The Case of the Purloined Pixels

Lexington, Ky. — It’s not uncommon to have a bad day or even a couple of bad days.

So for an example of how absolutely dreadful yesterday was, let’s start with the least bad thing that happened.

I was walking Lily, my 14-year-old English Springer Spaniel, on a crisp and pristine early morning walk.

My iPhone buzzed, and this message appeared:

“Oh mercy. A WCCK bomb just dropped. Can I call you?”

It was Sharon, my good friend. WCCK is Woman’s Club of Central Kentucky, a historic woman’s philanthropic group. I currently have the honor of serving as president, with Sharon as my vice president. We have lunches, raise money and shine a light on nonprofit organizations in our community. We dress up in our Sunday best and love on each other for several hours a month.

Trust me. We aren’t doing anything to deserve having a bomb dropped on us.

Turns out, the kickoff event we are hosting on Saturday, one that we planned so carefully and wanted so much to go smoothly, hit a snag. We had a caterer nailed down, but she called to say that she could have the food ready, no problem. Unfortunately, she could not find anyone who would agree to serve and clean up afterward. Not a single soul in her large electronic Rolodex. Not for time-and-a-half. Not for double time. Not for anything.

So are the days of post-COVID back to normal? Unable to find workers at any price is one of many challenges. No reason to be upset at our fantastic caterer. She is having the same problem hundreds of others have.

My friend Sharon assured me she had a plan. Knowing how capable she is, I felt concerned but not distraught. I told her to call me back if she needed a second set of hands. I finished my walk and pulled out my cell phone to open the garage door.

Nothing happened.

The Whirring Circle of Despair.

The Computer Whirring Circle of Despair kept spinning, but the door did not open.

Lily looked up at me like “Staff! Open the door!”

Then, the spinning stopped altogether and said: check your Wi-Fi service.

Egad! I am paying more than $150 a month for the highest high-speed internet that Kinetic/Windstream offers, and it can’t pull a signal through my garage door?

I turned the phone off and restarted it. The Circle of Despair reappeared.

Like the catering issue, this is not good news but no reason to fly into a frenzy. I just so happened to have a key hidden in my yard.

Hang on to that key that doesn’t fit any lock.

Retrieving the key, I confidently went to the front door, slid the key into the lock, and turned. Or rather tried to turn. The key stubbornly remained in its original position and would not budge left or right.

How could the key that I retrieved from a zip-lock bag labeled: Front Door Keys not fit our front door?

On a couple of occasions, we had our house re-keyed. Some people might just toss the old keys in the trash, but not us. No, we can’t just throw away that carefully molded nickel, copper and brass trinket.

To understand this, one must realize that we are in Kentucky. Our state song is My Old Kentucky Home. One of the lines in the song is: “By and by hard times come a knocking at the door . . .”

So even though the old keys no longer fit our front door, and never will, there is every possibility of some future use, such as opening a mystery door when hard times come a-knocking.

That’s why my wonderful husband gathered up all the old keys and placed them for safekeeping in the zip lock bag. Labeled them Front Door Keys. Knowing how my husband is, a smart person might have tried the key before hiding it, but no. I didn’t.

Don’t call us child, we call you.

I sent a text to my cleaning man, asking if he was nearby and could let me in the house. He was in an adjoining county and could not come.

By this time Lily had gotten tangled up in the garden flags in my front yard at least three times, so we went to the back yard on the outside chance that I left the back door unlocked. Which I didn’t.

The only other times I have been locked out of my house or my car, I called Grott the Lock Doc. They always came right out. But now they must be having the same hiring problem as our caterer, because I got a recorded message that said all their service people are busy and I could leave a message or call back later.

My next idea was to call the people who recently installed my new garage doors, but unfortunately, my Wi-Fi service took another turn for the worse and its faint signal went out altogether. I could not even look up the phone number.

I texted my aunt, who is recovering from COVID, and asked her if she could look it up, but she said, “I’m feeling well enough to drive your door key over to you.”

So, an hour and 15 minutes later, I was in my house, using a key that my aunt had wrapped in a hand sanitizer-soaked paper towel.

On Deck with a Tech.

No longer could I put off calling Kinetic. As much as I dreaded the hassle of tech support, I had to get to the bottom of my internet issue. Step one. Go on their internet site and spend 15 minutes on Chat Support. I started as Customer number 18 and it took at least 15 minutes to become promoted to Customer number 1. Second, spend another 30 minutes online with a tech support person, who after doing some checking to make sure I was who I said I was, asked me to go upstairs and turn off my modem, which I obediently did.

Did this person not know that if I turned off the modem I would be disconnected from the internet?

Back on the chat for another 15 minutes, only to find out I am going to be advanced to a Tier 2 technician, who can’t talk on chat. She has to be called on the phone.

Another ten minutes waiting for the Tier 2 to come online. She runs tests. She asked me to describe my equipment. She asks which cables are plugged in where. She wants me to turn on and turn off anything that is running.

Finally, there is a deep sigh followed by silence.

“Let me ask you something,” she said. “What devices do you have running right now on your Wi-Fi service?”

“Well I have my iPhone in my hand right now and it’s running on Wi-Fi,” I said. “And of course, I have my laptop, my Hydro, my booster/route and my garage door.”

Another dramatic pause.

“OK, that is weird because I am looking at your connection. It is running perfectly, but it is not connecting to any device, including your cell phone.”

That’s when she asked me to look at my Settings.

“Look under Wi-Fi and tell me what it says you are connected to,” she said.

I told her.

Corpus delicti.

“Judy, I’m sorry to tell you but that’s not your Wi-Fi.”

She gave me the name and password of my real Wi-Fi and suddenly I was flying off the face of the Internet.

The mystery remains.

Whose service have I been pilfering? I’ve been using this Wi-Fi address for years!

Stay tuned. The Kinetic technician will be on-site Tuesday, as we unravel the caper of the purloined ping and the absconded-with access point.

Going to school

By Linda Craiger House

Parents would line up in their cars to pick up their children at Erica’s school. The Lower School Headmaster had the children gathered and would yell, “ERICA HOUSE TO THE YELLOW LINE!” when she recognized a parent in the car queue. She was picked up by me in my Volkswagon Rabbit, her Dad’s secretary in her smoke-filled car, my boyfriend in his red Ferrari, or my boyfriend in his police cruiser.

By great contrast, I rode the yellow school bus to my rural elementary school, a few miles from home. Part of the time, the bus driver was an Old Regular Baptist minister (the same one who married Lennie and me in 1973, under the plum trees on my parents’ property). He would drive on the wrong side of the road when going around steep curves, loudly blasting the horn. I prayed not to encounter another vehicle on one of these curves.

For high school, all of the rural children rode a yellow school bus to Whitesburg High School. That is, all of the county students except the ones of us who lived on Cumberland River, the other side of Pine Mountain from the high school. We rode two Cumberland Coaches the fifteen or so miles to Whitesburg. They were passenger buses, similar to Greyhounds, with cloth seats and high seatbacks. They came from Cumberland, a small town in Harlan County. We lived closer to Cumberland than Whitesburg, but had to go to school in Letcher County.

I remember being terrified many times while going over that mountain. I feared that the bus would roll off the road and over the mountain, where we would all perish. There were a few guard rails, but they looked too flimsy to support a heavy bus. There were no guard rails at all in most places.

We had some colorful bus drivers. One had a lone, unusually long tooth. We called him Hambone, but I don’t know whether he told us that was his name, or if some of the students named him that. Once he pulled the bus over to the side of the road at the top of the mountain, the only spot wide enough to pull over. Smoking on the bus was forbidden. Hambone stood up and faced us, saying, “I have clear evidence that they’s smoking on this bus.” No kidding. There was such a haze of smoke in the back of the bus that it was hard to see through it. “Now I want to know who’s smoking,” he said. No one answered and we went on.

That was not the only illicit activity on the bus. The freshmen boys were taken to the back of the bus on their first day of high school by the upperclassmen. Some of the boys would hold the boy down while another boy pulled up his shirt and slapped him repeatedly. He was then told that he was “a member of the red belly club.” My brother, Jimmy, told me that the prank got even worse when a boy was dragged to the back of the bus, his pants pulled down, and a girl was invited back to see. I won’t even say what the girl supposedly did to the poor boy. I was very glad not to be a boy on that bus, and I sat as close to the front as I could.

Another bus driver, Clinton, liked his whiskey and carried a bottle with him. Once when the roads were particularly icy and we were scared, we begged him to take us home. He said that if we would take up enough money to buy him a pint, he would take us home and then call the school from the bus garage to say the roads were too slippery to get us there. We dug into our pockets for our 20 cents for lunch money and handed it over to him. Once the bus slid into a ditch and the students walked off the mountain.

Jimmy was two years behind me in school. I had already graduated when he told me of being on the bus when Clinton became agitated when cars would be lined up behind the slow bus, trying to pass. He would speed up when they got to a place to pass, to keep them from passing. When a motorist dared to pass him, Clinton pulled out his pistol and fired shots at the car. The buses continued to be in disrepair and would break down, stranding the students. When the students were finally fed up, they went to the principal and demanded safer conditions. In Jimmy’s last year of high school, he got there by a yellow school bus

Gremlins and Monsters at the Basement Door

“Hi, Mommy!” echoed through the hall as I pushed open the unlocked front door in my normal cheery manner. “Mommy, I’m home,” I tried lustily, but only silence greeted me. In a house with four children, silence isn’t really normal. I was surprised but undaunted, continuing to cry out as I moved toward the kitchen.

“Swingch,” the door to the refrigerator said to me as I peeked to see about a snack. Glass of Kool-Aid in hand, I pressed on, peering around the corner into the butler’s pantry to see if mother just hadn’t heard me because she was busy putting things up after unloading the dishwasher.

The silence was deafening. I mustered myself for the trek to the third floor. Surely she would be there cleaning the bathroom or putting the boys’ clothes away. As I passed the living room and put my empty glass down on the hall table, I spied the Endust and rag left hurriedly on the game table. “She’s got to be here,” I mumbled half to myself, half to the first step as I grabbed the railing to mount the rising staircase.

Reaching the first landing, my tiny eyes glanced out the back window to the empty clothesline below. No Mommy there. My little feet began to pump. Heart pounded. Moving swiftly now, I covered the second floor. Not in the sewing room, or the bathroom! Folding clothes in the sitting room? No! “Mommy!” I fairly screamed, wild-eyed and beginning to feel the fear as it rose in my throat with my voice’s high pitch.

Now, the final peak – to the third floor! Clutching the rail, my pint-sized hands, still chubby from leftover baby fat swung me up and around the curve in the stairs. The light poured in through the round window at the rooftop and guided me up the darkened ascent. “Chirp,” Petey’s strong sound pushed its way into my churning thoughts. The pretty little parakeet in Wakeley’s room had heard me come up the stairs and figured it was time for his afternoon free flight. Not to be.

Tears began to well up and sting my eyes. I looked behind me with that eerie feeling someone was there and jumped when the winding stairs were empty. “Oh, no,” I groaned, knowing what would come next.

I would have to face that glowing monster in the basement. Even with the lights on, he loomed large in my imagination and breathed fire through his mouth! Slowly, I made my way down the stairs to the dreaded door in the kitchen. My trips to that netherworld were always filled with uneasiness. Sometimes Mommy would ask me to venture down there for clothes left on the indoor line or a hammer from Daddy’s workbench, and always the pounding heart accompanied me as I quietly crept down the stairs hoping not to wake the sleeping gargoyle in the corner. But somehow it usually sensed my fear and clicked on producing a muffled scream from its victim.

I steeled myself as the door approached, knowing that Mommy would be down there cheerfully loading the washer. But the images of the monster stopped me. The rush of blood in my head masked my hearing, and the only sound was the loud roar of blood coursing through my veins. I knew it would hear the beating of my heart and release its gremlins that forever lay in wait behind its ugly bulging form. Once down there, I would have to avoid their little tricks by quickly jerking this way and that because only when they were seen would they disappear!

The thought of those empty coal bins peering out at me around the corners of the glowing monster kept me from turning the knob more quickly. There was always something in there. The ax murderer, the boogie man, the devil. I just knew it and never dared enter them to see what really was left in their cavernous expanse. No choice remaining, I quietly rotated the crystal knob, being sure to get the latch totally clear of its home, so the gremlins wouldn’t hear the door open. Then my little palm pulled against the weight of the awesome door, opening a tiny sliver to peer into. It was dark!

No light at the bottom of the stairs! Relieved at not having to check further, I quickly slammed the door against the disappearing gremlins who had mounted the staircase behind it.

I reeled away from the door with the sudden realization that I was totally alone for the very first time. Carried by the fear that enveloped me, I quickly, but quietly, ran, eyes full, toward the couch in the living room. Its velvet arms reached up and comforted me all scrunched up in a little ball in the corner.

A few minutes later, I heard, “Hullo? Anybody here?” through the kitchen door. It was Mommy carrying groceries. “I need help, here,” she called out, and I stumbled into the room with eyes spilling over, too relieved and scared to explain because I’ve never been sure that Mommies understand about gremlins at the door.

My Love Affair with the Written Word

By Janice Austin

I am in my Mother’s lap. She is reading in a soft voice. Some words I do not understand, but I feel their magic. I am transported to another time and place with fantasy creatures. This is when I believe the love affair started, the association of the written word with love and affection.

An image of being in my grandparent’s library appears. There were books on all walls. They seem to embrace me with warmth and feelings of love and safety. It is though I am wrapped in a cocoon of that warmth.

I soon learn that a diary was a safe place to express feelings. Many years of diaries and journals present a kaleidoscope of my life. It is as though my life becomes a slide show.

They include:

Riding a bus in Birmingham, Alabama and becoming aware of “colored to the back of the bus” and the drinking fountains saying “colored only”.

A birthday party in Knoxville, Tennessee.

An operetta in junior high school.

A new co-education in high school (going from Louisville Girls High): wearing uniforms, marching to class, writing poetry and then Louisville Manual High with cheerleading and boyfriends.

The University of Kentucky in the 50’s: Coaches Bear Bryant in football, Adolph Rupp in basketball.

Meeting Van Cliburn the famous pianist while working at the Louisville Orchestra.

Seeing Pappy Van Winkle walking the grounds at Stitzel Weller Distillery.

Years later, when I experienced the trauma of divorce, loss of income and home, I knew I needed to write about my challenges in order to forgive and heal. Starting Over is that therapeutic tool. I am finally free. My soul has been nourished and I can move forward with renewed optimism.

Now that I have reached the aging cycle, I find reading and writing more essential. They entertain, explain and sustain. They nourish and expand my soul. The journey continues. I am content in my world.

Janice Austin is a past president of the Woman’s Club of Central Kentucky. She has a BSW and MSW from the University of Kentucky and started her career as a Geriatric Social Worker at age 60. Now retired, she says her claim to fame are four children, four grandchildren, and her toy poodle Ella. Her memoir entitled Starting Over can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Over-Ms-Janice-Austin/dp/1500209880/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Janice+Austin&qid=1637515241&sr=8-2

WCCK Women’s Write

Sisters in their 70s embark on the write of a lifetime

In less than 24 months Linda George and her sister Kathy Steele published Bourbon and Benjamins, to rave reviews . . .

“Thankfully, we could laugh at the pitfalls of trying to write a book for the first time at our age . . .”

By Linda George

Age has always been just a number for my sister, Kathy, and me. For the most part it still is. But I will have to admit that driving at night has become a bit problematic. 

My sister is only 15 months younger than I and throughout the years we have remained close, even if we lived 700 hundred miles apart. Even when we were living the busiest part of our lives, we didn’t lose that indefinable sibling connection.

So, it wasn’t a real surprise to our families that at ages 70 and 71 we undertook a joint project that neither of us knew anything about. 

According to the 2020 Profile of Older Americans, in 2019, (the most recent year for which data are available) the population aged 65 and older numbered 54.1 million. We older Americans represent only 16% of the population. From what I can glean from census figures, about 4-5% of folks drop off the bar graphs between 65 and 70. Had anyone advised my sister and me that we were just statistically significant to be alive, I doubt we would have embarked on our journey.

But anyone who doesn’t believe ignorance is bliss has never tried to write a book, let alone with a co-author, when each are 70+ years old. But that’s what we did. 

Many years ago, my sister Kathy and I started writing about two fictitious sisters who would end up living together. With less than 60 pages of musing under our belt, our hectic lives as working mothers got in the way. Living 700 miles part and being unable to spend a lot of time together, we laid it aside. 

Fast forward twenty years. Amazingly, we each had kept our early work. Kathy suggested that since we were both retired and the kids were grown, we should dust off the old yarn and look at it again. Kathy even volunteered to run it through a blender and see what survived. 

What survived was the original idea and a modest outline. All of a sudden, we were on our way to writing something that would resemble a book. The original idea revolved around two very offbeat 50-something sisters, their quirky cohorts and their day-to-day exploits. The sisters love their Bourbon cocktails and their Benjamin$. When the sisters begin to realize that they are blowing through an inheritance from their mother, their father passes and leaves them yet another inheritance. The problem is that he didn’t tell them what it was or where it was. The sisters set about to find their inheritance unaware that a psychopathic mystery man feels that it is rightfully his and will do anything to get his hands on it.

One of the traits that both Kathy and I have shared throughout our lives is an off-beat sense of exaggerated humor. We’ll often be talking on the phone about something as mundane and exhausting as sitting in the waiting room of a dealership’s garage waiting for an oil change and the wheels of one of our cars to be rotated and end up weaving a story about the experience that at least we find hilarious. I mean really. You are there forever. The pale green walls, the overflowing trash can with empty Big Red containers, the only television tuned to reruns of “Bear Grylls Running Wild”, and a vending machine with snacks that are on the “forgeddaboutit” list of every diet known to man. It begs the question, what would our two sisters do? Actually, we’ve written a short story about it. It passes the time.

However, I would be shot as a liar if I said this adventure was all laughs. The endless revisions, typing a couple of hundred pages with arthritic fingers, and agreeing on where the story was going required our share of cocktails, concession, and concurrence. 

Thankfully, we could laugh at the pitfalls of trying to write a book for the first time at our age. For instance, at some point between our summer school typing class and a half century later, it became incorrect to space twice between sentences. Seriously? People care about that? Apparently so. That’s still difficult to remember and a bummer to correct. 

 But we learned early on, that you don’t ask questions if you don’t want to hear the answer. Particularly difficult some older people are comments like “that’s just not done.”  Our first two critiques, very early on, pretty much decimated our first chapter. I thought it was okay to start the chapter with dialogue. Evidently not. This kind of news sticks with you. It followed me into the grocery. I stood in aisle of books and office supplies, opening paperback after paperback and reading the first couple of pages. Sure enough, none of the books started with dialogue. Does anyone think outside the box anymore, I wondered? In the end we scuttled the opening dialogue as we felt we weren’t in a position to challenge the establishment. We’d have to beat them up with our canes and then run. We weren’t feeling either option.

When we finally submitted our manuscript to a real editor, she asked what are plans for the manuscript were. We were truthful. We didn’t know. We asked our editor to let us know if we should just put a staple in the corner and will it to our children or if she thought it had legs. Much to our surprise, our editor encouraged us to give it go—after making more revisions and clarifying a few points. 

We were hooked. In less than 24 months we were published. Now the really hard part begins—marketing book one while writing book two. Something else we’ve never done. But to paraphrase the poor man in Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail, “we aren’t dead yet.” 

*****

Bourbon and Benjamins by Kathy Steele and Linda George can be purchased at Amazon.com, where it has received an average of five-star reviews from verified buyers. https://www.amazon.com/Bourbon-Benjamins-Kat-Denney-Archives/dp/B096TN9QD3/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8