Category: Current events


When Silence is Golden

Filed under: Communications, Current events, Music, travel, writing — Leave a comment
August 9, 2024

By Dan Roark

During the school year last year (she works with ESL students as a teachers’ aide), Cyndy quit listening to the radio in the car. With all the noise of the school day, she began to crave silence when she got in the car to go home or to New Hope Equine Assisted Therapy. And that continued into the weekend when we went places.
At first it bothered me. I’ve almost always listened to music when I’m driving or riding. But I generally just listen to two stations.

I tried to argue against the silence. I didn’t try very hard though, simply figured I’d just listen to music when I was driving the van. Sometimes, when Cyndy was driving, I wanted to listen to music. But I got to thinking about something else and the urge went away. Being a writer, my mind is good about wandering.

After that, there were times I would be driving when I would realize that I hadn’t turned the radio on. That’s still true much of the time. Sometimes I’ll give each of the two stations a couple of songs to catch my ear, so to speak. If the station plays two decent songs in a row, it usually goes south after that. Either way, at the beginning of the first “clunker,” I just turn the radio off.

What sort of surprised me about this little experiment is all the garbage I actually listened to without thinking about it. Not the commercials – I always turned the volume down. But the crap the DJs say. As if anyone cares what they have to say. And the crappy songs. Definitely, the crappy songs.

If the song is good, but I just don’t like it, I’ll admit it’s a good song. But I’m not talking about those songs. I mean the songs that really suck. The songs you wonder about why they’re actually playing them on the radio. The songs which are really painful to the ears. And the songs that don’t seem to make sense. The music is catchy, and designed to keep the focus away from the lyrics, which, taken by themselves, are just a bunch of words thrown together.

So I turn the radio off.

_________________________

Keep writing the songs that are in your heart.

Peace be with you.

paypal.me/danroark

Comment

The El Camino Forest Lane Saga

Filed under: Communications, Current events, writing — Leave a comment
August 3, 2024

For those who don’t know, Forest Lane, in what was then north Dallas, was the longest public dragstrip in the country according to Hot Rod Magazine in the late 60s and early 70s. At the time, north Dallas was between Northwest Highway and the new 635 highway.  The stop lights were (and are) in quarter mile increments, perfect for short races. There is no one particular site online, but when you search you can find out quite a bit about it.

On Friday and Saturday nights in high school, we would hang out in the parking lot of the Park Forest Theater. Smiley, the local truant officer, would give us rides around the parking lot. I was one of the people hanging out in the Park Forest parking lot and then going home. Other folks with fast cars raced up and down Forest Lane (gas was 35 cents a gallon and we hadn’t heard of global warming yet). I drove one of the family cars. Granted, it was a ’65 Mustang, but it was stock and not all that fast off the line. I wasn’t the racing type anyway.

So I told you that to tell you this:

It was a number of years later, in the later 70s or early 80s, that I had an apartment with a friend from high school in a complex at Nix and Beltline that is now a Goodwill Store with grass between it and Whataburger.

I needed a vehicle and somehow this used black El Camino (somewhat like the picture above) popped up. My roommate at the time, Dave, who was into cars and had a job at an auto parts store, encouraged me to buy it. I probably bought it from a friend or customer of Dave’s. But he insisted it was a good deal.

The muffler ended just behind the front seat, so it was loud enough that everyone knew the truck was on the road. The radio was deemed irrelevant. If the truck died, I had to grab the largest, longest screw driver I’ve ever owned, hop out, raise the hood and connect the terminals with the screw driver to start the truck. I had a key, but it didn’t always work. There were times when it happened at a light, causing honks, stares, and unsolicited comments. But Dave said it was a good deal. Which it probably was if you were into cars and trucks, but I’m a guitar playing singer-songwriter (I still play a song we wrote together in my shows). I was only interested in getting from one place to another.

It felt good for a while having a hotrod truck. Being noticed by literally everyone was kind of fun, but got old fairly quickly. There were not a lot of situations where I wanted someone to know I was coming before I got there. But they knew every time, whoever it was. Having to hop out and start the truck with the screwdriver in rain, cold, and wind could easily be a pain in the ass. It was also a four on the floor which made driving work. You have to constantly be moving your hands and feet.

There was one night Dave and I were out in the El Camino. At some point we ended up on Forest Lane. I was just cruising until a jerk in a stock Camaro was acting stupid and pissed me off (Dave told me it was a stock Camaro). I just knew the driver was pissing me off.

I was in the far right of the three lanes. The car in front of me seemed to be going less than, or right at, the speed limit. The idiot in the Camaro was in the middle lane. He would lag a bit, then speed up when he saw I was about to change lanes until the front of the Camaro was parallel to the back of the car in front of me. That’s how he was pissing me off – keeping me locked in place.

Then the car in front of me sped up quickly enough that it threw the idiot in the Camaro off-guard. Feeling the power of the El Camino naturally for the first time, I made my move. I took a deep breath, stomped on the accelerator while shifting into third gear – the truck liked to cruise in second gear. Coming perilously close to the rear of the car in front of me, I whipped on over into the second lane in front of the asshole, much to his dismay, and sped ahead of him. He didn’t bother me after that.

It was the one time I finally felt in control of the power of the the truck. The way Dave reacted you would think I had won the Indy 500. He thought he had molded me into the driver he wanted me to be. He was wrong. Come to think about it, it’s the last memory I actually have of seeing Dave or driving the truck. But I have to admit – for a few seconds it was heart racing fun.

Keep writing the songs that are in your heart.

Peace be with you.

paypal.me/danroark

 

Comment

Red Wine Vinegar or White Wine Vinegar – Pardon Me?

Filed under: Communications, Current events, Family, Food, writing — Leave a comment
July 30, 2024

By Dan Roark

Since I have looked for recipes online before, I am now getting emails with recipes. Some of them are variations of other recipes someone has borrowed and made their own and given stupid names. Under the misguided impression that calling it Barbara Walters bake will entice people to try it and other recipes of theirs so they can put out a cookbook that’ll look good in their kitchen, but won’t sell. They can show all their friends the book and sign a few copies, but they’ll fall far short of their cooking show goal.

One of the recipes I received earlier this week was for something called Cowboy Caviar. I couldn’t help but look to see what the hell it was. I think the name is still crap, but the recipe was close enough to the corn salad I have been trying to recreate from where ever the hell I had it once, or at least what’s in my head, to use as a base recipe.

Which is what Cyndy and I would ordinarily do when the same old same old becomes tiresome. We find a recipe to give us ideas and then do whatever we want – none of this, less of that, no way do I need to do that much work, type of thing.

This particular recipe called for white wine vinegar. Which sounded right for the result I was looking for so I bought some. We only had red wine vinegar.

I made the corn salad and it turned out rather well. It was not like the recipe I received in my inbox. Which made me all the more happy, because there’s no way I was going to vocalize the words, “Cowboy Caviar.”

But here’s the deal. I don’t think it would have made a big difference if I had gone ahead and used red wine vinegar. Now we have a bottle of white wine vinegar to add to our bottles of red wine vinegar, cooking sherry, and so forth that we only use once in a blue moon or even less often.

For one thing folks, it’s all freaking vinegar. Any sort of wine trace gets cooked out or fades out if used cold. The only way you could tell the difference is to drink it from the bottle. The dominant flavor would still be vinegar. The red wine vinegar might have more of a brisk flavor out of the bottle, but who wants to drink it out of the bottle?

Either way, I’ve got a corn salad recipe that’s pretty damn good. If I make it again, I’ve got both white wine and red wine vinegar, and I can use either one I want. I challenge anyone to tell the difference in the end result.

Keep writing the songs that are in your heart.

Peace be with you.

Paypal.me/danroark

Comment

Texas Rangers and Kubota

Filed under: Communications, Current events, Family, Texas, writing — Leave a comment
July 25, 2024

So I spent a good chunk of my birthday with Cyndy standing in line at Globe Life Field waiting to get in and get the Adolis Garcia replica ring. It was the last time this year we have to get the promotional item or theme night item for our youngest son, J.D. It was definitely not the first.

There were actually only three games requiring our assistance. The first was a theme night game (caps), which meant you had until the end of the third inning to pick up the item(s). Since I had two tickets on my phone, I could pick up both of them. Unlike the promotional item nights when both ticket holders were required to be present. So Cyndy dropped me off and drove around while I went to get the caps and then met her back at the drop-off spot.

The second game was both a promotional night and a theme night. J.D. didn’t care about the bobblehead, just the Stars/Rangers sweater. But we went early to get a bobblehead for J.D.’s brother Cameron, who has a Rangers display at his house. The gates opened at 5:05. I entered the gate about 5:15, got the bobblehead and headed for the theme night area. There was already 200 – 300 people in line. Cyndy needed to be at New Hope Equine Assisted Therapy to volunteer, so I went back to the drop-off spot with the one bobblehead.

Which didn’t please either of us for slightly different reasons. But it meant I had to drive back to the stadium, pay for parking, and pick up the sweaters by the end of the third inning. And it was one of the 100 degree days. But I was successful, poured my quarts of sweat into the van, and drove straight to a brewery.

Tuesday’s game, as you’ll recall – my birthday, was the Adolis Garcia replica ring – which I also mentioned. The hitch was, we had to pay to park, and both of us had to get in line to get them, because both aforementioned sons wanted one. Their older brother, Conner – who’s in Iowa, got a replica World Series trophy when he was in town, so he’s good.

Thankfully, it wasn’t quite as hot and I had found a cheaper parking lot when I went back the last time. We also went earlier than ever, which turned out to be a good thing. We went through the door and got our rings as they were running out. We stood off to the side to suck up some air conditioning before walking back to the car.

My leg was cramping a little and the first thing I saw to lean on was the scoop of an orange tractor. I didn’t think much more about it. Cyndy took a picture of me with the two ring boxes to show our sons that we’d gotten them.

“Now stand up!” she said, smiling. I did so.

“Now look at the side of the tractor!”

If you’ve heard me play my music, you’ve probably heard my song, Goat Yoga and a Stolen Kubota. If not, danroark.com. Cyndy gave me the idea for the song and I tell the story in my shows. I tip my cap every time I/we pass a Kubota dealership on the road.

So I immediately walked over and Cyndy took the picture you see above.

 

Keep writing the songs that are in your heart.

Peace be with you.

paypal.me/danroark

 

 

Comment

Remote, Remote, Who’s Got the Remote?

Filed under: Communications, Current events, Family, travel, writing — Leave a comment
July 12, 2024

When I check into a hotel, ordinarily there is one remote by the tv. Granted, there are times I have had to take it to the front desk for new batteries or eventually getting a new remote. Which entailed holding the door of the room open while the desk clerk programed the new remote. But ultimately – regardless of the technical delay – it still only took one remote to operate the tv.

Now that doesn’t mean it operated the tv well. It just operated what was there to operate. Sometimes you get lucky and have a choice of shows that you can tolerate. Then there are the times when the only show you can find that you can possibly stand are reruns of shows you only watch in hotel rooms because you’ve seen them far too many times. Castle, Rizzoli & Isles and Bones are a few that come to mind. Or certain episodes of Andy Griffith that no one likes.

But in this particular hotel there were three remotes. (And the refrigerator didn’t work, but that’s another story.) There were no instructions as to which remote to use. Come to find out, it took all three. J.D. and I would have to re-discover the combination each time we came back to the room.

The remote on the right was the tv remote. The middle remote was a Roku remote. The one on the left was our Fire stick remote. If I remember the combination correctly, the Roku turned the tv on, the tv remote changed it to the Fire stick (HDMI 1) and controlled the volume and the Fire stick controlled our shows. It took us quite some time to figure it out in the first place. But, pain in the ass though it was, it was worth it. None of this explains why there were two remotes to operate the tv in the first place. Before we figured it all out, we had a choice of – you guessed it – Rizzoli & Isles or Castle.

Keep writing the songs that are in your heart.

Peace be with you.

paypal.me/danroark

Comment

Siding Saga – How Furniture Feels

Filed under: Communications, Current events, Family, Pets, writing — Leave a comment
July 5, 2024

We had new siding installed at the house a while back. The picture is from the camera before they took it down and we were looking at the front lawn – that also had crap all over it. The ladder is over the front door. This went on for days. The back door was blocked as well.

Cyndy was working at the school so she came and went. At night we could get out to volunteer at New Hope Equine Assisted Therapy Center. But during the day I was effectively trapped in the house with the dogs.

One of my uncles on my Mom’s side made, repaired, polished and refurbished furniture. All kinds of furniture. The effects of doing all that in a closed room eventually caused symptoms that led to his death.

I thought of his woodworking over the years. The smells – particularly of the wood – and the sounds. How he could use a plane and have the wood come out smooth. I always had one end come out higher than the other. When I tried to fix it, the other end came out higher. Which also applies to trimming (or mangling) bushes and trimming my moustache – I can manage that one a little easier.

Be that as it may, I have never thought about how the furniture felt. Until I was trapped inside while they removed the old siding and installed the new.

It was like being stuck inside a whack-a-mole game. It would go quiet a while, then a rapid banging on different parts of the roof, surprising me and making me jump. Over and over and over. Then they would stop for lunch for about an hour. Which would make it worse. The two dogs concurred, we were continuously on edge. We would drop our guard and start thinking about something – then bam, bam, bam! I would jump and they would bark.

It rained on Thursday so we had a day of silence, except for constant rainfall. Then on Friday they returned to make more noise, “finishing” the job. When they left, the trailer in the driveway (a makeshift dumpster on wheels) stayed behind a few days.

But it was blissfully quiet. We could go in and out of both doors and let the dogs out again.

 

Keep writing the songs that are in your heart.

Peace be with you.

paypal.me/danroark

Comment

Toilet Paper Holder – Over and Under

Filed under: Beer, Communications, Current events, travel, writing — 1 Comment
July 4, 2024

I don’t remember what hotel or where it happened to be. I think it was in Joplin, Missouri. I was looking around the room upon arrival. As soon as I saw the dual toilet rolls, I immediately took a picture. Just in case you can’t tell, the top roll comes out under and the bottom roll comes out over.

I’ve heard of over and under shotguns, but toilet paper holders? But it must soothe the traveler’s soul when he or she realizes they are saved the trauma of having to switch the roll around or live with it as is.

If I was staying in the room awhile, I would definitely use the bottom roll until it ran out. Then the quandary would begin. Do I go ahead and use the other roll as is? Or install the backup roll on the bottom holder – leaving the top roll as is. Which is what I would probably do. For one thing, if I used the top roller, I would have to turn the roll around. Which would defeat what little purpose it had in the first place.

Which begs one last question: If I used the top roll after the bottom roll ran out, and if I used that roll as well, would the cleaning staff replace them the way I found them?

We may never know. Like how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. And don’t get me started on freaking Blow Pops. But it’s something to think about when you drove all day, arrived at the hotel and had a few beers.

Keep writing the songs that are in your heart.

Peace be with you.

paypal.me/danroark

Comment

Just Another Brick in the Road

Filed under: Communications, Current events, travel, writing — Leave a comment
April 17, 2024

I couldn’t resist borrowing from Pink Floyd, in a manner of speaking. About 11:30 Monday night, I found out that I would have to take our oldest son, Conner, to Love Field Tuesday morning to catch his plane back to Des Moines. The late revelation delayed my calming down to go to bed.

Naturally, I noticed the time when I got up to go to the bathroom at 4:14. Which caused me to toss and turn in fear of falling asleep and not waking up in time. If I was actually able to take any short naps, they were certainly not restful. I got out of bed a little before six, dressed, and went downstairs. Fortunately, Conner woke up on the couch on his own. Mind you, he has a room with a bed to sleep in. Ever since an accident in his truck, he sleeps better on the couch. Particularly when he had been on a bachelor party trip and hadn’t been able to sleep for over 24 hours, even on the plane.

Let me explain that that early in the morning is God o’clock to me. Especially, being on the road. Drinking coffee at my desk in darkness with a low lamp is a completely different universe. There’s not a part of the day when people don’t drive stupid. And when they’re tired too, it makes it worse.

But dropping Conner off at Southwest Airlines baggage check was fairly simple since I knew where I was going. Except for the other drivers dropping people off who were tired and would rather not be there. After dropping Conner off, it was back to the usual morons getting back to I-35.

I was a few blocks before I-35 when suddenly everyone was getting over, with three lanes trying to get to the left turn lane, presumably to turn around. I didn’t see what the issue was – I couldn’t see any obstruction. I was in the far right lane and passed everyone.

Then I saw that someone had lost a good number of bricks in the road. There was no truck around with people waiting to pick up the bricks – just bricks in the road. So I drove over them with my fourteen year old van with new tires fairly slowly. And no one followed me!

Are you kidding me? There was no reason to care about the bricks – and I don’t think I even did that much to them. Even large pickup trucks didn’t follow me. They were still getting over to turn around. I was nonplussed. More to the point, I was home before the backup got through. And they were late for work.

___________________________________

Keep writing the songs that are in your heart.

Peace be with you.

Paypal.me/danroark

 

Comment

Texas Winofest

Filed under: Beer, brewery, Craft Breweries, Current events, Texas, Wine, writing — 1 Comment
January 25, 2024

Cyndy and I went to our third Texas Wino Fest event a number of weeks ago. They have Wino Fest events in cities around the state. They also organize winery and brewery tours, but that is another side of the business. The Wino Fest events bring Texas wineries together in an event center for tasting events. Those with tickets receive a souvenir sampling glass to sample all the wines from the different wineries. Glasses and bottles of wine can be purchased as well. They begin at noon and continue until 8 p.m. on either Saturday or Sunday.

There is a Wino Fest event in the Dallas area this Sunday, January 28 from 12 – 8 p.m. in Plano/Fairview at Accasia Event Venue – 351 Southwind Ln, Fairview, TX 75069.

There is entertainment – usually an acoustic act. The events are rather enjoyable. Cyndy and I were never really wine drinkers. We usually visit – and I play at – breweries with craft beers. Wino Fest allowed us to see that there are craft wines as well. We don’t really care for dry wines, but we have had a couple of dry wines that we like at an event. We wouldn’t buy a bottle of it, but for a dry wine, we liked them.

Tara Vineyard and Winery was one of the first wineries we tried. They have a red wine called Texas Twang. The proper way to drink it is to put a slice of jalapeno in the glass and pour the wine over it. It adds the proper amount of tang. It’s one of our favorites. While we like sweet wines, we don’t like them too sweet. And the slice of jalapeno makes sure it’s not.

__________________________________________

Keep writing the songs that are in your heart.

Peace be with you.

paypal.me/danroark

Comment

Ponding – Say What?

Filed under: Current events, travel, writing — Leave a comment
December 23, 2023

Cyndy  and I drove to Weatherford to pick up a friend and take her to New Hope Equine Assisted Therapy in Argyle on Thursday. We have been to the Fort Worth area and beyond countless times over the years, sometimes in the rain. But Thursday there was more rain than we had previously seen in our forays in that direction. There were signs we hadn’t seen before with a term we hadn’t seen before.

“Excessive water on roadway.” Yep, we’ve seen that one – not on Thursday.

“Standing water on roadway.” Yep that one too – not on Thursday.

But “Possible ponding on roadway” we hadn’t heard. Are you freaking kidding me? (I didn’t get a picture of the sign due to darkness and the aforementioned rain and I was driving half the time). So the wording is paraphrased. But it turns out that ponding is actually the present participle of pond. Which doesn’t mean it’s not still stupid. In this viral day and age, there are many useless words that don’t really say a damn thing other than what the social media community has proclaimed it to mean. With no foundation whatsoever. It just sounds cool – or whatever term they’re using for that these days.

Which leads me to wonder – why does the present participle sound very much like a verb (just saying, don’t call me out on the technicalities).

So if you hit a pond on the road, do you hydropond instead of hydroplaning? How much water constitutes a pond? Following that thought, how would you recognize a pond as opposed to what we’ve always called standing water? The last time I saw enough water on the road to constitute what I would consider a pond, we called it flooding.

And the final question to the powers that be in the Fort Worth area: why did you wait to use the term until now? A lot of people won’t have a clue what that means. Or the capacity to figure it out going 75 miles an hour down the highway.

___________________________________

Keep writing the songs that are in your heart.

Peace be with you.

paypal.me/danroark

Comment