Walter Baldwin

            On Wednesday at 4:00 when I got up to pee my computer said it was 15 degrees but it felt colder, so I decided to turn on the heat for a while. I got up half an hour later and shut it off just as the radiators were getting warm. That was all the extra heat the building needed and it was fairly comfortable for the rest of the morning. 

            I memorized the fourth verse of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Street) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the eighth verse of "Lost Song" by Serge Gainsbourg. There are two verses left to learn. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar for the second day of four during song practice. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I've been in the morning in a week. 

            I continued sanding one of the boards I glued down to fill the depression in the kitchen floor. There's one part of one side that keeps sticking up from the level of the floor. I think I'm coming close to making it flush but it's taking a long time. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before lunch. I had crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and when I got back to Parkdale I stopped at Mary Brown's. They finally opened today after the "coming soon" sign has been up for two years. All of the employees are South Asian except for a perky young white guy who seems to be there from the main office and a young white woman who seems to be under him but is also management. The guy was telling my server that there's lots of room for advancement within the company and he can tell from how she's done so far that she has what it takes. He indicated the counter area to someone and told them "This will be our domain". Apparently they were giving out free sandwiches in the morning. A down and out looking guy came in asking for one and was disappointed to hear the free ones were all gone. I ordered the Nashville Mary combo which is just a spicy chicken sandwich and taters. I had to wait about ten minutes. I'll heat them up for dinner. 

            When I got home I had to use the toilet. I pushed for fifteen minutes and extracted the biggest human turd I've ever seen. When I flushed it the toilet plugged and the water kept filling up so I had to constantly bail it out to keep it from overflowing. I used the plunger until it broke and then I used the other plunger I bought a few years ago that was advertized as the best plunger ever at the hardware store and the manager vouched for it but I don't find it works as well. When I dumped toilet water in the bathroom sink it plugged the sink. Later the plunger worked on the sink but not the toilet. Eventually the water stopped filling the toilet but then it was too low to plunge and so I stupidly flushed it again and spent another half an hour bailing it until it stopped again. I went out to see if the hardware store was open so I could buy another plunger but it was closed. I tried to flush it again and spent more than half an hour plunging and bailing to no avail until it stopped. I poured what is supposed to be the super powerful drain cleaner in but then I read that it doesn't work if the toilet won't flush. If the toilet flushed I wouldn't need it. The guys renovating unit 5 weren't there today. Maybe they'll be there tomorrow and the guy who snaked my kitchen drain can help me. I spent an hour and forty five minutes on the toilet. Maybe the drain cleaner will seep down and dissolve the blockage. 

            I weighed 84 kilos at 19:15, which is the lightest I've been in the evening in thirty nine days.

            I was caught up on my journal at 20:15 and didn't have any time to review videos, work on my video project or scan any negatives. 

            I heated the sandwich and taters from Mary Brown and they were okay but nothing special. I had them with a beer while watching season 7, episodes 12 and 13 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story the chimp that Joe bought for Kathy Joe's birthday is causing a lot of trouble. He pulls laundry from the line, pulls up Billie Joe and Bobbie Joe's garden, contaminates Janet's medical instruments, and tangles Joe's fishing line. Joe has grown attached to the animal and so it breaks his heart but he takes him to give to the Riverdale zoo. But the chimp gets away and returns to the Shady Rest. Joe goes to Sam to take out an ad asking for a good home for the chimp. A salesman says he'll give him a home but he really just wants to sell him. Joe is bamboozled and lets him take the chimp and he leaves with him in a cage on the Cannonball. But the dog chases the Cannonball, gets on when the train stops for a cow and frees the chimp. They both go back to crawl into bed with Joe. 

            The chimp is not in the second story, so maybe they quietly wrote him out of the series. Joe discovers that it's been 75 years since the golden spike was laid to connect the Cannonball line. Joe, Sam, Newt and two representatives from Pixley all argue over who should drive the spike in the commemoration ceremony. Bobbie Joe suggests that it should be Grandpa Miller, since he was at the original ceremony. But Grandpa has a hard time swinging the sledgehammer and so Joe drives it in anyway. Suddenly oil comes spurting up and Joe thinks he's rich. Grandpa accidentally hits Joe over the head with the hammer and Joe dreams the opening segment from the Beverly Hillbillies but with Joe and his family replacing the Clampetts in the old truck and the lyrics changed from Jed to Joe. After Joe wakes up a representative of the Tristate Oil Company arrives to say that the spike that was driven cut one of his company's pipelines. 

            Grandpa Miller was played by Walter Baldwin, who started out performing in his parents' stock company. He worked on Broadway for twenty years before acting on the screen. He played Whit in the first Broadway production of Of Mice and Men. From 1949 to 1959 he was featured in a series of John Deere Day movies called Tom Gordon Family Films. John Deere dealerships would hold an annual party and show a movie. Baldwin played Tom Gordon, who would always buy the newest John Deere product. He was the first actor to play Floyd the barber on The Andy Griffith Show but only for one episode.