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.

Dad Woulda Been 100

  Somewhere around here amidst all my stuff I have a picture of my father when he was about 5 years old.  A tow-headed kid wearing bib overalls standing by an outside water pump.

  I have kept that picture for a long time.  I keep it to remind me that my dad was once a boy like myself.  When I was a kid it was hard to imagine he had ever been a kid, he acted like he never had been one, like he had forgotten that part of his life.

  I’m thinking about my dad because this is the time of year of his birthday and this year, 2017, marks 100 years since he was born.

  Most of what I knew about my dad, and it wasn’t much, came from my grandmother, his mother.

  That he was just a year old when “The Spanish Flu” hit their town in the high mountains of western Virginia.  That my dad and the town doctor, who had a fondness for liquor, were the only people not hit by the sickness.  My grandmother attributed my father’s health to him crawling around to the coal bucket by the fireplace and teething on coal nuggets.

  Now one time my dad did tell me a story of himself, this was after me and my buddy Catfish got in some trouble, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Dad told me such things seem big at the time, like the time he and his buds ran the toll booth at a city park but were caught by the city cops.  It was one of those rare times that dad seemed to be a “real” sort of guy, admitting that he was scared that the toll booth incident would be a black mark on his life.  It wasn’t.  And in the end Catfish and I didn’t get in any trouble.

  Dad was in World War Two, Army.  There’s a part of me that thinks the war had an effect on him.  I don’t know what he saw, but after he died we opened a footlocker that had been stored away to find photos of dead Japanese soldiers, no doubt taken on Okinawa.  Before the war there were lots of photos of him in my grandmother’s collection of him smiling a rakish smile, looked like he was enjoying life.  After the war that great smile was rarely seen.

  No, I tell people I’m my mother’s son, not a momma’s boy, but my mother’s son.  Dad had left my raising to Mom.  I shouldn’t’ve taken it personally, I’m given to understand it was a way of life when I was growing up.

  The stuff that affected me most when it came to Dad was he yelled.  He yelled a lot.  I often describe it as “he could yell to peel paint off the wall.”

  Dad also drank.  He drank more and more as his career as a hotel manager spiraled downward.

  I really didn’t even know he drank as much as he did.  It wasn’t until I was 16 and my pals were over at the house.  We were playing a board game when Dad fell into the Christmas tree.

  “Your dad’s drunk,” said Lewis.

  “No,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Lewis.  “I’ve been watching him.”

  Never mind that I had watched him openly drink a bottle of blackberry brandy as he drove me and mom to the old homeplace from Baltimore the previous Christmas.  I couldn’t wrap my brain around him driving drunk and the peril we were in was lost on me, even when he nearly missed a hard curve on the interstate that could’ve sent us flying through a guardrail and on to the rocky river valley below.

  But my sister knew he had driven 300 miles drunk from an office party then fortified with the bottle of blackberry brandy.  She was waiting for us at the old homeplace and once she realized Dad was drunk she jumped in his shit and the two of them had a big row.

  I’m told Dad used to hit me when I was little.
  Clenched fist.
  To the gut.
  Couple of times lifting me right off the ground.

  Interestingly, I don’t remember him hitting me.  It was my mother and sister who told me he did.

  I remember him yelling, though.

  The best Christmas I ever had with my dad and mom was the Christmas before he died.  He had just turned 67 that December.

  No one knew it would be his last birthday.

  I was broke, had no car, I lived in a place where I slept on a foam pad on the floor and had a job that paid little.  Mom and Dad drove up to see me bearing gifts of new clothes and a bit of money.  They took me out to eat at a nice restaurant where we laughed and talked.

  The following February Dad started stumbling.  He went to the doctor’s where they found an octopus-like cancerous tumor at the base of his skull.

  The following months were like he was on a battery that was running out of a charge, he got slower, weaker.

  Then one August day I got the call from my mom:  “Come home, I don’t think he has much time left.”

  I made the 200 mile trip to the home town and went right to the hospital. 

  There was Dad in the hospital bed.

  I walked up and put my hand on his.

  “Hey Dad, I love you,” I said.

  He looked at me then looked away.

  I kept my hand on his.

  “Thanks for everything Dad.”

  Dad looked at me again and looked like he was about to cry.

  I sat down and kept my hand on his.

  He would turn and look at me then look away.  He did this a few times.

  I looked at Mom with a look like, “Why won’t he talk to me?”

  Mom gave me a look back like, “I don’t know.”

  Then it was time to go.

  When I got back to my place there was a message on my phone.

  It was Mom.

  Dad had died.

  It would be months later while visiting my mom I asked her why didn’t Dad talk to me.

  “He was very sad about you and some of the situations you’ve gotten yourself into,” she said.  “He wished he could’ve done more for you.”

  It made me kind of sad.

  I wish he would have told me that.

  Because Dad did the best he could.

  He had his life where he wrestled with his own demons and he did what he could for me, as best he knew how.

  What more could I ask for?

E P I L O G U E

    It would be years later when I had a chat with a “medium,” a close friend who had the ability to channel stuff from “the other side.”  I believed her because it came natural to her, she didn’t charge for her “service,” the channeling would just suddenly happen and she knew things about Dad that only the family would know.

  I had envisioned Dad as a new person, walking the earth somewhere as a young man.

  No, I was told.  Dad was still on “the other side” waiting.

  “Waiting for what?” I asked.

  The Medium said there was no answer.

  “He repeats he is waiting,” she said.  “He….says….the………the…..disappointment.  He was disappointed that no one was ‘there’ waiting for him when he got there.”

  That struck me as sad.

  “So he’s waiting,” I said.  “Is it like a waiting room?  Are there magazines?”

  “DON’T BE A SMARTASS, BOY!”

  “Ah,” I said as I leaned back, “I recognize THAT.”

  Mom died 3 years ago.

  I’m betting Dad’s not waiting anymore.

  I believe they’ve gone together on to the land of sunsets and rainbows.

Asteroids in My Brain

  Sometimes there are just random thoughts that drift through my mind….not enough “stuff” for a story but noteworthy enough to not let slip back into the abyss of forgetfulness.

Makes me think of The Asteroid Belt…there’s chunks of stuff there but not enough to make a planet.

Old Lady Perfume

  

  I was going through the radio station emails and came across one from corporate.

  “Mrs. Polenta is flying in this Friday for her quarterly visit.  Please make proper arrangements.”

  “Oh jeez,” I said as I hit the print button.  Emails from corporate generally went to Jack the general manager.

  Mrs. Polenta was the owner.

  There was long hair and a pair of eyes looking at me from the doorway.

  It was Duanita.  That’s NOT Duanita like “Juanita.”  Duanita was named after her daddy Duane so her name was pronounced “Dwayne-neeta.”

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Whaddarya sayin’ ‘Oh jeez’ for?” she asked.

  “Mrs. Polenta is coming to visit Friday, once she gets here I gotta make myself scarce.”

  “I kinda notice when she comes here you’re kinda gone right after she gets here,” said Duanita, still just eyes and hair peeking around the door frame.

  “It’s her perfume,” I said.  “It gives me a splitting headache, I mean like if someone took an axe and split my head wide open.  It’s the only perfume, cologne, toilet water that I’ve known to give me a headache.”

  “She gets it at the Old Lady Store,” said Duanita.

  “There’s an Old Lady Store?” I said.

  It was still just Duanita’s eyes and hair peeking around the door frame.

  “Old lady perfume from the Old Lady Store,” Duanita started laughing.

  Then she was gone.

  I still heard her laughing.

  “Where’s this Old Lady Store?” I yelled.

  Duanita kept laughing.

Slow to Modernize

   

  My mp3 player died the other day.

  It was 9 years old, truly a surprise gift from The Lady of the House.  In essence she introduced me to the world of mp3s.

  I don’t think I would have gotten there on my own.

  When it comes to music I’ve often been slow to modernize.

  I can remember when vinyl was on the way out, making way for compact discs or CDs.  I suppose I couldn’t imagine a world without record albums, and would it mean I’d have to replace all my vinyl.

  I kept my vinyl well into the time that record companies were cutting back on coming out with records.  I found myself buying cassettes because there was no vinyl release, just cassettes and CDs, record companies even put an extra song on the CDs and not the cassettes to entice people to buy the CDs.

  Then came that fateful day in the early 90’s when Don the Engineer at the radio station in Roswell pulled out the record turntables in the radio studio and replaced them with CD players.

  “Nooooooo,” I yelled.

  And not long later I bought my first CD player.

  It was 1991.

  Then I started buying CDs.

  It was 2008 when The Lady of the House gave me my Christmas present.

  Then my daughter gave me her old IPod.

  Not long after that The Lady of the House gave me the gift of a new IPod.

  Here in 2017 it has 19,240 songs on it.

  I reckon I’m “all in” on this new technology.

  But I still have about 600 vinyl albums.

  And about 200 cassettes.

  I just can’t bear to part with ‘em.

There’s a Story Here

  I was at Thing Land the other day.

  Thing Land is what I call Walmart.  I call it that because you can buy all kinds of things there.

  I was looking at some canned beans when I overheard words, words of one woman talking to another.

  “She drives me crazy,” said one woman’s voice, “She smells like old clothes, cat piss and liquor.”

  I stopped looking at the beans and pondered.

  There’s a story there…. “old clothes, cat piss and liquor”….I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.

The Death of Mr. Romance

  I saw a big ol’ boy walking down the aisle of the dollar store the other day.

  “Big ol’ boy” is generally a “polite” Southernism for a guy who is waaaay overweight.  The young gentleman was as wide as the aisle.  Rolls of fat were crawling up the back of his neck and on top of his head.

  There was a big part of me that wanted to take the guy aside and say, “Son, you’ve REALLY got to do something about your weight.  It’ll kill you.  Maybe from a heart attack, maybe from congestive heart failure, maybe from complications from the diabetes you’ll probably get and may already have, maybe from kidney failure from the diabetes.  It’ll cut your life in half.”

  I didn’t do that though.

  Folks seldom take kindly or even listen to the advice of a total stranger.  The reaction can be one of anger to just nodding to saying phrases of total denial like “it’s a hormone problem, I can’t do anything about it.”

  I know what being overweight does to a body, it happened to me, cost me my health.  But that’s another story for another time.

  So as I stepped into a side aisle to let the young man pass I remembered an old co-worker who had a similar physique.

  Mr. Romance.

  His name was “Wooly” but I called him Mr. Romance because even though he was a “big ol’ boy” with a big set of “table muscles.”  Wooly probably weighed about 400 pounds.  He seemed to be right proud of himself, his weight didn’t seem to bother him.

  Interestingly enough, Wooly was always in the company of much younger women, driving them around town in his 1976 Corvette convertible that had seen better days.

  Wooly and I worked together at a radio station in the southern mountains.  Wooly worked middays and did sports, I did the morning show and sold advertising.

  One day Wooly and I were kicking back.  He was on the air and I’d come back to the station with some contracts to file.  The boss wasn’t around so we weren’t under any kind of “watchful eye.”

  “So what’s with all these different girls you hang around with?” I asked.

  “Jealous much?” asked Wooly, then he cut loose with a laugh.

  “Not my style,” I said. “I tried dating multiple girls at the same time one spring at college, it got messy.”

  “Listening.  Give women your ear, they’ll give you much in return,” he said smiling and wiggling his eyebrows.  “Don’t talk about yourself so much.  Let them talk.  Look them in the eyes while they’re talking.”

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “And remember,” said Wooly, “What matters when the lights go out is who washed last.”

  “Advice from Mr. Romance,” I said.

  “Bank on it,” said Wooly.

  I lost track of Wooly over the years.

  But I found him recently with the help of The Great and Powerful Internet.

  Too late.

  Wooly died last year.

  Wooly was just 50 years old, died at a convalescent home back in the mountains.  From what I could put together from tidbits of info it looks like he had some sort of major health failure like a heart attack, stroke or something and was put in the home.

  Wooly had actually settled down and married someone.  They had three daughters.

  And judging by his obituary picture he was still a big ol’ boy when he “went on to Glory.”

  “So long, Mr. Romance,” I said to the computer screen.