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Date:         Thu, 5 Nov 1992 01:13:00 EST
From:         Blue eyes cryin' in the rain <TRAVEN@VMS.CIS.PITT.EDU>
Subject:      long weekend (2) -- property inspection
Comments: To: words-l@uga.cc.uga.EDU

Property inspection...

But first, a note on ballots.  My parents always get a 'sample ballot' in the
mail, showing all the names and their locations on the voting machine.  They
look like the ones you always see hanging up somewhere at the polling place,
but all Cherry Hill residents get copies of it.

So there are 6 columns on their ballot, and the line for President (actually
'Electors Pledged to:') has Clinton/Gore, Bush/Quayle, Gritz/??, and
Marrou/Lord in the first 4 columns, nothing in column 6, and about 10 pairs in
column 5.  Perot/Stockdale are just kinda stuck in the middle of that gaggle, a
couple of places above LaRouche/fellow nutcase.  You'd think Ross could have
bought himself a column of his own.  BTW, like my parents, I vote on a machine,
and always have (I think).

On Saturday, I'm at the mercy of my sister Janis and brother-in-law Mark.  They
have wheels and they have plans.  First stop is her rental property (once her
own home) in the Art Museum area of Philadelphia.  Aha, I think, she's writing
off this entire pleasure trip!  We park the car on 25th Street and walk the
narrow streets toward Meredith Street.  The street immediately before hers is
... Perot (per-OTT) Street.  I don't see any of Ross's signs there.

Janis's tiny rowhouse is in decent shape, but still requires many thousand
dollars of repairs -- the kitchen addition is settling and making wall cracks,
several windows dryrotted, one window at least an inch out of square, parquet
kitchen flooring coming loose, tile work needed in kitchen and bathroom, etc.
Somehow I think she'll still turn a hefty profit on it whenever she sells.

After spending a couple of hours going through the problems with the tenants,
and negotiating whether they'll do some of the work themselves, we're off to
Manayunk, Philly's newest trendy area, to shop for a bit.  I lived in Manayunk
in 1986-87, when it had just started emerging from obscurity.  Our block was
still mainly working stiffs and blue-collar ethnics then; I bet that's no
longer the case.

Mark and Janis have to buy some sort of gift for his uncle Harry, who they'll
be visiting tomorrow.  He's apparently very tough to buy for -- what do you get
for someone whose estate in Wayne (or is it St. Davids?) has Picasso and
Chagall originals hanging on the walls?  Eventually, they decide on some
knick-knack or another.  We also eat lunch at 'Le Bus,' which was once based on
a seedy street near Penn and actually *was* a bus that was one step up from the
ubiquitous lunch wagons of Philadelphia.  This place is just another bare-brick
fern bar, serving spinach-feta salad and sproutburgers.  The Dock Street Amber
is awfully good, though.

Since this used to be <my> neighborhood, I direct us toward the highway (PA
309) that will take us up to my brother's party this evening.  Not too shabby a
job, though I know I could have cut a few minutes off it if I'd remembered a
few more of the old cut-offs and shortcuts.  Speaking of cut-offs, we cross
over Wissahickon Creek on Walnut Lane, which has about 1.5 lanes in each
direction and then reaches a small traffic circle (New Englanders, think
'rotary').  A woman in a beemer comes up behind us *fast*, then hangs just off
our right rear bumper, in Mark's blind spot.  I inform him of her
obviously-impatient presence there.  When we reach the circle, we stay on
Walnut Lane, which is actually the first road leaving the circle.  The beemer
nut decides that this is the perfect time to pass us ON THE RIGHT and then
continue farther around the circle.  In other words, she circles around us and
then cuts right across in front of us before speeding away.  We all count our
blessings (I believe the final tally was 31) and drive on.

...in the next installment, we'll magically appear at my brother's place,
readying ourselves for the party.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
neal    traven@pittvms                  Bitnet          412-624-0097 (office)
        traven@vms.cis.pitt.edu         Internet        412-624-0110 (fax)
                    "You're only young once, but you can be immature forever."
                                          -- Larry Andersen, relief pitcher
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