they say ohioans cuss more than any one

Arbor Day Sale is Over

I astounded myself with the realism i put into my carvings . The muskrats ate away my pond bank and collapsed my fish carving into the water and guess what he ended belly up floating like a real fish.

      Had a pretty good Arbor Day sale and moved a few trees and I’m sure they will be planted and in turn part of what I made will go back into buying more trees for next year. Also I have plenty of trees yet to plant. All in time as I can. Anyone lacking anything to do and still want to do your part is welcome to stop and I will take you planting. I can’t afford to pay you anything but trees, but even that isn’t all bad. I have some perennials also, and would throw in a few flowering pots if you are seriously interested.

     Well going to jump subjects and touch into a new area of things that one may say WTF to. One is pop trucks and beer trucks. So who in their right mind would think you can take a 40 ft. box semi with a 6 ft. fold down tailgate should be taken into a mini mart and service the beer cooler without affecting the traffic patterns and the irritabilities of the same patrons they are there to serve. It is insane to think that beer or soft drink deliveries should be handled at the front door of the local gas station. Heck nine times out of ten if you thought about robbing one of those places you might make it away from the counter with the money but sure enough, as you are running out the door, you would run smack dab into a pop truck delivering their sticky sweet obesity inducing GMO sugar and chemical soda water. It seems that no matter the time of day I can always run into one these freightliners sporting their decals acting like roadblocks to make me want to just use my debit card at the pump rather than have to do the dance with the pop guy trying to maneuver his wares through the sliding doors.

     When I see them bring these behemoths into a gas station and block pumps and people and generally causing havoc, it makes me wonder why this is necessary.  I am sure it is due to cost cutting and of course they will blame it on the drivers and the union. It used to be not that long ago, that one truck would take care of maybe ten customers a day and would only carry enough product to service just those clients at a trip, maybe taking time return to restock before going back out again for an afternoon trip. Some bean counter after being prodded by management suggested cutting wages as a means of increasing profit, when the vice president of sales for North America complained about loss of profits from product and complained to the division mangers and wanted answers as to how to resolve the problem. A meeting was called and a memo was written and the end result was to get a bigger truck that could hold more products and instead of making a trip back to the warehouse. He could haul more products and cover more area, and in return they could cut their labor cost in half thus saving the company substantially and increase profit. Nowhere in this scenario was the public or the actual consumer consulted to see how they would feel about marathon trips maneuvering around these mega obstacles to the public, and in particular handicapped people who must dodge traffic and be able to look around blind corners to see if you are going to be run over by a frustrated motorist who just spent 15 minutes trying to back his car out around this vehicle to just get on his way. It is just a recipe for disaster someday.

 Of course when faced with a need to fish my carving out I employed a nearby fishing pole and pretty soon had him snagged safely on shore. Brother in law Mike gladly offered to take a pic of me with my first wood fish of the season. 

      And the worst part is they depend on us to buy their product and we and we don’t bitch, at least I don’t say too much , I just quit drinking pop and beer and still I have little use for these trucks now as I ever did. Just wish everybody else would send these guys a message. Either get a smaller truck or bigger back door to the Hindu palace to drag all that product into. Give us a break. We know what a Coke truck or a Budweiser truck looks like so quit parking the damn thing in front of the front door I am tired of taking my life in my hands just to go inside and buy your damn product if I so wanted to. Sorry you pissed me off and I quit for my own reasons but I would like to think it was for this alone.

    Next up is the Fed up w ex and UPS trucks. You pay for delivery to your house and have no control over who carries the package, this is problem one. If you think that since it is Fed ex and you are paying for door step delivery, then forget it as now I seems that Fed ex and the postal system have an agreement whereas the Fed ex guys deliver to post office, any parcels that need delivered to rural residents, and the post office who are already reluctant to deliver any packages having thought they had  trained all customers years ago that in many cases you need to drive to the post office and pick up your package, as the little pink card will usually have a reason why they can’t drive back your lane or use both feet to try and cram your parcel into an undersized post office post box. Rather than get out of their car or take the time to actually take the mail out of the way other than normal. You paid good money for doorstep delivery and it ends up in a post office where you have to drive 6 miles to get to, to find out that they went to lunch and will be back anytime they feel like and you must wait, or that you arrived 2 minutes after they had closed long before their 8 hour shift was up. So instead of costing you just delivery it now costs two round trips and initial delivery costs to finally recover a package that will be available to pick up as long as it isn’t a government holiday or a weekend.  Wtf.

 A bear similar to this one I carved the other day will be offered as the door prize to my open house of the greenhouse this season on May 23, 2015 beginning at 10 and ending ? this is the third annual open house for Yockey Farms. This will be the only public carving i will do this year. 

      Now if you have a choice as most of the time you don’t, you might choose UPS. They are great for door step delivery but it usually costs you. And if you are lucky to have a concrete driveway you can guarantee that UPS will not take a chance and drive in your driveway, instead they will park in the middle of the road unexpectedly and hit the 4 ways and damn the torpedoes grab the package and start hurriedly running for your front door. Leaving a string of motorists stranded on the roadway trying to negotiate how to avoid that big damn brown box left sitting there in the road with its flashers flashing. If you pass the damn brown bus, and pull across the center line you are responsible for any accident caused. This is wrong. I have seen times where these guys wouldn’t even try to pull on to the berm of the road and just didn’t care about how people were supposed to get around. Usually at this point I just wait till the driver disembarks the comfort of his brown box and salute with an upraised middle finger on one hand, while the other hand lays on the horn. I just want to make sure that he and the neighbors understand my appreciation for his efforts at impeding my ability to roam freely in this capitalistic world where the profits and liability of a company are more important than the safety of the consumers who use their service. Wtf.

      It is my understanding that you cannot impede a public right of way anytime except for an emergency. I doubt if Mrs. Brown’s back brace is a medical emergency and if it was, wouldn’t an ambulance be a better choice to call than a UPS truck. Chances are if her back is bad it happened years ago, and at the least days ago.  After multiple deliveries to the same residence you would think it would give them plenty of time to figure out how to deliver the package the safest way besides putting everyone else’s’ life at stake. Some of these houses are on blind corners or on hills where traffic is congested, and who wants to sit there and wait on Mrs. Brown to answer the door and quiet scruffy the dog who hates the UPS driver almost as much as me, down. Maybe Fed up w ex would have been better for delivery as they would have left it at the post office and Mrs. Brown and Scruffy would have to wait till Monday to fetch her new back brace. Hope she doesn’t have to follow any UPS trucks down the road or stop at the Minit Mart to grab a soda from Hajib the Indian proprietor of the convenience store that isn’t so convenient with the Coke truck sitting in front. She will need to watch her step as she comes out of the door and has to step out with a bottle of Coke in one hand and Scruffy in the other, from the front of the truck to make sure that someone doesn’t run her over in a hurry to get to the post office before noon to pick up their package left their by Fed up w ex. Don’t you just love capitalism. Wtf.