Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Tom Kockau at Avoidable Contact writes about the 1970 Lincoln Continental:

Lincoln: Great luxury car manufacturer, until they told all people who don’t want an SUV to F themselves. But such is life. People want a certain kind of vehicle, and over-promoted incompetents torch their own castle. But I digress.

But once upon a time in a BETTER time, you could get a parade float-sized Continental in metallic turquoise, and steer the luxurious behemoth to your favorite supper club for the Old 96er, a baked potato the size of a football, and side salad with bleu cheese dressing, Herbert Tareyton smoldering in the mini Coleman cooler-sized ash tray.

And this very nice ‘70 Continental takes us back to those days of yore! I’ve always liked the 1970-71 Continental four doors. Some argue they are kind of plain for a Lincoln, a little too much Marquis, and not enough pizazz, but I always loved this style.

Ah, gentle reader–at one point, my father told me that would be my first car.

You see, when I was living with him whilst I attended the university, my great-grandmother, whom we called “Grams Great” and which is why I cannot apply that sobriquet to my grandmother even after she became a great grandmother in, what, 1997? since we called her Nana in our youth and she’s now become a Grams Great Great but not if my line, wow am I getting bad at these sentences with commas–to reiterate, my great-grandmother was still living independently in an apartment down not far from my old neighborhood and a block or two away from my brother’s first wife’s parents, and probably her, too, in 1993ish–ah, what? Oh yes, my great-grandmother, who lived independently, had one of those 1970s Lincoln Continentals, and when she came to his house one day, I was given the task of moving the car for some reason and parking it on the street. Ah, gentle reader. I was still a novice even though I probably had my license by that point, but I had a devil of a time parking it even at a patch of turf between driveways–not even parallel parking which I would get adept at two years later because I when I returned to Milwaukee, I stayed with friends where street parking was the only parking. On that summer day, though, I could not handle that much car. Every time I tried to park, I was three feet into the roadway. Three feet? Well, not close to the curb in any event. And my father said to me that that Lincoln would be my first car as he expected I would inherit it from her when she passed soon. Ah, but she was at his funeral but two years later.

It might even have been in that blue that Tom spotted.

It certainly triggered a memory. I like Tom’s Lust Object posts not so much because I have fond memories of the cars themselves, but I do remember a time when those long Cadillacs and Lincolns and (sometimes) Buicks were considered the height of luxury. Like something my godfather uncle would drive. And that I might never aspire to.

I mentioned that when the Hittler family moved out of the Siesta Manor Mobil(e) Home Park–and when their trailer was moved–a table was left behind which must have been stored under the trailer but forgotten. Of course, we grabbed it right away as we were still using a small apartment-sized table in our trailer.

Not long after we got it, we got a Welsh Corgi puppy from the woman who lived next to Pixie and Jimmy N whose dog had gotten pregnant from some random dog walking by. We did not take as good of care of Bandit as we should have–my mother worked all day, and we were at school, so a high-energy puppy had lots of time on his hands to gnaw on things and engage in all sorts of high-jinks even when chained in the small kitchen for the day. Oh, how wrong we did by that dog until my sainted mother took him to the shelter over an hour away and cried on the ride home. I would like to say I’m a better person now, but a guilt-inducing dream last night of a negligently injured cat indicates I fear I am not.

You know, I’m not sure when our family stopped using that table–probably when I was in high school, when my sainted mother would have had many opportunities to inherit another. Or perhaps it was after college, when we moved to the house my aunt owned in 1995 if she had a better table for us. I know that I got the Hittler table when I moved into my own apartment–I’d thrown it atop my possessions loaded in the cargo van I used to move, and when I had to brake hard, it slid forward and hit the whiplash-protective top of the driver’s seat.

When I got married, my beautiful wife had a nicer table which we used in our homes in Casinoport and in Old Trees, so it was taken apart and stored.

It makes appearances every decade or so when we have people over. In the basement of Old Trees, I set it up to have some friends over for games after our boy had gone to bed upstairs. At Nogglestead, we had a very populated Thanksgiving, probably fifteen years ago, when I set it up. But it’s been sitting in the garage since. For some reason, I stored the legs downstairs and the top in the garage until I cleaned out the store room–which I guess was just last year, but it’s been a long year.

But with the guests coming over, out it comes.

The kittens (who are 3, 3, and 2 years old now) wouldn’t mind if I kept it in the living room all year. Put together or incomplete or maybe made into a kitten jungle gym!

But after today, it will go back in the garage for another decade, maybe. Or until one of the boys moves out and needs a table which is likely to be far sooner than I really want.

At any rate, when I call it “The Hittler Table,” people hear Hitler. Which is appropriate because they are pronounced the same. But in the 1980s, Hitler was just a guy who lost a war and not the secular Devil he is now. How much of that was due to the safety of using Nazis as the only safe villains in the thrillers starting in the 1980s? Discuss.

For the second time this autumn, I found myself needing to repair a floor lamp at Nogglestead.

In the first instance, the parlor lamp which has a main upwards pointing light and a downwards pointing reading light failed as its single switch, up by the top lamp, bent or something and was touching something else which made the metal turn knob hot to the touch (not, fortunately, electrified). It took me a couple of trips to Lowes, which has a small section of basic wiring, sockets, and switches for lamps. I made this a little difficult on myself by not realizing the difference between a three-way socket and a three-terminal socket. One handles the bulbs that change the brightness, and the second is a socket whose switch controls the two different bulbs. Well, I learned something, but I bought a new floor lamp while the ordered three terminal socket came via that long-unused online store.

But I fixed the lamp anyway, which was nice because I am thinking about rearranging the living room upstairs after the holidays so I can read books while listening to records, and I planned to use the former parlor floor lamp there.

But! The floor lamp beside the reading chairs downstairs had an issue. Its plastic socket cover, which anchored the socket to the tube, broke. So the lamp and its heavy glass shade were almost freely swinging. My beautiful wife mentioned it was loose, but that probably meant it was only partially broken at that time, but one evening, it broke completely and was not attached any longer.

I took it apart and this was the assembly:

Basically, a hollow stud bolt which has threads at both ends and threads inside bolts into the tube. Another stud bolt goes into this and through the housing that holds the shade. Another nut and washer hold the housing tightly to the tube. And the socket housing fits onto the smaller stud bolt (and the socket itself goes into the plastic housing where the wire connections to the socket will be kept, hopefully, safe).

Except: The stud bolt does not fit into the commodity socket. It’s not standard. The bolt is too large.

Were it too small, I could have cheated with some tape on the threads. Actually, it looks like it has a set screw But to fix this, I would have to special order a different pair of stud bolts. If they’re available. If I could measure the sizes I would need, but I don’t have any calipers, and I checked Lowes’ Web site for pricing. And let’s just say that’s not in the cards for the nonce.

So most of it will go into recycling and whatnot. And apparently I have even more old lamp parts to collect in my garage.

Fortunately, though, I have light to read from the spare lamp I had from the parlor. Which did have a standard size bolt to connect it to the replacement socket.

What to expect at the Mayor’s Tree Lighting Holiday Show in Springfield:

The Mayor’s Tree Lighting Holiday Show, a long-standing tradition of Springfield’s holiday season for nearly two decades, returns to Park Central Square this year.

Yes, the guy who wrote the piece is apparently 24 years old. So almost 20 years would be long-standing to him.

Ah, gentle reader. My beautiful wife were for some reason talking about trains the other day–taking them to California or something–and I started running down a list of trains whose names I remembered.

When I was in college, lo, those many decades ago, I used to take the train from Milwaukee to St. Louis on holidays. The Hiawatha Service would take me from Milwaukee to Chicago, and I would take the Ann Rutledge from Chicago to Kirkwood (since renamed the Missouri Ridge Runner. It continued to Kansas City, and stopping in Kirkwood was more convenient for pickup in the afternoon going downtown. On Sunday mornings when I was returning north, I would catch the Texas Eagle coming out of Texas since it would get me to Chicago earlier.

And I remember the name of a couple of the other trains leaving Chicago: The Empire Builder heading to Seattle, the Empire service heading to New York, and the Sunset Limited heading to Los Angeles. If you believe the review of The Christmas Train last year, I apparently also remembered (then) the Capitol Limited and Southwest Chief.

You know, every once and again, after watching an old movie or reading a book like The Christmas Train, I think how neat it would be to take a train excursion, say from St. Louis to Chicago to Seattle to San Francisco and back. But, holy cats, a small compartment on the Empire Builder alone would be somewhere in the excess of $1000 or even $2000–and the other segments probably as much.

It’s a picturesque thought, but dayum, I’ll drive that first.

Holly has a problem with Amazon’s new LLM:

Just in time for their Black Friday deals, Amazon has rolled out the most annoying, aggressively anti-customer thing I’ve ever seen. If you aren’t seeing it today, you will soon.

Every search results in Rufus, their AI, opening a chat window with you that’s part of the browser window, so your pop-up blocker is no help. You cannot turn Rufus off from within Amazon. If you beg it to stop, it’ll tell you that your browser settings are wrong.

If you check those and try again, it’ll tell you that only Customer Service can help you.

If you contact Customer Service, as I did, they will suggest that you stop shopping on the website and only shop on your phone.

Really think about that.

I wouldn’t know about that. I haven’t placed an order on Amazon since the end of August. Which is likely when they ended the “family” Amazon Prime thing, where I could order under my beautiful wife’s Amazon Prime account. It had been in place for many years, and it made Amazon a default for when I needed something, often trifling but sometimes more expensive.

But that all ended. And like most streaming providers, they’re throwing ads into things you watch unless, I guess, you pay even extraer. So never mind all that. I can order on other Web sites, and I can go to department stores for what I need. Amazon has lost but a couple thousand dollars annually in revenue from me, and perhaps they’ll make it up in raising prices and adding fees to everyone else.

I guess I am lucky enough to be a cranky old man who lived before the Internet became, pardon my French, merde (know that I mispronounced it in my head while typing this, and pardon me). I don’t need Amazon. I don’t need Spotify. I don’t need Kindle. I got along fine before them, and I’m getting along fine without them.

Although I still set Spotify to play a radio station based on an artist some nights, I’ve again come to recognize that the options are limited and they tend to put artists whose “radio” stations I’ve asked for onto other radio stations I ask for–Miles Davis, for example, will have Chuck Mangione and Herb Alpert, for example. I’ve also come to remember that the playlists that they come up with are rather limited in scope and duration–so if I listen to it more than once, I am heavy into repeats. I mean, I can stream actual radio stations for free, and I have a pretty extensive media library. The tradeoff of selection for convenience is starting to tip back away from the convenience of Spotify.

At any rate, I guess I’m coming up on three months Amazon-free. No reason to think that will change any time soon. Even with Christmas coming up.

So my beautiful wife prefers toothbrushes with smaller heads on them, and we had or have a couple left from when my boys were boys, so she grabbed one of them when replacing her last brush.

It’s a little pseudo-crayon with a suction cup base.

So I have “hidden” it by sticking it onto a vertical surface around the sink, including putting it onto the mirror, when tidying up the basin area.

Of course, this will remain amusing to me for far longer than it will be for her–which might have been exactly once, yesterday.

This also might be what eventually breaks the camel’s back and why I might be rooming with Lileks in 2026.