Your Car as a Billboard

Sitting at a stoplight today, the dealer sticker on the back of the car in front of me caught my attention and I reminisced. I peeled the dealer sticker off of the first new car that I ever bought as soon as I got home. I had to take the car back to the dealer a few times for warranty related work.

Each time that it went into the shop they put a new dealer sticker on. After about the third time, I insisted on some mutual expectations. It was simple to me. It’s my car and the dealer needed to keep their trash stickers off it. The only free advertisement that they got out of me was when I told people why I have to keep coming back for warranty work and what poor service that I get. If they gave me good service, then I’d tell about that, too, but it never happened.

Every car that I've bought from a dealer since then has either had the sticker removed before I left the dealership or, at my instruction, they didn't put one on to start with. One salesman got a little fussy about it. I told him that, if he wanted to draw up a contract to compensate me for carrying a billboard for the dealership, then I would consider the sticker. Otherwise, take if off.

Recently, I had this idea that we might be missing an opportunity. Instead of a dealer sticker, there could be a little device that operates on the same principle as changing billboards but mounted on the back of your car. It would be very simple.

The device would be 6-12 inches long and in the shape of an eight-sided cylinder that is embedded into the rear of your car showing only one flat side of the cylinder at a time. You could sell advertising to eight different businesses and the device would rotate to a new message every time that you stop and then turn again at 30 second intervals.  To save your battery it would operate only with the ignition on.

Do the math! Eight advertisements as $50 per month would be $400. You could almost make your car payment with that. A person could even go with two rotaries, on each side of the car, and double their money. If somebody doesn't pay up on time for their advertisement then you just peel their ad off of the cylinder and replace it with PLACE YOUR AD HERE along with your phone number.

Better yet, instead of a rotating tumbler, the device could be a programmable LED display with 8-12 ads in the program. Then you’d never be running a blank ad. Regardless of how many ads that you have, you could program your own ad to run every fourth or fifth time.

I was even thinking that you could have a little bit of fun with the impatient horn blowers who pseudo-curse you with their horn. You could use one of the ad spaces for a curse-back. It could read something like, SCREW YOU BACK, HORN BLOWER! Of course, then you’d have to have a button within reach of the driver to override the auto rotation and turn to your curse message. You might even have a flashing back-light on the lettering be certain that the jerk sees the message.

Thinking in terms of higher technology, you can’t open a screen on the internet without an ad popping up somewhere. When someone clicks on the ad then the advertiser is required to pay the agent who posted the ad for those views of the ads. The agent, in turn, pays a small commission to the site owner who allowed the ad.

Sometimes they’re slick about getting you to open the ad. They set it where you will mouse over it and “pop” the ad opens with a pass of your mouse and you have to knock it down before going on. We can’t be too far from technology that activates an ad on an internet browser just by looking at it.

If that can be done then it even seems possible to replace tumbler or LED ad idea with pop-up ads on the back of your car. Imagine pulling up behind another car at a stoplight and, when you look at the rear of the car, a 20 second ad runs for one of the local eateries, a car dealership or a sale at one of the local retailers. What would make this even better is that, by retina identification, it could be designed to interface with your thoughts and only flash up ads for retailers, services and Items that you've previously shown an interest in or are thinking about at the time.

FaceBook and Google are already doing this to social media zombies, so why not do it to motorists who typically drive with their heads up their butt anyway? Think about it for moment. How many times have you and your spouse had a conversation about where to eat that went something like this after a shopping day.

“Do you want to go out to eat?”

“Sure where do you want to go.”

“I don’t care. You decide.”

“It doesn’t matter. Wherever you want to go is fine with me.”

Right from the start, both persons had some idea of where they would like to eat but wouldn't say it. The conversation goes on until it escalates into an argument and two angry people go home to a cold bologna sandwich. Now rerun the same scenario but with a pop-up ad, complete with a viewer brain interface.

“Do you want to go out to eat?”

Right away both of you thinking of two or three places to eat and the interface can pick up a common location in both brains. The display pops up an ad for Applebee’s. No arguments!

The person driving the car with the pop-up ads is making a car payment from the revenue. The restaurant gets in customers to generate revenue that helps to pay for the ad and there is no stress in your life for trying to decide where to eat out. Can it get better than that?

Visitors: Planned, Unannounced and Otherwise

We never experienced a Cousin Eddie calling from the airport while we were in Hawaii. The closest that we came to that was one of my father’s cousins calling from the Honolulu airport without letting us know that he was coming. To some people it might seem like he should have called ahead but there was a fairly close-knit group of us in the family who occasionally popped in on each other back home, too.

The big difference between my cousin and Cousin Eddie was that my cousin was fully prepared to put himself up in a hotel. His son was on a Navy aircraft carrier that was returning from a West Pacific cruise to their home-port in San Diego. At the time, there was a program for fathers or teen-aged brothers of sailors to ride the ship from Pearl Harbor to San Diego.

For not calling ahead, Cousin Ted had to sit and wait for awhile at the airport as we lived a good distance away. Had I been on duty he would have waited longer. At no point did he take it for granted that he could bunk with us. He did ask if it was okay to stay with us and he offered to pay for some of his expenses while he was there.

Had Ted planned it better I might have arranged a deep sea fishing charter. Nonetheless he saw some tourist sites and we drove him around Oahu. He had a good time.

My wife’s parents made a trip over to Hawaii, while we were there, for their grandson’s first birthday celebration. The only downside of that trip was for my father-in-law. I chartered a deep sea fishing day for him. I warned him to take something for motion sickness unless he was certain that he would not get sick.

Some people just have to be tough guys. The water was pretty calm that day but he was leaning over the side and was yakking his breakfast before we even got into the open sea. I had run through typhoon weather on warships and had never been seasick so I had no empathy except for what I had seen my shipmates suffer.

As for sympathy, I had absolutely none. He was warned. One of my co-workers was with us and we weren't going to turn the charter back because somebody tried to be a tough guy. We did end up coming back early but it was only because we got into a pretty good mess of fish early on. We had the live well filled up in just over a half of the day. Credit was given to Pa’ for chumming fish into the wake.

We liked Hawaii but when I got out the Navy we went back to Iowa to put our three sons back in their Midwestern roots and rear them near their grandparents. During the next twenty years we lived near Iowa City or Des Moines. This brought an occasional overnight visitor to our home from more rural parts of Iowa.

The University of Iowa Hospital would bring relatives to Iowa City for medical care that they couldn't get in the smaller hospitals near where they lived. As a result, one or two of the immediate family might bunk with us. It was the same when we lived in the Des Moines area.

For the most part, these were good hard working people with agricultural backgrounds of one sort or another and we didn't mind for most of them doing an overnighter. My wife and I had an agreement about the Cousin Eddies on each side of the family, though. Some were simply intolerable.

If I knew that there was a Cousin Eddie type in the hospital I would answer the phone by saying “bueno” instead of “hello.” I kept that up until I was certain that they were recovered and on their way home. I always figured that, next, I could say, “eh… no Ingles.” They’d think that they had a wrong number give up after a couple times of hearing Pedro answer the phone.

Actually, my own sister was a bigger pain the butt than any of the Cousin Eddies on the in-law side. We didn't smoke and preferred that no one smoke in the house. My sister did an overnighter with us in Des Moines one time in order to be bright and early to her exam for her registered nurse license. She asked if she could bring a friend and we didn't mind that.

As they settled in after arrival, however, my sister announced to her friend that we didn't like smoking in our house but that she did it anyway. All I can say is, that apple didn't fall far from the mama tree. Anyway, her friend, also a smoker, gave me a questioning and bewildered look.

“Do you mind, really? I can go outside.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I shrugged. “If it gets too bad then I’ll deal with it.”

My way of dealing with it, unknown to the guest, wasn't always pleasant. On one occasion I opened the windows in the living area of house in the middle of the winter to get relief from my sister and her chain-smoking husband. Yes… they had the audacity to complain of the cold.

“If I have to suffer your smoke then you can suffer the cold.”

“I remember when you used to smoke,” my sister retorted.

“And I can remember when you didn't. So… your point is?”

The friend, more appreciative of our hospitality than my sister, only smoked once or twice during the evening and it was on the porch outside. I really think that the poor woman was embarrassed by my sister’s insistence on smoking in the house.

We were visiting one of my wife’s cousins in the Methodist Hospital in Des Moines. He was a nice enough guy. I had never met him at any of the family events because it seemed that it was always planting time or harvest and neither waits for anything but a dire emergency in the life of a hard working farmer.

I don’t remember if his immediates were overnighting with us or not while he was in the hospital. I had to hold back a chuckle at what he said while we were visiting him, though.

“You know, if you ever get up around Farmerton and you need something, then at least, now you know that you have someone there.”

Well, heck yes, Eugene! You just never know when I might be making a vacation excursion along County Road 23, and right through Farmerton. Heck if I need a couple of ear of feed corn or a handful of soy beans, I’ll be certain to stop in. It’s good to know that I can count on you.

That is what I was thinking but I held back and simply thanked him for the gesture. One of the Cousin Eddies, whom I knew a little better than Cousin Eugene, got one from me straight between the eyes a few years later. They were having a family reunion because someone had died.

The word was going around the group that we were moving to Florida. Cousin Eddie started up a conversation with me about the topic. Eventually, he got around to a, less than subtle, hint.

“Do you know how many of your wife’s relatives are going to visit Florida when you move down there?”

“Do you know how many hotels there are in Florida, Eddie? I’m going to make certain that they all leave the light on for you.”

Cousin Eddie wasn't the least bit insulted by my answer to his question. As a matter of fact, he went around telling everyone that he talked to, what I had said. Tom Bodette couldn't have done it better for the Motel 6.

The Freeloader Vacation Spot

While I was in the Navy we lived in Hawaii for three years. A friend of mine, who lived down the street in the Navy housing, once told me of a relative who called him from the Honolulu airport. The conversation that he related went something like this after the phone rang.

“Hello.”

“Hey, Mike, how are you?”

“Well, I’m fine, who is this?”

“It’s Uncle Eddie.”

“Who?”

“Uncle Eddie, you know, we met at the family reunion that they had when Aunt Mildred died a couple years ago.”

“Oh yeah, I remember you now but I thought that we were cousins.”

“Well, yeah, but I feel more like an uncle being that you’re the same age as my own kids.”

“Well… okay but what’s up? Why are you calling?”

“Your aunt and I are here at the Honolulu airport. We came to Hawaii for vacation.”

Mike’s warning alarms went off like July Fourth fireworks. He sidestepped what he suspected was coming.

“That’s great. There is a lot to do and see in Hawaii. Which hotel are you staying at?”

“I thought that we could just stay with you.”

It was as Mike suspected. He acted as if he didn't hear Eddie’s last statement.

“How was the trip?”

“We’re a little tired but it wasn't bad. We just got our luggage here at the airport.”

“You'll feel better after you get checked into your hotel and get a nap. Which hotel did you say that you were staying at?”

“Well… I really hoped that we could stay with you.”

“So, are you planning to get over to any of the other islands while you here?”

“We’re not sure. We haven’t thought that far ahead.”

“I really sorry Eddie but I have to cut this short. I work really crazy hours and I have to get ready to go on duty tonight. I’ll tell you what, though. Give me another call, in the next few days, and we’ll see if we can find time to get together while you’re here.”

For some reason, Uncle Eddie didn't call again.

Visitors: Planned, Unannounced and Otherwise is a related story.

Different Traffic Signals and What They Really Mean

A red left turn only light means wait patiently until the light turns green to give you the right of way.

A green left turn only light means you have the right of way to safely make your left turn if the intersection is clear.

A yellow left turn only light means gas on it so that you can still get through in time.

A red left turn only light, if you are rapidly accelerating toward the intersection, means gas on it even harder and screw the safety of yourself and anyone else in that intersection because you’re going through anyway as long as you think that can do it without a rollover.

Laying into your horn while some jackass makes a left turn in front of you, on red left turn light, means that you think that the jackass is a selfish bastard. Further, it means that you have no sense of self control so, you sound your horn in lieu of screaming at the jackass who you think is a selfish bastard. Consequently, you distract everyone else in the intersection with your horn that was meant for a warning rather than pseudo-cursing of jackasses.

A slight beep-beep of your horn, when the car in front of you doesn't move on green light, is a polite reminder that green lights mean to go.

Laying into your horn, when the car in front of you doesn't move on a green light means that you think that the driver is a dumbass.

Flipping someone off either means that you’re too impatient to allow another driver to make a mistake without judging them harshly or you’re too immature and too insecure to shrug off someone else’s pseudo-cursing horn directed at your own mistake.

A turn signal on the car ahead of you in heavy traffic means that you should gas on it, change lanes, and cut the driver before he can make the lane change that he has signaled his intention to do.

A turn signal on the heavy truck ahead of in any kind of traffic means that you should gas on it, change lanes and cut him off before he can make a lane change to be in position for his upcoming turn.

If the truck moves into the lane over top of your car then it means that there is a profound concept, of blind spots for drivers of heavy trucks, that was evidently unfamiliar to you.

If this lands you in a hospital with life changing injuries it means that the agent of an ambulance chasing lawyer will be right behind you to assess that possibility that the law firm represented can make some big money off of your misery and throw you enough money to make you feel like you got a deal.

Instead, this may put you on your back in a box with a painted face and your veins full of formaldehyde. Your family can say how “natural” that you look after the trauma that you went through. It means that the ambulance chaser will meet with your family instead of you.

Whitey Tighties and Athletic Supporters

On the list for school supplies for 7^th grade in junior high school, it listed several items for gym class. A t-shirt with gym shorts, sneakers, socks and an athletic supporter were required.

“What’s an athletic supporter,” I asked my mother.

“I’ll get you one and then you‘ll see.”

The athletic supporter came in a small box with a photo of it on the box without benefit of a model. Looking at the athletic supporter it was plain enough how it was to be worn, though, filling the pouch on it proved a curiosity, at my level of physical maturity for the time. Trying the thing on, I found that it was comparable to tossing a couple of peanuts into an empty ten pound potato sack.

An inexperienced twelve-year-old could really begin to wonder about certain details not explained for lack of directions on the box. Surely, I wasn't the only 7^th grader that wondered if the athletic supporter was to be worn under my whitey tighties or on the outside of my whitey tighties. What added to the confusion even more was the question of what the athletic supporter could do for a twelve-year-old that whitey tighties weren't already doing. It wasn't as if I had things bulging from the leg holes of my whitey tighties.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the sort thing that I felt that my father had any knowledge of, being that they didn't have junior high school in his childhood. He got his physical fitness from working the farm and walking five miles to school in three feet of snow with nothing but a sweater to wear. He might have been exposed to athletic supporters in high school except that he didn’t go past the eighth grade.

You would think that being an adolescent was difficult enough with the girls being taller than the boys and hormonal changes coming upon both genders that nobody explained well enough in the sixties. Not so though, some idiot had to invent athletic supporters in the late 19^th century for bicycle messengers and evolve them into the mix of adolescent male confusion and insecurity. Think about it.

It’s bad enough to be a 7^th grader at the bottom of the food chain in a grade 7-9 junior high school. Even worse, is to not be cool. I was never cool but I always tried to be more cool that the uncool kids. Now how on earth can you be cool in junior high gym class if you can’t fill a jock strap, much less, know whether to wear it on the inside or the outside of your whitey tighties?

The first day of gym class was a bit of a trauma. I hesitated before changing to see what the other boys were doing. Most of the younger boys quickly stripped down to their whitey tighties and dressed their gym clothes over top of them. The older boys stripped down to that which was endowed to them by their maturity.

I didn't want to get caught staring but there was no doubt that the older boys had more than berries in a bush. Those guys were sporting the grapes of wrath, in comparison to my beanie boys which were hiding tight to my lower abdomen, in little more than a fuzzy Lipton teabag. I won’t even mention the contrast in the other, male only, appendage.

One thing that I learned, for certain, was that, before the jock strap went on, the whitey tighties came off and stayed off. I pushed my jockstrap underneath of my street clothes, in my gym bag, and pulled my gym shorts on over my whitey tighties. I just wasn't quite ready for butt-less underwear even if I could work up the nerve to bare the beanie boys to the whole junior high school gym class.

Late in the school year of 7^th grade the beanie boys had matured to the point that I had started acting like a ninth grader and wearing a jockstrap with no underwear. I wasn't sporting the grapes of wrath, by any stretch of imagination, but I could, at least, make some use the pouch in a jockstrap.

I walked out onto gym floor for class one day to find most of the boys shooting hoops. This was the usual warm-up. I caught movement, in my peripheral vision as I scanned the activity, in search of my friends. Suddenly, I was standing there with my gym shorts around my knees and the full moon shining from my butt-less underwear.

The movement that I had noticed was a stealthy ninth grader who had been swooping by seventh graders and dropping their shorts for amusement of him and his friends. There is nothing dignified about being on the gym floor with your butt hanging out, nor is there any dignified means to recover from this situation. I bent down, pulled up my shorts and went about my normal gym routine. However, that incident cured me of wearing a jockstrap for the remainder of the school year.

The Man in Charge

Rex, one of the operations managers, was in the shop waiting for a meeting with the shop manager, who was on the phone in his office. Rex was standing behind Jennie, the service writer, dressed in office casual. Jennie was dressed in a white-shirted shop uniform with her name embroidered above one of the pockets. She was at the service writer’s desk and going about her normal duties.

A driver walked in and looked straight past Jennie at Rex.

“You must me the man in charge. I need to get my truck looked at…” Rex cut him off.

“I am not the man in charge.” Rex pointed. “He’s in that office there, on the phone, but he’s not the one that you need to talk to either.”

Rex deliberately focused his look toward Jennie. The driver didn’t pick up the signal. Jennie may as well not have been at the service counter. The driver began to show the annoyance of someone who was about to make demands.

“I have to get this truck looked at. It’s been pulling to the right since I left the Sacramento on Monday. It’s not safe to operate this way.”

Right then, Mike Bachman, the shop manger, opened his door. Not knowing that a confrontation was brewing, he greeted Rex and apologized for making for making him wait. The driver interrupted again.

“He says that you’re the man in charge,” nodding toward Rex. “I have to get my truck looked at. I have freight that has to deliver in Chicago by tomorrow.”

Surprised, Mike looked from the driver to Jennie and then to Rex, who was grinning big. This happened from time-to-time when Jennie was on duty. Mike turned back to the driver.

“Jennie, here, is running the shop. Has she not been able to assist you for some reason?”

The driver noticed Jennie for the first time since he had walked in the door. She looked back with a calm deadpan expression. Normally, she greeted the drivers and offered assistance when they stepped up to the counter. This one hadn’t given her a chance. Mike went on.

“When you come into this shop and see a white shirt in that chair, that is who is going to help you. On occasion, one of the mechanics may cover the service desk for Jennie to go on break but they, too, will be in that chair at this counter.”

The driver stood with his mouth open but unable to speak for the taste of humility on his palate. Jennie pushed a clipboard to him. Mike and Rex went into Mike’s office and closed the door for their meeting.

“Fill this out and we’ll get you taken care of.”

When the driver finished, he pushed the clipboard back to Jennie. She looked at it, asked a couple of clarifying questions and pointed the driver to the lounge. The driver hesitated and started to make an apology.

“Don’t worry about it. It happens.” Jennie was used to this type of initial behavior. It stopped bothering her long ago. The driver nodded and turned toward the driver lounge.

The truck was repaired in less than thirty minutes. Jennie paged the driver.

“What was wrong with it?”

“You had a nail in the right steer tire. The truck was pulling right because the tire was soft.”

 It was this driver’s day for eating humble pie. He should have found the nail in the tire before bringing the truck all of the way from Sacramento to Des Moines. What's more, being a steer tire, it could have put him into an accident if it had blown on the highway. Not wanting to go away without making some sort of verbal restitution, the driver stopped and turned back to Jennie before leaving.

“I was determined to find the man in charge. I should have been looking for the woman who knew what was going on.” Jennie simply smiled in response.

It Happened at Painless Nell’s

The young sailor walked into the tattoo shop and gawked at the seemingly endless illustrations of tattoos. The name of the shop was Painless Nell’s. It was 1970 in downtown San Diego.

The middle-aged woman behind the counter gave the ink virgin plenty of time to look. She smiled and said hello but, otherwise, let him go. She was used to gawkers coming in the shop. They came in often and walked out with their skin unmarked.

With his net pay being only $78 for each half of a month, the sailor was hesitant about putting $20 down on the counter for tattoo. Still, he wanted one. The question was which one?

Finally, he settled on a picture of a cutlass drawn to look skewered under the skin and back out again. It was embellished with a scroll that read Death Before Dishonor. The tattoo was mostly of black outlines with a little shading here and there to give the picture depth.

 The only color fill required was on the handle and the hilt of the cutlass. There was green, yellow and red to fill in on that part of the tattoo. The sailor paid for his tattoo and, at the woman’s direction, stepped behind the counter and sat his slender frame down in the straight wooden chair provided.

Even with her customer in the chair the woman didn’t talk much. She washed the sailor’s forearm, shaved the blonde hair from it and laid on an outline of the image with a template. With her toe on the foot pedal the tattoo pen buzzed to life as the electric motor on top of the pen set the needle to vibrating rapidly in and out of the pen tip.

As the outline and shading was done the sailor sat calmly, experiencing only minor discomfort from the needle cutting into his skin. The yellow fill on the handle of the cutlass was a little bit painful but it didn’t last long. The dark green fill on the handle and hilt would have been reason not to get a tattoo had the young sailor understood, before the fact, what was going to happen.

The woman drew the fill-in needle back and forth, back and forth, back and forth across the sailor’s skin to fill in the green. The nerve endings under the skin’s surface screamed in response to each pass of the flesh piercing needle. The surface of skin was soon more than tender but back and forth, back and forth she continued, to fully embed the color into the young sailor’s skin. The tattoo pen went back and forth, again and again and again.

The sailor’s friend could see that his companion was hurting as he turned pale and his head started swaying, first one way, and then the other, as consciousness ebbed away. A young man and young woman, probably just curious gawkers, came into the shop and were watching.

The artist finished the green. There was only a little bit of red left to fill. The worst was over.

“Are you okay? The artist could see that her customer was struggling.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He wasn't lying. His head started to come back to him, for the short time it took to prepare for last color. Then the buzz of the pen was in his ears again.

The young sailor’s sense of hearing was soon overridden by returned screams of assaulted nerve endings. Still, he was certain that he could get through this. The jabbing needle tip, however, did not relent. It continued dancing, like a jack hammer on concrete, to pierce and re-pierce the surface of his skin to receive the ink.

The sailor came back to consciousness with his face on the floor. Any of the three people watching this event, if they had been thinking about getting a tattoo, may have got over the idea about then. The woman expressed her disgust and turned for the door. Her boyfriend followed.

The sailor got back into the chair and the artist wiped the bleeding wound clean.

“I think that I’m done.”

It was hard to tell, with blood oozing through, where there was supposed be red fill. The woman didn't want to send her customer out unfinished but she also didn't want to pick him up from the floor again.

“If it doesn’t look right when it heals, then you can come back and I’ll touch it up for you.”

“Fair enough.”

The red fill was never as rich as the green and yellow, in the tattoo, but the sailor didn't return for a touch-up. A few months later he got another tattoo, on the other, arm without an event as severe as the first.

As a civilian, in the years that followed, the former sailor sometimes wore long sleeves where displaying the folly of his youth might seem inappropriate. When he would hear young people speaking of getting a tattoo, he would roll up a sleeve for them.

“Just so that you know, this is what it will look like in twenty years.”

“What does it say?” The viewer would often ask.

That old tattoo had long since lost its sharp definition and color. The edges were blurred, the color was faded and the print wasn’t any longer legible.

“It says that I was a stupid 18 year-old.”

Yet, another generation has passed and tattoos have become the trend among many circles of young people. The old veteran sailor isn't self-conscious about his tattoos anymore. He doesn't hesitate to show ink virgins what is in their future, if they take ink into their skin.

Another young sailor now walks the footsteps of her grandfather but she won’t find the shop where he was inked. Painless Nell’s became Ace Tattoo many years ago. Later, a downtown San Diego redevelopment, forced the shop from the downtown location. They’re now in Ocean Beach.

Wherever the shops are, this young sailor will find one and make her choice to be a gawker or a living canvas. Then, as she matures through her life, she will know her consequences, whether she realizes them now, or not.