The man knew his stuff all right

Winter isn’t officially here yet, but Mid-Michigan is already under snow and experiencing temperatures hovering around the freezing mark.

By the way, do you know why Mr. Fahrenheit’s “freezing” is 32 degrees instead of zero? Because his zero degrees is the temperature at which salt water freezes.  Just a little trivia.

Okay, back to it’s cold outside. It is also cold inside. Earlier my wife got up out of her recliner, walked over to the wall with the thermostat on it, and leaned over to give it a good look.

“Are you cold?” asked I.

“Yes,” she replied, “but I shouldn’t be. It says it’s 75!”

“And what would Uncle Frank say about that?”

My father’s older brother was in the heating and air conditioning business. He frequently got calls in the middle of the night from someone wanting him to come over right away to fix their furnace because even though their thermostat was set to 72, it was cold in their house. He said he wished thermostats didn’t have numbers, that they were basically meaningless.

“Well, what would Uncle Frank say?” I prompted.

“Don’t worry about the number.”

“And?”

“If you’re cold, turn it up.”

“Exactly right.”

She didn’t, though. Instead she took one of her comfy afghans and curled up under it. Thanks anyway, Uncle Frank.

Bless me father, for I am sick

Sometimes two distinct and somewhat disjunct things will come together in my mind and form an odd sort of juxtaposition that I find interesting or, as in today’s example, ironic at least.

One of the things is that a few weeks ago we replaced both the toilets in our house.

The other is that because the posture of a person kneeling in front of and vomiting into a toilet resembles a supplicant at prayer, it is sometimes (especially if overconsumption of alcohol is involved) referred to colloquially as “praying to the porcelain god.”

What I noticed today was the brand name of the new toilet seats.

I should have said "None"

When I was in college in Wisconsin back in ’65, it happened that right after my birthday at the beginning of November, I started getting sick. At first I thought maybe it was just too much birthday cake or something, but in a few days it developed into a serious stomach ache and then into abdominal pain.

Late one evening my roommate came into our dorm room to find me doubled over and raised the alarm. Eventually our house mother and all the resident assistants were summoned, and it was decided I needed to go to a hospital. Luckily, St. Michael’s was right across the street.

At least four people escorted me over to the hospital where I was deposited into a wheel chair and pushed into the emergency room. A clerk hurriedly quizzed me for personal information -- name, address, birth date, religion, next of kin, insurance, allergies, all that stuff. Then I was whisked away to where nurses took blood and inserted an IV and a doctor poked and prodded.

Everyone thought it was appendicitis, but no test or procedure they tried would confirm it. They decided to wait and see but were afraid to send me back to the dorm, so I was admitted.

The next morning a distinguished-looking gentleman wearing a conservative suit and tie walked into my room and stood at the foot of the bed. He looked as if he wanted me to say something, but I didn't know what, so I just looked back at him.

“You don’t know who I am, do you?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Should I?”

“Well, you would if you’d been to church.”

Oops. The local Methodist minister visiting all the patients who listed "Methodist” on the admitting form.

He promised not to tell my mom.

Sur-PRIZE! Sur-PRIZE! Sur-PRIZE!

There was this boss I had once whom I didn’t like. Well, I’ve had quite a few bosses I didn’t like, really, but I’m thinking of one guy in particular.  Joe Leta, his name was, and I don’t think he liked me very much either.

He never struck me as particularly religious. In the three years I worked with him I never heard him talk about religion or God or Jesus or even mention anything about going to services or involving himself in activities at a church. That’s why I was so surprised by what he said to me as he was leaving the office one afternoon.

He stopped halfway out the door, turned to me and said, “The Lord be with you.”

To which I immediately responded, “And with thy spirit.”

If his words surprised me, I shocked the hell out of myself. I hadn’t voluntarily set foot in a church in 15 years, and yet that response popped right out of my mouth all by itself.

I guess it’s true – you can take the girl out of the Methodist Church, but you can’t take the Methodist Church …

True bread from heaven

When I lived in west-central Illinois in the mid 1970’s, I discovered on the shelves of our local Kroger store Rosen’s Light Jewish Rye Bread, with caraway seeds, thin sliced. It was so tasty, it immediately became my favorite bread, ever.

How good was it? Well, let me tell you about the time I hosted a cook-out for a lot of people on the big lawn in front of my apartment building. As it sometimes happens, we ran out of hot dog buns.  While someone made a quick run to a store, I went inside and brought out a loaf of Rosen’s rye which I left on the table next to the grill in case someone couldn’t wait for the replacement buns to arrive.

My attention was diverted to something else for a few minutes, but when I returned to where the hot dogs and hamburgers were being grilled, I found two of our party guests standing there eating the rye bread, plain, all by itself.  That’s how good that bread is.

Continuing to live in the Midwest, I always found Rosen’s bread in local Kroger stores, but then about ten years ago, Kroger began carrying some counterfeit brand called “Private Selection,” but it was so much like my favorite that I was sure Rosen’s was the bakery that produced it for them under private label.

Then earlier this year, I suddenly couldn’t find that rye at my local Kroger, nor any other Kroger that I went to or called on the phone. In response to my inquiries I was told that Kroger regional management in Detroit had decided to discontinue carrying that rye bread. No amount of complaining or cajoling or threatening that office moved them to restore my favorite rye bread to the shelves.

What was I supposed to do without my favorite bread that I'd been consuming for more than forty years? With what was I now supposed to eat with potato soup? What could I toast that wouldn’t be an insult to my eggs? Could I even think of making a braunschweiger sandwich on some other bread?

Finally I called Rosen’s headquarters in Chicago and asked them to tell me the nearest place I could buy their products. I said I was willing to drive two to four hours to a store that sold their wonderful rye. I was told that the closest place to me is a Jewel-Osco grocery store in Chesterton, Indiana.  I saw a day trip in my future.

But then, through the miracle of UPS and a loving wife, today there arrived on my doorstep a large box containing six loaves of Rosen’s Light Jewish Rye Bread, with caraway seeds, thin sliced, directly from their bakery in Cudahy, Wisconsin. Because the shipping cost more than the total cost of the bread, those loaves are worth about $6.00 each.

But a sandwich of braunschweiger on rye (that is, Rosen’s Light Jewish Rye Bread, with caraway seeds, thin sliced) for my lunch today – and the promise of more of those to come – proves the value of those loaves is priceless.

Thank you, JB.

(Potato soup tomorrow night.)

A Name by Any Other Rose

I just saw a thing on Facebook where somebody wanted suggestions for the name of her new tenor ukulele. I know there are people who name everything, and I know some of those people. I am married to one.

My wife named the riding mower Chewy, the push-mower was Nibble. There’s also Swishy the washing machine and Fluffy the dryer. In the garage we have Frosty, the big freezer, and our old refrigerator, Fridgie. (The fridge in the kitchen is Icy.)

She christens cars almost the minute she drives away from the showroom. We’ve had too many between us to list all their names here, but our current ride, a Chevy Equinox, is Belle. She is blue. (Get it?)

I never named any of my musical instruments, of which I have had dozens in my life, but this summer I rediscovered the ukulele, bought a couple new ones, and suddenly – they all have names.

What is it about the ukulele that makes people want to name them, I wonder. Maybe it’s because they’re little and cute and you cuddle them when you play.

Well, whatever the reason, I must now report that I have four ukuleles – a Martin soprano, a Kumalae soprano (that my friend Larry gave me), a Favilla baritone uke, and a Luna concert ukulele which are named, respectively, Marty, Larry, Barry, and LunaTunes.

And I don’t care who knows it.

Been there, seen that

I've been thinking about future travel plans and where I’d like to go and what I’d like to see. I freely admit that I am a sight-seer. I know it is considered unsophisticated and banal and downright common to like to see sights, but that’s why they’re there, isn’t it? To be seen.

Some of my favorite tourist things are historical, like Civil War battle fields or places where Presidents from other centuries were born or lived or got shot or whatever.  Museums are good because there’s lots to see in one place.

There are some sights that are worth seeing but once you have, you're done. Mount Rushmore is one of those. You drive a long way to get there, pay to park, walk a long way to the visitors’ center, and finally you look up and – there they are – four faces carved in the side of a mountain. “Okay, what’d’ya wanna do now?”

Plymouth Rock is another one (“Yup, there it is all right.”) and so is Niagara Falls (which someone once described to me as the second greatest disappointment in the life of a new bride). “Oh, look! Water falling over a cliff.”  Got it.

Not all natural wonders bore me. The Blue Grotto, a sea cave on the cost of Capri in Italy, was very cool. Here’s how I described it at the time:

”Arriving on the Isle of Capri, we took a motor boat to the Blue Grotto, where we transferred to row boats (four people to each) to go inside the cave. You have to lay down almost in the boat to get into the narrow little mouth of the cave. When the tide is up, you can't get in at all. Inside the water is bright azure blue as if illuminated artificially, but, of course, it isn't. The guys rowing the boats sang most of the time inside the cave.”

There was also one special moment I will never forget. My friend Marcy and I ended up in different boats, and at one point when her rowboat and mine were fairly close, she looked at me, put her palms up and shrugged her shoulders as if to say “What’s the big deal?”

I called out, “Take your sunglasses off.” She did, and then she said, “Oh, wow!”

As Much As I Hate To Admit It

I have no use for Colin Kaepernick who is, among other things, a male chauvinist pig, but I am on his side with regard to his  protest during the playing of the national anthem. If the First Amendment grants citizens the right to burn an American flag in protest, then it ought to permit a person to protest by taking a knee during the playing of "The Star Spangled Banner."

I have written on the topic of disrespecting the national anthem in a previous posting (see "Shame on You," from January 22, 2012), and I include a few pertinent sentences here.

In my youth (and yes, that was many decades ago) when the anthem was performed before a sporting event, spectators stood, removed hats, put hands over hearts, and even if they didn't sing along, they did face the flag, and even if they weren't exactly solemn, they were at least quiet for the duration. When it was over, they applauded and cheered, not for the performance but for the anthem and the republic for which it stands.

Over the years, sports fans have started clapping and cheering closer to the start of the song than the end of it, until at some events they carried on clapping and yelling and making noise throughout. As time goes on, fewer and fewer folks actually sing, stand, remove hats, and put hands over hearts, or for that matter, even pay any attention to the anthem at all.

An athlete who kneels, and remains quiet and still during the performance, shows more respect for "The Star Spangled Banner" than the guys drinking beer and yucking it up with their pals while the anthem is performed.

She said, he said

A bird feeder hung on a shepherd’s hook attached to the deck of a house, about three feet above the wooden railing.

A dove flew near the feeder, then lit on the railing below it. She looked up at it for several moments, then decided to take a crack at getting some of the tasty seeds inside. She flew upward, flapping her wings hard, hovering unsteadily trying to land on the little perch. It was just too small.

Disappointed, she alit on the railing again. Her boyfriend flew in just then to join her.

“I can’t get into that bird feeder,” she complained.

“I’ve told you before,” he said. “We can’t use this one.”

“But I’m hungry,” the girl dove said.

“I know. We’ll have to try somewhere else.” He flew off into a nearby tree.

“Look! Look!” she cried. “That little sparrow is eating the seed!”

Her pal returned to check it out, and sure enough, a small bird sat on the perch and pecked at the scrummy treats inside. He dropped a steady stream of emptied hulls as he chewed, causing the doves to moan.

They discussed the matter again. “Why don’t you try?” the girl dove asked. “You’re so good at things like this.”

Flattered, the boy dove took off, flying up high, scaring away the sparrow, but failing to get his feet on the small perch. Instead he went up and landed on the top of the crook, striking a pose.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” the girl dove said, turning away. He flew down, confronting her with a steady gaze. They talked the matter over for another few moments, then flew off in the direction of the house next door.

Or at least, that’s what I saw from the kitchen window last evening while I was washing the dishes.

I'm not going to sell my guitar after all

The first guitar I ever saw was in my grandparents’ basement. It had belonged to my uncle who died in World War II and had probably not been touched after he left for the army. I found it one day when I was playing down there, and although I was only about four or five years old, I managed somehow to prop the dusty old thing up on a chair. I remember standing there brushing one finger across the strings and thinking how cool it would be if I could actually play it. Completely out of tune, possibly with strings missing, it must have sounded dreadful, but I was enthralled. Playing the guitar was a little wish that I kept in the back of my mind for years.

In the sixth grade, I met a girl named Chrissie Sherman who was way too cool -- smart, popular, athletic, good looking – everything I wasn't but wanted to be. I wanted, in fact, to be just like her in every way. Then somebody told me that Chrissie Sherman played the guitar. That put me over the top.

Despite my parents having strained the family budget to buy a piano and give me lessons, I started asking for a guitar. As always in such circumstances, my mother said, “Well, you save your money, and when you have enough, you can buy one.” It was her way of approving a scheme without committing to pay for it.

I started saving every penny I could, mostly from my allowance, and in a year or so I took myself into our local Olsen’s Musicland and announced I had come to buy a guitar.

Mr. Olsen asked me how much I had to spend, and when I told him proudly that I had $8.50, he said that a guitar would cost about three times that much. A dream crushed! At that rate, I’d never be able to save enough to buy a guitar and be like Chrissie Sherman.

Aware of my disappointment, Mr. Olsen said, “I do have a ukulele that costs $8.50. How about that instead?”

Assuming that any stringed instrument with frets was close enough, I bought the little Harmony uke and took it home.

Armed with a “Ukulele Ike” book Mr. Olsen had thrown in, I managed to get the thing tuned. The songs in the book, however, gave me melody and words and chords, but what I knew about playing music on the piano did not translate. And it made my fingers sore.  After a couple days, I put the thing in the closet and left it there.

I came across the ukulele a couple years later, and one evening when I was supposed to be doing my Latin homework, I took another crack at it, and this time it made sense. I was to strum the chords to accompany myself as I sang the tune. Duh.

I had a lot of fun playing that little ukulele. When I was in high school, my folks bought me a baritone uke for Christmas. It was 1962, and guitar-playing folk singers were all the rage. A baritone ukulele is just like a guitar that's missing two strings, so I had no trouble learning to play the guitar too, always somebody else's. In fact, I carried on playing borrowed guitars until 1967 when I finally bought one of my own.

One afternoon in the early 1970’s while I was sitting alone playing my guitar, it hit me for the first time that here was a dream that had actually come true. I remembered how often and how hard I had wished that I could play the guitar, and here I was doing it, and doing it pretty well.

I guess I owe it all to Chrissie Sherman, who, I found out later, did not and never had played the guitar at all.

What chamber pot?

It was pointed out to me today that I haven’t posted anything in this here blog thing for several weeks. When no topic came immediately to mind, I consulted a Word document I keep on my hard drive entitled “blog ideas.” That’s where I jot down a few words to remind myself of subjects I might want to write about.

When I opened the document, I saw this on the first line:

Defenestrate – why?

Well, why, indeed?  Why do we need a word that describes something so specific? (In case you’ve forgotten, it means to throw something or somebody out a window.)

We don’t have a word that means to save the pasta water when we drain the spaghetti, nor a word that means to put food in the dog’s dish, so why do we need a word that means to throw something out a window?

Could I use it in a sentence? Sure. “The Senator wants the bill to be defenestrated.” Or how about, “The defenestration of chamber pots is prohibited.”

Or, for a snappy come-back, there’s always, “Oh, go defenestrate yourself!”

A Royal Leader's Loyal Readers

Don’t be fooled by today’s title – it has nothing to do with anything.

About three weeks ago I signed up to receive daily emails from Merriam-Webster (as in, Dictionary) in which they send me their Word of the Day. So far there have been two words I’d never heard of, both of which I promptly forgot, and one word that was familiar but I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. I’ve forgotten that one too. Obviously, daily vocabulary injections are lost on me.

Anyway, what’s more fun are links in the email that lead to articles on M-W’s webpage that deal with words and word usage, and language in general. It was there that I discovered some new words that I liked.

One that I didn’t know even needed to have a word to mean what it means is acnestis, which is the name of the place in the middle of your back that is just out of reach so that it is impossible to scratch there if it itches without assistance or equipment.

Another very cool word is biblioklept, meaning someone who steals books. “Book thief” pales in comparison, doesn’t it?

I also liked agelast, which is somebody who never laughs. If you know somebody like that, don't take it lightly. Being an agelast is no laughing matter.

Pick your poison

Playwright Lillian Hellman once said that if you want to know how people will feel about you when you are dead, just go to Europe for a year. When you come back you’ll see how many people didn’t even notice you were gone.

Another way to learn what people think about you is to listen to the innocent voices of their children.

Whenever I visited my brother and his family, I liked to take a quick trip to a grocery store to pick up a loaf of plain old white bread for myself. I never cared for the kind my health-conscious relations always kept on hand, those multi-whole-grain loaves that resemble matted kitty litter.

One day when preparing lunch, my sister-in-law asked my five-year-old niece what kind of bread she wanted for her sandwich. The little girl replied, “I want some of Auntie Jan’s decadent white bread.”

So, how do you really feel about it?

A Family Story

Yesterday, a minor yet nevertheless noteworthy event occurred that has set me to thinking about my great-grandparents, Turner and Anna Hefley, whom I’ve written about before (see in particular “The Honey-Do List,” December 12, 2016).

William Turner Hefley, a 22-year-old coal miner, and 19-year-old Anna Isabelle Conley were married in 1891 and went to housekeeping, as they used to say, in Hillsboro, Illinois. By 1906, Anna had borne five daughters, of whom the third, Blanche Alberta, was my mother’s mother. (A son would finally arrive in 1915.)

By all accounts, Turner was a hard-working, conscientious fellow, well respected in the community. Although never well to do, he provided adequately for his family, and Anna managed the household well.

A good seamstress, she saved money by making clothes for the children, but she longed for a sewing machine to make the work easier and go more quickly. Turner thought $69.95 was too much to spend on a contraption, and although she argued that it would save money in the long run, he would not agree to its purchase.

Then one evening as he was walking home from work with his months’ wages in his pocket, Turner passed by the music store. On display in its window was a beautiful upright piano of dark, polished wood. He stood gazing at it, imagining his house being filled with music, his daughters taking lessons and becoming accomplished young ladies who could play and sing.

With hardly a thought, he went into the store and bought the piano, then rounded up some pals to help him get it delivered to his house where he installed it in a prominent place in the parlor.

The next day, her handbag weighed down with the coins she had squirreled away from her household allowance, Anna went to the dry goods store and bought a brand-new 1906 Singer sewing machine.

The last time I saw that piano was at my grandmother’s house in Litchfield, Illinois, in 1968.

The last time I saw that old Singer sewing machine was yesterday when my niece and her husband hauled it out of my basement and loaded it into their van. It has passed to the next generation, the fifth to own it and, I hope, to remember its provenance.

Does almost Ph.D. in musicology count?

When I have Facebook open on my PC, there are various temptations off to the right of the main postings -- games to play, headlines, today’s baseball games. I often don’t even see them, but something caught my eye yesterday – an image that looked like part of a cartoon, and it belonged to a group called Music Teachers. I like musical jokes, so I thought I’d click on it and see if I could look at the whole image.

I landed on their group page and was disappointed to see that even less of the drawing is visible. An introductory blurb welcomed all but warned that this was a closed (but not private) group whose membership “is limited to Private, Public, and Studio Teachers” over 18. There were three questions for me to answer, and if they had any doubt about me, my eligibility would probably depend on what the admins were able to glean about my musical background from my Facebook profile.

Well, thought I, let’s just see. I clicked on the Join Group button and tackled the first question:

In what setting do/did you currently or formerly teach music? If you are not a teacher, please answer the next question.  

I wrote: Private teacher of piano and guitar; Graduate Teaching Assistant teaching freshman sight-singing and ear-training.

That’s pretty good, isn't it? But, since I no longer teach, I had to go on to the next question:

If you are not currently a music teacher, how do you plan to benefit?

Um.  Well, I’d like to see the entirety of that cartoon, which might make me smile, or even laugh, which would increase my overall general disposition and health.

Ooh, well now, I don’t know – inadequate, probably.

Okay, how about – I could have the satisfaction of amusing people by telling stories, like the one about my guitar student Walter who wouldn’t stop looking at his watch, which is why even 40 years later, when I’m with someone who looks at their wristwatch, I automatically say, “Quit looking at your watch, Walter.”

What more could they want besides a former music major with some good stories to tell?

Well, we’ll never know now. I left the page, too afraid of failure even to try. I don't take rejection well. That cartoon might not have been funny anyway.

There was a third box, in which I was to write any number larger than 18, to show that I am not a robot. I doubt any self-respecting robot would try to join that bunch.

A walk or hit batsman doesn't count either

There's an outfit called Binny's Beverage Depot that sponsors some Chicago sports broadcasts. They have dozens of locations in and around Chicago, and we actually stopped at one last year on our way home from Iowa. I’ve visited a few liquor stores in my time, but I’ve never seen so much liquor, wine, and beer in one place in my life, so they're advertising catchphrase is apt -- If you can't find it at Binny's, it's probably not worth drinkin'.

For the last few years Binny’s has sponsored Chicago Cubs baseball, and one of their gimmicks is to donate $100 to Cubs Charities every time the Cubs first batter leads the game off with a hit. I say gimmick because it sounds a lot better than it is. They are hoping you don’t notice that even if every lead-off man in every one of the Cubs’ 81 home games gets a hit, they’d only have to fork over $8,100, and I think a place with 38 locations and a gazillion bottles of booze could do better than that.

But it’s not  going to cost them anywhere near that much, since even a really good lead-off hitter (according to MLB stats) starts the game with a hit only 39.8% of the time. At that rate there would be no more than 32 lead-off hits in Wrigley Field, costing Binny’s a mere $3,200.

I think you need to generous up a little, Binny.

Keep 'em coming.

Okay, so here I am, one of, if not the most fundamentally rotten person on the face of the earth. I am constantly grouchy, I take advantage of others, I piss people off on purpose, I kick dogs, I scare little children, and I wish everybody else on this planet would leave me alone and/or drop dead.

Then one day while logged in to Facebook on my tablet, I see a posting by some do-gooder that shows a pretty picture of a sunset, or a field with butterflies, or some such equally wholesome image over which in large, fancy lettering is superimposed some cocked-up bit of moralizing sophistry, such as, “He who plants kindness gathers love."

And all at once, without warning, out of the blue, in a sudden a fit of self-awareness, I realize the awful truth -- I am not kind.

So I instantly stop being a bitch and become a kind person for the rest of my life.

Because I read that homey little homily on Facebook.

Right.

Dorm Food

Today’s episode of “The Pioneer Woman” was all about what Ree Drummond called “dorm food.” What she meant by that was how your average college student could create meals and snacks right in his or her very own dorm room, assuming that dorm room comes with a refrigerator and a microwave oven.

When I was a college student living in a dormitory (in 1965), “dorm food” meant the cafeteria fare they slapped onto our trays as we passed down the chow line in the dining hall. We had special names for some of the things we were served, like Grilled Grease and Hockey Puck on a Bun. There was also a particularly offensive stew we called Gravy Train.

There was no fridge and no nuker in my dorm room -- no way to keep anything cold, and if you wanted hot water, you either had to settle for what came out of the hot-water tap in the community bathroom down the hall, or take a chance of electrocuting yourself with one of those little immersion water heaters.

My “dorm food” consisted of a jar of peanut butter and a box of saltines. In winter I could provide a quick breakfast for myself by putting one package from a box of Pop-Tarts on the radiator while I got showered and dressed, which I would then eat on my way to class.

Now who's a Pioneer Woman?

Mystery Solved

On a Sunday six years ago (January 15, 2012) I posted comments about the names of some of my grade-school teachers. You can go back and read the whole thing if you like, but the part I want to follow up on is this:

And then there is the mystery of Miss Lauschke.  She was my first-grade teacher, and she left us for a week or so toward the end of the school year to get married. When she came back, she told us she had a new name, so it was inappropriate for us to call her Miss Lauschke and incorrect to call her Mrs. Lauschke, but she was afraid her new last name would be hard for us to pronounce (like Lauschke was a bargain?) and since there was only a week or so left of school, she decided we could just call her Mrs. Anna.  I assumed at the time and have believed ever since that Anna was her first name.

Then today, nearly 60 years later, I see on that report card, where it says Name of Teacher, she has written Corinne Lauschke.

So, who the hell was Anna? 

Well, I now have the whole story, and I blame my earlier mistake on having been six years old at the time. It seems I misunderstood what she told us about her new name and also what her new name was.

Through the miracle my subscription to ancestry.com, I have discovered that Corinne Lauschke was married on April 25, 1953, to one Paul Anda.

She told us to call her Mrs. Anda, not Mrs. Anna.

I should go back and check those report cards to see what grades I got in “listens well.”

That's a good name for it.

It looks like spring is finally going to come to Michigan, which opens the door to many possibilities, not the least of which is the opportunity to enjoy outings that involve driving around more or less aimlessly on back roads to see what we can see. For a detailed description of this activity, see my posting entitled "Sploring" of August 20, 2010.

As I said in that post, we often add scratch-off lottery tickets when sploring, which requires stopping at mom-and-pop stores to buy the tickets and trading in the winners and/or buying more tickets at the next little store.

On one such occasion we ended up mostly north and west our home base, and quite a long way off. We stopped at a convenience store that appeared to be on the outskirts of a town, but we didn't know which one. I waited in the car while my wife went into the store to deal with the lottery tickets. Parked next to me was a pickup truck with an older gentleman at the wheel whose companion had also gone into the store.

Both our windows were down, so I leaned my head out and said to him, "Excuse me. Can you tell me what town this is?"

"This is Lakeview," he said.

I admit I do have a rather shameless tendency to be -- well, a smart ass, and before I could stop myself, I said mildly, "Oh, I'll bet you can see the lake from here."

"Oh, no," he said earnestly, "not from here.  But from town you can."

Good to know. Thank you, sir.

Please? Pretty please?

One time my mother and I were watching a Cubs game on television. When a player made the sign of the cross before stepping into the batter’s box, she said, “Do you think he’s praying for a home run, or that the pitcher doesn’t bean him with the ball?” Maybe both, is what I thought.

Back then only a player who crossed himself revealed he was asking for favors from a higher power.  Nowadays you might see a pitcher remove his cap and bow his head – and sometimes go down on one knee – before taking the mound. Praying he throws lots of strikes, maybe?

And batters, even without an obvious pre-bat prayer, will raise their eyes and point to heaven above when they arrive safely at a base or cross home plate. So, again, is he saying, “Thanks for the base hit,” or is he giving thanks that he didn’t break his arm sliding head-first into the bag?

It is temping to wonder if God takes sides. Can the MLB standings be a reflection of divine intervention?

Well, I kind of doubt it, actually. I don’t think a merciful supreme being could ignore the prayers of Cubs fans for a hundred years before assisting them in winning the 2016 World Series.

Although – the turning point in the Cubs' fortunes came after that 17-minute delay before the start of the 10th inning of Game 7, caused by the sky opening and a deluge falling upon Cleveland.

Hmm.

Reality Check

My mother was in charge of the household budget, and one time she got to thinking it would be nice if there was just a little more money left over after the bills were paid. She thought maybe getting the monthly house payment lowered might help, so she called the bank that held the mortgage. She was connected to a loan office who told her that it might be  possible to refinance the loan.

“I’d like to understand your situation,” he said.  “Are you carrying large balances on credit cards?”

“No, we don’t have any credit cards.”

“Are you making payments for a lot of things you bought on credit?"

“Just our car,” she said.

“Are you behind on any payments?”

“No.”

“Do you have a lot of medical bills?”

“No.”

“Do you have kids in college?”

“No.”

Sounding a little irked, he said “Well, what’s your problem, lady?”

“I guess I don’t have one,” she said, then thanked him and hung up.

Very Like Schenectady

I’ve lately been mulling over figures of speech, of which there are myriad types. The ones most of us remember from our high school English classes are the very common simile and metaphor.

The distinction is the presence or absence of comparison words like “like” or “as” since simile says one thing is similar to another:  The sun was like a big orange ball.

Metaphor tells us one thing actually is another: The sun was a big orange ball.

Where I started to bog down in my mulling was in the various subspecies of metaphor, two of the most common of which are metonymy and synecdoche.

A metonym is a word or phrase that substitutes for another, as in, “There was no comment from the White House,” where the building stands in for the President.

On the other hand, a synecdoche represents something by one characteristic of it, such as calling a car “wheels.”  One source I consulted gave as an example of synecdoche the use of “long hair” for hippie.

That brings me to my original point, which I admit was a long time coming.  When I was young – well, before the Beatles, anyway – “long hair” didn’t mean hippie, it was associated with classical music, probably because of the longish and often untidy heads of hair seen in portraits of famous composers of the past and one or two eccentric orchestra conductors of the present.

It was that meaning that frequently caused my father to deliver the indirect referential synecdochic locution of, “I think I’ll get a hair cut.  It’s cheaper than a violin.”

(I hope that was worth waiting for.)

What'll you have?

In previous postings, I’ve talked about my adventures with the sidecar, a popular World War I-era cocktail. I was curious when it was mentioned in several episodes of the British series “Upstairs Downstairs,” so I researched it and made one for myself. And liked it. A lot.

The popularity of the drink faded long ago, and I gave up trying to order a one in a restaurant. Only experienced mixologists know how to make a sidecar. Most bartenders, especially wait staff who are pressed into service behind the bar, have never heard of it.

Yesterday I went into our local Outback to buy a gift card for a friend. The hostess directed me to the bar, tended by a very pleasant young woman who, at 3:00 in the afternoon, had no other customers. She was ringing up the sale, and just on a whim, I asked, "Do you know how to make a sidecar?"

She stopped what she was doing, looked off into space, and after a significant pause, said doubtfully, “Do you mean, like for a motorcycle?”

Never mind. Thanks anyway.

Move over, Dolly Parton

What do I have in common with the Titanic, Gertrude Ederle’s swim across the English Channel, and Betty Grable’s legs?

Insurance by Lloyd’s of London, that’s what.

Lloyd’s is not actually an insurance company. It was started in 1686 by a dude named Edward Lloyd who owned a coffee shop on Tower Street in London. Lots of sailors and ship owners hung out there, and he and some other guys decided they would offer financial backing for maritime enterprises, for a fee, of course. Today Lloyd’s basically comprises syndicates that share the risks for underwriting all manner of things. Much of it is routine, like the policy I just bought to cover the property I inherited from my recently-deceased aunt in Washington state.

But Lloyd’s has gained a reputation for being willing to underwrite all sorts of unusual things, like Dolly Parton’s breasts, David Beckham’s legs, and Tom Jones’ chest hair. They also wrote the first automobile policy in 1904, which at the time seemed pretty strange.

For the record, the legs of Pin-up Girl Betty Grable were insured for $1 million. When Gertrude Ederle came ashore after her swim in 1926, Lloyd’s forked over £1,863. And the Titanic cost them $10 million, which was a bundle in 1912.

I was pretty excited to learn that my aunt had also left me her shares in 21st Century Fox, the Murdoch mass media company. I started thinking about how I would spend my share of the profits. They brought in $28.5 billion last year.

Then among her papers I found the stubs from the dividend checks. Last year her 21st Century Fox stock earned her $5.76.

Oh, well. Maybe I'm just not ready for show biz.

Like paying the doctor with a chicken?

Since the domicile of my recently-deceased aunt is in Washington State and I am in Michigan, I have hired an attorney out there to take care of the basic legal matters relating to her will and probate and such like.  I was lucky to find a very nice man, Michael by name, who is retired now but still takes cases, especially for the elderly, partly to keep busy but mostly just to help people out. He does some pro bono work, but even for paying customers like me, his hourly rate is low.

We talked on the phone a couple days ago. I had several questions for him, and before we concluded the call, he wanted to make sure I understood that he does not bill clients for the time spent talking on the telephone. He stressed that I should feel free to call him any time I needed legal advice about my aunt’s estate.

Most lawyers bill a client for every minute they spend even thinking about their case. This guy is unique, and I told him so.

He said people are usually surprised, and he told me about one man for whom he handled a legal matter. The man stopped by Michael’s house with some papers, and they spent the better part of an hour talking about the case, among other things. When he was preparing to leave, he asked, “What do I owe you for today?”  He was surprised when Michael said he owed nothing. “I don’t charge for conversations we have at my kitchen table drinking coffee,” he told him.

This man, who had what Michael called a “hobby farm,” knew the lawyer was an avid gardener, so by way of thanks, he stopped by Michael’s house the next day with three bushel baskets of cow manure for his garden.

“I can’t think of anything more appropriate,” Michael said, “than a lawyer being paid with bull shit.”

In vino veritas

My wife doesn’t often drink anything but Diet Coke, but we ate out last night and she enjoyed a glass of wine with her dinner. She said she wished she would remember to order it more often.

Wine was not part of my family's life. My first experience with wine came when I was about 14 years old and some people who came to our house for dinner brought a bottle of Manischewitz Concord Grape. I was allowed a sip, and I decided that if that’s what wine tasted like, I didn’t want any part of it.

Because of that I abstained from drinking wine for a lot of years, until I discovered there were plenty of wines out there that taste way better than Manischewitz. That was in the mid-1970’s when you could pick up some cheap but acceptable vino from wineries like Gallo or Carlo Rossi for about $1.50 a bottle.

To earn extra money when I was in graduate school, I gave guitar lessons at the local music store on Saturday mornings. The store owner didn't take anything out of the $3 I got for a lesson.  It was just a way for him to lure customers into the store.

Sometimes lessons were paid for a month in advance, sometimes a kid would forget to bring money, and sometimes there were no-shows, so my income varied a lot from week to week. One particular Saturday I had given several lessons, but I finished the day with only $3 in cash.

On the way home, I stopped at a liquor store and bought two bottles of wine with my earnings. While driving home, I suddenly thought, “Well, ain’t that just like your basic drunk -- gets a day’s pay and immediately spends it all on cheap hooch.”

Half A Thousand Origami Cranes

The crane, like the dragon, is a kind of mystical creature in Japanese lore, and there is special significance to folding one thousand of them from paper. Depending on which legend you believe, 1000 paper cranes will get you either a wish granted by the gods or a lifetime of happiness and/or good luck. Some think they all need to be strung together in a garland.

A bride or a newborn baby might be given 1000 paper cranes as a wish for their future, and people will also hang them in their homes as a kind of talisman. It is also sometimes said that these 1000 cranes have to be folded all in one year to be effective.

I’ve been folding paper for a number of years, but I found the crane difficult. About a year ago, I decided that any origamist worth his or her salt ought to be able to fold a decent crane, so I started practicing, and they started to turn out pretty well. I used various types and sizes and colors and prints of paper and scattered them all around the house in places where my wife would find them (stuck in the frame of  the bathroom mirror, in the seat of her recliner, on top of the toaster). She thought they were so pretty and wonderful she actually said to me, “You can leave those all over the house if you want to.”

She has never said whether she regrets saying that.  In any case, I began folding more cranes with an aim to making it to 1000. Unfortunately, I didn’t get them done in a year, but I am halfway there. I folded my 500th crane yesterday. Since I thought it should be special, I made it a gold one.

There are still cranes all around the house in baskets and on shelves, but most of them are in my office in big glass jars. Empty jars await the next 500, and if I can get them done before another year goes by, maybe the gods will grant me half a wish.

I'll get around to gun control later

Last night I read some poems by Judith Viorst, one of my favorite writers. There's one called “If I were in charge of the world,” my favorite line from which is:

“If I were in charge of the world
“A chocolate sundae with whipped cream and nuts would be a vegetable.”

Naturally, that led me to thinking about the state of the world if I was running it, and I concluded that:

If I were in charge of the world, children under 12 would not be permitted in any public place; vodka martinis could be drunk by the gallon without causing intoxication; all blackjack tables in all casinos would deal single-deck pitch for $2 minimum bets; and no person would be admitted to a Walmart store wearing pajama pants.

That’s all I’ve come up with so far, but I’ve only had 24 hours.

A Sad Goodbye

My Aunt Blanche died last month. Making arrangements and dealing with the inevitable things that need to be dealt with has kept me busy, but I'm just going to take the time now to reflect a little on her life and her part in mine.

Memories come flooding in – her taking us kids (my brother and our cousins) to Brookfield Zoo, she and her friend Dorothy taking me with them to hear concerts in Grant Park, she and my friend Marcy going with her to see the Ice Capades. There were her elaborately-decorated Easter eggs, fancily-wrapped Christmas presents, and intricate Christmas tree ornaments made with beads stuck with pins into Styrofoam balls. I also remember how much we both loved poppy seed kolačke, Bohemian bread dumplings, raised glazed donuts, and green olives.

I will never forget the New Year's Eve after everyone else had gone home when she and I crawled under the Christmas tree with a bottle of whiskey and sat there drinking the new year in.

One oddball thing suddenly came to me the other day that I had totally forgotten – we kids sometimes called her Auntie Branches. I don’t know who started that, but I think she kinda liked it.

She was my father's youngest sibling and what they used to call a bonus baby -- one who arrives long after the mother’s child-bearing years were thought to be over. The next youngest child was 11 years old when Blanche was born in 1927. Gently teased by her lady friends about this late pregnancy, my grandmother said, “This baby is going to take care of me in my old age.”

Blanche started taking care of her family, like her sister and brothers before her, by leaving school to get a job.  She worked in a defense plant during the war, and after that spent the next 35 years working as a machine operator in a factory that made power tools.

She never married, and never expressed any regret about that, at least not in my hearing.  She and Dorothy, her close friend and co-worker, took vacations together for over two decades, traveling all over North America by Greyhound bus. It was on those trips that she started collecting salt-and-pepper shakers as souvenirs. She had hundreds of them.

When she was in her mid-30’s, Blanche startled the entire family by taking driving lessons, got a license, and bought a car, a brand-new 1963 Chevrolet Bel Air. Thereafter she and Dorothy and some of their other friends could drive to vacation spots. And, one imagines, bring home lots more salt-and-pepper shakers.

Blanche fulfilled her mother’s prophesy, living with and caring for her mother until she died in 1972 at age 81.

A few years later, Blanche and my widowed father moved in together, and she took care of him until he died in 1978.

Her sister Mae, 18 years her senior, was living in Washington State in 1982 when her husband called Blanche to say he was dying of cancer and asked her to come take care of her sister after he was gone. Mae had had a stroke several years before.

Blanche quit her job, gave up her apartment, sold her furniture and her car, put the rest in storage, and headed out to Washington to take care of yet another relative. After Mae died in 1983, Blanche decided she liked it out there, especially the temperate climate so different from the hot summers and cold, snowy winters of Chicago. Her sister and brother-in-law left her everything, so she was pretty much set for the rest of her life.

I used to tell people my aunt lived in a tree in Washington. In truth, it was a double-wide trailer in the woods on the edge of the Olympic Mountains in an unincorporated wide place in the road called Joyce. For shopping, doctor, or other necessities she could drive the 15 miles to Port Angeles in the big 1980 Chevy van she inherited and drove until it died two years ago.

There were also magnificent sights to be seen within a few short miles of her home, with Olympic National Park to the south and the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the north, and Canada beyond.

Despite needing occasional home-nursing care, Meals on Wheels, and a little help from her friends and the EMTs who arrived when she pushed her help-I’ve-fallen-and-I-can’t-get-up button, Blanche lived there alone until about a week before she died at age 90.

I think I will always smile when I remember her, for her kindness, her sense of fun and adventure, and, especially, for her endearing but hysterical hack of the English language. I posted a story about that in this here blog thing once (see “Mrs. Malaprop, I presume?” from October 16, 2010), so I won’t repeat myself here beyond including what is probably my favorite thing she ever said to me:  even though it's narrow, the cars go down the street two at a breast.

After taking care of everybody else, in the end there was nobody to take care of Blanche Virginia Knez, formerly of Berwyn, lately of Joyce, so she took care of herself for 90 years, and did it quite well.

Rest in peace, Auntie Branches.  I’ll miss you.