Getting Old

Yes, I feel your pain.

Several years ago, I was in the office, and one of the interns asked me how to copy a file, or something. I told her to shell out to DOS and copy the file.

She looked at me with a blank stare and asked me what DOS was. That is when I knew I was getting old.

That reminds me of the guy at the phone store when I picked up my most recent cell phone. I was telling him about the only telephone in our home until I was about seven. It was what you call a crank phone that was basically a wooden box hanging on the wall with a big ear piece on a cord, a microphone sticking out towards you and the crank for making the bells jingle to form either long or short rings. If I had told him I had a pet dinosaur that I used to ride to school he would have been more likely to believe my story.

> That reminds me of the guy at the phone store when I picked up my most recent cell phone. I was telling him about the only telephone in our home until I was about seven. It was what you call a crank phone that was basically a wooden box hanging on the wall with a big ear piece on a cord, a microphone sticking out towards you and the crank for making the bells jingle to form either long or short rings. If I had told him I had a pet dinosaur that I used to ride to school he would have been more likely to believe my story.

We didn't ever have one of those but one set of my grandparents did until I got old enough to remember. They probably got their first dial phone in the late 50's or early 60's.
B-)

foot-feet?

One bad habit of mine that has manifested (prominently with age) is referring to landmarks that aren't there anymore when I give my guys directions. Something like, "Take the old highway south and turn left where the feed store used to be..."

..that usually gets me a lot of funny looks from a room full of people that don't even remember when they put lead in gasoline.

I understand getting old is inevitable, but I had no idea that it would affect my ability to communicate with the rest of the population.

The other day one of the crews was out of white flagging. For a day or two I had a roll that kept slipping out from under the truck seat when I stopped. I told one of the guys I had a roll and it was on the driver's side floorboard. I got a funny look...I reiterated and explained myself further..it was right under the foot-feet...more funny looks. One of the "older" hands finally showed him what I meant. I had no idea that to them I was approaching not even speaking English in their world.

I tell my grandkids when I was a kid telephones use to have to be wired to the wall and televisions didn't...they give me the same kind of screwy look. :pinch:

foot-feet?

What bothers me the most was walking into the Smithsonian Museum and suddenly realizing that not only do you already know what half of the stuff on display is, but that you have all of that snit in boxes in your garage. :excruciating:

foot feed

As opposed to increasing the flow of fuel to the carburetor by using a hand throttle.
From Wikipedia.....

foot feed
English
Noun
foot feed (plural foot feeds)

(archaic) The accelerator or gas pedal, so called when the throttle control was moved from the column to the floor.

Paden: Please note that I cringed to find the addition of (archaic) into the definition.

That kind of reminds me about my little get away place, a 32 ft trailer near Lake Mead. I have the infamous "rabbit ears", and they are not top of the line. The best station I get is NBC on "antenna tv" and includes programming such as Mr Ed, Dennis the Menace, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and an assortment of other old sit com types of programs from that era (many of which are black & white). One of which includes Green Acres. Nothing like Mr Ziffle and his pig, or Mr Douglas (Edie Albert) climbing up the pole to make a call as Mrs Douglas (Eva Gabor) does her nails in her fur coat. I still laugh 40 yrs later and wonder where the time went.

foot feed

Ok, can't resist this one either. I lived in 'da UP for a few years and frequent back whenever I can. It is common in some unsophisticated area to "go take a dump in the brush". Every surveyor I know can relate

The yoopers just laugh. You don't take anything. The term is "leave a dump in the bush". Ok, brush vs bush is semantics, but leaving vs taking is significant. Yoopers are cool, the US needs more folks like that.

Other things that remind me.. The other day I found a small K&E magnifier with the tail of plumb bob string still attached. In the same box were my DMD sheets, pen tips and a 'timely t41'. My how things change...

thanx, HC

I just put a check by "learned something new" on today's list!

Foot-feet vs. foot-feed rates right up there with bar ditch vs. borrow ditch. Our (Okie's) mispronounced and artfully applied butchering of the language is alive and well down hear (prounounced he-ah).

thanx, HC

First time hearing the term "bar" ditch I was listening to a co-worker who grew up somewhere between Houston and Baytown. To me it simply was a ditch. Didn't need a modifier.

We had a 1951 Dodge pickup that had a two piece windshield and a hood that had two doors, one for each side. The windshield wiper control was a little doohickey up atop the dash close to the strip separating the two halves of the windshield. To start it, you had to put your heel on the foot feed while pressing on the starter with your toes. Coordinating pumping the foot feed while maintaining a constant pressure on the starter was a challenge for a ten year-old kid. Working the manual choke at the same time was too much for my simple mind. In the glove compartment (another old timey term) we had a length of rubber air hose with a cloth-like outer covering that was attached to a thingamabob you would screw into a spark plug hole so you could air up your tires or something else much faster than the standard hand operated air pump.

When the grandkids come over they love to play with the "toys" in grandpa's drafting table drawers.

The mention of K&E brought to mind when I showed them the polar planimeter.

Since the oldest is only 12 they were sure I was pulling their legs.

More than once I've gotten a puzzled look when I would say "There's more of (this or that) than Carter has pills!"- yep, getting older here...

No doubt I could come up with quite a few more that made me show my age...

> To me it simply was a ditch. Didn't need a modifier.

In my experience, the difference between a drainage ditch and a borrow ditch is that the former is created for the sole purpose of conveying storm water, while the latter is created first as a source of fill material to be used to raise the adjacent improvement (typically a railroad or highway road bed), and second as a means of conveying storm water.

> We had a 1951 Dodge pickup that had a two piece windshield and a hood that had two doors, one for each side. The windshield wiper control was a little doohickey up atop the dash close to the strip separating the two halves of the windshield. To start it, you had to put your heel on the foot feed while pressing on the starter with your toes.

The first vehicle I ever owned was a '51 Dodge pickup. It had all the features you describe, plus the battery in a compartment beneath the driver's feet. I learned the hard way that if you don't properly restrain the battery in the compartment, you can be driving along the freeway, hit a bump and suddenly fine big sparks shooting up into the passenger compartment.

The foot starter was actually pretty cool. Instead of relying on the starter motor to spin the starter gear into the flywheel, your foot actually pushed the gear into engagement. It was a remarkably simple mechanism.

When I first bought that truck in 1974, I was surprised to find that the same basic engine was still in production for use in forklifts and other industrial applications, so engine parts were easy to come by. Body and driveline parts were another matter, so I eventually ended up with a couple of other parts trucks. I don't think I paid more than $150 for any of them.

The most fun I had with that truck was when I swapped out the Fluid Drive (a really bad idea that combined the worst features of a manual transmission with the worst features of an automatic) for a heavy-duty New Process spur-gear 4-speed. It probably took me a week to remove the transmission from the donor truck, replace the main bearings, and install it into the project vehicle. But I clearly remember the crisp October evening when I finally got everything all buttoned up and took it out for a test drive. That spur-gear transmission -- it didn't have any synchros or even any helical gears, just plain old-fashioned straight-cut gears -- sounded like an air raid siren until you got into 4th, which was straight-through (1:1, no gearing at all, as is typical of a non-overdrive gearbox). The granny gear was super low, and a couple of times when out on a country road I'd put it in 1st and then get out and saunter along side of it just to see it idling driverless down the road.

I sold it shortly before I got married in 1996. I hadn't driven it in years, and the house we bought didn't have enough room for it. Sometimes I miss it, but I don't miss that cranky old 6-volt electrical system, or the anemic defroster, or the uncountable leaks in the steel floorboards. But for a young person not afraid of doing a lot of maintenance, it's a great ride.

I know all about First Gear. That is how we spread bales of hay to the cattle. Drive out to a big empty spot in the pasture, stick in First, hop out and start grabbing bales and cutting strings. Rarely had to run up and give the steering wheel a turn, but it could be done. Yes, the battery was directly below the driver's feet.

In about 1969 I took a sharp turn in a country road a bit to fast and slammed the front bumper into a hedge corner post at about 15 mph. When I regained my composure and took it out of gear, then into reverse, I got out and could see no damage to the post or the front bumper. The absence of damage allowed me to continue having driving privileges because no one was around to see me hit the post.

> When the grandkids come over they love to play with the "toys" in grandpa's drafting table drawers.
>
> The mention of K&E brought to mind when I showed them the polar planimeter.
>
> Since the oldest is only 12 they were sure I was pulling their legs.

Last time I used a planimeter was 23+ years ago. Doing some grading plans in California.
B-)

After a long day in the field, I stopped in at
Hooter's to see some friends and have some hot
wings and drinks.

After being there for a while, one of my friends
asked me which waitress I would like to be stuck
in an elevator with.

I told them "The one who knows how to fix elevators."

I'm old, tired, and pee a lot.