In college, I was on the student newspaper. At one point, the university was competing with several others for a big federal research center. One day, it was announced that the project was awarded to a university in Texas and not my school. So as I was sitting there in the newspaper office, the news editor was in the other side of the room making calls. So I got to hear, “Hello, is this Texas? May I speak to the governor, please?” as he called the statehouse in Austin for comment. I was on the floor laughing.
Mountain House is in Northern California.
I grew up in Southern California. At a time when there were a lot more orange trees in Orange County than there were houses. Everyone knew at least a bit about citrus cultivation; sorta like all Iowans know about corn.
Here’s an outfit that sells wind machines. Which are installed in orchards and are turned on to make wind across the trees on cool still winter nights to prevent the dew from forming frost which will quickly destroy the entire crop with just 1 freeze.
Back when I was a kid these were commonplace in the surrounding orchards. They were a bit like a stationary airboat: a ratty old ICE engine with no muffler welded on top of a 20-30’ post with a prop like from a light airplane but bigger. Each acre of trees usually had 2 or 3 machines. I got woken up a lot by all the engines starting & running overnight.
Nowadays they’re computer controlled and much quieter. And at least in Orange County, substantially all the orange groves are gone with nothing but houses, houses, and more houses in their place.
So yes, the woman was confused. But depending on her background, maybe not quite as confused as you thought.
Actually, the “public good” was in boosting the tax income of the municipality or county, not so some developer could make a profit on the development effort. The term of art is “highest, best use”.
I agree 100% that’s a really shitty definition of “public good”, but the Supremes have spoken. And as @Odesio has said that’s no more Communism than it is Republicanism.
Now that’s interesting. I’ve been told that old-style Christmas lights can raise the temperature around a tree by ten degrees (F). But that’s only feasible if you have one or two yard trees.
I was in a department store in Paris and while my wife was trying on shoes, I went in search of a book to read as I had seen an English language section.
I found something suitable and went to pay. Behind the counter, two elegant Parisian shop assistants were having an animated conversation and on my side, two ladies were standing patiently, magazine in hand and being ignored.
I thought that the other two customers were waiting for something, so, being somewhat wise to the ways of Parisian shop assistants, went up to the counter and in my best French, said “Bonjour madame,” to the nearest assistant. She promptly took my book and while her colleague rang up the sale she said something. I only caught “emballé” so I assumed that she was asking if I wanted it wrapped. I shook my head and replied “Non mercie”, so she just put it in a bag.
At this point, I realised that I was being glared at by the other two customers and one turned to the other and said in English, “Typical bloody French; ignore the English and serve the locals first.”
I just smiled and walked away, but I really wanted to tell them that what they heard was pretty much the limit of my schoolboy French and that Parisian shop assistants always ignore customers until they speak.
You should have done just that. Using your most exaggerated Texas or New York accent, whichever you’re better at. Then you’d have had two stories to tell. 
I’ve seen these in orchards around Florida and briefly thought that that was their purpose and function, but when I saw them I didn’t think such a small device could make a difference. I concluded they were either wind monitoring devices or that they, despite their blades, somehow blanketed the orchard in some protective fluid. I also briefly thought they might be tiny windmills but rejected that idea because if they were then why did I only see them in orchards?
The trick is that on cold winter nights a temperature inversion can form. The temp at ground & tree level can be freezing-ish whereas even 40 feet up it’s a bunch warmer. The machine mixes the warmer air above into the cooler air below. It’s not going to save a citrus crop from 20F overnights. Which is why citrus in the USA is grown only pretty far south and at low altitude. But when the difference between 31F & 33F is economic survival, these machines are essential for the nights with outlier-chilly weather.
See this university extension article for more. Funny enough, it’s from Pennsylvania. Where they have orchards, but not citrus orchards. Same concept applies.
“Is this the party to whom I’m speaking?”
(you’re old if you recognize this quote)
Brought to mind a time I was in a department store in Paris, just browsing, circa 1983. I heard a piercing, nasal voice across the store saying “I don’t what to know what it costs in French. I need to know how much in American!” (Yes, she emphasized that word.) A moment later, I heard an indignant: “XX dollars? That too much!”
All I could think was ugly American.
Ah, Ernestine . . .
“one ringy dingy, two ringy ding . . . Is the the party to whom I am speaking? A gracious good afternoon!”
When my father was very young (late 1950s, early 1960s), he went overseas to study. He had a stop over in Paris for a couple of days. He went into a shop selling perfumes to buy presents for his mother and sisters. But he had no clue what to buy, so he went back out into the street and asked a young woman who was walking past to assist. (Not an example of a stupid overheard conversation, but a story he liked to retell.)
To continue the hijack…
We have them here in Napa Valley, too. They are quieter now than when I was a kid. I also remember them burning smudge pots when it got bad. They’re just little burners for diesel oil. They put out great clouds of greasy warm smoke. Before they had those, they would burn tires.
Not exactly overheard, but my son told me this story. He was working in an IT group for a largish company. One day the company’s email system went down. He got a call from an employee complaining that her email wasn’t working. He explained that the email system for the whole company was down, but they were working on it and it should be up again shortly. She indignantly exclaimed, “When something like this happens, you should send out an email to let people know!”
I send out email reports every night. A few years ago email went down. I had to wait til the end of my shift to let the guy who deals with email know. I’m told one of the managers in a different department - sales, I think - had a huge hissy fit about not getting the daily emails. When it was explained why they said, angrily, there’s no excuse for not letting us know! Why didn’t she send an email!?
One of my wife’s big cheese bosses, president of the company, often tried in big meetings to motive the managers, imploring them to be team players, to have es-spirit da core.
Yes spirit as in ghost.
That’s when I started working on my informal research: those people who sorely mispronounce a word will be the person who uses it the most.
I am British, so far too diffident.
I apologize for my thoughtless US-centrism. I should have recognized that from knowing your username, or if not that, from your use of “schoolboy” which is much more typical UK- than US- English.
In many ways your Brit accent, of whatever region, might have been even more effective in tweaking those annoyed English tourists.
[quote=“LSLGuy, post:177, topic:926858, full:true”]
He could have told them he was from New England.
Ah, that’d be near the New Forest then
I’ve gotten that email.
We had a company wide email outage, and when I got access back, there was an email sitting in my inbox, letting me know about the email outage. (To be perfectly fair, there may have been some people who still had access, so it would make sense to notify anyone with access that most people didn’t).
I’ve also called our IT department about an internet outage, and was told, in all seriousness, that they would update me on the status of my request by email. This has happened more than once. Yes, it’s clearly a script, they tell everyone that for every issue, but it’s a dumb script unthinkingly applied. (To be scrupulously fair, supervisors and some other folk have company smart phones with access to their company email account, but most of us peons can only access our company email accounts through company computers).