Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson Red Bluff Daily News 10/29/2024

Winter creeping up on the mountains

Returning to our Red Bluff home after 4 months of traveling, camping and relaxing with nary a care in the world (beyond the now-routine medical issues), there’s always a groan over the deferred maintenance and yard work. However, we quickly remember how refreshing it is to have the open rural spaces around us after months of camping neighbors and urban congestion. There’s a reason we chose not to live in Redding or Chico; Tehama County’s where we feel free.

After a summer spent avoiding our local outdoor sauna, seasonal transitions hit the “high country” of Mount Bachelor. The changes produced views on the web cams of...snow. Not just on the Cascades but Big Sky mountain in Montana, and Mammoth Mountain in the Sierras.

When refueling in Klamath Falls, Oregon on Thursday, the gas pump display (who would have thought growing up in the 60s and 70s that you would have little videos to watch on gas pumps?) included a weather forecast. Predicted: rain on Sunday, followed by snow on Monday, in K-falls itself. Best to avoid snow in a motorhome.

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A few items didn’t make it into the print edition last week, for unknown reasons. While I included Congressman Doug LaMalfa’s voting recommendations, endorsements for President and U.S. Senate were missing. Unsurprisingly, our Republican Congressman urges us to vote for the Republican candidates in those two contests.

I’ll not waste space repeating the rationales, but Doug urged “NO” votes on Props 2 through 6, as well as 32 and 33; a “YES” vote is recommended on Props 34, 35 and 36.

You can always go to donpolson.blogspot.com on Tuesday to read this column as originally written; I’ll post the parts that didn’t show up in print. The parts not printed had to do with: 1) some derogatory comments about Senate candidate Adam Schiff; 2) a Democrat State Senator’s bill providing “surrogates” for gay men to be able to “have children” like non-gay couples;

3) The fact that the Democrat running for President claims to have prosecuted a Mexican cartel, as the California Attorney General, but that cartel had already eased to exist; and 4) the California inmate known as the “yacht killer” received a taxpayer-funded sex change, as advocated for by that same presidential candidate.

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As things California-related are in my purview, note that there is a potential scandal involving Congressman-now-Senate-candidate Adam Schiff. He has “repeatedly declared in mortgage and election filings that both of his homes – one in California and the other in Maryland – were his ‘principal residence’…

“These are serious, documented allegations which carry significant criminal penalties if substantiated,” retired FBI supervisory special agent Jeff Danik said. Our state’s print and media news outlets are probably on it; one would expect “news hounds” to pick up the scent of fraud.

Although the Democratic presidential candidate’s time in California will soon be history, it appears that she got into law school via a program that she didn’t actually qualify for. The “Legal Education Opportunity Program” at Hastings School of Law, University of California, “is intended to make legal education accessible to those who come from disadvantaged economic and educational backgrounds.”

A Politico article from August, 2021(https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/08/18/kamala-harris-law-school-politics-503924) delved into the background that supposedly qualified her for said legal program. She was not, in any sense, economically or socially disadvantaged. Of course, by November 6, it’s irrelevant.

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We’ll not be delving into the controversy over whether the Democratic candidate for president ever worked at McDonald’s. I can, however, testify to my time in the 1960s working at a McDonald’s in Oklahoma City. We received sacks of potatoes in the back door, stored them in the basement, and hauled them up for french fry preparation.

That started with pouring them into a big metal-barrel machine that had a very rough interior; turning on the motor, and running water through it, created nicely peeled potatoes. They then were pushed through a slicer to create finger-length pieces; put into baskets, those were then “blanched” or par-cooked. That made the final trip into the (please bring it back) beef tallow-filled fryer a mere few minutes away from the best crispy hot french fries you could buy anywhere.

Back then, there was only one small paper bag size, and it was a one-handed talent to slip that bag onto the scoop, get the right amount of fries and then drop that full bag onto the rack for an order. That was long before the larger box, and owners’ obsession with “portion control.”

One other thing: As a junior high school student, it was routine to take an order for burgers, fries, drinks and shakes—and then do the math in our heads to tell customers the total. The prices were obvious and, at 15 cents a burger, I learned my math tables—at least until they raised the price to 18 cents (to this day I know those prices: 36, 54, 72, 90 cents, etc.).