systems in the United States are in the New York City Metro area. 1. Long Island Railroad (118 million annual riders) 2. New Jersey Transit Rail (88 million annual riders) 3. Metro North Railroad (86 million annual riders) Next closest is the Chicago Metra System (67 million annual riders) It drops precipitously from there. So basically, New York City dominates, and I mean dominates, commuter rail in the USA. It is not even close. I mean, you have 400 plus individual stations to...

Miss Jacques’ Typing ClassThe most useful class I ever took in high school was the two years of “typing” with Miss Jacques during the late 1970s. Typing I and Typing II. The skills I learned during those two years got me through a successful four-year enlistment in the Marine Corps and accelerated me through my management career in the business world during the 1990s and beyond. It almost didn’t happen though. On my first day in class, I was one of the only boys in a sea of girls and almost walked out in shame and embarrassment. Let me explain....