Pizzles, Pogo Sticks and Pogo Possum

Pizzles. The women made pizzles during the cookie baking a few weeks ago. I'm speechless. Well, perhaps I'm not completely speechless.

We went over to Sam and Deb's for Christmas dinner. First off I saw Deb's sister Donna put a pat of butter on the mashed potatoes we brought. I hope her cholesterol numbers are well under control. Eight pounds of potatoes. Two teaspoons of salt. About half a teaspoon of pepper. Three quarters of a pound of butter. And a little milk which wasn't needed. The potatoes were just a bit too creamy; but they almost all went. And the only quibble was by Marianne who just had to get in a little dig.

After dinner I told Sam that he was completely off base on Christmas Eve when he asserted in his typical no-doubt-about-it fashion that the Pogo Stick was named after the Pogo comic strip. It sounded shaky to me at the time, so I looked it up. The Pogo Stick was patented in 1919; while the Pogo Possum comic strip didn't start til the 1940's.

Sam, of course, reacted to being trapped by trying to switch fields. He lamely claimed that the Pogo comic strip was named after the Pogo Stick. But I had already foreclosed that escape by looking up the info on the comic strip. No mention of any Pogo Sticks; but lots of mention of the writer choosing names to go with the type of animal. So the possum's name is Pogo for onomatopoetic reasons, not bouncing reasons. Besides, who would ever envision a sluggish waddling possum bouncing like a person on a Pogo Stick? If the character was named Pogo Pronghorn it would perhaps make sense to think that it was derived from a Pogo Stick; but thinking that of Pogo Possum doesn't make a lick of sense.

So I was up two points on Sam. And I still haven't gotten around to checking on whether Volare is the only foreign language song ever to get to number one on the Pop charts. Sam claims we saw that song sung on the Ed Sullivan show with Uncle Angelo that time when Mom and Pop were gone for a week and Aunt Tavia and Uncle Angelo were babysitting us. I tend to believe Sam in this case because he's pretty good with family stories; although the Volare flourish is just the sort of thing he would gratuitously embroider into a story. Sam's not a just-the-facts guy like me. Anyway, it's also intriguing to wonder where Mom and Pop went that time. And just now I realize where Mom and Pop went that time. The only other time I can remember anybody moving in to babysit us was when Grandmom and Grandpop L came up to take over while Mom was in the hospital having Marianne. But that's a story for another time. I have to get to the pizzles.

A bit later Hobbs was being cute, playing his well practiced "I want a treat" game. Have I ever mentioned that Hobbs runs that house? Anyway, Sam suggested to Deb that she give him one of the pizzelles, "He likes the pizzelles," Sam said. So Deb goes in the dining room and gives Hobbs his treat. Then she comes out and reports that she gave Hobbs a pizzle; at which Sam, Deb, Dolores and Marianne laugh. It's clearly an inside joke; but the combination of the pronunciation with the fact of Hobbs getting a treat has rung a bell for me even though some coincidences are just too incredible to occur; and at that point even I wasn't fully connecting all the dots, at least not consciously. So I spell out P-I-Z-Z-L-E and ask if that's how they're spelling the word.

They explained that they're laughing because Rebecca, whose last name will not be mentioned to spare her embarrassment, had her pizzelle recipe labelled "pizzles" when she came to the cookie baking to make them. It also turns out that the inside joke people are laughing because they found the mis-spelling funny; but they're unaware that the joke goes deeper. So I point out that I could be wrong - I was wrong on a vocabulary question one time in the 1980's and I was wrong on a simple word spelling question one time in the 1950's, onstage at a spelling bee unfortunately - but I'm pretty sure a pizzle is the particular body part that connects a bull and a cow when they're in a romantic frame of mind and endeavoring to make a new little cow or bull.

None of them have heard of this meaning, even though I know for a fact that Sam has read Commanche Moon by Larry McMurtry. The word is used in there, quite memorably in a sentence uttered by Captain Inish Scull that I could come close to quoting if this weren't a family blog. The relevant phrase is ". . . a Dalrymple pizzle." I haven't googled that but it may work if someone has extracted memorable quotes from the book.

They're all doubting me so much that Deb even gets up and checks their dictionary; and she finds that pizzle isn't in their dictionary. So now even I'm doubting. But understand me. I'm not doubting the existence and meaning of the word. I'm doubting the quality of Sam and Deb's dictionary. And, just a little part of me is thinking that maybe I have the spelling wrong, even though I can visualize that sentence in Commanche Moon.

So when I got home I checked on the web, and sure enough there it is. Pizzle is not only a word, it's a pretty old word; and it's primary meaning is just what I thought. Not only that; but one of its other meanings, as a name brand for dog treats, explains why I perked up when Deb returned and mentioned that she had given Hobbs a pizzle.

Rebecca has a dog. I need to remember to buy a treat for him next Christmas. Maybe I'll pick up one for Hobbs too.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night

I've been told that some folks have been wondering why I haven't posted anything here for a while. Part of the truth is that my laptop, on which I'm writing this, has a virus that has been causing it to crash regularly. Another part of the truth is that I've been immersed in a couple of pretty good novels. And the final part of the truth is that I've started several blog entries that haven't worked.

So, I'd be working on a frustrating blog entry and the laptop would crash. And when the laptop crashed I would use it as an excuse to pick up one of the novels. Then when I returned to the laptop after it restarted, I would find myself facing the still unsatisfactory blog entry. So I would try a new start for it, or a new middle, or a new end, and then the laptop would crash again. And I would go off to one of the novels again.

The two novels were Fleet of Worlds by Larry Niven, which I finished a couple of days ago and Playing for Pizza by John Grisham, which I finished an hour or so ago. Both were excellent, but now they're done. I plan to loan Playing for Pizza to Sam and Jas because it's about football, Italians and food; but Fleet of Worlds will go up on the shelf with the other science fiction since nobody around here likes science fiction.

We had a great Christmas Eve gathering here earlier even though we missed Al R and Angela. Al's down in Florida crowing about the warm temperatures every time we talk to him on Saturday mornings. Angie's out in San Diego waiting on a back operation that's now scheduled for New Year's Eve day, of all the days. Hopefully they'll get to cutting on her back before they get to partying.

Thankfully Catherine and Liana came over to help with the food preparation. Linda and I couldn't have done it without them. There is a tempo necessary to preparing the various fried foods.

Incidentally, the laptop crapped out after the line above and restarted itself. I went out and had a cigarette and read the beginning of The Godfather Returns by some schlemiel named Mark Weingardner. How can it be that the best writer they could hire to continue the godfather saga can't write one tenth as well as Mario Puzo? Well, at least this novel is set in the time of the original novel and uses some of the original characters.

Anyway, we had a great Christmas Eve gathering of the tribe. Marianne and Dave managed to find the old pogo stick I wrote about a few days ago and gave that to me as a Christmas present. I was encouraged to try it out; but I'm not that stupid. Nor was I that drunk. I'm told that Samuel managed to do ten jumps on it when the younger and more foolish folks took it out to the driveway, so the darn thing still works fifty three years after I first got it as a gift. Meanwhile it's now propped out there by the front door, so I'm stuck with it again.

Rebecca brought very serviceable red baccala stew, although it wasn't a hundred percent Aunt Mary style, and Rebecca fessed up to messing with the recipe. Caramelize some tomato paste indeed! Mom would have said "quan de gatsa de mossa." But I think Mom would have approved of the flavor. Also, Rebecca gave Sam a Marche' cookbook which looked interesting. It had what looked like some of the traditional recipes in there. I have to borrow it from Sam and read it.

The fried foods were as delicious as they were unhealthful. And, as usual, the folks ate an unbelievable amount of garlic and oil spaghetti. Some of them corrupted it with a topping of the quite good tomato gravy that Deb brought, but all seemed to enjoy it. There is a segment of the family that refuses to recognize that garlic and oil spaghetti is too good to mess up with tomato sauce.

I'm always amazed when they compliment that spaghetti on Christmas Eve. Just for the record there's nothing magical about why it tasted the way it did. The secret is in the garlic, the fresh instead of dried parsley and the egg noodle spaghetti instead of water based pasta. It's an everything to excess recipe.

One bulb of garlic for each 14 ounce package of egg pasta even though your hands get cramped from chopping so much garlic. Buy a chopper if you don't want your hands to get cramped. Don't cut down on the amount of garlic. And one supermarket bunch of chopped fresh parsley for four packages of pasta, which is how much we went through tonight. Also, a couple of tablespoons of salt at least in the pasta cooking water and a tablespoon or so of salt in the couple of cups of olive oil in which the garlic is cooked until some of it is browning. Forget all that stuff you were told about not overcooking garlic. Some of the garlic has to be overcooked.

Truth to tell, in my own opinion, I could have browned the garlic a bit more than I did tonight. I was a bit too quick to put in the water and parsley. But things were a bit hectic over there what with the four packages of pasta being a bit too much for the size of the cauldron that Kathy loaned us. Also, I was getting a bit tired of cooking by that point, and I had forgotten the garlic and oil for a bit and they were on high. So I panicked a little when I saw the first brown bits and put the water and parsley in maybe a couple of minutes too soon.

On the Ninth Day before Christmas

We all want consistency in our parents; but we treasure and remember the surprises.

Today, for instance I was remembering Pop on a certain Christmas Eve, probably the Christmas Eve of 1954 or so because we were still living down on Penn Street, and I had to be old enough for Doc to have taken it to mind that I was old enough to need a pogo stick. For the record I didn't weigh enough to be able to make that pogo stick work for at least several years after I got it.

Anyway, Pop is hopping on the pogo stick in front of our house on Penn Street sometime after Midnight. It takes him a few tries; but eventually he gets up to being able to maintain a string of about ten pretty good hops. This I know because I was watching from the second floor window.

Mom, meanwhile, is hissing at him from the open door of the house. "Get in here you damned idiot. You're drunk. You're going to fall and break your neck." Mostly she's not happy with the spectacle because Midnight Mass is about to let out down at Holy Saviour Church and the neighborhood will be filled with quiet upstanding neighbors shortly. This I know because it was one of Mom's favorite stories concerning what I'll call the Christmas Eve follies.

We had that pogo stick for a long time because it was practically indestructible. It was made to last of heavy gauge metal; and it had a spring that was so stiff that it took a real jump by someone weighing at least a hundred and forty or so pounds to get it to work at all. When you mounted that thing you either jumped on for real or you wouldn't depress the spring enough to get any kind of a bounce.

To get up to even a few continuous bounces was very hard. I never got beyond six or seven bounces; but then I never tried the thing after a dozen or two shots of Canadian Club, which would have alleviated the concern that I would break my neck and thus made me more daring. The heads of the simpering nannies at the Consumer Product Safety Commission would explode if someone tried to sell a similar toy today.

To imagine Pop healthy enough and athletic enough to get up to ten or so continuous bounces on a pogo stick is probably impossible for those of you who didn't see him do it. But I'm here to tell you that there was a time when he made that thing work for him. I've often wondered how many continuous bounces he would have gotten up to if Mom hadn't coaxed him into the house just after he really started getting the knack of the thing.