The Last Boarding House

  The thing about a lot of towns is there’s a lot of history about each town that folks will never know about.

  I got to thinking about this the other day while I was riding my bicycle home after work.  I was pedaling through an old section of town looking at old run-down, boarded up houses that surely dated back a hundred years, maybe a little more.

  With a 21^st century eye I looked at some of the bigger hulks, the two story kind, and thought of the cost to renovate them, the cost to heat them.

  Then I wondered why they were so big.

  I wondered if these big, old, rambling hulks had once been boarding houses.  I mean, it made sense…Clovis, New Mexico started off as a railroad town named Riley’s Switch.  So there’d be all these railroad workers who’d need a place to live.

  I’m kinda getting ahead of myself here because you might be one of those folks who doesn’t know what a boarding house is. 

  A boarding house is a place where people rent rooms…like someone might rent an apartment….and part of the rent goes for “board” or meals…it’s where the term “room and board” comes from, if anyone still uses that term.  The room might come with breakfast and dinner or just dinner.  The meal would be at a set time, the boarders would all sit around a big table and have a meal.  If you missed the meal  you were just shit out of luck.

  I remembered my encounter with an old-fashioned boarding house many years ago back east.

  I had taken a job selling advertising in bowling alleys:  Ad space on the scorecards, ad space in the lobby, ad space at the end of the lanes above the pins.  I had thought that with a wide-open field I could make a million bucks…later it turned out if I averaged out my pay over the time I spent hustling local businesses in a three-state area I was making about 4 bucks an hour, about minimum wage back in the day.

  It was a traveling salesman’s gig.  I spent many a night in cheap motels in small towns.  I needed a place to crash when I was done with the work week.  I was in a rebuilding phase of my life so I didn’t have much in terms of cash reserves to put down a deposit on an apartment.  I scoured the local paper for maybe a room someone was renting out of their house or something.

  Then I saw it:  “Room for rent, bathroom privileges, comes with dinner daily.  $200/month.”

  I decided to drive out and have a look.

  The address was out in the country on an old US Route that had seen better days after the interstate opened up and most everyone was zipping from town to town along the new highway.

  I pulled up in front of a run-down, ramshackle, two story, old farmhouse.

  I got out of my car, stood and stared at the house.

  A spry old woman came out of the front door.

  “Can I he’p you?” she asked.

  “Yes ma’am,” I said.  “I saw your ad in the paper for a room with board.”

  “Well come on up here,” she motioned. 

  I walked on up the dirt path to the front steps.  The front porch railing was covered in honeysuckle and trumpet vine.  The plants wound their way up the columns in front.

  It wasn’t ‘til I got to the porch I noticed a sleeping old man slumped in an old weathered arm chair off to a corner amidst more vines.

  “Come on in,” said the old woman.

  I walked in the house and was taken back to the 1930’s.  It was clean but everything was from another time.

  I walked past an entryway to the living room where two old men, maybe in their 70’s, were sitting back and watching some soap opera on the TV.

  She started walking upstairs.

  “Let me show you the room I have for rent,” she said.  “I’ll be honest with you, the man who was renting it died in his sleep two weeks ago.”

  I smiled and said nothing.

  She stopped at the top of the stairs and turned around.

  “You didn’t say anything,” she said.  “That doesn’t bother you?”

  “No ma’am,” I said.  “We’re born and we die, that’s the deal of life on Earth.”

  She chuckled.

  “You ain’t a hippie, are you?” she said smiling.  “That sounds kinda hippie-ish.”

  “I am what I am, ma’am.” I said.

  “What do you do?” she asked.

  “I sell advertising in bowling alleys,” I said.

  “Oh my,” she said, “you’re a traveling salesman.”

  I laughed.

  “Yes ma’am,” I said, “I reckon I am.”

  We continued down the hall walking on a runner rug that was probably new 50 years earlier.

  The old lady opened the door to a room and there it was:  Just a room with a single iron bedframed mattress and box springs, a small desk and chair, an old easy chair and a dresser.

  “New mattress?” I asked.  It sure looked like it.

  “Well yeah,” said the old woman.  “You know when people die things kind of cut loose.”

  “Ah,” I said.  “Yep, yep that’s what happens.”  I thought to myself how good it was she replaced what was probably a stained mattress, that she didn’t just flip it over.

  “The bathroom’s down the hall,” she pointed, “You have to catch it open when you can catch it open and I just have to insist that you not take too long in there ‘cos there’s three others here who use it too.  Oh, and that you rinse the tub out when you’re done.”

  I looked at the simple room.  It had an appeal to it.  Simple.  A window that looked out across a field that no one tilled anymore, a field where scrub trees were starting to reach for the sky.  Off in the distance was the Blue Ridge Mountains.  It would be a good place to rest, a good room where I could write.

  “You’d be the youngest in the house,” she said.

  I paused and pondered.

  To be surrounded by four old folks might be a good thing, I might learn something.  But then it might be seriously depressing too.  And if perchance I had a social life I’m sure a visitor in my room would probably not be tolerated.

  And me using a tub used by 3 other dudes…I mean, I’m sure that’s how people did it in bygone eras but I didn’t know if I was ready to go back to ancient times.

  I turned and looked the old woman in the eyes.

  “I appreciate your time, ma’am,” I said.  “I have a couple of other places I want to look at.”

  “Well now this might not be available soon, people’s always looking for places to live,” she said.

  “Yes ma’am,” I said.  “But if it is to be it will be.”

  “You sure you ain’t no hippie?”

  I laughed.

  “I’m a traveling salesman,” I said.  “Now I might’ve been a hippie in college.”

  “I knew it,” she pointed a finger at my face.  “Well now I’m a pretty good cook.”

  “I’m sure you are, ma’am,” I said as I walked down the steps, past the two old men watching TV and out the front door to the porch where I paused, looking at the fellow asleep off in the corner.

  I stuck my hand out and shook the old woman’s hand.

  “Thank you for your time, ma’am,” I said.  “It looks very nice.”

  I ended up living in town, sharing a ramshackle old house with a young woman who had a very active social life and the offices of a telemarketing vitamin company.

  I got the house’s old living room with French doors furnished with a double bed, a big desk and chair and a dresser. 

  I knew the girl upstairs had an active social life because from time to time there’d be a banging on the front door of the place at 1 or 2 in the morning and there’d be some drunk guy hollering, “JENNIFER!  JEN….IFFF….FERRRR” and she’d come down the stairs, I heard her, there’d be the opening of the door and quick, hushed talking.  There’d be footsteps back up the stairs.  Sometimes I’d hear rhythmic thumping coming from up there.

  I reckon Jennifer had her own bathroom because I seemed to have the downstairs bathroom all to myself.  To get to the bathroom I had to leave my living room and walk down a long hall.

  Sometimes I wondered if I missed anything by not taking the room at the boarding house…the window looking out across the field to the mountains in the distance.

  Sitting down to a meal with folks from another time.  Would there be macaroni and cheese?  Homemade yeast rolls dripping with sweet creamery butter?  Would there be good stories told?

  Or would it be stuff quickly whipped up out of boxes and eating in silence.

  I'll never know about the boarding house experience.

  No, I was in the noisy town, a busy street right out front.

  But at least I had a shower.

National Peanut Butter Day!

Today, January 23rd is NATIONAL PEANUT BUTTER DAY!!!!

I remembered The Lady of the House and I were headed back to Clovis from Portales and we passed by the peanut plant northeast of "Learn Town," which is what some folks call Portales because Eastern New Mexico University is there.

"I wonder if they still have the peanut store?" asked The Lady of the House.

"I don't know, one day we have to stop in.  It looks closed now," I said.

I remembered when the plant was new and I got to go on a tour of the place. The peanuts go in, get roasted, mooshed up, seasoned and the delicious stuff is shot into jars. Then I saw what, to me, was the most fascinating part of the tour: the machine that screwed the lids on the jars at high speed.

I don’t know when my love affair with peanut butter began.

As a kid, my mom would slather it on toast. The thing about mom’s peanut butter toast was she would spread butter or margarine on first then the peanut butter. I didn’t like that much. I didn’t think peanut butter and butter went well together. Years later I asked her why she made it like that.

“The butter helps the peanut butter slide down easier,” she said.

In school I learned peanut butter was developed by George Washington Carver. The Arkansas native worked with peanuts and sweet potatoes; he came up with over 400 uses for the two plants.

When I got older I liked to put peanut butter on English muffins. Once I read an article that indicated I was in good company: Charlton Heston is known for doing the same thing.

Peanut butter is one of my staples; if I have a jar of it, a loaf of bread and a toaster I won’t go hungry. If I travel in Mexico I know to look for “mantequilla de cacahuate.”

I was gladdened by the recent revelation that peanut butter reduces the risk of getting type 2 diabetes (check it out on the Internet).

I like that all-natural peanut butter, the kind that separates into oil and peanuts and you have to stir it and blend it when you open it. I like it when you first open it; after that, not so much. You’re supposed to refrigerate that all-natural stuff and it hardens up. It’s hard to eat by the spoonful like that.

In an article on sandwich ideas in the “Old Farmer’s Almanac” a peanut butter and bacon sandwich was mentioned. I tried it once. It wasn’t bad.

I often wondered at one of Elvis Presley’s favorite things: fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. I wondered how you’d keep the bananas from sliding out while frying. The recipe was revealed in “People” magazine in the early ’90s: Mash the peanut butter and bananas into a paste, spread it thickly on bread and fry like you would a grilled cheese sandwich.

According to the 1998 movie “Meet Joe Black,” the favorite food of The Angel of Death is peanut butter. Now that says something. In that flick, Brad Pitt plays Joe Black, or “Death,” who has come-a-callin’ for Anthony Hopkins’ character’s daughter. Death takes up residence in Pitt’s character’s body and goes about experiencing day-to-day human existence, including frequent dips into the peanut butter jar.

Every morning I dip a spoon into my jar of peanut butter to start my day.

I love me some peanut butter as some folks might say.

It's food of the Gods.

Granddaddy's Car

  Tucked away amidst all the news this week is a story out of Louisville, Kentucky about a dude who borrowed his granddaddy’s  1957 Bel Air, took it back to his place and spent the past year restoring it.

  They say the last time anyone drove it was 42 years ago.  It’d been sitting in the guy’s granddaddy’s back yard all that time, rusting away, falling apart.

  This is the week the dude presented the Chevy to the old man…shiny, spiffy, looking like new.  Needless to say granddaddy was blown away, moved to tears.

  I would’ve liked to’ve done that for my granddaddy but he died 42 years ago.

  And I would’ve liked to’ve done that with my granddaddy’s old car but it was totaled in a wreck 49 years ago, and he was driving.

  My granddaddy’s old car was a 1956 DeSoto Firedome.

  Damned if I know all the particulars but I like to say the thing was built back when cars were made of solid American steel, a heavy clunky thing.  I don’t know if the engineers at DeSoto, a branch of Chrysler, even knew the word “aerodynamic” but if they did I reckon it was aerodynamic for its day.

  Granddaddy’s DeSoto was pea-soup green….or would that be chartreuse….and dusty yellow.  It had four doors, no headrest and no seat belts…apparently we didn’t need them back then.  The front seat was a bench seat, individual bucket seats were off in the future.

  Every Sunday my granddaddy would get dressed up in his suit and tie, put on his fedora, get in his 1956 DeSoto and drive downtown to the big Methodist church to go services.  He had retired from the power company before I was born.  In the years after he retired he worked in the office of the church.  I never knew if he volunteered or got paid…we didn’t talk about money in my family.  Money, sex and farts were taboo topics at my house.

  Sometimes my grandmother would put me in a suit and tie and I’d get in the 1956 DeSoto with granddaddy and go to the big church downtown and sit beside him in the pew during services.  Then would come time to sing the hymns.  We’d stand, hold the hymnal and he’d sing in this quavering style of singing from another time….he was born in 1886.  I’d listen and think to myself it must take a lot of work to make your voice do that.

  I don’t say much about words from my granddaddy, he didn’t talk much.  He was a quiet fellow.  My grandmother did enough talking for both of them though.

  I rode up front with granddaddy when we drove around in his DeSoto.  Now my sister for some reason, liked to ride in the back seat…granddaddy driving, sister in the back and he would take her to the high school.  That stopped when, one evening, Dad told sister when granddaddy gave her a ride to school she needed to ride in the front seat.

  “Your grandfather is not your chauffeur,” said Dad with his usual Moses-coming-down-with-the-tablets voice.

  Granddaddy putting on his suit and tie, then his fedora and walking out the door to his 1956 DeSoto waiting in the driveway all came to an end one Sunday morning in the fall of 1969.

  Granddaddy had gone off to church.  I couldn’t tell you why I wasn’t riding with him that morning but suddenly my grandparent’s house was busy, people running around:  Granddaddy had been t-boned by another car just a few blocks from the house.

  “What happened to granddaddy?” I asked my dad.

  “He’s been in a car wreck and is in the hospital,” said Dad.

  “But what happened?” I asked.

  “Boy, I’ve told you all you need to know,” Dad snapped back. 

  Dad never was a good storyteller.

  Well, in the next few days someone, can’t remember if it was my mom or grandmother, told me what happened:  Granddaddy was just a few blocks from the house when he crossed one of the city’s busier two-lane streets.  Did he run a stop sign?  Did he not see the car that rammed him on the driver’s side of his 1956 DeSoto?

  Who knows.

  What I remember is the impact shot the DeSoto’s front bench seat out the passenger side door and granddaddy along with it.  Everything ended up in a vacant lot at the intersection.

  When the rescue squad arrived on the scene granddaddy was sitting on the car’s seat in the vacant lot singing “Little Red Wing,” a song from 1907…

“Now, the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing
The breeze is sighing, the night bird's crying…..”

  Well, granddaddy spent some time in the hospital, I don’t know how long, I wasn’t even a teenager yet but he never was the same after that.  I didn’t know if the wreck sped up his decline or if it was the Parkinson’s Disease he had.

  As the years went on he got quieter and quieter, shuffled instead of walked and seemed to just fade away until late in 1976 he “went on to Glory.”

  Whenever I see an old DeSoto or hear “Little Red Wing” I think of him.

“Now, the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing
The breeze is sighing, the night bird's crying…..”

Listen:  John McEuen picks it here....

The Tattooed Waitress

  “That’s just disgraceful.”

  It was a voice from behind me.  I could tell it was from whoever was sitting behind me.

  I had pulled off the interstate at a Waffle Shack.  Waffle Shacks are all over The Southland.  This particular one had the exit all to itself.  

 I knew what the woman thought was disgraceful.  No doubt it was the waitress with little stars tattooed on the side of her face and both arms full of tats.

  “I’m sure she’s just a little whore,” the woman went on.

  “It says in Leviticus 19, ‘Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you,’” said another voice, a woman, “That poor child is doomed to Hell, no chance of salvation.”

  “Oh really now,” I said out loud without turning around.  “It’s my understanding that that passage was written to admonish the Israelites to not copy the ways of the Canaanites who tattooed images and words of their gods on themselves."

 ”Well,” said the first lady, “I didn’t know we have an eavesdropper nearby.”

  “You damn well knew you were being evesdropped on,” I said as I turned around, “because if you wanted to NOT be heard you would’ve kept your voices down.  You’re trying to shame that poor child based on your standards.”

  I was looking at two women not much older than me.

  “What if I told you that waitress has those tats as a way of soothing her soul?  A way she found to express herself after she watched her daddy gun down her mother and another man, shoot her in the gut…her own father tried to kill her…. then blew his own head off.”

  “What?” said the second lady, “I don’t believe this, how do you know this?”

  “So here’s a 12 year old girl, no mom or dad anymore, alone in the world,” I said.  “So she grew up the best she could, Then she discovered tattoos.  It was a way to express herself.  Her inner pain greater than any sense that the world might frown on some stars on her face or tats on her arms that gave her some relief, that she thought were artistic and pretty.”

  “W-w-well we didn’t know,” said the first lady.

  “Of course you didn’t know,” I said.  “Yet you saw fit to judge her based on her body art.  Do those tats really bug you or do y’all have your own problems that you don’t know how to deal with so you take verbal pot shots at other people?  Like this poor girl, raising a daughter all on her own, doing her best to earn a good tip from people like you who judge her and condemn her.”

  “And while we’re talking about The Good Book…what’s that passage in Matthew 7?” I went on, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.  And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

  The first lady just looked out the window, the second went on eating her waffle.  I turned around and went back to drinking my coffee.

  A couple of minutes later I heard movement behind me.  The two women were leaving.

  After I felt they had plenty of time to clear out I turned around and looked at their table.

  They left the tattooed waitress a $20 bill for a tip.

  I looked across the room at the waitress.  She was busy taking care of other customers.

  Truth was, I had no idea why the tattooed waitress liked tattoos so much, why she tattooed her face.  I didn’t know a thing about her.  I was just a guy on the interstate who pulled over for a coffee break.

  I told the tale in honor of a young woman, another tattooed waitress, back in the old home town.  I didn’t know her very well but I knew her story…it made the news 24 years ago.  Her momma ran off with a co-worker leaving her husband on his own to deal with his demons from the bottle and from an old war.

  That particular young woman had indeed been shot…right in the stomach… by her own father that day, the day that he killed her mother and her mother’s boyfriend before turning the shotgun on himself….all for a 12 year-old to see.

  She grew up to wait tables.  She grew up to have a daughter of her own, a daughter she raised by herself.

  It would be years later, when her daughter was grown, that that tattooed waitress back in the old home town, would kill herself.

  I told the tale for her.  And I told the tale for the tattooed waitress with stars on the side of her face, working her ass off at the Waffle Shack by the side of the interstate.

Encounter with The Sushi Puppy

Sushi Puppy made the news ("Frozen Puppy as art raises a Bisbee stink")

It’s been over 20 years since I had my encounter with The Sushi Puppy.

The Sushi Puppy was a work of art submitted for a dog art exhibit called “Dog Daze” at one of the many art galleries in the southeastern Arizona hippie town/art colony of Bisbee.

It’s here I should say my favorite quote about art: "Art is supposed to make you think.”

The Sushi Puppy made me think. It made me think that if The Sushi Puppy was art I sure could have made a lot of art in my life.

The purpose of the "Dog Daze" art exhibit was to have a show of art involving dogs.

My dogs had ripped up a down comforter and I thought about entering it. I had left them alone one afternoon and when I got back to the house the living room was a mess of feathers…all over the place.  Both dogs…a Dalmatian and a Husky stood amidst the feathers and fabric with their dog smiles.  Dogs think such a thing as a ripped up comforter is humorous or arty depending on which dog you ask.

And so I took myself down to the section of Bisbee called Brewery Gulch and walked into the Dog Daze art exhibit..

I pondered the various art exhibits that fall evening in 1997. And then I was standing in front of The Sushi Puppy.

At first I thought Sushi Puppy was quite a realistic creation by the artist of a newborn pup.  But then, I don’t remember how, I came to understand the pup wasn’t an artistic creation at all.
The Sushi Puppy was an actual factual tiny dead pup…and there it lay in a sushi bowl. 

The artist had painted the puppy's toenails and put a pink bow on top of its head. It was dark, maybe no more than 5 inches long, wrinkly and…well, dead.  There was no way to tell what kind of dog it would’ve been, they all look like a newborn puppy when they’re born.

Sushi Puppy was called Sushi Puppy because Sushi Puppy was displayed in a sushi bowl surrounded by a Japanese dining setting.

I wasn't shocked. I wasn't disgusted. I did think it weird and as such just right for Bisbee.

I had seen many weird art displays in Bisbee in my time there:  An art gallery where everything, all subjects…paintings, photo works, sculptures…. revolved around the human male reproductive organ.  The artwork that I remember most was the framed flower where every petal, and there were dozens, was the photo of an individual and unique wickerbill (as they call a “thing” in The Great American Southwest).  There were big ones, small ones, turgid ones, relaxed, circumcised, uncircumcised, black, white, in-between.  I pondered where someone might hang this particular work…on sale for “just” $1000.

Other Bisbee art I had seen included lampshades that had unique drawings on them.  Thing was these drawings were child-like but people were paying up to $100 for them…because it was Bisbee.

So a dead puppy in a sushi bowl didn’t really surprise or bother me.

However, Sushi Puppy soon became national news.

People were shocked thinking animal cruelty had been committed.  It hadn’t.  It turns out Sushi Puppy was a stillborn pup, preserved by the artist before the show in his freezer and then, just before it was supposed to be displayed, he painted its toenails, slathered it in lacquer and put it in the sushi bowl.

And then there was the politically correct crew who believed a slight had been perpetrated on the Japanese by using a dog and a sushi setting and therefore implying the Japanese ate dogs as sushi.

The story was carried from Bisbee, to Tucson to Phoenix then no doubt emerged on the national stage.

The late, great radio commentator Paul Harvey even talked about it on his radio show.

But any way you cut it the artist had accomplished his goal:  Sushi Puppy had gotten attention.  Sushi Puppy had made people think.

Probably more than my torn up down comforter would have.

True Confessions about Driving at Night

The optical viewing devices of my biomechanical suit are wearing out....

  I don’t want to be “That Guy.”

  You know “That Guy.”

  That Guy who complains loudly, makes a scene at a restaurant when there’s something wrong with the food (I’m not That Guy).

  That Guy who yells at customer service people on the phone (I’m not THAT Guy.  Okay, I USED to be but not since I walked in customer service reps shoes when I had that job for a short bit in Florida.)

  That Guy…That OLD Guy…who drives slowly through traffic.

  Well…

  I reckon I MIGHT be That Guy.

  First thing…to be clear…I can see just fine to drive from dawn to dusk.

  Second thing is, to be clear, I can see to drive at night if there are streetlights.

  Lots of streetlights.

  Or if I know the road really well.

  I wanted to get those things out of the way in case someone thought I was a hazard to navigation.

  It’s not like stuff is blurry or anything…there just doesn’t seem to be enough light.

  It took me by surprise, this giving up on driving at night.

  I had a clue last September when The Lady of the House and I were getting the hell out of Florida.

  Our last night there we were staying at The Lady of the House’s sister’s house.  The two of them sent me out to a fast food joint to get some munchies.  I was in unfamiliar territory rolling through a hunk of the county that had few streetlights.

  Sidebar comment:  If you move to Florida or visit there, don’t get freaked out by the pitch black county roads outside the tourist areas.  Florida officials apparently believe that they shouldn’t spend money lighting highways smothered by trees, that if you can’t see shit at night “Yew don’ need ta be on our roads.”

  Anyway I returned to sister’s house with a bag of fried carbohydrates and bird bits.

  “Wow,” I said, “I’ve never driven out here in the dark.  I think I’m having a spot of bother with my night vision.”

  The Lady of the House looked at me.

  “Well let’s see how the trip goes,” she said.

  We left Florida behind and headed west back home to New Mexico.

  By the time the sun set that day…I can’t remember if we parked-up in Louisiana or Texas…but I really didn’t have much of a problem, the highway was wide and well marked.  The next day it was dark by the time we reached Wichita Falls, no problem there either.

  We made it back to New Mexico and settled in.

  Then we took that day trip to the state park over near Quitaque, Texas.

  We had a grand time walking and driving around Caprock Canyons State Park, looking at the buffalo and such.

  Then it was time to go.

  We took a lesser used two-lane highway that was a straight shot home.

  Big mistake.

  The sun set and I realized I was in trouble.

  I had big trouble seeing the road.

  “You can’t see either?” I asked the Lady of the House as the old road markings faded in and out…they hadn’t been painted in years.

  “How long have we been together?” she said, “14 years?  You know I can’t drive at night.  Welcome to the club.”

 To add to the excitement of having trouble seeing there were giant mashed, and sometimes not mashed, dirt and manure clods in the road that had fallen from 18-wheelers driving in and out of fields.

  So I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to zip along this Texas highway at 55, I’d have to take it at 25 or 30 miles an hour.

  We made it home with no problem.  Late at night, but no problem.

  Not long after that we had the family all pile in the car and we headed to the kids’ favorite Chinese restaurant…miles away in another town…as it got dark.

  When we got there everyone got out of the car and kind of stared at me.

  “Let Justin drive back home,” said The Lady of the House, talking about the son.  “You gave them quite the scare.”

  “Really?” I said.  “Nothing happened.  What about you?”

  The Lady of the House just smiled at me turned and went inside the restaurant.

  Then one day The Lady of the House saw an ad on the TV for some yellow glasses designed just to help driving at night.  She ordered some similar ones from Wally World for six bucks.

  They arrived just in time for us to take the family out on the town for dinner.

  We piled in the car, I put on my new “special” flip-up glasses and took the driver’s seat.

  The kids all looked at each other.

  “Now don’t be afraid,” I said.  “I have these super-duper yellow glasses that are supposed to light up the night.”

  I hadn’t driven but about a quarter of a mile before I tried to go straight from a right turn only lane.

  “No problem,” I said, “Nobody’s on the left, I’ll just move over.  Now y’all just speak up if my driving bothers you.  We’re all family here.”

  Then I came to an intersection.

  I couldn’t figure out why the stop sign was across the street.  I flicked on my turn signal and started to turn.

  “You’re turning into a parking lot,” said the grandson in the back seat.

  “Oh,” I said, a bit troubled that a 13 year old saw something I didn’t, “THAT’S why the stop sign is across the street, ‘cos this isn’t a street.”

  When we got to the restaurant everyone was standing around smiling at me when I got out of the car.

  “Well, so much for my super-duper yellow night vision glasses, “ I said.

  Everyone still just stood there and smiled.

  “Okay,” I said, “Justin can drive us back to the house when we’re done.”

E P I L O G U E

  You see there’s a bunch of stuff wrong with my eyes.

  Back in 2008, the eye doctor diagnosed me with “the most aggressive case of Glaucoma” he’d ever seen.

  The condition, marked by high pressure in the eyeball that destroys the “rods and cones” in there, had done some serious damage.  I could still see but it wouldn’t take much for me to lose my sight.

  I got mad about the situation for a couple of days then accepted my fate…that I’d have to use eye drops to keep the condition arrested for the rest of my life.

  I had a side experience with cataracts back in 2014, but had that taken care of.

  When I saw the eye doctor in Florida and he looked in my eyeballs and saw the ravages of a nasty case of Glaucoma he practically yelled at me that I was too nonchalant about my condition, that I wasn’t taking it seriously.  I told him I didn’t like his “bedside manner” and what the hell did he expect me to be, all sad and depressed and humming “The Song of the Volga Boatmen” all day?

  I never went back to see that guy.

  The next eye doctor I saw in Florida peered in my eyeballs and said, “Oh my God.”

  She leaned back and stared at me.

  “So you, as an eye doctor, what does it look like?” I asked.  “A war zone?  A haunted house?”

  “It’s bad,” she said.

  “Yep,” I said.

  No, my vision problems are a combination of Glaucoma and the goo inside each eyeball getting old.

  There will come a day when I won’t be able to see to drive at all.

  And I promise I’ll give up the keys gracefully.

  Funny though, I really don’t have a problem riding a bicycle in the dark.