respublica

New week, new tally 2019

Near Wentzville on I-70 EB a mattress on the road. And, over the weekend, a bent up ladder on 364 at Highway K in O'Fallon.

Mattresses 97

Ladders 93

The things you find

While going through old boxes in the basement over the weekend, I came across this gem. No idea of the date but we figure it has to have been taken when Dale was with the Lutheran Hour. If you don't know who these people are, you may be too young.

Name his wife, I'm pretty sure many of us recognize the man immediately, but I had a memory slump trying to remember her name.

Looking for a day trip

You might want to consider heading east on 70 to the small town of Casey, Illinois, a few miles from the Indiana border. We stopped there a year ago when we took our grandsons out to DC and it was the most fun road stop ever. Now the Chicago Tribune travel writers have discovered this town which markets itself as having the "Worlds Biggest everything". And it's true.

The biggest things include: a mailbox you can actually climb into, the world’s largest pitchfork, world’s largest golf tee, world’s largest wooden shoes, world’s largest rocking chair, wind chime, pencil, and more.  Tomorrow officials from the Guinness Book of World Records will be in Casey to certify the world’s largest key, golf club, gavel, twizzle spoon, teeter-totter and barbershop pole.

Our boys got a real kick out of this town and really liked the old time candy store.

 

Food trucks...sort of

The tractor trailer sagas continue as we read about several of these overly big trucks flipping over and spilling their contents. It seems various food products are carried in them a lot of the time. In the past couple of weeks here in St. Louis: September 11-several tons of chocolate were spilled onto 255 during the evening rush, September 25-a load of hot dogs fell on I-70 requiring snow plows to clean up the mess, and this morning in Pennsylvania 130,000 eggs fell out of a tractor trailer when the load shifted. This is a huge mess today out there.

All of this to rant about again, is that these trucks are too tall, too wide and too long which makes them susceptible to falling over on curves or wet roads. Of course if they were able to slow down at those places they might not fall over. There are probably many more stories of food spillage on the highways, but this is just what I've found in the past couple of days.

Alright now

We are at the point in our culture where everything we've known seems to be wrong. Today we learn that using your hand to make the traditional OK sign has now been officially added to a civil rights group's data base of hate symbols. Supposedly it now represents white supremacy.

People who aren't bothered by this new rendering of the sign are moving on to using the thumbs up. Pretty soon we will be locking ourselves in our homes so that we won't take a chance going out in public and doing something normally innocuous that now offends someone.

Tally

It's been hard to concentrate recently so I've been off my game paying attention to things. So here is a catch up on the tally.

Mattresses 96

Ladders 92

All of the faculty houses on campus are having a complete renovation and by complete, I mean complete. For months our street has had vehicles used by every construction/landscape trade imaginable. We've taken to getting up really early and moving our cars out of the driveway so that we can get out during the day. Otherwise half our driveway is blocked or if there is some way to back out, there are trucks just across from the driveway. Over the years I've been known to back into other cars so lesson learned.

Baseball needs another rule

Baseball has rules for everything, I'd guess they even have a rule about where a player can spit. They also have records for every imaginable thing. But they obviously don't have a rule for allowing a game go on for 19 innings without a break or a suspension til the next day.

Everyone is reporting and talking about the Cardinals game with the Arizona Diamondbacks that went 19 innings last night. That is more than a doubleheader without the normal break between games. If nothing else there should be a rule that a game can't go longer than a normal two games. That was just crazy and even worse the team felt Yadi should catch all of those innings. How is going to be able to stand up much less walk for days?

Now they have a day game which just as weirdly will only be broadcast on YouTube!

Plant based meat

I've missed this and I'm not sorry. It seems in the food world there is such as thing as a "plant based meat craze". The Nestle company is in the process of rolling out their new "Awesome Burger" a plant-based burger designed to cook, look and taste like real meat. According to this story, the Awesome Burger is a big deal because it marks a turning point for fake meat.

"Nestlé is not the only major food company angling for a piece of the plant-based pie. Kellogg plans to launch a line of meat substitutes called Incogmeato under its Morningstar Farms brand next year."

Incogmeato.. too funny.  I just don't know what to make of this, will it be a food type we'll all be eating in the coming years or is this another trend that will disappear?

The first day of fall

I know every food and drink business seems to consider Labor Day the beginning of Fall since they start trotting out pumpkin in everything. I am not a pumpkin fan except in pie. Ads have red and gold autumn leaves bordering things at the same time. But...Today is the real beginning of Fall. It's the Autumnal Equinox when light and dark are equal in hours of the day. 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of dark. It's the halfway point between our longest and shortest days of the year, light-wise. We'll have just a bit more than 12 hours of daylight today. Then it's all down hill to getting darker earlier which if you don't like it dark so early in the evening then you're not thrilled. I actually do like it getting dark earlier in the evening, it settles people down more. 

I get a huge kick out of saying the word Autumnal, it's kind of a funny sounding word.