Murder, She Reads

The ideal murder mystery is set in one of those small English villages with a ridiculous name, like Chipping Cleghorn, which is dominated by the large manor house on the hill that has been in the same family for generations, possibly since the Conquest, and in which lives the old patriarch of the family, who may or may not be titled, and who may or may not be an invalid and who may or not have just changed his will; his very-much-younger-than-he is second wife; the spineless, stodgy older son, who is taking over the family business or title or property, and his ambitious wife; the ne’er-do-well younger son who has just returned home after a number of years in Canada or South Africa or the Argentine, and the woman he brings with him to whom he may or may not be married and about whom nothing is known; the ingénue, a pretty young great-niece or ward of the patriarch who, by the end of the story, will have fallen in love with the local young doctor; plus the butler, the housekeeper, the housemaids, the cook, the gardener and the chauffeur. Somebody bumps off the old man, and you have to figure out whodunit.

And if it’s written by Agatha Christie, that’s best of all.

That Holiday Again

At one time in my life I summed up my attitude toward Thanksgiving by asking, "Thankful to whom, and for what?"

The first part of the question stemmed from the religious overtones of the holiday, which I find objectionable, and the second part reflected my belief that I didn't have much to be thankful for even if I knew whom to thank.

Well, not any more. Today I give thanks to my partner for allowing me to be in charge of the mashed potatoes for our turkey dinner as well as everything else that is worthwhile in my life.

Thanks, JB. Happy Thanksgiving.

On this date in history

November 22, 1963. It's one of those things. People remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.

I was a senior in high school. I had just finished lunch and was on my way to choir practice. At one point some sort of bottle neck caused the streams of students to come to a brief halt, and I found myself facing a girl I knew only casually.

She was smiling in an agitated sort of way, and she said to me excitedly, "Did you hear Kennedy's been shot?" I shook my head, thinking it was a joke, but before she could deliver the punch line, we both got swept along. I wondered why on earth somebody who hadn't talked to me since the sixth grade would suddenly want to tell me a joke as we passed in the hallway.

Shortly after choir rehearsal began, the principal came over the PA system to announce that the president was dead. Some of the girls wept. Our director asked us to join him in a minute of silent prayer, after which he carried on with the rehearsal.

For the record, I believe it was a conspiracy, Oswald did not act alone, and the Cubans were behind it.

I'll bet that girl has not thought of me once in the last 47 years, and there is no reason why I should remember her either. We were not friends; we basically each knew who the other one was.

But she is linked in my mind and memory with the event of that day . I do remember her. I remember her name. I can see her face.

Equal Time for Mom

Today is my mother’s birthday. Since I mentioned my dad’s birthday last month, I thought I shouldn't let the day go by.

She was born in 1921, which means she would have been 89 today. It’s hard to imagine her as a very old woman because she was only 49 years old when she died.

However, her birth was duly noted on page 4 of the Montgomery News, a weekly newspaper published in Hillsboro, county seat of Montgomery County, Illinois, on November 25, 1921:

Local Notes
Mrs. Ralph Weatherford, who was formerly Miss Blanche Hefley, came home to see her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Turner Hefley, and old Doc Stork played a joke on her by leaving a little girl at Turner’s house, and the little tot was such a handsome “joke” that Ralph and his wife concluded to keep her and name her Elizabeth Anna.

They don’t write birth announcements like that no more. Thank God.

Shall we live lively or long? (And what's wrong with both?)

I used to know a man who wanted very badly to be a wild party animal, but some sort of innate sense of responsibility held him back, at least until the weekend. He even confided to me that he wished a doctor would tell him he had only six months to live, because he could then abandon all pretense and embark upon a non-stop binge of drunken and licentious carousing with no concern for the consequences to his employment, his reputation, or his health.

I suggested he go ahead and do it even without the fatal diagnosis since after a few months of that sort of riotous living, he'd probably be dead anyway.

As far as I know, he never did.

And then there is Miss Hathameyer who has shared with me the dilemma upon the horns of which she now finds herself. Looking ahead to her retirement from the work-a-day world, she admits that her one desire is to become the definitive couch potato. She wants to do absolutely nothing, or as close to nothing as she possibly can, all day, every day. She has heard, however, that people who are completely inactive after retiring do not live as long as those who remain active.

And she wants to live a long time so that she has more years to do absolutely nothing.

She's working on that one and will get back to me. And then I'll get back to you.

inconsistently Neurotic

I have noticed that before I broke my arm, I generally put blog titles in sentence case. Post-fracture, I am trending toward title case.

I dislike inconsistency. However, I wonder if I would appear delightfully eccentric, even madcap, if I never settled on one or the other style.

Whilst pondering this problem, I snacked on a small bag of cheese crackers. In this I was consistent: I picked out and ate all the broken crackers first, saving the whole ones for last. How neurotic is that?

But -- I have a follow-up to the Aunt Blanche blog. Imagine how grown up I feel with a blog follow-up.

With regard to Aunt Blanche, avid reader Kristin M. of Rochester, Minnesota, (yes, my niece) reminded me about her pronunciation of the word license, but I did have to point out to said favorite niece that it wasn't just Aunt Blanche. The entire Knez family -- in fact, the entire Bohemian enclave in which they lived (Berwyn, Cicero) -- apparently lacked the required linguistic aptitude to be able to say it correctly, so that it came out lyce-ness. As in, I have to renew my driver's lyce-ness.

Everybody on my mother's side, on the other hand, could say license correctly but complained of frequent congestion in the bronical tubes.

However, NOBODY -- and I mean not one single person -- on either side of the family was ever caught saying noo-cue-ler for nuclear.

Perhaps that's why none of us was ever elected President.

Something I'll never understand

If you drive around mid-Michigan where I live, you will see these metal boxes here and there along the road. I have always presumed they have something to do with the electric utility since they are often at country intersections that have street lights and/or stop lights. I've seen them near the street in people's yards too, though.

They come in various sizes, but most are about as wide as a washing machine, but not as deep. Those usually have one door. Wider ones often have two doors.

They will have some identifying numbers on them, usually those cheap gold-on-black 3-inch tall self-stick things you peel the backing off of and stick onto your house or mailbox.

Around here they are painted green. The elements transform it into a dull, pale color.

There is nothing about them that is aesthetically appealing.

So, that must be why somebody (the manufacturer, one presumes) has decided they would look better if their doors were covered with what looks like wood-grain contact paper. Not the whole box. Just the front panel.

Who are we kidding here?

Slapping some wood-grain contact paper on the front is not making those boxes any more attractive. Or maybe that's not the point. Maybe this disguise is supposed to fool us into thinking it's a tree stump.

Who comes up with this stuff?

Frankfurter's Weenie Hotdogs, Doggonit

Here are my three favorite ways to eat a hotdog – and these are in no particular order:

The familiar (and arguably definitive) hotdog on a bun.

Next, the hotdog sandwich. This involves bread surrounding one or more hotdogs, which are either split lengthwise and placed between two pieces of bread, or the simpler (one might even say more primitive) version in which you simply roll a piece of bread around the hotdog.

Then there is the perpendicularly-impaled weenie. This is the way I grew up eating hotdogs. You stick your fork right in the middle of it, dip one end in a condiment and take a bite; give the fork a 180° turn, dip the other end and take a bite; repeat until there are no bites left.

Now that my table manners are a little more polished, I have refined this method. I no longer pick up the entire hotdog on my fork but very daintily cut bite-size pieces as I go.

Now, as if the foregoing were not spectacularly spellbinding by itself, the really fascinating thing is that if I eat a hotdog on a bun or with bread, I put mustard on it.* If eating the plain hotdog one bite at a time, I dip it in ketchup.

Ketchup? What is that about? I put ketchup on absolutely nothing. I do not put ketchup on French fries. I do not like ketchup on meatloaf. I don’t even like ketchup very much.

Is the presence or absence of bread as a delivery mechanism the difference? Or is it just a throwback to my childhood?

If I’m really throwing back, then I should stop microwaving hotdogs and boil them in a pan of water on the stove, just like Mother used to do back in the day.

It should not go without saying that hotdogs are among my favorite things to eat. My father used to call them “tube steaks.”

Yes, very droll was he.

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*And occasionally peanut butter, but that is for another time.