Cables, Wires, and Chops... Oh My!!

grrrrrr.... I have such a love - hate with electronics... I took today off to go over to see the girls and since they got a new flatscreen HDTV.. They had everything but the cable hooked up... I figured it would be about five minutes of work and the afternoon to hangout and see how they were doing. Six and a half hours later and a few choice words for the cablesystem later, I still hadn't figured the dang thing out. After several calls to the cable company, it turned out that I wasn't the problem (for a change), but rather, the cable box was not functioning properly and they are going to come out with a new one and install it for Terri at no charge. I should be happy about that, but I'm still frustrated from having spent all day banging my head (figuratively and literally) against the wall. I didn't need the headache, but you know how it goes some days.
I was reading something in my local paper (in the obits of all places) that brought me back to a small, brief, innocent part of my youth. I was reading that a guy I simply knew as "Chops" had passed away. I hadn't seen him in years (decades), but for some reason, he left a permanent mark in my head from that time. Chops was a grill cook at a local little hole in the wall restaurant when I was a little boy and my dad used to take me in there because you could pig out and it was soooooo cheap. The place had booths whose seats were usually torn. Not exactly a Bob Evans or Cracker Barrel (If your table had matching glasses, you were lucky.) But the funny part was that for some reason, the little dive of a eat 'em up joint had some of the best food I ever ate. On the very rare occasion that my dad would let me pick the restaurant we could eat at, I always picked there... My dad liked it cause it was cheap. I loved it cause the food was good. City officials would eat there all the time. And then there was Chops. Chops would be involved with three or four different tables full of people in some spicy conversation (the restaurant was very tiny) and have everyone in stitches. He could weave in and out of different conversations without missing a beat. I wanted to be like that when I was a kid. I always thought he was cool. He was a very large man. Later in life he lost over 140 lbs. and stayed behind the grill at the Green Lantern restaurant till 1994 when he retired because of his health. I hadn't seen him since I was a kid, but when I read that he passed (he was only 55), I felt like a small part of my youth went too. I dunno, I had all of these memories come flooding back from when I was a kid. Going to the Green Lantern. Listening to Chops crack jokes on food, girls, politics, life... you name it. I don't even think the Green Lantern is open anymore, but it will always hold a special place in my heart... A double Gooper burger and free entertainment courtesy of Chops. And for an eight year old kid from a tough neighborhood, that was as good as it got.