I assumed it's American. It looks and sounds like a Texas thing. And that makes the little tee trimmed as a topiary in its stark protective square even more funny. But it's Dutch. Apparently a New Year celebration tradition, and there goes the funniness of the silly tree while making the song even more funny.
3 comments:
The carbide lamp is an ingenious use of the same basic chemistry: the generation and controlled ignition of acetylene gas from CaC2.
Union Carbide got its name from the compound. They used to supply CaC2 to mines in West Virginia and elsewhere. CaC2 is made from coke (coal) so the industry was self-sustaining.
Those lamps would be like carrying around a little bomb. The whole thing relying on the valve.
And that's what completely freaks me out about automobiles. All that power under the hood, the pressure, the hot oil and even the cooling water is steaming hot, the explosions in continuous series, the power created, high velocities, force and momentum, and then, riding on air and all depending on and controlled by tiny valves.
Me no likey.
It's all too tenuous. Too dangerous. Way too hazardous for a klutz such as myself. I could lose an arm, I could get fingers wrapped up in a fan belt, burnt by steam or hot oil. I could put out an eye with a simple accident or oversight.
And when I look back at some of the ridiculous repairs I did myself late at night under the light of a street lamp, something just enough to get home, wrap a hose with a ripped off sleeve of a shirt, connect a controlling lever to the carburetor with found wire, and do that by feel and then take off rolling, change tires on hill on a soft shoulder, I appall myself all over again just remembering those things and close calls.
I just now survived a harrowing experience with brakes. All four brakes are replaced because of it. And the whole time I was praying please send angels to protect your imbecile, I need you right now, hold my cramping leg steady, please help clear the way, I need help! And I did get to the garage somehow without incident and I fell out of the truck babbling so that the intercepting mechanic ushered me through the garage which breaks all their rules. (And the place is a mess too. You'd think it'd be posh but it's not. I know an ordered garage when I see one and this is not an ordered garage. Crap all over everywhere. Every square inch.)
Explosions for motive power, and controlling water dripping onto a chemical for a flame in my hands, are not for me.
Chip, it sounds like riding a Saturn rocket would have freaked you out: athwart tons and tons of liquid H2 and liquid O2.
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