Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission. Autumn doesn't always bother to warn us when it comes to Tehachapi abruptly. Usually it kind of sneaks in, but some years, summer ends with a sudden chill. I've gone out to my curb in my usual shorts to pick up the paper and quickly discovered we had moved into long pants weather overnight. Having lived here a mere 23 years I don't fancy myself an expert on local climate, but I'll venture a guess that we'll have some...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill MeadReprinted with permission. I have put aside my efforts to close the ozone hole to deal with a more urgent problem. My wife says we must decide how much stuff we can give our grandkids without spoiling them. You whippersnappers who lack third-generation progeny have no inkling how weighty this matter is. Like managing the national debt, it is a question with no good answers-only bad ones and worse ones. As Grandma and Grandpa see it, doling out...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission from Tehachapi Lifestyle Magazine, April 2014 issue. I never thought I was fixated on food until my daughter Maggie's husband, Arch, expressed dismay over our family's tendency to discuss the dinner menu while still eating lunch. That's pretty much how everybody was during my growing-up years in the cornbelt. Partly that was because grocery stores didn't sell a lot of ready-to-cook meals back then. Nearly everything had...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission Our granddaughter Nikki and her husband Buddy came by the house over the weekend and something in our conversation took me back to the days when radios and TVs were full of vacuum tubes. When I started to reminisce, it quickly became clear they didn't have a clue what I was talking about. I don't believe they have ever seen a vacuum tube because their expressions remained blank when I described it as a sort of light...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission My daughter met me the other morning and warned me that I had shaving cream still smeared on my chin. Actually it was residue of a glazed doughnut (which I am not supposed to eat) so I didn't tell her. When I was younger I often wondered why old men don't pay attention to their appearance. Now I know. When you get to be my age, looking in the mirror can be unbearable torture. I'd rather wander around with sugar on my...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission I have found that one of the worst things about growing old is that you have fewer people to talk to. This hit me again last week when, during a meeting with our news staff, I referred to the late sportswriter Grantland Rice and drew only blank stares, reminding me how long ago Rice went to that big press box in the sky. Frequent episodes like this make me wonder why old guys marry young women. What do they talk about?...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission When we have good memories of a certain time and place, it's usually best to leave them alone. If you go back to relive them you're more apt to lose them. I left my hometown of the cornbelt during World War II, went into the Navy, then afterward settled in California. Because I didn't go back to my hometown for the next few decades, memories of the place stayed pure in my mind, never changing from the distant summer day...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission I have put aside my efforts to close the ozone hole to deal with a more urgent problem. My wife says we must decide how much stuff we can give our grandkids without spoiling them. You whippersnappers who lack third-generation progeny have no inkling how weighty this matter is. Like managing the national debt, it is a question with no good answers-only bad ones and worse ones. As Grandma and Grandpa see it, doling out...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission Autumn doesn't always bother to warn us when it comes to Tehachapi abruptly. Usually it kind of sneaks in, but some years, summer ends with a sudden chill. I've gone out to my curb in my usual shorts to pick up the paper and quickly discovered we had moved into long pants weather overnight. Having lived here a mere 23 years I don't fancy myself an expert on local climate, but I'll venture a guess that we'll have some...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission There's an anecdote about multi-millionaire cowboy actor Gene Autry that claims he kept paying his dues to the telegraphers union long after he had amassed more wealth than he could count. The way the story goes, he told his wife he wanted to keep his options open in case the movie business went sour. Like most yarns about famous folks, this one probably isn't true. Nevertheless, it does capture Autry's attitude, as...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission Our middle daughter and her husband operate a law firm in Atlanta. Margaret likes to cook so once a week she puts on a noon spread for the other lawyers and employees in the office. Not long ago, remembering her childhood thrill when Dad brought home the ingredients for banana splits, Margaret offered all the makings for banana splits for her co-workers to assemble as they wished. The results astounded her. The younger...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission Every so often I read something of such devastating truth that I wonder how I have lived so long without having thought of it myself. I am thinking about an article I read not long ago that said, "Intuition is our only defense against the articulate incompetent". I think most of us suspect that far too many problems are created by people who can spout idiotic twaddle in the most convincing ways. Unless we have...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission When we were in Sacramento recently to visit a sick relative my wife made an interesting observation. She noted that in the past we take the good times for granted while we reserve our sharpest and fondest memories for the pratfalls. She said this revelation came to her because of an incident in Sacramento when she was a young women. She was being driven down Freeport Boulevard when the drover, another relative, had the...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission When I was growing up in Iowa, we could predict that at least once a year some old farmer in our county would end up in the hospital from falling off a roof. Usually it was a barn roof but almost any steep, slippery slope would satisfy these relics' need to prove they were as good as they ever were. Over the years I have told my wife of this peculiarity of antiquated Iowa farmers. I should have kept my mouth shut...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission from Tehachapi Lifestyle Magazine, October 2013 issue. Here is a list of instructions left behind by the late Bill Mead, who wrote them up for the benefit of his granddaughter, who had been on many family adventures in the Winnie, but had never borrowed the motorhome without Bill captaining the crew. The RV that you own or use may differ in some ways, but the advice is sound. And amusing, like most things Bill wrote....
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission I just read where a county employee in Mississippi got slapped with a $500 fine for shooting a woman newspaper editor with a .20-gauge shotgun. By Mississippi standards that was a harsh punishment, particularly in view of the fact he almost missed his target, managing to put only two bird-shot pellets in the editor’s carcass where the sun doesn’t shine. My wife and I think Mississippi is a great place. We have not...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission. Last week for no particular reason I thought about my Lost Island summer, reaching back nearly 50 years and a couple of thousand miles. Old men so that a lot, I’m finding out. Lost Island Lake is in northern Iowa. It isn’t very big, perhaps two square miles, but it looms large in my memory because it is where Dad and I reached a turning point in the way we felt about each other. Under straw hats, we discovered that we w...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission from Tehachapi Lifestyle Magazine, November 2012 issue.When I was a small lad in Iowa we had Civil War veterans in our Memorial Day parades. Today, I find that hard to believe even though I was there. The memory of those old Union soldiers whose war tales are now buried with them prompted me a few years ago to try writing a family history of my Dad's experiences in the First World War. By then it was clear that before...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission Considering how gracious she is about most things, my wife can go ape about a few things that bother her. Like truck drivers. She thinks they all get together once a week to plot how they can run her off the road. This unhealthy and, in my opinion, grossly distorted notion stems from an incident more than 40 years ago when a truck crowded her on a narrow bridge. At least she thought the truck was crowding her. Now when...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission I’m sure it has already occurred to you that we don’t age at a steady rate. We go along for years feeling good and looking presentable and then all of a sudden the passing years gang up on us and we start feeling unfamiliar pains and gasping at our images in the mirror. It seems to happen almost overnight. I was still hiking all over the mountains in my early fifties. Now a stroll around the block leaves me whe...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead With everybody tossing rotten tomatoes at the beleaguered Internal Revenue Service these days, I thought you might like to hear that the IRS did have a sense of humor at one time. I will violate one of my sacred principles just this once and tell you the absolute truth. Many years ago, I converted our garage into an office for my consulting business. Foolishly, I made it big enough that it encouraged my wife and daughters to cram it with their...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission Not long ago I got to thinking about a patent medicine called Hadacol that I'm told has been off the market for a long time. I mentioned it to a friend and she said that when she was a young woman her middle-aged parents started taking Hadacol and soon presented her with a baby sister. Why would they quit selling something that magical? As I remember, Hadacol was an invention of a master showman who called himself Judge...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt When he made that famous statement more then 50 years ago, the newly-elected President was trying to boost spirits crushed by the Great Depression. Yet his simple words have timeless meaning. Fear is a tenacious parasite of humanity, breeding more evil than hatred, jealousy or any other emotion. The fear Roosevelt spoke of in 1933 was based on...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission One of the things I like best about my home town of Tehachapi is its one-of-a-kind name. I haven’t heard of another Tehachapi anywhere in our galaxy. I also take perverted pleasure in the fact that Tehacgapi doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue. I always look forward to calling in a catalog order and hearing the sharp intake of breath as our town’s noble name pops up on the monitor. One time the order clerk went entir...
Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead Reprinted with permission from Tehachapi Lifestyle Magazine, July 2013 issue. My wife and I feel blessed that all three of our daughters have kept close ties to the old homestead even as they have started their own families. Unfortunately, every silver lining has a cloud. In this case, it's the girls' presumption that all possessions of Mom and Dad are up for grabs notwithstanding the fact the old codgers are still alive and kicking. "Can I have...
