Pockets and Holes

Pockets and Holes was Originally Posted on December 29, 2011 by lavarock

I had a thought to write a blog about pockets and holes.

There is a place in Kealakekua called The Korner Pocket, which appears to be a billiard hall, restaurant and bar. I have passed it a number of times but not yet stopped in. I have only been in town like 10 years, so I can’t ne expected to have checked out every place here yet.

In the rural college town I used to live, we would go to a little fast food place, which was not much more than a window where we would buy burgers and fries. The name escapes me. Oftentimes while the guys in the dorm would play poker, I’d make a burger run. If their order was $3.25 they would give me $4 and tell me to keep the change. I only had to find a couple of people who were hungry to have gotten my meal for free. Back then the gasoline on sale was 29 cents a gallon and during a gas war dropped as low as 19 cents a gallon. I was only driving a mile or two round trip.

On the other side of our small town was a place called Bertha’s where we would get burgers, fries and beer. Often I would get onion rings instead as I could digest them back then. Now I get indigestion from onions. I still eat them but in moderation. Virginia had “near” beer and regular beer; the near beer having less alcohol. As I remember the beer had 4.2% alcohol instead of the normal 5% which puts it in the classification of lite beers today. I could be wrong on the alcohol content but it was still alcohol.

I don’t drink much anymore, not that I drank much in college. Now I usually have a couple of beers when friends come into town or I eat at the Kona Brewing Company up in town.

But I digress. I wanted to talk about pockets.

It must have been Wal-Mart where I bought this pair of shorts. I wear shorts almost exclusively now because of the warm weather. Long pants are usually jeans and only worn when I need to work on the farm and kneel down or cut weeds. In fact just yesterday I was cutting weeds with the weedwacker and stepped into a hole up to my shin. I had boot-like shoes on and my leg was really stuck. I was able to get my leg up high enough to slip my foot out of the shoe to get out. When I stuck a piece of PVC pipe in the hole I found it went down a couple of feet. I will leave the PVC sticking out until I fill it in or cover it. These little holes open into lava tubes of various sizes and can be just a foot or two big, or in the case of the one near the house, large enough for a family to fit into. My neighbor has a lava tube near his house, which you could drive a bus into. I’m sure he will give tours if asked.

Back to the pants though. These shorts were designed with two sets of pockets on each side. Side pockets times two. I am not talking about a regular pocket and a watch pocket but two independent side pockets one inside the other. By slipping your hand in the one pocket and missing the flap by a small bit, you are in the other pocket. It might be useful to put you cell phone in one and keys in the other so you won’t scratch the face of the phone. However, I find that I lose my keys and shopping lists when I wear these pants.

MY Mom and Dad were both left-handed and all 3 children were right-handed. Mom told me stories about he being in grade school and the teacher would bind her left hand with a piece of cloth so she was forced to write with her right hand. How barbaric! Today we would use Super Glue!

It may be that I have left-hander tendencies but I don’t know. I think my left hand opens stuck jar lids better, but I write with my right hand and don’t remember ever having been forced to write right-handed. In any event, I find that I put my keys on either side and with 4 pockets I am constantly shuffling in each pocket to see where I left things.

Back on the subject of holes, I also need to visit the dentist because I have a few cavities starting and a tooth or two, which have broken off. One is so bad that I don’t think there is much they can do but suggest to replace it. The front is missing but the back is still there. If it were the other way they would just fill it. However a filling in the front would look odd unless they make enamel colored filling. I don’t want them to send their kids through college by reconstructing my mouth. Last time I paid something like $1000 for the dentist to replace a tooth. They take a digital photo of your mouth, take the image of the opposite side tooth and reverse it, thus making a mirror image. Then they adjust it a bit so it looks good on the computer screen. A few mouse clicks later a small lathe in the back room takes a cube of material and cuts it down to the exact size and shape needed to put in your mouth. Although it sounds far fetched, it is in use today even here in Hawaii. The resulting tooth or cap is ready in an hour compared with having to take an impression, put a temporary tooth or cap in, wait a week or two for the real item to be made somewhere overseas or in some back room and sent to the dentist. he then removes your temporary and puts the final tooth part in.

So there you have it, a story about pockets and holes. If you can’t sink your teeth into the story, at least you will have a leg up on it. And you can drink to that!