In the early eighties, we headed off to New York City. I was going to a trade show and the family came along for a brief respite. One fine morning we headed out to a NY style diner in Brooklyn. It was about 7:00 am and the place was buzzing with patrons. In typical brusque NY style, we were ushered to a booth along the window and the waitress dropped off four menus. Each menu weighed a pound or two, was about twenty-four inches high and had perhaps eight pages. The kids had never seen a menu like this. It had more meal selections on it than all of the restaurants in our hometown of Orangeville, Ontario combined! Our kids were learning to read, and we were encouraging them as we traveled to order from the menu themselves. Continue reading →
A young woman following her wedding placed a footlocker at the foot of the bed and locked it. The husband asked many times “What’s the footlocker for?” and she refused to answer, saying that he would be told, “… all in good time.” After fifty years of marriage a couple decided to go to the first hotel room they stayed at on their wedding night some fifty years earlier.
The husband was a little surprised when the bell man was taking the luggage from the back of their SUV, he saw that his wife had loaded the footlocker from the foot of their bed and had loaded it into the SUV. He asked why and she replied “Later Dear! I’ll explain later.” Continue reading →
They were determined to make this a real vacation by not wearing anything that would identify them as clergy. As soon as the plane landed they headed for a store and bought some really outrageous shorts, shirts, sandals, sunglasses, etc.
The next morning they went to the beach dressed in their ‘tourist’ garb. They were sitting on beach chairs, enjoying a drink, the sunshine and the scenery when a ‘drop dead gorgeous’ blonde in a bikini came walking straight towards them.. They couldn’t help but stare.
As the blonde passed them she smiled and said ‘Good Morning, Father ~ Good Morning, Father,’ nodding and addressing each of them individually, then she passed on by. They were both stunned. Continue reading →
I was at a shopping mall with my dad many years ago.
We decided to grab a bite at the food court.
I noticed he was staring at a teenager sitting near us. The teenager had spiked hair in all different colors – green, red, orange, and blue. My Dad kept staring. It was becoming a little embarassing. The teenager kept looking and would find my Dad staring every time.
When the teenager had enough, she sarcastically asked: “What’s the matter old man, never done anything wild in your life?”
Knowing my Dad, I quickly swallowed my food so that I would not choke on his response; I knew he would have a good one!
In classic style he responded without batting an eye…
“Got stoned once and screwed a peacock. I was just wondering if you were my daughter.
The origins of the TRIVIAL PURSUIT® game can be traced back to a blustery day in Montreal, December 15, 1979, when two friends, Scott Abbott, sports editor with the Canadian Press and Chris Haney, photo editor for the Montreal Gazette, engaged in a friendly argument over who was the better game player. This led to the friends creating a board game of their own. It was introduced in early 1982. After numerous setbacks and hard times, things finally began to go their way. Chieftain Products Ltd. became their Canadian distributor beginning October 1, 1982, and in 1983, Horn Abbot introduced the TRIVIAL PURSUIT® game to the Selchow & Righter game company for the United States market. The result? In 1984 alone, over 20 million games were sold. (Paraphrased from www.trivialpursuit.com)
Kampei is a traditional toast in Japan. Where we might say Cheers! or Bottoms Up!, the Japanese typically say Kampei or “Empty Glass”.
Throughout the eighties and nineties I traveled extensively in the Far East and Europe. It was tradition in Japan for us to meet at the end of the week in our rep’s conference room for a wrap-up of the week’s activities. One particular Friday in the early eighties I was working for Eimac, then a division of Varian. We had had a particularly successful week. The meeting started a little early and was to be a celebration. John Button, also from Eimac, was just beginning his travels in Japan and had arrived in Tokyo from Taiwan or Korea. He was to stay over the weekend and travel with our rep the following week.
Here’s a little factoid for automotive buffs or just to dazzle your friends.
The four Goldberg brothers, Lowell, Norman, Hiram, and Max, invented and developed the first automobile air-conditioner.
On July 17, 1946, the temperature in Detroit was 97 degrees.
The four brothers walked into old man Henry Ford’s office and sweet-talked his secretary into telling him that four gentlemen were there with the most exciting innovation in the auto industry since the electric starter.
In the early eighties, we headed off to New York City. I was going to a trade show and the family came along for a brief respite. One fine morning we headed out to a NY style diner in Brooklyn. It was about 7:00 am and the place was buzzing with patrons. In typical brusque NY style, we were ushered to a booth along the window and the waitress dropped off four menus. Each menu weighed a pound or two, was about twenty-four inches high and had perhaps eight pages. The kids had never seen a menu like this. It had more meal selections on it than all of the restaurants in our hometown of Orangeville, Ontario combined! Our kids were learning to read, and we were encouraging them as we traveled to order from the menu themselves. Continue reading 
