Category: Life with Pratts

Meet Joe Motocross

Meet Joe Motocross

Monte Schulz pointed out here on DogRat last year, that his brother Craig — and only Craig — was a dirt bike rider. Once again I refer you to the Coffee Lane portion of the documentary “Good Ol’ Charles Schulz,” where you can see both Craig and Monte.

Craig has an article in the October ’08 Racer X Illustrated, and he tells about riding dirt bikes.

The sound would travel for miles, and like a mating call, it would summon my buddies to head on over to my place to practice. My parents must have received plenty of phone calls, but I never heard of any complaints.

I’m struck by the fact there is something of a similarity in the contrast between Monte and his brother Craig, and me with my brother Jeff, who also rode dirt bikes. This picture of Craig could almost be one of my brother from that same period of time. Maybe I can get him to send one so you can see what I mean.

Craig Schulz

The Explosive Sounds of Jackson Paine

There is precious little about humorist Jackson Paine available on the Internet. In fact, there’s nothing at all. Everything that I know about him is on the back of his 1961 LP, “The Explosive Sounds of Jackson Paine: Humor in its Newest Form.”

Jackson Paine liner notes

My dad got this record when he bought a stereo in 1963, a big GE tabletop console. The turntable had an automatic changer that swung down on a hinge, and it included stereo FM, which was quite new at the time. In fact, my father first brought home a GE stereo radio without a record player, but exchanged it. A wise move.

The Explosive Sounds of Jackson Paine

“The Explosive Sounds of Jackson Paine” is one part comedy record, one part sound effects record, and one part stereo demonstration record. I have very fond memories of listening to it when I was a kid, along with the Audio Fidelity Stereo Spectacular record that I featured over a year ago.

I think a lot of the humor holds up pretty well. It’s a real artifact of its time, created by a New York ad man working in the JFK era, as depicted in Mad Men. Each side is about ten minutes long.

Side 1
[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Jan/JacksonPaine1.mp3|titles=The Explosive Sounds of Jackson Paine: Side 1]

Side 2
[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Jan/JacksonPaine2.mp3|titles=The Explosive Sounds of Jackson Paine: Side 2]

Warning! Ice Cream

Bismo’s son has a humor book of warning labels that has some stickers in it. He put one of them on a carton of ice cream in our fridge.

Ice Cream Carton

Not a bad idea, actually, warning against “brain freeze.” Some people call it an “ice cream headache.” When I was growing up our family called it a “cold fever,” and I still prefer that description.

Maytag Doesn’t Suck After All

It’s always something. Our washing machine has suddenly started to leak. I was hoping it was one of the hoses, but when I popped open the back I could see it’s leaking where the transmission couples with the tub. It’s only seven years old. So much for Maytag reliability! But at least it picked a good time to die. This weekend there’s no sales tax in Massachusetts. See you at Sears.

And oh, by the way, we still don’t have our replacement Bose Wave. It’s in transit from Arizona, and according to the UPS tracking number will be here mid-week.

2023 Update: The replacement Bose Wave is still working well, as are the Maytag washer and dryer that were purchased when this blog post was written.

Music & Politics In Western Massachusetts

Last Sunday we were at Tanglewood, in Lenox, MA, where the Boston Symphony Orchestra plays every summer. It was an all Mozart program, and well attended, although the age of the audience skewed decidedly 40 and up.

While waiting in the “wine line” during intermission, I happened to stand next to political consultant and former presidential adviser David Gergen. I overheard him discussing — what else? — politics.