OH Hail

This morning I had to put out the recycle bin as well as the trash cans.  On a normal Friday I only have trash cans and can use the car.  On those recycle days I have to fire up the tractor to get it all up to the court.  This morning it was just sprinkling when I started out to the shed to get the tractor.  Inside the shed it sounded like a bunch of kids were throwing rocks against the building.  As I backed the tractor out I saw that it was hail hitting the roof.  It didn't look big but it was noisy.   Also, it was about 40 degrees colder than yesterday when I went out.  Brrrrrrr!

Trash Hauling Tractor

I guess I don't understand where society is going.   I thought we had about all the laws we could ever use on the books and now there is a religious right saying they shouldn't have to cater their business to Gays, lesbians and trans gender customers.  The have also in couple of states said that religious groups don't have to admit them to their organizations even if they are publicly funded.  People, if you are in business, you owe it to yourself to do business with everyone that has money to pay you for your goods and services.  I don't recall ever in any of my training reading that wearing your religion on your sleeve is a part of the profit margin.  Suck it up and do your job or get the hell out of the business.  Is the next step that people will want to not do business with black, Mexicans or Arabs?  The 60's were about 50 years ago and that is where we are headed?  I guess someone forgot to tell today's Christians about Jesus and who he worked with.  WWJD should tell you all you need to do to do the right thing in your life. 

I can recall a sign in a local grocery store when I was a small child that said "We reserve the right to refuse doing business with any person."  The lady was a red neck fresh out of the hills of Arkansas and because it didn't apply to me I never paid attention to it much.  I am not sure that she did either as there was one black street maintenance worker that would pick up pop bottles in the ditch and bring them in and buy cold pop on hot days.  The only reason I did notice him was that he put peanuts in his Pepsi and I just could not get to like either one mixed like that. 

Did I ever mention that I had a skewed view of black people growing up?   The only black people in my neighborhood were businessmen that came to our neighborhood to do services.  The trash guy came by and hauled off the trash once a week and when he came to collect once a month, he generally drove a new Cadillac.  There was also a couple of old black men that came in the spring and summer and sold fruit and veggies out of a new Chevy Panel Delivery.  I never thought of blacks as being poor by race or intention.   Besides, my dad used to say that no self respecting black man would ever bring his family to a neighborhood so full of red necks, both Oakies and Arkies.  

As you might tell, our school was almost devoid of minorities of any kind.  We did have one family of American Indians, one Cuban family and one Mexican family.  Oh yes, we had a Jewish girl in our class who's mother would bring treats to our class on Jewish Holidays.  I think I had a friend in each one of the families mentioned and a love affair with the mother that brought those treats. 

For reasons only the politicos know, the entire school district I went to was told that in High School we had to go to either a downtown High School or way the hell up north to a new school called Wichita Heights.  The guys all went to east and most of the girls went to Wichita Heights.  Talk about your culture shock.  From a school where there were no blacks to a High School where at least 60% of the student body was black.  We had one kid held up at knife point in gym class.  There were over 5,000 students in that school so about 3,000 of them were black.  It was the early 60's so at least the black militancy was not much of a factor then. 

As I have mentioned earlier, I am inputting my taxes into Turbo Tax and it just doesn't make sense.  There has to be an error somewhere as the income is overstated and the resulting tax load is way over the top.   Oh well, I am going to start over today and see if I can find out where I have made the mistake.  I am pretty sure the error is mine.  There was one time that Turbo Tax failed to give me enough instructions on the partnership return and I had to do battle with them for a while.  It all worked out as I am pretty sure it will this time.

I would complain more about the hail but we do need the moisture.

MUD