Don’t expect this week’s gas-out to solve anything

Dave Farquhar Saving money ,

Last Saturday a woman standing in line with my wife and I told us not to buy gas on May 15.

She beamed at her Ford Super Duty pickup. She said she’s tired of paying so much to fill it, and she’s looking forward to sticking it to the gas companies.

The gas companies love people like her.Voluntarily not buying gas on May 15 won’t solve anything because people are just going to buy more gas on May 14 or May 16. My wife sees this effect on her business, on a smaller scale, all the time. On and around April 15, she doesn’t sell much because people just paid their tax bills. So the cashflow dips, but then the customers are back with a vengeance within a couple of weeks. To a lesser extent, the same thing happens on most major holidays.

Business is like that. Every business has at least a few slow days in a year.

Gas-outs have been happening ever since the beginning of Gulf War II. I remember people at work talking about one in 2002, and another one in 2003. I’m sure there have been some since then but my e-mail filters usually catch them.

In case you don’t remember, in April 2002, gas jumped to $1.40-plus a gallon. Then in September of 2003, it surged to $1.70-plus a gallon, then it backed down into $1.50 territory. By mid-2004, we were in $2.00 territory, and it’s been there ever since. Well, except when it’s been $3 a gallon, that is.

Did you ever think $1.40 gas would sound good?

Gas prices are high right now primarily for two reasons. One is investor speculation. You can buy gasoline futures the same way you would buy stocks. And right now it’s a much safer bet that $100 invested in gasoline right now will be worth more in August than the same amount of money invested in, say, Time-Warner stock. So investors with a Las Vegas mentality (and there are lots of them) have been investing in gasoline and, in some cases, crude oil, which is the raw material gasoline is made from.

The second factor is, well, we’ve proven time and again that we’ll pay these high prices. We’ve been paying $2 a gallon for gasoline for three years. When gas prices go up, there’s no incentive for the oil companies to rush to fix the problem that caused prices to go up. We keep buying gas, and they keep raking in record profits year after year.

There are a couple of things we can do to drive gas prices down again. But none of them are short-term fixes.

Basically, we’ve gotta burn less gas. Driving less helps. Instead of running to the store the minute you remember you need something, make a list, plan out a route, and go get everything in one trip. Google Maps has a cool new feature now where you can punch in a destination, then add multiple destinations, and drag them around to try to find the optimal route and cut down on backtracking. Every little bit helps. I use this web site every single weekend. Besides saving me gas, it almost always saves me more time than I end up spending planning the trip in the first place.

But that Super Duty pickup truck is an even bigger part of the problem. Every day when I go to work, I see people driving ever-bigger pickup trucks. Or Chevy Suburbans. Pickup trucks are designed to haul cargo, while Suburbans are designed to haul families. As commuter vehicles, they’re doing neither. At 12 miles per gallon, all they’re really doing is burning a lot of gas.

My Honda Civic burns 1/3 the fuel that a pickup truck burns. It’s not even a hybrid. I get mad when it costs me $36 to fill its tank. But when a pickup truck with a 30-gallon tank is sitting on empty, you’re looking at $90 to fill it.

Most of us only haul stuff on weekends. Given that it costs $30 to rent a U-Haul, you would be better off driving a Civic during the week and renting a U-Haul on the days you need to haul a lot of stuff. Odds are you’ll find you really only need a lot of cargo space a few times a year anyway.

The same logic can apply to large vans and SUVs. A lot of people buy those and justify them by saying they go on a trip once or twice a year and they need to haul a lot of luggage and extra family members. Considering that monster vehicle is costing you anywhere from $30 to $60 a week more to drive than a passenger car costs, it’s costing you about $1,500 a year to drive that thing. And that’s just in gas–it’s not even counting the higher monthly payments. It would be a lot cheaper to rent the thing twice a year. Even renting a 15-passenger van would be cheaper.

And if you rented those vehicles when you needed them and drove a Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla the rest of the time, you’d be burning 1/3 the fuel you’d otherwise burn. Drive a hybrid, and you might be able to drop that down to 1/4 or so.

Imagine what would happen if 100 million households decided to cut the amount of fuel they burn by a third. That would actually stand a chance of causing fuel prices to drop permanently.

I think the government ought to try to sweeten the pot a bit, offering incentives for owning any fuel-efficient vehicle, not just hybrids, in order to encourage this to happen more quickly. But that would make sense, and petroleum companies and most auto manufacturers would oppose it, so I don’t expect it to happen.

But as long as people keep driving huge vehicles with capabilities they only use a handful of times a year, and just complain about sky-high gas prices, those prices will stay high. Complaining alone doesn’t accomplish anything.

I’ve talked economics enough, so if anyone’s still reading, hopefully you’ll indulge me for a few minutes. Every time I turn around, I hear about the problems with the possible solutions to the gasoline. Ethanol, biodiesel, and hybrids all have their problems.

Fine.

Why aren’t we combining them?

The fact is, hybrids do save energy that otherwise gets wasted, and if you drive them correctly, that means better fuel economy. So a gallon of ethanol gets fewer miles per gallon than a gallon of gasoline. Wouldn’t a hybrid ethanol/electric engine more than make up the difference?

Biodiesel isn’t quite as efficient as petroleum diesel. But diesel fuel of any type gets more miles per gallon than gasoline. Why aren’t we building hybrid diesel/electric engines to reap even bigger benefits?

And why are plug-in hybrids only available as hacks by garage tinkerers? If you plug in your hybrid, you can do your local stop-and-go type driving entirely on electricity and not burn a drop of gasoline. Why isn’t this benefit available to the masses?

And why not take it a step further? My car sits in the hot sun in a parking lot for 8 hours a day, five days a week. What if it were a hybrid with solar panels, using those solar panels to charge the battery? Of course the benefit wouldn’t be the same as plugging the car in overnight, but the energy doesn’t cost anything either, aside from the cost of the solar panels.

Maybe there’s a good reason why a diesel/electric hybrid that plugs into the 110 outlet my garage and has solar panels on it doesn’t exist. But the light bulb didn’t exist either, until Thomas Edison decided its benefits outweighed the pain required to invent it.

Maybe there’s someone out there who knows how to build the thing. The world would be a better place if someone would.

Meet Melvin.

Dave Farquhar Personal , , , ,

I have a new un-friend now. His name is Melvin.

Thanks to Melvin, I can almost add library sales to places I’ve been kicked out of. It’s a short list, but it includes the library, church, Best Buy, and substitute teacher Rick Hannebutt’s seventh grade theology class.It began innocently enough. My wife and I arrived early. We were 10th in line. The problem was that within about half an hour, we were 15th in line. For example, one guy came in, asked where the end of the line was, and then walked up and took a spot two or three places in line ahead of us. He wasn’t the only one who did it, but he was the closest one.

The guy behind me said something to him. They had a brief exchange, then the guy who cut in line apologized, got in his car, and left.

It was stupid, because if he’d gone to his proper place in line, he would have only been five or six places back. There’s not much difference between being the 10th person in and being the 15th.

Then Melvin came staggering out of Applebee’s. He walked over to his black Chevy Celebrity (very much like the one my driver’s ed instructor drove, back in 1990), got out his bag, and then went to the front of the line and talked to the people standing up there. Nobody up there let him in, so he settled back, two places ahead of my wife and I.

Melvin seems to go to all the places I go, and he’s elbowed in front of me (or tried to) twice in the last two weeks. Furthermore, I saw him steal from an estate sale. It takes a special kind of scumbag to steal from an estate sale–the deceased’s survivors could be relying on the proceeds from that sale to pay for the funeral, for all we know.

Needless to say, I’m pretty tired of Melvin.

"Sir, I think you got here after we did," I said.

"You’re wrong, Junior. I got here two and a half hours ago, then I walked over there to have a couple of drinks. You can ask anyone here. Now why don’t we step over here into the parking lot and we’ll settle this. You’re messing with the wrong guy," Melvin said.

"If you take a swing at me, I’ll call the police. And keep in mind I do have your license plate number."

"If you call the police, I’ll call my lawyer and he’ll be over here so fast, and I’ll be sure to get your number too–"

I wonder what it says about Melvin that he has his lawyer on speed dial?

Just then, one of the people running the sale walked past.

"Ma’am, this guy is threatening me."

"Actually," I said, "He’s trying to start a fistfight and I don’t want a fistfight. I don’t want any trouble here."

She took my admission money and gave me the don’t-give-us-any-trouble look. I nodded and thanked her. She told me she’d keep an eye on him.

The guy standing behind me told me he’d heard people at a sale last week talking about Melvin too.

Melvin went up to the front of the line and started ranting at the people up there about me. They kept looking back my direction with confused looks on their faces.

None of the people up there are people I know well, but I see them often enough that I don’t want trouble with them. Melvin came back, took his place in line, and tried to burn holes through my skull with the laser death rays in his eyes.

For a few seconds I stared back, then I decided that was stupid. I tried to egg him on a bit. I looked back behind me, tried to look confused, looked back at him, and mouthed, "There’s nothing back there."

Well, the other people in line thought it was funny. That was probably too far over the top though.

Once I was pretty certain Melvin was going to stay put, I walked up to the front of the line.

"Hey, I don’t know what he told you, but he tried to get me out in the parking lot and start a fistfight. I just want you to know I didn’t threaten him. I’m not that way," I said.

They nodded. "So we’re cool?" I asked. They nodded again. I smiled, thanked them, and took my place in line.

Melvin continued his gaze of death. I turned around and made smalltalk with the guy behind me. He cracked a few jokes about drunks.

Finally we got to go inside. I watched my back pretty much the whole time. You can’t trust a drunk guy with his lawyer on speed dial, after all. Wherever Melvin was, I stayed away.

Finally, he walked up to the counter. I heard him say he had 10 record albums. I was standing a good 15 feet away with a big crowd in the room, so I guess a lot of people know he had 10 record albums. I breathed a sigh of relief when he left.

My wife asked if I found something I wanted. I told her I got what I wanted the most.

"What was that?" one of the people running the sale asked. "Anything good?"

"My fistfight buddy left," I said.

"Is that a CD or a book?" she asked. "I’ve never heard of that."

"Oh, it’s not a thing. The guy who tried to start a fistfight with me in the parking lot left."

"That was YOU?" she asked.

Yeah, I’m pretty harmless. I’m usually fairly polite too. But I guess the word was out about me now, even if the people who knew the story couldn’t place my face with it.

A few minutes later, I ran into one of my acquaintances from the front of the line. "You know Melvin’s gone now," he whispered.

I nodded.

"What happened?"

"He challenged me to a fight, and I said if he took a swing at me I’d call the police," I said.

"Ah, so that’s why he brought up the police. Nothing wrong with that. You have to protect yourself."

He told me a little more about Melvin, that he tends to be paranoid and he’d been drinking. When he’s sober he’s harmless, he said. He laughed when I told him Melvin told me he’d been drinking.

"In the morning he probably won’t remember any of it," he said. And he told me I’d handled the situation pretty well.

We’ll see how much Melvin remembers. I’ll see him again, I know. But I’m pretty sure the people who run the sales we both end up frequenting like me better than him. I don’t pick fights, and I buy a lot more stuff.

And they know it.

And now, since I know I’ll get asked about it, here’s the story behind the places I actually have managed to get kicked out of.

The library: It was closing.

Church: It was closing too. Yep, both of them sound a lot more interesting than reality.

Best Buy: I uttered a couple of colorful words when they wouldn’t honor the extended warranty I’d bought. The manager and customer abuse rep asked me to leave. I went to a different location and got my stereo exchanged under warranty there.

Substitute teacher Rick Hannebutt’s seventh grade theology class: He never liked me because I wasn’t a Cardinals fan. I didn’t like him much either. The kid sitting next to me hit me with a dusty mitten. I pushed his arm away and told him to quit.

"Davit," Hannebutt bellowed, "You may leave now."

I was really mad then. Twenty years later, I don’t know why. I don’t think anyone in that room wanted to be there, and I was the one who got to leave.

I think Melvin makes for the better story.

Incidentally, Melvin isn’t his real name. I would never mention someone who has his lawyer on speed dial by his real name.

It’s pretty close though. His real name is the same as that little Martian from Looney Tunes.

What to do when you can’t upgrade WinZIP because wkqkpick.exe is in use

Dave Farquhar Windows ,

So you’ve got WinZIP installed and have to upgrade it for security reasons. Like a good compliance-minded sysadmin, you run the patch, and the installation fails. You get the error message that wkqkpick.exe is in use.

Since you’re smarter than the computer, you fire up Task Manager to go show wkqkpick.exe who’s boss, only the operating system tells you Access Denied. Now what?

Read more

Blister on my thumb…

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , ,

So, I got my hands on a working Nintendo NES and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out cartridge. I used to play that game at my cousin’s, about 20 years ago. It’s addictive.I think the nice thing about this game (and a lot of the older games) is that they’re easy to learn, and they’re challenging, but if you look closely enough there’s a definite pattern, so you can learn to play the game well and win.

I can’t remember exactly how far I used to be able to get in this game, but this time around I had a whole lot of trouble with Soda Popinski. Most of the advanced boxers have one big weakness and it’s the key to beating them. Soda Popinski doesn’t have one. What I figured out is that he’s predictable, and he’s fairly slow. So you beat him by anticipating and dodging his punches, throwing a whole bunch of punches yourself whenever you get the opening, and not worrying if it takes three rounds to get a KO or TKO.

Now if I can just get my timing right to beat Bald Bull in the next match…

Random thoughts on the Va Tech massacre

Dave Farquhar Personal

When I read more about the perpetrator of the massacre at Virginia Tech, I thought the same things I remember thinking about Columbine. And I wasn’t the only one with those thoughts. After Columbine, I was corresponding with one of my best friends from college, and she said the descriptions of those two guys really reminded her of me.

So the question then, as now, is, why am I a reasonably productive member of society while other people like me kill dozens of people?Bullying.I certainly got bullied a lot growing up. In the sixth grade, I had no consistent friends, and by seventh grade, I had no friends at all. People would talk to me when I knew something they needed to know, but aside from that, they threw stuff at me, or tried to break my leg. We moved to St. Louis the year after that, and I counted down every single day.

I got bullied in St. Louis too, but at least I had some friends.

What happened? For one thing, by the time I was 18, I knew none of the people who gave me trouble, including the kid in Farmington who made my life pure hell, managed to finish high school. Now, I know some very intelligent people who didn’t finish high school either, and I mean no disrespect to them, but I did take a lot of satisfaction in accomplishing something they didn’t. Not having to work all that hard at it gave me even more satisfaction.

I guess the difference for me was that I had a number of adults tell me from a very young age that I could accomplish a lot. So I didn’t just believe I’d accomplish more than those (insert family-inappropriate noun, plural, here). I knew I would. And that was enough to satisfy me. There wasn’t any need to spill blood.

It’s been years since I heard anything about any of them. The last I heard, the crowning achievement for one of them was holding down a job at a sandwich shop. Astounding. Probably my tax dollars are helping to support the others, if they’re even still alive.

One thing I learned as an adult is that there’s no need to take vengeance on people like them. They’ll do far, far worse things to themselves than the worst thing you could do to them.

Depression and mood swings. In college, I’m not sure that I was known for much of anything else. I was never diagnosed with anything, and I’ve had my moments in the years since, but my struggles have never prevented me from doing the things I need to do in order to survive.

The difference? Mainly, I got help when I needed it. A counselor’s outside perspective is a wonderful thing. And at the end of a particularly nasty breakup right after college, I attended an experimental group therapy that really helped. In a nutshell, it used secret society tactics to break you down and get you to admit who you really are underneath all that stuff the world piles on you. The theory is that if you get rid of all those masks and be authentic, you’ll function better, and people in general will like you a lot better too.

Also, I really think proper nutrition helps. I think things are worse now than they were 20 years ago, which frightens me, but we eat a lot worse now than we did even 20 years ago. Hydrogenated oils and high-fructose corn syrup are evil, evil things, and it’s amazing what a difference eliminating those from your diet will do. There are lots of good books out there, and used copies are cheap. Familiarize yourself with the writings of Dr. Mark Hyman, for starters. Used copies of his books sell for less than $5 online now. They’d be a bargain at $100.

Trouble with women. I could so be a poster child for this one. If you’re reading this because you’re frustrated with the world partly because you have difficulty starting relationships with women, or all your relationships go south really fast, I have two bits of news for you. First, you’re not alone–I’ve never heard a story from anyone else that I couldn’t top. I was the worst of the worst. Second, it doesn’t last forever. I’m married now, and happily at that.

There’s a lot to say about women, but there are probably four things that matter.

1. Think long-term. It’s morbid, but the answer to this question is very important. If something happened to you in 10 years, do you trust this woman to raise your kids right, and does she have the ability to see to it that all their needs are met? I’ve only met one woman, ever, who wasn’t related to me who passed this test. I married her.

2. Stay grounded. Often I found myself imagining the things I didn’t know about a woman I was chasing. It was easy to get caught up in that and not realize that it was that image I was infatuated with, not the person. Don’t invest a thing emotionally in someone until you know an awful, awful lot about her. Otherwise, she’ll just disappoint you.

3. Be nice. Most guys aren’t nice to women. I don’t think I met any women who really valued that until I was pushing 30, but being nice to women will eventually pay off, so it pays to start this minute. You’ll need practice.

4. Mostly, women want to talk. I think this is the big secret that I didn’t learn until I was in my late 20s. Be pleasant to talk to, and let them do most of the talking. You’ll know when they want you to talk (they’ll tell you). Listen at least twice as much as you talk. Getting them to talk is the hard part, but there’s a book about that. Go to the library and at least thumb through How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It’s a classic. It’s not specifically about women but it will help in that and every other relationship. I wish I’d known about that book when I was, say, 14.

Right and wrong. I’ve always had a very strong sense of right and wrong, and I get infuriated when I see people do wrong. That cost me my job a couple of years ago, but it could be worse. There could be blood on my hands.

I’m 32, which isn’t terribly old but it’s given me plenty of time to watch people ruin their lives. I’ve certainly wanted revenge plenty of times, but the people I’ve wanted revenge on always manage to do worse things to themselves than anything I could have ever done to them. Remember, stupidity is a talent, and I’m sure the stupid people in your life have lots of it, just like the stupid people in mine. Just stay away from them and let them ruin their lives. They don’t need your help.

Jealousy of wealth. I hate seeing people flash wealth too, especially when that wealth was either handed to them, or acquired dishonestly.

All I can say is that for all the rhetoric that’s out there, the United States does still have lots of opportunity for people. There’s a very simple formula for getting rich, if you want to know it. Go to the library and pick up The Millionaire Next Door. If you can hold down a job, you can get wealthy and stay wealthy in this country.

The tougher half of the equation is finding something that you enjoy doing. Find something that interests you and doesn’t seem like work, then find a career that fits that. Talk it over with your guidance counselors. That’s their job.

Planning. In both cases, the perpetrators have been very good, or at least meticulous, planners. Planners have a huge advantage over the rest of the population, because they can imagine something, and they can figure out how to make that happen. I dated a girl once who had one dream in life–to join the Air Force–and due to health problems she couldn’t get in. She had no direction and no idea what she wanted to do with her life after that. It’s pretty sad.

So if you can plan something and it sounds reasonable in your mind, you might as well make it something positive. It’s cliche, I know, but with enough patience and determination, it’s possible to turn almost anything you can envision into reality.

I published a book before my 25th birthday. It was something I’d wanted to do since I was in second grade. Of course when I was in second grade I had no idea what I wanted to write about. But as I got older I learned the things that I needed to do to make it happen. Along the way I wrote a few things that I thought might be it and turned out not to be, but I didn’t let myself get discouraged. When the right opportunity presented itself soon after I turned 24, I recognized it and I took it. About a year later, I walked into a large bookstore and saw a book with my name on the spine sitting on the shelf.

If that sounds like something you would like, you can do it too. Or maybe you’d rather do something else, like design a practical electric car. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you enjoy doing it and it helps someone.

This isn’t terribly organized or coherent, and it’s getting really late. But if this helps someone, then it was worth it.

The Three Dog Bakery

Dave Farquhar St. Louis

So yesterday I was in the Clayton/Ladue area. I had someplace I needed to be at 8, and then again at 8:45. So I went looking for someplace to get a cup of coffee and something to eat.There’s no shortage of coffee shops in Clayton, but most of them looked expensive–and not only that, you also have to pay to park, and the cost of parking in Clayton is pretty close to what I was looking to pay for the cup of coffee.

Finally, on the outskirts of Clayton, I found a plaza. I saw a sign that said "Three Dog Bakery." That sounded promising. I pulled in. I quickly noticed a sign that said "Please, no food or drinks." No food or drinks in a bakery? That’s like a "No firearms allowed" sign on a gun shop.

I looked at the storefront again, and I realized this wasn’t the kind of bakery I was looking for. This particular establishment sold gourmet dog biscuits.

I had strayed pretty far out of my element.

A little further down, I found a grocery store. I got an 89-cent cup of coffee there.

We just lost the best pure writer alive

Dave Farquhar Writing

Everyone and his uncle is writing about Kurt Vonnegut today, I’m sure. I have to admit I wasn’t a Vonnegut fanboy by any stretch, but I had a great deal of respect for him. I always thought he was the best writer alive during my lifetime.I know I’ve read a few of his short stories from time to time. I’m ashamed to say I haven’t read Slaughterhouse Five (which is probably something everyone in Washington D.C. ought to read–I think we’d be better for it as a nation) but I should. It’s a common book, so the next time I see a used copy, I’ll buy it and read it. That could be Saturday for all I know.

But a Vonnegut essay did have a profound effect on me. I first read it at 18. It was a short, probably 400-word essay titled How to write with style, written for a paper company as a promotional piece. Go read it.

My favorite passages:

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

Had I heeded this advice at 21, there’s no telling how many things I would have published by now.

Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

Don’t visit dictionary.com and try to work the word of the day for the last week or so into what you’re writing, in other words. (Yes, some people do that to try to make themselves sound smarter than they are–including people who should know better.)

The writing style which is most natural to you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child… I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench… I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am.

I was going to say it’s steel that’s galvanized, not tin, but technicalities aside, everyone else’s opinion of his own sound was much better than his own. There’s another lesson here: If you find yourself enjoying your own writing too much, your ego is too big.

I just have one other thing to add. Vonnegut hated developing new characters. If you’re an aspiring fiction writer, a way to get around this weakness if you have it (I do) is to keep elements of the story on notes on index cards rather than sitting down and writing furiously, which is my natural inclination and I’m sure I’m not the only one like that. The two most important elements of a story are plot and characters, and it’s the characters that make it interesting. Start with a few lines out of a psychology book that seem to describe someone you used to know, then flesh in some details. Imagine how those people would interact with the other people you’re creating, and the world in which you’re placing them.

And so it goes…

I wish I’d tried out Cafe Manhattan much sooner

Dave Farquhar St. Louis ,

My wife and I tried someplace different for dinner tonight. Cafe Manhattan has been near the intersection of Lindbergh and Tesson Ferry since 1989–longer than I’ve been driving. And since it’s just a couple of miles away from where I went to high school, where I live, and where I worked for seven years, I’ve driven past it a lot.

Big mistake. But it’s going to be in heavy rotation from now on.In 2006, Cafe Manhattan got the RFT award for best milkshake in St. Louis. So I had to try it. It’s done up the old fashioned way, and you get the metal cup, and I’ll admit it’s awfully good. I’ll put it ahead of local favorite Oberweis, but it’s not quite up to par with Crown Candy Kitchen. Of course for me it’s also a much shorter drive.

The other reviews suggested to me that Cafe Manhattan is a greasy spoon, but that’s not really a fair label. Not everything is deep-fried or grill-fried, and there’s a very surprisingly large number of vegetarian dishes on the menu. I wouldn’t call it a health food place, but if you want a place to eat and there are vegetarians in your party, this place is a winner.

The menu claims the hamburger is the best in St. Louis, so of course I had to take up that challenge. It was very good, but I think the burgers at Concord Grill, a couple of blocks away, are better. Let it be known, however, that regardless of Citysearch’s claim that Hardee’s makes the best burger in St. Louis, that Cafe Manhattan’s burger is much better.

My wife had something called a Liberty Melt, which was a bunch of veggies on whole wheat bread with some type of Wisconsin cheese on it. Not my thing, but she loved it. She’s a vegetarian now, which can make going out a little difficult sometimes, but she changed her mind about four times about what to get before settling on this one. She wasn’t disappointed.

The service was excellent. The place was packed, and yet everything arrived quickly. The meal probably arrived 10 minutes after we placed our order–faster than some fast-food restaurants. The staff was attentive and courteous and kept our glasses full.

And I almost forgot the atmosphere. The building it’s in used to be a Naugel’s–one of many local Mexican fast-food chains that have come and gone–but they’ve done a lot with it. The interior has classic diner floor tile and tables, and there’s a jukebox in the corner. But along the ceiling there’s a shelf that runs the perimeter of the dining room stuffed full of Americana–old soda bottles, signs, toys, and other neat things. Lots of casual dining chains try for that look, but Cafe Manhattan does it better.

As far as having the best milkshake, best burger, best pizza, or anything else, if you’re willing to look, you’ll find one or two places that are a little bit better at each of those things. But I doubt you’ll find anyplace that does all of it better.

And while the place was busy, this was a Saturday night. Had we gone to O’Charley’s or Friday’s or Applebee’s at that time, we would have had to wait. We didn’t have to wait and we got better food.

Now I know what I was missing when I drove past those hundreds–if not thousands–of times. We’ll be back soon.

Cheap, effective terrain scenery

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , , , , ,

Most traditional toy train layouts feature painted scenery: After plopping the 4×8 sheets down on some 2x4s to make a table, the hobbyist grabs a brush and some dark gray and green paint and paints roads and grass on the board.

If you want something that looks a little better than that but doesn’t take a lot of time, here’s my method, which takes 2-3 hours to complete.This method works well for traditional toy train layouts and for wargaming scenery, where ultrarealism isn’t paramount. You can also mix the method with modern model railroading methods if you wish, if you’re modeling flat land or flat areas.

First, buy enough 1/8 inch 4×8 hardboard sheets to cover your area. If you go to Lowe’s and ask for Masonite, you’ll get what you want. If you go to Home Depot, you’ll have to ask for hardboard (Masonite is a brand name, and Home Depot doesn’t carry it). A lumberyard should also have what you need, if there’s one near you that the big-box home improvement stores haven’t run out of business. When I bought mine, a 4×8 sheet cost about $6, so this project costs a lot less than those Life-Like grass mats that some people use. And unlike those mats, these don’t shed.

I had the boards cut into smaller boards ranging in size from 1×2 to 4×2. I can then arrange the boards on my tables, leaving six inches between them for roads, and then I have curbs and stuff on my layout. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I took the boards outside and painted them. Don’t worry if you’re a horrible painter; you don’t have to be any good to use this method. I used random spray paints (whatever I had) of various shades of green, yellow, and brown. The greens I had on hand had names like Hunter Green, Forest Green, and Meadow Green. All of these came from garage sales and estate sales so they cost me very little (25 cents per can, usually). Cheap spray paints from Dollar General and other private-label brands are just fine for this project if you don’t have it on hand or you don’t make a habit of visiting every single garage sale in your neighborhood every Saturday like I do.

Here’s an unpainted board.

Next, take a shade of green and spray it. Don’t go for total coverage. Don’t think of it as painting the board; just try to stain it.

Here’s a board with one coat of green on it.

Now spray a different shade of green on it. Again, don’t go for total coverage. You’re making the green look less uniform and more random. But leave a little brown still showing.

Now dust some yellow and/or brown over the board. Basically spray the yellow above the board and let droplets fall where they may. This breaks up the monotony a bit and gives the illusion of texture. As you can see, my yard isn’t a uniform shade of green either, especially not in March.

And here’s a closeup of what a board will look like when finished.

Let the boards dry out in the sun for a few hours, then you can take them inside and use them.

This method is similar to what British train manufacturer Hornby must have used to produce its scenic panels, which it sold before WWII. They’re quick and easy and cheap, and if you vary the shade enough and lay on enough yellow and brown, the result doesn’t look like the surface of a ping-pong table.

If you want, before you lay the boards on the layout, paint curbs and lay down sidewalks where appropriate. To paint the curb, get a good-sized brush, mask off about 1/8 of an inch from the edge, and then paint the edge and that 1/8 inch from the side with acrylic paint. A bottle of Delta Ceramcoat from a craft or discount store, at a price of about a dollar, ought to be enough to do the trick. You could mask and spray the edge with white or gray primer, but I find I can do this part about as fast with a brush, and using a brush and acrylic paints lets me do this part indoors.

If you want more realistic scenery, you can get boards and then paint a base coat on them, then spread glue on the surface and sprinkle Woodland Scenics materials on it. The result is quick and easy and portable scenery that looks a little more realistic.

Take the boards inside, arrange them on the table, lay down some material for roads, lay down your track and ballast (if desired), and you’ve got very quick, easy, and inexpensive terrain for your layout.