What to Write

Some years ago, almost in another lifetime, I taught school.

Those were some of the best years of my life, and quite possibly, the most traumatic for my students.

Someday, I may write a bit about those years.

But I do recall something I often told my students during creative writing; “When it feels right—write.

I’ve tried to endorse that same adage for when and what I write.

But sometimes I get derailed on what to write.  It feels right, but other factors float in, like, they won’t like this, or it’s too long, or it’s about such and such again, or . . . 

I don’t pay those floating thoughts too much mind though; seems like it often distills down to something I’m enthused about and want to get out of my system. 

Quite often, I end of writing with maybe one or two people in mind whom I hope will read what I have written, because it pertains to them. 

And if the rest who peek in at the blog get some enjoyment or distraction out of it, then that is good too.

All that for this.  I’m going to write about disc golf again.  Those not interested may go on merrily with their day now.  Because I’ve thought about this off and on and now it feels right to write about it.  Even though I don’t know why I write on this subject; my Udisc app shows I’ve played over 50 rounds, my score hasn’t improved much.

Morley Field

My good wife and I were in San Diego for several days to celebrate our 25^th anniversary.  And I had my disc’s along, just in case, although I was fairly determined to make it the case.

The weather for the end of our stay looked grim with rain and wind, so I chose what looked like the best day and planned accordingly. 

I didn’t realize how devasted I was about to become.

That was back when I was fairly confident in my disc golf game.  It may well be that the game I played on Morley field changed my confidence level indefinitely.

Because, I naively thought it would be a lot like home. 

Sure, you had to pay $5 to play, but that was okay; I was in California, by the way, where a nacho appetizer, shared by my good wife and I and our two drinks cost a nice $45.  Or where a soft drink ran you in the $7.90 range. 

But when my Uber finally got us there, I wasn’t so sure he had the wrong place.  This was Thursday morning, and the place was loaded with cars.  And people.

I sallied forth, still pumped in my own self confidence.  I had this.

We got to the first tee and were told by those standing there that they were waiting on the group in front of them who had a 10:00 tee time.  Okay, so I’m not in Kansas anymore.

Then, as the 10:00 teer’s teed off, an older fellow came striding up and asked, “Do you mind if I play through?  I got stuck in traffic and had a 10:00 tee time.  (Turns out he was a pro golfer)

I was getting the heebie-jeebies’ already.

There were two nice looking Spanish fellows following us and they said they had played the course a fair bit.  I invited them to join me, on the pretense of being friendly, but really because my nerves didn’t look to handle this alone.

Because, ahead, I saw many many trees.  And hills. And rocks. And people. 

I selected an old fried of a disc and spoke a few quiet words with him and let fly. 

He vacated for the parking lot, and almost creamed a few high-end California vehicles.

My bladder suddenly tried to empty itself.  Right there.

But I counselled with it and after a few hiccups, it submitted to me.

I hit a tree next, and finally bogeyed on hole 1.

I made par on hole 2, but things started going downhill, literally from there.  And it was at hole 2 that started noticing the benches.  There were two benches by each tee.  I began to realize more and more as my vision slowly morphed away from the tunnel it was in.  People were sitting on these benches.  Watching me.  People were at the next basket, watching me.  People were everywhere, watching me. 

Suddenly, it didn’t matter how I tried to set myself up to throw.  Everything went whacky.  Whacky the tree, whacky the rock, whacky hill, and whacky fence. 

The Spanish guys proved to be a good decision.  They acted as tour guides and coaches all at once. They also became psychological counselors when they saw how frayed at the edges I was getting. 

For sure at hole 9.  I threw into a thicket of brambles and thorns.  When I tried to toss out, it made it ten feet and stopped again.  When I tossed out the second time, I watched incredulously as it landed flat on the slope in front of me, and slid down, flat, not rolling, for a good ten feet back to me.  The hill was that steep. 

The Spanish guys were hanging around par.  At least that is what they claimed, but they told me that if the other one didn’t catch them cheating then it was okay. 

I was done.  I tried to convince my good wife we needed to quit, the wind was coming up and everything else.  She said if we had come this far, we needed to finish.  It seemed she was enjoying this for various reasons and was intent on keeping it going for those reason’s sake. 

And so I threw, gamely, high up, and smack into the trees.  And there it stayed.  The Spanish guys told me there were some pipes there for problems like that by the clubhouse.  I slinked and crouched behind every available grove of trees on my way over there, and even more so on the way back with the blazing white pipe in my hands.  But it worked, and I eventually finished the course, not necessarily having fought a good fight. 

We waited, for the first time during our trip, a long time on Uber to get there.

My score was 20 something more than the Spanish guys.

I bet, if I knew where to look, I’d find some pro disc golfer’s blog about that day and a certain white bearded guy that he watched trying to play in a most frantic sort of way. 

That is, if he could type while laughing so hard.

She

I asked, without any preamble whatsoever, which part of India she was from. 

Our acquaintance wasn’t 30 seconds old when I asked, either.

And she answered, without any preamble whatsoever, that she was from New Delhi.

I told her in rapidspeak, while firing off a couple questions about the menu to her son, that we had flown into New Delhi and then on to Bagdogra.  I saw a bit of a blank in her eyes, so I amended it to Siliguri, and the blank was quickly filled in. 

“Did you like India?” a question I find common in those whose country I have visited.

“Absolutely.” I said,  “That’s why I’m here today, to go back just a bit by eating your food.”

I had to move, because other customers were joining the line behind me, so I made my way over to the buffet line and loaded my plate with butter naan, chicken tikka masala, and aloo chili. 

I happened to look up a bit later, when my plate was about half done, to see that she had left the till and was seated, directly across the room from me in a booth.  She sat sideways in the booth, so she faced me front on, back straight, hands folded in her lap, and watched me eat my food.  Nor did she move when I went to get a second plate and looked right at her.

For some reason, her two sons kept stopping at my booth and courteously asking if I needed anything and then took my plates away as I used them.  I noticed they waited for all the other customers to finish their meal before taking their plates away.

“This is so good,” I quietly told one of them.

His eyes shone.

She watched my whole meal, and when I got up to pay, she got up to check me out, even though she hadn’t the previous customers.

“Did you like your food?” she asked.

“Yes, it was everything I remembered,” I told her.  “I have been looking for the aloo chili ever since I came back and finally found it here.”

She smiled in a quiet, satisfied way. 

She told me she had moved to the states in ’76 but goes back often to her homeland, the latest being just before the pandemic. 

“I want to go again as soon as I can.”

Her two sons flanked her as we spoke quickly, because the line was building up behind us again.

I thanked her for the meal and her sons for their service and left.

But a part of me wishes I could go back, and eat again, without silverware and just with my fingers, of her delicious food.

Because I think eating her food with my fingers gave me away to her.

Rules of Marriage

(from an air conditioner man)

I didn’t know my friend Daniel existed until 12 years ago.  It would have been better for me if I had known him before that, although I can’t speak for him.

I became acquainted with him while he was installing an A/C unit at a project we both happened to be working on. 

When I heard he was from Cimarron area, I asked if he happened to know any of my relation; and I think that question is sort of what got it started between us. 

Come to find out, his dad had died quite unexpectedly.  It was a shock to the community, and unfathomable to the family.  He told me then, and again now 12 years later, that my grandmother had been so kind to them during that time, bringing them food and staying for two days and nights with his mother right after the death.  And as far as I know, my grandmother was a stranger to the family, though I’m quite sure she didn’t remain a stranger.

All this was long before my time, but it felt like my grandmother’s kindness from way back then sort of binds us together, all these years later.

There were/are three things, no four, that I was immediately attracted to in Daniel.  And I hope that in some small measure I have been able to impress, at least the first three, into my boys.

Dan is particular, courteous, fair, and has a corny sense of humor.

Through the years, we’ve ranged on many different topics.  I’ve stopped by his shop and he has taken me to his hobby trailer where his restored car is.  We’ve talked about the President.  We’ve talked about his hired help.  We’ve talked about the church he goes to and the church I go to.

But it was a conversational question I asked, rather on the spur of the moment ten years ago, that has evoked the most thought and same question, when I asked it just three months ago of him, that got the same answers.

Dan has been married three times.  His first wife divorced him.  His second wife died a terrible death from cancer, and I would agree with Dan that God probably brought him into her life to help her through that time.  He and his third wife live happily together, as long as she gets to drive his high- powered sports car once in a while.

“So Dan,” I said, while taking a break with him on the sunny side of our house one cold winter day, “you’ve been married three times.  Got any words of wisdom for me?”

“Yes I do,” was his immediate answer.  “There are three things you need to know that will keep your marriage intact.  You always say them in this order—”

“Yes, dear.”

“You’re right , dear.”

“I’ll do it right away dear.”

Very few of you know who my friend Dan is.  Doesn’t matter though.  I’ve been practicing his words of wisdom now for ten years, and it seems to be working, in a sort of, tongue in cheek way.

And I venture to say, (very respectfully, of course) if the other side of the house practices those same words of wisdom, we tend to get along famously. 

You know how it is for some folks when they get up in front of church to have a special number or something and they make a few nonsensical remarks before they get started?  I’m pretty sure they do that to ease their nerves and brace themselves up for what comes next.  Sort of lighten things up for themselves, maybe.

More than the words themselves, my friend Dan gave my wife and I, and maybe you too, a nice little way to ease the situation up a bit when things are a little tense by smiling and saying,

“Yes dear”

“You are right dear”

“I’ll do it right away dear”

(And we don’t always say them in that order either)

Golden Moment

Probably 15 or 20 years ago, I read a bit of a story that treated on this subject.

And since then, more or less consciously and sometimes subconsciously, I’ve done like that little boy did.

The little boy was settling in for night and his dad asked him, as he tucked him in, what his golden moment of that day was.  If I remember right, it had something to do with a sand eel.

Now I know some of you are thinking I’m going down the line of thankful therapy.  That definitely has its place.  But selecting your golden moment takes a bit longer and gets a fair bit more personal.  You can rattle off ten things you are thankful for in sort of a mad huff, if that’s how you are feeling right then, and be done with it.  You might have even picked several thankful things that really didn’t mean a lot to you, just to get it over with.

Some days, because of all that we scrape through, we might struggle to find a golden moment. 

But, if we are really honest, even on bad days there is usually at least one golden moment.

And that’s what makes it worth doing, for me.  Because then I have to go through and decide, really, really, what my golden moment was.

What actually meant the most to me, in the day I just came through, the trip I just took, or the hour I just lived?

The process the other day was decidedly difficult.

And I suppose by the time I tell you what my golden moment was, you will call me presumptuous.

Go ahead.  Because I know what I know.

The uncured bacon, sprinkled with freshly ground black pepper, fried up and paired with a couple of donuts was a real humdinger of a deal.  I didn’t need lunch at all after that breakfast, which may or may not indicate how much of that bacon I ate.

When Sir Bozar the Bull yielded all of his 1,400 pounds to me and let me scratch his ears, slap his huge neck, and gently pat him all around his eyes and tousle his forelock made for another moment.

Seeing 80 head of black calves splattered out across hock deep triticale for the first time came pretty close to topping the list.  Like my friend Glen and I say, it’s visual therapy.  (Seeing 15 head bust through the fence in total disregard to me and the fence, wasn’t so cheesy, but they came back soon enough.)

Stepping out of my car at the disc golf course and having Bryce hand me a cold Dew could have sealed this up, right then and there, but there was more day left.

Tossing what was my longest throw and watching it float on in total abandonment to care and worry left a nice impression.

Eating blackened Florida catfish, paired with grits and slaw, then finished off with pie needs to be reserved for a whole ‘nother post in itself.

Watching my faithful ole Boola get up and walk on an obviously smashed foot after getting stepped on the day before by a 6-weight calf was cause for great rejoicing.  I was afraid this one might take him out, with his age and all.

It was the 30 something year old dad with his kids in the park that made gold.

They had these big frisbee’s that his children, the oldest of which might have been in fourth grade, were trying to throw.

And they were trying, so kindly, to get out of our way so we could play.  We waited some on them, and at one of our throws I heard the dad say, “Let’s stand here and watch how they throw.”

Luckily, both Bryce and I had decent throws right there.  I tossed one of my discs to the fourth grader and said, “Try that for a throw.”

He did and was massively impressed with how easy it threw compared to what he had been throwing.  He trailed us at a respectful distance, watching all along, until we turned to work our way back to the 9^th hole.  Then the dad told his family it was time to go home. 

I tossed my putter to the fourth grader and said, “Take that home with you.” 

His incredulous look still puts a bit of a lump in my throat right now.  And his little 2-year-old sister’s sweet, “Me present, me present?” capped it off perfectly.  

Brainer

She was obviously a brainer.

I could see it from 300 feet away as easily as I could at 30.

She was down in the northwest corner of pen 3, laying on her left side.

Her head was cranked back at an awful, unnatural angle over her right shoulder and her eyes were rolled way up and was twitching and jerking spasmodically. 

I came near to her and tried to ease her head back around, even though I knew it was of no use. 

And it wasn’t.  Trying to twist her head back to where it should be was like trying to move the wall of our house I’m sitting beside right now with my bare hands.

She hollered when I tried to move it.  I wondered if from pain or agony of mind.

Brainers are caused from two things that I know of.  Both are feed related; one from a type of grass, the other from an unbalanced ration that has too much distiller’s grain in it.  Her problem was the latter.  In each scenario, the chemicals in a calf’s brain are altered to the point that they lose normal function, and it often involves balance. 

This was the case with her.  Her head twisted off to the side like that, even when laying down, was evidence that her mind was telling her that her body was in a different place than it actually was. 

In ten years, I think we’ve had 5 brainers.  I’ve managed to save one out of those five, and I knew the statistics weren’t in my favor as I walked back to the shed to get a heavy dose of Thiamine ready to inject.  At that point, I wasn’t aware of just which statistics weren’t in my favor. 

I was acutely conscious of several other things as I walked back to get the meds for her.  High on the list was the fact that I had dropped my eldest son off at the airport the day before and that he was going to be gone for 6 months.  I didn’t like that idea at all, but I wholeheartedly supported him in the volunteer service he was going to give.  Second on the list was how cold it must have gotten overnight; the manure patties were frozen completely solid, and I kept tripping over them because of that.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in dealing with cattle, it’s take the opportunity they give you, even if it means a split second decision.  More than likely they won’t give you the same opportunity again and the next one might not be as good as the one just given.

When I got back to my sick girl, she was up on some very unsteady feet and aimlessly moving in the general direction of some panels that were situated nearby in a ‘v’ shape.  I had been planning on working her up to the squeeze chute, but this opportunity looked better for her; she was so unstable I wasn’t sure I’d even get her as far as the chute.  So, I eased up against her and got her facing into the narrow part of those panels.

She was so weak; she could hardly stay upright.  I leaned up against her left hindquarter, just in front of her back leg and wedged her forward and against the opposite panel.  I got my syringe ready and quickly injected the meds. 

Part of them, anyway.

She screamed like it hurt something terrible, and the next thing I became conscious of, was that my right leg had experienced some extreme power exerted upon it, and I caught a glimpse of my knee splayed outwards to the right at a neat 45 degree angle.  The bend would have looked normal if it had been front to back; sideways like that came through dimly to me that something must have happened.

I say dimly, because it seemed like for a bit there my mind operated in very slow motion, and even though it was only 3 degrees Fahrenheit, I was sweating profusely for some reason. 

And it seemed that, as I tried to walk towards the nearby panel, my right leg wouldn’t cooperate at all.  Seemed sort of floppy.

It’s easy to see now what happened then.  As I leaned up against her, one of those frozen clumps locked my right foot on the outside of it from moving at all, which was good to brace against for the injection I needed to give.  But the poor girl was so distressed and evidently in so much pain that she reacted by getting her left hind leg just inside my right leg and her consequent kick backwards did the deed that splayed my knee out sideways.

I called my good wife from my hunched over position against the panel.  The calf wasn’t an issue anymore; she had given out and laying on the ground.  She came out there in the car and got me through the main fence, somehow or another, and into the car. 

I had her stop by the conduit rack, and I cut a piece of ¾ inch steel conduit down to size and took the bender to it, making a makeshift cane for myself and the time being, because something still didn’t feel right in my knee, even though it didn’t hurt nearly so badly anymore.

She, my good wife, thought we needed to get right in to see the Doctor.  Me, not so much.  I’d tough this one out, I told her.  It would just end up being a strained something or other and be fine in a day or two.

She prevailed, like a good woman ought to, and we were soon on our way to the Doctor.  Halfway there, I told her it was feeling so much better and had her stop so I could show I was fine and could walk normally. 

Except I couldn’t walk on that stupid leg.  It wouldn’t cooperate.

The Doctor took my limp little leg in his strong arms and did a few cursory assessments.  His brow was still furrowed as he was trying to decide what the problem was when he stopped, dead still, and said, “Whoa.”

Next, he called the nurse over and said, “I want you to feel this.”  He had her take my leg in her arms and do just as he had.  She said quite a bit more than ‘Whoa’ and it wasn’t very respectful to the One I normally pray to.

He asked her, “Did you feel how you could have kept on going right around his whole neck with his leg?”

Anyways, the MRI came back with a severed ACL and a torn MCL, among other things, and surgery was scheduled.

If you see me limp a bit or notice I don’t really run anymore, you might understand now that it all traces back to a brainer calf.

And if you see me taking an interest in anyone wearing a knee brace, you can bet that I know what they feel like, after having worn one for more than 8 weeks. 

I must say, though, I got pretty fast on the crutches.  Especially after I modified them to my liking.

Spotted King Snakes/Small Town Weatherman

I was on a parts run to Liberal the other day, and stopped in at Stanion to pick up some things on my list.  A rather young, but quite friendly dude whom I hadn’t seen in there before met me at the counter and asked what I needed. 

My first impression had me curious how we were going to communicate.  He had a chew in his lower left cheek and on around into his bottom lip that looked like it might have filled a Solo cup at least half full if he had spat it all out.  Coupled together with the pinched brim of his baseball cap, neck length hair, a 2 inch beard and glasses pushed tight up against the bridge of his nose, he made an appearance.  But like I say, he was friendly, which I could sense even before we started speaking to each other.  He must have had a part time career in disappearing acts; the chew was as mysteriously gone as it was large before once we started visiting.

He said he was from Oklahoma.  We talked weather for a bit, commenting on how dry everything was getting, and I mentioned the bad rattlesnake problem we have had this year.  He really came alive when we started talking snakes. 

He told me he was a snake hunter; he caught and delivered snakes, rattlers of course, to the snake round up festival some 60 miles east of where he lived.  I mentioned that snakes must not bother him much.

“Oh no,” he said, “I’d way rather sit down beside a snake than a spider any day.”

I squinted hard at his back as he led the way to get my parts.  Rather sit down by a snake than a spider, I mused.  Sort of went along with his appearance.   But he may have had a point.  One of my children told me later that more people are admitted for serious hospital stays stemming from spider bites than from snake bites.

I asked him how many times he had been bit. 

“Twice.  Once on my fingers of my left hand.  Went in and got them fixed up.  Just fight a little arthritis in them when it gets cold.  Other time was in my leg.  Thought I’d try to tough that one out without going in; it’s still givin’ me problems.”

I was about ready to leave when he got started on king snakes.  He said they kill rattlers.  I listened close, because we’ve killed seven rattlers already this year and they’ve all been nearby home.  He said king snakes kill by constriction, not by biting or poison.  Said he threw a king snake in with a 6-foot rattler and the rattler was squirming every which way trying to get out of the bucket they both were in.  Claimed he could have reached his hand right in there and never been bit, it was so alarmed. 

He told me he had a king snake there and I asked to see it.  And true enough, inside a kitty litter bucket I saw a completely black snake with yellow speckles mottled all over it.  If there’s any truth to what he says, I would venture to say someone could turn some handy cash by becoming a king snake dealer in these parts.   

The last thing he told me was that he had seen a mouse kill a rattler.

*****

I must have written the above last year sometime; but rereading it made me think of snakes and how dry it is here again.

I’ve been watching for snakes on the road.

And watching the sunsets.

And the pheasants.

Easter is coming up; I’ll be watching that weekend.

If we get any fogs, I’ll be counting days after them.

And, I’ll be listening for the first cicada. 

Now I’m definitely not a weather geek.  Or who knows what name my sis will try to attach to me about all this. 

If you spread a weather map in front of me, I couldn’t tell you what high and low pressure lines are.  Neither would I know how to interpret any other of the interesting looking symbols.

But I do have a fascination with weather predictions that nature itself gives.

And it all started years ago at the gas pumps here in our local town. 

I was gassing up and an old timer, named Curly, was on the other side the pumps.

I told him I had seen a snake on the road and thought maybe we’d soon be getting some rain. 

Curly’s gone now, but I wish I would have picked his lore of wisdom a few more times. 

He leaned in close and asked, “Which way was the snake headed?”

I said I didn’t have a clue.

He said, “Take note, it’ll tell you if your gonna get rain or not.  If they are headin’ west, they’re movin’ to higher ground and we’ll get rain.  If they are headin’ east, they aint concerned about the weather and we’re in for a dry spell.”

I almost snorted out load at what I thought was the height of ludicrousness.

I wanted to guffaw and say, “What about when they go north or south?”  But, it turns out, after a good 20 years, he has been right, 98% of the time.  The north and south snakes don’t count.

If I see the sun heading down behind a cloud on Wednesday, I take note to watch it all the way down, if I have time, that is.  Because if it makes it all the way down behind that cloud, we WILL have rain by Sunday.  If it peeks out at the last minute, like so often happens here in Kansas, forget it.  No rain.

It’s a rarity to see a pheasant roosting in a tree, they don’t do that.  But if you ever do, look for rain.

And like I said, I’ll be taking especial note this Easter weekend, just like I have other Easter weekends.  Because if we get rain on that weekend, as sure as taxes, we’ll have rain for seven weekends afterwards.

Okay, okay.  You’re getting weary of this aren’t you.

Fogs are interesting here in Kansas.  Seems like we don’t get them a lot, but then we don’t get a lot of rain either.  Both are tied to each other, with 90 days in between. 

They are tied to each other the same way the cicada and our first frost are.  Except it’s 100 days, give or take a couple, for the cicada and frost. 

Okay.  I’m done.  Except calves are sure interesting to watch before a storm.

And I’d be interested in what weather signs you go by in your locale. 

Leave Some Joy

I like my friend Loren.  Quite a lot actually.  I suppose if I call him a friend, I should like him.  He’s one of those folks who bring with them their own type of joy, spread it around while they stay with you, and then leave a little behind. 

You know what I’m talking about?  It’s like after they leave, their joy lingers on.

I haven’t known Loren for as many years as I’ve known some of you, but I’ve decided years don’t necessarily spell what friendship can or will be. 

Sometimes it’s more about what you share in common with the folks you call friends than the length of time spent together.

Some years ago, the thing was all about hostess gifts.  Maybe it still is, I don’t know.  But if you stayed at someone’s house, say overnight, or even as short as 6 hours, you needed to bring along a hostess gift.  These gifts ranged from lotions to lotions, I think.  Maybe a nice little cup or scarf came our way once or twice.  And as far as I know, I never got any hostess gifts; it seemed to be more of a female thing.

But Loren, on the other hand, is not shy concerning hostess gifts.

I suppose since we are talking men here, it would be good to switch over to calling it a host gift instead of a hostess.  I think what makes a stayover with Loren so enjoyable, is that you never know what his host gift is going to be.  That’s probably part of the pique of our friendship.  I’ve tried to return the favor, when I stay at his place, but I suspicion my efforts at leaving some joy, have fallen far short compared to his.

He told me once, that when he went on a trip years ago, which was obviously long before digital G.P.S. days, his route could easily have been traced just by the host gifts he left behind.

One place got a partially used bottle of shampoo, another probably got a tee shirt, clean or worn that day, we don’t know, and maybe another got a belt, etc., etc. 

He is truly generous and impartial in his giving. 

So, it was one day, that Loren was getting ready to depart from my place after a brief stay.  He and his wife stood by the front door, ready to load into the silver Malibu they had traveled out on.  We chit-chatted about having a safe trip and that we would miss them.  I paused in my thinking, then decided maybe a breach in protocol would be okay this time.

I mentioned to him the trip he had made years ago and wondered if, just perhaps, he had inadvertently left a host gift somewhere around our house.  He was quick to reply that both he and his wife had given special attention to that detail this time and they were sure they had retrieved anything that could possibly be conjectured later as a host gift.

It was some 20-30 minutes after they left that my phone rang.  My friend seemed to have a bit different inflection to his normally pleasant voice.  It almost seemed a bit more serious, per se.  In his call, he wondered if I could run downstairs to the bedroom they had used to check the headboard storage for his wallet.  I figured since I had harassed him on this subject earlier, he was getting his last laugh. 

But not so. 

He definitely wanted me to go check for his wallet. 

I found it much where he said I would and jumped in my truck to meet him halfway on his journey back to my place.  His comment upon meeting?

“I had a comment saved up to tell you when we met, but I must have left it somewhere along the way.”

The final chuckle to that deal was when I got home and saw his notebook lying on my desk.  He refrained my offer to run this out to him, saying he would pick it up at another meeting.

*****

I suppose in all fairness, Loren would like to tell you of a host gift I left for him once, but since he isn’t here to do so, I can relate it very briefly. 

It seems that once, after we left their place, having been treated so kindly and graciously by them, I had the audacity to leave a pair of my undershorts, to be discovered sometime later, as my host gift to them. 

Leave some joy.

Foodie #2

Okay.  I suspect if the sister of mine still reads these things, she would rise up in accusation with the above title, should I have not titled it that. 

At times I feel her presence very distinctly.

But let’s just say we scored the other evening with our supper.  (Or dinner, depending which generation you sprang from.)

I don’t read the news regularly.  I scan the headlines about every day, and if one of two of them look interesting, I’ll read what they have. 

There is a documentary that I have looked at occasionally. 

It’s a food documentary. 

Okay. Okay. OKAY.  Someone needs to read those things.

Anyway, the fellow they used did just that.  He traveled the world, sampled any and every kind of food placed in front of him, and almost always said, “Mmm, that’s good.”

Some of the stuff I’ve seen him eating couldn’t have been good.  I got sick looking at it.

So when I read a deal of his, promoting what he said, “Could possibly be the most delicious thing,” I bookmarked it.

I was pushing the very heavy grocery cart for my wife, trundling down the aisles of food, when I got the hunch that we needed to do this.

But I ran into problems immediately.

Who sells, or where can you find, Chinese rice wine?

Or, pray tell, what is black vinegar?

The soy sauce, sesame oil, and garlic were easily found.

And the boneless pork chops were quite available.

It was after we had left the store that I realized I hadn’t found Panko breadcrumbs, but my good wife thought the store in Montezuma might have them. 

We found some substitutes for the Chinese rice wine and black vinegar, but the final item looked to be a little harder to find.

Five spice powder.

Now I know some of you reading this probably have it on your shelf already, or if not, it’s just a hop and a skip away, due to higher population rates in your area and more diversified population at that.

I Googled Asian grocery stores with very little faith anything would show in Dodge City.  I knew of a couple in Garden City and figured this meal would have to wait until I could get myself over there. 

But surprisingly, one showed, on a street I hadn’t rolled down yet in my 30 plus years of driving that town. 

And I could see why I hadn’t driven down it yet as I started to. 

When I got to what Google proclaimed as Asian grocery, I found myself in front of an old mechanic shop, converted into grocery store.  Red spray paint had been slathered and misted, alternately over the garage door and front part of the building.  Iron bars were securely fastened to the windows and door.  (a bit of a rarity in these parts)

I stepped inside and was nearly pushed back out by the sound concussions of heavy disco music coming from somewhere midsection of the store. 

And just that quick, I was home, back in a little store in India.  The only thing it lacked was incense burning here and there.

I dabbled for quite some time in there, looking at their wares, and almost doing several impulse buys.  Eventually, I found the five-spice powder, and made my way to the cramped, little checkout counter where a young man could hardly make eye contact with me.  But I stayed just a bit after the sale, and his eyes met mine in a friendly glance before I left.  I want to go back to that store soon. 

We stopped in at the store in Montezuma, and sure enough, they had my breadcrumbs.

At this point, I was traveling blind on this meal.  The only thing I was hoping to prove, was whether it was ‘the most delicious thing ever.’

When it comes to working in the kitchen, I don’t do so well.  It generally takes me twice as long as the recipe says to get something done; I can’t get the hang of peeling an onion or a garlic clove, so my good wife was there alongside me, like she promised a while ago now, with helping hands.  If her heart wasn’t in it, she didn’t let it show.

I got the marinade made and the meat pounded, and both put together in a plastic bag and left it set for a couple of hours.

When I came back, the meat had definitely changed color, and had a rather good smell, if not entirely familiar. 

We, (again I needed help) coated the meat with flour first, then egg, then breadcrumbs and fried it.  I cut some of that good homemade loaf bread into slices, toasted and buttered it when it came out. 

It mated nicely with the fried meat, and we sat down to our meal.

And you know what?  It may just have been the most delicious thing ever. 

I suspicion that the big skillet the family gave me for my birthday a while back may house quite a number of those meats in the future, on some nice spring evening when folks tend to get together.

Wanna come over?

Macau-style pork chop sandwich

Makes 4 servings

Ingredients

4 boneless pork rib chops or cutlets (about 6 ounces each)

¼ cup soy sauce

¼ cup Chinese rice wine

¼ cup black vinegar

1 tablespoon sesame oil

4 cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped

1 tablespoon five-spice powder

1 tablespoon dark brown sugar, packed

1 large egg

½ cup all-purpose flour

1½ cups panko bread crumbs

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

2 cups peanut oil, for frying, plus more as needed

8 slices white sandwich bread

Chili paste, for garnish

Special equipment

Meat mallet or heavy-duty rolling pin

Sheet pan or platter lined with newspaper

Instructions

1. Pound the pork to ¼-inch thickness, using the meat mallet. If using a rolling pin, be sure to wrap the meat in plastic before whacking it (and consider getting yourself a meat mallet).

2. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the soy sauce, rice wine, vinegar, sesame oil, garlic, five-spice powder and sugar. Place the pork in a zip-seal plastic bag or nonreactive container and pour the marinade mixture over, turning the chops to ensure they are evenly coated with liquid. Seal the bag and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to 12 hours.

3. Remove the chops from the marinade and brush off the garlic. Beat the egg in a shallow bowl. In a second shallow bowl, place the flour, and in a third shallow bowl, place the bread crumbs. Season the flour with salt and pepper. You may need to add a tablespoon of water to the beaten egg to loosen its texture so that it adheres evenly to the meat.

4. To a large, heavy-bottom frying pan, add the peanut oil and heat over medium-high. While the oil heats, dredge the chops in the flour, batting off any extra, then in the egg, then in the bread crumbs.

5. Test the oil with a pinch of bread crumbs. If they immediately sizzle, carefully slide the chops into the hot oil, working in batches if necessary to avoid overcrowding the pan and bringing down the temperature of the oil. Cook until golden brown, about 5 minutes per side. Remove the cooked chops from the oil and let drain on the lined sheet pan. Season lightly with salt.

6. Toast the bread until golden brown. Assemble the sandwiches and serve with the chili paste alongside.

Tube Socks

It might be a little bit early to go camping.

But it’s never too early to contemplate it.

Everyone should go camping at least twice, and, if after that, you become a fan, go as many times as you wish.

I am not such a huge camping addict; I used to enjoy it, but by now I much prefer a soft bed and a full night’s sleep.

I do have some powerful memories though, of times spent out in the wild, where everything degenerated into hysterical laughter, good times, and a few stomach aches.  The last not necessarily from laughing.

For starters, take plenty of starter fluid.

Especially if you plan on doing anything on a grill in Colorado.

A few of us guys were checking the slopes out.  We had purchased T-Bone steaks down in the foothills, and had the awesome idea to run up to, say, 10,000 feet and grill them while surveying life down below.

Unfortunately, our charcoal was resistant to producing heat.  We thought maybe it had gotten wet, but as a few years have passed by and experience has become more of my friend, I venture it was the elevation that gave us the stress.

But not to worry.  We had plenty of lighter fluid along, and one of the guys kept a steady stream of it feeding the feeble flames. 

We had flame kissed, lighter kissed, and finally, river kissed steaks that night. 

Because in the process of turning one, it flipped off to the ground; not a problem, said the guy with the lighter fluid.  He let up a bit on flame throwing, grabbed the lukewarm steak and marched off to the nearby river to swish it a few times through that frigid water and tossed it back on the grill, whereupon he reheated it with lighter fluid fumes.

*****

We live in an area where the nearest body of water is an hour’s drive.  We call them lakes, but upon doing a little traveling, I have since shied away from that term and now refer to them as mud puddles.

Most of them are manmade, and the fish laugh at us when we cast in our juicy fat worms for them.  They are so overfed because the ratio of people to fish is probably 9:1, and any attempt to catch one is much like trying to serve me cooked carrots after I have just finished a full course meal.  “I’ll pass,” I say, and so do they.

One sunny afternoon, when I was about 16, three of us guys rounded up the general necessities to go camping.  Ham steak, potatoes, water, eggs, bacon, and candy bars rounded out the meal side of things.

Borrowed canoe, tent, sleeping bags, mud boots, fishing poles, paddles, and firewood rounded out the rest of it.

The trusty ’74 Ford we often used as a conveyance launched us on our way with its 4-barrel Holley carb, headers, and short glasspacks. 

All went well for a while, until the lid on the Styrofoam icebox we had our food in set sail and left.  We skidded to a halt and retrieved it, but it soon left again.  We solved the problem by partially crushing the whole affair when we covered it with firewood to prevent it’s leaving again.

Lakeside and we soon had the tent up.  We cruised up and down the lake (about a mile in distance one way) several times and one guy did his best to snare a fish or two, before retiring for the evening.

A good-sized fire was built, and the ham steaks turned out perfect, even if the potatoes didn’t.

We sat around the fire and started swapping stories; our clothes were rather sodden from the wild canoeing, so we got started drying them out.

My socks were especially wet, and I was having a very difficult time of it with them.  I kept burning my hands when I tried to dry them over the fire.

Someone suggested I get a stick and hold them over the fire.

“But they’ll burn,” I said.

“No,” they said, “Not as long as they are wet, you can actually hold them right in the fire and they won’t burn.”

I took them at their word, and soon my socks were toasty warm and dry.

We were getting ready to turn in, and I thought I’d just pull those warm dry socks on, as the night was getting a bit chilly.

I pulled the first one on, but it didn’t stop when I got to the toes of it.  I was so intrigued, I pulled it easily up to my thighs. 

I had just discovered the true tube sock.

The other one was in the same shape.

Where the toe area had been was an open, black edged hole the width of the sock.

I spent the rest of my time there with the leading edges of them tucked under my toes and said toes curled tightly upon them to hold them in place.

The next morning, we found a creek that meandered back from the lake and decided to canoe it.  In places it was 2-3 inches deep and the poor guy who brought his muck boots was put to work dredging us along. 

We had no sooner cleared that area, than we hit good water and started paddling.  But something went wrong about then, and the canoe was divested of its human cargo in a most unseemly manner. 

I hit the water feet first, but my friend Gregg hit it flat.  He fully submerged, and when he surfaced, he bug-eyedly declared, “This water is deep!” and started stroking madly for shore.  I, on the other hand, stood nimbly in four feet of water, but I squatted down to chin level and thrashed a bit just to make him believe it was deep.

We slogged back to camp and stripped down to the bare essentials, or maybe even a bit less than.  We laid our clothes out on the truck hood and propped the legs open with twigs so the wind could blow through, and they could dry quicker. 

Two of us did.  The guy with the muck boots opted out of this and went for a hike to dry out.

He missed out.

Because the two of us, now liberated from the bulk of our clothes, started in on the Sun dance.  It was really going well, and we had almost lost ourselves in the beat and tempo of it all, when we noticed a school bus coming down the road towards our campsite. 

Self-preservation kicked in and we kited in level towards the tent.  We omphed in on our bellies and, looking out saw a new crisis had developed. 

The bus had stopped opposite our tent, and we saw, to our horror, it was filled with the female detail of a near junior high school. 

We hurriedly unstrapped the window covers and tied them in place.  With a final zip of the tent door, we were safe . . . until we realized that if they decided to stay, we were trapped, unless we decided to make streak for it.

Our friend, with his muck boots still on, viewed all events from afar and chuckled with glee.

The bus driver must have sensed our dilemma and in common decency to humanity pulled his crowing, screaming, pointing, giggling females away, much to our relief.

*****

It had rained between us and home during the night, but we weren’t aware of it as we sped homeward over a little traveled cowpath of a road.

Until we crested a hill, doing a sweet 70, and saw at it base a large pool of water.  We couldn’t go left or right, so with brakes locked we skidded across it. 

Since the truck we were traveling in didn’t have A/C, we had all the windows down and the wing windows open. 

Torrents of water gushed in and filled my friend Gregg’s lap right up. 

We like to wet ourselves laughing at him, especially when he realized, just then, that he had brought another change of clothes along and had completely forgotten about them the whole time. 

We didn’t let him change though.

Botox Smiles

(A mediocre collage of insights; not meant to demean any location or gender)

Come along about Thursday of last week, the premonition that had been lurking in my mind for the last several days became a full-blown realization.

I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

Sure, all the health foods available, and the fact that now I was walking and talking with folks who lived in a place where, as most product labels say, can cause cancer in the state of —- had something to do with that premonition.

And sure, the heavy music beat, anywhere and everywhere, had some to do with it also.

But it wasn’t until I was relaxing in a nice little coffee shop, right on the beach, that I started putting all the scattered pieces of what my subconscious had been saying, together.

It was her smile that did it.

She was seated across from a nicer looking young man who wore his cap like I wear them, bill sort of squenched down at the edges.  (he also wore it pulled low over his eyes, which, after listening in for a bit explained itself.)

She: “So do you like, always drink coffee?”

He: (murmured) “Yeah, I like the Americano’s best.”

She: “Does it like, do anything for you?  Because, I, like, used to drink coffee a lot and then I was like, what is this, like, really doing for me.  And I was like, it’s not really doing anything for me, so I’ll quit.”

(murmured comment from him)

She” “So do you have a cutoff time for, like, your coffee?”

He: “No, I can drink it whenever I want.”

She: “See I was like, I can’t drink this stuff any past 7 in the evening, so I’m like, if I can’t drink after seven, why drink it at all?”

(murmured comment)

She: “So have you, like, lived in Cauleefornya all your life?”

(murmured assent)

She: Yeah, I lived in Dallas for 3 years, and I was like, you know, I really like it here.  But it wasn’t until I moved away that I realized how, like, totally landlocked that place is.  I’m like, if I had realized that sooner, I’m sure I would have moved back here sooner.

(murmured assent)

She: “So can coffee actually be good for you?  I mean like, if it doesn’t do anything for you, can it be healthy?”

(murmured thoughts on benefits of coffee.)

*****

I had noticed her smile some, but not a lot, since she really wasn’t happy, even though she was super healthy and all. 

But I had taken note that it was a Botox smile. 

And that made me sad.

Because, have you ever noticed that Botox smiles aren’t happy smiles?  In fact, if you visually cut off the person’s face that is smiling in the middle and look only at their eyes when they smile, it looks like they are ready to cry.

There is no personality in a Botox smile.

And, a decided risk factor can be added to the already risky venture of guessing a woman’s age when they flash their Botox smile. 

You can’t do it by looking at their face.

But I’ll give you a hint.  Look at their hands.  They never Botox them and a person can usually get within 5 years by looking at their hands. 

I’ve risked it enough as a little experiment to know.

I paused and thought long on this; Here I was, in a State where extreme emphasis was put on health, beauty, and youth.  In a sense, you could say they have achieved their goal. 

But their inside health has deteriorated drastically.

And that thought directed me back to something I had written sometime back . . .

*****

I was walking a mall the other day and happened upon a shop named Forever Flawless.  I didn’t step inside, I figured they would take one glance at me and make that shuffle store owners make when they wish to become invisible.  Because I’m not flawless.  And to do a remake to get me there would cost more than I care to spend; I also suspicion the remake would be imperfect when it was all said and done anyway.

But it sure got me to thinking.  My mind went back to a book I had been reading where a certain thought was promoted.  The book said with the approach they recommended, “That we would be one step closer to making ourselves into that designer human being, by modifications to our gene pool, that we all wished to be.”

So let’s follow this through a little way and say we can attain a flawless human body. 

I see certain evidence around that progress is being made to that end.

You can, for a sum, have a surgery done to get hair implants and have a full head of hair. 

There are all types of skin lifts, fat reduction, eye lifts, etc. available. 

Your teeth can have that pearly white look given back to them. 

If you are willing, you can hire a professional eyebrow artist, who, with a string caught between their teeth and two hands will make quick lunges towards your face whilst plucking out unwanted eyebrow hair to give the perfect outline of your choice. 

If you think your lips are the wrong shape, that can be fixed also.  Although I recently saw one that hadn’t quite taken as it should have.  Her upper lip had three definite sections to it and the incision lines were quite discernable. 

Your toes can be straightened; your skin glow can be enhanced, on and anon. 

And finally, after all these fixes to the tired, jaded body some think we have, are made, we’ll have the perfect, flawless forever. 

I see some problems with the forever flawless approach. 

To me, the problems outweigh the benefits by far, but maybe I don’t see it correctly.

What happens to the inside problems?  Do they get fixed somehow in this flawless approach? 

Allow me to explain.

What would have happened, that evening some years ago, when, after a get together with friends, someone called me and said, “I noticed you were looking a little down.  Want to talk?”  If I had my wrinkles all frozen out earlier, those same wrinkles couldn’t have told my friend what I wasn’t saying out loud.  

What if my weight had been scientifically measured and kept in balance all these years?  Would my wife and daughter nudge that pudge I have in my midsection in the friendly way they do now?

Would I spend more time with my personal body trainer than my family?

If every surface of my body were toned to perfection, would I ever be vulnerable?  Could someone tell by my body language, how I was feeling?  Or would I have a sculpted stance ingrained to hold to at all times?

If all joints and bones were aligned perfectly, I would never need any help.  And as I got older, I still wouldn’t need any help because it would have become a habit.

In the end, being forever flawless will rob us of the greatest joy in life.

We won’t need help and we won’t be able to help others.