GATHERING GROUND REPORT - MAY 10, 2023
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"The cars in the parking lot contained four Ct State trooper cars. We had to be on our best behavior today!" |
A beautiful spring day greeted the four arriving at the Gathering Ground restaurant in Windsor Locks. Chet, Norm, Dave O and Jerry.
Aches and pains did not occupy the conversation this morning, but lots of banter about traffic and other springtime topics kept the conversations flowing.
If anyone has traveled into Cape Cod in the last several decades, the bridges are always a contest to avoid traffic jams when crossing into or out of the Cape. Sagamore is currently under construction for repair. It is scheduled to be completed by Memorial Day, of this year but we all know about DOT projects and the lack of ability to make their promise dates. HERE is a news article about the traffic situation in March of this year.
A couple of times a year, the topic of visiting the DMV to complete a transaction comes across the table at our breakfast meetings. This month we had the luxury of recent visits to four(4) different state DMV's. Since most have used the Connecticut DMV in the many decades living in this state we were able to rate the other three with Ct DMV being the base. Ct - D, Mass B+(recent improvements got to this grade), Florida B+, and New Hampshire B+. I think the B+ were not A's because you still had to wait 5 or 10 minutes before your transaction was cheerily resolved in a very prompt fashion.
We did cover how Unions went from very helpful for the workers to not so helpful, when many unionized plants were unable to see the economics of the times and the companies moved to areas that offered very inexpensive labor to help them stay competitive with the global markets. Not good sometimes for towns that lost their major employer like Flint Michigan. A major GM plant that employed about half of the city's 200,000 population.
Gathering Ground sill has the best and biggest breakfasts as contested by the table to breakfast tasters in the area.
~ Your scribe,
Jerry
Photographers Norm & Jerry (apparently lacking a selfie stick)
P.S. Oh, and the pic with the line of State police SUV's
sitting in front of the restaurant this morning caused some pause for Chet and
Jerry as we were hoping a mass killing of chicken eggs would not disrupt our
monthly meet...
