Learning to love my spam

What’s this? My “junk mail” file? I don’t usually look at it.

Hey, why does Yahoo label all of this junk? Who is Yahoo to separate the good mail from the bad? Freedom of speech, Censorship. Let me take a look at what is being withheld from me.

The first one is from Cheech & Chong. I remember them from the movies. Weren’t they into drugs? Well, look at this promotion to sell their gummy bears: “Join the legendary duo on a flight to relaxation and good vibes.”

 

Isn’t that sweet! They have gotten off drugs and are selling candy now. Bless them! And stop calling me naïve!

 

And here is another. It is from McAfee, the antivirus company. They have just charged me $268 on my credit card, it says, for a one-year subscription. I don’t remember doing that, but how nice of them to take care of me that way. That will keep the bad guys out. It says, “If you have questions, call this number for service.” Well, I’ll have to do that and thank them!

 

Oh, and here is a message from someone named Cecelia Lambert. “I have no heirs and want to transfer $7.5 million into your account for humanitarian work. Send me your details now. I await your reply.”

 

Well, how thoughtful! I don’t even know Cecelia. Her English isn’t very good—maybe she is a foreigner. But she sounded so polite.  I will call her to help her save humanity. I could make some money off this too!

 

Here’s a good one:  “My name is Adele. You'll meet  your perfect girl  to be with when you match with me on the dating website. I would be glad to be  conversing with you there.”

 

But Adele, I’m married! Why are you sending me this? Do you know something I don’t?

 

OMG! Look at this. It is from a friend who died a year ago. How can that be? An email? Speaking from the grave?

 

This person lived a good life, but you never know: She might be influenced here by the devil. I wonder if I should take her advice.

 

Oh, all it says is: “Look at these great pictures.” Well, sure. They must have been taken at that last party where I saw her.  Click. Crash.

 

Yes, the devil! My computer’s dead. I’d better call those nice people from McAfee!

Yes, there is room at the inn!

 

As a child in the California suburbs, I certainly never dreamed of helping to operate a bed & breakfast in Southside Virginia.

But things just happen. When I was living in Washington, D.C., I met this great woman, Pickett Craddock, who had a farmhouse with 400 acres in in Cluster Springs. She had no intention of ever moving to California.

I first visited the place in summer, 1981. I was itching from bugs all the time. An engineering friend told us the old building was a “bottomless pit” of future repairs.

But slowly, over time, she found the right people to help her fix it up, including Joe, a former preschool student, now in his 50s.

She had always wanted to open a B&B but was dissuaded on our honeymoon in 1985, when she saw how much work was involved at the Mainstay B&B in Cape May, N.J.

But she persisted and opened a summer-only B&B, Oak Grove Plantation Bed & Breakfast, in 1988. She even took the  Mainstay’s recipe for California Egg Puff and made it into her signature dish, Cluster Springs Egg Puff. The B&B was open year-around (without the plantation name) when we moved to Cluster Springs permanently in 2021.

When I travel, I am more prone to stay at a Marriott or a Motel 6, but I went along with the idea and have found numerous benefits.

We don’t have to travel as much: people come here instead. Some of them were great news sources for articles. I savored talking to a guy who rode his bike across Virginia, stopping at inns along the way. There was an emergency room doctor, a race car driver, a musician who jammed with me as I played piano.

There have been a few bad experiences along the way. We warned a couple not to go into the attic, but of course they went anyway. It used to be a children’s school over 100 years ago, and it had weird drawings on the wall. Terrified, the couple fled during the night, figuring the house was haunted. They even demanded a refund.

One woman had very stricct dietary guidelines in a two-page sheet of paper. Any Parmesan cheese had to be from either Italy or France. When Pickett was gone for a few days, I met this lady’s requirements for breakfast, but her sister didn’t like this food and wanted something different. So I made her French toast, which was awful. And I spilled a glass of water on her friend. We got a terrible review. “Fried bread” is what she called my dish. I have not been asked to cook breakfast since.

Apart from such disasters, there are heartwarming moments when you feel good about hosting guests. Two in the last week, in fact!

A couple driving a Hyundai electric car from South Carolina called on Saturday night asking to use our Tesla destination charger. The wife, in tears, said the Christmas parade blocked the route to the Microsoft charger, and they had trouble using the Tesla supercharger at Sheetz.  They were going to miss their grandson’s concert in Farmville. “We have called a tow truck. Can we charge at your B&B and spend the night?”

We were busy with a big event the next day at our house. Normally we have a two-night minimum, but hey…this is the Christmas season!

So we had a nice conversation with them later about the benefits and drawbacks of electric cars. People we never would have met.

Then, just yesterday, a lady called and said she was having trouble finding a room because of the opening of the casino Danville. Pickett scrambled to clean a room, and the lady is sleeping upstairs.

We don’t have a manger, but yes, there was room at the inn!

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Reasons for the visits vary all over the map: Weddings, funerals, reunions, genealogy searches, house hunting, car racing. Pickett does all of the cooking but she has someone help clean once a week and others to mow the yard. Me? Well, I help clean up after  breakfast but can’t do much besides write press releases.

Pickett likes to talk endlessly with the guests, but I have much less patience. Usually I will clear the table once they have stopped eating and begin washing dishes and then leave. If I stay and chat, take that as a real compliment.

Business is better now that we are operating year around, with a lot of guests in the spring and fall (but not winter.)

What happens when we are too old to run this place? Your guess is as good as ours.

Remorse over missed chances

  

“Regrets, I’ve had a few. But then again too few to mention.”—from the song “My Way.”

Admit it. We all have regrets. Things we wish we had done or not done. What are some of my biggest regrets? A failed romance? A terrible investment? Someone I have badly wronged?

No. Right now I regret failing to write an article after interviewing the Grateful Dead. A friend told me I should write a column about it.

In 1971, a photographer for The Associated Press saw my car in downtown San Francisco blaring loud rock music full blast on the radio. Probably Crosby Stills & Nash.

“Hey, you should write something about the rock groups around here. This is the big time,” said Richard Drew,

The city was turning out great pop music from the likes of Santana, Neil Young, the Jefferson Airplaneand the Grateful Dead.

So I got ahold of the Grateful Dead’s manager and was granted an interview. At the time, the Dead was in decline after a few hits before it became a legend with enormous following.

I arrived at the Dead’s house and headquarters in San Rafael and sat down with Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir. I think the two must have been feuding. I would ask Garcia a question and he would complain how dumb it was and Weir would respond back with an intelligent answer.

Garcia was quite unfriendly to me. Weir was uplifting and complimentary. “Good interview,” he said as it ended.

I wasn’t sure what kind of a story I had and frankly I don’t remember. I no longer have my notes. I went to see one of their concerts at the huge Winterland Arena. Despite my experience covering entertainment in Las Vegas, I had never thought to ask the Dead for tickets. When I got there, it was sold out, and I could not talk my way in.

I still had a story, but in the meantime, I had just been transferred to Washington. The Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers, political scandals. Who has time for failing rock groups?

My boss gave me a lot of other assignments before I left for the nation’s capital. “I know you will finish the Grateful Dead story,” he said. Ha! I’ll fix him. I won’t write it! I never did. Take that, Mr. Boss!
Well, as the Dead grew in stature and fame, I  had nagging doubts about my omission. They say it isn’t what you do that you regret. It is what you don’t do.

But let’s face it: I just wasn’t a fan. They did give me a record album, which they probably signed but I no longer have. (Sigh.) If their music really grabbed me, I would have rushed to put out a story, like I did after interviews with Hoagy Carmichael, Little Richard and Dionne Warwick.

So I was proved wrong. I mean, they even named an ice cream flavor after one of the people I interviewed.

About 30 years later, I was having lunch with Austin Kiplinger, my boss, the kind, dignified, stately gentleman whose family ran the Kiplinger Letter for generations.

Somehow our conversation turned to the Grateful Dead. “Why were they so popular?” He asked.

“Drugs, I think” was all I said. There was a long pause and he changed the subject to the Gross National Product, the federal funds rate  or something more boring.

Note to Mike: If a spiked story is one of your biggest regrets, you must have had a pretty easy life.

2nd Note to Mike: You know, maybe I’m glad I didn’t write the article. I have since learned that the Dead’s  strength wasn’t their music, it was the experience of the live shows. Since I never saw one, I would have been left with a bunch of meaningless quotes.