White Out!

Not the blinding snow kind, but the ‘fix my mistakes’ kind.

Remember correction tape? I remember some electric typewriters that had an extra spool of tape for correction. The print ribbon dropped and the correction tape popped up for you to rekeyed the error keys.

I sit in amazement at the ‘Word Processor’. Where you can change, replace, move delete and never ruin a NEW document. You can see it before it prints, you can even have a spell check, auto or manual.

I bring this up because I still have white-out. I used to laugh at friend Fred whose Sweet wife Frances was his ‘Minister of finance’. I got to thinking of that, since I left the business world Sherry is ‘Our Minister of finance’.  This girl gets upset about missing dollars and even missing pennies when balancing the check-book.

           

This week she was $2.00 off. She would not change the total and go from there, she had to find the error. She used white-out to cover two pages of figures, then refigured. SHE FOUND IT!

I had a good laugh, remembering the first contract on a house I built. I had no idea where to get the contract forms. That was a long time before the internet.  I dug out our own house contract then sat down and laboriously covered every entry.  Then wrote the new contract.

The attorney handling the sale was Parks Wilson in Belmont. He looked at the contract and broke out laughing,  with tears in his eyes he said, “Mr. Darnell, you need to invest in the White-out company.”

    

I was learning, I used a lot of whiteout, but I knew one thing, I had just completed a new house and sold a house by myself. I had earned $10 an hour. I knew I was going to be a builder and one day this lawyer would look at me with a little more respect. In fact he did; he also became a friend and gave me some good advice at times that helped me succeed.

(This box contains words NOT said)

Now in life, it would be nice to be able to use whiteout on our mistakes. It is good to say I am sorry, but the words (or deeds) have been said/done. The mind does not know whiteout. IF someone in anger calls you an SOB or other name, then later apologizes, it just does not work like whiteout. The error and the correction action are still vivid in the human mind.    

Ma or Betty could state this better, but we need to think twice and speak once.  We should never intentionally hurt someone with the wrong word, because whiteout won’t fix it.

Nite Shipslog

PS:

And I haven’t said a thing that you do not know!

So?….How did this happen?

 

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Above is the Tucker, that did not make it. and Below is just a beautiful shot.