Baseball Hot Dogs Apple Pie and Chevrolet
What could be more American than driving a Chevy to a baseball game, eating hot dogs and coming home for dinner with a hot apple pie for dessert? The last big league game I went to was in 2012 at the Ballpark at Arlington to see the Texas Rangers against the LA Angels. It was a good game. Josh Hamilton hit home run number 18 for the month of May.
That was before he got traded to the Angels and then went into rehab for his drug habit. Hot dogs were $8. A 12 ounce can of Coors Light was $12. The concession stand also had footlong dogs with the whole refrigerator piled on top. They were $21. I didn't get one. Wrigley Field in Chicago was a better experience. It was in September the wind was blowing in the windy city and I spent $75 for a Cubs logo sweat shirt.
The hot dogs were good and reasonably priced, I don'r remember how much but I didn't have to take out a second mortgage to eat 2 of them and drink a bunch of beers. Sammy Sosa hit 4 balls that would have been home runs if the wind hadn't been blowing in. Sammy's head was bigger than a basketball from all the steroids he had taken.
We had a great time and then went to Harry Caray's bar across the street. After a few more and a walk back to where I had parked my Chevy truck behind some guy's house for $50 all I wanted to do was go back to the hotel and take a nap. After driving around for a while I finally found the freeway and got on. Going in the wrong direction during rush hour traffic. I didn't have a GPS. Nobody did back in the dark ages of 1999. My cell phone was a flip phone.
Driving at a breakneck 2 mph I got up to a toll booth. Seems I had to go to Indiana before I could get off the freeway and turn around. I didn''t have a GPS but I did have a map of the city of Chicago. If must have been printed wrong. I ended up on the South Side. There were lots of dangerous looking people on the street and they all stared at us when we drove by. Some of them looked like Bad Bad Leroy Brown.
Sweet Home Chicago. But it's not my home.
Chicago, Chicago, you're my kind of place, my kind of town.. All kidding aside Chicago is a great place as long as you stay on the north side. It's a bit too far for the bullets to reach you.
Was it Ever Real Important to You
To talk to somebody at some business or agency and the phone kept saying,"Due to the high call volume we can't take your call." For days at a time. Except after working hours when it tells you to call back during regular working hours.
Yesterday out of sheer frustration I drove to what I thought was the office. It was. Just not the office that handles my kind of business. The security guard took my name and number and said somebody would call and to be sure to answer the call. When nobody had called by 6 PM fell asleep. When I woke up an hour later I had a missed call and a voicemail. The lady on the voicemail said to call back tomorrow. She left the number that won't take my calls.
This morning I drove to the other office. There were no cars in front of the building and it looked closed. I drove around the back and there were a few cars in a lot with a sign that said Employee Parking Only. I was looking for a place to park in the forbidden lot when a woman walked outside. A real live human at last. She said she was on her way to lunch. It was 10 AM. But she took my name and number and said she would call when she got back. Must have been a long lunch because she hadn't called by 4.
Then the phone rang, I told her my story and she told me what to do on their website. Seems that I had put in the wrong bank account numbers and the bank had rejected my deposit. So now, if it's really true that everything is fixed I won't have to seek some kind of employment for quite a few month By then I should be making a ton of money with my website.
And that's why I haven't done nearly as much as I had planned on WA
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Recent Comments
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I utterly detest all the phone tag with these companies, but in a small way, I also completely understand it!
After all of that it looks like you managed to get it sorted, so your perseverence paid off.
One day I'd like to see a baseball game, the closest I've been was watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
What a frustrating experience! That is kinda how things are these days, because everything is so different from what we are used to. I do hope we finally level out to some kind of more effective ways of getting things done. Glad your car didn't break down in the South side of Chicago.
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Hi Neil,
Love your story. There won't be any hot dogs this year at the "old ballpark" in fact we won't be there. The players will have to sit in the stands, a section apart I suppose to comply with the social distancing.
COVID testing every two days for them. My daughter-in-law's mother will be happy as her husband, who is the voice to the D-Backs (Arizona) will be out of the house at the ballpark and out from underfoot while the rest of us will have to watch the games played in empty stadiums on TV. a small price to pay for Baseball 2020, I suppose.
Isn't it fun dealing with modern technology playing the calling game. Yes, with me they answered, eventually, but the outcome was "Sorry my department doesn't' handle that, let me connect you with the department that does", Ok, I said and after having waited 25 minutes for this first person to answer, then when he tried to connect me, I get a dial tone.
Another true story. I tried to call a government agency over an issue. They said "Sorry this department doesn't handle that let me connect you to the one that does", I got through and the new person said, that she didn't handle that request, let me transfer you to someone who really does, ok I said.
This went on for a least 30 minutes and finally, I got the right department. Are you ready for this, the recording said, "I am sorry we are closed for the day (200PM), please call back tomorrow"
Have a nice day!!
Bill