A Joke at my own Expense

General Discussion
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When I pulled the car in the yard, my wife shut the metal gate behind me. She said, “Look!” And, there was a piece of metal lying on the ground beside the gate. It was 1-5/8 inches long, a moderately shiny gray color, except a short rod-like piece sticking out at one end. And, on one side, a broken spot-weld.

I thought, “Oh, crud! A piece fell off my purty car!”

I got out my trusty old canvas WWII shelter half that I use for working under the car. (I have had that thing and its mate since around 1962.) And, I crawled under looking for anything gray. Negative.

I took pictures of it, thinking to post it here. Whatever came off the car must be replaced before my annual return to the USA.

As I was preparing the posting, a thought came to me. I trotted out to see if there is any place on the gate where that part might fall off.

The gate is the same exact color of gray. I started inspecting the gate for a part like that.

The gate is in two sections, specially designed by the man who makes our metal items. The modern equivalent of a blacksmith.

The longest section has a small pedestrian gate at one end. There are three hinge thingies for that small gate.

Oops! There are only two hinges for the small gate, and a hole where the spot weld for the third hinge was.

I think I found where the part came from. :smiley: :smiley:

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Oops! I was going to put it on the General Discussion thread and failed to so so. Sorry.

3

You reminded me of the Fibber McGee and Molly sitcom on the radio back in the 1940s and 1950s. In one episode, Molly was driving the car and one of her friends was riding along. They heard a terrible clunk and found a big round object behind the car. Molly and her friend got the object in the trunk. The car seemed to run o.k. so they went on about their business. When Molly got the car home and told Fibber, he examined the object and decided that it was the flywheel. Molly didn’t think so, because she said if the flywheel wasn’t working, there would have been flies in the car and there weren’t any. Fibber proceeds to take the car apart to put this big round object back where it belongs. He really gets himself in hot water because not only can he not figure out where the part belongs, but he can’t figure out how to put the car back together. A policeman then comes along and tells poor Fibber McGee to give the city back its,manhole cover.

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@irlandes, moved it for you…

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Thanks, cdaquilla

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For the younger set, that radio show was very funny at the time. And, you could listen and do other things at the same time. The show had regular ‘events’. One of them involved Fibber’s hall closet.

He’d be looking for something and finally announce, “I think it’s in the hall closet.”

And, Molly would shriek with fear. “Look out, Fibber!!!”

And, then it would sound like someone upended a large dump truck full of Yugo car parts in the street.

A few years ago, you could download those old radio shows from the URL of a radio station in Alaska. I downloaded and listened to several hundred shows of GUNSMOKE.

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I grew up hearing about old radio shows and my parents calling the “junk” drawer the Fibber McGee drawer.

I like listening to a golden oldies radio station when driving around town. Certain songs were roller skating music, others homework music.

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Another episode of Fibber McGee and Molly that I thought was really funny was that somehow McGee’s neighbor, Gildersleeve gets McGee to bet that McGee can’t wash and wax a car blindfolded. McGee takes the bet and works all day at washing and waxing what he thinks is his own car. When McGee is finished, he has won the bet, but finds that Gildersleeve has switched the cars around and,McGee finds he.has,washed,and waxed Gildersleeve’s car. Gildersleeve thinks he has pulled aa fast one, but McGee gets the last laugh. He looks at the can and says to Molly “Where did this can come from?”. Molly.said, " It was on the shelf in the garage, dear". McGee then said, “Oh my gosh, that isn’t wax,it’s paint remover”. The show ends with Gildersleeve frantically washing his own car hoping that the paint remover will be rendered ineffective while Fibber confesses to Molly that it was really wax and not paint remover after all.

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Bad! :smiley:

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If I can digresss away from cars for a moment, some of the recurring gags on Fibber McGee and Molly would be lost on today’s generation…Where Fibber and Molly lived, the community didn’t have dial service. Instead, when you picked up the handset, the operator would come on and you would give her the telephone number of the party you wished to call. McGee would pick up the phone, start to give the telephone number and then interrupt himself and say, “Oh, is that you, Mert? How’s every little thing, Mert?”. I’ll bet today’s generation doesn’t know that we used to go through an operator when we made a phone call. In fact,I’ll bet some have never heard of a land line.

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@irlandes. In a trivial way I can slightly relate to your predicament although without the hassle of checking underneath the car. Several years ago I found a strange rectangle of slightly flexible thick black vinyl about the size of a dollar bill inside my car. I spent considerable time and effort searching the car interior, twisting into contortions to explore the underside of the dash and front seats, etc. trying to find its origin. Turned out the 50 year old car trash basket had one segment of a side flap finally break off. A few months later the same thing happened to the flap on the other side. I must have picked up and moved that little trash container a dozen times during the search before noticing the shortened flap.

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@Marnet. Good one, thanks. In the late 70’s, the national magazine for Mensa had an article by a member in the regular column IF I’M SO SMART WHY DID i?

She had the trap go out in her kitchen sink, and so put a pail under it until the plumber arrived. When it got full, she picked it up, and poured it in the sink. :smiley: :smiley:

I am old, Triedaq. So old that my dad still drove a Model-A until I was 9 years old. I not only knew about the operator switchboard. At Ft. Lewis in 1964 I was switchboard operator on field phones used by the 32nd Artillery. The bad news was I had to keep it active all night. The good news was I got to be in the switchboard hut instead of out in the rain and cold.

And, when the buzzer went off, I had to say, “…Sir!!” just in case it might be an officer.

In 1960 our community changed over to dial phone. As President of our FFA chapter I was invited to the festivities. So, I am old. :smiley:

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This thread reminds me of the old joke about a couple of guys driving down a really bad road in a rusted, falling apart pickup. After one particularly bad pothole there is a horrible noise and the passenger turns around to see something big and metal just coming to a rest behind them. He says to the driver, “What was that! Is that important?” The driver shrugs and says: “We’re still going aren’t we?”

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@irlandes I attended a consolidated country school with grades 1-12. The school’s only telephone was crank operated phone, and the school was even on a party line. The switchboard for the phone company was in a house in small town about 2 miles from the school. FFA was really big at the school. However, my family didn’t live on a farm, so I couldn’t be in FFA. This made it difficult to go steady with a girl. When afellow had a steady girl, she wore his FFA jacket. It didn’t count that I worked for farmers–I had to live on a farm to be in FFA.

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I never thought about that, Triedaq. Everyone in FFA when I was, lived on a farm, but I don’t know if any ‘townies’ wanted to. I do know each student was required to have a farm project. I had 100 laying hens.

But, of course a student could rent from a farmer.

So, it sounds like someone was a bit arbitrary.

How times have changed. I can’t imagine girls today doing deep breathing over a future farmer.

Most of my FFA class did not end up on the farm. More lads than farms.

I was a electronic technician/Senior diagnostician in a high tech factory. A brother, ditto. Another brother moved into management. Another farmed, but had to work nights at a gas station for 25 years to buy the family food. There were other former FFA members in that factory.

Our voc-ag teacher taught us everything a farmer needed, including automotive and tractor mechanics, though very simple.

He taught us to think, and to learn always. I started Linux after I retired.

Now, at 73, I am teaching programming, simple C++ and Java stuff, to my two best English students, after they finished the basic Laubach course, to keep them motivated to learn more English. I think I mentioned that the next week or so I will be covering OBD-II for the 12 year old girl and her 20 year old sister. The elder is already studying programming at the local tech school, but in Spanish.

They will be on their stomachs plugging in the scanners in my Sienna.

i saw a simple OBD-II reader on Amazon for under $20, and am thinking of buying one and making a present of it if it actually works.

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@irlandes. In the school I attended, all boys in 7th and 8th grade, including me, had to take agriculture. There were several us who didn’t live on farms–it made no difference. I don’t live on a farm today, yet the agriculture courses were some of the most valuable courses I have ever taken.

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Wow! That is fascinating! I thought that, too, but assumed it was our excellent teacher who made it that way. He told us often his goal was to teach us to think because anything he taught us was going to be obsolete in a few years anyway. So, we had to be able to access the latest information and apply it to our farms.

That does seem like dirty pool, to make you take agriculture but not be in FFA.

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Well, we must admit that that school definitely prepared you for college. :smiley:

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@irlandes I think the most important thing that rural school did for me was to help me develop a work ethic. At the time I was there, a city school corporation didn’t have enough space for all its students, so the school I attended accepted three bus loads from the city school. Our little school needed the money from the bigger school district. We were sent kids from the roughest part of the bigger district. These kids came from single parent homes long before it was fashionable to come from such a home. Some didn’t have lunch money–they were fed anyway. These kids worked like the rest of us. Our country school was overcrowded, but we made it work because we needed the money. None of the elementary teachers I had had a college degree–they taught on two year certificates. Yet these teachers were well read and we learned from them. I don’t think I was deprived.

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“his goal was to teach us to think because anything he taught us was going to be obsolete in a few years anyway”

And to think of all that time spent posting debits and credits from ledger and journal entries and checking my math . . . and made obsolete by the computer. Maybe I should see if I can get my money back. I wonder if ole Dr. Egger ever made the transition to computer or just gave up? I’ve still got a pad of 13 column ledger paper though and just used one last week. The old die hard.