Scott's Sidelights

Getting Screwed

Apr 13, 2020

The project is simple enough, putting up a thirteen foot shelf and using the shelf to secure a back privacy wall along a back porch wall. All that is needed is wood, deck screws, a drill, a tape measure, a handsaw, and patience. A local Home Depot isn’t far from the house and they cut a sixteen foot, 2×8, down to thirteen feet for me. Next, I look for a box of deck screws. The deck screws, incredibly, come to $9.94, for a box of fifty 3 and a half inch deck screws. These same screws, several months ago, were, for the same sized box, in the six to seven dollar range, including tax. Made in Taiwan,the box does include a little drill bit, which I need, because the screw heads have a star pattern and can’t be driven with a normal bit. The cost of building a house is going up at the same rate as this box of screws, around 30%. Even with an illegal immigration workforce in this state, that keeps costs down, it is going to cost a pretty penny now to put up a house. With supply chains broken and dollars everywhere,the total on my sales receipt is going to keep going up, up, up. We are told there is no inflation, but, building this simple shelf is getting expensive. Inflation is sometimes defined as too much money chasing too few goods. Seeing a simple box of exterior screws, fifty to a box, costing almost ten bucks, hammers the point home. Most of the workforce in New Mexico don’t make ten dollars an hour. When an hour of your life gets you fifty screws, you really are getting screwed.

Embudo Canyon Hike Albuquerque's East Side

Apr 9, 2020

Our country is now on ” lock down. ” I’ve never been through a government ordered lock down where businesses are shut down, movement is restricted, banks are closed except for drive up windows or internet banking, and the real economy grinds to a halt as the stock market tries to reach it’s old- new heights. One of the few things we are still permitted to do, before we are fined for being on the road, if we don’t have our papers in order, is hike in the Embudo Canyon in the Sandia Mountains. The gate has still opened at seven in the morning and people are still coming to meet nature, in person, in their back yard. People are cautious with the new ” social distancing ” orders from our state capitol building. On the trail, some hikers wear masks, and back ten feet away from us as we pass them on the same trail we have been hiking for the last several years. Some people you pass don’t even answer you when you greet them with a cheerful ” Good Morning. ” When you are not a billionaire, you can’t escape this new reality as easily,you can’t take a private jet to your private bunker in New Zealand or Australia,you can’t play the stock market casino with someone else’s money. It’s a great morning for a hike and Albuquerque, from up here, looks like it always does, from a distance. It makes me wonder about the sanity of a “lock down.” For most of us, at ground level, the health of the economy is always life, or death. Is saving 2% of a population worth crippling the other 98%? What would Spock say?

Waffle House Shutdown Tramway/Central, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Apr 8, 2020

” We are not in the food business. We are in the people business. ” Joe Rogers Sr. – Co founder of Waffle House Inc. says on their website. The Waffle House has been in business since 1955 and has seen some history. The country, since then, has been through the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam, several recessions, the Gulf Wars, the Moon Landing, Aids epidemic, legalization of pot in some states, the creation of food stamps, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 9-11 bombing, the introduction of computers and cell phones, the ” citification ” of America. This store hasn’t been here since 1955 but it has been here enough years to be a landmark in our local area, always busy on the weekends, but open 24/7 for quick economical food cooked right in front of you. At one time, this place was my early morning hangout for coffee and conversation. Since the Covid-19 explosion, this business, as well as all restaurants and food places in New Mexico, that can’t do drive up, or delivery, have been shut down, by order of our Governor, following what other Governors are doing in other states. Why the Waffle House remained open during all the other bumps in our United States history, but is shut up tight for this bump, is something talking heads will discuss on television shows on Saturdays. Whether life will resume, as we knew it, after this whirlwind of emotion has passed, is an unknown. Even ” People Businesses” are in jeopardy these days. For everyone associated with this business, ” shut down” has become very very personal.

Watching the Fire During a power outage

Apr 5, 2020

Back in ancient days, cave men only had fires to keep them warm, and the skins of animals fashioned into clothes. We doubt all the women looked like Raquel Welch, but then the men weren’t Brad Pitts either. Both sexes must have found something to like about the other though because we are still overpopulating the planet. Last night, the electricity went out and all I had was a phone that worked on batteries, a flashlight with batteries, and some matches. Sitting in the dark, I Googled the Public Service Company of New Mexico, after checking my circuit breakers in the garage, and confirmed there was a power outage in my part of the city. Sitting in the dark without electricity, not hearing your refrigerator work hard to keep your stuff from spoiling, the living room was very very dark, I kept thinking about those old ancients huddled around their fires, back in caves, looking out the door of their homes, with no doors, at a great star filled sky with no plausible answers for what created it, except for a God, or Gods. The only thing I know about electricity is that it works when you flip a switch, or plug something into an outlet in the wall. It runs our world. Sitting in the dark with cell phone in hand, I read about coronovirus and realize we could have it much worse. When the power goes off, we aren’t a whole hell of a lot better than those cave men.