I tried to watch some NFL playoff football over the weekend and stumbled onto an ongoing Woke indoctrination seminar. It meant the TV controller got a workout looking for alternatives.

This was particularly noticeable Sunday. First, apparently the Los Angeles Rams didn’t get the message. The white spaces at the front and rear of the helmets all seemed to have traditional “Los Angeles” and “Rams” stickers instead of the trendy commands to end hate or the like.

The Rams have in the past, however, had “Be love” and “Stop hate” stickers on their helmets.

Missing from Rams helmets in this playoff contest were the virtue signalling sloganeering that seems to have taken over sports of all sorts.

The Rams’ opposition Sunday, Tampa Bay, was with the program. Some Bucs’ player helmets bore social justice warrior approved messages such as “Inspire change” or “Stop hate.”

At one point, the Rams quarterback seemed to kick a Tampa Bay defender. If only the QB had been wearing a “Stop hate” message on his helmet, this probably wouldn’t have happened.

These virtue signalling helmet stickers have been with us all season and it occurred to me that an all-controlling outfit such as the NFL must have an approved list. I checked and it does.

“End racism,” “Stop hate,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Inspire change,” “Say their stories,” and “It takes all of us,” are on that list.

In keeping with the league’s priorities, I’m thinking “No unapproved messages here,” “Football isn’t really dangerous,” “Please ignore all our outlaw players,” or “Kiss the commish’s robe” would be fitting additions.

Alternatives I’d personally like the NFL to consider include “Hate hate,” “It’s all about me,” “Greed is good,” and “Why is the season so long?”

Oh, for the innocent days of our past, when XFL player Rod Smart wore a jersey with his nickname “HE HATE ME” on it instead of his actual last name as is the jersey tradition.

I’m not sure who the NFL helmet stickers are supposed to please. Wokesters don’t think they are anything more than empty platitudes, and they are not wrong.

Otherwise solid upstanding citizenry among the fans grow tired of being preached to for crimes and offenses they are not committing.

But the whole phenomenon can produce some hilarious moments of incongruity.

The out of bounds stripe at the extreme of end zones can have two messages such as: “Advance social justice” at one end of the field and “It takes all of us” at the other.”

For the Kansas City-Buffalo game, played at Kansas City, those messages were icing on end zones that were painted with the word “Chiefs” in huge letters. Holy mixed message Batman!

Nicknames like the Chiefs are totally unacceptable in Woke precincts these days and are seen as derogatory, stereotypical and just plain nasty.

I’ve made the argument, and continue to make it, that team mascot names are not meant to demean anyone and instead impute admirable qualities. Packers, named as a tribute to Green Bay’s original meat-packing company sponsor, and Steelers, a nod to Pittsburgh’s history of steel mills, are but two examples.

But the terminally insulted and offended always tend to win in the long run, note the Washington Redskins becoming the Washington Football Team — not exactly a catchy transformation.

How long can the Chiefs continue to play with that nickname, and in Arrowhead Stadium, to boot?

No amount of helmet stickers or virtue-signalling field messages are going to smooth over that disconnect in the minds of the offended.

Joe Biden claimed his administration has overperformed in its first year and I thought of comedian Jeff Foxworthy and his trademark you might be a redneck if . . . jokes.

Biden is no stranger to playing fast and loose with the facts. These days it’s often chalked up to his declining mental faculties, but the trait has accompanied Biden throughout his public life.

Exaggerations over his academic performance, his political accomplishments, where he’s been at historic moments, sort of like Forrest Gump, all are part of the Biden resume. But while the fictional Gump was a likeable simpleton, Biden really isn’t likeable — except by other simpletons.

Biden can be amusing, though, in a sad, pathetic way.

This is a tribute to the shrinking number of people who are believing without question whatever Biden says.

You might think Biden has overperformed if you anticipated gas prices would be $10 a gallon by now.

You might think Biden has overperformed if you thought the Afghan pullout went flawlessly.

You might think Biden has overperformed if you expected the stock market already would be cut in half on his watch.

You might think Biden has overperformed if you predicted the annual inflation rate would be 50 percent and climbing.

You might think Biden has overperformed if you feared the COVID death rate would be 99.4 percent under him.

You might think Biden has overperformed if you were certain there was no need for him to do anything to shore up our southern border.

You might think Biden has overperformed if you thought he’d actually be at the Ukraine border to welcome any invading Russian troops instead of merely giving Vlad Putin the green light for a “minor incursion.”

You might think Biden has overperformed if you thought he would do absolutely nothing to try to stem the rising tide of overdose deaths among young people.

You might think Biden has overperformed if you thought his claims could pass fact-checking only 5 percent of the time.

And, finally, you might think Biden has overperformed if you’re still running around with a Biden bumper sticker on your Prius.

In the early days of my career in journalism I worked with a guy who covered a high school football game for our newspaper, touching off a week-long run of corrections.

He had the wrong names for touchdown scorers – on both teams as I recall. He had other incorrect names, statistics, etc. and, as subscribers read the daily corrections, they felt moved to call and ask that even more misinformation be corrected.

It was a journalistic joke considering that the guy was a professional sportswriter. But at least he wasn’t this nation’s president.

Make no mistake, we have a similarly fact-challenged type in the Oval Office. Every time he opens his mouth, Joe Biden’s cringing staff spends ensuing hours, days, even weeks, trying to clear up that what Joe said wasn’t exactly the way he should have said it.

It occurs to me that Bumbling Joe is so fond of illegal immigrants because just like most of them, he speaks English very badly as a second language. Biden’s first language is greed, which he and his family speak fluently.

When it comes to Biden and English, not so much.

In recent weeks, Biden apologists and surrogates have had the impossible task of maintaining that Biden wasn’t calling opponents to his voting rights power grab racists, even though he said they were lining up behind racists. It’s an insignificant distinction, but one Biden’s staff and lapdog media members tried to make.

It seems they’ve failed to do so with any but the most blind and tone-deaf Biden loyalists.

Biden went back to the matter of racists and voting reform in his press conference two days ago, a session notable for its length and more Biden gaffes.

The leader of the Democratic political party, which sees Russians under their beds and behind every ill in the world, laid a verbal egg when he said a “minor incursion” by Russians into Ukraine would leave him uncertain of what to do.

The words were barely out of his mush-mouth when outraged reactions began. So did the clarifications that have become so common that they follow a set theme, to wit: Never mind what Biden SAID, here’s what he MEANT!

We shouldn’t be surprised at this from a guy who showed up at a rally during his presidential campaign, introduced himself, and proclaimed he was running for Senate.

Biden’s malaprops and misstatements were mildly amusing when he was a political sideshow. Now that he holds the fate of this nation in his trembling hands, it’s not so funny.

In this same press conference Wednesday, Biden questioned the legitimacy of the upcoming midterm elections if his proposal for federal election over-reach is not passed by Congress, and it won’t be passed.

Understand that Democrats questioning the legitimacy of elections is old hat and hailed by the leftists.

Hillary Clinton could not accept her defeat by Donald Trump and all these many years later, had the incredibly pathetic egomania to go public reading her “victory” speech that she never got to give.

Clinton was and is celebrated by left-wing types for her ongoing delusion.

Earlier this month, when Biden hypocritically blasted Trump for questioning the past presidential election and called it a case of Trump and his followers “holding a dagger” to the throat of democracy, it was accepted as fair commentary.

To sum up, Trump questioning results of an election that featured videotape of suitcases full of ballots emerging and being run through scanners after observers had been sent home, an election that also followed a strange counting path that statisticians say is so improbable as to be virtually impossible, is a threat to democracy.

Hillary, with no reason other than the disproved Russian interference theory that her campaign funded, can question Trump’s win without any fear of backlash.

Now Biden isn’t even waiting for results and instead is questioning in advance our next major national election. Translation: If Democrats lose a lot of Congressional elections, as the polls indicate is a very likely outcome, Biden and his gang of lackeys will take to their usual media outlets to question the results and the legitimacy of the winners.

Anyone with more than a scintilla of intelligence understands that you cannot in good conscience play both sides of this argument. If it is wrong for opponents to question the results of elections that you are said to have won, it’s just as wrong for you to question when the results indicate the other side prevailed.

More hypocrisy from liberals. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you; just as shocked as when Biden said he’s “outperformed” so far in his presidency.

The man needs help. With him in charge, we all need help.

Let us attempt yet again to separate COVID reality from the cocktail of hysteria and propaganda that continues to be served up by governments and their sycophants in the media.

REALITY: My mother once again has tested positive for COVID (no specific variation has been shared).

She is an 85-year-old woman confined to her bed in a long-term care facility. She has had COVID once before while staying there, exhibiting basically no symptoms, but testing positive. Since then she’s had various vaccines and boosters.

She’s lived since all the COVID mania began in a facility at which visitors at first were banned, and then had to be masked to enter. Staff members not only wear facemasks, but of late now wear clear plastic face shields, too.

But still my mother has tested positive again, and has been moved to the Red Zone, into solitary confinement.

My brother got her on the telephone earlier today and said she seems fine, but is disgusted yet again to have tested positive and therefore to have been denied visitors, despite all the vaccines and boosters. What was the point? Indeed.

REALITY: Even the VaccinNazis have had to ratchet down their rhetoric from the starting-point fallacy that vaccines are the be-all and end-all in preventing infection, to the vaccines work at a high level in preventing infection, to although they don’t prevent infection at least the symptoms aren’t as severe, to maybe they do little if anything to prevent infection but they sure do make a lot of money for pharmaceutical companies.

REALITY: England finally got it and announced Wednesday that it is ending vaccine passports, mask requirements and work from home mandates. In other words, the dog and pony shows, the Kabuki theater, the Potemkin villages are being dropped in a concession to the reality that they are all show and no go.

REALITY: I know plenty of people who have come down with COVID and zero have ended up in the hospital due to it. This would be passed off as anecdotal evidence. But, at some point, personal experience means more than some crackpot models cooked up by academics along the line of scientists who once cited statistics that bumblebees should not be able to fly due to wing mechanics vs. body size. The fact that most of us have seen bumblebees fly is merely anecdotal evidence.

REALITY: Speaking of flawed models, one concocted at Penn State ignores falling COVID death rates since the onset of the Omicron variation, and similarly ignores that the COVID case rate is falling in 34 states, including Pennsylvania. Despite all this, the model predicts a surge in COVID deaths in our near-term future.

REALITY: Reports from around the world note top-notch male athletes – vaccinated athletes – keeling over in competitions. There are studies indicating vaccines increase rates for various maladies, particularly in young men. Under the anecdotal evidence category, a friend of my son, a thirty-something JAG officer in excellent physical condition, came down with COVID and had little in the way of major symptoms. But the military, in all its genius, required him to be vaccinated, and that vaccination did more to him than the virus itself.

OPINION: Historians are going to view this COVID mania in much the same how-could-this-have-happened? wonder formerly reserved for exercises in public lunacy such as Holland’s Tulip Bubble.

Before I layer up, grab a snow shovel and go to work on the 12 inches or so of white stuff that needs rearranged around my house and vehicles, a word about the politicization of COVID-19.

It’s a subject into which reality never seems to intrude – at least when COV-IDIOTS and MaskHoles are doing the talking.

Perhaps you’ve heard that 270 “doctors” have called for the silencing of podcast host Joe Rogan for the sin of doubting the need for and effectiveness of vaccines.

This is a familiar tactic by the radical left and its lapdogs in LameStream media, who repeat their distortions without any of the so-called fact checking they are so fond of performing on conservative voices.

Recall how DR. JILL BIDEN!!!!!!!!!! had to be referred to with her doctor title whenever she uttered a few disjointed thoughts on the subject of the virus? Well she does have a doctorate, but she’s not a physician. Her doctorate is in educational leadership! She’s no more qualified to issue medical advice than a philosophy professor or a math PhD, or any of us.

And so it is that the 270 doctors coming out against Rogan include, by one author’s post on Zerohedge.com, “50 PhD academics, around 60 college professors, 29 nurses, 10 students, 4 medical residents, and even a handful of . . . science podcasters.”

Bet you’ve never seen or heard that kind of breakdown of the “270 doctors” offered by the left-leaning “journalists” in the LameStream media.

Rest assured that you would have, had the “270 doctors” come out against the need for vaccines.

Why does the left lie and distort with such regularity? Because it works on the sheep who consistently vote them into power.

Consider another item from Zerohedge.com, a report on a national poll by Rasmussen Reports that found that 45 percent of likely Democratic voters approve of the government placing those refusing COVID-19 vaccinations in interment camps.

It gets worse.

A full 48 percent of these mentally challenged voters are OK with the government fining or imprisoning anyone who questions the efficacy of vaccines on any platform.

The First Amendment be damned!

And, finally, 59 percent of these clueless sheep would go along with the government confining to their homes, except for cases of emergencies, anyone choosing not to get COVID-19 vaccines.

If you’re on the right side of this issue, both politically and morally, you must understand this is the deranged sheep mentality you are arrayed against.

It’s not just the general populace among the left that is academically questionable. You have a Supreme Court Justice making up statistics to bolster her case, and eventual vote for, Biden’s vaccine mandates for private companies that six of her fellow jurists saw as the unconstitutional power grab that it was and is.

Understand, also, that these people on the left never quit. They always are pushing to take away the freedoms of those who do not agree with them.

They only can win if you continue to accept it.

Rome was not built in a day, and it didn’t fall in a day.

Both processes took hundreds of years. But I’m sure there were many observers during the closing days of the fall who had missed the ample signs of decline along the way.

Equating the rise and decline of Rome with the ascent and fall of the United States is a familiar topic and not without merit.

Pay attention and one can see the parallels.

Our governments – Democrats and Republicans alike — have debased the nation’s money supply, accelerating the process when Richard Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1971.

Ancient Romans “clipped” coins, taking a little silver or gold off the edges to the point where the coins were unrecognizable. The government went along by substituting base metals for gold or silver in the coins.

The U.S. long ago went down that road, suspending convertibility of currency into gold or silver and taking the gold and silver out of coins, except for investment coins that trade not on their face value, but on the value of the underlying precious metal in them.

Roman rulers attempted to distract the masses from the problems with their bread and circuses (free food and entertainment).

Is that really any different than our current and past regimes with their “stimulus” handouts, various other government freebies, and a general bent toward dividing the populace against itself, lest it turn its attention to the failed leadership?

Romans and Americans alike experienced dramatic reduction in the standard living for the common folk, a vast and widening gap between rich and poor, and taxes verging on the confiscatory.

The story goes that many in the outer reaches of Rome’s empire welcomed invading barbarians because their take from the people was less than the Roman government’s taxation.

Erosion of our nation is evident by taking a trip to stores and being greeted by empty shelves or extremely limited supply where once there was an abundance of choices.

It’s evident at the checkout line where the prices rise steadily, or at the gasoline pump – same thing.

What is pathetically sad about all of this is how many governmental types, or sycophant economists, proclaim not to have been able to see this coming. Really?

You goose the money supply at an historic rate, keep interest rates at historic lows to encourage wild borrowing and speculation, yet you are surprised when the classic recipe for inflation – rising money supply and declining supply of products – produces price inflation?

The decline goes beyond rising prices and decreased availability of products.

Major cities, often under socialist-liberal leadership, are becoming hell holes of violence and general lawlessness.

Service levels almost everywhere are in the toilet. Teachers don’t want to venture to their classrooms and teach. Truckers don’t want to deliver goods. Sales people in stores run the other way if you make eye contact, indicating you might be seeking help.

People in various walks of life might show up at their jobs but they’re not going to put much effort into it.

Just the other day my son had his family stop at a failed link of a national fast food chain. Among the service gaffes were no utensils for the kids to eat their pancakes. The order was handed across the counter with no syrup for the pancakes. No chocolate milk for the kids. No soda for the adults. And on. And on. And on.

All should have been there, as ordered, but these items weren’t provided without extra requests. A guy stood for a time at the counter and was ignored. He was looking for napkins. My son eventually got some for him, too.

My mother is in a long-term care facility at which there are quarterly meetings with family members, ostensibly to address any concerns.

But bring up staff failures – ranging from consistently poor and inaccurate food trays, to failing to follow doctor’s orders and administer medication or tests – and the blanket defense is “no one’s perfect.”

We heard this ad nauseam a few weeks back.

Imagine that, no one’s perfect. We’re not seeking perfection, but rather some semblance of consistent competency.

We might as well howl at the moon.

And, mark my words, these situations, both in our personal life and in the national experience, will continue to worsen as failed leadership coddles the under-performers and tries to buy their allegiance, or vote, or both, with more handouts.

Eventually the pot is empty and there is no more money for handouts.

Can we dream of barbarians showing up at the gates to rescue us? Doubtful.

Bumbling Joe Biden had a very bad week, even by his standards, which are lower than whale dung.

Begin with the Supreme Court, which got past politicized and erroneous statistical jawboning by one questionable jurist and struck down Overreach Joe’s vaccine mandates for private businesses.

Score one for freedom. And pause for a moment to note how curious it is that Clueless Joe and his minions so often are at odds with freedoms guaranteed and enumerated in the U.S. Constitution.

Blathering Biden’s approval ratings for his overall job performance and also his handling of virus matters, both plumbed new lows. A Quinnipiac survey found Blundering Biden at 33 percent approval.

This begs two questions, what’s wrong with the 33 percent who think he’s doing a good job? And, should these people be institutionalized for their own protection?

Along the line of ignoring the Constitution, Biden was hoping to ram through legislation by eliminating the Senate filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes, much better than a simple majority, to pass major laws. Boastful Biden can’t even get all his Democrats onboard. One of those, Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, has gone on record that she’s not along for that ride to kill the filibuster.

A grave PR gaffe was made when Biden took the microphone in Georgia and pretty much indicated that anyone who disagreed with him on his voting rights agenda, which he needs that end of the Senate filibuster rule to shove through, are bigots, racists and generally disreputable people. By that standard, Sinema falls into the category, along with the majority of people in the nation that Biden pledged to unify during his campaign.

I don’t think name-calling is the best unifying technique.

Then again, Biden also vowed to defeat COVID-19, tame inflation, fire up the economy, and return the country to better place. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. And Wrong.

Joe has shown himself to me more than a bit tone-deaf through his checkered political career.

This also was a week of much discussion about how Burrito Biden’s porous border policy is allowing Fentanyl to flood into this country even as drug overdoses have been identified as the leading cause of death in adults 18-45.

Bilious Biden’s energy policy has ramped up the price of gasoline to seven-year highs and many analysts say the price is going to hit or surpass $4 a gallon on average across the nation within months if not weeks.

Meanwhile Geriatric Joe is finding even his fellow Democrats are critical of his inability to get virus tests into the hands of the masses.

Those disgruntled Dems also are griping about Blowhard Biden’s inability to deliver on all his left-wing promises to turn our country into yet another experiment in socialism. Considering socialism’s track record – all failures – those critics should be thanking Biden for his ineptitude in getting bills passed into laws.

But Jawboning Joe did have one small victory when a NewsNation poll found only 31 percent of participants still buying the propaganda that Fearful Fauci is selling regarding the pandemic.

Besting Fauci 33-31 percent in approval and credibility is not exactly cause for celebration, but it’s all Ballot Box Biden has going for him these days.

We have a local group, Vision Together 2025, trying to raise the population of the Greater Johnstown area by trolling for refugees. Except you can’t call them refugees, but rather “legally vetted immigrants.”

In the way that the guy (or girl) collecting your garbage might be called a sanitation engineer but is still a garbage collector, so it is that the Vision people are big on semantics and euphemisms to make things sound less harsh.

Let’s concentrate on the term “vetted.” It makes one think of Supreme Court justices, high level political candidates and Cabinet appointees, among others, all being vetted to make sure they have what it takes.

When done right, it’s a thorough examination of a person’s character and qualifications for a job. But who will be vetting these “legally vetted immigrants?”

That is not a detail you will find on the organization’s Facebook page. Myopia problems for Vision Together?

What you will find are assurances that all will be legal residents of the United States. Of late the topic of a possible inflow of immigrants here has turned to discussions of displaced Afghans.

A quick internet search showed that Afghan refugees (I will use the word) are unhappy in general with slow progress in awarding them citizenship, but hold out hopes for speedier legislative solutions.

A Green Card is a temporary measure, but a holder of a Green Card is not a citizen.

Also, it was interesting to read that some Republican lawmakers on a national level have doubts about how good the vetting process will be for Afghan refugees.

Recall that the Biden regime made a mess out of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan and do you really trust these same boobs to guarantee no undesirables got on planes or other transportation headed to our country?

Early in the discussion about immigrants in general being recruited to settle in Johnstown, terms “skilled workers” and “highly skilled workers” were tossed around.

It was implied and sometimes stated outright that they would readily find employment here and not be a further boost to our growing industry of life spent on the government dole.

Again, what does that “skilled” or “highly skilled” verbiage mean? A person with a talent for making mud bricks could be said to be skilled, but does that translate to landing a job here?

Statistics vary, but the best literacy rate I could find quoted for Afghanistan is 43 percent, meaning that underwhelming percentage of people 15 years of age and older can read or write – in their language. The global literacy rate is reported as a touch over 86 percent.

Are we to presume that all of our refugees will come from the 43 percent able to read and write, albeit not necessarily in English?

As is customary with such issues, anyone who would like more information, who would like to see specifics cited and not just the vague generalities, is labeled as a racist, bigot or otherwise undesirable person not fit to breathe. Homophobia is not yet being tossed around to tar critics, perhaps because homosexuality is widely disapproved of by followers of Islam.

Last, the refugee recruiters are trying to inflict guilt on those not eagerly going along with it all, noting this is a region that once was a hotbed for immigrants.

That is true. But those immigrants, as some have noted, came for plentiful jobs in steel mills or mines, neither of which are anywhere near as widely available now. And those jobs back in the day were not described as skilled labor.

Also, the immigrants who settled here long ago, bought into the melting pot philosophy. They might speak the language of their home country at their residences, but they understood that their children had to speak and be taught in English and had to know English for the workplace.

This is not the common philosophy these days in America, particularly among many refugees/immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries. This helps explain why the local Sears store, before it was closed, had “Caballero” signs above the men’s dressing rooms.

It explains, too, why virtually every time you need telephone assistance, an automated voice has you press 1 or some other number for English and yet another number for Spanish.

Can press 3 for Dari and press 4 for Pashto (the two official languages of Afghanistan) be in our future?

Inquiring minds want to know.

The news is populated with entertaining stories, almost as many as there are amusing animals in the Old MacDonald Had A Farm song.

Let’s marry the two.

AOC she has CO-VID.

E-I-E-I-O.

Went down south and flipped her lid.

E-I-E-I-O.

She went mask-less here, mask-less there.

Here no mask. There no mask. Everywhere no mask, mask.

AOC she has CO-VID.

E-I-E-I-O.

Hunter, Joe and Kazakhstan

E-I-E-I-O.

Making dough, they had a plan.

E-I-E-I-O.

’twas a photo op here, a photo op there.

Here an op. There an op. Everywhere an op, op.

Hunter, Joe and Kazakhstan

E-I-E-I-O.

Nancy P. will send you dough.

E-I-E-I-O.

To buy votes both to and fro.

E-I-E-I-O.

With a handout here and a handout there.

Here some pork. There some pork. Everywhere some pork, pork.

Nancy P. will send you dough.

E-I-E-I-O.

Chi-town teachers won’t attend.

E-I-E-I-O.

This demand they will not bend.

E-I-E-I-O.

With a virus scare here, a virus scare there.

Here a scare. There a scare. Everywhere a scare, scare.

Chi-town teachers won’t attend.

E-I-E-I-O.

Let me tell you about our neighborhood game that I call Parking Grab.

If ever it becomes a board game, Parker Brothers of Monopoly fame would be a natural to distribute it.

Until then, we must content ourselves with live-action Parking Grab.

There is no limit on players. The goal is to occupy the most on-street parking places with the fewest number of cars.

To spice up things, as in gymnastics or diving, a degree-of-difficulty factor can be introduced by factoring which households park the fewest percentage of their cars in driveways, garages or other off-street spaces.

For a long time I got my entertainment as a spectator. Now I’ve devolved into full-fledged participant.

This game was popular when I first moved into this neighborhood more than three decades back. Dedicated players included the people to my right, who were outraged if someone parked in “their” spot.

These are the same people who were put off when I asked them to move their car a tad so I could park a moving van and commence moving into my house.

Across the street at the time was a family with a wife I called Ann of a Thousand Parking Spaces. They had a garage, driveway and a pulloff spot in the alley behind the house. But Ann was particularly attracted to on-street parking, especially in the winter when someone had shoveled out their vehicle, left to run an errand and returned to find Ann’s car plunked in the spot.

But Ann and family moved, other players either died, moved away or lost interest and Parking Grab went on hiatus.

The game has experienced a rebirth in the past five years or so. I credit the people to my left.

The man of the house, at least that would be his assigned birth gender, accumulated vehicles through the years. A two-car garage was erected, but as far as I can tell, none of the family vehicles ever has been inside it.

A car could be parked along the side of the garage that faces the alley. A couple of cars could be parked in a gravel pulloff area beside it. But the family believes it has dibs on the street parking, too, of any number of spaces they should desire. Woe be to those who do not recognize this claim.

This became a problem one day a few years back when my son came to visit with his family and parked on the street. The neighbor raced out cursing at my son, a fact I was made aware of when one granddaughter burst into our house to get me.

My son’s sin? He’d parked on the street. IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE!!!!!!!!. It was raining fairly heavily at the time, so I went onto the porch to see what was up. The neighbor’s wife ran into my yard to scream at me.

I found it all amusing since she was getting drenched and I was under my porch roof.

The reaction of that family, when it was pointed out street parking was first-come, first-served, was to make sure to park all four of their vehicles (three cars and one sad blue truck) on the street for an extended period of time, often two of them in front of my house. When one vehicle left, others were pulled in ways to preserve the spot.

A side benefit of all this was convincing my wife that I was correct in long ago branding the folks as petty morons.

Fast forward to 2021/22 and I have accumulated five vehicles, although I’d never let one of my Mustangs parked unattended on the street. They spend most of their time in the garage, either the one at my house, or one I rent that is nearby.

But I do enjoy parking two of my wife’s cars in front of our house, using the old parking grab technique of letting half a car length between the front of Car No. 1 and a neighbor’s driveway and half a car length between Car No. 2 and Car No 1.

This creates great angst for the people two houses up, who have a rule that none of their visitors can park in front of their house.

It also plays havoc with the long list of poor drivers on this street who cannot parallel park and when their traditional resting spots required that rather simplistic skill, they were fond of seeking out the sometimes open spots in front of my house.

Those spots seldom are open these days.

Just yesterday, when I lent wife’s Car No. 2 to my son, a neighbor kid from across the street rushed out to plant his SUV in the vacated spot. It has not yet moved again. I think if I opened the door and listened, I could hear the victory celebration.

On my walk today, I saw one parking-impaired sort had pulled into a spot that the people two houses down consider their property. As I came back from the walk, that car had moved and the husband of the aggrieved family was rushing to clean off the wife’s car parked in an alley pulloff spot, which he promptly started and drove around the block to plant it in the vacated parking spot in front of his house.

The game has spread, like Omicron, to the people in the next block. Again while walking – last week — I saw a woman in a car pull up in front of a house and honk the horn vigorously. A half-dressed man rushed out, jumped into an SUV, and pulled out as she slid into the space.

He drove to the back of the property and pulled into a garage. Apparently he’d been a placeholder.

As mentioned earlier, I used to get my kicks just observing the Parking Grab phenomenon, recalling the saying of a high school friend to describe the players: Little things amuse little minds.

Alas, my mind now has shrunk, too, as I delight in playing the Parking Grab game my neighbors have taught me. Currently I’m indulging the idea of buying a couple of beater cars, just to have more pieces with which to play the game.