Just a few more miles on grandson street...

Ok, so I've been typing the last few days on my Iphone. Truth be known, all of last week and all of this week to be precise, and I guess I'm getting used to typing with my right index finger. I notice that I still have the same amount of screw-ups, but they seem to be coming faster. So I guess that means I'm getting better at booger pickin finger typing. If there is any chance that anyone has been reading this for more than a few days, then the previous reference will make some sense. It's not meant to be offensive, it's just the truth. We all must do finger spelunking on occasion, I've just decided to ignore decorum here and admit it. By the way, I used decorum in a sentence, twice. This blog is getting more hi-falootin and fancier by the second.

So, my grandson Jonah (my little car dude) stayed overnight with us again, mostly because he knows this is where all things automotive live. I've got more car related stuff I've accumulated over the years than I care to admit. I mean toys and slot car tracks (actually two complete sets of the same slot car set) Hot Wheels track, and I mean the orange kind you had to keep put up after you played with it as a kid. Why? Because many a kid committed many a kid crime and an ass whuppin might spring up at any second. My dad was a belt user when it came to getting my ass busted for an offense. My mother, on the other hand, did not care in what form the proverbial (and yes, it's in Proverbs-the biblical Proverbs) rod of correction took. The last thing I wanted was to: A. Get my butt cracked with a section of Hot Wheel track. 2. Risk getting a section of my most coveted Orange Hot Wheel track destroyed while doubling as the aforementioned Rod of correction. Her ass whippins (if you wat to call them that) were the easiest piece of time I ever had to endure. They primarily served to make her feel better about her parenting skills. Truth was, my poor old mom couldn't whip her way out of a used wet grocery bag. The key to haulting her whippins was to whine just a little after she got a couple of swings in. She'd immediately stop and load us all in her 1956 Bel-Air for a trip to Dairy Queen for banana splits and milk shakes as an "I'm sorry" from her, for her turn at the correction rod.

Hot Wheels track was a valuable commodity when I was a kid, and usually only given as a gift at Christmas or birthdays. I mean, if your parents felt guilty about you doing something without being told, like cutting the grass or cleaning up your room, a single Hot Wheel was easily purchased as a "thank-you" surprise. That is, if your folks didn't suspect you were covering up some as-of-yet undiscovered infraction you might have committed. Hot Wheels track, on the other hand, couldn't be purchased one section at a time. It had to be acquired in "kit" form, in a bigger box, with the purple attachment tabs and "C" clamps for mounting it to anything narrower than four inches. Toss in a few unpopular Hot Wheels models, like Volkswagens and any American Motors products other than the AMX, and the kit was born. You car dudes reading this, you know what I mean and you get it. Us kids used Hot Wheels track as a de-facto form of currency, using it in trades for various and sundry items, when allowance was suspended for any number of infractions a kid might commit at any given time. Good ole solid Hot Wheels track was as valuable as Fort Knox gold in my day.

So Jones, what I call him, insists we play with the slot car track most every time he comes over, and I oblige him when he asks. I said before that I bought two complete slot car tracks and I did so for this reason: I can, and, my grandson likes it. As a matter of fact, he loves it. And so do I. He insists that we construct then deconstruct the tracks every time we build one. That gets him in good with Gracie, the name by which my lovely bride answers to and the same name Jones's grandmother comes running when uttered. If he weren't four I'd swear he was exercising a suck-up maneuver by wanting to pick up the slot car track and carefully put it all back into the carrying case(s). But he insists, letting me know that he does most certainly carry my wife's genetic code. She is the single cleanest human I have ever met. And we tend to be polar opposites on issues of what I call micro cleaning.

Oops, that's a subject for another day. Not this day and maybe never. It might reveal more about me than her.

Concerning the slot car track building, we construct (with two full sets of the same track) whatever track the NASCAR boys are racing on that week. It's relatively simple until you get to the road race tracks. I purchased two sets just so we could construct Sonoma Raceway, what Sterling Marlin called "the wine and cheese track". But we can still construct it in its entirety. To me, that's purdy dang cool. And guess what? My four year old grandson can name the tracks.  I'm buying another two sets so we can build a scale Nuremburg ring in our downstairs area. I mean, if he's going to do this, we're going whole hog, no sissies allowed.

I'll wrap it up here. I hear Jonah waking up and it's time to get some tracks built. That is, after morning suckers, bubblegum, and candy (important breakfast items in kid land) until Gracie wakes up and injects fruit and protein into his diet. In Poppy land, I'm still cool, to at least one kid in this world. I'll leave it that way as long as I can, or until I get caught and my bride goes hunting a section of my vintage Hot Wheel track to put an ass whipping on me for being the author of our grandsons joy.

Are you folks reading thus? It really doesn't matter, I'm writing it anyway.