Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

With all due credit – and apologies – to Jeff Foxworthy, we’re massaging his “you might be redneck if . . .” shtick for our own use.

And so we present: If this (fill in the blank) is the case, you’re probably a Democrat.

If you read of two Republican members of local government councils being shot to death in New Jersey over the past week, in ostensibly unrelated incidents even though there are precious few facts that have been released to prove that, and you were perfectly willing to accept that it was not political, you’re probably a Democrat.

If you learned that stroke-afflicted Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman couldn’t make it through five weeks of service without checking into the hospital and you are flabbergasted by this, you’re probably a Democrat.

If you proudly cite Pulitzer Prize-winning and since discredited Lamestream media reporting of Trump’s “Russiagate” hoax, but are mum on a Pulitzer Prize-winning author writing it was the U.S. that sabotaged (as in blew it up) the Nord Stream pipeline, you’re probably a Democrat.

If you think the FBI is an even-handed organization that would never sink to partisan witch hunts, despite mounting evidence to the contrary on many subjects, you’re probably a Democrat.

If you think it’s great that our Federal debt is about $31.5 trillion and you can’t understand what all the fuss is about over the government once again bumping against the spending ceiling – just increase it like always – you’re probably a Democrat.

If you think Hunter Biden is no worse than a poor, misunderstood guy being unfairly targeted for political reasons, you’re probably a Democrat.

If you think it was quite justifiable, however, to lie, cheat, steal and bully various members of the Trump administration, you’re probably a Democrat.

If you think it’s perfectly OK for school districts to indoctrinate kids on shifting their gender identity, to rewrite history and teach that bastardized version, to penalize achievers and generally to conduct a socialistic re-education program that would make Chairman Mao blush, you’re probably a Democrat.

If you think anyone in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, who wasn’t a Democratic voter, member of Black Lives Matter or Antifa, or otherwise steeped in left-wing credentials, is guilty of insurrection, you’re probably a Democrat.

If you think it’s okay for media members to abandon the tradition of nonpartisan coverage and instead indulge in spreading falsehoods if it furthers their agenda, you’re probably a Democrat.

If you think AOC and the squad are anything but self-absorbed, loudmouth intellectual lightweights, you’re probably a Democrat.

If you have read this and now are eagerly looking to scour my social media accounts (there are none), seeking my address for petty retribution, or are dialing the FBI to report me as a domestic terrorist, you’re probably a Democrat.

I encountered some unicorns today at the Richland Walmart vision center – unicorns as in rare and highly useful people, not the mythical one-horned equine.

Let us begin with Dr. Richard Way. Of late I’ve encountered poor, lackadaisical service almost on every front, but as I told Dr. Way at the end of my vision checkup, he was a welcome exception.

Begin with attention to detail and thoroughness, something appreciated in any matter, but doubly so when the subject is one’s eyes.

Dr. Way practiced good “chairside” manner, carefully explaining what he was testing me for and what results he was getting.

Sometimes, even with medical care, one gets the impression they are just a stop on an assembly line. But Dr. Way took as much time as was required to do his job in painstaking detail.

The good doctor was amiable and conversational, but still got the job done, another bonus. Too many people these days can be nice and pleasant, or efficient, but not both simultaneously.

My vision had changed, which Dr. Way explained sometimes can be the unlikely result of cataracts. I had just a trace of a cataract when last I’d been examined. Now I was up to a 1 or 1.5 in each in eye, on a scale that reaches four and generally calls for surgical intervention at 3.

But I’m fine for now. By the time Dr. Way was finished with my exam, he had a prescription that will do away with the falloff in vision clarity I’d been experiencing.

I made it a point to note to him that I’d been impressed with his work. This got us into a discussion of society in general. I’m 67 years of age and Dr. Way is a tad younger, but comes from the same kind of upbringing in that you do your job, to the best of your ability, at all times.

Sadly, this sort of ethic has been lost amidst a cacophony of artificially high self-esteem, rights over responsibilities, gender confusion and general socialist navel-gazing.

Dr. Way walked me out to a worker, Mrs. Sanders, who was in the midst of trying to juggle multiple phone calls. When she was done, she helped me order a new pair of glasses, with the upgraded prescription.

Like Dr. Way, Mrs. Sanders was pleasant and proficient. It was quick work and I was soon on my way to order some pizza to take home for dinner.

I’d be remiss in not mentioning the young man who did the preliminary testing for glaucoma and peripheral vision. I didn’t get his name, a lapse on my part. But he, too, did his work while keeping it pleasant.

What a welcome change this whole experience was from what I’ve been encountering recently. If only it could be like this more often.

The spinner for the area school threat game stopped on Westmont Hilltop in recent weeks, with predictable results.

Schools were closed and parents panicked after someone affixed a threatening message to a high school entrance door.

Coming so soon after threats of violence had closed down the Greater Johnstown School District, it seemed to be a copycat incident, with copycat administration response.

It was interesting to read that this Westmont note was particularly well-written, a curious bit of information shared where little else was.

Eventually, the alleged perpetrator was caught after breaking a window at our relatively new elementary school, this in the wee hours of the morning.

And a lot of questions are being asked by concerned citizenry. I’ve got questions, too, as a taxpayer in the Westmont district, but would be stunned to receive legitimate answers.

Reports on social media, which around these parts have a few posters who are extremely good, better than our professional reporters, have identified the person as a teenage girl, perhaps 14 years of age.

Of course officials can tell us nothing, underage kid and all that. Adolescents can run wild with little fear of the public learning about their infamy in these enlightened times.

They receive relative slaps on the wrist for their transgressions, with magically cleansed or sealed records, and all is forgiven due to their age.

If you’ve ever been around young people, you understand they mature at much different rates. Some 14-year-olds have the outlook of a 30-year old. And, conversely, some 30-year-olds act like 14-year olds.

But those 30-year-olds don’t get the pass on misbehaving that the actual 14-year-olds do.

Maturity is relative and not to be determined solely by age. Remember, Mozart is said to have composed his first symphony at about 9 years of age.

Details from social media said that when this sweet, young girl who threatened Westmont was taken into custody, she was in possession of a loaded gun, a sledgehammer and a butcher’s knife. Supposedly there was a suicide note recovered, too, somewhere, as well as some sort of school-shooting manifesto.

Also, according to social media, she is a cyber school student of the Westmont district who has been missing for a week or so.

This speaks to a constant factor in these types of incidents – parenting, or lack thereof.

The privacy blanket also prevents underperforming parents from ever having to deal with being outed for their poor work.

One hand washes the other.

Now the clock is ticking toward the time when the next disturbed local youth decides to get some attention by making a threat against his or her school district.

The reward, in their sick minds, is great and the downside, in unfortunate reality, is demonstrably small.

Ineptitude or indifference, the why really doesn’t matter. What does matter is precious few people I run into during the course of life are doing a good job.

Allow me to give you a slice of my experience from today to illustrate the point.

For starters, consider the ongoing ordeal of dealing with the state’s Medicaid estate recovery people regarding my late mother. She died April 3, 2022. I may just have gotten this thing resolved on Feb. 6, 2023.

Maybe.

To understand this, know that long-term care as consumed most often by older people, is expensive and insurance pays a small part, if any. When costs easily surpass $11,000 a month, many people quickly exhaust their life savings and are shunted onto Medicaid.

In order to preserve the cash value of a life insurance policy for a burial, it must be signed over to a funeral home. To protect a house, there is a homestead exemption, that ends with the death of the owner.

My mother was a woman of modest means at best. She died with thousands of dollars in her checking account only due to the government stimulus payments.

Medicaid, rightly, wants paid as much as possible from a deceased’s assets if they’d been put on Medicaid as a last resort. We were prepared to write a check to Medicaid for our mother’s checking account assets, minus such costs as having her tombstone engraved and paying some lingering utility bills for her house.

By the way, my mother’s house is uninhabitable, having had the water and sewer disconnected physically in order to end the money drain due to the ongoing war on homeowners being practiced here under the guise of sewer improvements. Also there is structural damage to the foundation, most likely due to mine subsidence.

Medicaid wanted my brother and I to sell the house and send them the money. We offered simply to sign over the deed to them.

They didn’t want it.

I took the lead in dealing with Medicaid, from reporting my mother’s death in timely fashion, to providing them time and again details of her financial situation at her time of death.

When the Medicaid people got a bit aggressive, I reached out to a long-time acquaintance who specializes in elder law and even works at times for Medicaid. He basically advised me to tell them to stuff it regarding the house.

If we opened an estate regarding our mother, he pointed out and I already knew, it would have been upside down financially from the get-go.

Nearly a month ago I reached out – again – to Medicaid for a status update. I was required to email the same accounting of the situation I had sent so many previous times, most recently a sheaf of various documents.

I was told we were almost over the finish line. Tiring of the wait for the checkered flag, over the weekend I sent the guy I was speaking with – and his boss – an email reminder that nothing had happened in almost a month.

I got a call today that I missed, and a pathetic voice mail was left indicating the guy had been planning on sending a letter, but he guessed it never got done. He promised an email with the final accounting, and miracles, I got it today.

All that is left is for me to write the check for $3,300 or so and we’re done. I think.

Feeling emboldened by this modest success, I decided to push my luck regarding an ongoing medical matter. It was decided at a Jan. 20 regular checkup that I should have a stress test and it would be scheduled for me by that doctor’s office.

Two weeks later, considering how on this last visit the office couldn’t even find my blood work report that ostensibly had been sent to them from a lab, I thought maybe yet another matter had slipped through the cracks. I called and was told I’d have to talk to someone else, and not before the end of that week.

I waited even longer, until the beginning of this week, and called again. After working my way through three people, who all needed my date of birth, address, phone number or combinations thereof, I got to the person who handles scheduling.

She’s operating without even basic insurance knowledge, thinking my Medicare Supplement Plan G was just some add on to cover dental and vision. I pointed out it’s the best Medigap plan offered here since Plan F has been sunsetted.

This woman got a little nervous when I emphasized to her this revelation was coming from a guy who used to hold a state license in health insurance.

After some verbal tap-dancing, she assured me the request had been resubmitted with the proper note that I didn’t need a preapproval to have the work done. Because I’m that guy, I asked for the number of the central scheduling people so I could pursue this myself.

I called that number and that next woman also did some verbal tap-dancing before telling me that, magically, the approval had just come in and they would call me to schedule.

In fact, she added, she could schedule it right then. I took her up on that offer.

But in this case, or that of my deceased mother, why does it have to be so difficult? Why can’t people deliver on their promises?

Why can they not simply be required to do their job at some degree of proficiency, or hit the pavement?

So much of our current world view is fantasy that it boggles the mind and prompts the concern that truth is being rendered an archaic concept.

Consider the online artificial intelligence exercise ChatGBT, which obviously has been programmed to have a strong left-wing bent.

As reported by Forbes, the AI site refused a request to write a positive poem regarding Donald Trump, but quickly was able to praise poetically Clueless Joe Biden, he of the ongoing classified information scandal and the inability to process or communicate information in general. Just this week the Clueless One said “more than half the women in my administration are women.”

Some might argue it was a moment of unusual candor, or a Freudian slip considering Biden’s penchant for appointing sexually confused people. But I’m going with Clueless Joe often speaks like English is a second language for him.

Still on the Biden front, another source, a tech writer posting on youtube, went to ChatGBT to try it out for a poem on Clueless Joe’s feckless son Hunter. You know Hunter, drug user, laptop loser, rider of daddy’s coat-tails at every opportunity.

Sure enough, ChatGBT praised Hunter with “through it all, he stands tall.”

ChatGBT, however, had nothing to offer on outspoken Republican Congress member Marjorie Taylor Greene because it said it cannot take a partisan stance.

Yeah, right. Or should I say, left?

Lest you tend to nod affirmatively about this, not surprised based on your life experience, but wonder why you should care. Here’s why.

Fantasy such as this can and does affect you. Other fantasies have more immediate impact on your life.

Refer to the past Friday’s “blockbuster” January payrolls number offered to you by government bean counters.

Understand this is not a partisan issue. It occurs during Republican and Democratic administrations. But that doesn’t make it right.

These releases are short on actual numbers and very long on backward-looking revisions, projections spit out by computer models and a thing called seasonal adjustments that factor heavily in those models.

The expected January increase was 188,000 jobs added. But, push the button, listen to the computer whir as it factors in its programming (sort of like the tilted programming for that AI site) and you get, voila, 517,000 jobs added and an unemployment rate of just an historically low 3.4 percent.

The number would have been a decline of about 2.5 million jobs. But the seasonal adjustment was more than 3 million jobs, the largest such tweak in history.

This report, released early in the day, supposedly will make the Federal Reserve more determined to raise and maintain high interest rates for longer, which sent stock market indices into frantic back-and-forth action, with all three major averages here closing lower.

Precious metals were hammered relentlessly because of this report and its supposed impact on The Fed.

Government numbers, in general, tend to be fantasy, as is the typical reporting from Lamestream media.

It has become almost a full-time job to try to sort through the propaganda and, sadly, too few members of the citizenry are willing to make the effort.

This makes the job easier for those who would treat us as mushrooms, perennially kept in the dark and fed manure.

By now you know, even if you didn’t want to, that Punxsutawney Phil was hoisted in front of his adoring crowd today, saw his shadow, and thus we are doomed to six more weeks of winter.

I always thought the fix was in regarding Phil. Whether it be sunny or not, the glare of all the electric lighting and those television cameras – plus smart phones videoing the proceedings – virtually guarantee a shadow result on Gobblers Knob.

With all due respect to Phil, I’ve never ventured to Punxsutawney on this day. I did, however, serve as a member of the wedding party 49 years back when my cousin displayed his sense of humor by being married on Feb. 2. He’d gotten engaged on April Fools Day.

My son once did go to the Phil show (Woodchuckstock) as a college adventure and hasn’t been back since (at least not on Feb. 2), which speaks to the attraction of it all.

Regardless, I was amused to hear that Phil might be branching out on prognosticating, beyond practicing meteorology without a license.

It seems Phil could be spreading into political and social punditry.

And so, Phil saw his shadow today and predicted six more weeks of Clueless Joe Biden classified documents being discovered, including in Phil’s burrow – next to Phil’s Corvette.

Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of Hunter Biden making fumbling, bumbling claims about his laptop, or maybe what is not his laptop, and asking daddy’s justice department lackeys to make all the mean people pay for talking about that laptop with Hunter’s disgusting personal information on it, whether or not the laptop actually is Hunter’s.

Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of Democrats whining about Republicans doing to them what Democrats did to Republicans when the Dems held the majority in the House of Representatives.

Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of pathetically over-the-top emotional displays from Democrats, such as outgoing Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who cried his way through a departure press conference and proclaimed Clueless Joe the greatest father figure he’d ever encountered. Yes, the guy who sired and raised Hunter and now covers up for his errant behavior. I hope Klain’s real father isn’t alive and forced to hear any of his son’s maudlin garbage.

Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of White House press mouthpiece Karine Gay-Paris (Paree) stonewalling reporters, even those from formerly friendly left-wing Lamestream media operations.

Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks – at least – of machinations over raising the national debt limit. We never can pay back existing indebtedness, short of a hyperinflationary event rendering debt meaningless, so what’s a few extra trillion dollars of shortfall?

Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of bad economic news. Despite those suspect glowing job reports, and a rip-roaring stock market in which companies on life support such as Carvana are rising meteorically, understand that just today stalwarts like Apple, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Starbucks and Ford were among major companies reporting significant earnings misses.

And last, with spring training opening later this month, Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks, months, years and decades of bad Pittsburgh Pirates baseball.

You are forgiven if you take in economic reporting and feel as though you are trapped in a version of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities,” specifically its best of times, worst of times passage.

Fed chief Jerome Powell took to the podium Wednesday to announce a 25-basis points increase in interest rates, as expected. But it was his press conference afterward, in which he dispensed with his fire-and-brimstone warnings on inflation and the economy and instead turned all warm and fuzzy, that was taken as him waving the white flag.

Taking its cue from Powell, the Dow Jones Industrial stock average, down 500 points or so at the worst of the day, rallied to a small gain. Other stock averages did similar turnarounds and even bond interest rates sank a bit in the face of this latest Fed rates raise, a real-life example of the investment world seeing the Fed about to capitulate on its attempt to rein in inflation and resulting speculation in the investment world.

All bark and no bite. All hat and no cattle. Pick the most appropriate cliché for the Feds’ jawboning bluff being called.

The optimists, the bulls, see nothing but sunshine and lollipops ahead.

The pessimists, the bears, see a lot of fools about to be fleeced.

Who is right? How can one tell?

Consider the government Gross Domestic Product (GDP) report for 2022, that saw the biggest drop in consumers’ disposable income since 1932. Because they no longer teach history in schools, allow me to point out that was in the midst of The Great Depression.

But the optimists counter that current individual savings totals, still flush with stimulus handouts, are at all-time highs.

The pessimists’ reply is a simple inquiry: So why are credit card balances at all-time highs? This at a time when interest rates are through the roof and all that debt comes at a huge cost.

Why is the flood of car repossessions taxing the available supply of those doing the repossessing?

The optimists can point to all that spending on stocks in recent weeks, pushing the share prices to near all-time highs.

And then there is the job picture, which is stunningly strong if you believe the government reports.

Yet this comes against a backdrop of huge layoffs, particularly among tech giants. Meta (formerly Facebook) saw its share price rally immensely today based in large part on promises to cut spending, a euphemism for reducing employee headcount.

Although our often moribund Johnstown real estate market seems late to recognizing the reality, rising mortgage interest rates have crippled housing markets across the country.

Ah, say the bulls, this just makes housing more affordable. Perhaps, if you still have a full-time, well-paying job.

We’ve written before that the job reports can distort reality on the ground. Job openings in California don’t necessarily benefit unemployed in Pennsylvania.

Demand for writers of computer code doesn’t help the person whose job skill is limited to asking if we want fries with that fast food order.

A highly compensated worker loses his job and the local eatery hires a waiter. That’s a wash on job reports.

Those reports, by the way, are mostly conjecture and modeling and very little actual counting.

The inflation rate declining is heralded as a huge win. Not entirely. If in 2023 you are paying 110 percent of 2022 costs for goods and services, but the inflation rate drops to 5 percent in 2023, you’re still on pace to pay 115.5 percent of 2022 costs in 2024.

To repeat, a decline in rate of inflation, doesn’t mean you are making up economic ground, only that you are losing ground at a slower rate.

The optimists made a lot of money on their investments today. The more speculative those investments, the more they made.

I made a little bit, too, based on safety plays such as gold and silver rising on the back of a declining U.S. dollar.

I’m still thinking I’m on the right side of the boat for the long haul. But these are curious times, with increasingly insane happenings in the investment world, right along with what’s happening in the world writ large.

It was 1977 and a friend of mine, fresh out of college and earning the big bucks as a polymer specialist with a big oil company, was looking to purchase a car.

I accompanied him on a test drive in a diesel Volkswagen Rabbit, which he was considering because of its great fuel miles per gallon rating (the 1970s were times of multiple gas crises in these United States) and the fact that it ran on diesel.

Believe it or not, diesel fuel back then was much cheaper than gasoline. No longer the case, I know. More on that later.

Also, diesel engines were supposed to provide a longer usage life than their gasoline counterparts.

The Rabbit ran well enough, but on an uphill pull on Eisenhower Boulevard it seemed – to put it kindly – to be emasculated.

Rabbits – gasoline versions – had a reputation for peppy performance. Not so with the diesel.

As I explained to him then, diesel engines have a narrow torque band and need to be kept in that sweet spot in terms of revolutions per minute. That’s why diesel trucks can have 15-speed transmissions, or more.

This Rabbit, as I recall, had just a four-speed manual transmission. You figuratively had to row the car up a hill with constant shifting.

It was a no-sale.

Fast-forward to 2023 and diesel cars are way out of favor. But since the 1970s, pickups trucks have swelled in size to challenge the semi trucks of the past, and diesel is a popular pickup truck option, mostly for engine life and torque. Diesel fuel has spiked well above the cost of gasoline, so owners take a big hit, there.

The Holy Grail now is the electric vehicle. While it costs more to purchase initially, just as diesel cars did back in the day and trucks do now, it is supposed to more than pay for that with cheaper operating costs. And then there’s the saving-the-planet angle.

Why, the government will even give you tax incentives to go electric. Clueless Joe Biden was posted on Twitter earlier this week driving an electric Hummer, a vehicle whose price begins at $87,000 and runs right up to $110,000.

Joe was boasting of those tax credits. The only problem was this vehicle would not qualify for any tax credits, which cut off at a vehicle price of $80,000.

You would expect better from Clueless Joe? Have you heard about his classified information problem?

Today, a report from the Anderson Economic Group said that rising electric power costs have pushed the cost to operate an electric vehicle above that of the traditional internal combustion engine.

That’s just the fuel cost. It doesn’t factor in the fact that so many cars will need a battery pack change 10 years or less into their lifespan, which can run $10,000, $20,000 or even more.

You can replace a gasoline engine for less than either of those numbers.

In addition, it is likely that electric power generation and distribution by our failing grid in this country will continue to be a negative factor, producing rising costs and even the inability to get any juice out of the outlet.

Like the diesel cars of the 1970s, these electric vehicles seem like a good, money-saving option, until you look behind the public relations curtain.

When you reach the point where the rubber meets the road – an intentional car metaphor – the electric vehicles don’t save you any money to operate, cost more to purchase, and leave you with less flexibility of use than someone gets by driving a car they are able to refuel at gas stations sprinkled liberally among cities, towns and villages around the country.

Diesel wasn’t a good choice for a car in 1977. Electric vehicles are similar in 2023.

It’s all about race these days, and we’re not talking NASCAR, Indycar, or any other form of motorized competition.

Everything, it seems, must be viewed through a racial lens, as in skin color.

Sexual orientation is coming on strong in virtue signalling and forced perspective, but race still is the prime consideration.

Watch some TV shows, or the omnipresent commercials that split those shows into tiny segments. The ads must have over-representation of blacks, Hispanics and even Asians compared to their numbers in the general population.

An acceptable substitute, on occasion, is an overabundance of women, or obviously gay folk – as in two guys holding hands or two women caressing each other.

A spinoff is the proliferation of the mixed race couple in ads, an outsized trend apparent even to Clueless Joe Biden judging by his June 2021 speech in which he said, “eight to five — two to three out of five (commercials) have mixed-race couples in them. That’s not by accident.”

Biden thought this was a good thing, indicating improvement in racial relations. Come on, man. These are actors, not real-life couples.

The Clueless One is right in one respect, it isn’t by accident. It’s advertisers pandering to those who would make racial representation the litmus test of whether an ad, or product, is acceptable or not.

Perhaps you have heard that Philadelphia will face Kansas City in the Super Bowl, Kansas City having gotten there with a huge helping hand from the zebras.

A prominent theme you will hear between now and the game is that this is the first Super Bowl with two black starting quarterbacks.

Like Barack Obama, KC quarterback Patrick Mahomes has a black father and a white mother, but for purposes of racial demagoguery, he’s black.

When a mass shooting occurred in California recently, targeting Asians, Lamestream media was quick to run with the hate crime angle, figuring it was the stereotypical angry white male.

But no, the alleged shooter was either Vietnamese or Chinese. Accounts vary. All agree, he was Asian.

And still newspapers in California, and likely elsewhere, continue to try to paint this as a racially motivated attack on Asians.

It’s no different regarding Memphis, where an arrest turned into a beatdown of the suspect by police and that suspect’s eventual death. Murder charges have been filed against police officers.

The suspect was black. So, too, were the five police officers who were charged.

Despite this, a Washington Post story decrying racism basically said “so what?” that the cops were black.

At least one of those crazed pundits from a leftist cable news outlet maintains those black police officers were motivated by racism.

This is the narrative, that the nation is a boiling pot of racism and likely always will be. Don’t let any facts to the contrary change that narrative.

No fact-checking here. And it emboldens those who would continue to inundate us with claims of racism, even when such claims are patently ridiculous.

Yes, there is racism in this country. But not to the degree it is portrayed.

More to the point, the situation never can improve as long as race is elevated to the prime consideration in evaluating and coloring the perception of each and every one of life’s occurrences.

Cheers for the advancements in the medical world, as evidenced by my brother’s relatively pain-free present state.

Said brother had his gall bladder removed Saturday by the laparoscopic technique, which simply put means four small incisions to insert a video camera and small robotic instruments to do the actual cutting and removing of the diseased and inflamed organ, along with any gall stones.

I happened to be present when a day before the surgery a doctor was giving my brother the standard background and what-can-go-wrong talk to get permission to do the deed. At that time, it was presumed the laparoscopic approach could be used, but if not, then there would be the more traditional abdominal incision made to provide access.

Even at that, he stressed it would not be that invasive. The doctor held his hands maybe four inches apart to indicate the size of the cut.

At this point I told him that was amazing, since my gall bladder surgery, admittedly performed in the relatively distant medical past, had produced a much bigger cut. He seemed to be incredulous, so I raised my shirt to show him the scar, which I have since measured at 10.5 inches, give or take.

Must have been done by a resident, he said dismissively, indicating perhaps I had not been worked on by a skilled surgeon. Or maybe there were complications?

No and no. My surgeon, since retired, was highly regarded at the time. His daughter apparently now does this sort of thing. She had spoken with my brother, but she was unavailable Saturday due to it being a weekend.

I pointed out to this doctor who my surgeon had been and he did some quick verbal backtracking.

Some background on my case is in order. Back then I’d been going to the hospital with chest pain that felt like I’d been harpooned. This was in the early 1990s and I was in my mid-30s. The presumption was heart trouble.

I even had catheterizations and balloon angioplasties done. But my Pittsburgh heart specialist at the time said although I had a congenital narrowing of a major blood vessel in my heart, through the years I’d formed a natural bypass due to the collateral blood passageways becoming enlarged. I had some arterial plaque, but nothing to account for my symptoms.

Eventually, I kept having these painful incidents and it was diagnosed as gall bladder trouble. Given the option to have it removed, I jumped at the chance.

Ironically, the laparoscopic methodology was on the near horizon locally, but no one mentioned that.

Instead, I was cut stem to stern and let me assure you, it was not pleasant. All the talk of core muscle training for athletes rings true because my core muscles were compromised and you use them for just about any movement.

The bonus was I was unable to work for six weeks or so. The time off – with pay – gave me great insight to the attraction of not working. I had not been idle for that long in the work place since age 17, when I began part-time work at the Post Office that became full-time temporary during summer months.

I soon transitioned to my first full-time newspaper job and kept right on working.

It was during that time off following surgery that I resolved to save, invest, and retire early. I hit that goal at 53 and a half years of age.

You might say my gall bladder surgery was a mixed blessing, ending my pain and acquainting me with the attraction of not working.

Since this was not a factor for my brother, I’m glad he got to have his gall bladder problem addressed the comparatively easy way.

Just as cars, appliances, computers, cell phones and all else have come a long way in the past 30 years, so, too, has this surgical procedure. And that’s the good news.