Politics and real work do not mix

Another evening given from God and this one is exceptionally well designed. We linger over supper outside in the backyard and discuss the hot weather and barn swallows (Do they really feed on flying insects only? No, says the family ornithologist) and then conversation drifts towards Ronald Reagan returning from Heaven and leading us to 12 percent annual returns.

Meanwhile the sun slowly sets and insect repellant candles come out and slices of pound cake and nobody feels an urge to get up and tackle life. I’m normally quiet and humble but give me a warm summer evening, a little candle light and I am tempted to make startling confessions---“I admit it (heavy gut wrenching sob). I started writing a newspaper column as a way of gaining attention! It was never about truth and inspiration. No, no, no, it was all about Me! I just needed attention! God forgive me!”--- but I realize as host it is my duty to conclude the meal and so I say “Well, umm, yep…”, stand up, stretch and start gathering plates. One can sit too long and one can say too much.

I’ve had to talk a lot this afternoon which is challenging. I’m not social like my wife who carries conversation easily like a gull drifting in flight. She is away for a weekend at the beach. My guest left some time ago, he has an early morning flight and now I am alone, the house is unusually quiet. Nobody in a slinky black dress has burst into my study, pressed her lips to mine and begged me to run away with her to Casablanca and live on love. There simply isn’t a lot of bursting or kissing going on right now only the steady tap, tap, tap of keys and the random squeak of my chair. The boxer at my feet just stretched, yawned and broke wind. That pretty much sums up the moment.

I don’t like to travel anymore so I stayed home. My need to see beautiful ocean sunrises, gather seashells and take long walks is at an all time low.

I’ve been reminded to water the tomato plants which is a labor intensive job I am not good at but I did it this morning so I guess I’m still young enough to learn how to work.

If your mother is alive it means you are still young. My mother has a firm grip on 79 and shelters me from mortality. Whenever I need to feel young and safe again I drive to my mother’s and discuss family and recipes and life. She tells me I have a lot of life ahead of me yet. My mirror tells me different.

I’ve never loved summer as much as now which I guess is a factor of age---the less time you have the more you appreciate it and partly because a short drive from my house the Democrats are going to hold their national convention in a few months. Now I know how the villagers felt when the Visigoths convened just outside the village. You hide your daughters and brace yourself for big crowds. I’ve been trying to think of a sign I could put out in front of the convention hall but “Aw Heck!” is all I’ve got right now.

I’ve been writing about Democrats, Visigoths and Ronald Reagan and suddenly remember I have left the water hose running for the tomato plants. They are probably drowned by now. I may need to call a tomato whisperer or a scuba diver. Talk to you later. I should know better. Politics and real work have never mixed.

A True Squirrel story---mostly

A beautiful Sunday morning and you walk outside in your back yard to enjoy the serenity, the peace and the fullness of nature as allowed in residential zoning. You have bird feeders strategically mounted for your viewing pleasure. However you notice a squirrel on one of the feeders and you walk towards him to run him away. Startled, he jumps on top of the feeder and with a look of pure malice faces you and starts yelling at you in squirrel! Angered you wave your hands and yell back but he stands his ground. The feeder is almost eye level and now you have two hairy legged guys standing four feet apart screeching at each other and neither guy wants to back down. Yes, I agree...so far pretty normal.

But two days later Fed Ex delivers a military grade squirrel proof bird feeder designed by a retired NASA engineer. Assembled it looks a bit Dr. Seuss inspired with cantilevers, pulleys and counterweights all made to collapse should the squirrel manage to get past thirteen built-in safeguards. The squirrel approaches, climbs the pole and figures it all out in 3.2 seconds.

So you make a plan. You buy a special titanium water hose nozzle that boosts water pressure up to a million pounds per square inch and produces a thin stream of water like a laser.

You lie under a bush holding a pressurized water hose and you watch and wait. Your mind drifts to that situation at the office and if the boss will....wait!...there’s the squirrel!

You watch the little jerk climb to the feeder. You hear him chortle to himself as he eats your feed. The Squirrel bends over for another sunflower seed and exposes the one place he does not have hair. You smile and suddenly a million pounds of pressurized cold water nails his rear end. The squirrel leaps 10 feet into the air and when he hits the ground you swear you hear him say “ Holy Crap!” He staggers to a nearby tree leaving behind a trail of small brown squirrel nuggets on the bright green grass.

You go into the house and pour yourself a victory drink and ponder your superiority over God’s creatures. Suddenly you hear your wife pleading for you to come to the front door quickly. You hurry and find her staring and pointing out the glass front door, tears running down her face.

She sobs,“That poor creature is hurt. Just look!”

You see the problem. It’s the squirrel--- limping across the yard and casting glances at the front door. A real drama jerk squirrel.

“I know that squirrel, “ you say, “ and the limp is fake. I hit him with water.”

Your wife stops crying, she turns to face you, contempt on her face.

“You? You did that?” her voice is cold. Over her shoulder you see the squirrel holding his stomach rolling around in the yard laughing.

And suddenly you and your wife are in a heated discussion about how you’re selfish and never warmed up to her mother who, by the way, claims you’re bipolar. The squirrel does cartwheels across your view.

The marriage counseling takes months but in the end she leaves you for Wayne, a big wheel in the PETA organization.

Now you live alone, it’s ten in the morning and you sit on your deck unshaven in your ratty old bathrobe, a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels by your side and you chain smoke menthol cigarettes.

You become aware of being watched and see the squirrel sitting on a low branch looking directly at you. He appears to be smiling. This isn’t over.

Come to me my sweet....corn

I was born in January a cold dark month. I arrived totally disoriented and without any clothes, was hoisted up by my feet, given a good whack and thus welcomed into the world. The mood in the room was somber and people avoided looking at each other. The doctor, nurses and my parents all knew the sad truth—I had missed the sweet corn season by six months.

Just mention the corn year of ’52 and older people in my community get dreamy, become trancelike and they drool. Corn connoisseurs say the crop that year was especially vibrant, a wonderful bouquet of earthy tartness balanced by the sweetness of the sugar with delicate hints of fried bacon. It was said that a farmer in the community, so enthused about the new crop, ate twenty ears of cooked corn in one sitting and (alas!) lost his taste for it. He sold the farm and played sad songs on the harmonica. He never got over it.

From the time I was just a wee kernel corn has always been a source of wonder and delight. We grew the corn close to the house and when it was “ready” my mother would march our family into the field at sunrise where we picked corn by hand and put in it in bushel baskets. Then we brought it back to the house, sat in the shade of a huge oak tree and there we would shuck, silk and stack the corn like gold bars. The bigger your pile grew so did your glory. “Oh my,” Mother would say” You’re such a hard worker! Look! Look everybody!” which produced frowns from your sisters but you’d smile and try to remain humble. God favored people like you.

Later work moved into the kitchen which became a boiler room filled with clouds of steam from the pressure cooker and pots full of boiling water for sterilizing the jars--- all of which had the name “Ball” written on them in cursive writing. We washed the corn in the kitchen sink passing the ears to my mother who slaved away at the canning process, her damp hair stuck to her forehead as if she’d just stepped out of the shower.

Mother would boil us fresh ears of corn for lunch and we sat outside on the ground and ate like beavers. No juice was ever so sweet and no crunch so tender as corn cooked, salted and buttered by your mother.

Corn is the grain of America. From it came a TV show set in a cornfield. A generation grew up watching “ Hee Haw” with Junior Samples who gave out the most famous telephone number in the world-- ‘BR-549”.

Corn mash is used to make whisky which is the foundation of the Kennedy family’s wealth and without them there would have been no news to report in the 1960’s and 70’s. There would have been no need for Walter Cronkite or the word “ Chappaquiddick”.

Without corn chips how would we eat salsa? With a spoon? Yucko, amigo.
Now corn stands accused of giving us unhealthy love handles that hang over our belts. Corn syrup is the least health-giving and the most fattening of the carbon consuming foods.

Ethanol, a mash that is one part corn and two parts tax dollars consumes about as much energy as it yields.

Corn is another tradition the health police are trying to take away from us. But I say to corn, come hither “Golden Jubilee”, come to me my “Silver Queen”. We go back a ways. Remember when sunshine and fresh air were considered good for you?

Summer and the living is confusing

I had meant to do an impressive essay today on food preservation as practiced by Himalayan Sherpa’s but my mind has wilted in the heat and it’s all I can do to roll the garbage to the curb and pant like an exhausted sled dog. Besides right now I’m caught up in a decision about draperies--pastels or primary colors? Pattern or plain, floor length, curtain rods or boxed, etc.? I usually leave these things up to my wife while I devote myself to weightier issues-- the collapse of the European Union, the Godhead Trinity—but the heat has thrown me way off.

Cold weather helps a man stay focused. This is a little-known fact. The thermometer plunges towards freezing and men are moved by primal urges to don heavy Carhartt clothing and hurl themselves into blowing snow, secure the livestock in the barns and then return inside with a haunch of moose for supper. But let the temperature climb to the nineties and those same men become fascinated with draperies, chopped basil and wear green plaid shorts and yellow flip-flops. The wife walks into the den buck naked covered in Mazola corn-oil stands between her husband and the TV, winks and the guy thinks, “ The cleaners! I was supposed to go by the cleaners.”

This increase in male confusion is directly related to global warming. No kidding.

Back when a winter was a winter men moved their tribes south to Florida, New Orleans or Six Flags. Men were able to walk about bare-chested and show off their washboard abs to attract women. Guys kept fit. You never knew when you were going to have to fight another tribe or pull an all-nighter on Bourbon Street and this kept men on their toes. But warming trends allowed people to remain up north like in New York and live in a climate that was neither very hot nor cold. Gradually as men began to wear shirts they lost the drive to stay buffed, they invented couches and then came the TV remote and bad cholesterol. Men didn’t know where they belonged or how to behave-- they became confused and short of breath.

Now thanks to medicine old geezers head for Miami or Arizona and you have Viagra induced love triangles popping up all over the country. These elderly would normally have passed the time playing bingo down at the lodge sipping an Old Fashion with bitters and complaining about the cold. They would have kept their hands to themselves.

Now men in their 70’s form hiking clubs, they surf and sky dive on the weekends. I tried to hike with a group of retired men not long ago, guys who should have been sitting in a nursing home watching the “The Price is Right” but were instead carrying pitons, climbing rope and lanyards. Just as we were walking out of the parking lot towards the trail I fell behind but bravely waved them onward. It was okay I shouted. I’d find my way back to the car.

Hold it a second. I’ll be right back.

Tic….tic….tic….tic….tic.

Whew, I’m back with some iced tea. Summers are better since I stopped drinking beer years ago and took up tea. With beer you get weepy, grab a buddy and start singing “He Stopped Loving Her Today” but with tea you are alone and do solos, something in a high falsetto like “The Rose”. I really need to decide about those draperies. I have a secret fondness for Laced Nottingham’s, but that’s just me. My wife is the solid beige type.


I’m confused. What were we talking about?