According to the sages of economics, each American will spend $343 and a bit of change on the day after Thanksgiving. That day, known in the retail trade as Black Friday, has been somewhat extended, however, to include portions of Thanksgiving Day itself as well as a bit of Saturday and maybe even Sunday.
For those of us who have difficulties balancing a simple checking account, there is some wonder as to the origin of the $343 figure. But since that total has the imprimatur of folks who regularly deal with such things ,we will have to concede and take the news as gospel.
Let’s not quibble or protest. Let’s just pick up our wallets and take our $343 and let’s go do some shopping.
Alas, that was not possible in my household. Before I could leave the house I was confronted with a $166 plumbing bill.
There is an unwritten law, you see, that on most major holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas, the household that is visited by friends or relatives, daughters, son-in-laws, et al is bound to have a plumbing problem, broken pipes, leaky toilets, clogged sinks and the like. We had a sink that would not drain so we called our good friends over at Perry Plumbing and they dispatched a young man who took care of the problem in short order, charging us only the aforementioned $166. Now if we subtract that figure from the Black Friday spending amount of $343 we have a balance of $179. We have some 15 people on our Christmas list. At that rate we can only afford to spend a little over $11 on each person. That would not even buy a pound of See’s Chocolate at the discount store. So, as not to skewer the prognostications of the learned economists and since it was such a pretty day we decided to take a ride instead.
November, at least some parts of it, can be a pleasant month. We have been blessed with an unseasonable amount of rain in recent weeks – rain that has resurrected the fields and yards to an early greenery, much to everyone’s joy. So why not a jaunt to the back country, particularly when we have a couple of designated drivers in our household? Daughter Margaret and her husband, Gregg, having been here for the Thanksgiving weekend and are partly responsible for the plumbing fiasco.
Ah, there is nothing like a built-in chauffer.
There is one negative to this built-in chauffer that one doesn’t at first realize and that is the chauffer might interpret a different meaning for specific places.
In my particular case the back country was interpreted to begin with a trip to a certain portion of San Diego, one with which we were not too familiar.
Daughter Margaret had found this one, in a recent issue of Sunset magazine, a place called South Park that is not too far from Balboa Park. It is in a rather old section of town, a section that has been revitalized with small shops and many old homes, most of the houses being of the craftsman design.
Though many of the shops were quaint they truthfully were not anything special. I would much rather saunter up and down Third Avenue. Our shops are much more inviting.
We did make a side trip to one of my favorite places in the Eastlake area, the Salt Creek Golf Club. The view from the driving range at this well-kept layout is one of the best, unobstructedviews that one has of Mount Miguel. I discovered this view back in the course’s early stage when it was known as the Auld Course. This scene is special because it is bereft of houses or other structures. The mountain, on this side, will never have buildings, or so they tell me.
My Thanksgiving weekend was a good one, spending it with relatives, friends and observing a birthday, a rather big one, I might add. Of course, at this stage in life everyone is a big one. I felt, however, that I was rather remiss in not mentioning Pearl Harbor. In a few short days the nation will be observing the 69th anniversary of that battle that ushered in WW II. Let us not forget this major incident that turned us all in a different direction. I know I never shall.
