hardware store

How to fight the City of St. Louis’ red-light scam

Dave Farquhar St. Louis , , ,

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I’ve never had a traffic ticket. I spoke too soon. Thanks to the City of St. Louis’ new red-light camera scam, I have one.

It’s too late for me to fight it. But since I want others to fight it, here’s what I wish I’d known the day I got the ticket.First, when you receive your ticket in the mail, get a lawyer. Immediately. The scam works like this: They get the picture of you allegedly making a traffic violation (in my case, not making a complete stop when turning right at a red light, which is perfectly legal in St. Louis County). Then they dillydally around as long as possible. A few weeks or a month after your alleged violation, you get the ticket in the mail.

And there’s the problem. A lawyer needs at least three weeks to fight one of these things, and you’ll probably get your ticket right about three weeks before the court date. If you wait a day or five to mull over your options, you’re not going to be able to fight.

And here’s why I say "alleged"–do YOU remember what YOU were doing at 8:27 AM on Saturday, August 25? Without a photograph of you at the wheel (which St. Louis doesn’t have), they can’t prove it was you. And by waiting a few weeks after the alleged infraction, you may very well not remember if you were driving in that area on that day, or if you loaned your car to someone, or whatever.

In my case, the infraction happened in an area I rarely go. I can’t prove it wasn’t me behind the wheel, but I also can’t prove it wasn’t Francis Slay either.

That’s the reason St. Louis treats it as a non-moving violation. If it were a moving violation with points assessed, every attorney would fight it by saying the city can’t prove who was driving. And the attorney would win every single time.

In the meantime, if you don’t want to get nailed by cities changing right-turn laws on a whim (or by the car behind you if you stop at a yellow light instead of blowing through it for fear of a ticket), there’s a company that sells a $30 high-gloss clearcoat that supposedly causes the flash on the camera to overexpose, rendering your license plate illegible. I have no idea if the product works, and frankly, $30 seems a high price to pay for the fraction of an ounce of clearcoat it would take to cover four license plates. (Although it seems reasonable next to a $100 fine for not coming to a complete stop on a right turn with no other cars present.)

If you want to try to defeat red-light cameras and you don’t mind trying something that might not work, try taking off your license plates and giving them a couple of coats of either Future Floor Polish (which is really an acrylic clearcoat, not a wax) or Krylon clear gloss. I’d probably go with Krylon Triple-Thick Crystal Clear Glaze, since it’s glossier than the standard spray. A can of Krylon will cost about $5 and give you enough to spray your license plates and all of your friends’ plates also. And if it doesn’t work, you’re only out five bucks instead of thirty.

I hope it does work though. The City of St. Louis needs to find another way to raise revenue, other than making a stupid law, enforcing it by proxy, charging an excessive fine, and then stringing it along to make it as difficult for citizens to defend their records as possible.

I’ll see you at the hardware store.

And if you just got one of these unjust tickets in the mail, contact a lawyer immediately. A lawyer will cost more than the ticket, but the city is counting on honest citizens just paying the ticket because it’s cheaper and less hassle than fighting it.

And if you’re wondering where the red-light cameras are, they’re at the intersections of Hampton and Wilson (the entrance to The Hill) and Hampton and Chippewa.

Dog stories

Dave Farquhar Personal

Since the next couple of things I post aren’t going to be terribly positive, I thought I’d share some dog stories.My mother in law was in town yesterday and today. My wife and I both got up before the crack of dawn for our weekly Saturday ritual–I spent a total of $4 at that 6 am sale, which was about $96 short of my goal. So while we were out keeping more money than we were spending, my mother in law was stuck with a black lab mix who’s too smart for her own good.

She knows the words "Come on, get in your crate." But with my mother in law, the dog played dumb. When she came after her, she ran away. So my mother in law had to catch the dog and drag her into her crate.

She and my wife were talking about it this afternoon. My wife said, "She knows what ‘Come on Angel, let’s go into the crate’ means." And the dog proved it, because she looked up with the oh-do-I-have-to? look.

Things got worse though. Not long after that, she said, "I think I’m going to go take a bath."

Angel doesn’t know the first 8 words in that sentence, but she knows what "bath" means. When she hears running water and she thinks it’s for her, she runs and hides. Not real well, mind you–she hides at the bottom of the three steps that lead up from the family room into the rest of the house, but it slowed us down for a few minutes the first time.

So I guess she had a better afternoon than she expected. No bath, and only about 30 minutes in the crate while we went to the hardware store to get some assorted nuts and bolts for some repairs I’ve been putting off.

My lawnmower adventures

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , , , ,

I’ve had the same lawnmower for the last 4 years or so. Maybe three. I lose count. It’s a piece of junk–worth slightly more, perhaps, than what I paid for it (nothing) but it didn’t work right when I got it, and this mowing season it just fell apart. And besides falling apart–the wheels really were coming off, and I couldn’t find anyplace that sold new ones that fit–it was getting to be impossible to start.

My wife found another one at a yard sale for $25. It didn’t start either, but at least it was in good physical condition and it was only a year old.

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How to assemble a plastic model kit

Dave Farquhar Model Building , , , , , , , ,

Several months ago I bought a plastic model kit for the first time in probably 20 years. This past week I started to put it together.

I’m doing things differently this time.

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Time to winterize the house…

Dave Farquhar Saving money , ,

We had a day last week where we topped 80 degrees and set a record, so small wonder I never thought winter would actually get here.

But we’ve had our first good freeze and it looks like that’ll be a weekly thing from here on out (assuming we don’t get multiples every week), so it’s time to winterize the house.I learned about plastic film window insulation when I was in college and lived in a drafty old barn–it wasn’t really a barn, but it felt like one–where the inside temperature was rarely higher than 60 during the winter and space heaters were strictly prohibited. It’s best to buy the stuff at the end of the winter and save it for next winter, but if you’re like me, you always underestimate how much you need.

The tape that came with one of my kits seemed strong enough to hold a car together, while the tape that came with another kit isn’t suitable for wrapping a present, let alone holding plastic to cold aluminum window frames. I ended up using packing tape to hold part of the plastic to a window, since I ran out of good tape.

Of course when I was finished with one package, I ended up with three odd-sized pieces, none of which fit any of my windows. So I tried an experiment. Out came the packing tape and the scissors. I taped together the odd-sized sheets to make one suitable for one of the windows, then I put it in the window. It held together just fine when I hit it with the hair dryer to shrink it into place. I don’t think this method will get wife approval, but it works. I guess I can tell her that Red Green would have used duct tape.

I also changed my furnace filter. My size was sold out at all of the usual places I buy them, but I happened to find them at Big Lots for $1.79 each. They’re rated for two months instead of three and they probably don’t catch as much, but they’re definitely better than the clogged filter that was in there. I don’t know when the last time was I changed the filter. Shame on me. For $1.79 I need to be changing it every month because it’ll save me a lot more than that if I don’t do it, at least in the summer and winter months.

I also went looking, without success, for insulation pads for electrical outlets and light switches. I have some double-sized ones and other oddities that I didn’t have a good fit for. When I came home I still didn’t have a good fit. So I ended up removing the plate, taking a styrofoam meat tray, and cutting my own with a hobby knife. It’s not quite the same material commercial insulators are made from, but it has good insulating properties and it’s hard to beat the price.

Of course I’m looking for other ideas, but these three things are a good start. I installed a programmable thermostat about two years ago and it paid for itself in the first month. The basic models cost half as much now.

Addendum: After sealing the sliding glass door and two of the three largest windows in the house, last night after the programmable thermostat kicked down I noticed that the temperature in the house dropped by about a degree an hour. The temperature inside the house started at 70, and the low overnight was around 30. I know under similar conditions earlier in the week, the temperature was dropping at least two or possibly even three degrees an hour.

I think that plastic is going to pay for itself very quickly.

I helped my girlfriend move this weekend

Dave Farquhar Personal , , , , ,

It’s been a long weekend and I’m exhausted, but I like the situation my girlfriend finds herself in now. She has an apartment in the Holly Hills neighborhood in south St. Louis.Holly Hills is a pretty swanky place to live, if you have a house. The apartment situation is a bit different. A comparable one-bedroom apartment in the working-class suburb where I live would cost about $200 a month more than what she’s paying, and some of her utilities are included. You won’t find that in Mehlville. What you’re more likely to find is an apartment like the one where I lived for nearly five years, which was in a fairly safe neighborhood, but the building was about 20 years old and was falling apart, in spite of them wanting $550-$575 a month for a one-bedroom apartment with a kitchen so small you couldn’t have both the fridge and the oven doors open at the same time.

And I noticed, as I looked down Gravois Ave. towards Holly Hills Ave. from Loughborough, that this neighborhood still has class. A block up the street is an old sign that reads 4 Sports & More. Twenty years ago, that was called The Baseball Card Store. The name of the guy who owned it escapes me, but I remember going there frequently to buy baseball cards. He retired about 10 years ago. Under the new ownership, the shop didn’t last long. It’s a shame, really.

Next door is what used to be a Rexall drugstore. I don’t know if the Rexall was still there 20 years ago. It’s a payday loans place now, a sign of the times. It wasn’t as easy to get a credit line 20 years ago, so it wasn’t as easy to overextend yourself.

On the end of the strip is an old-fashioned hardware store. The couple who own it are getting up in years so I don’t know how long it’ll still be there. It’ll be a shame if it closes. It’s not like those big box stores. Those two know exactly where everything is in their store, and they can tell you exactly what to do with it. No, I’m not being impolite. The two of them really are handy. And from what I can tell, she’s the handier of the two.

Across the street, there’s Elicia’s Pizza. It’s a local chain that serves up St. Louis-style pizza. It’s ultra-thin and sliced square. As far as famous St. Louis chains, it probably ranks fourth, and it may be a distant fourth, in numbers and fame. Quality-wise, I’d rank it second behind Fortel’s. We ordered pizza from there on Saturday. I kid you not, they had it ready in less than 10 minutes flat.

I have no idea what the proper name for these things are, but there’s a big clock on a pole on the street, too. It looks like the ones you see in a movie, or on a train layout or one of those ceramic villages. And it works.

It’s obviously not the bustling commercial district it once was, with about half the storefronts closed up, but it has charm and character. Who’s going to get nostalgic at the sight of a strip mall in Mehlville or Oakville?

Closer to her apartment, it’s a residential district. On the way there, you can see $200,000 homes and you can see a handful of $500,000+ homes. It’s near a big city park. The homes are old, so the trees are mature. One of the streets is even split to allow more trees to grow in the middle. It’s a gorgeous sight in the fall.

I’m happy for her. She has a nice apartment. She’s free from a very overbearing roommate. Her utility bills are about to take a dive. She has three grocery stores within two miles. And the neighborhood looks like a postcard.

I wish I’d known about the place when I moved back to St. Louis six years ago.

Refinishing without refinishing

Dave Farquhar Saving money ,

As I was walking through the paint section of my local hardware store, I spied a product on the shelves that claimed to work miracles. It was called Howard Restorafinish. The can shows a picture of someone wiping a door or tabletop that has scratches, water marks, and other nastiness and making it look brand new.

Too good to be true? Probably. But it was about five bucks. So I bought a can.I have a grandfather clock that belonged to my dad. A family friend built it for him in 1978. To most people it would be nothing special, but for whatever reason it meant a lot to my dad, and he lost it under some questionable circumstances and ended up going to a lot of trouble and expense to get it back.

Since then it’s endured four moves, and it’s spent the majority of the past 10 years sitting in basements. It sustained some damage in at least two of the moves, and in the last move it got some nasty scratches. Scratches is probably putting it nicely. I want it in my combination study/den, next to my wall-size bookcase, where I think it’d look gorgeous, but not with those huge gouges in it.

Since the clock needs to be sanded down and refinished anyway, I figured this stuff couldn’t do any harm, and I figured it was worth my five bucks to find out. So I took it home, grabbed an old sock, took the Howard Restorafinish and the sock down to the basement, and went to town.

The results were mixed. It really does seem to make minor scratches disappear. It also seems to help tired, faded color. I don’t really know how to describe it, other than spots that seem dry and lifeless. It also seems to do a good job of eliminating dirty buildup that turns the wood almost black.

The parts that were passable before now look bright and shiny–better than I ever remember it looking.

At first I was really impressed with what it did with the gouges. It recolored them. After 24 hours, I’m a bit less impressed. The cherry tint it put down is too dark. It seems where there’s no finish left to restore, its results aren’t as good. But I have to admit it still looks much better than before.

I found a few other light spots that it wasn’t able to do much of anything with. They’re minor. I can live with it.

The verdict? It didn’t exactly work miracles, but it made the clock look more than presentable again. I might need heavier-duty artillery for the spot that gave me trouble, but in all honesty I might be the only one who’ll notice it. I’m glad I spent the five bucks.

At some point I do need to sand it down and restain and refinish it. I’m sure I could sand it down, stain it and lacquer it and spend less than $100. But I really don’t have the time right now to do it. I can easily come up with five bucks and half an hour.

So I wouldn’t buy it expecting to make thrift-store furniture look like it came from Neimann Marcus, but for a scratch or a watermark on a kitchen cabinet, a piece of furniture, or a hardwood floor, it might save you a time-consuming refinishing job, or at least let you put that off until a more serious accident.

I’ll be buying the oak and walnut varieties to see what it can do for a couple of spots on my hardwood floors and my kitchen cabinets.

The second-cheapest way to get household necessities

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , , ,

The topic at lunch at work turned to saving money around the house earlier this week, largely because one of my coworkers suddenly found himself with full responsibility for his two pre-teen nieces. The coworkers who are parents started talking about the best places to get good used clothes, the best places to get food cheap, and other stuff. Not being a parent, I just listened. I’m not at that stage in life.

I’m in a different stage of life, still a relatively new homeowner. Yesterday I paid a grand total of $5 for an ironing board and a stepladder, two things I’ve been surviving without. I’m about ready to quit going to the hardware store and to Kmart.The secret is estate sales.

Estate sales are usually crowded affairs, as people swoop in from all corners of the globe to cram themselves into tiny houses in search of things that are rare, things that are cheap, or best yet, rare and cheap.

I see two types at estate sales. The first is the well-to-do, who are there in hopes of securing antiques and collectibles for pennies on the dollar. The other is recent immigrants, who are generally there in search of inexpensive household necessities. They already know the secret.

The best time to go to estate sales is either really early or really late. If you get there early–it seems like people show up an hour early sometimes–you’ll get the best selection but you’ll pay top dollar. In some cases I’ve seen things priced at literally 10 times what they’re worth. In less extreme cases, I’ve seen tools priced the same as a new one at Sears.

Then again, yesterday I bought a pair of small pruning shears for 50 cents and a sharpening file for a quarter.

If you get there on the last day, reality has kicked in, the sucker prices have generally gone away, and dickering becomes the rule of the day. Prices drop by a factor of two or three, and the later it gets, the more willing they are to listen to prices.

If you’re shopping for household necessities, this is a good thing. The antique furniture dealers have no interest in ironing boards and laundry baskets and trash cans. Recent immigrants do, but chances are they already have those things. Stuff like this is often priced low to begin with, and it gets cheaper as time marches on because the chances of someone buying it are pretty low.

You can get household appliances cheap too. I saw a 20-inch Zenith TV marked at $50 yesterday. I know it works because they had it turned on. I’ll bet someone will get it for $20 today. I saw a washer and a dryer priced around $200 each yesterday. The washer was less than two years old. The dryer was a bit older but it was a Maytag. Those prices were decent, and could go way down if they sat long enough. If you’re willing to live without a warranty, you can save yourself a bundle. Two years ago I paid $900 for a washer and a fridge. A friend gave me a dryer. It looks like it could be 25 years old but it works and I was happy to save $250.

But yesterday I wasn’t looking for appliances. I wasn’t necessarily looking for household necessities either, but I’ve been needing a stepladder and a full-size ironing board. So when I spotted one marked at $4.50 and $6, respectively, I wasn’t going to pass them up. It was around noon, and it was a Friday-Saturday sale. They’d be closing up shop in an hour or two. Anything under $20 was automatically half price. I dragged the ironing board and the stepladder up to the checkout. “Five dollars is fine,” she said.

And it was fine with me too. I still remember the day when I went out to either Wal-Mart or Kmart (I try not to shop at Wal-Mart anymore but I did then), days before I moved out of my mom’s house for good, to buy household necessities. After spending more than $200 on things like trash cans and laundry baskets, there was still a lot of stuff I lacked.

If I’d known then what I know now, I probably could have gone to three sales, spent a grand total of 50 bucks, and ended up lacking a lot less.

Building some cheap train shelves

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , ,

Needing a place to store my trains, I decided to build some shelves so I could simultaneously store and display them when they’re not on the track. I used materials that I had on hand, exclusively. Other materials would have been better, but I didn’t have them.

I built the shelves on the front of my table. That space is otherwise unused, and four feet of shelf can hold five or six train cars.I used 1x1s to build the shelf supports. I cut them about six inches long, held them up to the table leg, drilled pilot holes, and then screwed them in. I placed them about 5 inches apart, so that the shelves would have enough clearance to comfortably pick up and replace cars.

The shelves themselves are made of 2x4s. Thinner wood would be much better–I could have had another shelf if I’d had anything thinner–but I wanted to use what I had. I have lots of 2x4s and could build the shelves with those in less time than it would take to go to the hardware store. I’ll buy thinner boards the next time I’m out someplace that sells lumber. I still have lots of table space to convert to shelves.

To hold the cars, one could lay a bunch of track on the shelves. Since most hobbyists have lots of track, and many of us had O27 and then upgraded to something else, this would be an economical and true-to-spirit choice.

I didn’t have enough straight O27 track for the job. So I cut 1-inch strips of cardboard, then screwed those to the top of the board. Yes, it’s cheap, but the cars hide the cardboard. One could also use 1-inch strips of balsa or basswood to give a better look.

Or, given the proper tools, one could simply cut two grooves an inch apart lengthwise into the wood.

One advantage of cardboard, wood, or grooves over track is that the cars roll very poorly on it, so cardboard or wood tends to hold the cars in place better.

With the strips secured onto the top of the boards, I then placed the boards on the supports, drilled pilot holes, and then drove one screw into each side to hold it in place.

At some point I will want to replace the wood with something thinner and nicer-looking than pine, and stain it to make it look good. But in the meantime, I have cheap storage for about 16 cars in about four feet of space that had otherwise been going to waste previously, and it only took me about an hour to do it. And it doesn’t look terrible either.

Conversation in a hardware store checkout line

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , ,

Cashier: (Observing the one-inch fender washers in my hand) You playing washers?Me: Actually, I’m going to try to make wheels for an old train.

Cashier: Did you try Hobby Country?

Me: Oh yeah, but they don’t have anything for something like this (pre-War American Flyer). These wheels haven’t been made for almost 70 years.

Cashier: My brother’s into old trains. He and his son go to England to get old trains.

Me: (Eyes getting big.) Oh yeah, Hornby made some really cool stuff!

Cashier: I’m like, why do you have to go all the way over there to buy trains?

Me: Because Hornby made a whole bunch of cool stuff that never made it over here!

I guess I’ve got it kind of bad, huh? I’m not booking flights for England but I know why someone else is, and what they’re probably looking for…