Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The Greatest Car Commercial

The Blogfather has recently made several references to car commercials (here and here). As to car commercials, I'd nominate this one as the greatest of all times. OK, its not your run-of-the-mill ad. It was an LP record (you remember those, the round flat things with the groove on each side.)

I remember listening to this in a fraternity brother's dorm room at Clemson 1962, and from that point on, I lusted for a Corvette. I subsequently owned two, a '73 and an '84 and loved both of them. I wish I had a new one now! So I don't know about from an artistic standpoint, but from the point of commercial success, this ad did pretty well.

There is more about Arkus-Duntov, the Father of the Corvette, here.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Bored?

Need a little excitement in your life? You might want to try this job.

(Particularly check out about the 2-minute mark.) "There's only three things I've ever been afraid of: electricity, heights, and women, . . ."

Thanks, City

My driveway goes into Henderson Road, which is not curb-and-guttered along my yard. About every ten years or so, the junction of the driveway and the street gets washed out and a ledge of several inches develops at the street pavement. I thought I'd see if the city could do anything to help the situation, so I called to inquire. I got out the trusty Blue Pages in the phone book and under the city listing was a number for Shoulder Maintenance, which sounded like it might be the right place to start.

I called, and after listening thru several minutes of recorded messages, I got to talk to a live person. After explaining my problem, the lady said she'd have a supervisor come by and look at the situation to see what could be done. She said the supervisor would call me with a report.

Within an hour, a gentleman called to say he'd looked at the driveway, and he could authorize a truck to come by and put some gravel in the low spots, filling-in a couple of feet from the street, if that would be satisfactory. He said if I wanted concrete apron or curb/gutter work, that was above his authority. The gravel was just fine I said, and I thanked him for his quick response.

Before long, there was a dump truck in my driveway dumping gravel and a crew smoothing it out. They did a very nice job and quietly left.

It took less than two hours from first phone call to completion. Thanks for a job done promptly and well.

Here is what the repair looks like.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Remembering Friends Lost

Ed Cone remembers the 25th Anniversary of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. Some time ago I came across the web-site for the Virtual Wall which has a lot of info about men who were killed in Vietnam.

I often recall two friends who were killed there. Tommy Rose was from Greensboro and we were friends from church and scouting. That's Tommy on the left.


Robert Walden was a friend and fellow menber of the Pershing Rifles drill team at Clemson.

I think of them both often, and we should honor their sacrifice for our country.