Editor's Notebook

March 18, 2021

With the massive storm forecast for the weekend, I kept close watch on the weather and had trouble focusing on other topics.

It should be no surprise that Monday arrived before I was ready for it. Among the undone things on my to do list was the selection of an idea around which to build this week’s notebook entries.

Now facing a deadline, I am going to fill this space with a collection of unrelated stories.

The first one reminds me of my days working at my father’s gasoline station. We had customers who knew they had a problem but didn’t know how to explain it.

I remember the high school student with her first automobile. She didn’t think it sounded right and a young fella she asked for advice had convinced her she needed a new muffler belt.

She may have needed a new muffler but she certainly didn’t need a muffler belt because her muffler didn’t have a belt.

If she asked me for help today, I suspect her vehicle might need a catalytic converter. During the pandemic the prices of catalytic converters have skyrocketed to the point thieves are getting under vehicles and stealing converters

The converters were so unpopular when introduced, vehicle owners asked mechanic shops to remove them. The work was illegal and many shops refused but complied and the parts houses sold what they called “test tubes.” The straight pipe tubs fill the exhaust system gap caused by the removal of the converter.

An now, after vehicle owners have become accustomed to having the devices on their vehicles, they are having trouble keeping the converters in place. Test tubes are no longer available.

Late last week I read about the driver who was searching for a transmission mechanic.

According to the story, the driver’s vehicle drove well in the daytime when the shift lever was put in D for daytime but it refused to move when put in N for night.

That wasn’t the only problem. While stopped at a stop light, an adjoining driver suggested they race. The challenge was accepted and the driver shifted to the R or race position only to be surprised, after flooring the accelerator, to have the vehicle slam backward into the car behind.

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I understand why people are blaming February’s Polar Vortex for higher utility bills but I was surprised when our envelope suppliers blamed it for an envelope shortage. We are being told the cold weather caused southern chemical plants that manufactured a glue ingredient to shut down. This has resulted in a glue shortage and closed envelope manufacturing plants in the north.

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Friends to the east in the Deshler and Fairbury areas report light rain this week left a thin film of pink mud on their vehicles. A co-worker encountered a muddy slime in the Guide Rock area.

As a college student, I learned about a thin film of limestone left on a vehicle after it was washed at Pillsbury Crossing, a natural low-water crossing southeast of Manhattan, Kansas. When I returned to a KSU dormitory from a visit home, my roommate was excited to tell me he had taken his black Chevrolet to Pillsbury Crossing, a natural stone ledge which served as a county-road’s low water crossing. On warm spring days college students frequently visited the crossing.

Tom had learned about the crossing from an older sister who also attended KSU. He drove his car onto the ledge and proceeded to wash away winter’s grime. He expected his vehicle would look nice after being washed in the untreated water. He compared the water to naturally soft rain water.

Wrong. As it dried, his automobile had turned from black to a cream color. Dissolved minerals, probably from the limestone common to the area, were to blame.

I’ve played in the water at Pillsbury Crossing and I have college friends who liked to canoe the creek but we never washed our vehicles there.

Back to the thin film of pinkish mud. The National Weather Service explained the weekend’s massive storm system kicked up a huge area of blowing dust in Texas which then moved north into eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. Monday’s light rain and drizzle combined with the dust to form the muddy rain. The same thing happened here in the 1950s when a light rain washed red Oklahoma dust out of the air. I remember the south sides of fence and utility poles were turned red.

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Sunday afternoon the Phillips County Sheriff advised residents of his county: “I-70 is currently closed at Wakeeney and I-80 is currently closed at Lexington. We should expect an increase in traffic on U.S. Highway 36 so watch out for those in a hurry to get stranded in Eastern Colorado.”

When a Colorado resident learned of his warning she wrote: “Please stop coming toward Colorado. We’ve already had to activate the National Guard’s search and rescue team to help stranded motorists.” Before the day was over, Highway 36 was closed at St. Francis.

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A school teacher friend who knows of the problems I’ve had with spell checkers sent the following poem written by Lynn Miclea. It is titled “Ode to the Spell Checker.”

Eye have a spelling chekcer

It came with my pea sea

It plainly marques four my revue

Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word

And weight 4 it 2 say

Weather eye am wrong oar write

It shows me strait a weigh

As soon as a mist ache is maid

It nose bee fore two long

Ane eye can put the error rite

Its real lea ever worng.