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Pop cartons, another Keillor book, and a home equity loan

by Barry Bauer

If I were running the Pepsi Cola Co., I’d find some slippery cuss to sneak (as in Watergate) into whatever company designed and makes the refrigerator 12-pack cartons for Coke and borrow their secrets.

We prefer Pepsi’s products, but we’re stuck with a dilemma. Coke 12-packs are easily opened with plenty of perforations. After opening a Coke carton it’s designed to hold all 12 cans. Not so with Pepsi’s cartons. Theirs require us to use a pair of shears or sharp knife to open it; and when we’ve got it, opened it only holds 11 cans so one has to be grabbed and placed in the refrigerator separately.

Pepsi must have had some complaints because they redesigned their carton, but we’re wondering who they stole the idea from. It wasn’t worth the risk. The first time Betty tackled it she grabbed the carton as usual and gave it a yank. The whole end came right off and the cans poured out of the carton.

That must be why 3-M makes duct tape. Does Pepsi own them?

We’re not holding our breath waiting for Pepsi to wake up because they’ll probably go with this case design for a few years to get back the money they spent creating it.

Oh well.

* * *

I finished reading Garrison Keillor’s book, WLT — rather abruptly. It reminded me of an episode of MASH when the whole unit got wrapped up in reading a murder mystery by passing around a few pages at a time only to find out the last page was missing. They didn’t know who the murderer was.

I had already read ¾ of the book when I started to find missing pages as well as duplicate pages. The missing pages weren’t ripped out, but some how the book came from the printer that way. I sorted my way through it because there’s no way I was going to invest that much time and not read the ending.

The book revolved around a radio station and its many characters. I had characters playing characters in the many programs they broadcasted to keep track of. Barn dances, preachers, Christian music groups and a soap opera were a few of them. Then the main character changed his name about ¼ of the way into the book, so I had to remember who he was now. All in all it had too many names and people to suit me.

I’m now on my third Keillor book called Lake Wobegon Days, which is basically a fictional history of the lake. I should look ahead and do a page count before I get too far into it.

You don’t suppose they’ll do that to me twice, do you?

* * *

Like any other home owner we’ve spent a lot of money over the last forty years maintaining our house. We’ve built a family room, a garage, replaced our original driveway, new shingles, new siding, new energy efficient furnace plus air conditioning, new water heater, new storm windows and all the repairs we’ve encountered along the way.

Well the time has come to re-shingle our roof again along with new ridge vents and leaf guards over the eves. We contacted a contractor we like, Mick Rabe, and he gave us an estimate.

We put half down and thought we’d just get a home equity loan for the remainder. We didn’t want to spend all our ready cash on the project.

We went to the place where we’ve done our banking for over forty-five years to apply for the loan. Before we even borrowed one dollar, we owed them $500 for processing the loan and title insurance.

Boy was that a shocker! My poor mind was living in the old days when banking was much easier and on a first name basis. Was I on that Twilight Zone train again?

We decided to go to alternative sources.

The house is still all ours, bought and paid for.

Until the next time . . .