Saturday, June 28, 2014

Investments

I'm the type of person who would invest in a horse leasing business a week before Henry Ford started mass production of the Model T.

I have about thousand DVDs, which I had bought at 15 to 20 bucks each.  I would buy two or three a week, every week for about 4 or 5 years.  Most of them I only watched once.  I quit buying them in 2007, so I don't have any current releases.  I had thought they may have depreciated, so I figured if I sold them, I should get 2 or 3 dollars a piece.  The other day I saw an ad for an online site that bought DVDs, so I thought I would check it out and see what my collection would be worth.  I grabbed a handful and entered the information.  Only about half was wanted, and for those they would pay 25 cents each.  There goes my retirement fund.  The discs, which I had spent 15 to 20 thousand dollars, will bring back a hefty 125 bucks. And that value will lower as time goes on.  Damn you, Blu-Ray!


Saturday, June 21, 2014

Coca-Cola Memory

I was telling Linda a story from my youth about a Coca-Cola vending machine. She had no idea the machine I was describing, so I had to go online and find a picture of it.  Here is the picture:


...and here is the story.
The year the St. Louis Gateway Arch was completed, my parents and I took a vacation to Missouri.  I had fake relatives there.  I had fake relatives everywhere.  I was raised to call the friends of my parents "aunt" or "uncle" depending on their gender.  And those old enough, I was instructed to call "gramma" or "grampa."  I could fill a cemetery with all the fake relatives I had.  That's if I were so inclined to dig them all up and rebury them in one place.

So in 1965, I found myself being introduced to another aunt and uncle who lived on the outskirts of St. Louis.  They owned a bottle factory.  They specialized in making brown glass bottles, the kind you find beer and certain whiskeys inside.  (I still have a couple of the half-gallon size bottles taking up room somewhere in my basement.)  I must admit, it was fascinating to watch molten glass being turned into bottles.  Then again, at that age, I was fascinated watching a swarm of ants devour a rotten apple.

Almost fifty years later, I cannot remember the names of that aunt and uncle, yet I remember their son, Ricky, who was a couple years older than I was.  Ricky taught me how to masturbate, but that's another story.  The story I was telling Linda was about Ricky taking me to the local gas station for a pop.  The gas station was down the street from the bottle factory.  My mother had given me a couple dimes to get pop for Ricky and myself.  So Ricky and I walked down to the gas station.  When we got there, on the side of the station was the pop machine.  It looked like the one pictured above.  Ricky asked me for the dimes and I gave them to him.  He put them in his pocket and asked what flavor pop I wanted.  I said Coke, naturally.  Ricky opened the top of the vending machine, took a bottle opener from his pocket, uncorked a Coca-Cola, and handed me a straw.

I leaned into the vending box and drank my coke through the straw, never once thinking I was doing anything wrong.  How was I to know Ricky never paid and intended on keeping the dimes for himself?  To this day I look back and wish that sneaky bastard would have split the loot with me.