The lawn mower suddenly went kaput, and after spending too much time figuring out the problem, I’m deciding on a new one. The furnace needed major surgery, which is now done. And I had to straighten out a permit problem with the town for the contractor I hired to replace the deck.
Category: Life with Pratts
Pratt Forced to Apologize for Speaking Truth About Trump!
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A federal judge in Iowa admitted wrongdoing and publicly apologized for comments ridiculing former President Donald Trump for issuing a series of pardons to well-connected Republican officials.
Senior U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt made the remarks during a phone interview with The Associated Press in December, saying: “It’s not surprising a criminal like Trump pardons other criminals.”
https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-2df8728cfafe4624c1e21ef44622e756
Comics Books, The Inflation Canary
This is adapted from a letter I wrote to my buddy Denro that, upon review, seemed suitable for a blog post:
If you look up the causes of accelerated inflation in the 70’s, conservative economists always point to Nixon ending the gold standard for currency exchange. They completely ignore our generation coming of age, which I’m certain was, along with the OPEC oil crisis, a main driver of prices. We saw the trend in our comic books!
Comics had stayed 10-cents for over 20 years, and were 12-cents for most of the Sixties. But then in ’69 they went to 15-cents, and only two years later there was the jump to 48-pages for a quarter, before the rapid reversal to 32-pages for 20-cents. The cover date of that first big jump? August, 1971, so the issues were on sale in May-June, exactly 50 years ago. As fans we saw the immediate effect of inflation in one of the smallest segments of the American economy. When did Nixon end the gold standard for exchange rates? August, 1971. Stupidly, I had failed to see that connection while writing my senior paper for Economics on Nixon’s wage and price controls!
I see another factor behind 70’s inflation, with the high sustained wages earned by unionized factory workers at the same time the peak baby boomers were flooding the job market. As I like to point out, the Polka and Portuguese music shows at the radio station on Sundays were paid for by guys who worked union jobs at the Spalding plant in Chicopee. With me having the FCC-mandated license to operate the transmitter, they sat at the mic and played records while their families and friends sat in the talk show studio. The Polish people headed out while the Portuguese people came in, then followed by the stock car racing guys.
The car show was all talk, so I was in the control room at the Gates console, engineering and handling the calls. The guy who ran the car show owned a garage with a custom shop. (You should imagine John Milner instead of Curt Henderson being at Wolfman Jack’s station in American Graffiti.) Half of the ads during the car show were self-promotion for the guy’s business, so I have to assume he wasn’t running a chop shop. 😉
During the Polka and Portuguese shows I was checking the AP wire and reading Billboard, or in the production studio working on commercials, while keeping an ear on the over-the-air monitor, listening for trouble. The guys solicited their own advertisers, and if that money didn’t cover the station’s fee they had to pay the difference out of their own pockets. Sometimes I’d see a new RV in the parking lot, and I’d hear about their vacation houses on Lake Winnipesaukee. I’m sure they were earning more than my $3/hour. Those tennis balls and basketballs aren’t made by union labor in Chicopee anymore, and those lakefront properties now have million-dollar vacation homes owned by executive class buyers.
Between Two Ears
Behind the high school version of me in the picture above was a pair of Realistic MC-1000 speakers from Radio Shack. MC-1000’s are now a butt of jokes in audio circles, but only my steady girlfriend had more of my undivided attention than my stereo system did at that time.
Consumer Reports gave the MC-1000 a Best Buy rating. I bought a pair with money earned working at a restaurant (following my night working as a carny). At the time they cost $100. That’s equivalent to $600 today, which will still buy a very good pair of speakers.
When I quit the restaurant at the end of high school I was earning $1.85/hour, or about $11.50 today. The summer after graduation I worked for the town’s school system at the incredible rate of $3.00/hour, or $18 when adjusted for inflation. I could easily have been killed by an accident that happened while doing unsupervised and dangerous work for that job, but I escaped unscathed.
Even with the money spent on girlfriends, comic books and related items, and the stereo and records for it, I managed to save $2500 for college. That’s $15,000 in today’s money, which wouldn’t get anyone past their freshman year at even a public 4-year college.
P.S. to mih — We met 50 years ago this month. You were the one who told me I should get a job.
Uncle Sam Loves Me
Does the federal government play April Fool jokes? Because I have received a second $1400 economic stimulus deposit from the U.S. Treasury.
Follow-up: I have confirmed that the money, automatically deposited in my name, is mine. Every other family member has received their $1400.
It Was Time
Four years ago today, after 36 years with the same company, and 40 years since graduating from college, I became unemployed by choice. The founder of the company once told me that I had a job for as long as I wanted it. When I told my boss why I was quitting, to assume Durable Power of Attorney for my father, he offered me a 3-month leave-of-absence. For a variety of reasons, both practical and personal, I no longer wanted the job.
After my father’s stroke, for several months I commuted between Boston and Phoenix every other week, with no end in sight. I knew that being free from my job for the following three months wouldn’t be enough, and that definitely proved to be true. Disregarding every other consideration, I had always liked the idea of retiring 40 years after graduating from college. When I told my father that his stroke made it easy for me to act upon that idea, he laughed and said, “Glad to have helped!” That was one of the few lighthearted moments we were able to share in those difficult ten months between the stroke and Dad’s passing.
Dying with your boots on should be by choice, and not by necessity. Thanks to the way the founder set up the retirement plan, I had the money to quit.