My two-years older sister, Barbara, taught me to dance when I was about 15. We lived in Morrice, a town of about 450 people, 14 miles south of Owosso — the biggest town in Shiawassee County, with 14,000 residents.
There were just four boys in our class of nine. I don’t think any of them danced.
I liked dancing. And everything I tried, I knew I was the greatest, whatever. That ego prevails to this day, untrue though it is.
With Mother’s permission, she let me hitchhike Saturday nights to Owosso and Edgewood Gardens dance hall, in a woods east of Owosso.
After the dance I’d hitchhike to Corunna, three miles from Owosso where brother Dair and his family lived. They had a sofa for me.
Then came a 22-month Navy tour, a hospital (tb) for 17 months, then I met Hazel at a dance and we danced at every opportunity for 50 years.
Before she found me, she spent Saturday nights barn dancing in Swartz Creek and Sunday night polkaing in the same town, about 20 miles east of Owosso. I love spelling that town. I was born there.
Now to the point of this Jottings.
The Oxford Rotary Club hosted a Valentine’s Day party Feb 10, at Oxford Hills Golf and Country Club. Ray Johnson of Imlay City provided the great music.
Bob Warnke kept things moving with his mic and mouth. He had strangers asking strangers to dance and the night went fast.
At one point, a lovely lass with a colorful Valentine blouse asked me to dance. My heart skipped, my will waned, but my legs were unwilling and I had to reject such an invitation for the first time in my dancing lifetime.
I know I’m going to fall. Everyone does. Knowing my feelings, daughter Luan convinced me to buy one of those medical alert alarms.
Thinking back to that rejected dance, I wonder if I should have tested that alarm while dancing with a beautiful woman?
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It really strains me to keep from getting worked up about some of our government’s actions, the influence do-gooder environmentalists are exerting, banking, the Detroit Pistons, popular fashion, the tube, high cost of king crab legs, my computer, car drivers, sirens behind me, and, and, and . . .
But, this winter’s weather has been nice.
Okay, I’ll get specific about one thing. A mixture of the list above, has forced (and financed) companies to build so-called ‘electric? cars.
Specifically, the Volt. The CEO of General Motors says the average income of buyers of this Chevy is $170,000 a year. Then our Uncle Sam rebates these buyers $7,500 (raising it two $10,000 has been suggested). This all adds more to the federal debt.
When all the federal and state subsidies to General Motors and its Volt suppliers are totaled, it is estimated each Volt sold costs taxpayers as much as $250,000!
In 2009, one of our president’s task forces concluded the Volt, ‘will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful,? yet the President did not cancel the project.
Oh, wait, there’s more.
The Volt is fueled, in a large part, by electricity generated by fossil fuels, the industry has not figured out how to dispose of the 500-plus pounds of the highly hazardous lithium batteries per car.
So, let’s see: The Volt is very expensive for its buyers and we taxpayers. It has limited mileage. It’s little, even un-American little, and there is no way to get rid of the batteries.
Hmmm?
I’ll close on an up note. Advocates say the Volt will pay dividends for decades, and more time is needed to prove the true worth of the Volt.