Mustaches and Car Crashes

When I returned to Celina after our weekly basketball officiating meeting in Van Wert last night, Patricia had informed me that she had called and left a message on my cell phone....which I had turned off for the meeting...that Sam had been involved in a car wreck down in Columbus, while heading for a officiating meeting in Bexley himself. She said he was OK, but his Dodge Stratus was apparently "totaled". About that time, the house phone rang, and here it was oldest son, asking the old man what he should have the wrecker do with the car? "Was it Totaled?" I asked...he proceeds to tell me he was t-boned on the passenger side, and if he had a passenger, they might not have survived. As it was, he only had a scratch, and a ticket.

As Sam told it, he was turning left onto the Interstate ramp when another drive put had her turn signal on, and as he turned, she didn't...well at least that's his story, so he got t-boned, and is facing a ticket and court date of November 13th. The family has AAA Plus, and I told him not to have the car towed the 100 miles to Celina, just to take it to the wrecker's home lot and we would deal with it later.

The main thing is, he and the other driver are OK...the next few weeks I will probably make a few trips to Columbus{starting tomorrow}, to get him to enough basketball meetings to keep his license current, and to get him home this weekend for our final football weekend for the season...we both are scheduled to do 5 games on Saturday, which should keep us busy. In the meantime, he doesn't have a big need for a car, so until Winter break, he can use the bus and shoe leather express, to get around.

Biding ado to the facial hair___for now

Since I left the Air Force, I can count on one hand the times I have been without facial hair. Whether the almost always present Mustache, a Goatee for the past decade, and the occasion winter beard...I have usually had some form of facial hair for almost all of the past 37 or 38 years.

I shaved it all off in the late 1970s when living in northern Wisconsin, that lasted about 2 weeks, then the "stash" was back. In late 1981, around the time Sam was born, I went clean shaven for a few weeks. Then I started growing a goatee off and mostly on back around 1998, I finally shaved that off a few years ago, when I screwed up trimming it, on a RV run to the west coast....so I went with the clean shaven look for a few weeks. Since that time I have alternated between the goatee and mustache.

When viewing a few photos of my recent Michigan trip, I noticed that along with the weight loss, my facial hair, as well as the hair on my head, was pretty well snow white...making my ego feel a little aged. So yesterday I trimmed it down to a 3 day growth, this morning, I shaved it completely off...marking 4 times since I hit my mid 20s that I have been "bare". Not a big deal, but it always seems like a milestone since I seldom go without some sort of hair on the face.

How long will I keep it off? Who knows...A week, month, forever? The last I doubt, but you never know.

Tomorrow afternoon I will travel to Columbus and Ohio State and bring back "Captain Crash", and return him Sunday....other than that, the week ahead looks pretty quite. I hope!

Photos-through the years...The top left is me this morning after "coming clean" {shave that is}, then a week or so ago with the graying goatee, 1974 from the Red Door days, the wedding in December 1976, and finally with the semi-graying goatee in 2000.

That's the Hair Business for today...

back later>>>>