When I first got out of the army, I worked briefly for a small family owned TV repair shop putting up antennae, picking up and delivering TVs, anything that needed to be done including working on the family ranch when there was nothing to do around the shop.
One day Dennis told me to go pick up a TV from a long-time client but emphasized that I take the pickup instead of the van and I was not to bring the TV into the shop under any circumstances.
When I got back to the shop, Dennis changed into a pair of coveralls, pulled the TV to the tailgate, and opened the back while it was still in the truck. When he pulled the back away from the frame, the roaches just exploded out of it. There must've been a thousand of those nasty fuckers in there.
That was my last job of the day so I went home, stripped down on the back porch, threw my clothes into the middle of the yard and ran for the shower. After I got out of the shower, I hoofed it down to the corner store and bought a couple bug bombs to set off in my truck.
Just the early biological version of the Rhumba. They like to tell that the first computer "bugs" in Hoboken (Seton Hall Institue of Technology) were moths, but I have my doubts.
ReplyDeleteI think you mean Stevens Institute of Technology. My grandfather graduated from there, and I did masters degree work at Seton Hall in South Orange NJ.
DeleteSteve the Engineer
Lol, that college name would have made a great sweatshirt.
DeleteMadMarlin
Had a good friend pulling time in LBJ. Threw a grenade into his Sgt's hut. Sgt stepped out one end while my friend tossed a grenade through a window on the other. Anyway he said he was laying on his rack and heard a noise. He said a cockroach with flip flops and sunglasses on was squeezing though the bars. Roach got to his rack and he leaned over an beat the shit outta it with a fuck book. Laid there a while and heard another noise, looked up and the roach was limpin outta his cell. Before you judge this was my buddy Butch. he never should have been drafted in the first place. He's gone now but he was real slow and easily manipulated by others. Great big sum bitch and the last thing you wanted to do was fuck with Butch's friends. Which the Sgt. did. I loved him like a brother.
ReplyDeleteHuh? I sense a great story here, but I don’t understand what you wrote. Who did what to whom? And why was the bug wearing glasses and flip flops?
Delete/RAF
Them palmetto bugs make great targets
ReplyDeleteScenario:
Delete35 years ago.
My Grandfather and I are dropping two 30' Mexican Palm trees.
The Plan:
I ladder up and tie a chain into top of tree.
He attaches chain to pickup to put tension on the tree.
I then chainsaw the base and he pulls it over with the truck.
1st tree:
Works as planned. Tree drops where we want it. Everyone is happy.
2nd tree:
Rinse and repeat...except...
...as I take the first swipe with the chainsaw on the 2nd tree, the saw makes the cut with virtually no resistance and I get this spray-back of gooey sawdust. ???
I take a second swipe...same gooey mess. ???
I take a third swipe...the same goo...the tree begins to fall...
...and out fly thousands of 3" palmetto bugs...
...in a cloud
...all around ME
I scream like a little girl, throw the chainsaw, and start running for my life while batting at my head to get the bugs out of my hair.
Apparently, one half of the interior of the tree had rotted hollow from the base to about half-way up and every palmetto in creation thought this would make the perfect nesting area.
I returned moments later to find my Grandfather still sitting in the truck... and still laughing his ass off.
Thanks for reminding me of this story.
I still miss him every day.
Howard "Marty" Martin
1929-1991
Roaches also LOVE to get inside cable tv set tops. Those would get put in an industrial trash bag and tied off before shipping to corporate. Something about the warmth of the circuits attracting them.
ReplyDelete-former satellite cable tv guy
Yup, same thing Dennis told me.
Delete1964, back in basic at Great Lakes NTC, my training company was put in WWII era barracks for initial training. Those barracks were infested with roaches. We'd have hunting parties at night after the lights went out using a Zippo and a can of Right Guard. Fry'em long enough and they pop.
ReplyDeleteNemo
By 1992 when I was there, nothing had changed.
DeleteWhen I moved back to Texas after being gone 20 years I was told that for some reason cockroaches won't live in the area where I was looking at houses. Been here for almost 20 years now and it seems to be true. I have a theory that there is something like boric acid in the soil that they just won't tolerate. Growing up in South Texas was a constant battle with the damn things. When my son was at A&M down in the dank humid Brazos River Valley I was walking around campus and saw some of them hanging out in the bushes waiting to fly at people. I thought I heard on of them saying "where have you been, we're still here!". Might have been my imagination. I hate those things.
ReplyDeleteMy first encounter with a palmetto bug was in Key West FL while in Sonar school. I had the 4 to 8 watch and had to wake up the duty MAA in the bunk room next to his office. I opened the door to the office and flipped on the light. A palmetto bug the size of Delaware ran across the desk blotter and tried to hide under the standard issue, black, Navy desk phone. He was too big to fit!
ReplyDeleteI screamed like a little girl.
The duty MAA came bursting out of the bunk room in his skivvies. He looked at that bug and said: "MMM, that's a bigun!"
I did not live that down the entire time I was there.
Later, I was stationed in Charleston, SC. A friend of mine had a pet cat named Charlie. One day, we were sitting around drinking beer and telling lies when Charlie suddenly went into "stalk" mode. He pounced on something behind the curtains and came out with a good size palmetto bug in his mouth.
ReplyDeleteCrunch, crunch, gulp... Gone!
Charlie then gave us a look like "...that was good. You got any more of those?"
We all laughed our asses off. (By then I was used to palmetto bugs.)
Kenny, I too worked at a TV repair shop putting up antenna's and delivering and picking up TV's. I also made house calls with my tool box and tube caddy for those simple easy home repairs.
ReplyDeleteYeah, every now and then we would have to bug-bomb a console TV before it came into the shop.
Do they even have TV repair shops anymore? I haven't seen one in I don't know how many years.
DeleteI haven't seen a dedicated TV repair shop since at least the 90's. However, I have seen a few general "Electronics repair" shops.
DeleteTV's have become a commodity item. If you open up one of these flat panel TV's there are very few components inside anymore - usually just three, the screen itself, the main board, and a power supply. Any single one of those components costs as much as a brand new TV.
I've had friends ask me to troubleshoot their dead TV. I'll open it up and look for a blown fuse, but anything beyond that, I'll tell them to just replace it. It isn't worth the trouble and expense anymore.
I took a TV/VCR repair correspondence course years ago. Now, I don't think it is worth fixing a TV. I am not even certain that you can even fix one, with the kind of chips and surface mount parts they are using. For sure, it would just be a matter of pulling the board and replacing it, it you could get the correct one.
DeleteWith the television that you can buy from the big box stores for 300$, if you get 3-5 years out of a TV, then have to buy a new one, it is likely not worth fixing.
1996, I sponsored a Persian family from south of Tehran.
DeleteElectrical Engineers -- he with a Masters, she a Doctorate -- they immediately opened an electronics repair shop near Sacramento, California.
Looking over their shoulders was fascinating... they somehow 'tuned' into the problem inside all that magic.
And one on one bench could diagnose a problem on the other bench.
Some version of telepathy?
.
1986, my buddy Tai escaped china by swimming (to Singapore? Hong Kong?).
He operates the only electronics repair in Eugene, Oregon.
.
An aside:
Tai sponsored his sister to emigrate from china.
Yvonne is a precious delicate blossom.
After she gets to know you, she might judge your capacity to hear of her treatment by the border guards before they threw her out the gate.
Used to work for the old Houston Post newspaper back in the late 70s at a branch distribution office in north Houston. In other words, we were where the carriers for that area picked up their papers to deliver. The roaches were so big that I swear three of them could get together and carry off one of the big bundles of newspapers. Never worried about checking my shoes before putting them on until I moved to Houston. Learned that one the hard way.
ReplyDelete