Common Ground

I love to listen to talk radio.  I agree with conservative talk most of the time.  This morning I was shouting at the radio in disagreement.  I hope the driver in front of me didn't see me in his mirror and think I was saying some choice words about them!

The discussion was about the minimum mark-up law.  If you are not familiar with it, booze, smokes and gasoline, all highly taxed items, must be marked up a minimum of 9% over cost. All other products cannot be sold for less than cost, with a few exception like closeout sales.

What really upset me about the discussion, no, it was more of a lecture, was the premise that the consumer was getting a bad deal presently.  People, a business does not thrive on a 6% mark-up let alone selling at cost!

I hope our schools are teaching mathematics so our young consumers can figure some of this out.  For example, if Kohl's is having a 50% off sale, what is the least that their mark-up could be?  Give up?  100%  I'm thinking that even at 50% off, there is still profit to be made so the mark-up is probably at least 110% or better.

So, who can sell at only 9% mark-up or none at all?  General some multi-store business trying to put Mom and Pop out of business.

You've heard the phrase, "The rich get richer..." For a store just to buy a product, Mom and Pop are at a disadvantage. The middleman, called distributors, have layered pricing on their products. Buy above a certain dollar amount and you pay less for the items they distribute. Buy even more and you pay even less.  Have more than one store? Now you really get the buying power.   Become so big that you no longer need to buy from a distributor and you really make the money.  Next time you buy something from a big box store, check out the tag. Often it will say "Distributed by..." themselves. Right there you are probably looking at at least a 10% to 25% savings on cost to the store . That means that you can often sell an item at the cost of what Mom and Pop PAY for it, still make a bit of a profit and put Mom out of work and Pop in the hospital with a coronary worrying about how he can make the business survive!

This marketing has made Waukesha lesser for it. We've lost convenient grocery stores. We've lost hardware stores.  Downtowns suffer for it. Enjoying the quaintness of it and spending a few dollars here and there does not keep the doors open nor does it make the sale of the business attractive to anyone. Our downtown likely will not change much in the years to come. However, keep your eye on downtown Oconomowoc. If they do find a developer for Pabst Farms, Mom and Pop businesses will fold like a bad hand in Texas Hold-em. And it will not be another Mom and Pop doing the damages.

Actually, we as a planet do live in a vacuum.  It was a trendy expression some years ago. Usually used by micromanagers at work.

While thinking about what necessary tasks to put off and plan something fun for the remaining daylight hours, I ended up washing dishes and vacuuming the carpet. Being the CHRISTMAS season, (happy birthday Lord) being kicked off by a holiday, a lot of consuming is being done. Potential members of the Polar Bear Club were waiting in line for predawn openings.  These places would be a great place for psychology majors to gather material for their thesis.

Up there with waffle irons for a last minute present are vacuum cleaners.  I bring this topic up because yesterday I was cursing a bagless vacuum and today I was thinking how great this one was.  I've seen a whole lot of vacuums in my time.  An uncle was a vacuum cleaner salesman way back when few people had a televison. Consequently we had several in the house. Most were in the basement and the Kirby was the one that mom regularly used. I remember that was kind of a bagless vacuum. We put it over some Milwaukee Sentinel newspaper or a torn open Kohl's grocery bag, flipped a lever and a cover would swing out and all the dirt and dust would fall onto the paper, and a good amount back into the air. I guess Kirby's are pretty much the same now. Mom's was still in use for over fifty years. If a Kirby salesperson comes a knocking on your door, take that for what it's worth.

Most vacuum cleaner companies make their money on replacment bags. Pat and I have had seven vacuum cleaners in the last thirty five years and bought a lot of bags. Kanook is our second Siberian Husky. That's been nineteen years of having a Husky out of thirty five years of marriage. Graph that out and those nineteen years with a husky will show a spike in the purchases of vacuum bags. That is until a couple years ago.

Our second to last vacuum was a popular brand with all sorts of goodies including self-propulsion. One problem with a dog that spends a lot of time outdoors and in the Kettle Moraine with me is they pick up some nasty odors from time to time.  Kanook had frequent shampoos after some excursions, but even at that, the vacuum bags would frequently expel malodorous volumes of air if not changed with each vacuuming.  One such day, I decided that this was enough.  I went shopping for a bagless vacuum cleaner and wanted the best!  I'll not say the brand, but suffice it to say, I bought it where nearly all of our previous vacuums were purchased. The exception was a Grant's. Remember those department stores? A new English brand was being marketed and it was pricey, but factoring all the bags that I would not be buying, would probably be no more expensive than the so called bagless brand that I was cussing at yesterday!

Again, I'll not mention the brand but it does imply that someone there sold their soul to satan. This particular one was the second so-called bagless at the store.  The first was a glorified "shop vac". If you have one of these, they don't use a bag but have a big canister filter that catches the dirt from flying out.  It has to be removed and shaken clean from time to time and holds odors. No thanks. The next one did not have a canister filter but had a cup that could be removed and emptied.  The marketing made it sound great. Once purchased, it was found that it had no less than four filters within it! Each had to be either tapped clean or washed and dried to re-establish workable vacuum. The cup just caught the big stuff that fell down from a foam filter.  So in reality these bagless vacuum cleaners are often no better than shaking out a bag and reusing it. 

Even the pricy bagless that I purchased for home has a filter in it. It is recommended to be washed every six months.  I bought a spare.  After a few months, I removed it and was puzzled.  It looked clean.  Not much rinsed out of it. That patented bagless design really worked well!

If after all these clues, you really must know what brand I'm talking about, leave me an email.  When I really like a product, I feel an unsolicited testamonial is in order from time to time. I just thought that I'd help you out if you are going to give a vacuum cleaner for a gift.  Waffle irons, I have no recommendations.

If you check out the official map of the city, you will see nestled at the corner of Northview and Merrill Hills Roads, a piece of land not of the city.  It is surounded by the 14th district. In that piece of land is Pewaukee Fire Station #2. Over east of here on Northview is our fire station on Northview and Grandview.

Down the road from the Pewaukee fire station on Merrill Hills and Summit, the city wants to build a new fire station.  It would be one mile away and the firemen could walk out in the road and wave at each other. Well, not quite, but if the land were flat, it would be possible.  One mile is not much of a distance provided there are no railroad tracks to delay things and there are not.  However, our fire chief has set a goal of a seven minute response time to a call for help. That is a noble desire. Instantaneous response would be great, but something reasonable has to be selected.  I don't know if seven minutes is reasonable. I think the people footing the bill have to decided.

If you are thinking what I hope you are thinking, you will have looked at the map and wondered what happens when a dwelling in the 14th or 5th district has a fire?  Do our firemen wave while passing the Pewaukee station? Do we take back roads so as to avoid such an awkward situation? That would certainly add to the response time. I did a little checking on the drive time at legal speed limits from the proposed location of the new fire station to others.

1. St. Paul station to proposed site:         6:26 minutes
2. Northview station to proposed site:       4:46 minutes
3. Pewaukee Station #2 to proposed site: 1:08 minutes

Add some time to get suited up and fire up the trucks and I would suspect another two minutes could be added. I'm asking questions and not making any conclusions.  I'm trying to be a little like the news network that reports the news and you make your own conclusions.

I think about the extremes.  When I was on the farm, fire response was something between non-existant to minimizing damage to near by buildings. Many towns have volunteer fire departments. Sometimes while driving in the country you will be overtaken by a car or pick-up truck sporting a red light in the windshield or stuck on top of the roof. That would be a volunteer racing to the department to gear up and hopefully not be left behind when the truck rolls out.

I don't want anyone to get the impression that I'm against a new fire station.  I just don't know that it has been well justified. If one is built, I hope they patronize where I work as the new Slinger fire station in the center of town has.  It isn't complete, but I've worked there making sure the workers and the volunteers are warm and cozy this winter. So if a new station is built, it could be money in my pocket.  Unfortunately the tax collector is waiting to remove it!

 Davey Crockett lived in Kentucky and liked his privacy. Once when learning that someone had settled somewhere about fifty miles away, he moved claiming that he needed more elbow room. At least that is how I recall the story.

I grew up with little seclusion. My first recollection was living in the upper level of a duplex. Many of the houses in the area had walkways between them such that you could easily stretch your arms and touch both houses. As time passed, Dad was able to buy his first house. It was one recently built only a couple years prior in a new development near Hampton and Sherman in Milwaukee. Here we had a little elbow room. We were separated from the neighbors by a driveway just wide enough to get the post-war Pontiac past the stoop and their house.

Dad carpooled each day to his job at AC Spark Plug, later Delco Electronics, along with three other electronic engineers who lived in the same development. On the weekends our getaway to seclusion was a long drive out to Dousman to the Fin and Feather Sportsman's Club on Hardscrabble Road. On weekdays we'd meet at the official club tavern on Vliet street and either talk about going to the country on weekends or bowl in the club league. I was young but remember lots of smoke and cigars.

Perhaps it was those early trips to Dousman that made me love the Kettle Moraine Forest so much. It was one of the reasons that when I finally surrendered to the threats from the drug house across the street from my home in Milwaukee, less than a mile from where I grew up, that I moved my young family to Waukesha.

As much as I loved the country, I like the convenience of the city so we bought on the west side of town where the country was less than a mile away. One of the great ways to enjoy lots of the county is to ride a motorcycle through it. You not only get an unobstructed view around you, but you also enjoy the smell and hear the sounds (if you have a muffler) that you miss in a car. This is part of seclusion.

There are signs that seclusion if beginning to elude us. Those curvy side roads that motorcyclist love to cut through now have dirt eroding on to them from someone building their dream home of seclusion in the country. As their elbow room diminishes from others wanting a piece of that seclusion, soon the speed limit drops lower, finally not being much enjoyment to the motorcyclist.

About this time the years without the companionship of my first Siberian Husky moves me to look for a pup who needs a home. Kanook is adopted by Pat and I and I commit to training him to be a hiking companion rather than a runner as his predecessor Kanuk was.

We'd spend weekends hiking the Ice Age Trail and other areas. All the time enjoying the seclusion and communion with Nature. We'd be aware of the hunting seasons and relinquish our enjoyment of the area to the hunters who only ask for a few weeks of time and a little elbow room. One day on a section of the Ice Age Trail seemingly in the middle of nowhere, we came upon a sign saying “Don't Shoot In This Direction”. Now, that is a question that begs an answer so we naturally hiked in that direction. The reason for the sign was soon apparent. Just outside a thickness of trees was someone's home. It was enough to make Davey Crockett's raccoon hat spin.

Now Kanook and I spend more time at the dog parks. Mitchell park has a nicely wooded area to the east, Minooka Park has woods all around. Both are good places to go to think and have a little seclusion.

Now that Fall has come, the leaves of the trees and brush have fallen to the ground. They no longer mask what is beyond the ever thinning thickness of the woods. At Mitchell, you can now see the cars park beyond the woods at the game fields of the Academy. At Minooka, the leaves yield to the houses nested against the park and the traffic on the road alongside of it.

As it is fast becoming in the county, seclusion is an illusion.

If you like science fiction and have HBO, you've probably seen War of the Worlds a few time as have I. If you'd like to experience seeing two of the invader's monster machines, just drive out on I94 towards Oconomowoc and you will see two such monsters rising above the tree on the south side of the road.

When I was in high school and would decide to visit the downtown Milwaukee Library or buy a Bantam Pocketbook at City News, I was acustomed to seeing these cranes rise with highrise buildings. Out in western Waukesha, they are out of place.  Sand Hill Cranes are what I'd rather see than these cranes.

Next Blog, "The Illusion Of Seclusion"

If you heard a man scream last night, it was me.  Never mind that I just picked up my car from Don Jacobs and spent around 6 months of car payments for an axle replacement and a major tune-up.  What really made me scream was tuning to my favorite talk radio station and hearing a basketball game.  Punching in my #2 station brought me more sports rather than local and national discussion. 

Ok, lets punch the FM button and listen to what used to be my favorite oldies station is playing. No! It can't be!  Christmas music?!?! Heck, it's still officially Daylight Savings time and they're playing Christmas music?

 What's next? Back to school sales for the 2008-2009 season?