I am writing this story about my dad because we made a deal that if we let him use my new family name, “Magoon” and write about Thomas, my four kids and me in his last story, I could write the next story about living with him. So here goes. First off, dad became “The Falcon,” when I was about to have my first child Alyssa. Dad had expressed to me that he didn’t think he was old enough to be a “grandpa” and tried to come up with another name for his dear granddaughter to call him instead. He actually started off with Uncle Bill. Although that never took as she ended up calling him Papa or Grandpa anyway. But by the time I had my second child Christopher he came up with “The Falcon.” He sometimes tries to get the kids to call him that still but they all think it is just Papa being silly and they think it’s funny.
Dad
is not what I would call a hands on grandpa, well not until they reach
about
age 1 or so. They need to have what he calls their “sea
legs” before he would
really hold or play with them. He always looked a bit awkward when I
would ask
him to hold one of them while I was heating up a bottle or getting
their food.
When I had twins, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. With
Thomas working
nights, I needed an extra hand to hold a baby. Although I did sometimes
wonder
how in the world did he take care of me as a child? Did I change my own
diapers?
Because he certainly NEVER
once helped change any of the grand kids diapers!!! I
couldn’t even get him to
throw them away. He did help a bit here and there, only things like
take one
out of the bath while I watched the other one that was still in the
tub. Of
course he had to switch with me right away cause he was not about to
hold a
naked baby for too long.
Cooking is something he relishes, Dad is not what I like to call an adventurous eater he only has about 10 different meals that he rotates over & over again. He doesn’t like to try new things and he insists on cooking his meat, not on our gas grill, but on his rickety charcoal fired Webber and only uses mesquite charcoal, unless of course we are funding and cooking dinner then he will gladly partake in the gas grilled barbeque. One of Bill’s favorite dishes is his “Cajun Chicken.” Thomas likes to kid him that it really isn’t Cajun chicken, just burnt chicken, as you just can’t control that grill as well as the gas barbeque.
Now you can always count on the fact that whenever we have just finished detail cleaning the kitchen (with a family of seven, usually happens twice a week) he will show up with the fixings for making spaghetti sauce, which always ends up all over the newly cleaned stove, not to mention the walls and cupboards. He makes a huge pot of it and then freezes it in Tupper wear to be consumed for weeks and weeks later, until he runs out and waits for us to clean the kitchen again. Another favorite recipe of his is chicken soup. He insists on using bottled water and not broth to boil his chicken, but he never manages to get all the bones out, so there is a surprise in every bowl. It’s become a contest with the kids to see who finds the wishbone.
But no leftover episode ever ends without a Tupperware lid scavenger hunt, which is about him ranting and raving about where all the lids have ended up (usually this ends up with him blaming Bill Gates, we’ll get to that later). One time he pulled all the Tupperware out, threw them all on the floor, and spent the next hour fitting each lid to each container. Only to find that there were indeed lids missing. Usually the Tupperware ends up being covered with tin foil. A month later when he made the next pot of spaghetti, all of his work had been undone. All he had to do was look in the back yard, as the boys like to use them as Frisbees.
Every morning he fills the house up with the aroma of sausage or bacon and eggs, and other odors due to the fact that he adds garlic, onions, bell peppers, olives, mushrooms and spinach, the only way to make scrambled eggs according to him. The kids usually like his food but this; they won’t have anything to do with. He usually says, “Well, their Czappa taste buds just haven’t developed yet, give them time.”
The most entertaining part of the day is usually in the evening. The kids take their showers and get ready for bed. While getting their pajamas on, they like to pull them all the way up past their belly buttons and walk around the house saying, “Who am I”. Of course they are imitating their grandfather who usually is always prepared for a flood. Another fun activity in the house is who gets to watch what on the TV at night. I like to watch more popular shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives or House. Thomas will watch
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Winter 2009
The
ARC TV Gazette
Circulation 12,000
******************************************************************
The
Editor,
Hope you enjoyed our newest story and keep in mind that these stories may not be entirely true, especially the ones written about me. We still have our book of short stories on sale down at the shop, makes a great holiday gift. We have had another interesting year here at the shop and even sold another art piece. Yes, “Pressed Duck” has found a new home.
You know I wrote some years ago a paper called the “Economic Formula,” (It can be seen on our web site) and now parts of it are being quoted on TV nearly every week. The major point I made with that formula, how to have a good economy, is to have good paying jobs here at home, not in China or some other country. Money flowing to other countries does not do anything appreciable for the welfare of the USA’s people. You hear on the news over and over that it is the small businesses in this country that will save it because they employee more people and also local people. With things as bad as they are you just can’t count on the government to fix the mess they themselves helped create. But we can all do something positive about it by helping your local small businesses. By spending your money locally, at small businesses, the money stays flowing mostly in your city and state. If possible, buy American made products. And remember when you repair something, even if it was made elsewhere, it is being repaired here by Americans. Think of it as remanufacturing. And repairing things is also good for our environment as well. By recycling electronics our store has always been part of the recycling effort.
Please let us know if you are getting duplicate copies or your name or street is miss-spelled. You know we take the call over the phone, writing your name and address on a call ticket, and then it gets transferred to a sales receipt and then gets transferred again into the computer. So there are three chances for it to be incorrectly spelled and then of course there is the problem of penmanship.
Antenna
reception is getting better and better.
Although the new HDTV broadcast signal is a little harder to get, many are finding that they now have a much better picture. Gone are the ghosts and snow that plagued broadcast reception in the past. Each station now is as clear as the next. I did require many of you to get a newer or larger antenna to make it work right but the picture quality is well worth it. And we now have some 86 channels to choose from besides.
We have noticed a lot more people getting off of cable, Satellite or U-verse. I’m told that one of these new channels are playing old movies similar to Turner Movie Classics. So if you are one of those people who is paying for cable or satellite just to get this station check out a TV guide or ask a friend who is using antenna and see if this channel will fill your needs. But the other thing you don’t get over the air is Discovery, Biography and the History channel. I have always said that if they ever broadcast those stations half of the people would drop cable and satellite like a hot potato. And besides, broadcast reception is usually superior to cable or satellite because the signal is not being suppressed as much.
Well the price of new TV sets continues to drop but the better makes are still costly. We have a 32” LG on sale right now for only $575.00 while they last. But if you don’t have room for a new set due to your space, repairing or buying one of our high quality rebuilt sets is a fine option. They do not sell just a VCR anymore, you have to buy one with a DVD in it. So remember we still stock lots of high quality refurbished VCRs. And they have tuners in them as well.
Those home movies you took years ago make fine holiday gifts. Your home movies on film or tape can be easily transferred and made into multiple copies for your family or friends. There is no better surprise then receiving a video of your self that you forgot about. Remember that if you are still using 8mm, Hi8, or even Mini DV formats, if you camcorder breaks you may not be able to replace it so start coping your movies to DVD while you still can. We have DVD recorders on sale right now or bring them in and we will copy
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We have mentioned this before that if you own a Plasma, LCD, DLP or projection TV you should make sure the vents in back are not full of dust. Dust will cause that very expensive lamp to go out prematurely. All these new sets have fans to help keep them cool so if the vents are blocked that cool air cannot flow. If you can’t get back there yourself and blow them out we do make house calls to clean them out for you. We would suggest at least going over them with a vacuum cleaner on the out side of the vents at least once a year. People who have pets, horses, smoke or live next to busy roads usually have more dust accumulation then normal.
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Continued
from Page 1)
anything sports related, he
usually gets booted to the bedroom, and Dad, well he will watch any
dating
reality show on television. He likes to say he’s dating the women vicariously through the show.
He still dresses like a surfer even though he hasn’t surfed in years, although at age 62 he still skate boards. I wouldn’t say he is a bad dresser, especially since I always give my honest opinion, although try as I might, he can’t seem to shake wearing his pants by his belly button or his white tube socks with brown Velcro strapped sandals. Yikes, I get shivers just thinking about it. He tells me he doesn’t care what people think, I’m an artist I can dress however I want! That is until he is going somewhere important and then he asks for my opinion but usually sticks with the white socks and sandals anyway though.
He had driven his old 69 Ford Econoline van since 1973, longer then my entire lifetime up to now. I had to take my driving test in that old jalopy. Do you know how hard it is to do a 6-point turn on a narrow street in the Glendale hills without power steering? You should have seen the look on the test givers face, especially when I had to unbuckle her, as her acrylic nails were too long to push the button in on the old seat belt. He used to tell me that it would be mine someday and he would paint it pink for me. Thank goodness he never followed through with that threat!! Of course I never expected that when my daughter Alyssa was 9 that he would then threaten her as well !!! She was not having it! I must say though, dad sure got some good use out of that old van, he was able to get over 300,000 miles on it before he had to finely let it go as it needed too much work and he was finally ready for air-conditioning and he just liked the idea of pressing one button to lock all the doors. Keyless entry, what a concept!!! It was kind of sad as it still had the desk he built in it when he took me to school so I could do my homework during the commute home. His new car can hold all the kids and he took them to the supermarket for the first time by himself. He hadn’t realized that it would be an experience akin to herding free-range chickens.
The Falcon likes to sing as he drives and has several songs he has made up. Songs like, “The sky is blue inside my shoe in September, in the rain. The birds are red inside my head, in the winter, in the snow. I’d like to go where the wind don’t blow in the sunshine and please find my lost toupee etc.” He started singing these songs around the house and when taking the kids places and well, now all the kids are singing his songs when I take them somewhere. I started laughing when I heard my son Joshua singing one in the car the other day. My husband Thomas who works at the shop with him has a different opinion about dad’s unique song writing skills. The guys at the office get to hear songs about Salinas and whatever rhymes with that. Some mornings he will wake up the kids singing, Mule Skinner Blues, “Good morning captain, good morning to you,” etc. While he sings his songs he does a little dance, moves of which he has made up on the spot and defy written description. You have to see it to believe it!!
Even though he has been writing stories for years, and is a published author, he still keeps pronouncing words incorrectly and his spelling is horrific. You know it’s bad when you use spell check and it doesn’t even know what you’re trying to say. Alyssa, at age 10, often corrects his work. He blames Bill Gates though for spell check not working, in fact he blames him for everything that goes wrong with his computer.
Yes, living with an artist is some kind of an experience. He often tells our guests that they are really visiting
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3)
his art studio and we are just people who happen
to live
there too. The garage, uh “Studio,” is filled
with everything and anything you might need to make art which is just great for the kids, especially when an art project for school is needed, so all and all not to bad a deal. Sometimes when we have friends over he will get out his guitar and serenade us while we are eating. And when guest leave our home after a holiday dinner he has to walk them to their car blowing his trumpet, it’s funny, now all the kids find some sort of musical instrument to play and accompany him with this task. Yes, he’ll say; “They’re all becoming fine little Czappa’s.” The kid’s always reply with “we’re Magoon’s not Czappa’s Papa!”
The End
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