Life with Pratts – Page 22 – Prattling Before the Pratfall

Burn it Like Beckett

Recently I had routine annual oil burner servicing^*, and now a problem from last year has returned, likewise when the burner is needed only for the hot water maker. The Beckett 7505 burner controller is shutting down the system and the reset button flashes. The button can be pressed only so many times to fire it up before there’s a hard lock-out. So far I have pressed it twice.

The first step in last year’s troubleshooting was to replace the 7505, despite a diagnostic reporting the original unit was fine. The problem returned only minutes after the technician had left. Later, a complete disassembly of the burner by a different technician revealed a worn-out part. It was replaced, and the burner has been trouble-free for well over a year.

Maintenance is supposed to prevent problems, not cause them. I almost didn’t schedule routine servicing this year, out of concern the very situation that I am in would occur, but it’s included in the service contract.

Being Labor Day weekend, I have a service call scheduled for Tuesday morning. This time, if the diagnostic doesn’t report an internal controller failure, and the technician wants to replace it anyway, I’ll suggest that he keep looking for the underlying cause of the problem.

^* Many New England homes rely on #2 home heating oil, which is mostly kerosene, rather than natural gas. The price tracks diesel fairly closely, and the last oil delivery I had cost $6/gallon. Six dollars per gallon, for a bio-fuel mix that has a tendency to clog the fuel nozzle in a burner. Which could be the underlying cause of my present problem. Will I be paying less than $6/gal. this coming heating season?

https://apnews.com/article/heating-oil-diesel-inventories-low-in-northeast-192f998c29bcb05fd0fcd4f680f1faf6

Driven to Distraction

Another favorite memory that, after 50 years, still seems like a fantasy. It happened the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, after attending the 1972 New York Comic Art Convention, which was made possible by mih.

That was the first time I met Joe Sinnott. It was also the first time Joe met Jack Kirby. In the past it was widely stated that Joe and Jack met for the first time at the 1975 Marvel Convention, but that is incorrect.

That isn’t, however, the memory that seems like a fantasy. The story you are about to read is true. The two names in it have not been changed.

After returning home from the convention, I attended a driver’s ed class that was held at the high school, paying for it myself. The first part was classroom instruction, before taking the learner’s permit test. For those who passed, driving lessons would be scheduled.

There were 10-12 kids in the class, evenly split between boys and girls. At the end of the last classroom session, the instructor said he needed to speak with me.

“Mr. Pratt, we have a problem,” he said. I had absolutely no idea what that could possibly be.

“Every one of the girls in the class has requested to go practice driving with you.”

“Uh… what? All of them?” I would have been stunned if even one girl had made such an unlikely request!

“Yes, and to avoid disappointing the ladies I have assigned you a rather difficult schedule. I’m sure you don’t mind.”

I swear this really happened, and I’m not making it up! I was, to use the British expression, gobsmacked. It was as if I’d been suddenly made aware of an entirely different plane of reality, where high school sports stars and bad boys with motorcycles existed. But I was just a nerdy, glasses-wearing, comic book fanboy.

I actually did mind knowing why the instructor had given me a crazy schedule, because I was extra nervous every time I was in that AMC Hornet sedan, thinking about the girls in the car with me. I was either behind the wheel with two of them in the back seat, or I was in the back sitting next to one of them! I remember quite vividly that I was so distracted seeing Diane and her friend Cindy in the rearview mirror I almost drove through a stop sign. The instructor had to slam the secondary brake pedal installed on the passenger side.

There was no such distraction when I was ready to take the driving test. I recall the RMV guy told me to go the wrong way down a one-way street. Are trick questions supposed to be part of the test? Anyway, I passed, and that was — gulp! — fifty years ago.

C2H5OH

When I was eighteen, the drinking age was eighteen. Except for taking a couple sips of Miller beer — or maybe it was Schlitz — when I was seventeen, I waited until I was legal.

I’m lucky regarding alcohol, because I’ve seen, and lived with, its effects on others who weren’t so lucky. I enjoy good beer and wine very much, and fortunately there is never a feeling of “needing” a drink. For that I am grateful.

My problem with alcohol is that having a second glass of wine or more than a pint of beer can sometimes affect my sleep. It depends on how much I’d eaten and how late in the evening I had the drinks.

A 4-pack of pint cans from the local craft breweries has been my typical weekly beer consumption. The cost for a double IPA 4-pack is approaching $20, and it’s going to get worse, once the carbon dioxide shortage hits.

https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2022/07/29/co2-shortage-hits-massachusetts-breweries

Lessee… $20/week… if I were to buy every week is… that’s over $1000/year for beer! So I do have an alcohol problem.

Personal Protests

I told a friend yesterday that I stopped donating money to our alma mater, and I no longer receive mailings from the alumni association. This post from nine years ago explains why.

Evan gets even

In that post I used a Boston Globe video, but now I’ve also soured on the Globe.

Buh-Bye, Boston Globe

WABC, PTT, and Me

Twenty years ago, while stopped at a red light in my little ’89 Honda Civic, behind a couple of other cars, this happened. I was a little late for work that day.

An elderly Russian guy came flying down the Mass Pike exit ramp behind me. I saw him in the rearview mirror, heading towards me fast. I knew he was going to crash and braced for impact. The collision pushed the Civic into the car ahead of me with so much force that it, in turn, hit the car in front of it.

The old guy was taken to a hospital where, as I was told later, he accused me of causing the accident. The Massachusetts State Police didn’t agree. I escaped with a mild concussion, and a badly sprained right ankle.

So began my Posterior Tibial Tendon troubles. I had forced the brake pedal down with so much strength the brake lines blew out upon impact. But a couple of other things also blew out. A blood vessel in my calf split open, and I didn’t know until later that some of the fibers in my PTT had been torn. The damage progressed once I returned to my running schedule.

I was almost home from a 25-mile training run for the Lowell Marathon when suddenly, mid-stride, my right foot literally just stopped working! I could feel something sticking out that shouldn’t have been. My PTT had slipped out of position. After popping it back into place I was able to hobble home the last half-mile.

That white area in the MRI seen along the PTT is tendinosis. There’s a bulge there to this day. With a lot careful attention to that area, along with motion control running shoes and orthotics, the tendon has held all these years. I dread the day if and (probably) when it finally breaks. The PTT in my left ankle is perfectly fine.

What does any of this have to do with WABC? As I have said many times, I was very fortunate to have grown up listening to WABC during its Musicradio ascendency. Its influence on me was so great that it led to my relatively brief but memorable stint working in AM radio. (Technology paid much better, believe me.) The man who transformed 77 WABC into the Musicradio powerhouse was program director Rick Sklar.

Rick Sklar with a Musicradio 77 WABC listener

https://musicradio77.com/Sklar.html

Rick was a marathon runner in his spare time and in June of 1992 he entered the hospital for minor foot surgery to repair a torn tendon in his left ankle. He never returned home. An unfortunate anesthesia complication took his life on June 22, 1992. He was 62 years old.

Whether the torn tendon was Sklar’s PTT, or his Achilles, that was a terribly lousy thing to happen to him. I continue to be careful with my PTT, in the hope that I can keep running without needing foot surgery.

He Goes “Ahhhhh….”

The temperature fell closer to 80 than to 90, I went running, then cooled off with a quick shower and poured a cold IPA from the craft brewery in town. Such a nice evening to relax and listen to music. Ahhh….

Prue once called Lia my “little girlfriend in Spain,” causing me to sputter and cough up my drink. Prue now lives in Spain herself. Both friendships came about from having this website.