Author Archives: Dick

Pigeon Scratches

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Not many people in North Puffin know that my college buddy Jabe Roy snuck me onto a flag station at Bridgehampton Race Circuit when I was a bit shy of my 20th birthday. That wasn’t the weekend I set the land speed record from Hoboken, through New York City, out the L.I.E. to NY27 and on to the track. That came in Jabe Roy’s ’65 Vette a year or two later.

The Bridge“The Bridge” was a 2.85 mile, 13 turn, road course sitting on some prime real estate out near the tip of Long Island, New York. OK, when I was there it was only a decade past being a potato farm but the area was growing by leaps and bounds. Today you can drive a golf cart on the same pavement that Mark Donohue, Dan Gurney, Bruce McLaren, Paul Newman, Jackie Stewart, and Rufus drove. And, of course, me.

My good friend and crew chief Rufus says he never drove my cars at Bridgehampton; he drove only to the flag stations. The earlier named star, racing legend Rufus Parnelli Jones, started on the pole with a 1:44.04 lap time in the 1969 Trans Am race.

Stirling Moss called it the “most challenging course in America.”

I was a year too young to set foot on a race track when I earned my National license in Flagging & Communications. I jumped the fence and earned my National competition license shortly after I did become “legal.” And it all started at the Bridge.

“All who have raced there know that the earth is flat and ends in the sand at turn two,” Bruce MacInnes said once. He was just another amateur racer when I knew him but he grew up to be Chief Instructor at Skip Barber’s Racing School. I have kept the hammer down through that turn; the temptation to feather the gas there is great.

Over in the political department last week, I remarked that (most) people apparently want to live in pigeonholes. Maybe it’s because they don’t have to think there.

That resonated for me in a way that transcended politics.

People reading this know I’m a news and political junky but how many readers know that I’m a mechanical engineer? Or a landscape photographer? How about that I chopped down some of Vermont’s vast fiberglass forest to build the 30′ production catamaran that I also designed? That I have skied the Alps and the Chesapeake, managed a movie theater in Times Square, or taught in Vermont Colleges? Perhaps you do know I anchor a local teevee show but not that I taught lifesaving. Or that I raced cars.

We get pigeonholed.

Pretty much everyone appreciates that Paul Newman won an Academy Award for The Color of Money. I knew him as one the drivers who pushed my Camaro along the pit lane when we were sitting waiting for a red-flagged race to restart. Bob Sharp once said PLN could have been world champion had he started racing before he was forty years old. He was that good. Who knew?

We get pigeonholed.

Neuroscientist Dave Sulzer, a professor at Columbia, studies how the different parts of the brain communicate and pursues treatments for certain diseases. In his other life, he co-founded the Thai Elephant Orchestra, a 16-elephant ensemble that performs in Lampang, Northern Thailand. Their second album includes the music of Beethoven and Hank Williams. Who knew?

We get pigeonholed.

Here in North Puffin my public persona is arts council chair and newspaper columnist. And occasional geek. Discovering that I can drive anything with wheels or build a dovetail joint for a cabinet drawer surprises most everyone.

“The emotional rewards of driving this turn ‘flat out’ are just as intense as the physical consequences of blowing it,” Mr. MacInnes said about Turn Two at the Bridge.

The rewards of living outside of the pigeons’ roost smell pretty good, too.


71 Camaro

Rufus suggested I list the race cars I’ve owned and driven.

  • ’60 TVR. This car was allegedly Mark Donohue’s but we never confirmed that. It spent an interesting afternoon with a tow rope through the windshield opening.
  • Triumph TR4. My “school” car. Came with a Mercury wagon tow car painted to match. I learned that front engine/RWD drive cars handle differently than rear engine/RWD drive cars when Porsche driver Alan Howes gave me the hot line at the New Thompson Speedway. Rufus eventually bought it from me and made it into a much better race car than when I owned it.
  • ’69 Camaro. The blue car which started out life painted yellow and which we raced in red-and-white.
  • ’71 Camaro. The gold car, built at Three Pines Farm. This was my primary ride from the time it was new until I smacked the wall at Charlotte and put an end to it.
  • Lotus Formula C. I drove this at Pocono to get some “logbook time” and learned that being able to see the tires going round and round is very distracting.

The 1969 Trans-Am at the Bridge.

Do Democrats Believe in Democracy?

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Maybe not.

“All politics is local.”

Speaking of shopping, the Vermont Supreme Court last week ruled in favor of construction of a Walmart in St. Albans. Developer Jeff Davis expects the store to be open for business by the end of next year. The unanimous decision, the high court’s second in the case since 1997, upheld a 2010 decision from the Vermont Environmental Court. The Vermont Natural Resources Council had opposed the development.

Vermont was the last state in the union to receive the Walmart blessing; the first store opened here in 1995. Some Franklin County residents have fought off the megaretailer for nearly 20 years. We didn’t need Wally back in ’95 because we had Ames but Ames closed its retail stores here in 2002. Since then, pretty much everyone in Northwestern Vermont has had only a couple of choices for sox and underwear: buy them at the supermarket or the Dollar store or pay the I-89 tax to drive an hour to the big box center in the next county.

The Vermont Environmental Court decision had already granted Walmart permission to build the 147,000-square-foot store in Franklin County over VNRC objections. The court required Wally to pay the Town additional “public service costs” (such as for fire and police) that its presence cause the Town to incur.

That’s not unusual. Municipalities often charge developers impact fees before allowing them to build houses and stores.

And now the Supremes have upheld it. Again.

“This is such a bad decision for the governance of Vermont,” VNRC spokesman Jared Margolis told WPTZ News. “Really gives the green light, opens the floodgates to local boards to act however they want because the Supreme Court has condoned pretty awful behavior.”

Atty. Margolis ain’t from around here or he would know that local control is the governance of Vermont life.

Former Vermont Secretary of State Deb Markowitz, also a Democrat, wrote, “…One-size-fits-all solutions from the state will not work as well as allowing our cities and towns to develop their own responses to local problems… Over the years our legislature has given us local control over many issues — from animal control to zoning.”

Ms. Markowitz got some of that right. Citizens and their local boards do have control over issues ranging from animal control to zoning but not because the legislature in its beneficence granted it. Citizens and their local boards do have control over issues ranging from animal control to zoning because we kept those rights while constitutionally ceding some affairs to the legislature.

Creepy, crawly, encroachment. That’s the way erosion works. Take a little here. Take a little there. Pretty soon the legislature grants us leave to shop for the little parts of our little lives.

Sooner or later they’ll notice that a local board might act however it wants and the sky falls down.

This is not the first time the Vermont Natural Resources Council has come down on the side of interference. They support major property tax increases on private lands to punish bad land uses, unremittingly denounce anyone who might allow a (gasp) snowmobile to cross his farm, and oppose the planned Lowell Mountain wind project.

I’m thinking the elected local boards might think VNRC’s self-appointed behavior pretty awful.

SODDI

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Ex-presidential candidate and Vermont’s former governor, Howard Dean told Bob Schieffer this morning that George Bush and the Tea Party caused the financial crisis.

Some other dood did it.

The SODDI defense, sometimes including “Plan B,” comes up in a criminal trial when there is no question that a murder, assault, or theft happened, but somebody else was in the room as a convenient fall guy. “Black guy, big head” actor Steve Harris liked to say in the television legal drama The Practice. The Other Dude can often remain unnamed, just a wraith who creates reasonable doubt. The real Plan B is invoked when the Other Dude gets a name.


AAA Rating

Republicans in Congress and on the street, of course, blame President Obama for all of the nation’s problems. “Hold the line,” Jim DeMint told Speaker John Boehner.Some other dood did it.

One of Rufus’ good friends, the very liberal born-again Zoroastrian musician Tom Minor, posted a Youtube video showing “How The Bush Tax Cuts Blew Up The Deficit And Debt.” It has easy to understand pictures, he wrote, “for all your friends who try and sell the BS that this debt is Obama’s fault.”

Some other dood did it.

If George Steinbrenner were still alive, how long do you think Barack Obama would last as the manager for the hated (in Vermont, at least) New York Yankees? I reckon he’d get tired of keeping power hitters Reid, McConnell, Inouye, Durbin, and Kyl, Boehner, Cantor, Pelosi, McCarthy, and Hoyer on the payroll when they couldn’t do anything but fumble.

Some other dood did it doesn’t work on the diamond.

Howard, and Jim, and Tom all missed the boat. They should have used the Shaggy Defense.

Reggae artist Shaggy’s number one hit song It Wasn’t Me portrays a man who asks his friend Shaggy what to do after his girlfriend caught him with another woman. Shaggy’s advice is to deny everything. Say “It wasn’t me,” despite all evidence to the contrary.

The Shaggy Defense described singer-songwriter, arranger, performer and record producer R. Kelly’s position when charged with child pornography after cops found a video of Mr. Kelly having sex with an underage girl. “You say that was me on camera, butt naked, face hanging out, banging on the kitchen floor? Nope. Wasn’t me.”

Worked in court.

Probably wouldn’t keep the manager or the players on the roster in the real world, though.

Citing the ongoing deficits and the unlikelihood that the current crop of politicians would ever solve them, Standard and Poor’s downgraded the United States debt from AAA to AA+ yesterday. It is the first debt downgrade in U.S. history.

I know. S&P must be the Other Dood.