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.

THE CHAINS THAT YOU REFUSE

I’m surfing through the channels last night, nuthin’s on. On Channel 13 they are having their Beg-A-Thon, trying to raise money, and they always use the “Celtic Woman” program. I guess it a big draw. But I’ve been watching Celtic Woman for 20 years now, ever since the Riverdance craze. I’m about done with gorgeous Irish lasses singing beautiful weeping Irish ballads.

But while swinging through from channel to channel, here we have the lasses doing a new song.
"Bonny Portmore".
"Bonny Portmore" is an Irish traditional folk song which laments the demise of Ireland's old oak forests, specifically the Great Oak of Portmore. It’s a beautiful song, it really is, especially the Lorrena McKinnett version, so I listen and move on.

Still nothing on anywhere, and passing by Celtic Woman again and what’s this?
They are doing “Beeswing” by Richard Thompson, a very beautiful love song about a little slip of a gal that cannot be tamed.
So you know I have to listen to it. Its about time they updated their playlist. The four lasses are doing OK with it, and there is a guy playing the pipes. The chorus:

"She was a rare thing
Fine as a beeswing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child
She was running wild, she said
As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay
And you wouldn't want me any other way"

But here is the thing.
They didn’t do the last verse!
What the hell?
How can you not do the last verse?
They stopped at “like a fool I let her run with a ramblin' itch”.
No Gypsy caravan, no wolfhound, no hip pocket, no faded flower, no chains refused.
Is that horrible or what?

The missing lyrics:

"Last I hear she's sleeping out
Back on Derby beat
White Horse in her hip pocket
And a wolfhound at her feet
And they say she even married once
A man named Romany Brown
But even a Gypsy caravan
Was too much settling down
And they say her flower is faded now
Hard weather and hard booze
But maybe that's just the price you pay
For the chains you refuse"

ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE

Last night I turned the TV on and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was on. The old Claymation one with Burl Ives. If I had a dollar for every time I've seen this show starting when I was 6 years old I could buy the North Pole. It was the part where Rudolph meets the adorable pretty-eyed doe with the little red polka dot bow, who flutters her huge eyelashes and tells Rudolph she thinks he's cute, that got me all blubbery, and I cried and cried.


It was just so sweet, and even a funny looking red-nosed bashful reindeer with a nasally sinus voice like Rudolph deserves to have someone with huge eyelashes that thinks they are cute to flirt and prance and caper about with them.
Then Rudolph tries to join in the reindeer games, and his fake nose he tried to use to hide his own spectacular schnozola falls off, exposing the big glowing red one, and all the other little boy reindeer started to tease him about his nose, and I cried some more. Then the coach of the reindeer games, in a very Trump-like fashion, starts to bully Rudolph too, and declares Rudolph unfit to play in the reindeer games, and I cried and cried and cried. I was a sopping wet mess.
So I figured what the hell, we may as well get this over with and put on "Its A Wonderful Life" and cried pretty much from start to finish.
Because Hey, its Gosh Darn Christmas.
Mercury is in Retrograde.
Let it bleed.


Melville says everything flows to the sea.
I that is so, then everything flows FROM "Its A Wonderful Life ".
Its got everything. Hockey, High School hijinks, real estate, Uncle Billy, car crashes, bar fights, skinny dipping, foxy librarians, bank crashes, bells, wheelchairs, spiders, ice cream, drugs, war hero's, singing cops, cab drivers, Italian Americans, malfeasance, crows, angels, angel wings, and Fully Clothed Women.
And Zuzu's petals.

JUST KILL ME NOW

Phone rings. “Hello?”
“Mr Bulletholes, this is (garbled ) from Texas (garbled) and we have the results from your sleep study in. Can we schedule your follow up appointment?”
“Yes, please”
“Would you like morning or afternoon?”
“Either one. The sooner the better”
Long silence.
“How about 2:30 on January 21st?”
Long silence while Mr Bulletholes calculates that this is five weeks away, and does his best to keep from blowing his top.
Then, in his sweetest voice “Miss (garbled) do you know I started this process all the way back in July? I was really hoping in July to have this done before the end of the year.”
“I’m sorry Mr. Bulletholes.”
“Is there nothing you can do for me? I'm so tired of being tired”
“Well, let me see….” Long silence. “Did you say morning or afternoon, Mr Bulletholes?”
“Either one”
Long silence.
“How about this Friday at 11:00 am?”
“You are a miracle worker. Thank you.”

Amusing Ourselves to Death

 “What [George] Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What [Aldous] Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism … In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.”

— Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

FOR MR RITTENHOUSE

 

Great Movies From My Youth
James Stewart as Charlie Anderson, scouring with several sons and a daughter the Shenandoah Valley, looking for his youngest son, accidentally taken prisoner during the Civil War.

Charlie Anderson : [a young Confederate picket has just shot one of Anderson's sons] Dead. Dead! How old are you? How old?
Young Picket on Road : Sixteen.
Charlie Anderson : [In a rage, but restraining himself] "Six - Sixteen. I'm not gonna' kill you. I want you to live! I want you to live to be an old man. And I want you to have many... many, many children. And I want you to feel about your children then... the way I feel about mine now! And someday, when a man comes along and kills one of 'em, I want you to remember! I want you to remember."

To young Mr. Rittenhouse, I hope you will remember.

NEED TO KNOW

"I found out I was in love with you, winter before last," she said. "I wasn't going to say anything about it because - well, you know. If you felt anything like that for me, you'd have known I did. But it wasn't both of us. So there was no good in it. But then, when you told us you're leaving... At first I thought, all the more reason to say nothing. But then I thought, that wouldn't be fair. To me, partly. Love has a right to be spoken. And you have a right to know that somebody loves you. That somebody has loved you, could love you. We all need to know that. Maybe it's what we need most."

— A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, Ursula K. Le Guin
 

"YOU BEEN PUTTING IT UP YOUR WHOLE LIFE"

Last year about this time lots of folks were pointing out that the odds of contracting Covid were about 1 in 100.
The chances of dying from it were 1 in 10,000.
As of today (9/20/2021), 40 million Americans have contracted Covid (about 12%), and the death rate according to population is 20 for every 10,000.
The reasons are pretty clear; the highly contagious DELTA variant which took hold this year, the huge increase in cases among the younger population, and the reluctance of many to vaccinate.
It took 170 years after the smallpox vax to eradicate the disease. Lets hope it doesn’t take that long for Covid.
What do you stand to win?
Everything.

Anton Chigurh: What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss.
Gas Station Proprietor: Sir?
Anton Chigurh: The most. You ever lost. On a coin toss.
Gas Station Proprietor: I don't know. I couldn't say.
[Chigurh flips a quarter from the change on the counter and covers it with his hand]
Anton Chigurh: Call it.
Gas Station Proprietor: Call it?
Anton Chigurh: Yes.
Gas Station Proprietor: For what?
Anton Chigurh: Just call it.
Gas Station Proprietor: Well, we need to know what we're calling it for here.
Anton Chigurh: You need to call it. I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair.
Gas Station Proprietor: I didn't put nothin' up.
Anton Chigurh: Yes, you did. You've been putting it up your whole life you just didn't know it. You know what date is on this coin?
Gas Station Proprietor: No.
Anton Chigurh: 1958. It's been traveling twenty-two years to get here. And now it's here. And it's either heads or tails. And you have to say. Call it.
Gas Station Proprietor: Look, I need to know what I stand to win.
Anton Chigurh: Everything.
Gas Station Proprietor: How's that?
Anton Chigurh: You stand to win everything. Call it.
Gas Station Proprietor: Alright. Heads then.
[Chigurh removes his hand, revealing the coin is indeed heads]
Anton Chigurh: Well done.
[the gas station proprietor nervously takes the quarter with the small pile of change he's apparently won while Chigurh starts out]
Anton Chigurh: Don't put it in your pocket, sir. Don't put it in your pocket. It's your lucky quarter.
Gas Station Proprietor: Where do you want me to put it?
Anton Chigurh: Anywhere not in your pocket. Where it'll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin. Which it is.

REALITY

 “The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn't real. I know that, and I also know that if I'm careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.”

Stephen King, Night Shift

BE LIKE ROD

 

Due to a worldwide 80% vaccination rate for smallpox back in the '60's, people don’t even need to get vaccinated anymore. Through a global effort, we wiped it out. The vaccine itself had a high rate of efficacy at 95%. You may have heard there has never been a vaccine that achieved 100%. They don’t have to. Mumps vax comes in at a measly 88%.
See Rod’s Smallpox scar? Thank you Rod.
Now go put on something decent.

I USED TO BE A RULEBREAKER

It has taken me 64 years to learn simply following the rules eliminates most of the problems in my life even if they don't make sense to me at the time.