A man, along with an accomplice, has been charged with a string of robberies, mostly of barbershops in Louisville.

Something tells me his list of places to rob didn’t include my barber:

 “We are the safest barber shop in town, cause everybody here has a conceal carry permit,”

There’s something really nice about a barbershop with deer and boar heads on the walls, a haircut finished up with hot lather and a straight razor, advertisements for gun manufacturers and shooting ranges next to the door and cash register, a display of gun belts and leather holsters, and knowing that each and every barber in the place is carrying something that goes bang.  Plus, every so often they give away a gun, which is always nice.

Researchers at the University of Alabama have reported that overzealous adults do a lot to ruin the experience of sports for children.  They suggest that kids need unstructured play at young ages, and shouldn’t specialize in one sport until age 15. 

They aren’t telling me much that I didn’t already know.  Little Bear wanted to play teeball in the spring of first grade, so his mother and I signed him up for the league near her home.  This was the year after a local team had won the Little League World Series, so every coach had championships in their eyes as they worked with their teams.*  The head coach and assistants on Little Bear’s team were absolute jerks. All but two of the kids on the team hadn’t done much but play catch before, but they were expecting them to know when to throw to first base.  The other two were coaches kids, who had obviously been worked aggressively since the time they could pick up a ball.  Little Bear was the smallest and youngest member of the team, and the coach was continually screaming at him from the dugout to pay attention and stop playing with the grass, or kicking up the dirt, or whatever it is that young boys like to do when they’re bored by the frenetic pace of teeball.  Little Bear wanted to quit after the third game, but I got him to stay through the entire six week season. That was the last time he wanted anything to do with sports.

Coaches and parents have to walk a fine line between pushing young kids to help them excel and being too harsh.  Kids in sports need to be taught discipline, but making 1st graders take a lap because they forget to throw the ball home when there’s a runner on third base is a bit too much.

I’ve also seen parents who put so much emphasis on sports in order to position their child for a scholarship and possibly a professional career.  That’s all well and good if a young man or lady is in high school, but some start the lectures in grade school.  Pressuring kids to perform and excel at a level so much above their age almost always backfires.  

Sports at that age should be about fun, learning, and exercise.  Adults who make it about winning and nothing else need to get a grip and join an adult league.

*This isn’t an exaggeration.  I overheard a meeting of several coaches where they discussed specific players of all ages that they wanted to groom in order to create a new superteam.

Dear NFL Players,

Look, you’re not soldiers, and I don’t expect you to stand at attention and render a hand salute when the national anthem is being played.  If you want to put your hand over your heart, or sing along, or just stand respectfully for a few minutes while the nice lady sings, that’s just great.

But do us all a favor:  While someone’s singing the Star Spangled Banner, please lay off with the head shaking, shrugging, rolling of the eyes, and mugging for the camera.  It’s just trashy, and I expect better of men who are being paid small/large fortunes to play a child’s game.  If your mama didn’t raise you right and you don’t know how to show a little respect, I am always available for a little remedial training.

Thank you,

Daddy J. Bear
Devoted Football Fan

This afternoon, we went over to Irish Woman’s aunt’s house to retrieve a piece of her mother and father’s estate.  You see, when they died in the late 1960’s, their household got spread across the extended family, and their bedroom furniture went to this particular aunt and uncle.  They have passed away now, and their kids asked Irish Woman if she’d like the furniture.

Since she became an adult, Irish Woman’s been able to find and reclaim a few things that belonged to her parents.  She’s found some jewelry, her mother’s wedding ring, the family china, a few pictures, and today she got back some of the furniture that her parents bought for each other when they got married.

It’s a fine old hardwood set, and it’s going to need a little TLC.  That being said, it’s in remarkable shape for being almost 50 years old.  We got it home, and set to work giving it a good scrub with Murphy’s Oil Soap and elbow grease.  Irish Woman remarked on how dark the finish was, when her memory of it was that it was lighter.  Then we started scrubbing.

Before:

 After:

That’s one of five bar towels we used to clean up the furniture, along with two buckets of Murphy’s and hot water.  This is the accumulated tar and ash from five decades of smoking in bed.  Another reason I don’t care for smoking – it gets into everything.  The more we scrubbed, the more we smelled Lucky Strikes and Parliaments.

We let the woodwork dry after cleaning it, then wiped it down with a healthy dose of lemon oil.  We’ll keep doing that for a while, but our long term plan is to strip it down to the bare wood and refinish it.

You don’t see craftsmanship like this anymore without paying through the nose for it.  These things are solid wood, and are held together with joinery and some screws.  No plywood, veneer, or particle board in this stuff.  Accordingly, it weighed a ton.

The good news is that if we take care of it, it will be there for Boo when we either decide to pass it on or we decide to start taking advantage of that time share I have on the Lake of Fire.

Here are the two dressers.  The bed is still disassembled, but it’s just as pretty.