Oyster Boy

Youth doesn’t all mean you have fun. In fact it can be the exact opposite. Just as a follow up to the oyster story I had to post this image. It is of Ms. Effie, Uncle Bill and me. It appears to be my father’s shoulder moving out of the image. Go ahead, have a good laugh, everyone else did. For full effect click on the picture once or twice.

The Thing About Eggs

Why I hate fried eggs-Part 1

Previously recounted on this blog were the details of my forebears. I was the child of southern parents. The South in my parents was noticeable in the way they carried themselves, the way they addressed the world and in the way they ate. My folks believed in hearty meals. Fried chicken was big on the list of delicacies. Fried potatoes were big too. Fried tomatoes sliced thick and fully floured up were pretty darn good. But these were evening meals. In my house even breakfast was fried.

Where scrapple came from I really don’t want to know. Scrapple was a breakfast staple at our house. Scrapple is the part of the pig not good enough to be part of sausage or Spam. Compressed into a green/grey rectangle scrapple is served as a breakfast meat. In my house scrapple was sliced off the brick it was packaged as, and then dropped into a pan with hot sizzling grease. Cooked until a hard crispy crust formed around the edges, it would be set before you. Scrapple for people with experience with Greek food is Saganaki substituting gray meat pieces parts for the cheese, no flames (usually) and nobody screaming Opa! But I digress (and now I am really worried about my arteries).

On days when the” it came from beyond” dish scrapple wasn’t on the morning menu there were bacon and eggs. Bacon is bad for you. Still consider the smell of bacon. I have heard it said that the aroma of cooking bacon alone has stopped many a person from becoming a vegetarian. One singer put it this way, when I see a pig and I remember the smell and taste of bacon I could just rip the hind leg off that porker myself. As for me, I was okay with the bacon part of the morning equation.

(As a side note on the bacon thing Sam’s sells maple cured bacon in their normal bulk packaging. I cooked some of it up once. Five days after cooking that stuff my house still smelled like I should be living in Moose Jaw, Manitoba. The maple smell was so strong there were guys in toques asking in French if they could watch Hockey Night in Canada at my house because the Habs were on. It is darn good stuff but you had better like the small of maple smoke ‘cause it sticks with you, and your house and your clothes for days at a time.)

Anyway back to the main story, my mother would invariably cook the bacon first. Why you ask? Well, so she would have the grease to cook the eggs in. Now mind you I like eggs today. I have eaten eggs benedict, eggs lorraine and eggs princess; every one of them a treat. I make egg white omelets with fresh yellow tomatoes (so sweet) and mild goat cheese. In a pan wiped with just a little olive oil this omlet browns wonderfully and a sprig of basil tops it off. Hell, if I am in that Scotch Pub in London, Ontario I will even eat scotch eggs with my toque wearing friends as we watch the hockey game and scream Go Habs Go.

I did not, nor will I ever, like to eat eggs cooked in bacon grease over easy for a time period that was just way too long. Really these things my Mom made were like thick organic versions of those little rubber squares you use to open tomato sauce jars with. (I know most of you use a butter knife to break the vacuum -but I can’t think of anything else except maybe a replacement universal bath tub drain plug that would have the same texture and consistency as those damn eggs). A pair staring up at you they weren’t; they were chewy, they were greasy, they were gross. And every morning that I didn’t get scrapple I got those damn eggs. Hell, it is a wonder I am willing to eat food at all. Hell, even the dog wouldn’t eat ‘em, damn useless Scotty dog.

One day when I was in about seventh or eight grade I figured something out. An awareness crept over me that when Mom made sure the eggs were on my plate she would leave the room. Mom had to prepare to go off and teach school. Alone with those nasty things sitting there before me my mind was free to wander. Wander it did. Straight out to the bush that was right outside the kitchen window did my cogitating go. A bushy bush it was with lots of foliage.

Several days after hatching my plan I acted. Mom had left the room and I got up. Still wearing my pajamas I every so quietly made my way to the kitchen door. Looking about and making sure no one was watching I made my way down the concrete steps. I scurried. Five feet from the house, just across from the water spigot but not as far as the pussy willow or the maple tree was the plant that was my goal. With a quick lifting of the limber braches of that ornamental shrub I threw the plates of eggs down and out of sight. When the limbs were loosed from my hands no errant food could be seen. Understand there was no bacon left on the plate. I ate the bacon. I always ate the bacon. It was just the eggs that had to go.

Back in my seat with a clean plate I waited until Mom returned to the kitchen. She was clearly pleased I had eaten my eggs. Perhaps it was because she had thought I had latched onto fried eggs as my source of protein (my plate was completely empty wasn’t it-nothing remained) that the egg quotient on the breakfast food cycle went up. As the frequency of egg service increased so did the trips to the bush. The bacon was good and so was the toast, the eggs well they were still just greasy round thingys.

Forsythia has a lovely yellow flower at the start of spring. When they bud and blossom the world is golden, maybe even more golden than it becomes with the turning of those northern trees in fall. In summer these bushes are a striking shade of green with thick leaves that must just be cranking out the oxygen. Then sometime in fall their leaves drop suddenly and completely. It is almost like a memo goes out to the small boat like photosynthesizers to give up and drop right now. It was in the New Jersey fall that my fried pre-chickens came home to roost.

I think it was my father who first noticed the great pyramid of cooked chicken ova lying underneath the naked skeletal frame of the forsythia. But like all these conversations in my house that followed the discovery of my various transgressions, there had been a colloquy amongst the parents before the confrontation. Dad took the point. At dinner one night that my father simply pointed out the window and inquired of me, “Do you have any idea what those are?”

What do you say? If you say yes then the why question follows at once. Despite having had months to think this through I hadn’t thought I would have had to explain myself. Even the damn vermin hadn’t eaten the freakin eggs. In a situation such as this if you say no the flow chart just gets uglier. It begins with a declaration, “You should know better than to lie, boy.” Each decision point after that is more and more unpleasant.

I opted for silence. Silence was the household equivalent to a plea of nolo contedere. Silence meant either I didn’t remember or I was not fessing up. It also meant I would take the blame and the punishment. Silence was as long as the transgression was minor not going to increase the punishment. It would just make it take longer to get there. Silence induced the lecture. There were the musing on right and wrong, on sin, and there was the theorizing as to the whys of the transgression. This stuff had to be worked out. Things had to be said like “Do you know how hard you mother worked on those eggs,” and I kid you not, “There are starving children in India (or China)”. And of course there were my Mom’s eyes, questioning and hurt. I swear she practiced that shit. Agggh.

And you know I didn’t care about getting busted. I didn’t care there would be punishment. What I cared about was that I had hurt my mother’s feelings. Again and again during those years I hurt my mother’s feelings. I can hear those words ringing in my ears still (usually this line was launched into when the family was going somewhere Mom didn’t feel like going to, “Don’t worry about me. I will just stay here. Maybe I’ll just lie down and die” Agggh!!!!!!

Bill Cosby used to have a bit about how a shop teacher would shame the kid who threw the bullet or firecracker into the furnace ( I don’t remember which it was but a firecracker sounds safer). The teacher would talk about how doing such a thing meant the kid’s mother was a bad mother. Very quickly the culprit would identify himself because his mother was so important to him that he didn’t want anyone talking about his mother being bad. My feelings in this situation were kind of like that. The finding of the eggs meant I was in essence talking bad about my Mom’s cooking.

Trust me now I can do it with ease because a lot of the food Mom made sucked. Then, not so much. The guilt when you are discovered hiding the eggs sucks. The guilt of letting your Mom down sucks even more. But so do greasy eggs.

I still hate fried eggs.

Riding Alone Amongst the Masses

September 24, 2008

Riding the bus in today I took another seat, one usually not my own. Engaging in the conversation that was bound to be going on in the rear seats I normally occupy wasn’t appealing to me in the least. What I wanted to avoid by this new choice of seat was not a particular topic of conversation, but rather the whole experience of conversation.

An opportunity to deftly avoid this entanglement presented itself. Where the severely handicapped/disabled/differentially abled (terminology on our physical challenges is so complex and so fluid today and one doesn’t want to offend) individual usually sits there was an extra row of seats because he was not on. When he is present those seats are gone. The seats are absent at that time so that he may be positioned and his wheelchair anchored safely. Carol my bus stop buddy preceded me onto the bus and headed for the back and took up the last spot in the rear of the bus that would not require sitting/crowding next to someone. Thus it was not considered socially inapt for me to take an empty seat at the front of the bus.

Placing my earbuds in, I heard Leonard Cohen singing Alexandra Leaving.

Suddenly the night has grown colder.
The God of love preparing to depart.
Alexandra hoisted on his shoulder,
They slip between the sentries of the heart.

Upheld by the simplicities of pleasure,
They gain the light, they formlessly entwine;
And radiant beyond your widest measure
They fall among the voices and the wine.

A beautiful ballad sung in a voice that carries the wisdom of the years in its tones. A look across the bus and out the window and the sun is coming up in its full, an orange ball gaining intensity. It was a moment lost in music and environment and I didn’t have to say a word or for that matter think anything. Empty was nice for a change.

Boom, Boom and the Connection is Made

In every town there are one or two of them. Well actually there are quite a number of their kind in the broadest sense of the concept, but there are a key few that people remember and that matter. I am talking about a bar with character that is perfectly of its time and place

You will know the kind of place that I am talking about. In Sommer’s Point, NJ in the mid 1970s it was Gregory’s where you could buy 7 beers for a buck surrounded by a décor that was positively beach house fifties. Reddish wood was everywhere and a smooth well worn bar was set at just the right height to comfortably lean into, both elbows resting on it, as you lifted one of those seven pony beers whilst you entered into a discourse on the status of the good ol’ Grateful Dead. Who knew that in 30 years you would be an administrative law judge and your conversational partner would be a Ph.D. in physics working at an Ivy League college.

Fast forward to the early 1980s and In Detroit there was the Post Bar. The Post was at the corner of Cass Avenue. Dimly lit the Post was populated by lawyers and accountants and other power suits of the day. It was where, if you were a professional and you still lived in the city, you just had to drink from time to time. Packed on a Friday night the joint had a certain air about it. There was a jukebox that had 45s from Buddy Holly and Jimi Hendrix and whoever else might need to be on it to be your perfect jukebox. And someone had scrawled on the wall in four inch high letters the phrase “You can only give it away for free so many times”. Each and every person in that bar understood the import of that Sharpie permanent ink inscribed philosophy.

In early 1990s Toronto there was Rodney’s Oyster Bar. It is well an oyster bar run by a Newfie and that should sum it up. Rodney’s is the kind of place where you can find an pearl in you slap jack on the same night one of the CBC’s big name on air folks is getting downright toasty two stools down. It is a place where Rodney comes out and with an enameled coffee pot in hand and pours you ice tea on a November night all the while grumbling, well shouting actually to anyone who will listen, about the idiot who wanted an iced beverage on a night like this. Or where a tender at the bar where beers and PEI mollusk’s are being sucked down answers a duo of well coifed trendi bimbi’s question about “Why don’t you have cappuccino” with the retort “So that dilettantes like yourselves don’t waste good bar space for hours when there are good people who want to drink beer and eat oysters looking for a seat”.

These are the places where Jung’s concept of synchronicity seems to have been formulated to describe. You know that concept, simply stated is when two or so things or events occur which have no godly reason to be tied together and they seem to be related in an uncanny and meaningful way. You know a bar in this catagory is the place that in your fifties when you are sitting and talking with your closest friends you find out that everyone you still like was hanging out at the same time you were (in your twenties) but you never met them, not then at least and not there. These bars are the places where seminal events in your thread of life happened and as you are talking to someone in an airport seven hundred miles from home you find the woman in the next seat was there at that bar but it was on the next night and she remembers people were still talking about it, whatever that event was.

In Lansing in the late 1970s it was the Boom Boom Room. This link is dicey and you may have to cut and paste it into your browser but it shows the dugout canoe that was the BBR’s bar. http://l.yimg.com/g/images/spaceball.gif

Despite the importance of these bars I have learned that alcohol consumption is in many cases bad. More alcohol means more bad choices. When I was young there were places my feet took me places where I should not have let me go. The Boom Boom Room is one of those places, a relic of the way hip late 50s. When drinks were drinks and men were Neanderthal.

Tripping down memory lane I came upon this photo. The place doesn’t exist anymore. However the hangover I got there still does. Boom Boom Room denizens always had the option of an Orgy. The Orgy was a drink served in a common bowl shaped like a lake surrounding a volcano. Inside the center of the volcano was a shot of 151 rum set afire. In the lagoon were 14 shots of various liquors. The drink was served with three foot long pliable straws. A minimum of four people had to be present for the Orgy to be delivered to a table. They didn’t all have to drink but they had to be at the table.

On one occasion I sat there sucking on a straw at the Boom Boom Room and I am pretty sure two of the other people were just blowing bubbles. The 151 wasn’t the only thing that got lit up that night. In this forum I apologize to my wife for anything that happened that night. I also apologize to those two young women at the next table for any untoward comments that may have been made. I apologize to the gardener whose tomatoes suffered at my hands in my post midnight journey on foot home from the bar. And finally I apologize to the person whose car I woke up atop the late enough in the night to be called next day when I was found by my now spouse.

These were bars of their time. Their time was a long time ago. Or maybe it would be better said that their time was a long time ago for me. Ah the memories a photo can awaken.

Simple, Eloquent and So Intuitive We More Often than not Miss It.

A dear friend from those days before I became obese as a child, and from after, tries to keep a dialog going with me. However I am usually a lost cause and her efforts are in vain. Frantic, overwhelmed and self absorbed, I am a poor correspondent.

In recent days she passed on a piece that I had never seen. I delayed reading it until a late hour because it was long. However when I got around to reading it the old speech (it is said to be from the latter days of WW II) was quite an amazing piece of writing. It was worth the time to consider it from start to end.

As I went through the piece I would catch phrases that fully described moments and experiences I had seen and shared in. The author really addressed well why in many of our struggles for connection in this world we are often denied what we seek most, that is, a seat at what we believe is the prime table in the room. Maybe our desire is ill directed.

If you have a moment to spare, take the time to give it a read. It probably won’t change your life, but your mind and maybe your spirit will be rewarded.

http://www.geocities.com/bigcslewisfan/

And understand I do believe this has meaning in the context of the current election.

Near Sooke-For Susan

A long time ago I went for a drive seeking out a place I had never been. On a road between somewhere and somewhere else I made a turn and found a piece of God’s world. It was a place sculpted by human hands that at that moment in time in the decay of an old farm homestead had transcended into a statement of beauty beyond description. Each time I hear Sting singing:

Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the fields of barley
See the children run as the sun goes down
Among the fields of gold
You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in the fields of gold
When we walked in the fields of gold
When we walked in the fields of gold

Today as I remember this time I am warmed by the memory. My soul now is more troubled than it has been in a long time. Warm memories marked by these pictures allow quiet to come to me. I believe there will be many more of these memories to come and that makes all the difference on a blue day.

If you are even on Vancouver Island on the road to Sooke coming from Victoria look for the small park on the water side of the road, it is worth it.

Immerse Yourself in the Waters of Knowledge

Reading is something that no adult should ever give up. It is easy to find reasons why not to read. I have used one or two of them myself. One common avoidance tool is that for someone in a paper pushing trade like mine it is a bit of a busman’s holiday. Yeah, well whatever. The second you stop reading is the second you lose vitality. Your mind atrophies. You become part of the past.

What I read has shifted. I have moved from the political world/the freak show of the 60s to the more universal themes. Instead of reading “Steal This Book” I am reading Victor Hugo. Why, because as I age and as I raise children these greater theme books have more resonance to me. Classic layered fiction and philosophy books are the stuff that gets me engaged into being in place in this world.

Read, this is today’s public service announcement from the Spirit of the Lake.

Nutz

My homelife is nuts. Stark raving nuts!

Last night my wife needed to use one of our two and a half baths. We have two full bathrooms on the second floor of our home and she started in her attempts to answer nature’s call with the first of them. The bathroom she initially tried to use was occupied by my oldest child, Primus. Primus is now 13. Once he is in our washroom he is in there for a goodly long time. It has always been that way and so she knew there was no point to waiting.

Trying to respond to her body’s urgent pleas she then proceeded down the hall to the other full bathroom. A towel was draped over the top of the door. It was a penant standing as a reminder of someone’s prior shower or bath or whatever. (With two boys in this house there can never be enough showers to wash off that hockey/school yard athlete scent. As a result of the terry cloth decoration the door would not fully closed.

Despite the un-sealable door bathroom number two was occupied. Enthroned therein was my second child, let us call him Secundus. Lad two heard my wife pitter-patterning down the hallway, she having been rebuffed at her primary choice of facilities. Secundus was significantly enough engaged in the use of this next potential rest stop that he had no plans on freeing the room up. Apparently wishing to maintain some privacy, he pulled tightly on the door.

Approaching the door my now fleet of foot wife saw the light emitting from the bathroom change. Lumens disappeared from the dark hallway that runs from one bathroom to the other. The narrowing of the light was due to a drawing of the door a little more inward. The occupant seemed to be trying to convey an actually closed state. The wife thus had an awareness loo two was also committed to use.

Thinking she would have a little fun at Secundus’ expense she lightly tried to push/pull the door. Secundus in a slightly higher slightly more excited than usual voice barked out an inquiry as to what my wife was doing.

My wife, the loving mother that she is, in response to this apparently urgent inquiry said she was looking for an open bathroom to use. She followed up by commenting that she sensing that Secundus might be in there decided to tease him just a little by jiggling the door if only just a little bit. Secundus (never one who wants to be bested in humor) at that point kicked or threw the door wide open exposing himself ensconced on the throne and declared in his deepest voice, “Well take a good look so you can assure yourself this bathroom is occupied.”

My wife almost wet herself as she began laughing hysterically.

My house is nuts, my sons are nuts, my wife eh that is open to question. C’est la vie.

Act Now

When you accept what you have, you see all you have received is more than enough and you are overwhelmed. I desire other things because I fear to be content with what I have-I fear it is inglorious. In the last few days I have seen what matters is to be humble enough to admit I am content with just this. Leave the rest to God.

Thomas Merton, September 7, 1958, III. 216 (from A Year with Merton, p. 269)

The word inglorious is a tough one to parse in context of this quote. When I use the synonym finder in Word it brings up unsuccessful, dishonorable and humiliating. I think the first and the last are apt when I look at it in the context of my own life. I think sometimes we are too much of this world to do the good that lies in a state of potential within us.

In America we measure success not so much by the more intangible things, the lives we have helped, the kindness we have shown or the quiet acts of compassion we have done without fanfare. It appears we are unwilling to accept these as enough in measuring our lives. We measure success by things and titles, bank accounts and power. Listening today as the markets shake and perhaps melt down I end up going back to a quote from the New Testament that should refocus us all. It is from Matthew 25:

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

Whether you believe in God or the evolving nature of the human spirit this has meaning. We all need to conduct an act of kindness and love today. Really.

One Stone Laid on the Board

There is a book by Herman Hesse that goes under a couple of titles out there in the marketplace. The friends of the library sales won’t have this one, but an average sized used paperback store will. It was big in the sixties along with titles of the era like Mother Night and Play it As it Lays.

One of the titles of this Hesse work is Magister Ludi and the other is the Glass Bead Game. The book is the tale of a great player, perhaps the greatest player of an incredibly complex game. The game is played by intellectuals in a rarefied monastic environment set purposely away from the travails of the normal world. The details of the game itself and its rules are never really set out in the book being rather only obliquely referenced. The Wiki says this of the exact nature of the game:

At the center of the monastic order lies the (fictitious) Glass Bead Game, whose exact nature remains elusive. The precise rules of the game are only alluded to, and are so sophisticated that they are not easy to imagine. According to the plot, playing the Game well requires years of hard study of music, mathematics, and cultural history. Essentially the Game is an abstract synthesis of all arts and scholarship. It proceeds by players making deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics. For example, a Bach concerto may be related to a mathematical formula.

Why does this book come my mind now you may wonder? In recent days I have found myself more and more pulled into the Glass Bead Game of electronic communication. As some readers of this blog know I have a Facebook page. Also I have this blog. Additionally I have and iphone with a number of social connection tools including the Grafitto application. I have several e-mail accounts. Each of these media for the communication of ideas intersects with the others and the interplay is a kind of game of deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics. Let me explain by way of several examples.

On my blog I recently wrote a story about the connection I felt between sucking down some oysters during a road trip repast and of a group of memories central to the core of who I am, those being of travels to my paternal grandmother’s home. In creating that blog entry I violated one of my own prime rules of online writing, I used identifying names for people and places that were real. In doing that I laid a cosmic go stone on an infinite board located out in the electronic ether. Based on a search he must have been conducting I made a connection with a cousin I hadn’t seen in decades.

The contact with my cousin got me thinking about a niece who due to my own negligence I had lost touch with. My wife mentioned that suddenly she was getting hits from her family in Illinois on her Facebook page. Using a people search feature there I found my niece, I asked for a friend designation and was accepted. Whew, being accepted is a whole bunch better than being denied.

As I was contemplating my next move I circled around the blogs that I read and came upon another connection. While a couple of days ago I had been thinking about the meaning of poetry to my son, one of my friends was remembering some very personal and very insightful things about her own poetry. Another piece on the cosmic board is laid out.

And the connections will continue. On Facebook I referenced some books that I find wonderful reads and I just know that somehow that will come back to me in some unexpected way. Or it may be that a piece of music I riff on about in these postings will show up on someone’s list on Facebook as a favorite. Right now I can’t get the boys to stop singing this song by a band called the Postal Service. Here is the link to the video for We Will Become Silhouettes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEILFf2XSrM .

Or maybe the fact that I mention I once studied archival management at the graduate level will get me a shout from some archivist I once talked with at a records management conference and she will turn out to be a poet who believes post apocalyptic music will free us…. Well any how you get my drift, right? On glass bead, one cosmic go stone and the ripples spread out.

Oh and I want to thank all of you who wrote in saying my nose hairs scared/scarred you. It was just a picture for crying out loud.

A Question of Inspiration

I have discovered that for me my day does not start out well if I have not read something inspirational. The above photo shows me on one of those days. Seems odd to me that this is so important but it is. On those occassions when I have just thrown myself into the day when I haven’t had a pep talk usually from the words of someone who has been dead many years I find myself running out of emotional balance at about 10 or 11 a.m. It is then I become one grumpy curmudgeon.

The man who does not allow his spirit to be beaten down and upset by dryness and helplessness, but who lets God lead him through the wilderness, and desires no other guidance or support than that of pure faith and trusts in God alone, will be brought to the Promised Land.

Something like this helps me. I don’t care if you have no faith in God or otherworldly rewards or comfort. I also don’t care that the original text is tainted by the sexism of the period in which it was created. Anyone can reformulate this to work for them. It does not take much to move this to a secular affirmation. It is the affirmation of the positive that matters. Here is one reformulation.

Do not allow your spirit to be beaten down and upset by dryness and helplessness. Faith and hope will lead you through the wilderness. Pure faith that we as human beings can survive in harmony with our world and with each other based on the good and right things you have witnessed in this world, and in the kindness we have received from others, will sustain us.

At the edge of twilight on a cool evening I walk out to see the fading of last light. Faintly the luminescence is scattered between leaves turning brown and orange and golden. Carried on the lightest of a cool breeze there is a hint of something cooking on a grill somewhere out there in the last remains of this day. Tantalizing the odor wafts by.

Lights are on in most of the houses including my own. My jacket is lightly lined with fleece and it feels good. On my ipod John Hiatt is singing a song about discovering that you have become your parent without being aware of it. Fall is coming to me and it is a metaphor for both my age and the ending of a period of quiet. The things of my children’s school year life will be rushing by very, very soon.

Silence is not the same as Inactivity

The minds of most people are confounding if you have not known them and spent time with them over the years. The mind of a child is especially confounding. The older of my children, the one with ASD (Asperger’s) had two writing assignments last night. One was to type a poem. Secondly he was to write out a fictional letter from his last English teacher to his current English teacher talking about the attributes of the student (my son) now coming into her class.

Handwritten the faux teacher to teacher note was a nightmare of grammatical errors. The content was fine. Penmanship? It bordered on the unreadable. Motor skills, fine motor skills are not the ASD child's strong suit. Hey most of you have seen my writing and know that I am not the person to offer aid and assistance on this issue.

The poem on the other hand was amazing. It was to be a description of what lay outside a window. In a style that was sparse and clean he described the flora and sensory components that lay outside his room. My understanding is that motor skills are tough for children like my son. The imagination part of the poem however just took me to a completely different place in understanding exactly what he perceives in the world around himself and what he is assigning meaning to. Understand some of the references to the window do mean something other that what it would seem at first. The window has a broken child proof lock, thus to open the window you have to unlatch it at the midpoint, raise the window and that snap it back into place at the point you want it opened to.

Here is the poem….

Through my Portal

As I look out my window
I see my kingdom
Covered in ivy
I see an old tree stump
Cut down when dead
I see my lamp post
I see my street

I pull my window
Out and up the only
Way to open it
I smell my neighbors
Barbecuing steak
I smell ivy and lavender

I pull my window down
To open it
I reach out to grab a
Branch of my tree
Wet with dew
Through my portal

A Literary Turn

When I was young I was very lonely. At about 10 years of age I got fat following an accident that left my arm in a cast for a number of months. My mother making that bizarre equation that we all make, that is food is love, fed me until my girth pretty much exceed my height.

Young and fat means that you have just one heck of a bunch of time to develop alternate uses for time that could have been used bonding or dating or whatever. Once you get beyond mastering the Ernest Borgnine approach to longevity you still have a copious amount of other moments to use. Personally I whiled away those seemingly endless hours by throwing myself into reading, bigger and better tomes. I was thirteen when I read the book that was used to make the movie Patton. It was by Ladislas Farago and weighed in at about 1100 pages. I also took on Look Homeward Angel, by Thomas Wolfe.

Books were more my friends than people were. Books could be controlled; people were simply unpredictable and unreliable. The few forays I made out into attempting friendships did not end well at this time. Eventually my isolation would end but it was a long time in coming. So over a goodly long number of years I kept reading. My regret now is that I wished I had been reading more of the real classics instead of Rosemary’s Baby and the purportedly hip and relevant books of the late sixties. (I still have no regrets about Vonnegut however.)

Reading still matters to me. My usual habit is to go to a large library that has a “Friends of …” organization and check out their book sales. Both here in my midsized Midwestern city and down in South Carolina at Hilton Head those 9 months off the best seller trade paperbacks sell for $1 or maybe $2. While on holiday in late August I read both The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and The Secret Life of Bees. Both were very, very enjoyable reads. On deck is another former bestseller Bel Canto and Midnight’s Children by Rushdie. There may come a detour before I attack this queue as I have found my old copy of Look Homeward Angel and a reread with what is ostensibly an adult mind might be interesting.

Okay so the gist of what I saying is that books kept me sane when I was young and to some degree serve the same purpose now. Personally I am wondering what book kicked in the concept that reading mattered for those of you out there that are perusing this post?

Moist Food and Memory (or should it be Moist, Food and Memory?)

When I was growing up we would trek several times a year down to South Carolina to see Miss. Effie. Miss. Effie was Miss. Effie Joyner who had previously been Miss. Effie Todd and before that Miss. Effie Parker. Ms. Effie was retired school teacher who I found out later must have taught all the northeast quarter of Horry County between the 1920s and the 1950s. She was my grandmother on my Dad’s side. The trip south from New Jersey took one long ass day to make it there the route being nigh onto 500 miles door to door.

Not much to recommend my grandmother’s place as a youthful vacation destination. Up until I was in the later years of high school there was no phone. I believe that the installation of this modern convenience was only motivated by the sheriff’s patrol finding a murdered corpse in the filed in front of the homestead. My grandmother didn’t care she had her rifle but her sons decided it was time to have immediate contact with the outside world available henceforth.

The nearest store was in Red Bluff which was a good two mile walk in the hotter than blazes summer sun of South Carolina. I was a town boy and I wasn’t walking to Red Bluff for an RC Cola and a moon pie. Once I did. It wasn’t worth it. Still I remember that walk.

There was no air conditioning and there were snakes. There was a dog usually, normally a collie. My grandmother would always say as she was shoeing the dog off the porch, “Its cooler in the yard” and the dog would go lie in a hole it had dug under the porch. You could play with the dog, but it had this habit of picking up snakes and shaking them until they were dead. Such behavior could be off putting. Being myopic there was also always the danger I would pick up a snake as opposed to a stick during a game of fetch. My father used to say I was so blind I would pick up a snake to kill a stick. He was sensitive that way.

If you were really bored you could go look for arrow heads and Indian pottery shards out by the tree in the corn field. Over the years I found some but alas a trip into the field means we are back to the snakes again. You could go look at the hogs in the pen. Still snakes.

Yup, the TV was black and white and most of the program was regional fare of gospel hours and Amos and Andy reruns. My uncle Bill who had a hunchback and who was as one of my friends of English descent used to say, was a member of God’s special people, would sit in the rocker and laugh at “Them old boys” when Amos and Andy came on. I was still young and didn’t understand the racism inherent in that program. I just didn’t find it funny.

However there were a couple of things that recommended the place. Food is involved.

If it was a fall trip there were oyster roasts. An oyster roast is when you put a tub of oysters out on a grill, my grandmothers was an old 55 gallon drum cut in half, and steam those little shelled beasts until their shells just start to crack open. You then take an awl, crack open the shell and pop them succulent critters out. Then you suck ‘em down. Hush puppies were omnipresent and there was plenty of Pepsi Cola and Orange soda. Eating until you had to unbutton your trousers, even after you had belched any excess air out of your system, because it was the only way to keep blood flowing to your extremities due to the straining and bulging of your abdomen was not just encouraged it was expected.

At other times of the year there were boiled peanuts. Salty, hot and gummy/chewy with a hint of the taste of the earth these were a delicacy to my palette from an early age. It is hard to explain these little things dug out of the ground have no right to taste that good and they should have no attraction to a kid, but they were wonderful.

The only reason I am talking about this stuff was that on my recent trip I had a small oyster roast at a seafood place on Hilton Head Island. I got about 18 oysters out of what was served me. It wasn’t enough. In the day I could eat to half a bushel of roast oysters by myself. Once at a fried oyster dinner I ate 45 fried oysters. When I was popping oysters open at that restaurant I was a teen again hanging with my family at my grandmother’s house, no two ways about it. Life was good and I was still in the care or the old man and my mom. All the memories of those trips came back from the black sandy soil, the chiggers and the Spanish moss to digging up yams that had been stored in a sandy pit in some weird tepee set up for winter eating. What is it about a single food item that can unlock such memories?

On this trip the boiled peanuts were contemplated first on a rural stretch of US 21 in lower South Carolina as we whizzed by several farms with signs for ‘em.
But they were actually purchased at a farmer’s market in Asheville, NC. These legumes, now that is a fancy word isn’t it, were good. Served warm and moist in a Styrofoam cup they too were childhood come back. The kicker was that my oldest boy loved ‘em too. Peanut appreciation must be in his genes despite him being raised here in the frozen north.

Ah I am back to food again. Must be the gallbladder thing, I can’t eat so late I night I remember the good food. Sorry about this detour, I will try and get focused and talk about something like politics or sex soon. Or both.

A Technical Upgrade

I am often making reference to a piece of music in this blog. In order to facilitate your access to the artist and/or song involved I have added the You Tube search utility. So the next time I reference Chris Smither you can find him and see him singing. Hey, I don’t throw these references out lightly.

The Wind Along the Beach

Having traveled over 2000 miles we are now back in East Lansing. Early September and it is still warm in this part of Michigan. Warmth now is a gift. Plenty of years when I have returned home after a late August jaunt fall was upon me in full measure. Clear day today and a joy it was.

Notice that I did not say home when I referenced East Lansing, I said back. Thirty years now I have considered this upper niche of the Midwest my home. South Carolina’s beaches, North Carolina’s mountains and even that ancient piece of Georgia called Savannah have caused me to call into question the location of my home.

Wind along the water’s edge is what did it. Looking out at the surf, smelling the salt air and feeling the sun on my skin (through SPF 50 sunblock) reminded me of all those summers I spent at the beach. Sand and lotion, wind and water, humidity and heat these are the things tied to the happiest days of my life.

My home is a place that is many miles from here although I am not sure quite where it is.

If Louisiana is a Boot….

So there we were riding along coming back from SC with two children in the backseat. There came a point where our GPS convinced us to take I-74 to I-69 because per its little brain it was the fastest way. It probably was but not by much. When we turned to follow this route we had to cross from Kentucky into Indiana then into Ohio and finally back into Indiana. When asked how this could be I offered up the comment that the southern tip of Indiana was like a boot. My oldest (now 13) opined, “Well then there must be two boots and two mittens in the USA.” He went on to say Michigan and Maine were mittens and based on what I had just said Louisiana and Indiana were the boots. Without missing a beat the youngest said, “I can tell you what Florida looks like… “I suggested in a loud voice he stop right there (because I know what I was thinking before he spoke up). Francie and the brother commenced to laugh so loud I think Francie was having trouble keeping the car on the road. 12 years old and his mind is working like this. Just wait until he sees a youtube clip of Buddy Hackett, there will be no stopping him. “So this guy and his family walk into a talent agent’s office….”

Tupelo Honey and Secrets of the Road

Shhh, I am about to share a secret with you. More importantly it is a bona fide travel secret. Travel secrets that are worth they salt are rare.

Everyone seems to have a secret travel spot that they love and that they cautiously tell others about. Hidden by location or newness or by having survived years of passing fads these places are special and when you share them it is done with some trepidation. Basically you don’t want too many people to get to know about the old timey store, the great but inexpensive restaurant, the natural water slide or the isolated beach. As a special small spot, be it a tourist attraction or a restaurant, becomes known the quaint and unique touches at the edge of the painting disappear as the operators try to accommodate more people and more generalized tastes.

On the way home from our August 2008 southern excursion we stopped in Asheville NC. A number of reasons made me want to see the place. Asheville from the guidebooks is apparently an artists’ Mecca. As noted in the blog earlier we had previously stopped at the artisans’ haven of Berea, KY, (and a couple of other stops-one on the Blue Ridge Parkway) so this seemed liked a good addition to the tour. What the guidebooks said was basically correct.

Asheville is a southern city that used to be a mercantile center. It is a college town and a haven for old hippies of the Allman Brothers loving variety. Ann Arbor has some of the same feel but Asheville is more welcoming. Its streets are quirky in their layout, narrow at points but the building stock is pretty. It is a city with a history including hosting the likes of O’Henry and Thomas Wolfe at various times.

We wandered about the city. There is an old very cool central gallery that was originally set to be the base of a skyscraper that never got built. Inside this places neo-gothic façade you had your usual array of high end furniture, chocolatiers, espresso shops and book stores. Additionally there were a number of art galleries that abutted this square. Some great paintings and fine ceramic work were to be found.

Due to my membership in a travel affinity group we spent the night before at a Crowne Plaza. Because of major work to one of its courses the rate was really cheap. Asheville is a golf haven also. When we got up we decided to go into town to seek out breakfast. One of the restaurants we saw was called the Early Girl and seemed focused on southern regional cuisine with fresh ingredients. However the one that drew us in was the Tupelo Honey café. http://www.tupelohoneycafe.com/day_menu.htm Hey how could a place named after one of Van Morrison’s greatest songs go wrong? It didn’t. Subtle décor with beautiful oil paintings blended with the feel of an old southern lunch counter.

The food was out of this world. I had Petunia’s Pain Perdu. It was awesome and cooked just as a great French toast should be. The fresh blueberries went just an added flourish. The sweet potato pancakes that John Lee had were also phenomenal. (Go to website and check out the day menu). Even the normal stuff like the country breakfast was cooked to perfection. The music playing in the background was soft and eclectic. It was a damn near perfect dining experience; even the ice tea was perfect.

When you are on the road, if your travels take you by Asheville, stop in. It is a beautiful place and there are a number of things to please the eye. Your palette will thank you also. Hey just one thing though, don’t tell anyone who can’t kept a secret about Tupelo Honey, okay?

You know maybe it was because I was reading the Secret Lives of Bees that I threw in with the Tupelo Honey café. Maybe.

(I note the photo above is from the Tupelo Honey website. Yesterday’s shot of James Dean’s grave was taken by F. Todd on her Iphone.)