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