HIGH MAINTENANCE PATIENT

 

I have a surgery scheduled for November 29th. They will be removing my left kidney. Its probably going to hurt like hell.
In September, when I had a minor complication from a hernia surgery it was discovered I had a mass on my left kidney. This is not good news, nor was it a surprise. Kidney cancer seems to run in the family. It killed my brother Don and his son Dave, both at an early age.
But it appears I am quite fortunate. Don and Dave both had masses that were smaller than mine. But they were situated and had grown in a way that surgery was not possible. They had to endure rounds of chemo and radiation in order to try to shrink the masses. The treatments were not successful. That doesn’t seem to be the case with mine. The good news was that if the mass was cancerous they could just remove it and the kidney. The bad news was that even if it was not cancerous I was still going to lose the kidney. I feel pretty lucky.

I did change kidney doctors. The first doctor scheduled my MRI and I went in for the consult. That’s when he said they could probably just remove the kidney. He scheduled a biopsy. When I got home I thought of another question I wanted to ask. I’m like Columbo, you know, always one more question. So I called. I got a recording that said:
“Please leave your name and number and we will try to get back to you in the next 48 hours. Please understand that we are a HIGH VOLUME OFFICE, and if you call back a second time it messes up our system”.
Well, how about that? I need for them to know that I am a HIGH MAINTENANCE PATIENT, and if they are so busy they cant get back to me for 48 hours maybe they need to get some more help up in there.
High volume office my ass.

So I went to the biopsy thinking I didn’t much like this doctor so much, especially since it had been a whole week and no callback. The nurse putting in my IV asked me who my kidney doctor was. When I told her she audibly gasped. She stopped with the IV and froze like a stone. Her eyes got big as saucers. She looked horrified!
“What? What? What?” I asked “What is that look?”
She gathered herself. “How did you end up with him?” she asked.
She brought me the name of a doctor she recommended, and I told her I had already determined I’d be changing doctors because of them being a high volume office and all.
So the next day I had my final appointment with the hernia doctor.
I told him about the phone call, and the office too busy to return calls.
“That’s no good “ he says, scrawls a name on a pad and hands it to me. “Give this guy a call. If they cant get you in this week, give me a call and I’ll grease the skids for you.”
It was the same name as the nurse had given me. A good sign. A very good sign. I'm not one to attribute much to being a sign from God, or stuff like that, but you could say this was my burning bush.

All things considered, I’m feeling pretty good about all this so far. Were it not for a minor complication from a hernia surgery I'd be walking around not knowing what was up with my kidneys.
I like my new doctor very much, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

My Best Friend Larry

 "So  Now You Know"

"Thank you Lisa for the honor and privilege to speak here today. Lisa is my longest running friend…we went to nursery school together. Erica, Ryan Michael, Jay Sara and David, thank you for allowing me this. I was proud to know your dad.

I’ve had a lot of best friends in my life. In my old age now I think back on all of them regularly, and when I do Larry always comes out at the top of the list. If best friends can be ranked, Larry ranks best best friend. Not many people have been as close to me as Larry and Lisa, and I never liked a man as much as I liked Larry Allen.

I remember the first time Larry and I bonded. We sat on the hood of my car on graduation night and talked about what we would do now that we were out of school. I was going to be a chef. Larry was going to do art. Over the years Larry and I would check in with each other, and congratulate ourselves we were still doing what we said we were going to do.

I haven’t cheffed professionally in years now. But I want you to know the last time I saw Larry, just a few weeks ago, it was at an art studio in downtown Fort Worth called Dang Good Candy.  The exhibit was titled “Larry Allen: A retrospective”. The gallery was filled with Larry's artwork, and also a life time of his friends. His pieces were professionally displayed, with captions,  descriptions and details of the provenance of the particular pieces. Tip o’ the hat Larry, still doing art.

Larry said later it was the greatest night of his life. Most of y’all were there, and I was amazed by the sweet sweet spirit in the place. It was one of the most amazing nights of my life as well, to see this tribute to my good friend.

Some of you may have been unfortunate enough to be cornered by me to view the portrait of the old man Larry had gifted me long ago. I held people hostage to read the story and poem that I associate with the portrait. It was only a lack of vanity that kept me from taking the portrait down from the wall and making them read the inscription on the back Larry had written 28 years before. The inscription reads:

"In life, there are people who affect the way you see the world, not by what is said, more in how they assist in one’s illuminations of what is; those people are friends. I am grateful, as well as a better man, for your friendship.”

This inscription probably says more about Larry than it does about me.
The Old man is one of my most prized possessions. I told Larry that night that if he ever wanted it back he would have to fight me for it. From his chair Larry gave me his biggest smile, and put up his dukes.

A few months after high school there is a story that I cant tell here that earned me the first Larry Allen raised eyebrow I had ever seen. Y’all know the eyebrow, yes?

A few years later Larry and I went to the HOP. I taught him how to drink Peach Brandy. Then to the Old South for Dutch Babies, and back to my place where we unwrapped Waiting For Columbus, littlefeats latest release in 1978. Larry fell in love with Dixie Chicken, and the album became a mainstay of gatherings and parties among our peers.

The day after Erica was born Larry and I went to dinner. He told me all about what it meant to be a father, and reminded me that soon I would be a member of the club.

Back about ’94 Larry bought a house. Larry spent a month preparing for the move and I helped. It would be the most organized move ever. He had shrink wrap, stretch wrap, bubble wrap and boxes. His boxes were meticulously labeled. You know Larry could not make a check mark without it being a work of art. Shoot, he couldn’t request Dixie Chicken at a Buddy show on a cocktail napkin without it being a work of art. We saw that at his retrospective, cocktails napkins saved through the years with Larry's artful requests.

I'm going to cut to the chase here. On the day of the move the movers came. The the house sale fell thru. Somehow a rent house was located and movers were redirected. By 4 O'clock that afternoon I would have helped Larry move TWICE. But it wasn’t over yet because when Larry finally saw the rent house, he said “This place is a dump, I’m not letting my family stay here”

Well, we sat and had a discussion for the next hour about what to do.

At some point I said “I tell you what we could do Larry. We can move all your stuff  into my garage and onto my back porch. We'll put pallets up for our kids to sleep on. Y’all can stay with us until you figure out what to do”

And do you know what?

That’s exactly what we did.

All night that night we moved Larry's stuff into my house. We finished up about 8 the next morning, both a bit punchy. I said “Larry, you couldn’t have planned this more perfectly; you paid movers to move all your worldly possession's to two different locations, then all night long we moved them all to my house. And right now our kids are sleeping on pallets in my house, and all is right with the world.”

I asked Erica if she remembered this. She said she did not. Of course she didn’t …it was just part of the grand adventure.

Two weeks later a group of friends loaded a U-haul in my driveway with Larry's stuff. He had determined to move to Florida. There was Gary, and Bill and Jeff maybe, Billy Baker and Curtiss Pilcher (Hey guys). They got the truck all loaded, and I noticed Larry frantically looking through his well marked boxes. He pulled one off the truck and took it into my living room. He was being kind of furtive about the whole thing, but at some point I knew what he was doing. I went and took a shower while everyone sat in my drive way. I stood in the shower and I cried. Partly because Larry was moving away, and partly because I knew that Larry was about to gift me the portrait of the old man.
So now you know. So now you know part of the story of the Old man that is seldom told.

There are people that help illuminate for you what is. Not by what they say, but more but what they do. Larry was that kind of friend to me. Our friendship wasn’t based on self improvement, for the self or the other. I don’t recall we ever gave or sought each others advice. But just by virtue of the companionship, we appealed to the larger parts of each other; the smaller parts of ourselves diminished, not from critique but from participation as a witness to each other on a journey that cant be taken alone.

I’ve been struck by pictures I’ve seen of Larry the last year. Handsome with a beaming smile, but ravaged from his disease. I see him at the farm, on the beach, home with family. And always that beaming smile. Larry didn’t want to go. He didnt want to go because he loved you guys so much.

I’d said earlier that he couldn’t have planned that disaster of a move more perfectly. But I was wrong. In addition to Erica, Ryan and Michael on pallets, we could have had Jay, Sara and David as well. And there was no way we could have known that that would come later."

*******

This is what I wrote for Larry's servce in its entirety. I did not read it for the service, I just wanted to tell it.  A lot of it fell off  as I spoke, including the last two paragraphs. The description of our friendship seemed a perfect place to end it.
I never liked a man as much as I liked Larry Allen. 

Final Shirt

 After my father died, my mother

and my sisters picked the shirt, the tie;

he had just the one suit.

I left them to it. I didn't

want to choose, I loved him

all those years. They took a shirt

from the closet., I don't remember

which one, I'm sure he had worn it

to church and hung it up again.

They held the tie against the cloth

of the shirt. They decided, finally.

It's like that. Things come down

to the pale blue or the white,

or some other. Someone buttoned it

over him, those buttons he had unbuttoned.

Marge Saiser

Larry's Barney Story

Once upon a time I took my kids to see Barney the big purple dinosaur. He was at Northeast Mall during the early days of the Barney Craze. There was a sea of people at the mall, scarcely room to breathe. Somehow the gentle Dinosaur was muscled through the crowd and onto a stage in the center where he spoke briefly and then sang the Barney song with the crowd:

“I love you, you love me, we’re best friends as friends should be,
With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you
Won’t you say you love me too”

Upon finishing the song, Barney was muscled back through the crowd and into the safety of the bowels of the mall where there was probably a limo to escort him to a helicopter that would fly him to a Leer Jet… because back then Barney was bigger than US Steel.

The whole episode had lasted less than 2 minutes and the crowd waited in expectation for more…maybe Baby Bop would come out next, or even better, a Barney Encore. Then over the loudspeaker came the words immortal, words that had been many years waiting for a worthy subject to rise to stardom:

“BARNEY HAS LEFT THE BUILDING! PLEASE GO HOME!”

We were shattered, and a thick air of disappointment, sadness and even resentment hung in the air. And thats my Barney Story that I actually stole from Larry Allen. But I stole it fair and square!

TRUST ISSUES

 

My nephew Davy used to tell me about the time he was a delivery driver assistant. He worked with a fellow who had not been in country for long. He spoke broken English. Out on a delivery one day they got lost. Lost and turned around. They made a few city blocks, and the immigrant driver was getting a little discombobulated.
“We need to be going east” Davy said.
“Ve are goink eazzt now” the driver said.
“No, we are going west. See? The sun is setting”.
The immigrant driver, very frustrated, replied.
“You…cannot …trust …the …sun”

GOOD SHIT HAPPENS

I don’t know what in the news today makes me happier. That Ukraine plans to take back the Crimea, lost in 2014.
Or that Florida has identified and arrested 20 people on voter fraud charges…10 registered Republicans and 10 registered Democrats.
Or that the Judge that issued the Miralago warrant to take back all those classified documents from Mr Trump has directed the DOJ to work up a redacted affidavit for the public to see.
Or that the prequel to Game of Thrones, “House of the Dragon” starts Sunday night.
Valar Dohaeris

MY GRATITUDE LIST

 

If you are laying on the couch watching TV and suddenly you THINK you just saw a rat run down the hall, I want you to know that yes, you saw a rat run down the hall. And the odds are that there is another rat somewhere.
So the day after thinking I might have seen a rat scamper down my hall I saw it again, this time in the doorway to my bedroom.
My bedroom, where I watch TV and my kids come to play.
This is an infraction, and intolerable.

So off to home Depot I go to get some rat poison. Only when I get there, they don’t have the old D-Con box I had used many years ago. They hat some kind of new stuff. I checked the active ingredient.
Corn Gluten. That’s it. Corn Gluten. How can that be? Can you imagine a happier rat than one that is feasting in a corn crib? I read all about it, how Corn Gluten is supposed to kill a rat. But I don’t trust it. No sir. I want something that sounds deadly. Something with prefixes like Tetra, or Doxyl, or Cyano, and ends with string of letters and numbers. It seems the EPA has banned the good stuff. I bought a box of the Corn Gluten. And I called a friend that I had heard had a rat last year to find out if this shit really works
“No, I didn’t have a rat” he said “but I’ve got a box of the good stuff”.
It is illegal these days to use it.

I set out the bait. I could see the rats had eaten some corn gluten. But after a few days I thought I heard a rat, and then I thought I saw a rat, and as previously mentioned if you THINK you’ve seen a rat, you’ve seen a fucking rat. My son cornered one and shot him with a BB gun, but rats are tough. I chased one under the stove one morning at 5 AM.

So I bought a couple mechanical traps. Two different styles. I baited them up with fried chicken, TacoCasa, and half an ear of corn because you know rats love goddamn corn. And after 4 days now the traps haven’t been touched.
But neither have I THOUGHT I saw or heard a rat. I am assuming the corn gluten got them, and now they are communing with their Higher Power and eating like kings in that big corn crib in the sky.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t find rats particularly disgusting on an individual rat-by-rat basis. But as a group they are disturbing. I have a friend that LIKES rats. She keeps them as pets. She has a big cage for them, with rat toys, and running wheels, and little rat mirrors and cedar shavings and stuff. They come out and play with her, and then scurry back into their cage. If I could have a cage like that, and these rats would just go live in that cage and eat sunflower seeds, we would get along fine.

But that’s not what they do. They have to run and hide and chew holes in the wall and stuff.
I can abide this kind of behavior, so the rats had to go.

HANG MIKE PENCE?

In today's environment simply doing what the law and the Constitution require qualifies one as either hero or traitor.
Hero? Or traitor?

Seems like just about everyone that associated with Trump ends up as part of the RINO infested swamp.

Hans Rosling

" ... resist blaming any one individual or group of individuals for anything. Because the problem is that when we identify the bad guy, we are done thinking. And it's almost always more complicated than that. It's almost always about multiple interacting causes—a system. If you really want to change the world, you have to understand how it actually works and forget about punching anyone in the face."

WILD BREEDS WILD

Wild breeds wild –
you bring something in from the woods,
and soon enough, your home’s not yours.
P!ant a little honeysuckle
and the birds will come… They’ll come
with their mulberry trees and thistles.
They’ll build nests and attract foxes
and hawks, raccoons and opossum…
you lose control… you lose control…

And isn’t it the same with us… Isn’t it
the same with kisses and with skin…
we set something loose in each other…
We plant a little honeysuckle bruise
in our peaceful souls and the birds come…
They come on our hands and on our lips…
we lose control… we lose control.
It’s a deep thing… a promise, a warning…
wild breeds wild..
- Peregrine @ YourEyesBlazeOut

 

MIAMI VICE

Back in the '80s and I was Garde Manger at the Hyatt all the salad ladies would come in the morning after Miami Vice and we would talk about the show and what music they had played.
"They play rock and roll" Geraldine would say.
And sure enough Miami Vice set a style for using contemporary music in a television show.
I think it is so great to find that this grand young lady Kate Bush, at the age of 63, now has a number one hit with "Running Up That Hill" more than 40 years after the song was released due to its exposure on "Stranger Things". Perhaps someone somewhere will use "Sensual World" someday.
I thank you Miami Vice.

The Sensual World

Mmh, yes
Then I'd taken the kiss of seedcake back from his mouth
Going deep South, go down, mmh, yes
Took six big wheels and rolled our bodies
Off of Howth Head and into the flesh, mmh, yes

He said I was a flower of the mountain, yes
But now I've powers o'er a woman's body, yes

Stepping out of the page into the sensual world
Stepping out

To where the water and the earth caress
And the down of a peach says mmh, yes
Do I look for those millionaires
Like a Machiavellian girl would
When I could wear a sunset? Mmh, yes

And how we'd wished to live in the sensual world
You don't need words, just one kiss, then another

Stepping out of the page into the sensual world
Stepping out, off the page, into the sensual world

And then our arrows of desire rewrite the speech, mmh, yes
And then he whispered would I, mmh, yes
Be safe, mmh, yes, from mountain flowers?
And at first with the charm around him, mmh, yes
He loosened it so if it slipped between my breasts
He'd rescue it, mmh, yes
And his spark took life in my hand and, mmh, yes
I said, mmh, yes
But not yet, mmh, yes
Mmh, yes
Mmh, yes

FACTS

 

"America the beautiful is today America the irritable, where road rage, unruly airline passengers and political violence — a protective fence surrounds the court — reveal a nation of short fuses and long-simmering resentments. Intelligent people disagree about how, or even whether, the facts of contemporary civic culture should influence how the Constitution, including the first 10 amendments, should be construed. But as a founder (John Adams) insisted, facts are stubborn things."
George Will

BAD ASS QUEEN OF THE DAY

Isabella, She-Wolf of France. Married the King of England at the age of 12, exiled to Denmark where she raised an army to invade the country she was queen of and overthrow her husband and father of her four children, King Edward the Second.
Here she is trying not to look pissed.

POP TARTS

 

I had a little vacation last week. Went to Galveston with my son, an old friend and his son.
As it happens my old friend, Jeffers, he married my ex-wife. That makes him my son’s step-dad. And his son, Dan-O, is half brother to my son.
We are all friends and fathers and sons.
Anyway we have a B&B In Galveston for two nights, and did a little fishing.
At the B&B the counter is cluttered with all sorts of snacks; chips, jerky, trail mix, ect.
The last night there I woke up about 4 a.m. and went into the kitchen looking for a little snack. Right next to the toaster was a single foil pack of Pop Tarts. I looked around a little and decided on the Tarts, got a bottle of water and went back to bed and snacked out.
The next morning I get up and I’m having a cup of coffee.
Dan-O comes in and starts rummaging through the snacks.

 Now Dan-O, he is 21 and an ace Poly-Sci student at the University of Texas. He is 20, but in some ways he is still about 16.
And he is rummaging through the snacks, and I sense an increase in his desperation, and finally he says, to no one in particular “I thought I had some Pop-Tarts here”.

Oh no!

I stayed quiet as a mouse. He continued rummaging a bit and finally says “Has anyone seen my Pop Tarts?”
Its just he and I there so its hard not to address the question. And I can tell by the wild look in his eye that those Pop Tarts mean a whole lot to him. I know how he feels.

Obviously, I have reached a moral dilemma. I can do one of two things:

1. Tell him the truth, that I ate his Pop Tarts
2. Help him LOOK for his Pop Tarts.
    

“Dan-O, I hate to tell you this but I got up last night and ate your Pop Tart. I’m so sorry. I really am”
He was crushed. It was like a dagger through his heart. His knees buckled and he looked to the heavens and let out the most pitiful moan I have ever heard. If I didn’t already feel badly enough now I felt even worse. He went back to his room.

 I went outside. Jeffers was smoking a cigarette.
“Jeff, I’m afraid I ate Daniels Pop Tart last night. It was his only one”
Jeff looked up, alarmed.
“Oh no” he said.
I could tell it was pretty serious.
“How long has Dan-O been having a Pop Tart for breakfast every morning?” I asked.
Jeff looked at me, dead serious.
“Ever since he had teeth”

TOP GUN "MAVERICK"

 

No spoliers, exactly.
I went to see the new Top Gun this weekend. It was good and I cried all the way through it.
But I have to say it wasn’t near as much FUN as the original Top Gun.
In the original Top Gun, Maverick flies inverted over a Russian MIG, flips off the pilot while Goose takes a polaroid. He proceeds to buzz the tower, causing the Sky Chief to spill coffee all over himself, shouting “I want somebodies butt for this”. Maverick and Goose are called onto the carpet to some superior officers office where they are told “One more fuck up and you’ll be flying rubber dogshit out of Hong Kong ” and given their new assignment--Top Gun in Miramar-- every pilots wet dream. Exiting the office they crash into the Sky Chief again. More coffee is spilled “God Dammmit I want somebodies butt” and off to Miramar they go.
At the local bar they serenade a mysterious woman with a rousing rendition of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”, and Maverick follows her into the bathroom and suggests they make it right there on the vanity. He is turned down (“Long cruise, sailor?”), but on her way to her seat she tells Goose "You're friend was marvelous". The next day she shows up as the instructor at Top Gun wearing high heels and those stockings with the seam up the back that look so fine. Hilarity ensues.

All of this happens in the first 15 minutes of the 1986 Top Gun. Already, everyone watching the movie loves Goose because he is such a great character and Meg Ryan hasn’t even shown up yet to holler “Goose! You big stud…”
The entire 2022 sequel is dependent on Goose, which is as it should be, but don’t expect it to be as much fun to watch.

THE THRILLING MOMENT

 Sometimes the best part of a journey can be just getting there. The journey itself.
My son had rented a cabin for a night for our fishing trip. Sixty bucks a night they said. I drove, Lee was was the navigator. He navigated us up to the southern shores of lake Texoma. We veered off the main road to a twisty-turny side road that took us past mansions and horse stables, past lush green fields and lily-padded ponds. We passed the golf course, country club, day spa, tennis courts, and spilled out into the parking lot and entrance to Tanglewood Resort, pictured above.
I stopped the car a distance from the entrance so we could take it all in.
“How much did you say a night?”
“Sixty dollars”
“Somehow I don’t think this is us."
"I‘m not seeing any cabins here”
"Don't look like a cabin kind of place, do it?"
"It probably don't"
“We’ve got Cabin #7?”
"Supposed to be"
“You reckon that’s a restaurant at the top of that tower?”
“Probably might be, yes”
We both laughed.

We debated whether to go up to the valet parking and ask for directions to Cabin #7.
The navigator looked again at our map and we were on our way a few miles down the road, into the most jumbled maze of gravel side roads like you never been on, through the poison oak thicket in the dark past untold numbers of copperhead snakes, on the phone with a lady trying to guide us in, who just kept saying over and over in a wonderful Texoma drawl “Just keep coming to me”.
We had a great day of fishing and caught our limit, but that may have been the best part.

“Every moment of life, I suppose, is more or less of a turning-point. Opportunities are swarming around us all the time, thicker than gnats at sundown. We walk through a cloud of chances, and if we were always conscious of them they would worry us almost to death.

But happily our sense of uncertainty is soothed and cushioned by habit, so that we can live comfortably with it. Only now and then, by way of special excitement, it starts up wide awake. We perceive how delicately our fortune is poised and balanced on the pivot of a single incident. We get a peep at the oscillating needle, and, because we have happened to see it tremble, we call our experience a crisis.

The meditative angler is not exempt from these sensational periods. There are times when all the uncertainty of his chosen pursuit seems to condense itself into one big chance, and stand out before him like a salmon on the top wave of a rapid. He sees that his luck hangs by a single strand, and he cannot tell whether it will hold or break. This is his thrilling moment, and he never forgets it.”
From “Fishermans Luck” by Henry van Dyke, 1923

CRITICAL RACE THEORY

 

This image shows some of the graphics that prompted the state of Florida to reject four math books from use in public schools. The books, Florida said, were trying to sneak Critical Race Theory into the curriculum through a mathematics book. Based on my own personal experience, I have to agree.

Whatever happened to apples, oranges and widgets? Whatever happened to “Let X=Y”? When did math become a vehicle for making the obvious more obvious? Why does math be so relevant?

Teaching history and social studies through a mathematics book is not fair. It is not fair at all.

See, in my Junior year at LD Bell I had gotten a hold of some kind of weird pills that caused me to stumble badly through the smoking area.

I pretty much bounced off the walls in C and D hall, and by some miracle found myself in my seat for History class. And it so happened in that history class, I was the leader of some kind of group project, and the results of that project were due that day.

And in order to submit those results I was going to have to do some math.

Mrs Brown approached my desk and asked if I had the results. I told her I did not.

“Why not” she asked.

In a whimpering drug addled voice I tried to explain.

“Because this is history class, and the results would require me to math. I am a bit indisposed presently, and completely unable to math, which I should not have to do anyway because this is HISTORY class. You cant just cold cock this math thing on me in history class, man. Its not fair. Its not fair at all.”

I plopped my head down on my desk. I was done.

And she gave me a pass.

“OK Mr. Renfro, maybe you will feel better tomorrow”

Fact is I couldn't really math very good even in math class.

AN EASTER STORY

There is a robin in my yard that seems to be there year round. I think maybe he roosts permanent in my yard or somewhere very near. I first took note of him a year ago, but I think he has been there since I moved in two years ago. He has gotten very familiar, and seems to tolerate my presence quite well. Before the storm three days ago I stepped outside, and he and I watched the clouds roll in. We were only five feet apart. I spoke to him, wondered if birds have ears, and after a few minutes I got bored and went back inside.
I think maybe he is an old bird, like me, that doesn't travel well.
They say that it was a robin that flew to Jesus side to try to help as He was being crucified.

EASTER IN DETROIT

 

In the corner of the backyard were the hydrangeas

Mother called them snowballs

Before the hydrangeas bloomed in the summer

there were little snowball blossoms

on the clover in the spring

which attracted the bees

Big black and yellow bumble bees

to come out from underground to buzz

around and drink from the clover.

And I wonder now why I never took a shovel and paid the

bees a visit.

Two giant plums that had more thorns than plums

A bird bath, a swing set,

And two tall thin acorns that Dave and I

climbed to the very top and swayed

while we looked out over Lake St Clair.

I remember showing my sister how to catch a bee in her hand

if you held it tight enough it could not sting your hand.

My little sister Lisa

Lisa only tried it once.

Lisa could not hold it tight enough.

Poor Lisa.

My mother wore me out.

STEVE, 2/6/2019

Fourth of July picnic...

...on the banks of the Trinity river just north of downtown, about 1986. My wife's family had set up camp early to get a good spot for the fireworks, and like an idiot I brought a fishing pole. I think I had shrimp as bait. Anyway we were there all day waiting for fireworks, the crowd filling up behind us, and I had my pole set up on the bank. All day people would come by and ask had I caught anything.
"Nope. Don't really expect to"
So just as the sun is going down there is a twitch on the pole. Another twitch, and another. I grab it and set the hook hollering "STRIKE!"
I play him for all he's worth and finally get him up to the bank. Its a 10 pound turtle.
I turned to look up the hill and there must have been ten thousand people watching me reel him in, so I Raised Him Up High, so everyone could see.
THE CROWD WENT WILD!

ITS JUST CAKE

 

My brother was best man at my wedding. He was a West Point grad and retired a colonel.
The day of my wedding the pastry chef at the Hyatt where I worked called me about an hour before the wedding, while I was getting dressed. She had made the cake.
“Steve, I’m lost, I can’t find the church”
“OK, tell me where you are and I’ll come get you and lead you to the church”
My brother grabbed the phone.
‘The address of the church is %%%%%. You should be able to find it. Steve is not going anywhere but straight to the church from here” and he hung up.
“Don, I have to go get her”
“Steve, you are not going anywhere but straight to the church.”
“But Don, she has the CAKE. The CAKE!”

I’ll never forget the look on his face. I really cant even describe it. Maybe its the look you give a guy when you order him to advance on a fortified position, or clean the latrines.  I don't know. Maybe it was look you give someone who asks where they can get some Ivermectin, you know, the horse pill for COVID.
He said:
“Steve, we can have a wedding without a cake. Get your ass dressed, We leave in 5 minutes”

I think about this one a lot when I encounter situations where I (or someone else) is placing too much importance on a detail.
You CAN have a wedding without a cake.

Our Latest Crush

 

Here at Bulletholes we  have a huge crush on Pati's Mexican Kitchen. She has wonderful recipes, and tells you all about the food that she is using. She also has a wonderful accent to go with them. As she tastes a dish she gets this look of ecstasy on her face. "Yummmm" she says and her eyes flutter a little before rolling up and closing and it's very hot.

She comes off all sweet and innocent but she knows what she's doing.

She knows exactly what she's doing.

SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT

My father used to give me licks with his belt.
It was always a very formal affair,
Like going into the manager’s office
And getting written up.
There was no emotion,
He just reviewed the infraction with me
(throwing tomatoes at cars, playing chicken with the hoodlum in the jalopy down the street, sass talking a teacher))
Reminding me this was going to hurt him worse than I,
Then he told me to grab my ankles.
I learned that if I started to cry
On about the 3rd lick or so,
He would stop and put his belt back on.

Then one day I decided not to cry.
The licks went on for some time,
But I didn't cry.
It wasn't a display of courage.
It was an act of defiance.
Rebellion, grabbing its ankles.
Without a whimper I had quit the program.
When he had finally had enough
The belt came to rest at his side
I stood straight up and turned to look him in the eye.
My father was crying.
And that was the last time
My father ever gave me licks with his belt.

srenfro 3/2013

ON THE PRICE OF OIL

Back when I was a chef I would call three produce companies to get prices for produce. Prices changed weekly and seasonally.
I called Ben E Keith one week. Orange prices had tripled from the week before.
I said "Why are orange prices so high?"
He said "Because they had a freeze in Florida."
I said "Can't we get some California oranges?"
He said "They heard about it in California."
That's about lesson number five when you're learning to be a chef.

IN LINE AT THE GROCERY

 

When I was in the sixth grade living up in Detroit, I went to middle school for a month before we moved back to Texas. In that month, walking home in the afternoons, I would walk behind a girl named Mary McD#######. She had gone to a different elementary school than I. She may have been in one of my classes, I don’t know, but sometimes I would pass her in the hall. She was easy to spot because she always wore a white blouse and a green or red Tartan style checkered skirt. And the shirt was usually untucked, which along with her tousled hair and striking Scottish lines, gave her a very tomboyish look.  But after school I would follow twenty feet behind her and after about two blocks she would turn right, and I would continue on ahead to my house. I don’t recall we ever spoke, but I never forgot her, the strawberry blonde hair, her name, or those Tartan skirts. For fifty odd years there’s probably not a year go by that Mary would not enter into some reverie or daydream of mine. In my minds eye I could see her face and wondered if I had ever spoken to her at all (how could my memory be so vivid and everlasting had I not?), if she ever stopped dressing like a Catholic schoolgirl, and whether we would have been friends had I stayed in Detroit and ever got up the nerve to speak to her..

Fast forward 50 years and there she is on Facebook. She looks just like I remember her.
That’s her on the right and I swear she hasn’t changed a bit. If I stood behind her in line at the grocery I would be tempted to tap her on the shoulder and ask “Is your name Mary?”

I guess that maybe I did get up the nerve to speak to her in that small one month window before moving to Texas. Mary says she has some recollection of me.
Or maybe she is just being kind.

 

THE KEYSTONE PIPELINE

I keep hearing a lot of chit and chatter about how Biden shut down the Keystone pipeline and that’s why oil here, and in Tokyo and Europe has gone sky high, blah, blah, blah.Fact is, the Keystone pumps about 1.5 million barrels a day to Houston and someplace in Illinois with the unfortunate name of Patoka.
The proposed construction of Keystone XL was terminated by Biden. It was only 10% completed and never moved a single drop of oil.
Seems like I heard Trump say one time that while he approved the construction of the Keystone XL, he knew it would never be built to completion. It would be tied up in court forever.
I think there may be larger factors than the Keystone XL that have brought about rising oil prices.

 

THE PROMISES

 1. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.
2. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
3. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
4. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.
5. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
6. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
7. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
8. Self-seeking will slip away.
9. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
10. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
11. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
12. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves 

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

Alcoholics Anonymous p83-84

VALENTINE'S DAY AT CENTRAL JR HIGH, 1970

Seventh grade. I was hopelessly in love with the cute mousey straight-haired girl that lived across the street. Her friends called her Peanut, and she was a bit bucktoothed and her ears stuck out the sides of her hair. But as I think about it, she really wasn't bucktoothed exactly. As I see her in my minds eye, as I am sure you are doing now, she was "over-toothed"...that is to say, her two front teeth were a bit out of proportion, a bit larger than the rest of her teeth, giving her a kind of Lola Bunny look that drove me absolutely wild.

The day before Valentines Day 1970, at the age of 13 years old, I told my best friend Billy that I was going to ask her to "Go Steady" the next day. First thing the next morning I went to the Student Council stand to put down my $1 and send her a Valentines Telegram, a "Love-O-Gram", in which I intended to declare my undying love and devotion to her.
Anonymously, of course.
Peanut was in three of my classes that day and I watched her as she got the Love-O-Gram in Second Period. I saw her show it to her friend Vicki. Later, I watched as it was passed around to all her girl-pals at the lunch table. I was terrified beyond belief, making sure I did not watch too closely lest I be found out, and I was starting to understand what a wimp I truly was, and that in my wimpiness I had no business asking a girl to go steady just because she lived across the street and might need braces.
I am glad that I have no recollection of what was in my Love-O-Gram or I would be tempted to divulge what my Seventh Grade mind might have written.
She had no idea it was me—how could she know?-- or so I thought, because I was a real squirrel back then, carrying a trombone with me everywhere I went and forever talking about the Chess Club, model rockets and stuff. Several times that day I nearly summoned the courage to ask Peanut to go steady, but in the face of those ears and teeth I always chickened out. I could barely stand to look at her.

Living across the street from me, Peanut and I rode the same Bus #29 home every day, and we got out together every day, just the two of us. Having lacked the courage throughout the day, it was now my intention to pop the question after we got off the bus. Do or die. It was Hammer-time.
We were standing there at the curb as the bus pulled away.
She had a funny look on her face as I toed the ground and studied my shoe tops and cleared my throat.
But before I could speak I hear her say through the ringing in my ears:
"Steve, can I ask you something?'
"Sure Peanut"
"Billy Rucker told me you were going to ask me to go steady today. Is that true?"
I felt dizzy, sick, weak at the knees. The earth spun under my feet. The blood drained from my face and my heart was in my throat.
Of course I completely and categorically denied it. If Billy had not been twice my size, I'd have kicked his ass the next day.
We seldom talked after that, she and I. She lived across the street from me for another two years and moved away to Houston. But the fates brought us together in May of 1975, the night of Graduation. A random meeting on the street in front of our houses, in almost the exact spot from five years earlier when I had lacked the balls to ask her to go steady. She had come to town to see her best friend Cindy, who lived up the street, graduate. It was then I confessed to her that my intention that Valentines Day in 1970 had been to ask her to "Go Steady", and that, yes, it was me that had sent the Love-O-Gram.
"I know, and I still have it" she said and laughing, gave me a light kiss on the cheek.
She had gotten braces or else her face had caught up with her mouth. She no longer had that Lola Bunny look and her ears no longer showed through her once-thin-and-mousey, but now stylishly permed and frosted blonde hair.
That is to say… her charms were somewhat faded in my eyes.
But I'll never , ever, ever, forget that sweet little kiss.

THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS

Originally posted in 2013 without addendums...

I’m really lucky. I only have a 10 minute drive in to work. There is not really a lot that can happen to you in that 10 minutes.

Up ahead this morning there was a school bus stopped. It had the flashing yellow and red lights, and the STOP sign out. Traffic was stopped on both sides of the bus, and I was able to watch the bus driver do her business.

It seems this bus was equipped with a lift for a wheelchair, and at this particular stop, the woman driver was out and lowering it for a smiling young man in a wheelchair as his father looked on. Traffic was building on both sides of the bus as the lift slowly lowered. I watched the woman driver roll the young man onto the lift. The father handed him his lunchbox. I looked in the rear view mirror at the man behind me on his cell phone. I watched the oncoming cars, stopped now, motionless, except for the woman ahead absent-mindedly drumming her fingers on the steering wheel.

It was like the whole wide world had stopped, and would stay stopped as the bus driver secured the chair to the lift with a strap; that time would stretch itself out while the lift slowly rose. That for just five minutes the earth had stopped its rotation and this child in the wheelchair was the center of the universe, the most important person in the world, and I sensed that no one in any of the stopped cars was in any kind of hurry, that no one felt put out, and it made me feel proud to live in a country that would take this kind of care for one single person. To live in a school district that is able to do this. Maybe not all of them can, I don't know. Seldom do I get to notice such a manifestation of my taxes doing such good work.

My heart swelled, it really did, and now the smiling driver rolled the chair from the lift into the bus, and I wondered how the kids in the bus felt about taking a moment this morning, taking a moment every morning, to get their pal loaded up. I wondered if anyone said “good morning”, or helped get him strapped safely into his spot on the bus. I wondered if he was a good student. The lift disappeared into the bus, and the driver smiled at the boy’s father, who smiled back, then looked up to see me.

Me, also smiling now, having witnessed this act of care play out. She smiled and gave me a happy little wave, got on the bus and after a long moment the lights stopped blinking and the STOP signs disappeared, traffic resumed and the world started back to its business again.

The whole world in His hands.

My moment of Zen.

Addendum: Since writing this I have had the privilege of sitting behind the bus on a number of occasions. One morning I had a Spiritual Awakening. This was about much more that my tax dollars at work, or living in a caring, nurturing country. It was about my Second Tradition. "For our Group Purpose there is but one Ultimate Authority; a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience". Indeed! And here I am, waiting on the bus and watching Him express Himself.

Addendum #2: I told someone who drives one of these buses my story. She told me that what I couldn't see was that there is a person on the bus that receives the kid, and gets him all strapped in and settled. Isn't it marvelous? The things going on that we cannot see?

MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR

Yes, I know, I neglected my blog just terrible in 2021. Lets see if we can't get back on the ball for 2022.

Do you not miss those days when we were young and before MTV when you acted out entire albums with your best friend? For me Magical Mystery Tour was one of my favorites, and me and Scott would stay up all night on Friday nights, building our model rockets, and listening to his collection of Beatles albums, acting out every song. Looking for clues about Paul's death. Then a bike ride to 7-11 for an apple beer at 3 in the morning in the seventh grade.
Penny Lane was just wonderful to act out, with its four of fish and finger pies, barbers, bankers and blue suburban skies; fire engines, roundabouts, nurses and poppies and the fireman comes rushing in through the pouring rain.
Very strange.
I nearly had these memories dashed by someone that wanted to tell me some of these songs, including Penny Lane, weren’t on this album. Sometimes I make stuff up. Yes, I do. But its not important anyone knows when I do that, make things up.
But its important for me to know.