Tank birthday, 47+ years

[atoll]

And here's me thinking I would love to go to Manhattan lol.

 

[MikeyZo]

Ugh manhattan is a **** show. Take it from a retired city cop… I don’t want to go there anymore even with my gun…

Stupid censoring

 

[Paul B]

And here's me thinking I would love to go to Manhattan lol.

There is no place in the world I would rather "not" be, although I worked there all my life.
I would much rather be up to my waist in the mud of a rice paddy in Vietnam, burning leeches off the skin under my arms with a cigarette while 7 Vietcong are shooting at me and a monkey is in a tree pointing out my location while it is monsoon season and it is Christmas day, and everyone I know is back home partying.

Mikey, lend me your gun, I want to blow my brains out. I could use my shotgun but that would make a big mess.

 

[MikeyZo]

There is no place in the world I would rather "not" be, although I worked there all my life.
I would much rather be up to my waist in a rice paddy in Vietnam, burning leeches off the skin under my arms with a cigarette while 7 Vietcong are shooting at me and a monkey is in a tree pointing out my location while it is monsoon season and it is Christmas day, and everyone I know is back home partying.

well I mean if you wanna be nice about it, sure. That pretty much sums it up.

 

[atoll]

There is no place in the world I would rather "not" be, although I worked there all my life.
I would much rather be up to my waist in the mud of a rice paddy in Vietnam, burning leeches off the skin under my arms with a cigarette while 7 Vietcong are shooting at me and a monkey is in a tree pointing out my location while it is monsoon season and it is Christmas day, and everyone I know is back home partying.

Mikey, lend me your gun, I want to blow my brains out. I could use my shotgun but that would make a big mess.

Na, just come to the UK instead

 

[Paul B]

Atoll. My President is there now. I see you guys cleaned up and greased those old Royal carriages and washed the horses. You guys make a big deal out of everything.

You do know that you are paying for all that, don't you? Including the dinner for 160 people. I hope they served something other than fish and chips from a local pub.

When your King comes here, we take him to McDonald's.

 

[atoll]

Atoll. My President is there now. I see you guys cleaned up and greased those old Royal carriages and washed the horses. You guys make a big deal out of everything.

You do know that you are paying for all that, don't you? Including the dinner for 160 people. I hope they served something other than fish and chips from a local pub.

When your King comes here, we take him to McDonald's.

Most of those in attendance had come over the day before crossing the channel in a rubber dingy and yes my taxes are paying for it all Those coaches came from a scrapyard, the horses are now glue.
I never go to McDonald's I prefer to eat food you see.

 

[ScottJ]

I am going into Manhattan today for a wedding so I am very depressed and will be until I get back here to Gods Country.

I would be depressed if I was getting married in Manhattan, too...

WAIT--- Aren't you already married?

 

[Lowell Lemon]

I would be depressed if I was getting married in Manhattan, too...

WAIT--- Aren't you already married?

 

[Paul B]

It ain't me. I have been married 52 years in a week or two.

 

[Paul B]

So, about the wedding we went to this weekend.
We took the Hampton Jitney from our house on Long Island for the 80 or 100-mile trip to Manhattan. The bus isn't far from us, maybe 15 minutes so I gave us half an hour. We were behind farm equipment which I couldn't pass so we just made it at 1:00 when the bus was supposed to depart.

I get my wife and our luggage out of my car and run into the terminal. The guy says "the bus is 25 minutes late". OK, we have plenty of time, so we can relax.

The bus comes and we get on. Keep in mind my wife is handicapped so it is very hard for her to get up the steps into the bus, but we get on and head to my "favorite place" Manhattan. The day I retired the first thing on my mind was OMG, I never have to go to this Hellhole again.

Wrong. Our Daughter marries a guy from there and now lives downtown near New York Harbor.

When I was in Vietnam (in the war, not as a tourist), I was attached to a field artillery battery as a COMMO chief, and we fired these huge cannons 24/7, six at a time. I also got blown up when 40 tons of ammunition blew up not far from me, knocking me and everyone else out. which left me with tinnitus.


That is a severe ringing in the ears that gets worse with loud noises.
Because of this, I bring custom made ear plugs to weddings or places where it is very loud or when I listen to Humble talk about fish diseases.

We get off the bus (which took 2 1/2 hours to get to a place that usually takes less than 1 1/2 hours due to traffic) and call and Uber to get to our daughter's house about 30 blocks away. ($50.00 for the Uber) My wife couldn't go in her house because it takes too long and we wanted to get to this wedding on time, so I take the luggage up to her apartment on the 19th floor while my daughter and granddaughter came down to sit on the steps of NYU across the street to keep her company, (and safe from muggers, homeless, rats etc.)

I run into the apartment and throw the suitcases on the bed so I could run out and get back downstairs to my wife.

Now we call another Uber to get to the wedding "about 2 miles away". That trip took about 45 minutes and cost $40.00. I could have walked it in 15 minutes.

Ever since COVID, the City allows restaurants to put tables on the side of the already narrow streets, and some stupid people double park, so the traffic often stops. The speed limit in the city is 25 MPH, which is ridiculous because you rarely get to go 10 feet before you have to stop, and that 10 feet is normally closer to 10 inches. Of course, because it's the city that never sleeps, the roads are wall-to-wall with people who have gone to too much college, so they have no jobs and are all out wandering about with nothing else to do.

We finally get to the wedding place.

The building is a 60-story, all-glass building, which I may have helped to build, but I don't remember. I try not to remember any part of working, especially if it was in Manhattan, which was 99% of my working career. I really hate Manhattan, I mean, like really. I spend a lot of time trying to think of what disease I would rather have than go into Manhattan.
If someone asked me to drive them there, I wouldn't do it for less than $7,000.00 plus tip.

We get inside and take the elevator to the penthouse. As I said, the place is all glass and taller than most of the buildings downtown, so we have 360-degree views of New York Harbor, including the Statue of Liberty. Now, most people were gawking at the view and loved that stuff. To me, it is just buildings and 9,000,000 people, most of whom I don't know and don't want to. And I worked in most of them as a construction electrician. I prefer oceans and beaches, and I go on vacations to get away from buildings and people I don't know.

That's the "Freedom Tower" in the center.

About 100 miles past that bridge in the background is God's country, where I live on eastern Long Island.

The place is very crowded, but the good part was that they put out a huge oyster bar. My favorite food, so I stood there and slurped them up as soon as they hit the ice.

As we waited, I noticed the "Band" walking in. There was really no band as they had a DJ, so I was perplexed to see these four guys walking in.
One had a bugle, one had a trumpet, one had a Saxaphone, and the last one had a bucket of what looked like dynamite.
After seeing this, I figured they wouldn't play any Linda Ronstadt or Celine Dion music.

After the cocktail hour and a half with just raw oysters, we were ushered into the main room, which was the same thing, all glass with wide vistas of the city. We find our names on the menus at the chairs and take our seats. We know absolutely no one there except, of course, our friends, the bride's Father and Mother, and the bride. A guy sits next to me and immediately, my wife recognizes him.

To me he could have been Soupy Sales or Houdini. My wife says to him, "Are you the Father of the bride's cousin Bob, Bill, Harry, whatever"?
He says yes. It turns out that when my 46-year-old Daughter was 14, we were at a party and he asked her to dance. What a coincidence.

Anyway, he was with his new wife, and she says, You mean you were hitting on their 14-year-old Daughter? He didn't remember.

So they announced the bride's and groom's parents, and that's the last I saw of anyone because the dais was behind a 10'X10' column, so I never saw them.

I did have time to take this interesting picture from our table. It shows out the window with the reflections of the interior of the room.
Confusing but cool.

Then the "music" started, and I realized why the guys were carrying in a bugle, trumpet, and saxophone. The "music" which was just noise sounded like....Let me think. You know those big pneumatic hammers they use to chop up the sidewalk, which is connected to a large truck with a huge air compressor? The guys wear big sound-deadening earmuffs. Picture standing next to five of them, inches from your head, all hammering in a square glass and granite room with no acoustics, while behind them, a group of musicians plays a bugle, trumpet, and saxophone, and someone is scratching their fingernails on a blackboard and just outside the windows, every 10 or 15 seconds, they are blowing up Dynomite.

I remembered my earplugs and immediately looked for them. Then I remembered I left them in our luggage at my daughter's house.

That was the majority of the "music". Now, I know I am old, and I grew up in the disco era, which was also loud, but there was real music with some sort of rhythm and sometimes actual words. There was none of that.

I have been to dozens of weddings and normally like them, and I also like to dance. I learned that there is no more dancing, just jumping with no rhyme or reason. younger people have no concept of dancing or music. Unfortunately, all those people will be plagued with tinnitus in 30 years.

I was going to call the police, not because I thought the music was loud, but to tell them to clear the street before the windows burst out, killing 6 or 7,000 people on the sidewalk.

Due to this tinnitus, I couldn't stand it and had to run, very fast, out of there as far as I could, which was to the other end of the building near the kitchen. There was a chair near there, which I sat in for almost the entire affair, because loud noises cause my ears to explode in pain like a Phillips screwdriver is being inserted in each ear, and the person doing it is trying to make them meet in the center of my head.
I made friends with the waiters and barmaids.

I always have this infernal ringing, and loud noises make it very painful. This will take 3 or 4 days to calm down to normal infernal noise.

After a while, my wife called me and told me the meal was served, so I went in and had a piece of salmon, then ran out again.
I stood there for the 4 hours until we left. I never saw the bride, dessert or anyone else in the wedding party, and I was holding my head, so I must have looked like I was having a stroke.

As we left, there were favors to take. Little boxes of Baklava, which is delicious, chopped walnuts wrapped in filo dough covered in honey.
I threw one in my wife's bag as we ran for the elevator.

Downstairs, we called for an Uber and made it back to our daughter's house. There is a step getting up to my daughter's lobby where my wife fell flat on the sidewalk. The doorman ran out and helped me get her up. She didn't get hurt, but my daughter brought down a wheelchair to help us.

I can't sleep normally, but in Manhattan, I waste my time closing my eyes because of the constant sirens and horns, and I am not used to that anymore.

The next day, our daughter made a delicious pasta dish, and it was thankfully very quiet. We played a game with them and our Grand Kids which I enjoyed. We had a 4:00 Jitney bus to get home, and the place the bus stops is on 41st St. We are on 4th St, so it is only 37 blocks away, and city blocks are short, but just to make sure, we gave ourselves an hour to get there. We called an Uber, and when the driver got out, he immediately recognized me. He was the husband of my wife's cleaning girl who was upstairs then. There are like 10,000 Uber drivers in Manhattan, so what are the chances?

We have an hour, so I am relaxed that we will get there in plenty of time.
Wrong. It took exactly one hour to go the 37 blocks, and between my head bursting from the pain and noise, I almost had a nervous breakdown because if you miss the bus, I guess you have to sleep on a subway grate on the sidewalk because you can't just get on the next bus, as they are reservation-only and are usually full.

Thank God, the bus was also in traffic so it was 20 minutes late. The Mexican Parade in the city didn't help because they had to close streets, and the mariachis with their banjos were all over the place, and the streets were full of tacos and enchiladas.

WE got home at about 6:30, and I tried to help my wife by emptying her bag. I stuck my hand in there and immediately noticed the bottom of the bag had about a half-inch of honey in it from the Baklava. Her wallet with all her credit cards, like 20 of them, her license, insurance cards, car registration, and about 30 bills were covered in honey.

I had to take everything out and wash it in hot water. Now I know what money laundering means, as I had to wash all the bills in boiling hot water.
The day was thankfully over, and to sleep I took medical marijuana, Zoloft, Magnesium, Valerian root, vodka, Tylenol and melatonin. I still got up at 3:30 this morning.

 

[JumboShrimp]

Did you at least stuff a doggie bag full of Baklava to bring back out East?

 

[Paul B]

I gave the box of Baklava to my daughters cleaning lady, and I hope all the honey leaked out in my wife's bag and not there also.

 

[atoll]

So.to.cut a long story short. You had a wonderful time and can't wait to go back to Manhattan again.
BTW re Philips screwdrivers. We had a big one and a little one, maybe a middle sized one. Now they have untold number of PZ 2 to God knows how many different sizes and configurations. Don't even get me started on these torox and others bits you need an ology to understand them.

 

[Freenow54]

You made a statement about being a Can

There is no place in the world I would rather "not" be, although I worked there all my life.
I would much rather be up to my waist in the mud of a rice paddy in Vietnam, burning leeches off the skin under my arms with a cigarette while 7 Vietcong are shooting at me and a monkey is in a tree pointing out my location while it is monsoon season and it is Christmas day, and everyone I know is back home partying.

Mikey, lend me your gun, I want to blow my brains out. I could use my shotgun but that would make a big mess.

You made a Statement about being a Canadian expert which we all know what that is. You are not even nominated until you Kiss a Cod, eat a Beaver tail not one of your supermodels, go ice fishing overnight, attend open water snow machine races, Ride on a Dogsled, go to the Calgary Stampede, Walk across the praries until you get to the rockies for no reason ( you will need a compass ) and swim with Sea Lions which charge you during mating season

 

[Paul B]

Freenow, I think I said the nurse I wanted to hire did those things. I ate a lot of cod and have gone ice fishing but the rest of those things I never did.

But I did crash in a helicopter, twice, and I flew the thing many times,



"Camped" in a jungle for a year much of which was in monsoons, pulled dozen or so small pieces of shrapnel out of my body,



SCUBA dove with dozens of sharks, but never a sea lion, although this year I found a dead one on the beach behind my house) Had 38 surgeries and will have another replacement shoulder in a few weeks, And I had lunch with a few Supermodels and worked a couple of Miss America Pageants along with building the New York Playboy Club

In my spare time I wrote two books, got two patents and was on TV for something about a Christmas Card a young girl sent me in Vietnam

https://newyork.news12.com/53-years...d-prompts-meeting-between-vietnam-vet-pen-pal

 

[smitten with ocean life]

wow.. that sounds like a nightmare paul. im sorry

 

[Freenow54]

Freenow, I think I said the nurse I wanted to hire did those things. I ate a lot of cod and have gone ice fishing but the rest of those things I never did.

But I did crash in a helicopter, twice, and I flew the thing many times,



"Camped" in a jungle for a year much of which was in monsoons, pulled dozen or so pieces of shrapnel out of my body,



SCUBA dove with dozens of sharks, but never a sea lion, although this year I found a dead one on the beach behind my house) Had 38 surgeries and will have another replacement shoulder in a few weeks, And I had lunch with a few Supermodels and worked a couple of Miss America Pageants along with building the New York Playboy Club

In my spare time I wrote two books, got two patents and was on TV for something about a Christmas Card a young girl sent me in Vietnam

https://newyork.news12.com/53-years...d-prompts-meeting-between-vietnam-vet-pen-pal

I almost was there with you but by the time I was of age they were shoving the helicopters off the decks of ships. Serious

 

[Paul B]

Smitten, it is all just parts of life.

 

[Imrahilwjz]

I'm so sorry Paul. We just found out my husband of 61 years has metastatic prostate cancer. Please all you older guys out there make sure you are getting an occasional prostate blood test. Somehow our doctor blamed all the symptoms my husband had on diabetes. I'm praying for you and Dale Paul.

My Dad just finished treatments for prostate cancer