Roses are Green and White, Ohio State is Blue

Sometime in the late 1980's I saw a really cool shirt on the clearance rack at T. J. Maxx. It was heavy cotton, maroon in color, and had three-quarter raglan sleeves. There were also three letters, USC, in yellow on the front, but I didn't care. It was a really cool shirt, and it was only $3.

I loved that shirt and wore it a lot.  In fact, I was wearing it a week or so before Christmas in 1987 while doing my holiday shopping at a local mall here in Mid-Michigan. I had my coat open, of course, since it was warm in there, and even though I was doing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary to call attention to myself, I noticed that people I passed were giving me the hairy eyeball. Some looked downright hostile, and I was starting to get rather paranoid.

An idea struck me on the way home, and when I got there, I said to my partner, "Who is Michigan State playing in the Rose Bowl?"

"I think Southern Cal," replied she.

Oops.

Michigan State won that game 20 to 17. In a little over three weeks from now, they will go back to the Rose Bowl for the first time since, having soundly beaten Ohio State last night in the Big Ten Championship game. I am in the market for a Stanford shirt to wear to the mall. After all, as they say in the beer commercials, it's not weird unless it doesn't work.

Go State.

Good Food

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, never my favorite holiday, for a number of reasons. Because of that, I really do not have a lot of memories, happy or otherwise, associated with the holiday, but I do remember one particular Thanksgiving in the late 1960's. The big family Thanksgiving dinner for grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins was to be at our house that year.

My mother planned for two weeks, prepped for one, and cooked for three days. She produced a traditional Thanksgiving feast that was a monument to her skills as cook and hostess. There were many sincere exclamations:  "Oh, Betty! The [turkey/dressing/mashed potatoes/gravy/green bean casserole/dinner rolls/cranberry sauce] is [delicious/fabulous/spectacular]!" But it was Aunt Blanche who stopped the show when she was heard to say, almost as if to herself, "Man, these olives are good."

Aunt Blanche loves green olives, and it was clear that she was thankful my mother had gone to the trouble of opening a jar and putting some on the relish tray.

Date and Time

It's 11/12/13, but that's all I have to say about it.

It snowed yesterday, our first snow of the season, although it left barely a quarter inch of it on the ground.

Another first snow I remember occurred when I was in college in Wisconsin many years ago.  We woke up one November morning to find three inches on the ground, and it was still coming down hard.

When I left the dorm that morning for my first class, I saw a girl who lived across the hall from me out on the lawn in front of the building, no coat or hat or gloves or boots. She was laughing and dancing and twirling, her arms outstretched and her head thrown back to feel the flakes land on her face. She was from Hawaii, and it was the first time she had ever seen snow fall from the sky.

I feel obliged to report that after another three weeks of Wisconsin winter, her delight in seeing snow had pretty much disappeared.

On the face of it

We had lunch out at a local restaurant yesterday, and I became quite fascinated by a group of women at a nearby table. There were nine of them, and the youngest of them was at least 65, and some appeared much older. There was no apparent guest of honor, and I got the idea they go out to lunch together somewhat regularly. I would like to have known how they all knew each other.

Seeing them all together reminded me a story about my grandmother when she was of an age to fit in with that group. She had agreed to watch a neighbor's child after school until her mother came home from work. One afternoon the girl, who was about seven or eight, arrived to find my grandmother getting ready for a little get-together for three or four of her friends. She explained that "the girls" were coming for coffee.

After the last guest had gone, the little girl asked, "So when are the girls coming?"  My grandmother replied, "Those were the girls," to which the kid responded, "But they all had grandma faces."

No Place Like It

When we travel, we realize we are trading the comforts and conveniences of our home and our way of living there for the excitement of seeing and experiencing new things. But I will tell you that after our recent driving trip to the West and Southwest, I can pinpoint exactly what I missed most about home.

We were on the road for 31 days, and our accommodations (not counting a few nights' respite with relatives) ranged in price from $54 to $230 a night (that would be California) and included motels (one each Travelodge and Super 8) and hotels (Hiltons, casino hotels), a bunch of Holiday Inns/Expresses, and one very lovely Candlewood Suite. Some were shabby, some were brand new, all were basically clean (probably), but they all had one thing in common that frustrated and disappointed me at the most fundamental personal level: cheap-ass plastic toilet seats and cheap-ass toilet paper.

I shall not elucidate. But it is good to be home.

My Kind of Celebration

Instead of a party for her retirement this summer, my partner wanted to take a celebratory trip to the Grand Canyon.  We left in the middle of September, traveling by car to the West and Southwest and became avid seers of sights.  There are so many absolutely magnificent things to see in this country.

Of course, by the time we got to the Grand Canyon, the juvenile delinquents who are representing us in Congress had shut down all the national parks, so we couldn't get in.  Never got near it.

As for me, I had always wanted to visit Reno, but we unwittingly arrived on the weekend they were hosting “Street Vibrations” there.  Thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists descended on the area like locusts who choked the life out of everything with their leather and their noise and their gang colors and their endless parade of motorcycles.  I never even got to see Downtown Reno.

We went to Boulder City.  The park that provides the most beautiful scenic view of Lake Mead was closed too, but some of the lake is visible from the road, and we did get to drive across the Hoover Dam.

Before we left for our trip, I gathered 10 dollars in quarters and 50 cents in copper (pre-1982) pennies so that I would be able to avail myself of those machines that squish pennies into souvenirs, to add to my collection.  In the 31 days we were gone, we saw only one such machine, in New Mexico, and it was out of order.

Could we surmise this trip was something of a disappointment?  Well, only here and there.  After all, I did get to see my great (or grand) nephews in Kansas City.  I also gambled in 16 different casinos, visited 4 states I’d never been to before, added 8 state capitols to my collection, and saw enough breathtakingly beautiful scenery to last me a lifetime.  Oh, and there was one other thing.

On the beach at Pacifica, California, on October 1, with the ocean waves crashing into the rocks behind us, the Rev. Terri J. Echelbarger, pastor of the Peninsula Metropolitan Community Church in San Mateo, performed a simple ceremony which she concluded by saying, “By virtue of the authority vested in me by God, the Metropolitan Community Church, and the State of California, I now pronounce you spouses for life.”

I didn't get to see the Grand Canyon, but I did get to marry, legally, the woman with whom I have shared my love and my life for the past 27 years.  Altogether, I’d say that made for a pretty good vacation.

Very grand and great they are too

I referred to my niece's son as my great nephew, and someone suggested that was wrong and that I should call him my grand nephew.  The argument presented was that the grand child of my brother should be my grand nephew.

Well, okay, but the sister of my grand mother is my great aunt, isn't she?  So there.