IT'S TIME FOR FROST HEAVES AND POTHOLES – WINTER’S MERCILESS OFFSPRING

One of my old friends came over the other day and the first thing I noticed when I opened the door was how green she looked.

“You have any Dramamine?” she asked. “Your road up here is so bad, I nearly lost my lunch!”

The problem was, she wasn’t joking. Every winter, the main road to my house probably could make the Guinness Book of World Records for breeding the largest number of frost heaves and potholes in a single month. An aerial view of the road easily could be mistaken for a topographical map of the Himalayas...or the Grand Canyon. 

When I went to the store the other day, I decided to take my two dogs for a ride with me. Big mistake. The road was so bumpy, by the time we reached our destination, they were giving a different meaning to the word “heave”…all over the back seat.

I guess the term “frost heaves” isn’t as widely known in the rest of the country as it is in New England. I remember when we had company from Maryland one winter and they asked us, “What the heck are frost heaves? We saw signs everywhere on our drive up here!”

My husband jokingly told them the signs referred to a really large family named Frost who thought it was fun to heave snowballs at passing cars.

I hate to say it, but I think our guests actually might have believed him.

Because of the condition of the roads every winter, I usually avoid leaving the house unless it's absolutely necessary. And when I do venture out to the supermarket, I buy so many groceries, you’d think I was preparing for a zombie apocalypse. But that’s partly because having the fillings in my teeth jarred loose really doesn’t appeal to me.

Naturally, I drive very slowly on winter-ravaged roads...mainly because I don’t want to leave my car’s exhaust system in a pothole. This inevitably results in some vehicle zooming up behind me and riding my bumper. The last one came so close to my car, when I looked in the rearview mirror, I thought the driver was sitting in my back seat.

In an effort to lose him, I stepped on the gas…just as I came to the Queen Mother of all frost heaves. I think some of my hair is still stuck in my car’s dome light.

Yesterday I received a call to schedule the annual maintenance on my house’s generator system. After I made the appointment, I warned the guy who called, “You’d better take some motion-sickness pills first. The road up here is so bumpy, it’s like trying to ride a rodeo bull."

 “Really?” he asked.

 "I'm totally serious."

 “Thanks for the warning,” he said. He paused before adding with a laugh, “Hmmm…now which of my employees don’t I like?  I’ll send him over.”

I was watching a skiing competition on TV the other night and they were showing some of the athletes training on moguls (a.k.a. hundreds of really big bumps). This resulted in them having to assume a position in which their knees practically were touching their chins. All I could think about as I watched them was how much the moguls course resembled the road to my house, and how the skiers seriously should consider coming over here to train. Heck, if they can conquer these bumps, they're guaranteed to win Olympic gold.

Anyway, if I ever have my car checked in the winter and the mechanic suggests it needs an alignment, I'll tell him it can wait until spring.

By then, I figure I'll hit enough bumps to throw the car back into alignment on its own.

#   #   #

Sally Breslin is an award-winning, syndicated humor-columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net

 

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RECALLING THE DAYS WHEN DOCTORS MADE HOUSE CALLS

 

Many of my friends recently have told me they’ve canceled their annual routine medical procedures this winter because they don’t want to expose themselves to Covid, the flu, or whatever other viruses currently might be running amok, just waiting to pounce on unsuspecting victims.

My friend in Scotland, however, phoned the other day and told me she was waiting for her doctor to arrive because she was having severe pain from neuropathy.

“Oh, you’re calling from his waiting room?” I asked.

“No, I’m at home, in bed."

It took a few seconds for that information to sink in.

“You mean he’s actually making a house call?" I asked.

“A what?”

“He’s coming to your house?"

“Well, yes. Don’t doctors do that where you live?"

“Not since Abraham Lincoln was too young to grow a beard.”

After we hung up, I found my mind wandering back to the days when doctors actually did make house calls. I was only a child back then, but I clearly remember good old Dr. Kennard arriving with his black bag, which contained the essentials: a stethoscope, tongue depressors, two thermometers (oral and rectal), aspirin, and hypodermic needles to administer the contents of the ever-present bottle of penicillin. And then there were the other must-have first-aid items…bandages, suturing materials, antiseptics like alcohol and iodine, etc. – all neatly packed in a black leather bag that nowadays would be considered too small to make even a decent purse.

But house calls made a lot of sense, at least for the patients. I mean, think about it. The last thing a sick person wants or needs to do is crawl out of bed, venture out into the cold, and then sit in a waiting room filled with people who look as if they’re auditioning to be extras on the TV show, “The Walking Dead." Even worse, there’s the real risk of going there with something like a mild case of the sniffles and ending up catching something like the Ebola virus.

When I was a kid, most of Doctor Kennard’s visits to my house were for my sore throats. Every year, like clockwork, I would end up with a really bad one. And, without any cultures or tests, he'd annually diagnose me with strep throat. Then he’d remove the dreaded hypodermic needle from his bag and fill it with penicillin.

“Roll over,” he’d say in a monotone.

I knew the routine by heart. The hypo's target always was my right butt-cheek. Luckily, I had plenty of fat on it to cushion the jab. 

But the weird thing about that shot in the butt was it always worked. Just one shot – no days of endless pill-taking like nowadays whenever antibiotics are needed. That single shot did the trick.

And for everything else, there was aspirin...or Bromo-Seltzer.

The cost for the doctor’s house call? Five dollars, which my parents always handed to him in cash at the end of each visit.

And that was that. Simple.

Unfortunately, at some point, doctors figured out they could help more patients per hour if they remained in one spot and had the patients come to them. No more spending precious minutes sitting in traffic while trying to rush to a house call. No more wasting gas, getting lost or worrying that something like a flat tire or a dead battery could result in a delay that might contribute to a patient’s early demise.

So the majority of doctors began to choose to stay in their offices all day and do away with making house calls. Much less stressful that way.

Maybe for them…but not for me.

I still too vividly remember the time, back when I was in my thirties, when I was suffering from the flu…and I do mean suffering. Even lifting my head off the pillow was a struggle. Never had I felt more certain I was about to see the Pearly Gates first-hand.

I finally gave in and called my doctor, hoping he’d suggest some miraculous home-remedy to ease my suffering.

Instead, he told me if I came right over, he could see me.

There was no time to call my husband and ask him to drive the 18 miles home from work to take me to the doctor’s office, so I was determined to get there on my own. It was barely a three-mile trip, so I figured I could handle it.

By the time I arrived, however, I looked and felt as if I’d just run the Boston marathon…during a hurricane…in 110-degree heat. My fever had reached molten-lava proportions by then, so my hair, skin and clothes were soaked.

The moment the doctor saw me, his mouth fell open and he blurted out, “God, you look awful! You should be home in bed!”

My thoughts exactly.

Loaded down with various samples of medication the doctor gave me (so I wouldn’t have to risk lapsing into a coma while waiting for any prescriptions to be filled) I drove straight home a short time later, took off my clothes, swallowed a couple of the pills and then crawled back into bed. It took eight days before I finally started to feel human again.

And all the while I kept thinking about how Dr. Kennard would have come to my house, jabbed a needle into my butt and I’d have been feeling like a new person in only a day or two.

Unfortunately, he was deceased.

Probably from all of the stress caused by trying to make too many house calls.

#   #   # 

Sally Breslin is a native New Englander and an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net

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WHEN IT COMES TO SLOT MACHINES, JUST CALL ME "BAD LUCK BRESLIN!"

 

A few months ago, after an eye exam that left me seeing everything in a blur due to having my pupils dilated, my friend Dot, who’d driven me to the exam, said, “Let’s go check out that new casino while we’re here in Manchester. I keep seeing the ads on TV and I’m curious to find out what it’s like.”

Even though I was seeing double, maybe even triple, at that point, I agreed.

Perhaps my compromised vision was to blame, but compared to the casinos with their crystal chandeliers and glitzy décor I’d previously visited in Las Vegas and Connecticut, this one kind of resembled a drab warehouse with rows of slot machines lined up along the walls. And it was so dark inside, I practically had to feel my way to one of the stools in front of a machine. 

TALK ABOUT UNPRETENTIOUS!

“I can’t see much of anything,” I said to Dot. Then I joked, “But I suppose I’ll know when I win something if I hear coins pouring out into my tray.”

Dot laughed. “When was the last time you went to a casino anyway? They don’t have coins any more, or even tokens. You get a receipt or a ticket to cash in.”

I’d forgotten about that. No more filling up cups and buckets with coins or tokens and then taking them up to the payout booth. No more noisy clanking sounds of coins hitting metal that usually made other players nearby turn to stare with envy…or contempt.

Not that I’d ever heard much coin-clanking going on at any of the slot machines I’d played in the past anyway. No, with me, it always had been more like that old song, “The Sound of Silence.”

I certainly didn’t take after my mother (a.k.a. “Lucky Fingers Della”) who never seemed to lose. Friends who’d been to Foxwoods Casino with her always returned with stories about how she'd been able to stare at a line of machines, point at one of them and say, “That one is about to pay off,” and it would.

So when my mother invited me to go to Foxwoods with her back in the late 1990s, I figured I had it made – that I’d come home with enough cash to pay off my mortgage. After all, I was going to learn the ropes from one of the best, so I couldn’t lose.

As usual, I’d figured wrong.

First of all, I was a little apprehensive about going to a casino. For years, I’d heard so much about New Hampshire not approving casino gambling because it would attract the “criminal element,” I’d envisioned a place overrun with men wearing black shirts, white ties, pin-striped suits and black fedoras, with gun holsters strapped across their chests beneath their jackets.

So I was surprised when we walked into what looked like the recreation hall at a nursing home. Sweet-looking, gray-haired grandmotherly types were everywhere. I didn’t spot even one Al Capone look-alike. 

My mother led me to a room filled with slot machines. It was a slow day, so we pretty much had our pick of them.

“Have fun!” Mom said, immediately rushing over to sit down and start playing.

I did the same. Within 15 minutes, I’d lost $50. I got up and walked over to see how my mother was doing.  She’d already won 200 quarters and obviously was having a wonderful time.

I, on the other hand, couldn’t stop thinking about everything I could have done with the $50 I’d just blown…like buy groceries. 

“This machine won’t pay again for a while,” my mother said, finally rising from her seat. “Time to switch!”

She moved to a different row of machines and inserted a $20 bill. Her smile quickly faded.

“This machine just gave me only half the credits it’s supposed to!” she said.

I moved closer so I could check it out. “That’s because it’s a 50-cent machine, Mom, not a 25-cent one.”

“Oh! Well, I’m not about to play a 50-cent machine. The money goes too fast that way.  I’m going to cash out my $20 and put it into a quarter machine.”  But instead of hitting the “cash-out” button, she accidentally hit the “spin” button…and won 100 half-dollars. 

I rolled my eyes and groaned.

My mother’s good fortune inspired me to use my credit card to get more money so I could continue to play.

Alas, even Houdini couldn’t have made my cash vanish any faster.

Frustrated, I sat on the stool at one of the slot machines and waited for my mother. As I was sitting there, I remembered seeing a TV documentary about casinos and how all of them were set up with so many hidden cameras, if you dared to even pick your nose or adjust your underwear, it would be seen by the entire security staff. They even said the cameras could zoom in on something as small as a freckle. The thought of my every move being watched made me feel uneasy. I wondered if I could spot any of those so-called hidden cameras in this particular casino.

I looked up at the ceiling, then left and right, and back up at the ceiling. I didn’t see anything that stood out. But obviously the security people saw me scrutinizing the place and must have thought I was planning to do something sneaky (like feed a slug into a machine), because two men who looked very “security-ish” approached and sat down at the slot machines on either side of me.

“Having any luck?” one of them asked me.

“Nope,” I said. “I’ve already lost my shirt…and other assorted articles of clothing.”  I laughed at my own statement.

They didn’t.

“My mother, Della, who’s over there, however,” I paused to point at her, “is really cleaning up.”

In retrospect, my choice of words probably could have been better. One of the security guys immediately went over to visit my mother.

They finally concluded that my mom and I weren’t Bonnie and Clydella, and went on their way.

An hour later, my mother, carrying two nearly overflowing buckets of coins, decided she was ready to leave. “I just have to cash these in,” she said.

I won’t say I was jealous, but I was hoping she’d drop one of the buckets so maybe I could scoop up a couple of the coins, quickly stuff them into a slot machine and win a jackpot, so I wouldn’t have to go home empty-handed to face my husband... who was going to be forced to eat canned spaghetti for the next two weeks.

My mother read my thoughts and reached into one of the buckets and handed me a fistful of coins.

“Here,” she said. “While I’m cashing out, have fun.”

I rushed over to the nearest slot machine and shoved the coins into it. The money disappeared so fast, it left skid marks.

Back to the present...even though I’d like to say I had better luck at the casino with Dot and won a big jackpot, I ended up just breaking even…which, in my case, I suppose could be considered a major victory.

But if nothing else, experience has taught me a foolproof way to play the slots and return home with a small fortune.

Go there with a large fortune.

#   #   # 

Sally Breslin is a native New Englander and an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net

 

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I'VE LEARNED THAT SNOWSTORMS AND SATELLITE DISHES DON'T MIX

 

As I am writing this, I’m holding my breath and typing as fast as my arthritic fingers will allow, because I'm rushing to finish it before the predicted big snowstorm strikes…and causes me to lose my Internet connection.

That's because I live out in the wilderness. I'm talking about hawks and coyotes eyeing the daily guests at my bird feeder. I'm also talking about having to wait for the deer to move out of my way before I can drive up my driveway. And due to this vast wilderness, the cable company I'd had at my previous house, only five miles from here, hadn't even reached this area yet when I first moved here.

So I ended up with two satellite dishes, side by side on my roof – one for TV and the other for the Internet. They constantly wage battles with each other to see which one will stop working first whenever there is more than one flake of snow or two drops of rain, both of which wreak havoc on the signals. And when a really bad snowstorm strikes and covers the dishes with snow, they end up looking like two giant white Mickey-Mouse ears perched on my roof. 

At that point, I'd probably get better reception using a wire coat-hanger wrapped in aluminum foil.

Unfortunately, after a snowstorm, my satellite dishes are destined to remain buried until the spring thaw. Call me a pessimist, but I think climbing a ladder so I can clear the snow from them is a recipe for disaster. I can just picture myself clinging to an icy ladder and then falling over backwards with the ladder landing on top of me...leaving an imprint in the snow that resembles a giant snow-angel lying underneath railroad tracks.

A few years ago, when my first Internet satellite company went out of business and I had to find a new one, the technician who came over to assess my situation said, “We don’t install satellite dishes on the roof any more. It’s more convenient to put them on the sides of the houses or even on the ground, where people can reach them to clean them off in the winter.”

I was pleased to hear that bit of good news. Finally, I thought, I would have a reliable Internet connection throughout the winter because I'd be able to clean the snow off the dish without risking the need for any of my body parts to be surgically pinned back together.

The day of the installation, I was in the house when the technician came in, smiling.

 “All done!” he said. “Your new dish is installed. And guess what? I decided to bend the rules a bit and put the dish exactly where your old one was, on the roof!  No sense drilling any new holes in your house when there were already some ready-made ones right there for me to use.” 

Let's just say the smile I flashed at him was so forced, it nearly cracked my face.

So I'm still plagued with “lost signal” messages every time I’m using my computer or trying to watch TV during a storm. Just prior to losing the signal, however, my computer is kind enough to warn me it’s about to happen…by completely locking me out. And my TV will freeze a program right in the middle of the action…which actually looks kind of pretty, like an explosion in a paint factory.  

And at those moments, I’m grateful it’s winter and the windows are closed, because people in the next county probably would be able to hear me having a loud “conversation” with either my TV or my computer, where every other word should be bleeped.

By the time winter ends, there is a strong possibility I’ll either have destroyed my computer out of sheer frustration, or pegged a few big rocks at my satellite dishes to “dislodge” the snow from them.

On the other hand, knowing my bad aim, I'll probably end up accidentally knocking out one of the birds flying in to dine at my feeder.

#   #   #

Sally Breslin is a native New Englander and an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net

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