Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• I walked out of my office yesterday only to find I had a flat tire. What a beat down. What a momentary feeling of helplessness. Now before I get dog-piled, let me tell you, I am a master tire changer. I bet I did it five times in three years alone in the 1990s when I lived on a lake road near Chico that apparently was full of nails.
• So I get the spare and jack out, glance at the owner's manual and get to work. But, for those who know me, I'm a white long sleeved, starched shirt and neck tie guy. It is August in Texas. So I sheepishly strip down to my t-shirt and dress slacks as I glance around. I'm embarrassed. That's just me.
• Back to tire changing. One thing I hadn't counted on: I'm not near as strong as I was in the 1990s. I can't get all those lug nuts off to save my life. In fact, I can only get one to budge. And another thought crossed my mind: If I continue to pull on that little lug wrench with all my might, I've got this sneaking suspicion that a disc in my back will explode. I had back problems five years ago but none since then. You have that feeling sometimes that something is about to go wrong. I had that feeling.  So then I do something I hate to do -- call for help.
• But I can't find local lawyer and friend Mike Carrillo's cell phone number to save my life, but I am able to send an email to his wife on Facebook who shockingly responds in a matter of seconds. I don't know why I thought about Facebook which I never really use other than it dawned on me she posts a ton of pics of her new grandbaby all the time. (Cute kid, by the way.)
• I also realized something else: I ask for help so rarely that if I ever contact someone and tell them I "need help", it's like the cavalry comes running. "He'll be there in a few minutes," she writes (along with an "LOL").  The quick response may be because Mike Carrillo is my friend or because his wife told him, "Barry needs help so get your butt over there." Either explanation, at that moment, was acceptable to me.
• Oh, and for you guys that don't think I know what I'm doing when it comes to tire changing, I wrote her, "If he knows what a cheater bar is, tell him to bring one." Ever try to get a lug nut off with a 12 inch lug wrench?
• As I wait in the parking lot in both the heat and my slacks and t-shirt, the Chairman of the Wise County Republican Party drives by and hits the brakes. He smiles. He has evaluated the situation. "You gonna blog about this?" The fact that he stops and smiles comes as no surprise to those that know him and me. We are good friends because we aren't crazy. We talk for a second, he mentions a funny moment from a recent vacation, tells me he is hurt that I didn't call him before Carrillo, we laugh, and he makes sure I'm OK. It dawns on me that with all the hatred in the comments section on this here blog, real life is a much nicer place to reside in. He was on his way to a funeral visitation but would have driven me home or to Timbuktu if I had asked. Irony.
• People mock lawyers. People mock small towns. I'm thankful for both at that moment.
• Carrillo shows up within minutes, yells at me briefly for the overall condition of my tires, tells me he left to help me in the middle of his haircut, laughs at the factory jack I've pulled out of the trunk ("What crappy equipment. Sheesh. Freakin' Dodge," he says), and then proceeds to try and get the lug nuts off. Much to my manhood's security's delight, he can't get the first one off and says, "Those suckers are on tight." Thank god.
• He then pulls out a can of WD-40 and a rubber hammer. "Stand back," he says. I comply. He then proceeds to replicate a member of a NASCAR pit crew and has the tire changed in a matter of minutes. (It wasn't a cheater bar, but it did the trick. I learned something about the use of a rubber hammer. I place that away in my mind.)
• "Get those tires replaced. Don't be an idiot. And carry a can of WD-40." And he is on his way. It was like The Wolf from Pulp Fiction had shown up. I stand there in my T-shirt, dress slacks, and well oiled leather shoes looking ridiculous. I'm suddenly like Samuel Jackson or John Travolta before the water hose treatment. 
• But before he runs off, I thank him profusely. I am a big fan of the expression of gratitude. I try to use it, uh, liberally.
• And now on to our regularly scheduled program ...
• Ticket fans: The Hammer via Twitter says he is working on his Masters Degree.
• I can't remember which issue it is, but Texas Monthly had an excerpt of a new book about the Charles Whitman UT shooting recently. It was from the perspective of the victims on the ground and it was chilling.
• Which reminds me, the three minutes of Full Metal Jacket where Private Pyle kills his sergeant, then blows his brains out and then the film cuts to the "Me love you long time" scene is an insane three minutes. (In an earlier scene the sergeant questions the squad about Whitman and proudly points out that "He was a Marine!")
• "blank" was at the top of the blog? A person in the comments pointed that out yesterday. I never noticed because I rarely go to the home page of this thing. I had to actually jack with the html to make it go away and it felt like cutting the red wire or the white wire of a bomb. I didn't know what I was doing and was afraid it would explode.
• Still obsessed with old Index issues. Ran across this one from early 1963 where the editor had a hot opinion about James Meredith entering Ole Miss (I'm not criticizing him, it was, after all over fifty years ago. His attitude was the norm.) But what does the prepatory phrase, "Now we've been eligible to smoke Viceroys for years" mean? That's driving me crazy. There also appears to be a reference to Bobby Kennedy causing damage to a presumably Bridgeport resident's car in Colorado. Love this stuff.
• There's an article in today's Messenger about a police "surge" which should scare you if you read between the lines. 
• I'm intentionally not posting a newspaper cover because of the cover of the New York Post. They may have crossed the line. Iraq is in chaos. ISIS is a bunch of barbarians. But that's what you get when you destabilize the most unstable area of the world.