I was just out in the woods wearing one of the two green Farm Credit Bureau knitted pullover caps that Mom got for me at least thirty years ago. Those knitted caps have gotten more and more ratty over the years; but I've found it impossible to replace them. Mom herself made me a new knitted cap in the 90's in an attempt to replace them; but it proved inferior because she made it only single thickness. Those Farm Credit ones are double thickness. There's a small but significant chance that one day Linda will need to send the 911 people to find me in the woods where I'll be lying under a felled tree like Mr. Colwell's dog. If such an event occurs in the winter the ambulance attendants may first spot the bright green of one of those Farm Credit Bureau caps.
On Saturday evening I met a couple, Leon and Betsy, at the Valentine's Day Dance up at the Ballroom on High who live in Silverdale, which was the site of the Farm Credit Office where Mom worked after they closed the Trooper office.
Last Thursday, Jas and Kathy and I played Scrabble using Mom's swivelling deluxe board with the little ridges that prevent the letter tiles from moving around. Naturally we talked about how Mom would give that forceful arm pump of hers when she put down a high scoring word and especially when she won a game.
Mom was very serious about Scrabble, playing it like a contact sport with very definite rules and very definite protocols of courtesy. Her "Gimme the letter bag!" could carry a real edge, especially when she was losing. And there was almost no better way for me to get a rise out of her at a family dinner than by mentioning just loudly enough for her to hear that I first beat her and Pop at the game when I was nine; which was untrue, but too good not to claim occasionally so Mom could exclaim "You did not!"
Then Marianne reminded me of another of Mom's characteristic reactions after dinner last night over at Sam and Deb's. She was talking about impressive Scrabble words. I was too modest to remind her of the time in Stone Harbor when I told her to look up "Galleass" as I started to put down all seven of my letters to connect the top center triple word block with the "s" that Mom had started a word with on the top right triple word block. The best part was that Mom didn't exclaim "Son of a Bitch!" until after Marianne read out the definition. The truth is that I told Marianne to look it up because I wasn't a hundred percent sure of the spelling; but having Mom tacitly admit by her delay in reacting that she didn't know the word made the moment priceless, even before I reached for the bag and realized that the game was over because there were no more letters.
Scrabble and Mom memories don't get much better than that.
Showing posts with label Stone Harbor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stone Harbor. Show all posts
Monday, February 16, 2009
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Death and hamburgers
There are at least eight billion stories I haven't gotten to yet, but the first thing on my agenda right now is to mention Rebecca, since Linda and I saw her and Matt at Sam and Deb's earlier this evening. Mentioning Rebecca, by the way, has nothing to do with the fact that she shamelessly asked to be mentioned. Instead, it has everything to do with the fact that she shamelessly praised this blog, telling me that I have readers I didn't know about in California and in the Tampa area of Florida.
In the course of this Rebecca told me I have a pathologist as a reader, a pathologist who has described me at different times, she reports, as both crazy and brilliant. I'll gladly take both the bitter and the sweet. I would much rather a pathologist judge me crazy after reading this blog than judge me as being past my sell by date after reading a slide of my liver cells. And anyway, everybody knows there's a thin line between genius and insanity. I'm quite content to be thought of as walking close to the line.
Also, Rebecca deserved to be mentioned because she has an unfailing knack of making conversations interesting. Tonight, for instance, we talked of Butch, and of the lion in the Stone Harbor zoo, and of Pop and Uncle Joe Sky. And we talked of a 1911 house trailer with sides of thin bakelite rather than metal. We also talked of sailing ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings before talking about sturm und drang. Most surprisingly, we even talked of immanentizing the eschaton, which very rarely comes up in casual conversation. In fact, I'm very sure it has never come up in conversation in my presence in all of my sixty years. I've read the phrase a few times, and I've written it once in a former blog entry, and I may have spoken it quietly once or twice as a memory aid; but I've certainly never actually said it to someone. I may well be a bit insane, but I'm not that insane.
But I didn't set out to write about any of those things. I set out to write about death and fairness, or more specifically about death and hamburgers. However, first I have to write about Swiss Chard; because that's the whole reason Linda and I had to go up to Sam and Deb's this evening for rice pudding and coffee and conversation in the first place. Sam, you see, grew the most amazing Swiss Chard plant in the history of the world, or at least of Montgomery County, this year; and I noticed it in his garden on Friday night when we went up there for coffee. So I set out to pick it this morning on the way to Corropolese for rolls and bread. At Corropolese, by the way, I also found them to have an excellent new variety of tomato pie with breaded eggplant on it. But I can't talk about that now because I have an important point to get to and mustn't tarry.
But first I have to finish with the darn Swiss Chard. You're probably going to be skeptical, but Sam's prize Swiss Chard plant was at least three feet tall, and the leaves had stems perhaps two inches wide and an inch thick, bigger and better Swiss Chard by far than what they sell in the market. From that one plant and a couple of other somewhat smaller plants I made enough chard by itself to serve as a vegetable for a few meals, plus enough chard, green bean and potato stew to feed me and Linda for dinner, with leftovers enough to feed me at least a couple more times this week - Linda is somewhat resistant to eating the same thing multiple times in a few days; but I'm like Pop in that respect, I can happily eat something I particularly like every day until it's gone. Pop could and would happily eat Pasta Fagiole for breakfast lunch and dinner when it was around. Butch was like that too, only his favorite meals all involved meat, which made sense because he was a butcher.
Anyway, there was a lot of chard and a lot of stew left over. And that's even after I took out a couple of generous helpings of each to take up to Sam. Which gets me back to why we happened to be up there this evening to see Rebecca and Matt. I had to go up there to deliver Sam his fair share of the Swiss Chard and stew, and also of the peppers I picked up this morning when I stopped to get the chard. I got the peppers because I did the right thing and told Sam yesterday morning that I was planning to come up and pick the chard since he wasn't picking it. So he told me to take the peppers as well. So I had to bring Sam some roasted peppers as well as the chard.
This is all of a sudden getting boring, or at least it would be getting boring if food could ever get boring; but it's not leading very directly to the point I want to make that started this whole blog entry. So I think I'll write a bit about Rose and Butch.
First off, it was not me that nicknamed them Pruney and Mumbles. I wish I could claim it was me, for the nicknames are as apt and melodious as any pair ever were, but Sam did that; and he and Jas and I have been laughing about them whenever we remember Rose and Butch for the past twenty years. Second, despite contradictory assertions and a certain amount of skepticism held by some parties as to the accuracy of my memory, I still think Linda and Alex and I were at the Stone Harbor zoo in the evening to see the lion that had roared at Johnny and Jenny the evening before when Pop and Mom showed up to tell me and Jas that they were headed home because Butch had died. Third, it was not me who started the story of Butch dying with his boots on, so to speak, by suffering his fatal heart attack while enjoying his customary late night snack of two good sized hamburgers. Sam started that story, repeating what Pop told him, I think, sometimes telling it as a story of tragedy and sometimes as a story of triumph.
But perhaps I'm the one who embroidered it into a story of triumph. Because I'm sad Butch was taken from us in 1986; but I'm determined to believe he got to enjoy to the full those two hamburgers before his head plopped down onto the coffee table and he went the way all of us will go if we're lucky.
Death is bad, sometimes hellishly bad; but I can tolerate the fact that death takes people from us because there's nothing to be done about it. What I can't tolerate is the thought that Butch didn't get to finish the burgers before his head plopped down. None of us can live forever, and only a very select few among us get to plop our head down onto an empty plate; but, dammit, Butch was too big hearted a guy to be cheated out of finishing those last two burgers.
In the course of this Rebecca told me I have a pathologist as a reader, a pathologist who has described me at different times, she reports, as both crazy and brilliant. I'll gladly take both the bitter and the sweet. I would much rather a pathologist judge me crazy after reading this blog than judge me as being past my sell by date after reading a slide of my liver cells. And anyway, everybody knows there's a thin line between genius and insanity. I'm quite content to be thought of as walking close to the line.
Also, Rebecca deserved to be mentioned because she has an unfailing knack of making conversations interesting. Tonight, for instance, we talked of Butch, and of the lion in the Stone Harbor zoo, and of Pop and Uncle Joe Sky. And we talked of a 1911 house trailer with sides of thin bakelite rather than metal. We also talked of sailing ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings before talking about sturm und drang. Most surprisingly, we even talked of immanentizing the eschaton, which very rarely comes up in casual conversation. In fact, I'm very sure it has never come up in conversation in my presence in all of my sixty years. I've read the phrase a few times, and I've written it once in a former blog entry, and I may have spoken it quietly once or twice as a memory aid; but I've certainly never actually said it to someone. I may well be a bit insane, but I'm not that insane.
But I didn't set out to write about any of those things. I set out to write about death and fairness, or more specifically about death and hamburgers. However, first I have to write about Swiss Chard; because that's the whole reason Linda and I had to go up to Sam and Deb's this evening for rice pudding and coffee and conversation in the first place. Sam, you see, grew the most amazing Swiss Chard plant in the history of the world, or at least of Montgomery County, this year; and I noticed it in his garden on Friday night when we went up there for coffee. So I set out to pick it this morning on the way to Corropolese for rolls and bread. At Corropolese, by the way, I also found them to have an excellent new variety of tomato pie with breaded eggplant on it. But I can't talk about that now because I have an important point to get to and mustn't tarry.
But first I have to finish with the darn Swiss Chard. You're probably going to be skeptical, but Sam's prize Swiss Chard plant was at least three feet tall, and the leaves had stems perhaps two inches wide and an inch thick, bigger and better Swiss Chard by far than what they sell in the market. From that one plant and a couple of other somewhat smaller plants I made enough chard by itself to serve as a vegetable for a few meals, plus enough chard, green bean and potato stew to feed me and Linda for dinner, with leftovers enough to feed me at least a couple more times this week - Linda is somewhat resistant to eating the same thing multiple times in a few days; but I'm like Pop in that respect, I can happily eat something I particularly like every day until it's gone. Pop could and would happily eat Pasta Fagiole for breakfast lunch and dinner when it was around. Butch was like that too, only his favorite meals all involved meat, which made sense because he was a butcher.
Anyway, there was a lot of chard and a lot of stew left over. And that's even after I took out a couple of generous helpings of each to take up to Sam. Which gets me back to why we happened to be up there this evening to see Rebecca and Matt. I had to go up there to deliver Sam his fair share of the Swiss Chard and stew, and also of the peppers I picked up this morning when I stopped to get the chard. I got the peppers because I did the right thing and told Sam yesterday morning that I was planning to come up and pick the chard since he wasn't picking it. So he told me to take the peppers as well. So I had to bring Sam some roasted peppers as well as the chard.
This is all of a sudden getting boring, or at least it would be getting boring if food could ever get boring; but it's not leading very directly to the point I want to make that started this whole blog entry. So I think I'll write a bit about Rose and Butch.
First off, it was not me that nicknamed them Pruney and Mumbles. I wish I could claim it was me, for the nicknames are as apt and melodious as any pair ever were, but Sam did that; and he and Jas and I have been laughing about them whenever we remember Rose and Butch for the past twenty years. Second, despite contradictory assertions and a certain amount of skepticism held by some parties as to the accuracy of my memory, I still think Linda and Alex and I were at the Stone Harbor zoo in the evening to see the lion that had roared at Johnny and Jenny the evening before when Pop and Mom showed up to tell me and Jas that they were headed home because Butch had died. Third, it was not me who started the story of Butch dying with his boots on, so to speak, by suffering his fatal heart attack while enjoying his customary late night snack of two good sized hamburgers. Sam started that story, repeating what Pop told him, I think, sometimes telling it as a story of tragedy and sometimes as a story of triumph.
But perhaps I'm the one who embroidered it into a story of triumph. Because I'm sad Butch was taken from us in 1986; but I'm determined to believe he got to enjoy to the full those two hamburgers before his head plopped down onto the coffee table and he went the way all of us will go if we're lucky.
Death is bad, sometimes hellishly bad; but I can tolerate the fact that death takes people from us because there's nothing to be done about it. What I can't tolerate is the thought that Butch didn't get to finish the burgers before his head plopped down. None of us can live forever, and only a very select few among us get to plop our head down onto an empty plate; but, dammit, Butch was too big hearted a guy to be cheated out of finishing those last two burgers.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Where's the global warming when you want it?
It's been a very unusual August this year up here in Pennsylvania.
I know it's been unusual because I haven't been in Sam and Deb's pool at all in August. Every other year since he and Deb got the pool I've found occasion to be up there floating around at least once or twice each August. We simply haven't had any strings of the 90 plus degree days and warm nights it takes to get that pool up to the 80 or so degree temperature which has become my minimum required comfort level.
Back in the old days I would happily go into the ocean down in North Carolina when the water temp was in the mid 70's. And back in the really old days I would inch into the ocean in Stone Harbor or Avalon even if the water temp was down in the high 60's or low 70's. Back even further, back way deep into the mists of time, I remember me and Sam and Jas spending long periods in the surf at Atlantic City unless the water was so cold your arches and ankles hurt from standing in it. But that was the ocean, and the ocean is different from a pool. A pool should be comfortable.
Mom and Pop only took us down the shore one or two days per summer back in those really, really, old days, so we approached the beach and the ocean with a certain amount of determination. We were singleminded in getting our full quota, and then some, of sand and surf and sunburn on those days no matter the cost in pain. And there was some pain, for back then before people knew about skin cancer we went to the beach without an umbrella. When Mom slathered the Coppertone of that era on us she was basting us like turkeys rather than swaddling us in any protection.
Me and Jas used to get moderate sunburns on our noses, shoulders and insteps, but Sam, lighter skinned, used to get as red as a lobster. You think I'm kidding, but him and Jas know I'm not. It's surprising he never got sun poisoning.
Marianne, after she arrived to go to the shore with us, spent most of such days in her portable playpen covered with a beach towel like a bird in a cage, so I don't remember her ever getting sunburned. I do, though, have a picture up on the other computer of her chubby little face and her chubby little legs and arms poking out of a cute two piece swimsuit; but I don't know how to put pictures on the blog yet.
I put that in about Marianne because I've gotten some flak for not including her on this blog when I write about Sam and Jas. But, duh, do the math! Marianne wasn't born til 1960 or so. And thus far I've mostly written about stuff that happened in the 1950's. Also, by the early 1960's Mom was plenty wise concerning our ways with toys and windows and bikes and pets and first generation TV remote controls and swivelling easy chairs and other things.
Mom would never have let Me and Sam and Jas out of her sight with something as fragile as a one or two or three or four or five year old. As a result I was too old by the time Marianne became available to participate in interesting events out of sight of Mom to remember her as a participant in many interesting stories, although there are a few. There is, for instance, the interplay of Jippon and Lion-Lion. I haven't gotten around to writing about that yet even though Jas and Sam and I were talking about Lion-Lion just the other week. We were wondering where he is, something we periodically do. We know where Jippon is, but we don't know where Lion-Lion is.
But I have digressed. . .
August is supposed to be hot. It was always really hot when I was a kid, and it was always hot before this year. And just to prove I can do investigative journalism I asked the lily lady the other day if she ever remembers an August as cool as this one, and she can't remember one either. The lily lady has been growing daylillies up there above Fairview Village since back when I first commuted to Fort Washington 33 years ago. Her gardens looked old then, and she looked old then. She has to be twenty, maybe even thirty, years older than me. She's so old I'm amazed each time I stop to look over her garden and find her still alive to answer her door.
So this is not just me. The lily lady said this is the coolest August she ever remembers. So where is all this global warming I've been hearing about?
I know it's been unusual because I haven't been in Sam and Deb's pool at all in August. Every other year since he and Deb got the pool I've found occasion to be up there floating around at least once or twice each August. We simply haven't had any strings of the 90 plus degree days and warm nights it takes to get that pool up to the 80 or so degree temperature which has become my minimum required comfort level.
Back in the old days I would happily go into the ocean down in North Carolina when the water temp was in the mid 70's. And back in the really old days I would inch into the ocean in Stone Harbor or Avalon even if the water temp was down in the high 60's or low 70's. Back even further, back way deep into the mists of time, I remember me and Sam and Jas spending long periods in the surf at Atlantic City unless the water was so cold your arches and ankles hurt from standing in it. But that was the ocean, and the ocean is different from a pool. A pool should be comfortable.
Mom and Pop only took us down the shore one or two days per summer back in those really, really, old days, so we approached the beach and the ocean with a certain amount of determination. We were singleminded in getting our full quota, and then some, of sand and surf and sunburn on those days no matter the cost in pain. And there was some pain, for back then before people knew about skin cancer we went to the beach without an umbrella. When Mom slathered the Coppertone of that era on us she was basting us like turkeys rather than swaddling us in any protection.
Me and Jas used to get moderate sunburns on our noses, shoulders and insteps, but Sam, lighter skinned, used to get as red as a lobster. You think I'm kidding, but him and Jas know I'm not. It's surprising he never got sun poisoning.
Marianne, after she arrived to go to the shore with us, spent most of such days in her portable playpen covered with a beach towel like a bird in a cage, so I don't remember her ever getting sunburned. I do, though, have a picture up on the other computer of her chubby little face and her chubby little legs and arms poking out of a cute two piece swimsuit; but I don't know how to put pictures on the blog yet.
I put that in about Marianne because I've gotten some flak for not including her on this blog when I write about Sam and Jas. But, duh, do the math! Marianne wasn't born til 1960 or so. And thus far I've mostly written about stuff that happened in the 1950's. Also, by the early 1960's Mom was plenty wise concerning our ways with toys and windows and bikes and pets and first generation TV remote controls and swivelling easy chairs and other things.
Mom would never have let Me and Sam and Jas out of her sight with something as fragile as a one or two or three or four or five year old. As a result I was too old by the time Marianne became available to participate in interesting events out of sight of Mom to remember her as a participant in many interesting stories, although there are a few. There is, for instance, the interplay of Jippon and Lion-Lion. I haven't gotten around to writing about that yet even though Jas and Sam and I were talking about Lion-Lion just the other week. We were wondering where he is, something we periodically do. We know where Jippon is, but we don't know where Lion-Lion is.
But I have digressed. . .
August is supposed to be hot. It was always really hot when I was a kid, and it was always hot before this year. And just to prove I can do investigative journalism I asked the lily lady the other day if she ever remembers an August as cool as this one, and she can't remember one either. The lily lady has been growing daylillies up there above Fairview Village since back when I first commuted to Fort Washington 33 years ago. Her gardens looked old then, and she looked old then. She has to be twenty, maybe even thirty, years older than me. She's so old I'm amazed each time I stop to look over her garden and find her still alive to answer her door.
So this is not just me. The lily lady said this is the coolest August she ever remembers. So where is all this global warming I've been hearing about?
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