Bad Month for a Buddy of Mine...

[neonsport]

There's a guy named Tommy who lives in a little town about 15 miles from here. I've known him for 20 years, since I walked into his barber shop after growing my hair out for 2 years. I asked him to just cut it all off. Anyway, I used to juat go hang out at his shop. He had a great collection of some of the most unusual old stuff... toys, tools, photos, old signs... whatever he liked. He'd hang this stuff all over the walls. He finally bought a huge old house that was once a hotel, and put his barber shop downstairs. I still see him around, but I haven't had the time to hang out for quite a while.

Last week , Tommy's father died. He was also a barber, and there were great pictures of him on the walls... on his Harley waaaaay back was my favorite. I was planning on driving out to pay my respects, but hadn't done it yet.

Sunday night, Tommy's house burned to the ground. I heard about it yesterday, and today it was on the front page of the weekly county paper. Tonight it was the lead story on the Little Rock news. Besides the barber shop, Tommy and his wife were running a ministry, feeding homeless people, just trying to help the community. He has no insurance; even though he's been working to meet code with his 200+ year old house, the insurance company wouldn't write the policy. That's not that uncommon with old houses in Arkansas in rural locations, but now Tommy's left with nothing.

My first thought was to find all my unusual stuff and give it to him. In times when I couldn't afford a haircut, he'd trade for cool stuff. I'm definitely going to do that, since he's going to need things for the new shop, whenever he can get that together. However, since I don't have any spare cash to donate, I think I'm going to load up some stuff I don't really need (my spare lawn mower and edger come to mind), and give them to him to sell. Having all this bad fortune at this time of year just isn't right.k

[ARCHINSTL]

And here's the link:
http://www.todaysthv.com/news/news.aspx?storyid=57593

And off the subject - have you ever seen the Gurdon Light? Pretty famous.
http://littlerock.about.com/cs/urbanleg ... nlight.htm
Tom M.

[neonsport]

I've never gone to see the light, but my kid has gone on halloween for the past few years. I used to live in a little town called Reader, about 35 miles from here. When I was a kid, we used to go out in the woods to an old stagecoach inn. It was said that if you were there late at night, you'd hear a woman scream, hear tumbling down the stairs, and see a pool of blood appear. It was a good story, anyway.

I wonder if anything's still standing at that inn... Hmmm... It doesn't really matter, I wouldn't know who to ask where to find it.

[Mattel]

That's terrible news. I hope that his good turns will come back to him. I'm glad that your friend and his family are physically unharmed. I must admit that the government of the USA doesn't always get a good rap in Australia (probably fair enough most of the time) and that your electoral system seems to have fundamental flaws. But we do recognise that the general population of Americans are some of friendliest, most charitable people in the world. This board being a microcosm of that. I seriously have learnt a lot more about the U.S since joining this forum (and also watching Jon Stewarts Daily show). Thanks for sharing.

[Typrus]

hahaha....
The Daily Show... Thats funny.

I don't watch it myself though. I pretty much avoid anything off of the History Channel, Nat'l Geo, Discovery, Science... YEah. I'm a nerd if you want to say it. But I know more about the last century than 9/10 of my peers, and I say thats important.

At least your friend is taking it on from a faith-based point of view. Ever heard of Job? Heh. Something greater will come of this. Don't know how to see it right away, but if you cling tight to His word, he'll use you in ways you never dreamed.


Thanks for letting us know about this. I'll be keeping them in my thoughts and prayers.

[shonuffisthemaster]

Its amazing he still has a positive attatude in the face of such losses.

I must admit that the government of the USA doesn't always get a good rap in Australia (probably fair enough most of the time)

The Daily Show rocks!

Yes, the government here (mostly the city) can be bastards all right. I know many people who have been screwed by codes and inspectors. One guy I worked for who flipped houses had his project house broken into, and all the new copper stripped out of it, basement flooded, etc.. Well, the inspector who had been on his case from day one happened to stop by that morning, before anyone else had seen the break in, he saw the broken window and the door ajar, instead of calling the police, he wrote the guy up for having an un-secured premises! Talk about a one-track mind! I have many other similar stories, like inspectors insisting on a manicured lawn on a house that's been classified abandoned (that same guy had to pay three times to re-instate the abandoned status of the house, because he was there too many hours in the day working on it).

The problem with the wiring (and everything else) on many older houses is that there was pretty much no code when they were built, or the builders got away with murder. I have seen some terrifying structural and electrical messes in the houses I've worked on that were only 80 or so years old. My parent's house had serious structural problems that were easily visible from the basement, that the inspectors completely missed when they gave it the OK to be sold. Also the wiring in their house consists of wire insulated with tarred cotton, hung with ceramic knobs nailed to the studs (apparently at that time they were supposed to use ceramic tubes to insulate where the wire passed through the studs, but they didn't) New code wiring is safe though, its the new building practices that are the problem (Tyvek in particular).