Just because it happened

Sunlight hits Pioneer Peak out the front window at about 10:30 p.m. July 27.

Oh, yeah there's a garden going on, too

Haven't posted much about the garden this year.  Like every other year, it's full of surprises and new stuff and things I didn't expect.  Here are just a few examples:

Flower end of the garden has poppies and assorted bright flowers plus pansies and petunias and rocks, lots of rocks. All those bright flowers in the foreground grew in an area where I spread one of those bags of  wildflower seeds last year.

Lettuce and potatoes with a lillie in foreground. Already
harvested some of those vegetables.

Two pots of pansies and petunias.

Potatoes pretty much took over one end of the garden. Not a good year for tomatoes which should be tall in the background. Skinny green things in front are onions.

Here's that woodpecker on the tree. It's
a hairy identified by size and the red spot
on its head. 

We had a very hot May and I read birds needed water in that
situation, so I invented a bird bath. This is the first one I have
seen using it. Hairy woodpecker.

Somewhere among those refugee kids is a writer

This guy wants to be president of the United States. One Facebook commenter

called this FULL METAL JACKASS.

Somewhere among those children making their way from Central America north through Mexico and into the United States, there is a child who someday will sit down and write the story of his or her journey to what is hoped to be refuge from the violence and poverty of the homeland.

If the child survives the journey through hunger, Mexican bandits, those coyotes who guide people across the border, crosses the Rio Grande hoping to find an American Border Patrol officer to surrender to, and is allowed to stay in the country, or even if sent back, and somehow lives to adulthood, the description of the journey may be told. Then, too that 5-year-old will have to survive the Texas governor, flying overhead in a military helicopter, machine gun at the ready apparently to mow down these dangerous interlopers seeking the American dream.

One of those kids will survive to tell the story and only then may the United States show some sympathy for their plight, at least those Americans who can read and choose to, because by then the way things are going with education these days, even basic reading let alone access to truth may become problems in the near future.

It is the history of such events that this country, supposedly founded on some principles involved with embracing refugees from all manner of atrocious situations, attempts to stop new emigres at the border. I am here, now close the gate. There are several memes floating around the Internet with photos of Native Americans saying something like "oh you don't like immigrants? When are you leaving?"

But that same internet seems to be overwhelmed with those who spew hatred toward these innocent children and spreading fears of such things as criminals among them or deadly diseases they will spread into our population. Perhaps we should all be taking notes for that writer who probably doesn't even know yet that it is his destiny.

 Those notes should include progressions like this: In the Texas budgeting process this year Gov. Rick Perry cut funding for border protection.  Then two days ago he sent 1,000 Texas National Guard soldiers to protect it from these kids. But today, today, he found it necessary to patrol that border himself in a helicopter, his itchy trigger finger ready on what looks like a door-mounted 7.62 mm  machine gun. Does anyone really believe he will use that if the helicopter happens to encounter a group of kids crossing the Rio Grande in an inflatable raft? That's doubtful considering the operators of the helo didn't allow him to have any ammunition. Put all that in the notebook for the aspiring novelist.

A week or so ago a U.S, Representative joined protesters attempting to stop an anticipated bus bringing some of those kids to a town in California. When a school bus approached he joined the others showing their signs of hatred toward who they thought were children who probably could not read them. The congressman even said he saw the fear on the children's faces as they  peered from the bus window at the demonstration. When the truth came out, it was a busload of American kids on the way to summer camp, and those fearful kids were actually laughing at the demonstrators and taking pictures with their smartphones to post on Instagram. It took about six tries for that congressman to back away from his original statement. One more for that notebook.

Perhaps the most telling meme around says something like "if your religion says an embryo is life to be protected, but living refugee children are not, then you need to rethink your devotion." Put that in the notebook as well. But these are only asides, footnotes, perspective. Only someone experiencing the journey first hand is going to be able to tell the true story of what these kids are going through.

One can only hope in time the U.S. will find a way to accommodate these kids, bring them into the fold,  save them from the horrors in their homelands and in the process, liberate the mind of that youngster who survives the journey to write the story. That has been the way of the world; the stories of what refugees endure never surfaces until the child grows into an adult and with that perspective tells it all too late to save many of those even now enduring the journey. One can only hope that writer isn't killed by starvation, or Mexican criminals or gunned down by the governor of Texas. Even with those obstacles, one of them is bound to make it and then we will maybe come to understand what we have done.


What remains to be seen is, when that child of today sits down as an adult of tomorrow to write the final chapter will it describe opportunity and success in the new country or will it chronicle another disappointing step along a tortuous trek toward eventual tragedy?

There is a book called "Enrique's Journey," written by a woman who made the trip.

Stories by two former refugee children.

Look at this picture and ask yourself WWJD

Syrian refugee wins Olympic heat after swimming for her life

Ramblings in a mental wilderness

A commercial last night showed a broad expanse of snow-covered tundra while the announcer said something like "observe this stretch of tundra and imagine the future. We see a new drill pad with wells pumping   ...."  I physically shuddered at that thought and turned it off.

Oddly juxtaposed in my mind was a story a friend of mine wrote about finding the skeleton of a missing man in the Alaska wild 30 years ago. His story is added at the bottom here and it was attached as a comment to a news site article that gave some of the history of people who have ventured into the wilderness never to return.  That story only guesses at the number who wandered into the wild without telling anybody they were going.  As the article says it could be dozens and it could  be hundreds.  There's a link below to the article.

My mind was kind of racing around and I recalled a stretch of tundra east of the village of Shaktoolik on the Bering Sea coast. It looked very much like the image in the commercial. One day during an Iditarod race I was staring at that white expanse trying to find the words to describe it. Barren tundra had been used to the point of cliché. An elderly man from the village walked up to me and asked what I was doing and I told him I was trying to find the words to describe what I was seeing.  All I saw was empty white, but he told me it was actually more swamp than tundra and he started pointing out where the river runs full of salmon in the summer and the slight rises where the arctic hares can be found in winter and another spot where edible birds gathered and about the caribou that occasionally showed up near the mountains on the eastern horizon. The nuances of shadows here and there accented the white and that land slowly came alive for me. He described a world full of life that I could not see, but he drove the word barren out of mind and I thanked him for sharing his knowledge.

Today I wonder in the centuries his people lived there how many of them wandered out into that wilderness and never came back. And then think across Alaska, the Arctic Slope. the Brooks Range of mountains rising from it to the south and the deep forests of the Interior stretching to the sea even farther to the south and opening onto more tundra to the southwest. A large portion of it is bordered by ocean along a coastline longer than the whole rest of the United States put together. There are lots of places to get lost.

White men only started coming to Alaska in the 1700s but archeology tells us the Natives lived here for at least 10.000 years before that. How many of them did the wilderness swallow even though they would have been so much more savvy about survival than those white men who came along later.

Trappers, gold miners, adventurers, how many wandered into the wilderness leaving no trace with only tentative connections to relatives in the Big Outside many of whom never learned what happened to Uncle Jack or a father or a son or a daughter.

Today it's mostly adventurers who take those steps off the roadways and disappear. But now they carry cell phones and GPS emergency locaters and have access to rescue by airplanes and helicopters and boats all over the state. Still now and then someone slips away, like the fellow Joe May and Harry Sutherland found thirty years ago, his bones mixed with those of two grizzlies, telling the story of a horrendous battle that neither bear nor man won. It can still happen today. As a matter of fact two adventurers are missing along the southern coast of Alaska right now.

But that wilderness and the danger it holds won't always be there if the visionaries like those who sponsored that advertisement have their way.  Drilling pads and strip mines and roads and dams and all kinds of possible developments have those people lusting after the land to take it over and make it like everywhere else, paying only required lip service to preservation and wilderness. And one day, maybe as soon as my grandson's time people will ask where it went. At times I wonder even now.

Given a choice of a horizon dotted with drilling pads or what at least looks like Arctic wasteland, I'll take the wasteland, the one described by that elder in Shaktoolik that a person can enter and never return from, one that is bustling with life if only we take the time to see it. 

Here's how my friend Joe May described his discovery:

Trapping shelter used by several people over several decades.

Photo is 30-35 years old.

Photo courtesy -- Joe May

"Thirty years ago, Harry Sutherland and I were prospecting a creek south of the Little Peters Hills. Gathering firewood for our evening camp I came upon bones lightly covered in moss. To kill time until bed time we dug the bones out and reassembled them like Tinker Toys. We ended with two grizzlies and one human. Later, in discussion with Cliff Hudson, the Talkeetna bush pilot, we surmised that we had found Jack Sneider, a trapper who had failed to make a rendezvous with Hudson near there years before. Jack obviously shot the bears but not before they got him. Today, a nearby lake is named for the man. Schneider had no close relatives so we left him where we found him. So...everyone who goes lost up here doesn't always stay that way. I like to think Harry and I gave Sneider a more proper send-off... twenty years after the fact, but better late than never.

"Jack Schneider's bones, those that haven't washed down the creek as a result of our disturbance, lie within a few feet of of the south bank of Bear Creek at the south toe of the Little Peters Hills.

"The photo is of cabin he left from to make the rendezvous with Cliff. The cabin is on the north side of Bear Creek.

"The cabin was originally built by a party of prospectors about 90 years ago. It was used as a line cabin by a former owner of the Fairview Inn (a famous historic bar in Talkeetna) and a trapping partner during the Depression in the 30's. Schneider refurbished and used it as a line cabin in the 50's. George Sanderlin (in the Talkeetna cemetery now) and I put a makeshift roof on it and used it as a trapping shelter in the 70's. Photo is 30/35 years old. I have Schneider’s frying pan around here somewhere … it still smells like fish."

Missing in Alaska without a trace by Craig Medred in the Alaska Dispatch News
Lost in the woods, a blog post

The Great Margaritaville cruise finds One Particular Harbor

Party boat.

Valdez, Alaska, seldom has a hot summer day. Built tight against the Chugach Mountains, surrounded by glaciers, and fronting on the cold North Pacific ocean, it just isn't in a place that encourages heat. But there was a day in 1987 when the temperature rose so high our favorite harbor bartender told us to take a table out into the parking lot to enjoy the late afternoon sea breeze. She promised someone would wait on us and someone did.


So, a bunch of us gathered around that table joined by others now and then and losing a participant occasionally, but a core of about eight of us remained for the duration. Conversation covered the gamut of fishing, boats and weather and sea stories until someone brought up the fact that Jimmy Buffett was playing a concert in Anchorage in the next couple of weeks and we were stuck so far away. There's a line in a Stan Rogers song about the same sort of gathering in which he sings "… with every jar that hit the bar …" a plan grew. It was that way on that hot night in a Valdez bar's parking lot.


With every jar that hit the bar we went from lamenting the fact that we would miss the concert to we could charter the tour boat I drove, get hold of concert tickets, arrange a bus ride from the harbor on the other side of Prince William Sound to the city and then sell tickets to the concert. People were responsible for their own meals and hotel.


First thing the next morning I approached the owner of the company. It being late August the tourist business had begun its late season decline and he allowed the charter. I contacted my daughter's mother in Anchorage and she purchased about $1,200 worth of concert tickets. A friend in another tour outfit scheduled one of the company's buses to take us to and from the harbor in Whittier and then to Anchorage and back and the marketing began. A few posters and a posting on the local cable channel scanner did the trick. We sold out within four days.


In a town with no movie theaters and a name performer coming by once every couple of years, people thirst for entertainment opportunities. Our plan was to leave early in the morning, reach Whittier in early afternoon and take the bus to Anchorage in plenty of time to make the concert. The next day we would meet in a central location, take the bus back to Whittier and the boat back to Valdez.


What could go wrong? For once, nothing at all. We had perfect weather crossing the sound, flat glassy water, blue skies and a party going on in the boat. The owner had installed a generator the year before and in his wildest dreams I don't think he ever expected to hear it used to keep four blenders producing margaritas all day long. With lots of music over the stereo and a calm ride, the 120-mile, six-hour trip passed happily and uneventfully.


In Whittier we secured the boat, met the bus and headed for Anchorage. And finally I could have one of those margaritas.


A few hours later we gathered in our block of seats and enjoyed the concert. Most of us had sailed for years with Jimmy Buffett singing the sound track, so we knew the songs and finally enjoyed a live performance.


Afterward we separated again and went our personal ways, eventually to hotel rooms or friends' couches.


The next day at noon everyone showed up to meet the bus, we didn't lose a soul, and off we went to the boat for the voyage home.


The weather hadn't changed and we enjoyed another clear, flat, glassy day. Feeling so good, I took the boat to places we didn't usually go on our trips and gave the folks a real treat in seeing Prince William Sound. One fellow who had been around for many years said we had showed him places he had never even heard of. The waterfall in Cascade Bay was one of those.


Night fell while we were still under way and we cruised toward the harbor in the dark on a party boat with lights blazing. Maragaritas still flowed, now it was all Buffett on the stereo and people were even dancing. We entered the harbor and I found the song I wanted. "One Particular Harbor" and played it loud enough to be heard on shore.


Right in front of the windows that overlooked the harbor from that bar I did a couple of brodies in the harbor's turning basin while the song blasted and passengers danced on the weather deck, waving to people in the bar who by then had spotted us.


When the song ended I pulled up to the dock where tour boats discharged passengers and let the partiers off, then went to our own slip with the crew. Once we had the boat secured, we all went up to the bar where the party was still in progress and lasted well into the night. At one point the owner of another bar in town, who had been on the trip, said it had been so good, if I wanted to do another one some time he would front the money. But that was for another day. The euphoria of the experience still had a grip and the party kept going until the last jar hit the bar.


The next morning I woke up and walked into the main cabin. I felt something out of place and it occurred to me that you know you had a good party when you walk in the next day and your floor is still sticky from spilled margaritas. It took a while to clean that boat but it was worth it. Over all, I lost about $90 for the effort and that was worth it too.


Now almost 30 years later I run into people who were on that cruise and they still talk about it. A defining moment? Maybe. Just plain fun? Absolutely.

Jimmy Buffett's 1987 A Pirate Looks at Forty Tour

Conspiracy check-- this time it's life insurance

I'm not one of those people who sees conspiracy behind everything that happens in the world. As a matter of fact, over the course of my life I have taken things at face value without questioning more often probably than I should have.

So, when I get the hint of some kind of ripoff, my first question is to myself, "Are you nuts?" Most often the answer is yes, but with some even when the answer is yes, there is a lingering doubt.

One of those popped up today. I have been maintaining a small life insurance policy, enough to mostly cover funeral costs and leftover bills so my kids won't have to deal with that sort of thing. The premium has been small enough that I barely notice.

But, a couple of weeks ago I received notice that my premium would double next month. Double! Same coverage, same payout, double the cost. My first reaction, and probably my course of action, was to cash out the policy. I did think it was kind of an outrage to hit someone on a fixed retirement income with a 100 percent cost increase.

Today I talked with the insurer and said something about not needing my premiums to double against my fixed income at my age. She giggled a little and said something like, "I can understand that." So the paperwork is under way to cash out the policy and leave me without life insurance. I do have other funds that will cover the same expenses and the cash out amount is almost the same as the payout in case of my death. After I started that process, it struck me that maybe that's what the insurance company wants.

I started thinking about that -- in case of my death.  In case of?  I'm pretty sure that's a given. But, now, here's the rub. The insurance company knows that's a given, too. They know when I die they will have to make the payout.

Remember the old joke about life insurance being a gamble in which you are betting you will die and the insurer is betting you will live? Something like that. Well suddenly I see a bunch of guys, their suit jackets off, suspenders over wrinkled white shirts, sleeves rolled up and one of them says: "You know everybody's going to die, so every policy we sell is going to pay off at some point. That's a big drain.  Maybe we can find a way to keep the money."

So, one guy says, "How about we do this. With people holding policies for a long time, once they retire and start counting pennies, we double the premium.  They'll decide they can't handle the added cost and cancel the policy.  We get their money for 40 years and then when they get close to the payoff we make it so many of them will want to cancel the policy. No payout. More profit. Bigger bottom line."

And now I feel like I have been walking down the path into their trap for almost 40 years. I don't even want to know how much I paid over the years, but I do know this, while I will get money for growth and interest, I will be getting a portion of my own money back, not a cent from the insurance company itself. So, they have been profiting from me for four decades, but when it gets close to the payoff for my heirs, they find a way out of the deal. Pretty slick.

On purpose, do you think? The way they go after numbers, it's doubtful it happens by coincidence. As a wise man once said, there are no coincidences. I wonder if there is a way to find out how many insurance companies do this and how many people they do it to. If they do, I would expect the amount of money they save goes into the millions, if not billions of dollars. 

I am beginning to think that little giggle from my agent after commenting on doubling premiums on a fixed income was more of a snicker --- we got another one. She'll probably get a bonus.

Let's not leave Exxon Valdez out of the corporate Supreme Court mess

The way it was explained in high school history class, the reason the authors of American democracy gave Supreme Court justices lifetime terms was to encourage objectivity on the court. Appointees for life no longer had to follow affiliations they may have made to get to the bench as they had a lucrative job for the rest of their lives with no political repercussions.

Then came the issue of activist judges.  Remember those accusations when President Obama began making his appointments to various federal courts? The concern should have been about those judges already appointed by Republicans to the Supreme Court.

Now we have a court that is slowly dismantling the democracy in favor of corporations and the rich. This is not what James Madison and the other authors of the Constitution had in mind.

The court's Citizens United decision ruled corporations were people as far as political contributions are concerned with no accounting and no identification. More recently the Hobby Lobby decision not only gave more power to corporations but also violated the separation of church and state doctrine by allowing companies to refuse certain health insurance coverages based on religious beliefs.

But long before that, in 2008, the corporate court ruled in favor of Exxon, cutting punitive damages for spilling oil all over Alaska's Prince William Sound from $2.4 billion to $500 million, less than one fourth of the original settlement. That should have been a signal of what was to come. Slap down the individual citizen, as in Alaska fishing families, in favor of the largest corporation in the world. It was the answer she should have given when Katy Couric asked Sarah Palin, then governor of Alaska, if there was a Supreme Court decision she disagreed with.

In the future as resistance grows to this attempted corporate takeover of the American judicial system and as follows, the government, let's include Exxon Valdez in the argument right along with Hobby Lobby and Citizens United as evidence.  It's only fair, except fair, let alone justice, doesn't seem to count with this court.

Once again, much ado about nothing

The talking heads this morning are all over the issue of President Obama going to Texas but not going to the border with Mexico where a steady flow of Central  American children has been passing into the United States.

There's very little reporting about the problem itself and potential ways to deal with the children if not solve the basic issue. What difference does it make when so many federal and state agencies are doing what they can to address it, if the president shows up on the border anyway? Does that do one single thing to solve the problem?

The Barbie newscasters are gathering panel after panel of supposed experts (many are the same old jerks they haul out to discuss every other situation that comes up) to beat the subject to death, a subject that has no bearing on anything at all except television ratings that apparently rise when they criticize the president.

You know damn well, the minute he stepped out of that helicopter next to the Rio Grande River, the people criticizing him for not going would be shouting that he's using a serious situation to create a photo opportunity -- grandstanding for his own political gain.

Sometimes you have to admire how strong the president really is, just to get up in the morning and face this crap day after day after day.

Never underestimate the value of a nap in the problem-solving process

I bought this four-wheeler in 1995. That makes it about 19 years old.  After I had paid for it and loaded it into my truck, I walked into the dealer's shop area and asked for the manager. When he came over I told him I had just bought the four-wheeler, it was paid for and now I wanted an honest answer. What can go wrong with this machine, what breaks, what spare parts do you think I should carry?

The map shows waypoints recorded and transmitted from my SPOT locater.
Waypoint 1 at the right is the cabin and Waypoint 8 at left is the trail head.
That's the Talkeetna River winding across the top. Talkeetna is to the west
(left) past the edge of the map.

He looked at me and said, "Nothing, they always come back. Get a tire repair kit and you’re good." So far he's been right, I haven't even needed the tire-repair kit, but that run almost ended yesterday at least in my own mind.

Let me explain a little of the mechanics involved first. You can't start this four-wheeler if it is in gear. I imagine that's a safety feature on most of  them.  There are three indicator lights: one red if the engine oil is overheated, another red one tells you you are in reverse gear and one lights green if the machine is in neutral. That green light has to be on or the engine won't start. There is no other indicator to let you know what gear you are using. To shift gears there is a kick shifter, one down for reverse after you hold in a mechanical button and four up for forward gears. Occasionally if I leave it in reverse when I turn it off, it will be difficult to shift out of that gear to start it.

With that said, over the July 4 weekend at the East Pole, I pulled a heavy load of firewood up the hill to the cabin, some of what I left at the bottom in March. Next to the cabin I had to stop on a steep bit of trail, I was backing up, but had to stop and I locked in the parking brake and shut the machine off. Then I unloaded the firewood, unhitched the trailer and moved it out of the way and went to start the four-wheeler to set up for the next run down the hill.

No green light. I kept kicking the shifter upward and still no green light, I figured it might somehow be jammed tight against something and I tried to relieve that pressure by pushing it forward a little. Wouldn't budge; I’d try to kick the shifter up out of reverse but still no green light. The red reverse light wasn't on either but I couldn't remember if that came on when the engine wasn't running.

To keep this post at a reasonable length I'll tell you I wrestled with that machine for more than an hour, even involving the come-along using it to pull the machine into different positions on the hill to try to relieve that tension so I could start it. When I finally gave up it was 50 feet down the hill from the cabin and still silent. By that time I had been thinking of possibilities. In addition to a number of mechanical experiments I could have tried, I also started thinking about leaving it there and walking out to the trailhead, about seven miles of hilly, muddy trail and me not exactly in the best shape of my life. I wasn't going to do it in 2 hours and 20 minutes. I also realized I hadn't eaten in a while and maybe wasn't thinking clearly.

So, I left it and hiked up the cabin and made myself  a hamburger. Of course, what follows a filling lunch? A nap, of course. This is the Bush after all. I laid down for a while, hoping to sleep and maybe wake up with a solution. But there wasn't going to be any sleep; my mind just kept churning. On one side I was figuring out the logistics of hiking out, what I was going to have to leave there, how I could get the four-wheeler under the porch to protect it. The other half was thinking through the difficulty with the four-wheeler looking for an answer.

After maybe 20 minutes of no sleep and a lot of thought, I started thinking through reasons why that machine would not shift out of reverse. As I thought about it, all the shifting I had tried was up, up toward the forward gears. At times it felt like it had shifted but the green light did not come on and the machine wouldn't start. As I thought further, I realized when I had moved it downhill it had gone fairly easily, but kind of chugged with that sound an engine makes when the spark plugs aren't firing. Why would it go forward if it was in reverse? It occurred to me I had been so convinced the transmission was stuck in reverse, the idea it might be in another gear never even came to mind.

It slowly dawned on me that I might have been shifting it into forward gears and that's why it refused to start. My last thought before attempting to fall asleep was I should try downshifting one gear at a time and see if at one point the green light shined on.

Of course. with the simplest of all solutions burning in my brain I wasn't about to fall asleep any time soon. Eventually, giving up, I put on my clothes and boots and headed downhill. I kept thinking it can't be this simple. Still halfway planning my walk out, I sat in the seat and  carefully kicked the shifter down one. It felt like it had shifted gears, but no green light. I kicked it a second time and again it felt like it shifted but no green. I kicked it again, turned the key and, voila!  A green light. I hit the starter button and the engine fired right up. The darned thing had been in third gear, not reverse. I raised my arms and gave a victory shout to the fans watching from the woods. That was when the wave of stupid washed over me.

In a previous post, I mentioned one of the benefits of living alone in the Bush is when you make stupid mistakes no one has to know about it unless you want them to. This was one of those, but all in all it's pretty funny too, so, I can take the ribbing. I'm just glad I didn't have to test myself on that trail. Of course, there is some satisfaction in keeping the 19-year  performance record intact, despite the spates of pilot error.

Incidentally while I was out there, we had enjoyed three beautiful hot days. By hot, I mean you couldn't even hold onto the door knob for any length of time.  The next day, I drove out, loaded everything on the trailer and headed for home. A couple of miles on the highway and I stopped for a snack. When I emerged from the store, I felt the first drops of rain. I drove the rest of the way home in a downpour. If I had hiked, I figured I would have been about halfway along the trail to the trailhead when the rain started.  I'll take it. Plus now there is at least a winter's worth of firewood under the cabin. Only four more­ years to go.

Bush Rules: Break one and you pay the price
About the SPOT locater

Fred Meyer continues baiting the elderly

Once again Fred Meyer demonstrates how honest the company is being with elderly shoppers. A couple of months ago I was checking out on the first Tuesday of the month. At the time I had not made the connection, but the checker told me I qualified for the discount the stores offer older shoppers on the first Tuesday of each month. Then with her voice lowered to almost a whisper she told me very conspiratorially checkers had been told not to offer the discount and only give it when someone specifically asks for it.  We shared winks and I thanked her.

Fast forward a couple of months and I made another trip on a first Tuesday. Unlike a couple of other trips, this time I remembered to ask the checker for the senior discount. I watched the display on the register and I think she saw the consternation on my face because she informed me the discount was only for house brands.  So, I had made a trip to Fred Meyer on a first Tuesday to save myself a little money.  Care to guess how much? My total came to a little over $100. When I got home and checked the receipt, it informed me I had saved a whole 35 cents. Incidentally it did not appear to apply to a $30 item that was a house brand. Thanks again Freddy.

On another note, a few years ago the company began offering reusable bags for sale. Part of the advertised deal was you got five cents off per bag each shopping trip if you used them. They don't do that anymore. Now, my interest in using the reusable bags is not the nickel, it's about all those plastic bags dumped into the environment. However I thought that nickel was a nice incentive for others to join the effort. Those nickels must have hit the bottom line too heavily, so they went the way of a serious senior discount.

There is no need to be devious. If Fred Meyer wants the business be up front about the discounts, say it out loud and straightforwardly. "Fred Meyer offers discounts to senior citizens on most house brands the first Tuesday of every month." Do that instead of hiding the qualifiers in minute type on an obscure web site. The honesty would pay off.  The way it's done now, it sure makes it look like the company wants to hide the true discount just to lure people into the store. Not much different from a car dealer who offers a markdown on cars and when you go you find out it was for one specific car that has since been sold.

Original post about Fred Meyer/Kroger baiting senior citizens