THE 30 MINUTE RULE

Tomato's don't come easy in this town, no sir, its easy to get a pickle, its easy to find a good Cappucino, but just try getting a little T for a BLT. Its a no go; you'd be more likely to find a goat that plays chess and smokes a pipe, or wool that don't itch, and just try being a diabetic its easier to get needles if you are a junkie than if you have a little problem with the sweets and come up short on insulin so you try snortin' Bug Powder like its Kool Aid or Folgers Instant but that never worked, all it ever did was lead you to feelin' buggy snortin' sugar and Coffee-Mate and all you ever really did want is to make love to a tomato; you'd trade some B and L for an adequate supply of T, but if you have learned anything over the years its always wait at least 30 minutes after meals before you try to fuck.

YOU WERE THE GIRL

I was the guy that sat next to you that never had pen and paper when he came to class, and was always a bit surprised to find he might need one on this particular day, and acted as though he had never had to borrow a pencil and paper from you before today, and feigned total confusion as to what may have happened to his pen and paper, incredulous that it may have been stolen just this morning, or having inadvertantly left it in the cafeteria, or used the last of it during Math last period.
And you were the girl that sometimes would torture me for a moment, and claim that you had no more pencils to lend, but I knew that in a plastic pouch in your well maintained binder there was like a whole aisle of school supplies and paraphernalia; a compass and protractor, a pair of safety scissors, French Curve, at least 4 rulers, a slide rule, erasers of every ilk, markers, high-lighters and of course ball point pens and freshly manicured pencils.
I could almost smell them over the aroma of the big ol' roach stashed in my front shirt pocket.
Almost.

I don't know how I did it, walking into a class I had not been to in some days to find that we were taking the Chapter test, and you might hold out for a while, but eventually your charitable heart and my droopy blue eyed smile and pretty blonde hair would win you over and I would have a pen with which to take my test.
I don't know how I did it.
The real miracle in all this?
How the hell did I pass those tests?

BRUCE LEE

I was thinking about a kid I used to work with when I was a Chef. We called him 'Bruce Lee" because his name was Bruce and the one thing he could do was karate. He was like a yellow belt, which was pretty good for a guy with an IQ of about 75.
He was sweet and harmless and dumb as a post and eager to fuck anything up you asked him to, and I learned after a while what I could and could not count on him for.
I learned after a while how to use him. I was Garde-Manger, in charge of salads and cold foods at the time.

Bruce Lee, he loved Cherry Peppers. I couldn't keep him out of them. Then one day he had a whole gallon bottle of them. He stuck his hand into the jar and had a whole handful of them, but with the hand full like that, he couldn't get his hand out of the jar. It was baffling and frustrating him to no end, and by the time I noticed what was going on he was about to smash the jar against the Can Opener.
'Let go of the peppers Bruce Lee" I said.
He just looked at me and stammered "But,but..."
'Let go of the peppers Bruce Lee, and you will be able to get your hand out" I pleaded.
Bruce Lee looked at the jar, forlorn, and back up to me "But I want..."
"Let go of the peppers, Bruce Lee"
Bruce didn't have it in him to let go of the peppers. He liked those peppers, he wanted those peppers and now that he had a hold of them it was going to be hard to talk him into letting them go.
I had to learn and practice a lot of patience and persuasion that day, but I managed to talk Bruce Lee out of that jar. It took almost an hour of negotiations.

When I told my son this story he said:
"Daddy, you can catch a raccoon that way"
I suppose you can!

RAINTREE COUNTY

Somewhere they said it was earlyspring and other places they thought it was latewinter and either way you knew it was going to be bad business. The crops would need rain and rain meant lightning and the winds that howl and wake people up at night and take them thundering to places they don't want to go and whether or not they ever make it back its anyone's guess and its a bad bad business. But the rain comes, we need the rain because its good for bad business and the winds blow turning trees to lumber and we have to grow up someday and the car payment comes due and the wind blows while you measure twice the tow truck screeches when business is bad and the next thing you know you wake up in Raintree County.
Raintree County.
Where the trees grow tall and the rain hammers down like bushel buckets of nails .

THE BLUE RAIDERS

It had all started as a lazy summer day in a cherry tree, the three of us filling our cheeks and wondering what a city boy was going to do the next three months. Then we moved on to Mrs. Domdalskis Raspberry patch, conveniently located in the far corner of her backyard, just out of sight from her kitchen window. From there we could see the Duchess’ Mansion, abandoned and inhabited only by whatever spirit the old Austrian lady had left after her death last year. Perhaps that is where it began, as we eyed the dog entry chute that led to a room on the second floor of the mansion, the chute that her little Bichon Frissee dog named Edelweiss had used while the Duchess lived out her last days.
Or maybe it was at the McMillan Mansion, next to 3-Mile Park, where we eyed the huge grounds on the way to fly our kites at the park. The grounds stretched for a good mile, from the entry gate, down the tree lined drive, past the eight car garage and servants quarters, through shrubs and hedgerows and past the huge Manor to the backyard that lay on a downhill slope, full of prize roses and heritage tulips imported direct from the old country, until you reached the shores of Lake St. Clair.
Or maybe it was at Bill Spencers 4th Grade Birthday Party where we went to see “The Great Escape” which sparked our sense of adventure and stealth.
Likely it was all these things that sent us exploring that summer.

Exploring.
We ran the back-cuts, Dave and Greg and I, and we ran the backyards. We called ourselves "The Blue Raiders" because we thought it sounded cool. There was no way that we could have known that after I moved to Texas, “Blue Raider” would be the name of my High School Mascot. Dave showed us a way to hop a fence without ever breaking stride. We could be up and over, back-cut down the sideway, through the brush and break free past a kitchen window without being so much as a blur. We were as shadows turned to smoke then vanished in thin air. By summers end we had popped up just about everywhere we shouldn’t have been and done things I won’t tell you all about here.
I will tell you that after you went up the Duchesses dog-chute that emptied on the second floor, you would find a dumb-waiter that went from the kitchen to a great hall on the Second floor, and then continued up into the lady’s bedroom on the Third.
I will tell you that some people found that their clotheslines had been cut, their roses tramples, their hydrangeas deflowered by little pen-knives.
That little old ladies in flowered bonnets would grab a pail to put strawberries from the garden in and find that…there were no strawberries left.
And that old men would stare down heart broke at what had been a ripe and full Rhubarb plant, to find that it was entirely gone, replaced by empty packs of sugar strewn across the garden..
And on more than one occasion along the lakefront properties, a Groundskeeper would have to rescue lawn furniture thrown into the lake from the lakeside Gazebo.


Boys will be boys I suppose, and even now I wonder how often we did these things. But I can’t imagine doing them very long, or for any length of time where we wouldn’t have been caught, just like Steve McQueen in the Great Escape. It doesn’t matter how slick you are, you do anything long enough or enough times and you are going to get caught.

I remember the day we did get caught, although for a misdemeanor far less serious than the ones we had been committing.
We had staked out Mr. Bowles Tomato patch, just behind his garage next to Windmill Drive. It was a perfect spot, with a curve in the road where a car would pass, and a vine ripe Tomato could be heaved at the windshield, and we could duck past the back-cut slide sideways and down past the heather and over the fence, safely into my backyard.
We were down to all green tomatoes, and little ones at that, when our luck ran out. We were over the fence into my backyard before you could say ‘Jack-bananas” but the lady driver had gotten a glimpse of us going over the fence.
She rolled up into my driveway, un-beknownst to us boys crouched and giggling in my back yard, went and knocked at the door and when my mother answered, asked:
“Do you happen to know three little boys that are as thick as thieves?”

My dad wore me out that night.

"Roscoe tried to miss 'em but he didn't quite."

I'm comin back from lunch and I
Look down at my odometer
and it says 87777.7
and all I can think its
I gotta get up to
Oklahoma
and play that Choctaw Bingo like ol'
James Mcmurtry.
This song is like an
entire lexicon of
how to talk Texas.
My favorite line?
"Roscoe tried to miss 'em but he didn't quite."

PARTY IN THE PRESIDENTIAL SUITE

The last time us Kitchen staff got to go to a party it was a disaster. It was a big celebration up in the Presidential Suite on the 16th floor. The beer was iced up in a couple big Lexans. When the last beer disappeared it left a whole lotsa ice water.
Must have been a hundred gallons of ice water but it wasn't so much that if two Sous Chefs and two banquet cooks got on each side they could'nt be lifted up and dumped on the F&B Director, Banquet Manager, Catering Manager, and three sluts from Sales, like they do to Coaches who have won the Super Bowl.
Its too bad they all happened to be sitting on a $5000 dollar couch.
This caused quite a commotion on the 15th floor as well, when all that Ice water started through the ceiling in the Governors suite.
They made us leave the Party in the Presidential Suite and if we hadn't had a whole Kitchen downstairs to clean up, I imagine Security might have escorted us to the Emplyee entrance.
So while we were cleaning the Kitchen, the Chef came down and bought us 8 bottles of Dom Perignon from Room Service.
It was great!
And the next day the GM wasn't even mad at us for fucking up the two best Suites in the Hotel; he was mad at the Chef because the Chef had signed the Personel Directors name on the ticket for the bottles of Dom Perignon.

Man-o-Man, those boys from the Kitchen!

PARANOIA

We have had this huge ice storm down here in Texas. It has caused the local Socialist Electric Company to institute "Rolling Blackouts". I suspect they are taking MY hard earned electricity and giving it to people who do not deserve it.
The Communist Bastards!
This is how it starts. First they take your electricity. Next, they will come for our guns. Eventually I will not even have a single Lesbian Cow left; it will have been gored and I will be living off the Gubment cheese with out so much as a Tinfoil Hat with which to defend myself
Its all part of the Health Care Reform.

MY FIRST DRINK WAS

Cutty Sark, four fingers from a 6oz glass straight up, the summer after 9th grade.
I then tried to smoke waterbugs, thinking they were "just big 'ol roaches" and inflict myself upon Susan, who was spending the night with my sister. They tried to give me coffee my sister made, except she didnt know how to make coffee, and then they put me in the shower.
All this while my parents slept soundly.
I woke up the next morning, wet, covered in coffee grounds, with a black eye and a busted lip. I spent the next three days near death.

MY POOR MOTHER

When I was in the fifth grade, about 1966 or so, there was a TIME Magazine that came to the house. I'll never forget the cover. There was a girl in a bikini, not a string bikini mind you, but one of those 60's Grandma style two-pieces. The headline for the Magazine said "THE NUDE LOOK".
So I picked up the magazine and took it into the kitchen where Mom was warming up the Totinos Pizza rolls for dinner and asked:
"Mom, what does "NUDE" mean?"
And she bustled over to the sink and washed her hands. I thought maybe she didn't hear me, so I stepped over to the sink and asked again:
"Mom, what does "NUDE" mean?"
And she looked down at the magazine, avoiding any eye contact with me, and she turned back to the stove to check on the pizza rolls. So I asked again:
'Mom, what..." but before I could finish, she said:
"Stevie, go wash your hands, dinner is ready."
I think about that all the time, that is to say, that little scene crosses my mind every now and then. The thing is, I already knew what nude was. In fact, upstairs under my toy box I had three Playboy magazines I'd found while out trash pickin' the week before. I'll never forget the day a few weeks later I came home from school and my little stash of Playboys was gone.

WHY I LOVE FACEBOOK

About once a week I hear from someone in my past and am able to send them a message like this. This one went to a childhood friends mother; he had died last year and I had not seen him in 35 years.
Dear Mrs. Barnard;
Yes, I found out about Ken last year through Nancy Street just before the Reunion (it was my first to go to after 35 years). I had rather disappeared after High School, working as a Chef. I worked for Luminarias, up on the hill over the Turnpike for almost 4 years. Then I worked for Hyatt hotels for a long time, then Rivercrest and Shady Oaks Country Clubs. I got to be pretty good, carve ice and everything!
Mom and dad both died inside a year back in 87-88, and my grandmother as well. I had married in 1984, my mom loved her a lot, her name is Shila. she and I had two kids, 20 and 21, but we divorced in 1998. We remain very good friends.
I am not a Chef anymore, I write a lot these days, and if you look through my notes (almost 250) and picture albums you may get a pretty good idea of who I am these days.
I guess the best thing I can say about myself these days is that I have 912 days without any drugs or alcohol. They caused me a lot of trouble over the years, and cost me a lot of things I can't get back, but I am blessed to still be here and to have found another way to live.
It is very good to be able to tell this to people that I haven't seen in all these years.
I'm so sorry to hear about Ken. When I pass ya'lls old house on Cheryl I always remember the day Ken and I walked to Whataburger and got the biggest shakes they had.
They were huge, and we swore to have them every day for the rest of our lives!

NOTHING 101

"I think I'd make a great teacher so I'm going down to LD Bell High School and do a presentation so they will let me teach a class next year."
"Really Steve? I didn't know you had a teachers certificate"
"I don't. But I should, don't you think? Hell, I should have a Masters in something, one would think. And after I give my presentation they will want me, I'm sure of it"
"I dunno Steve. What's the class going to be about?"
"About? Its going to be about "Nothing". A class about nothing in particular and everything in general. I'll come in everyday and just decide what we will learn about that day. We can call it " "Nothing 101""
"Nothing 101" Steve? Do you really think they will go for that?"
"Oh sure! The kids will love it!"
"OK Steve, so supposing they do hire you what will you do your first day?"
"I dunno. Stuff. Maybe we could talk about pencils."
"Pencils, Steve? What do you know about pencils?"
"Well, I know a lot about pencils. Dad told me it was the pencil that ruled the world, that nothing got bought sold or built without a pencil. But I tell you what is really amazing about a pencil."
"What's that Steve?"
"There is no country on the face of the earth can produce a pencil all by itself."
"How's that?
"Well you gotta have rubber for erasers, wood for the body and graphite to go inside and there is no country in the world has all those materials available on their own."
"Steve, that's going to be some class!"
"I agree!"

GOOD HAPPY EYE

So I go to pick up my new Blood Pressure medicine. The Lab Tech rings up my bill.
$165 she says, bored and unimpressed.
The cost is 12x the price of the old medicine. It must have Gold dust in it.
No, we don't need Health Care Reform.
Just go ahead and shoot me before I have a stroke in line at the Pharmacy.
I left without the new medicine. Its Christmas Eve, and I'm too poor, even with the Tax cut and insurance, to have proper Blood Pressure Medicine. So I started taking my old stuff again, the stuff that wasn't working so well.
It was't working worth a crap at all. I called my Doctor and set up a consultation.
By the time I got there, my Hypertension was in a full-tilt boogie. I was feeling pretty jumpy.
Doctor Strznik, a big Polish man with one loppy-jawed eye like Jack Elam's, asked me series of questions, regarding my medications, my previous blood pressure readings, and what I could afford. His last question was:
"So how do you feel, Steve?"
I said:
"I feel like I'd like to find a little guy and whup him."

Doctor Strznik laughed. He couldn't stop laughin'. I don't think he ever heard that one before. I thought he might bust a blood vessel, and the offset eye rolled around really weird while the good happy eye kept looking right at me.
I hope he never tries to do surgery with an eye like that, and I told him so.
He laughed even harder, and I started laughin' and the next thing you know we had two PA's in there and we are all laughing and that crazy cock-eyed eye is rollin' around.
Laughter....its the best Medicine, and the best answer to all that is wrong with the world.

WILLIAM SAFIRE

"Composition is a discipline; it forces us to think. If you want to 'get in touch with your feelings,' fine — talk to yourself; we all do. But, if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down and then cut out the confusing parts."

BUBBLES

My budget tells me that I have $200 to spend for Christmas. but even with the tax cuts, my confidence is at an all time low. Should I pump my $200 into the economy, creating more demand for goods and services, thereby more jobs, which eventually, (if eventually means "at the end of time") works its way back into my pocket duly increased by some number yet to be determined; or hang onto it for dear life for the emergency that will undoubtedly come up the day after I part with it?

I'm on the bubble here.

RELATIVITY

STEVE: "I'll try to get this place cleaned up before you come to town so maybe you could come over next time."
SUSAN: "Its OK Steve, I've seen your place dirty before."
STEVE: "No, Susan, you've seen my place clean before."

GOOD TABLE MANNERS

Had a date Saturday with the same girl that I went to see "Burlesque" with, the girl that thinks I'm a Billionaire.
It was OK.
She is nice, everything seemed to work out well. By that I mean we got to the movie ("RED", with Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman and Mary Louise Parker, which I had already seen with another date a few weeks ago, but that's what they all seem to want to see these days) 10 minutes before it started, and the movie was as good as it was the first time I saw it and Mary Louise is really cute, and I didn't spill the popcorn, and then when the movie let out we got to Chili's 15 minutes before they closed so we didn't end up at Whataburger or IHop, and dinner was good, and I think for the most part I chewed my food with my mouth shut and practiced good table manners, and on the way to and from I didn't get into any road rage and during the conversation we managed to avoid politics and religion so I guess that is what a good date is all about.
Oh, and she paid this time.
Is that what a good date is all about?
Is that all there is to it?
Seems like there ought to be more, it seems like there used to BE more.
I feel old.
God, how I hate the 21st Century.

OLD CHEFS DREAMS AND KNEE SOCKS

As I was dreaming of making a nice Pate' one night...
I look up to see a “Chap”. He is wearing a red and green Tweed Jacket, checked Scarf and Riding Cap. He has on Driving gloves and carries a Riders whip. He is in his 60’s, has one of those Curly-Q Mustaches, a pipe and is wearing a Monocle. He is the mental picture I get when I say “Chap”.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
Foodservice people always help.
In his thick British accent he says ‘Right-O, thank you young man, quite possibly you can. I am looking for a pair of ‘Knee Socks’
”“Knee Socks?” asks I.
“Knee Socks” says he.
I glance around the Kitchen and clear my throat.
“ Does any one here have a pair of Knee Socks?” I announce.
All movement in the Kitchen and Waiters Station stops.
Out of the corner of my eye I detect some movement by the ice machine. There is a Cocktail Waitress there, she is looking right at me and I can tell that she is going to answer my request.
.“Knee Socks?” she asks.
“Knee Socks” I say.
Very daintily, she reaches down and with thumb and forefinger of one hand, and grasps the hem of her skirt. She slowly raises her skirt to reveal a black garter belt with a little red bow, and Fishnet Stockings. She raises her heel, and on pointed toe flexes her knee to the inside slightly to further advertise the Product.
Very nice. Very nice indeed.
“Like these?” she asks, demure, in almost a whisper.
I look to the Chap; he is rather shocked; his eyes widen, the pipe dangles from his lower lip, the monocle pops from his eye and he shakes his head very quickly.
"Clever that one, but no" He says.
I look back to the Waitress and give her a wink.
“I don’t think so honey” I say “But you are looking really good today”

"LET THEM NOT STAMP THEIR FEET"

‎"Tell Believing women to avert their eyes, and safeguard their private parts, and not expose their attractions except what is visible. And let them wrap their shawls around their breast lines, and reveal their attractions only before their husbands or fathers, or fathers-in-law, or sons, or sons of their husbands, or brothers, or son...s of brothers, or sons of sisters, or their womenfolk, or slaves, or male attendants with no sexual desire, or children with no intimate knowledge of the private parts of women. And let them not stamp their feet to reveal what they hide of their ornaments. "

The Q'uaran, provided by my pal Dave.

Ornaments courtesy of This isn't Happiness

SHELLACKED AT BURLESQUE

I had a date Friday night.
We went to Red Lobster.
Over the Crab Claws I said "Do ya maybe wanna go to a movie after?"and she said "Sure" and as the waitress brought the check I realized that I should have said "Do ya maybe wanna GO DUTCH to a movie" but it was too late at this point to revise my invitation.
So I made sure that she saw the enormous tip I was leaving and the $60 check for dinner, in hopes that maybe when we got to the theater that she might say something like 'Hey, since you got dinner, I'll get my own ticket for the show" but she didn't even blink and now I'm in for another $20 and my only hope is that maybe she will spring for the popcorn, if for no other reason than the fact that I am about to sit down and watch a movie starring Christina Aguilera and Cher, and some guy named Stanley Tucci who I have no idea who he is but my date is more excited about seeing him than Christina or Cher so I know it can't be good. Besides, what kinda of man gets involved in a movie with Cher and Christina? I already know the answer to that and I still have no idea who this guy is.
So we are walking through the lobby and the smell of the popcorn is hitting me and I'm thinking "Maybe she will buy some popcorn and a soda" but she is completely oblivious. So we go in and sit down and its like 15 minutes till the show starts and I can smell the butter I can smell the corn and I'm getting thirsty like cattle at a salt lick and she's going on and on about Stanley Tucci and how great he was in "The Devil Wears Prada" and that's all the evidence I need; now I know everything I need to know about Stanley. Now its like a minute before the show starts and the popcorn smell is driving me mad and I look at her and say:
"Hey what do you think about some popcorn?" and she settles a little further back into her seat and says "Yeah, that'd be nice" and so up I jump and go get popcorn. This chick is really somethin'.
I'm getting shellacked.
The movie wasn't that great unless you really like Christina Aguilera, but she was right about one thing.
That Stanley Tucci, he's amazing.