getting plowed

  • by Drew

On the relatively recent subject of plows and plow drivers – they’re nuts, right? I mean, as a generalization. They’re pretty much totally wacko. Yeah, I know there are a few normal ones out there, but the majority of guys who plow must be bat-poop insane.

This is excluding the guys who plow with back hoes and other heavy machines. They are often in a whole other class. And, of course, anybody who puts a plow on the front of a four wheeler atv. Half of those guys are cowboys, the other half are in the market for tweed sport coats and mac memory.

No, I’m talking about the standard winter sight of rusted out pickup trucks with even more rusted plows, flying out of driveways with no heed for oncoming traffic. They slide around and do donuts in the middle of the road. They bounce off trees, and in large parking lots, sometimes off each other.

I’ve know a few guys who’ve done heavy winter plowing and man, their attitude borders on a death wish. Seriously. I even knew this one guy who wouldn’t plow with any less than a half pint of vodka in him. Often more. He said it kept him loose when there were impacts.

“Impacts?” I asked. “You mean when you hit a pile of snow?”

He just laughed at that, shaking his head at my naivete.

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar

  • by Drew

The exciting adventures of the man with the action packed expense account, America’s fabulous freelance insurance investigator, yours truly, Johnny Dollar.

Expense account submitted by special investgator Johnny Dollar. Following is an account of expenses incurred during my investigation of the chunky affairs matter.

I shaved, showered, put on a clear shirt and tie and spent item one, $1.35 on a cab to Teddy Lightweight’s office.

Item 2, $27 for a cup of Starbucks coffee and a copy of The Big Barista Picks Sambas to Get Caffeinated With on compact disc.

Item 3, $18 for the best eye cream in Hartford, CT to mask my hollow, sleepless eyes.

Item 4, $1 toll for the Kingston Bridge toll back to this side of the river, the side of the river where she lives. The lady in question. The cold, calm and calculating female who is invariably more deadly than the male.

In the parking lot of the Grocery Store I realized the need for items 5 and 6, $18 for a 12 pack of Twisted Tea and $4 for a metal nail file, just right for a lady’s purse.

Item 7, $3.50 for the generic brand adhesive bandages I used to stop the bleeding after shotgunning half a dozen malt beverages and stabbing myself blind. Don’t judge me. If you saw those behemoths making out on the dropped bed of that rusted out Ford pickup. All that writhing flesh. The guy with a plumber crack large enough to warm one of my 12 ounce tasty bevvies. The she-beast with parachute-sized bikini panties showing, a tramp stamp larger than my head.

Item 8, $45 emergency room copay. Hey, it’s a good thing I’m an insurance investigator and actually have health coverage.

What, am I the only person left who listens to Old Time Radio?

Chunky and the Cukes

  • by Drew

Se we ran into the grocery store for a gallon of milk and a few other things. I was walking with the boys, one on each hand while Mom had the baby in a shopping cart and was doing the real work. And that’s when I witnessed it, something truly gross.

Believe me when I tell you, I have a cast iron stomach most of the time. It is fairly difficult to gross me out. I can handle a lot. But some things are just…unecessary. I will set the scene.

Two oversized girls. Very oversized. One with the undersized hoodie and jeans on a butt so large it is collapsing back in on itself in a sort of unholy flattening. The other was a sassy chunker. She had a shearling lined suede coat that affected a look of trim tailoring, though it did more of a Hindenburg than an hourglass. She was overly made up and walked with a hand up, pinky out. Like Nathan Lane in the Bird Cage pretending to be feminine. Very much like that.

Anyway, Large Subject A, in the hoodie, was talking on her cell phone, a bit over enthusiastic for the Stop and Shop produce section. She was handling the cucumbers, perhaps looking for just the right one. She was also leaning over the cucumbers. Leaning against them, or even into them, really. So much so that when she drew back, her belly pulled a half dozen off the pile. They fell, unnoticed, to the floor.

So the cell phone call is getting heated and there seems to be some big flirting going on (no pun intended that time) judging by the volume and cucumber proximity. Then she did it. She took the two cucumbers she held in one meaty fist and put them under her arm. Right in the stinky pit, like a Hogan’s Heroes Nazi with a riding crop. She switched phone hands, wrote something down, giggled with her friend, and then de-pitted the cukes and returned them to the pile.

Back into the fray, my friends. From that clammy spot under the (larger than my thigh) arm, and right back to the pile. Yummy yummy yummy.

Now I’m trying not to sound reactionary here. I know most people are going to peel their cucumbers. And anyway, they’re so over waxed by the factory farmers that it’s like a Yankee Candle unscented veggie force field. And I know that’s not like they were Avo Cigars or unwrapped bendy straws or whatever, but its a grocery store, not your kitchen with the fridge door hanging open. Can I please appeal to the better taste of all people, large and small, short and tall – please please please do not carry the produce in your armpit. It’s just not right.

Swashbuckling Sommelier

  • by Drew

Saw another confusing vanity plate tonight.

RR CORKS

I couldn’t figure it out. Railroad Corks? Maybe a guy who digs vino when he plays with his Lionel trains? Or how about Double R Corks…who knows what that could mean. Double D and we’d have something to talk about but two Rs? Russian River Corks? Somebody who likes the region, maybe a Chardonnay guy?

Then I thought maybe it was RR like Arrr, like pirate speak. Maybe it’s a real life buccaneer who likes to kick back with some California Cab when his ship is in its home port. Like, you better be checking for life insurance quotes when you see this guy in your sailboat rear view mirror. Maybe when he’s done plundering the high seas, he gets his Kenny G on in his bonded leather rocker-recliner with a big glass of red and a skull and crossbones grin.

On the Road

  • by Drew

I want a van. I feel like I’ve always wanted a van. And not some lame ass soccer mom mini van. Calling such a contraption a van should be illegal. I’m talking a cargo van with the back seat pulled out to make room for gear. I think it’s the almost-rcok star in me that loves the 4 wheel road asphalt camels with covered windows.

I’m fascinated by RVs and always hesitate when I get one of those four color brochures in the mail. I can just see myself tooling around in a motorhome, a guitar in the back with a couple bags of beef jerky, a jug of cheap red, and a notebook or two.

Of course, someone else can take care of emptying the chemical toilet tank.

Rock and roll, baby.

Untitled

  • by Drew

I may not know how to beat a traffic ticket.
I may not know how to reduce belly fat.
I may not know how to be a famous rock star.
I may not know how to distill my own bourbon.
I may not know how to drive stick.
I may not know how to finish semi-fictionalized 30-something year old’s pseudo-memoir.
I may not know how to draw comic book heroes.
I may not know how to code php.
I may not know how to start my chainsaw in the winter.

But I tell you, I do know how to make a killer sauce. You need some kick ass spaghetti? Like, spaghetti that makes a fantastic bottle of red like Trefethen or BR Cohn work to keep up with? I’ve got you covered.

Servicing the Masses

  • by Drew

I’m still a little worked up from that last post. As someone who has spent much of his life working for smaller operations, the assumptions and expectations of certain customers can range from unwieldy to complete unrealistic. I mean, in a small retail operation like the liquor store I was talking about, advanced POS systems are often out of the question. Not only are the upfront costs substantial and prohibitive, but with a business that has a constantly rotating inventory, the overhead involved in keeping it up to date is impractical.

I mean, I know how nice it is to be able to scan things in Target to see if they’re on sale yet and such, but in a small store, can’t you just ask somebody? I mean, in New York it is already a law that everything has to be clearly marked with either a shelf sign or a price tag on the bottle. A few years ago I read about a Wal Mart that was fined heavily for putting out merchandise without properly tagging it. So, isn’t that enough?

The customer is always…

  • by Drew

Right? I dont’ know if I believe that. I mean, the customer should always be shown respect. I might even go so far as to say the customer should always be shown patience and tolerance, even when the customer is completely wrong.

I was in a store the other day and witnessed a truly painful interaction between a store employee and her customer. Let me rephrase that. I witnessed an interaction between a patient, young woman and the brain dead simpleton who should have been shopping for the best wrinkle creams but instead was buying from the 4 for $20 wine rack with only three bottles in hand.

First of all, the clerk politely pointed out that it was a 4 for $20 promotion, that some of the wines in the sale went for $7.99 or $8.99 on their own. I thought this was a good bit of info, as someone who tends to buy booze in bulk.

The customer made a nasty reply of the “if I wanted 4 I would have picked 4” variety.

The clerk did not seem taken aback at all, a surprise since I felt like I should be apologizing for the customer’s remark. She then said that “technically” the customer was supposed to buy 4 bottles to get the sale price, but she could take care of it.

The customer said something like “whatever” in her ongoing posture of hostility, suggesting that money was no object. Now I had seen her shopping a few minutes earlier and was pretty sure she had intentionally gone for the cheap stuff, but clearly she felt it was important to affect an air that said “money is no object.”

The clerk started entering the prices on the cash register and the woman gave her a glare. “Why don’t you just scan them in.” The clerk explained that they do not have that sort of system. The customer shook her head at this clear failure.

Here’s where it gets funny. When the clerk told her the total, which was $16 and change, the woman got pissy again. “I thought I was getting the deal,” she snapped.

The clerk finally seemed to be losing her balance. She indicated that she did not understand and the customer gave her a math lesson. “4 for 20 is 5 bucks a bottle, right? So 3 should be $15. You said you were giving me the deal price.”

“Yes,” the clerk said. “But there’s tax.”

Then there was a diatribe on tax and how liquor should not be taxed because it’s not taxed in other states and New York prices are already ridiculous blah blah blah.

Obviously I have a lot of reasons to dislike this customer. She was browbeating the clerk, she feigned not caring about price when clearly it was among her primary motivations, she disparaged the shop and its processes and systems. And she was really mean looking too.

Everyday Experts

  • by Drew

I am annoyed. Big surprise, but it is so.

I am annoyed by these people who have had some success in one, focused area, and decide they are experts in all things. For example, there is this wine guy who did a wine webcast years ago. He was the first one to do it, and he had some modicum of personality, and even some of the big retailers were linking to him for a while. Of course, then they realized that he is a retailer himself, in fact his family is a major retailing presence and much of what he would push was merchandise he, himself, needed to move.

This is marketing. This is capitalism at its finest…or worst. Same thing, really, right? And that is not what annoys me. The dude was trying to sell wine, and in so doing maybe got some more people interested in wine. This is cool. Personally, I think it was more an act of self-promotion and self-interest than true love of wine and wishing to spread the grapey love, but…that’s not what annoys.

What really toasts my bun to a deep, smoky charcoal is that this guy is now writing book about marketing and using social media and blah blah blah. Dude, you are a wine guy who had some success, mostly because you were in the right place at the right time. Be happy about that, and if you want to tell that story, fine. If you want to talk about how you marketed a very specific product in a very specific way, that’s cool. But when you start talking smack about marketing in general, media in general…seriously, shut the hell up.

I have table and chair set on my deck. I selected it from several different table and chair sets that I saw in a variety of stores. I am reasonably well-informed about my outdoor table and chair set but I’m not going to right a book about outdoor cushions. That would just be wrong.

Powerless

  • by Drew

So, the Subaru… We didn’t drive it for a couple of days. Then one morning, we turned the key in the ignition and nothing happened. Shouldn’t have been a surprise, I guess, since the dome light was off and absolutely nothing on the dashboard lit up for the effort. Dead battery you say? You say wrong.

Nope, I tried a jump and while it git the instrument panel to temporarily light up, the engine wouldn’t turn over. So I called teh dealership and since it is well within warranty, he said we need to get it towed in. I already screwed around with the fuse box looking for something blown with no luck, but I asked if there wasn’t something he could suggest. No luck. Get it towed.

So I called our roadside assistance number, the roadside assistance you get as part of the warranty, and after being hung up on twice by the computer, I was told that call volume was extreme. So it snowed for three days, big deal, right? The anticipated wait this morning was more than 8 hours. Actually, I think more than 8 hours is the longest delay the computer can offer, so for all I know it is more like two weeks.

Since we have another car – the unsinkable Toyota Corolla – I’m not too worried and figured I would wait a day for the call volume to subside rather than listen to the muzak light sounds of the 70s for “more than 8 hours” waiting for the next available operator.

But what if I was on the road, in the cold, with my kids, and a fading cell phone battery that I couldn’t charge because the power system in my car is completely dead. What then Subaru? It’s not like I’m looking for something complicated here like rv repair or jet turbine adjustment or help pairing wine with dinner. I just want a freakin’ tow.

© 2026 Drew Bancroft. All rights reserved. Totally.