Los Angeles, California is a great, sprawling metropolis. Few of the people who work downtown live there. All of those people driving their automobiles in and out of the downtown area create gridlock, and the emissions from their vehicles add a tremendous amount of pollution to the air. The government has tried to relieve some of the gridlock and pollution by putting pressure on businesses to decrease the number of employees who drive to work. This has been going on for decades, and the larger businesses have been responding to the pressure by encouraging their employees to use mass transportation. The problem for those employees is that Los Angeles has not had an efficient mass transportation system since the red car tracks were torn up in the first half of the twentieth century.
When I was commuting to and from Los Angeles what passed for mass transit were the express buses. Express buses were called that because each bus had a designated collection and drop off point outside of the city, and they made only six or seven stops to drop off or gather passengers in the city. Since the buses traversed the same roads as the automobiles, however, they were caught up in the same gridlock as the automobiles. On a Friday afternoon it usually took between one and a half to two hours for a bus to travel from down town Los Angeles to Long Beach, and that was after it made its stops in the city.
Some of the enterprising passengers of the bus I took to and from Long Beach started having wine parties in the back of the bus during those slow Friday afternoon trips. I soon joined them and became a member of the group. Alice was in her late thirties. She had light brown hair and was still very attractive. I had just turned forty. Bruce was probably thirty-four or thirty-five. He was the tall, dark, handsome type, but he was packing the pounds men frequently gain in the first few years of marriage. Jeff was probably around twenty-six. He was very bright, but we thought of him as the baby of the group. We thought of Dave as the grandfather of the group even though he was only old enough to be the father of some of us. He had a bushy, white mustache and blue eyes that seemed to take in everything. This was particularly true when he was amused by what he saw. He poured everyone a glass of wine. A new rider was sitting near us. He was almost as old as Dave. He told us his name was John. Dave offered him some wine, and he accepted.
“Folks,” Bruce said, “I know it’s my turn to bring the wine next week, but I won’t be here. I’ll make it up to you when I return.”
“Going on vacation?” Alice asked.
“Don’t I wish! The company is sending me to our office in Battle Creek, Michigan for a week.”
“Battle Creek, Michigan!” The name brought back visions of my childhood. “I used to think that was the toy capital of the world.”
“Yes,” Alice said. “It was where you sent the cereal box tops and small amounts of cash for the toys advertised on the radio or television.”
“And the toys were never quite what they appeared to be on television,” I added. “I remember a submarine. They showed it diving and rising in this wonderful ocean scene. I was really excited when mine finally arrived. My sister had a fish tank she abandoned when her gold fish died. I left the fake plants and rocks in it when I filled it with water. I can’t tell you how much I anticipated watching the submarine diving down to those plants and rocks and then rising to the surface again. I filled the submarine with baking soda as instructed, and I gently placed the sub in the water. It sunk about one inch. Then it rolled over and farted at me! I tried several more times, but it just kept repeating its farting act without sinking and rising as advertised.”
Jeff said they must have improved the submarine by the time that he got his. “Mine worked fine.”
Dave took a sip of wine and smiled. “Good thing Steve didn’t bring the wine or he’d probably refuse to refill your glass.”
Everyone laughed.
“Steve got off lucky,” John said. “Did any of you see that movie; I think it was called A Christmas Story. There was a scene in there where this kid sends away for the secret decoding ring. He excitedly begins decoding the message only to have the secret message tell him to drink more Ovaltine. Well, that wasn’t fiction. I did the same thing that kid did, and all a got was that same damn ad. To a ten year old boy this unpleasant surprise was worse than a neutron fart.”
“A neutron fart?” Alice asked.
“Yeah, lots of fallout.”
“Ewww! That’s gross.”
Dave Laughed. “You think that was bad, let me tell you what they did to me. The Lone Ranger radio show offered a map you could use to follow the movements of the Lone Ranger. It took six weeks for the damn thing to arrive. By that time they ended the promotion and no longer described the movements in a way that you could follow on the map.”
“Oh man,” Jeff said, “you guys got hosed!”
“Maybe,” Bruce said, “but don’t expect me to take your complaints to them. I’m not packing that baggage. Besides, it wasn’t all bad. I got this little plastic toy on a cord. It made the sound of a siren when you swung it. My brother and I were playing cops and robbers. I was chasing him around the yard swinging the siren toy above my head. I must have misjudged the length of the cord because I hit a tree with it. It was a shame. I really liked that toy.”
“Cheap plastic,” John said. “It was pretty brittle back then.”
Jeff agreed. “I got what was supposed to be a flute. It had a hole at one end and a hole in the middle. If you blew into the mouthpiece and covered the hole in the middle, it produced a fairly low tone. If you covered the hole at the end and left the middle one uncovered, it produced a high tone. I practiced with it until I could duplicate the sound of a boson mate’s whistle in the navy. I was really into navy things then. I played with that whistle for hours. I was calling all hands on deck for battle or calling them to prepare for a storm. Unfortunately the whistle must have fallen off the table at night. I found it on the floor in the morning. The plastic was so brittle that it split down the middle.”
Alice seemed amused by Jeff’s story. “You say you played with it for hours?”
“All day.”
“When I had something that annoyed my parents it always got lost.”
“Oh no! You don’t think my parents broke it, do you?”
“You don’t have kids, do you?”
“No.”
Everyone laughed. Dave held out the bottle of wine.
“More wine for the whiners,” Bruce joked.
Dave refilled Bruce’s glass. “Very punny. I see you’re not above joining us.”
“Not at all. Did any of you get the pen that wrote with invisible ink?”
“No.”
“Well, I know it was pretty cheesy, but it was also rather clever. They sent you a little pad of paper and something that resembled a fountain pen. You dipped the pen in milk. Then you wrote with the milk. When the milk dried you held the paper over a light bulb. The heat from the light bulb made the milk turn dark so that you could see what was written.”
We all agreed it was clever. I told them that one of the good things I remembered were the snap, crackle and pop hand puppets. “They were very expensive for cereal toys, but they were really good. They even inspired my cousin to start collecting hand puppets.”
Alice said the puppets were the exception. “Almost all of the toys you got from the boxes or from sending for them were cheaply made, but we still had fun with most of them.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “We made up for the shoddiness of the toys with our imaginations.”
“We’re part of the generations of kids that could make a house or a fort out of cardboard boxes,” Dave said.
“The other thing my generation had going for it was the fact that television was showing Laurel and Hardy and other movies my parents had watched in theaters,” I said. “That gave us a better understanding our parents’ experiences and many of their fondest memories.”
“Less of a generation gap,” Dave said. “I like that.”
John looked at Alice. “Do kids still send away for cereal toys?”
“I don’t know. Mine are always playing video games.”
We rarely drank more than one and half or two small glasses of wine during our commute. The permissible limits for driving are now so low that even those small amounts would probably get us into trouble today. Very few of our conversations were as nostalgic as the one I described, but there was always a lot of laughter during those trips home.
First published in macsbackporch.foxtail-farms.com on Jan. 20, 2010
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Monday, June 16, 2014
A Feminine World
“Max, I need you to do a little favor for me.”
It was the “little” that should have warned him. He obviously missed it. “Okay, what do you have?”
“Well, we’re having a baby shower for Linda this evening. Don’t ask me why, but I’m dragging my husband, Don, to it, and I don’t want him to be the only man there.”
“I don’t know; that’s a very feminine world. I don’t even know the rules.”
“They’re really simple, and I’ll educate you.”
There was a long pause as Max tried to think of a credible excuse for bowing out.
“If nothing else, you’ll get a free meal out of it.”
“What?”
“We’re having it in one of the meeting rooms at the hotel, and they’re catering a meal before we present our gifts.”
“I don’t mind chipping in for the meal, but… Well, I mean, this isn’t exactly a guy thing.”
“That’s precisely why I don’t want Don to be the only man there, and the meal is covered. Come on, let’s go buy a gift for her.”
It was obvious that Allison was not going to take no for an answer. Max’s initial reaction when she said she was dragging her husband to the shower was: “Oh, the poor bastard!” Now he was thinking, “poor bastards,” and he was one of them. Allison escorted him to the department store and then to the infant apparel section.
“Since you’re a man it’s got to be a man type of gift. Something practical.” She picked up a package of diapers. The next thing she picked up were a pair of infant pajamas. “Very plain, but practical,” she said. “They’ll be nice and warm. See, they even have little feet in them.”
“What if the kid’s born with big clod hoppers?”
Allison laughed. “They’ll fit fine. Trust me on this.”
“You’re the expert.”
The store had gift wrappers who wrapped the diapers and pajamas in paper that seemed a bit too cute to Max, but what did he know? This was a woman’s thing. He and Allison then went to one of the burger places for lunch.
“Now for the rules. All you have to remember is that the expression to use when she’s opening a gift is ah!”
“Ahhh!”
“That’s it! In case you’re wondering, Ooo’s are reserved for wedding showers.”
They finished launch and returned to the office. “Don and I will come and get you when it’s time.”
At five thirty she and Don entered Max’s office. Don was displaying the same expression Max’s dog had on its face when Max took him to the veterinarian. Allison led the way. Max and Don followed like two reluctant boys in tow.
“Thank you for doing this,” Don said. “How’d she talk you into it?”
“She’s very persuasive.”
“Tell me about it!”
They sat down at the table in the meeting room. Gini sat next to Max.
Linda was sitting at the head of the table. She turned her head and looked at Anne. “How’s it going with the new man you told me about?” Linda asked.
“He’s attentive, even romantic at times, but he’s still avoiding most serious discussions. I guess he’s the type who wants to control the speed of the relationship.”
“When I try that I get run over,” Max said.
Everyone laughed.
“Maybe that’s because you like assertive women,” Allison said.
“You should hit on the secretaries,” Gini said. “They tend to be more nurturing than attorneys are.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Anne said, “but Max does bring out a woman’s maternal instincts.”
“This shouldn’t be about me. It’s Linda’s night.”
Don laughed. “Sorry, pal. When you’re the only available rooster in the hen house, you’re going to draw attention.”
The waitress had a big smile on her face as she refilled Max’s coffee cup. “Maybe you should try waitresses,” she said. She was young and very attractive. Her blue eyes almost sparkled when she smiled.
“If I had your phone number, I would.” She wrote her phone number on one of her order pads and handed it to him.
Gini patted Max on the back. “See, there are some good things about entering such a feminine world.”
“By the way, the expression is ah,” Anne told him.
When the first gift was presented Max said, “Ah.”
Everyone laughed. “You should wait until the first one is opened,” Gini said.
“I guess I’m too eager,” Max replied. He was admiring the slim, graceful figure of the waitress as she walked out of the room with the last of the empty plates.
“So I see,” Anne said.
Linda opened the gift. Max and Don both said what seemed to be the mandatory ah. It did not seem right to either of them. Their baritone voices seemed out of place in the chorus of sopranos and altos, and their response to the next gift was more restrained.
Anne said, “Oh.”
Max turned to Gini. “She ohed.”
“Oh’s okay too.”
“Just not ooo.”
“No, not ooo.”
“Oh. But it’s usually ah?”
“Yes.”
The other women seemed to be entertained by the exchange. Linda picked up the gift Max had brought. The wrapping paper must not have been too cute, because the women said ah. Encouraged by this, Max said, “Ah!” as Linda unwrapped the gift.
“Is that the gift you brought?” Anne asked.
“Yes.”
The women laughed. “I guess you’re not supposed to ah over the gift you brought,” Max said.
“No,” Gini said.
“Oops!”
After the shower Linda told Max she was really glad he came. “It makes me think we should invite men to baby showers.”
“Thank you,” Max said. It was the proper response to what he considered to be a complement, but he was determined to avoid baby showers in the future. It was not that he had a bad time; it is just that a baby shower is such a feminine thing. It was really difficult for man react that way to baby clothes and things.
First published in macsbackporch.foxtail-farms.com on Jan 14, 2010
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Grief:
I know this should be posted on Face Book or some other social media type of thing rather than on a blog meant to entertain, but I cannot help myself. On May 7, 2013 my brother, Randy, died while on home hospice care. On May 6, 2014 my mother, Grace Smiley, died while on home hospice care. My grief over losing both of those wonderful people is great, but there is something else I also mourn the loss of. I know it must sound strange; I mean, why would anyone miss living from crises to crises, but taking care of Randy and mom was a large part of my life for a long time. I feel lost when I get home from work now or when I have a day off. Something very important, almost like a part of my being, is missing, and I do not know what to do with my time. My feeling of loss and emptiness cannot be cured by tears or talk, as necessary as they might be. What is clearly needed is action, some sort of positive step forward -- no matter how small that first step might be.
I know I have to move on, just as I know that I am still going to cry at times. Building a new life will not be easy, but I have to start soon. An event that could have been written by Kurt Vonnegut or Douglas Adams really brought that point home to me. On the sixth of his month there appeared in the in-box of my e-mail account a message from my doctor telling me he had ordered lab work that I needed to attend to. The message was dated June 11, 2013. I do not know why this message did not make it into my in-box last year or why it showed up now. What I do know is that I did not take very good care of myself while I was taking care of Randy and mom. Now that they are gone I cannot use them as an excuse for not attending to my own health. I have just sent my doctor an e-mail. Getting in touch with him, and writing this post are very small steps indeed, but I have to start somewhere.
Adding irony to irony is my previous post. I merely copied it from my files in the order in which it was posted on my other blog. I did not pay much attention to the content until I started proof reading this. No new years eve ceremony this time. This is my catharsis; you are reading it.
I know I have to move on, just as I know that I am still going to cry at times. Building a new life will not be easy, but I have to start soon. An event that could have been written by Kurt Vonnegut or Douglas Adams really brought that point home to me. On the sixth of his month there appeared in the in-box of my e-mail account a message from my doctor telling me he had ordered lab work that I needed to attend to. The message was dated June 11, 2013. I do not know why this message did not make it into my in-box last year or why it showed up now. What I do know is that I did not take very good care of myself while I was taking care of Randy and mom. Now that they are gone I cannot use them as an excuse for not attending to my own health. I have just sent my doctor an e-mail. Getting in touch with him, and writing this post are very small steps indeed, but I have to start somewhere.
Adding irony to irony is my previous post. I merely copied it from my files in the order in which it was posted on my other blog. I did not pay much attention to the content until I started proof reading this. No new years eve ceremony this time. This is my catharsis; you are reading it.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
New Year’s Catharsis
It was the dwelling of lost lives and broken spirits. Well, maybe not lost lives. We were all still alive and spirits can be mended. We lived in a complex of moderately priced apartments. A large number of us had just gone through divorces or had broken off failed relationships. We started playing penny ante poker at night, and we were soon joining each other in other recreational activities. Someone said we had formed a catharsis club, and the name stuck. It was a bit of a misnomer. Although we did encourage each other and there were serious discussions at times, most of our activities fell into the category of diversion rather than therapy. Holidays are particularly difficult for people going through what we were experiencing. Most of us joined relatives for Christmas, but we decided to get together for a New Years Eve party. Betty was the organizer of the group. I helped her make the invitations, but calling ourselves the Catharsis Club suggested a theme to me. I sat at the computer and typed the following letter:
"Dear…
In the course of any given year there is invariably one genuinely rotten day, a day in which you have the Midas touch in reverse and everything you touch turns to shit, a day in which objects and events conspire to cast a pall over your very existence, a day so vile that Count Donatien de Sade roars with laughter and envy over its cruelty. It is high time that we gave this day its proper due. It deserves to be a symbol for everything that went wrong during the year. It deserves to be scorned, reviled and destroyed by fire so that it will never rear its ugly head again and the memory of its awful events will fade away.
Enclosed is a gift certificate for this horrendous day. Please write your name and the date of your worst day on the appropriate lines of the certificate, and return the certificate to us before New Years Eve, the sooner the better. On New Years Eve we will give you your bad day. We will expect you to make a few appropriate comments at that time. So be prepared to direct your best and funniest insults at your bad day when that day is presented to you. Please note that although this exercise offers something in the way of catharsis, its real intent is to poke some fun at the adversities we have faced.
You do not have to tell us why your day was so bad if the reasons are too personal, but we do expect you to give it your most heartfelt insults. It deserves no less.
Your bad day is uniquely yours. It may have been a good day for the rest of us, but we will still share the revulsion you feel for what it did to you.
Just in case you are unable to be here on New Years Eve, we should like to say to hell with your bad day. May the New Year bring you happiness and prosperity, and may you never suffer another day as terrible as the worst one you suffered this year."
Betty loved the idea, and we both signed the letter. She scanned a picture of the screamer into her computer. The idea was to give each person a single page printout that consisted of that picture and a calendar of the appropriate month. The calendar was modified so that the name of the recipient and the date of his or her worst day were at the top where the name of the month was normally placed. In the body of the calendar we drew a circle around the bad day. We left plenty of room to write comments below the calendar. We then arranged those pages in the alphabetical order of our participants’ names. Ron made a huge bulletin board where the pages could be posted. We placed ink pens near the board. Everyone receiving the invitation and letter chipped in for a keg of beer and some Champagne.
The apartment building had a detached recreation or meeting room where the party was held. Betty waited until everyone arrived. She then stood on a chair.
“Ladies and gentlemen:
We are about to hand out your bad days. Please step forward when I call your name. Accept your day and then tell us about it. Since Steve is the one who came up with the idea I think we should make him go first. Here’s your day, darling.”
She handed me the paper. This took me by surprise, but I was prepared. I had printed out my comments in advance. I pulled the paper out of my shirt pocked and unfolded it. Everyone laughed.
“I know,” I said, “but I’ll become more spontaneous after I’ve imbibed a bit more. My bad day is the thirtieth of June. It’s the day I was laid off. I’ve found another job, but it pays a lot less. So the thirtieth of June is not just a symbol for everything that went wrong this year; rather it’s the beginning of everything that went wrong. It blew in like a demon’s wet fart, befouling the air and making each breath an unpleasant necessity of life. It’s the broken bed-spring of my nights and the empty toilet paper roll of my mornings. It’s a day so ugly that its disgusting face looks like something someone threw it at its head in anger. If it were a person the committee for civic improvements would gleefully banish it to a rival city, and the committee would be accused of committing crimes against humanity for doing this. So utterly devoid of all decency or any socially redeeming value is this day that any insult or abuse directed at it is totally justified. Indeed, the only the thing keeping me from pissing on it is my fear that it would not dry in time for me to burn it at midnight.
Please join me in booing and hissing my June thirty! I might add that a blast of flatulence would not be inappropriate. No takers, eh.” I reached down and picked up the glass of beer sitting on the table, and I took a large swig. “Well, the elixir of choice ought to cure that in short order.”
Tim let out a loud belch.
“Not as poignant as a statement emanating from the other end, but I applaud the vigor of your effort.”
The next person to receive his bad day was Mike. He was quite a bit younger than the rest of us. He told us he was at a party where people were discussing absurd fads of the past. Someone brought up the nineteen twenties’ fad of swallowing live gold fish.
“I told them it’s not that difficult if the fish are small,” Mike said. “Someone asked if I would care to demonstrate that, and I was just drunk enough to accept the challenge. But that was not my bad day. My bad day was the next day, the twentieth of April. That’s when I woke up with a hangover and Salmonella. God was I sick! The twentieth of April is a snaggle toothed cock sucker! May it roast forever in the flaming shit of hell!”
This was greeted with a mixture of booing and laughing.
“I guess I should’ve added that we need to hold each other harmless for any and all profanity,” I said.
“Agreed,” Betty said, “but I didn’t expect people to start using it so early.”
The next person to receive her bad day was Jan. She was an aspiring writer. She was close to finishing her first novel, and she decided she needed to retreat to a quiet place to complete it. Her uncle offered her the use of his vacation cabin in the mountains.
“It went well,” she said. “I completed the rough draft right on schedule. But the frigging storm they were predicting arrived early. I woke up to find the ground covered with snow, and it was still coming down. I walked outside and saw the high berm the plows had piled up in front of the driveway. I was looking for a shovel when I noticed something else. My car had a flat tire. So how do you jack a car up in the snow? Easy, you call to have someone come over and do it for you. Ah, but what if they want me to knock down the berm first so they can get to my car? I was contemplating that as I walked back into the cabin to take a pee. I must have put my keys in one of the pockets of my trousers, and they must have fallen out of the pocket when I dropped my trousers. I say this because when I went to flush the toilet I saw my keys sitting in the bowl filled with my pee. That did it. I decided right then that I was not going anywhere.
A few hours later I changed my mind. I thumbed through the phone book until I found the number of someone to come and plow me out. I considered this the first step in getting someone else to come out, change the flat tire, and put on my chains for me. I was just dialing the number when the phone went dead and all the lights went out. Somebody must have taken out a pole. That’s when I learned that forced air heaters do not work without electricity. I started a fire in the fireplace. I continuously fed it logs during the day, but I fell asleep that night. I woke up freezing my ass off! It was really a shitty day!”
One of the members of the audience offered the observation that it seemed more like a pissy day to him.
“Be that as it may, I would appreciate it if you’d join me in telling my fifth of February to get stuffed!”
Some of the crowd obliged her by yelling, “Get stuffed!”
The festivities continued in that manner until everyone received their days. We had a CD player, and people danced to the music. At midnight we placed wood chips in the barbecue outside and lit the chips on fire. Each parson then uttered a parting insult and threw his or her bad day into the fire. Adding the fire ritual was a wise thing to do. The comments people wrote on their bad days became increasingly obscene as the evening progressed. I do not think the written comments were nearly as funny as we thought they were in our alcoholic haze. The fire probably saved a lot of embarrassment by destroying the evidence.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, a toast,” I said. “Let’s put the past into the past. May the worst day of this year be better than the best day of last year. Happy New Year!”
"Dear…
In the course of any given year there is invariably one genuinely rotten day, a day in which you have the Midas touch in reverse and everything you touch turns to shit, a day in which objects and events conspire to cast a pall over your very existence, a day so vile that Count Donatien de Sade roars with laughter and envy over its cruelty. It is high time that we gave this day its proper due. It deserves to be a symbol for everything that went wrong during the year. It deserves to be scorned, reviled and destroyed by fire so that it will never rear its ugly head again and the memory of its awful events will fade away.
Enclosed is a gift certificate for this horrendous day. Please write your name and the date of your worst day on the appropriate lines of the certificate, and return the certificate to us before New Years Eve, the sooner the better. On New Years Eve we will give you your bad day. We will expect you to make a few appropriate comments at that time. So be prepared to direct your best and funniest insults at your bad day when that day is presented to you. Please note that although this exercise offers something in the way of catharsis, its real intent is to poke some fun at the adversities we have faced.
You do not have to tell us why your day was so bad if the reasons are too personal, but we do expect you to give it your most heartfelt insults. It deserves no less.
Your bad day is uniquely yours. It may have been a good day for the rest of us, but we will still share the revulsion you feel for what it did to you.
Just in case you are unable to be here on New Years Eve, we should like to say to hell with your bad day. May the New Year bring you happiness and prosperity, and may you never suffer another day as terrible as the worst one you suffered this year."
Betty loved the idea, and we both signed the letter. She scanned a picture of the screamer into her computer. The idea was to give each person a single page printout that consisted of that picture and a calendar of the appropriate month. The calendar was modified so that the name of the recipient and the date of his or her worst day were at the top where the name of the month was normally placed. In the body of the calendar we drew a circle around the bad day. We left plenty of room to write comments below the calendar. We then arranged those pages in the alphabetical order of our participants’ names. Ron made a huge bulletin board where the pages could be posted. We placed ink pens near the board. Everyone receiving the invitation and letter chipped in for a keg of beer and some Champagne.
The apartment building had a detached recreation or meeting room where the party was held. Betty waited until everyone arrived. She then stood on a chair.
“Ladies and gentlemen:
We are about to hand out your bad days. Please step forward when I call your name. Accept your day and then tell us about it. Since Steve is the one who came up with the idea I think we should make him go first. Here’s your day, darling.”
She handed me the paper. This took me by surprise, but I was prepared. I had printed out my comments in advance. I pulled the paper out of my shirt pocked and unfolded it. Everyone laughed.
“I know,” I said, “but I’ll become more spontaneous after I’ve imbibed a bit more. My bad day is the thirtieth of June. It’s the day I was laid off. I’ve found another job, but it pays a lot less. So the thirtieth of June is not just a symbol for everything that went wrong this year; rather it’s the beginning of everything that went wrong. It blew in like a demon’s wet fart, befouling the air and making each breath an unpleasant necessity of life. It’s the broken bed-spring of my nights and the empty toilet paper roll of my mornings. It’s a day so ugly that its disgusting face looks like something someone threw it at its head in anger. If it were a person the committee for civic improvements would gleefully banish it to a rival city, and the committee would be accused of committing crimes against humanity for doing this. So utterly devoid of all decency or any socially redeeming value is this day that any insult or abuse directed at it is totally justified. Indeed, the only the thing keeping me from pissing on it is my fear that it would not dry in time for me to burn it at midnight.
Please join me in booing and hissing my June thirty! I might add that a blast of flatulence would not be inappropriate. No takers, eh.” I reached down and picked up the glass of beer sitting on the table, and I took a large swig. “Well, the elixir of choice ought to cure that in short order.”
Tim let out a loud belch.
“Not as poignant as a statement emanating from the other end, but I applaud the vigor of your effort.”
The next person to receive his bad day was Mike. He was quite a bit younger than the rest of us. He told us he was at a party where people were discussing absurd fads of the past. Someone brought up the nineteen twenties’ fad of swallowing live gold fish.
“I told them it’s not that difficult if the fish are small,” Mike said. “Someone asked if I would care to demonstrate that, and I was just drunk enough to accept the challenge. But that was not my bad day. My bad day was the next day, the twentieth of April. That’s when I woke up with a hangover and Salmonella. God was I sick! The twentieth of April is a snaggle toothed cock sucker! May it roast forever in the flaming shit of hell!”
This was greeted with a mixture of booing and laughing.
“I guess I should’ve added that we need to hold each other harmless for any and all profanity,” I said.
“Agreed,” Betty said, “but I didn’t expect people to start using it so early.”
The next person to receive her bad day was Jan. She was an aspiring writer. She was close to finishing her first novel, and she decided she needed to retreat to a quiet place to complete it. Her uncle offered her the use of his vacation cabin in the mountains.
“It went well,” she said. “I completed the rough draft right on schedule. But the frigging storm they were predicting arrived early. I woke up to find the ground covered with snow, and it was still coming down. I walked outside and saw the high berm the plows had piled up in front of the driveway. I was looking for a shovel when I noticed something else. My car had a flat tire. So how do you jack a car up in the snow? Easy, you call to have someone come over and do it for you. Ah, but what if they want me to knock down the berm first so they can get to my car? I was contemplating that as I walked back into the cabin to take a pee. I must have put my keys in one of the pockets of my trousers, and they must have fallen out of the pocket when I dropped my trousers. I say this because when I went to flush the toilet I saw my keys sitting in the bowl filled with my pee. That did it. I decided right then that I was not going anywhere.
A few hours later I changed my mind. I thumbed through the phone book until I found the number of someone to come and plow me out. I considered this the first step in getting someone else to come out, change the flat tire, and put on my chains for me. I was just dialing the number when the phone went dead and all the lights went out. Somebody must have taken out a pole. That’s when I learned that forced air heaters do not work without electricity. I started a fire in the fireplace. I continuously fed it logs during the day, but I fell asleep that night. I woke up freezing my ass off! It was really a shitty day!”
One of the members of the audience offered the observation that it seemed more like a pissy day to him.
“Be that as it may, I would appreciate it if you’d join me in telling my fifth of February to get stuffed!”
Some of the crowd obliged her by yelling, “Get stuffed!”
The festivities continued in that manner until everyone received their days. We had a CD player, and people danced to the music. At midnight we placed wood chips in the barbecue outside and lit the chips on fire. Each parson then uttered a parting insult and threw his or her bad day into the fire. Adding the fire ritual was a wise thing to do. The comments people wrote on their bad days became increasingly obscene as the evening progressed. I do not think the written comments were nearly as funny as we thought they were in our alcoholic haze. The fire probably saved a lot of embarrassment by destroying the evidence.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, a toast,” I said. “Let’s put the past into the past. May the worst day of this year be better than the best day of last year. Happy New Year!”
First published in macsbackporch.foxtail-farms.com on Dec. 26, 2009
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Winter Waffles
My maternal grandparents had nine children. When those children left the nest my grandparents moved into a smaller, two bed room house. I have not done the math, but I believe my aunts and uncles produced an average of six children. One couple made up for the slackers by having nine. On Christmas Eve there was a small miracle. The neighbors watching us gather at my grandparent’s house must have thought the scene resembled a circus clown car only the procedure was in reverse. Which is to say that everyone was entering the dwelling rather than exiting. I am sure the neighbors wondered how that tiny house could hold all those people. It is not like you can stack people. The miracle was the fact that we all managed to get into the house and socialize with each other in such cramped quarters.
We grand children sat on the floor, except for my cousin Paul who was lying prone. The reason why Paul was lying rather than sitting was because he started the day by making winter waffles. It was a recipe I knew too well, as did many other children of my generation. You start with the type of electric wall heater commonly installed in bathrooms during the nineteen fifties. The heater has a checker board grate or grill to protect the heating element. At least I presume the grate is there to protect the heating element. It did not protect the people using the heater, because the grate became almost as hot as the heating element did. The next item is a bathmat, which you place in front of the heater. After bathing or showering you grab a towel and step out onto the bathmat. Since most people do not enjoy staring at walls you turn your back on the heater. After drying your hair and upper torso you bend over to dry your feet or lower legs. If you did not dry your butt first, there is a sizzling sound, much like the sound bacon makes when you drop it into a hot frying pan. Whether you dried your butt or not the effect is pretty much the same. The heater still brands a waffle pattern on both butt cheeks. Hence the name “winter waffles.”
Judging by his discomfort, Paul must have done a pretty good job. I teased him about the possibility of his parents buying him bicycle with a banana seat for Christmas. It turned out that my jokes about him trying to ride a bicycle with a banana seat came true. His parents actually bought him such a bicycle. I know because I went riding with him after his butt healed enough for him to tolerate the seat.
I do not know if any of the girls in the family made winter waffles. None of them would admit to doing it, and I knew they would not let me check the veracity of their denials.
Merry Christmas, and happy holidays to all!
First published in macsbackporch.foxtail-farms on Dec. 15, 2009
This post is out of the original order because I was thinking of saving it for next Christmas
We grand children sat on the floor, except for my cousin Paul who was lying prone. The reason why Paul was lying rather than sitting was because he started the day by making winter waffles. It was a recipe I knew too well, as did many other children of my generation. You start with the type of electric wall heater commonly installed in bathrooms during the nineteen fifties. The heater has a checker board grate or grill to protect the heating element. At least I presume the grate is there to protect the heating element. It did not protect the people using the heater, because the grate became almost as hot as the heating element did. The next item is a bathmat, which you place in front of the heater. After bathing or showering you grab a towel and step out onto the bathmat. Since most people do not enjoy staring at walls you turn your back on the heater. After drying your hair and upper torso you bend over to dry your feet or lower legs. If you did not dry your butt first, there is a sizzling sound, much like the sound bacon makes when you drop it into a hot frying pan. Whether you dried your butt or not the effect is pretty much the same. The heater still brands a waffle pattern on both butt cheeks. Hence the name “winter waffles.”
Judging by his discomfort, Paul must have done a pretty good job. I teased him about the possibility of his parents buying him bicycle with a banana seat for Christmas. It turned out that my jokes about him trying to ride a bicycle with a banana seat came true. His parents actually bought him such a bicycle. I know because I went riding with him after his butt healed enough for him to tolerate the seat.
I do not know if any of the girls in the family made winter waffles. None of them would admit to doing it, and I knew they would not let me check the veracity of their denials.
Merry Christmas, and happy holidays to all!
First published in macsbackporch.foxtail-farms on Dec. 15, 2009
This post is out of the original order because I was thinking of saving it for next Christmas
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