What Three Generations Have Seen

I was rereading one of my favorite books the other day called,

"How to Build a Fire And Other Handy Things Your Grandfather Knew!" By Erin Bried.

Afterwards,

I started reminiscing about my own
Grandfather
on my
Mother's
side of the family.

I often told my kids,
when they were still young enough to be amazed by my stories on life,
that my
Grandfather
and
Grandmother
were born in the year of 1904.

Only thirty-nine years after the
Civil War
ended,

one year after the
Wright Brothers
flew their
heavier-than-air powered aircraft,
and four years before
Henry Ford
made it possible for the
average
Joe & Josephine
to own an affordable car.

My
Grandfather
lost a hand in a farming accident when he was a young lad.

He never let that stop him from getting
Married,
Having Four Kids,
becoming
Vice-President
of a company whose sales were nation wide

and becoming a local
Politician
in the city he planted roots in for his new family.

My kid's
Great Grandfather
and
Great Grandmother
were born in families who were still using the
"Horse & Buggy"
for transportation.

They lived through two
World Wars,
the
Great Depression,
and were alive during the height of the
Cold War.

Saw medicine grow from its infancy,
to the fit teenager it became in the 1960s.
Where
School Immunization
almost wiped away certain diseases,
like
Polio.
Where the
Life Expectancy
of an individual became longer than 65 years of age.

Saw the majority of
Americans
buying their first cars.
To seeing a man walk on the
Moon.

They listened to a radio,
which brought the
"News of the World"
that much closer to home.
To watching pictures beamed directly into their home,
first through a
Black & White,
then a color
TV Set.

There were a lot of changes that happened during their lifetime,

there has been a lot of changes during my parent's lifetime,

and there is a lot which has happened to the world in my lifetime.

  Certainly,

there is going to be a lot of changes to the world,
in my
Children's Lifetimes.

So,

to help cope with this,

know that,

Change Is Inevitable.
Change Is Exciting.
Change Is Good.
Embrace Change,
Then You Will Never Be Left Behind In Life!

I used to say these words to myself every morning,
before I went to work.
I did this after I noticed that I was wishing that the
World
wouldn't change
and things would remain the same.

Once my mind
"Changed"
and I embraced
"Change,"
life became so much more fun

and interesting!

This is,
My Mantra Is Embracing Change In The World For The Better
Jim Hauenstein

 

And

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
- Mahatma Gandhi -

 

That is my story and I am sticking to it!

 

Sign up as a Follower or Leave a Comment

 

I would love to hear from you

Thanks for reading

 

Be kind to everyone

 

I'll be seeing you

I Have Changed

A partial reprise of my story from

May 22nd, 2015

of my post called 

I Haven't Changed A Bit

It's only a partial because this is the story I want to tell.

*****

Today,
I went to recycle my plastic bottles

and cans because I needed the extra money.

Out of the whopping $35.00 I received,
I immediately went to put $25.00 worth of gas into my car.
While I was at the gas station
I saw these two young guys pushing their car,
uphill,
towards the gas pumps.

Of course,
I helped push.

Once,
the car was next to the pump,
the youngest of the two asked if I had any spare change to give them.

I immediately thought to myself,

"Well you shouldn't have gone to the casino."

Plus,

this is really hard to confess,

I was judging them because they were Black.

I told him I was broke
and he got into their car.

While I pumped my gas I noticed nobody came out of their car to pump gas in theirs.

I thought about it,

then started feeling guilty about my profiling the two  
  and decided,
"What does it hurt to give up five bucks."

I knocked on the front passenger's window
and the young guy opened his door.
  There I saw this older fellow sitting in the driver's seat with an oxygen tank next to him.
He was being helped by an oxygen machine to function in life.

I gave them the five bucks,
they all shook my hand,
asked me my name and mailing address,

saying they would mail me a check for the five dollars. 

I told them,
it was the way I was brought up
and that they should pass it on.
If they see someone in need,
they should help them out.

They promised me they would

and the older gentleman said to me

"God will bless you for this."

This is,

I Work On Being Woke Everyday of My Life

And Hopefully Someday I Will Be Blessed For It When I Get There
Jim Hauenstein

And

“My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you.”
- Sylvia Plath-

 

That is my story and I am sticking to it!

 

Sign up as a Follower or Leave a Comment

 

I would love to hear from you

Thanks for reading

 

Be kind to everyone

 

I'll be seeing you

 

I did update the original story.

This version is the truth.

And I still work on being Woke everyday!

 

Don't Ever Be Fooled By An Imitator

Back in May of 2015, just at the beginning of when the popularity of my blog started growing in numbers, I wrote a post called

Don't Be Fooled.

It's about a copycat writer from northern California who was using my moniker as his own to cash in on my small time celebrity.

Today I woke up and wondered, What ever happened to him?

The good news is that I have done so much writing on the different social platforms and written so many posts on my Blog that I no longer see him when I search TwoBuckHowie on the internet!

Here is that story from years gone by.

*****

I want to inform my reading Public,
of all the imitators out there.
Once you have a good thing going,
like wearing a Rolex Watch,
all the cheep imitations seem to creep on out from every dark street corner.

I am,
as in me,
as in I,
as in only me,
  am the real
Two Buck Howie!

I've had this nickname since at least 1980,
when I was laid off from the prestigious job of slaughtering hogs,
back when I lived in the beautiful State of Wisconsin.

I already had the nickname of Howie from my grade school days. Hauenstein, Howie.
Get it.

Then came the Two Buck part of my name.

I used to meet one of my best friends Scott,

nightly,
at the local dive Bar.
  I had to hustle drinks by playing darts or shooting pool because remember,

I didn't have a job.
I would walk in the Bar with two,
$1 bills,
  and by the end of the night,
I was always over the legal limit
of any breathalyzer
and I would be ten to twenty dollars richer.

The next day,
I would only bring two dollars from my winnings
and the whole process would begin again.

Soon,
I had to change bars every night because
people wouldn't play me for money any longer.
When I would walk into a place,
people started telling their friends
or the patrons around them,
not to play me because
I would hustle them.
The people who had never met me would ask,
"Who is that guy?"
That's when Scott started saying,
"That's Two Buck Howie."

True Story.

*****

Back then,
I always lived by a famous quote from my favorite hustler,
golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez.

He once said,

"Pressure? You want to know what pressure is? Pressure is when you make a fifty dollar bet and only have five dollars in your wallet."

He then went on to say,

"That's why I became so good at golf. I couldn't lose because I couldn't pay the bet."

My Hero!

This is,

Yes,

I Had To Run Out Of A Few Bars When I Lost A Bet

Jim Hauenstein

And

“If you drink, don’t drive. Don’t even putt.” - Dean Martin -

 

  That is my story and I am sticking to it!

 

Sign up as a Follower or Leave a Comment

 

  I would love to hear from you

Thanks for reading

 

Be kind to everyone

 

I'll be seeing you

 

I Believe In Dad Jokes

Yes I do.

I believe in Dad Jokes because I have been doing them way before I even had kids.

They were called "awful" back then.

But now my corny jokes are acceptable among the populace and my family because they fall under that comedic category and worldwide phenomena called,

"Dad Jokes!"

Let me show you what I mean.

 

An old friend saw me at the library yesterday and asked, "Jim you like to read? Do you have any favorite books?" I said, "Yes. 1984." He replied, "Wow, that's a lot!"

 

Where do zombies go to swim? - The Dead Sea.

 

I went to see my Doctor today and told her, "Doc, I think I'm addicted to Tik Tok!" My Doctor said, "Sorry, I don't follow you."

What do you get when you add a Christmas tree to an iPhone? - A Pine-Apple!

What did the zero say to the number eight? - Nice belt

 

 

This is,

I Have Pages Of This Stuff

And Half Of Them I Made Up Myself

Jim Hauenstein

 

And,

 

 That is my story and I am sticking to it!

 

Sign up as a Follower or Leave a Comment

 

  I would love to hear from you

Thanks for reading

 

Be kind to everyone

 

I'll be seeing you

 

*****

 

The day after I wrote the humorous post 

The Selling Of My Information

 Meta was fined over

$400,000,000

for

"Targeting Ads."

 Now that's funny!

The Selling Of My Information

   This Blog was not meant to be a diary, it was meant for me to use as an outlet for my writing and my music. So why am I treating it that way lately? As a diary? Because starting in the early fall of last year I had to replace one-third of my fencing around my house, get a new refrigerator, have a new furnace put in, I'm remodeling the laundry room, and I have just finished updating some of the plumbing in the second bathroom.

   This Blog is mine to use the way I see fit. Now as an outlet for; what is on my mind, for my writing, and for my music. And not to be harassed on Social Media because it reads more and more like a diary and that some might think I'm a sad person!

   No, it's not because of my carpentry or plumbing skills. I'm being harassed on Social Media because of all the algorithms used by the different services are detecting that I'm a single individual! I'm not even being harassed by real people!

   Since all the Social Media outlets sell your personal information to each other, it is actually funny, but not unexpected, how they jointly coordinated the assault against me.

   Okay, let me tell you what's going on. It all started right before this past Thanksgiving. The advertisement I was getting on the different platforms started out innocent enough. It was for an app with the usual, "Find Single Women Living In Your Area" kind of thing. A week or two later it was apps for "Siberian Women, Asian Women, and Scandinavian Women." After a few more weeks the apps were for "Women Over Forty, Over Fifty, and finally Women Over Sixty."

   No my friends, it didn't stop there. The next app was for every repulsive pervert's dream, "Young Girls Looking For Older Men."

   Yes, I went to the different Privacy Settings on each platform making sure they were not allowed to sell my information to third party advertisers. But, do you really believe that these conglomerates, making billions of dollars a year, care about you and your personal preferences? Even if they are fined by the Federal Government $500,000,000 dollars once every 10 years they still have profited billions upon billions over that same time period!

   Remember the Drug Companies and the Opiate Crisis? None of them went out of business for being heavily fined.

   Now comes the kicker. The latest advertisement for an app was for, "Create Your Own AI Friend!"

 

This is,

Do I Look That Desperate To You?

(Don't answer that.)

TwoBuckHowie

 

And

 

“In this era of fake news and paid news, artificial intelligence is more and more used as a political tool to manipulate and dictate common people, through big data, bio-metric data, and AI analysis of online profiles and behaviors in social media and smart phones.”
- Amit Ray -

 

That is my story and I am sticking to it!

 

Sign up as a Follower or Leave a Comment

 

  I would love to hear from you

Thanks for reading

 

Be kind to everyone

 

I'll be seeing you

 

And not in a creepy way like

Social Media