Top November Posts

Thank you awesome readers! Your patronage was over the top this last month. Here are November's top ten. It is a balanced mix -- half November posts and half golden oldies. Your favorite stories are our favorite stories too -- karma at its best.  So let's get to them -- our November top 10.

1.)  I am retired. Up to now I have said little of my "professional" career on this blog. That carries over into life off the web as well. A Montana friend who played golf with me dozens of times this summer asked late August when I worked for the Postal Service was I was "a carrier or a clerk?" In Lining up Postal Data -- A Tale of a Career and Two Calendars we lay out what I actually did while employed for decades by the largest (by employment) and the most ubiquitous of all federal government agencies. If you know who Jonathan Gruber is, you will probably enjoy the post. If you don't know who Jonathan Gruber is, you could very well learn something. All thanks to the Washington, DC inside the Beltway establishment for their readership, promotion and sharing -- pushing this post to the top of the heap.

2.)  The Golf Channel: Spouse's Guide to Sanity (Special Guest Post) is the all time fave among Along the Gradyent readers. The PGA Tour is done for the year; same for the LPGA and the Champions Tour. But the Australian and Sunshine tours are in full summer swing and the silly season is upon us. If you will watch Tiger at his Hero World Challenge  this week, or Greg at his Franklin Templeton Shootout the next, or you are stuck in front of a television that's stuck on the Golf Channel, this primer is for you.

3.) It has come and gone but in mid-November it was coming. Here It Comes is the story of naming winter storms, a task accomplished this year by the Latin class at Bozeman High School. When the Weather Channel invited the class on for a segment honoring their achievement, the weather people surprised the students by changing the B name to Bozeman. Winter storm Bozeman lived up to its name dumping six inches of snow here in the Gallitan Valley, bringing full circle the Weather Channel's recognition for the young linguists, logicians, classical scholars and would be meteorologists at our high school. Go Hawks! 

4.) Hey bid a bid a, hey bid a bid a, hey bid a bid a, do we have $225 K, do I hear $225 K? 225 from UNLV! Now do we have $250K. Hey bid a bid a. Over there! $250K for president Bill. Do I hear $330 K now? Yes, thank you UCLA. Hillary Clinton's University Tours go to the highest bidder. Your next president of the United States bemoans the high cost of college education, while picking university foundation pockets and purses to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars each, to speak for a few minutes on the same. Jonathan Gruber is so right.

5.) Before it got torched it was open for business nightly in season right down the street from my childhood home. The Dells' prosperous run was concurrent, not the least bit coincidentally, with the Volstead Act and prohibition. Additional attractions included beer, liquor and gambling and gangland wars over the profits of the same. The Dells was said to be owned or controlled by Al Capone and his gang. It is commonly referred to as the most notorious of the Morton Grove roadhouses. Read about that and more in Morton Grove Before the Baby Boom The Complete Story of the Dells.

The Dells gets torched, October 7, 1934.

6.) Lyndon R. Foster was perhaps my favorite uncle -- yet I never met him. I learned essentially everything I know about uncle Lyn when I researched and wrote On the Road to Bathgate Act 4f: Lyndon R. Foster -- Veteran, Publisher and Politician. Lyndon literally put his life on the line in defense of freedom, accountability and good government. He got the Germans out of France and the mafia out of LA. 

7.) People are finally figuring out the federal government sucks and the president and his minions are lying to them virtually every day. As for looking forward,

Despite having cherry picked her appearances, just about everywhere Hillary Clinton had gone to support candidates the Democrats lost last night. I guess that should be no surprise, since last spring and summer she was about the first presidential aspirant in history to have lost a book tour. We look forward to learning what the next president of the United States has in store for us in 2015.

We commented thus and on other issues the day after in Random Observations on an Election.

Arlene Harvey, check room
girl at Club Rendezvous

8.)  Another of the roadhouse stories from prohibition era Morton Grove concerned an establishment across Dempster Street and a block up from The Dells. We blogged Morton Grove Before the Baby Boom: Club Rendezvous Goes Up in Smoke. 

Drapes and streamers stretched from the walls and ceiling of the dance hall and the dining room. The bar was packed. A mass of persons moved to the music of a three person orchestra on the dance floor. Every table in the dining room was filled. Many were Northwestern university students who had just come from a school musical comedy production. 

"Fire." 

The girl who had sent the cry ringing through the building, snatched her wrap and made for the only exit -- except the kitchen door -- a narrow doorway on the east side of the dance hall. This doorway led into an anteroom which led to the street.

The Daily Herald, March 29, 1935

A frenzy of fear seized the merrymakers. Screaming, trampling, striking, they surged to the east exit -- only to discover, firemen said, it opened inward. The foremost were flattened against the door and wall by the desperate press of the panic-stricken. 

It did not end well.

9.) Boom, Thwack, Kapowee! Five Guys Has Opened. 

10.) Caring About Culverts is the story of one of our 1970's real economy jobs, the kind of job that doesn't exist anymore in our overly corporatized, centralized and regulated economy. We rolled them, we punch holed them, we fitted them, and we riveted and bolted them. We did whatever it took to build anodized corrugated steel culverts in Madison, Wisconsin back in the day.