Road trip provides idea for a new Doodad

By Dan Barber

My wife and I recently took a road trip to Seattle. It has been a really long time since we drove such a distance. We gave our oldest granddaughter, Haleigh, a ride up there because her new husband, Anthony, is stationed at Fort Lewis.

For someone who has been born and raised in the Mojave Desert it was a real culture shock to discover that some places rarely have blue skies with a welcoming bright morning sun to wake and warm you. Haleigh has always been adverse to change and probably because she has lived her life in a land that will kill you rather quickly if you ignore the dangers she has a healthy respect for nature.

Anthony found a real nice apartment in a small community just outside the gate… or gates of Fort Lewis. I say gates because I went through several of them when trying to leave Fort Lewis to find my way to Haleigh’s new home. Anthony and Haleigh live in Steilacoom, Washington. Because of all the fog, trees and ancient buildings Haleigh believes that danger lurks around every corner with all sorts of critters, both alive and dead, set to attack from the misty fog shrouded trees and old buildings. She recently described watching a scary looking squirrel digging a hole, and a huge deer just walking up a neighbor’s driveway. And to top all of that off the old buildings in town would make for a really good scary movie set about ghosts; and a large brick building nearby that seems to serve as a mental health facility. According to Haleigh’s research on the place indicates that this part of Washington is supposed to be the most haunted piece of real estate in the country. In the desert there aren’t too many trees blocking your view of any nearby dangers. Haleigh said that she would walk to the little town of Steilacoom, but she would have to walk along this winding road through a forest of trees to reach civilization… it’s too scary! This from a girl who can hike a desert trail dotted with rocks and scrub that could be a shady resting spot for a poisonous rattle snake!

The scary part of this trip for me was the cold fog shrouded unfamiliar roads winding through the mountains with outside temperature around 20 degrees Fahrenheit … especially when I remembered my encounters with black ice while passing over bridges in Washington state from many years before. I kept the speed to about 35 mph while fully loaded semi-trucks were zipping past me!

On the return trip we left Haleigh’s home early in the morning so I could make it past Mount Shasta’s winding roads in the daylight hours. But we hit central California after dark and exited Interstate 5 at Highway 138 toward Lancaster, which put us into the dark desert night with nothing between the Interstate and Lancaster for many miles. For the first time in my life I discovered the comfort of GPS. I sometimes made fun of people who felt the need for GPS, I used to claim that I only needed a cell phone to make and receive phone calls… I didn’t need anything to tell me where I was located on earth at any given time, I didn’t need to surf the internet, and I didn’t need to check my social media or email messages. When you are in the dark desert at night 50 miles from any kind of civilization it is a comfort to have a robotic voice tell you that you are on the right road and you only have to drive on that road for another hour or so to reach your destination! Thank goodness my wife was along with me and understood how to use a smart phone! I think I’ll ask Santa for a GPS for my truck next Christmas.

This road trip experience did give me an idea for a new app for GPS or Smart Phones… it would be a app that could pin-point the location of any state trooper, highway patrolman or police car in the country… that way speeding drivers can avoid getting a speeding ticket.  I don’t speed of course, but many others do.  An enterprising entrepreneur could also market an app for law enforcement officials to send repeating signals to speeders on those “illegal” cop detectors indicating a possible speed trap just around the next corner! That would of course slow everyone down to the posted speed with no extra patrol cars needed, and the inventor of that app could get rich. Now if you see one of these traffic ticket avoidance contraptions advertised on TV for only three easy payments of $19.99 and sold ONLY on TV you’ve read about it here first.

Paying the bills

By Dan Barber

Do you enjoy living in your home or apartment? Do you enjoy the food you eat? Do you appreciate the good service you receive from customer service workers like restaurant employees, hair dressers, barbers and others too numerous to list? Do you enjoy the benefits of living in the United States? Do you have the freedom to be an atheist or worship in any church, synagogue or coven?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions or a myriad of other benefits or services you enjoy, then you have a bill to pay.

If you are living in a nice home or apartment then you have to pay a mortgage or rent, property taxes, insurance and maintenance either directly or through a landlord, utilities also have to be paid to keep the power and water on and to stay warm. If you are fortunate enough to have cable television, internet and telephone service then you have to pay for it. Those who live in public housing or require government assistance in anyway, through no fault of their own, also have a bill to pay.

Even those who choose to break the law as a shortcut to obtain any of the finer or even necessary things in life are paying the bill by being incarcerated in a jail or prison. But they no longer have to worry about when to take a shower, when to turn out the lights at night, when to go to bed, when to wake up in the mornings or even what is prepared for their meals. They are also relieved of the choice of what fashion or color to wear. These people are at least afforded the ability to live in a “smoke free” environment and given plenty of time to exercise and given employment in the prison industry as a reward for good behavior.

Unless you live in a vacuum the food you eat has to be home grown or bought in a grocery store. This store bought food has to be cultivated, inspected and shipped to the stores. Our government is involved in every aspect of that process before you prepare it for breakfast. Personally, based on my own experience, I would rather eat an egg that came in a government inspected clean container that I bought from my local store then one that I collected from underneath a chicken that I had to wash the chicken poop from before cooking it. The government regulates and inspects farms, food processing, stores, and for the most part, maintains the safe lanes of transport for that food to the distribution centers. The cost for that processing has to be paid for in your grocery bills to cover insurance, taxes and fees. I would venture a guess, based on the shape most Americans are in that they don’t really want to know where their food comes from as long as the grocery store is bright and clean or the food is delivered within 30 minutes for home delivery or 30 seconds in the drive through restaurant.

Restaurants and their employees who provide friendly and efficient service do so because they expect gratitude in the form of gratuities (tips) for that service. They probably also expect friendly and efficient customers… this is a common sense social norm, the quicker a customer selects their food choice and eats then the more money the restaurant and employee will earn; the restaurants customers waiting for seating also appreciate an efficient and friendly environment.

Public employees also provide a service and expect to be compensated appropriately, but in today’s media and political environments public employees are a favorite target to blame for higher taxes the government has to collect to continue paying for stuff the government provides to citizens.

In my opinion the government is now attempting to turn health care workers into public employees by making them dependent upon what the government will allow them to be paid for their service… a back door reward for health insurance companies and their investors. Healthcare and Medical Malpractice insurance companies should be regulated by the government not the services health care workers provide.

A recent development in the blame game for higher taxes falls on a group of people who only make up about one percent of the population of the US… no they aren’t the “one per-centers” who were blamed for the economic woes of our country and targeted for the “occupy Wall Street” movement across the country. They aren’t the poor citizens or undocumented immigrants’ who are dependent upon the government for housing or food assistance in order to survive.

These people being targeted and denied promised compensation can’t complain to their superiors or go to their union bosses for protection because in both cases it’s not allowed by federal law. The people that these “one per-centers” took an oath to obey have ordered further studies to search out ways to continue reducing promised benefits… these “one per-centers” are the men and women of the United States Military. Some of those men and women have been disabled due to their service to the country. Yes, we enjoy an “all volunteer force” but if we run out of volunteers our government will have to reinstate the draft. These current volunteers serve so you don’t have to witness the horrors of the battle field first-hand. A federal holiday and a thank you for your service to these veterans is nice, but promised compensation is a requirement!

I’ve seen Armed Forces advertisement slogans that state “Freedom is not free.” One percent of our population knows that first-hand. If you enjoy your freedom tell your elected leaders to pay the bill that has been promised.