"You get Laid Lot in This Business"

A CHEF'S RETROSPECTIVE
My ex-wife and I, we get along pretty good for an old divorced couple. But she likes to remind of the time we worked at the hotel together, and I found her and several waitpersons eating off a Queen Mary loaded up with leftover buffet food. She likes to give me a really withering look and remind me how I came over there and took HER plate from her hands, and dumped it in the trash can and ran everybody off from eating this leftover food, making sure to chastise HER especially the whole time.
All that food was basically destined for the dumpster anyway.
I remind her that it was "the rules" that no one eat off the the Queens, and the reason I picked her out to snatch the plate from was to make sure no one thought I might be playing favorites.
"No one ever did" she assures me, which nowadays cuts to the bone.

Anyway, while I'm telling her this, there is a spot in the back of my mind that cant quite square the fact that I was being an asshole under the guise of just doing my job. I was really kind of going out of my way to be one too. I never saw the Executive Chef run off everyone from perfectly good food.
Shoot no, he had assholes like me to do it for him I guess, but the fact was no one really cared and it happened all the time. Shit, thinking back,it should have been in the policy as part of the benefit package, right between Health Care and "You get Laid Lot in This Business".


At the same time this was happening, all this unauthorized munching going on, the General Manager would be downstairs explaining to the Banquet Chef that the employee meal down in the cafeteria was the most important meal he would prepare that day.

I'm really glad I'm not a Chef anymore. I do miss it so.

LOVECRAFT

“I'll tell you something of the forbidden horrors she led me into - something of the age-old horrors that even now are festering in out-of-the-way corners with a few monstrous priests to keep them alive. Some people know things about the universe that nobody ought to know, and can do things that nobody ought to be able to do.” 
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Thing on the Doorstep

YOU MIGHT BE LORD OF HALF THE WORLD...

“These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”“
The Weight of Glory” CS Lewis

"The only people opposed to escape are the jailers"

C.S. Lewis

"WHO DID THIS?"

The standoff and finger pointing in Washington reminds me of Picasso and his painting “Guernica”. The painting depicted the Nazi bombing of the Spanish city Guernica in Picassos own inimitable style. It was painted in like 1938.
Anyway, as the story goes, when the Nazis raided Picasso's Paris apartment in 1941, they found a copy of the now famous painting.
The SS Officer shook it at Pablo, screaming “Who? Who did this?”
Picasso looked at the officer and said “You. You did this”.
I never quite got Picasso's art, but I get the shit out of that answer.
A man that eloquent deserves another look.

It was later done as a huge Mural.

ALL THE YOUNG DUDES

When I think of Forrest Hardwood, I think of back in 1973 when I was arranging entertainment for the Valentines Dance at Bedford Methodist Church. Forrest was the manager for the band "Aftermath", which featured Loren  on guitar, Sara  on Keyboards, and John on drums. I cant remember the bass player, because Aftermath seemed to always be looking for a bass player, they even let ME tryout one time for bass player. It didn’t take very long for them to see that I didn’t really know anything about playing the base, but they were pretty good sports about it.

Anyway, I made arrangements with Forrest for Aftermath to be the band at Fellowship Hall on February 14^th 1973. Forrest pulled a contract out from under his shirt, and I signed it; One Hundred Dollars for a night of music at Bedford Methodist!

I only knew Forrest from our English Class where he was pretty good at torturing poor old Mrs.  Weathers. Mrs. Weathers was the blue haired relic tht tried to teach English to a bunch of 15 year old hoodlums. Forrest kept her in tears pretty much, and I figured if he was as good at managing a band as he was at being a horrible student, everything was going to be ok.

I met Forrest and Aftermath an hour early so they could get set up. Part of their pay also included Valentines Dinner in Fellowship Hall and after dinner, I followed them outside to “get ready” for the music.
I was shocked to find that “get ready”  meant that Forrest would pull a few pre-rolled joints from his shirt pocket and fire them up, right there on the steps in the back outside of Fellowship Hall, while the Methodist Youth Fellowship grades 7 through 12 waited for the band to take the stage.
I tried to protest.

Forrest, wearing a big floppy hippy hat and wearing Mott the Hoople sunglasses,  assured me  they couldn’t play without it, and that in fact it was in the contract, which he again produced from under his shirt, and showed me the line in Section 5, Part 3, which read:

3)Band gets a toke before the show.  

What could I do? 

THE JOB INTERVIEW

I applied at a Pappadeaux a few years back, the last time we were headed towards an economic collapse.
The manager asked what my qualifications were.
“I was a chef for 25 years” I told him.
He was a fresh faced 26 year old punk as far as I could tell.
“Well, how does that qualify you for being a waiter?” he asked.

“Have you ever wrestled an alligator?” I said.
“No”

I got that crazy Jack Nicholson look on my face and told him:
“Well, I have. Wrestled him, killed him, cleaned him, cooked him, and served him up with a glass of white wine and a nice Remoulade.”

His eyes were like saucers.
“OK then...” he said, but they never called me back.

Best interview I ever had.

YOUR WAITER RECOMMENDS THE GATOR TONIGHT

BACK TO WORK

Our highly skilled and intelligent staff is eagerly waiting to serve you.

THE GREATEST EBAY STORY EVER TOLD

At my grandmothers house in Grandview Texas hung a tapestry I was fascinated with since I was a little boy. I would stand in the hallway, gazing at it, imagining Ali Baba, or the 1001 Nights, or Xanadu, where Kubla  Khan did decree a stately pleasure dome. I always told my grandmother that I wanted it.
Here is a picture of it.

The size of this piece is 60" by 20"
Click on the image for a larger view

She finally gave it to me in the 1980s. Then about the year 2000, it was stolen from me. It had a huge sentimental value and I recently started looking on Ebay to find one to replace it. It took a while, and I got screwed on one attempt (click here) but I found the one pictured above and bought it. I sent the lady I purchased it from a message and told her how pleased I was to have found it and asked if she knew much about it.

She sent a reply back that she didn’t really know much about the piece. Then she says: "I see by your shipping address you live in Texas. I grew up in a little town named Grandview and knew some Renfro's. Are they any relation?"

Man, that just about blew my mind. I told her the tapestry I was buying from her was to replace the missing one that had belonged to my grandmother Renfro, and that yes, it it had to be the very same grandmother Renfro who lived in Grandview Texas.  As the story unfolds all the way, this woman selling me the tapestry actually lived right across the street from them!
How uncanny is that?

It gave me the chills.  

She was a few years older than me. We never crossed paths somehow. Partly because she said her parents always told her to “leave the Renfro’s alone, they are old and don’t want a bunch of kids around”.

So the story of my tapestry appears to have come full circle. Its got to be the greatest EBay story ever told.The one I bought pictured above is in very good condition compared to the one I lost. The colors tend to fade on these old textiles, but the one I bought still looks good.

If you followed the link above, you would know there is a little more to this story. Having bought this tapestry, I now have two of what I guess to be a set of four. Here is the tapestry I bought at an antique store 30 years ago that is part of the overall scene. I just need two more of the larger pieces to have the complete set. When I do, it will be like finding all 4 decoder rings in a box of Lucky Charms. A portal may open, transporting me toXanadu and its pleasure dome of earthly delights, where virgins wait eagerly for my arrival, and I shall feed on honeydew, and drink the milk of paradise, and there will be dancing, and dancing, and dancing.

The size of this piece is 48" by 34"

" A damsel with a dulcimer

   In a vision once I saw:

   It was an Abyssinian maid

   And on her dulcimer she played,

   Singing of Mount Abora.

   Could I revive within me

   Her symphony and song,

   To such a deep delight ’twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise."

HARD TO PORT... AYE-AYE SIR!

"We will pass through the American patrols, past their sonar nets, and lay off their largest city, and listen to their rock and roll... while we conduct missile drills"
Captain Ramius, Hunt for Red October

OCD

The first time I saw her,
Everything in my head went quiet.
All the ticks, all the constantly refreshing images just disappeared.
When you have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, you don’t really get quiet moments.

Even in bed, I’m thinking:
Did I lock the doors? Yes.
Did I wash my hands? Yes.
Did I lock the doors? Yes.
Did I wash my hands? Yes.


But when I saw her, the only thing I could think about was the hairpin curve of her lips. 

Or the eyelash on her cheek—
the eyelash on her cheek—
the eyelash on her cheek.
I knew I had to talk to her.

I asked her out six times in thirty seconds.
She said yes after the third one, but none of them felt right, so I had to keep going.
On our first date, I spent more time organizing my meal by color than I did eating it, or talking to her.
But she loved it.

She loved that I had to kiss her goodbye sixteen times or twenty-four times at different times of the day.
She loved that it took me forever to walk home because there are lots of cracks on our sidewalk.
When we moved in together, she said she felt safe, like no one would ever rob us because I definitely locked the door eighteen times.

I’d always watch her mouth when she talked—
when she talked—
when she talked—
when she talked; when she said she loved me, her mouth would curl up at the edges.

At night, she’d lay in bed and watch me turn all the lights off.. And on, and off, and on, and off, and on, and off, and on, and off, and on, and off.
She’d close her eyes and imagine that the days and nights were passing in front of her. But then…

She said I was taking up too much of her time.
That I couldn’t kiss her goodbye so much because I was making her late for work.
When she said she loved me, her mouth was a straight line.
When I stopped in front of a crack in the sidewalk, she just kept walking.
And last week she started sleeping at her mother’s place.

She told me that she shouldn’t have let me get so attached to her; that this whole thing was a mistake, but.
How can it be a mistake that I don’t have to wash my hands after I touch her?
Love is not a mistake, and it’s killing me that she can run away from this and I just can’t.

I can’t go out and find someone new because I always think of her.
Usually, when I obsess over things, I see germs sneaking into my skin.
I see myself crushed by an endless succession of cars.
And she was the first beautiful thing I ever got stuck on.

I want to wake up every morning thinking about the way she holds her steering wheel.
How she turns shower knobs like she’s opening a safe.
How she blows out candles—
blows out candles—
blows out candles—
blows out candles—
blows out—

Now, I just think about who else is kissing her.

I can’t breathe because he only kisses her once—he doesn’t care if it’s perfect.
I want her back so bad,
I leave the door unlocked.
I leave the lights on.

OCD, Neil Hilborn

YOUR HEARTS IN TEXAS; FOR RED AND SOUBY

When the Red Dirt Girl was in town this week I had hoped that maybe she would be able to go with me to see my pal Buddy, and meet some of my friends at a Buddy Whittington Show, and we would jam to Slow Rolling Train or Grits Ain't Groceries, or any other of Buddy's great songs..
But it just didn't quite work out that way. I hope when Souby gets to Texas here in just a few weeks that maybe they will be able to come up sometime and we will have some good fun and listen to some Buddy.

It was great to meet Red after all these years. We mention from time to time the fun we had in the early days where Red would put up some picture of a shoe, and I would build some kind of menu around it. It may sound far fetched, but it wasn't that much of a stretch once we got rolling. In fact, lets see if maybe I have a picture of a shoe handy....
OH! What do you know? We just happen to have one here!

The rule has always been in determining a Coral Snake from a King Snake:

"Red touch yellow, kill a fellow

Red touch black, friend to Jack"

So it looks like we are in business, especially if there are some black fishnets somewhere near.

Now all we have to do is come up with a menu for this shoe. This shoe is almost biblical. It reminds me of the verse in Genesis that says the serpent was the "craftiest creature in the garden, except the woman".

So, for an appetizer, we should go with a nice Rattlesnake-Leek Consomme', with some Quail Quenelles floated on top maybe.
For the entree I'm  thinking Filet of Sole (haha) ala Pompei, garnished with Seedless Green Grapes, Lobster Coral and Mississippi Baby Shrimps in a light White Wine Sauce.
For dessert, a chocolate Treasure Box, painted with Gold filigree, filled with White Chocolate Mousse on a Raspberry Coulis and seasonal fruits garnish.

I've still got it baby!

I went back and looked around, and found an excerpt from a long time ago, not about me or Red, but about the real star of this show, Sobriquet. Here is his place in the Land of Oz, that I had compared my pals here to at one point:


Soubriquet, whom we have not seen in these parts recently, I think we will call him the Farm Hand Hickory, I believe Hickory was building a wind machine and is the Scarecrows Kansian counterpart. Sobriquet has taken to giving us lots of Video Tech, and I miss his rambling stories. He is a parcel of information, but in between the Grit of his Gears I sense a tender Tin Mans touch.
Somewhere they will erect a Statue for Souby.

A statue for Souby! Who would have thought in 2008 it would be in Texas!

Anyway, it was such a pleasure to meet an old friend for the first time. Its really amazing how well you can get to know someone over time on the blogs when they present themselves in a genuine fashion. A few of us have come a long ways together.
As soft and sweet as I always thought Red would be, I was surprised to find that she is even softer and sweeter in person, if not even a little bit demure. She really IS a lot like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz!
This post is full of links to all sorts of places and I urge you to follow them to your hearts content. I dont think there is a way to tell the full story here, we lived it and watched it being lived. We really helped each other get through and get over.
Thats the trick sometimes you know, getting over what you just got through.

Oh, but back to Buddy and that Slow Rolling Train. heres a tune off his Dr. Wu Project. I'm not sure who wrote this song, but it really is a great song! They stop clowning around and get to the music at the one minute mark. Hurry home Souby. Take the fast train.

SOME KIND OF BROKEN

I know you are some kind of broken, maybe the kind of broken where everything seems ok, like a chair on which you let no one sit for their own safety and for the safety of the chair.

I know you are some kind of broken, maybe the kind of broken where the weather seeps in around the edges and you fall in love or fall apart and what’s the difference anyway, in the end.

I know you are some kind of broken, maybe the kind of broken everyone longs for in their life, the kind of broken that spills out over everything and everyone around you, a light that never turns off. 
— Peregrine (via youreyesblazeout)

BUDGIE GOES TO CAMP

I have a Cockatiel. His name is Budgie. Last summer I had to send him to Outward Bound up in Oregon. It’s a boot camp for troubled birds.

I went to my therapist. I told him I was deeply troubled about Budgie.

He asked if I was troubled because of separation anxiety, or from having had to do some tough love, and essentially having to send Budgie to a Boot Camp.

“No” I said “I’m afraid I forgot to pack his swim trunks”

JUST DRIVING BY

I got up one morning and got dressed and looked up and it was only 7:05. I thought “I’m way early; wouldn’t it be fun to drive over by where she works and go opposite the way she comes , and maybe as I’m going down Forest Ridge we will pass head on, and I’ll honk and wave and smile, and she will honk and wave and smile, and it will be funny, and we will laugh to ourselves all day long about it. Then I’ll call her, and we’ll laugh some more, and I’ll say something really cool like “We have to stop meeting like this!” and she’ll fall even more in love with me, the crazy kooky guy that I am, fate having brought us together on our way to work in the morning."

Well, the next thing I know I’m driving in front of where she works. And I’m coming up to a stop sign right out front, in broad daylight, and suddenly Forest Ridge seems a long ways away. I feel pretty much hung out to dry, completely out of place, and I come to the realization that what I’m doing is really creepy.

I mean REALLY CREEPY!

And now I’m at the Stop sign, and sure as shit, there she is right across from me, and now I’m trying to crawl up under the dashboard, or down an AC vent, anything to prevent seeing her look right into my eyes with a creeped out look on her face as I sit at the stop sign in front of her workplace, which happens to be WAY OUT OF MY USUAL WAY of getting to work, and I suddenly realize they have a name for what I’m doing:

STALKING!

As we passed each other in the middle of the intersection, basically 5 feet apart, tops, I did such a good job of trying to crawl under the floor mats that I had no idea if she had seen me or not.

I couldn’t imagine she had not.

I talked to her that night and the next day, and the day after, and there wasn’t a clue as to whether she had seen me or not.
Which was a good  sign, a very good sign.

Then at breakfast a few days later, just as I’m about to wash a pancake down with a huge gulp of milk she says, just right out of the blue:
“ I saw a guy that looked just like you by work the other day, only his car didn’t have the big grill on the front!”

I might have gotten away with it if I hadn’t spewed milk and pancakes all over the table. 

THE LITTLE-BITTY BABIES, IN HIS HANDS

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.

GOODBYE HAMBURGER HELPER

I have been teaching my friend Cara to cook. She’s never cooked before, thinking its really hard, and time consuming. It doesn’t have to be that way.  She said all she ever cooks is Hamburger Helper.
Good  God.

So for two weeks now she and another friend have come over, and I’ve shown her how to cook quick and easy and clean.

The first week we cut up a chicken breast and sauté in a little olive oil and added some zucchini and yellow squash and served it on top of some sliced tomatoes with fresh basil and some angel hair pasta. She did all the cutting and cooking.

Total elapsed time was 25 minutes.

About the same amount of time as it takes to cook the Hamburger Helper.

We used 1 pot for the pasta, and 1 skillet for the chicken and squashes.

You don’t always have to have sauce for pasta you know. Just a little chopped parsley and olive oil is nice. Just make sure you season it. I call it cooking clean, not just because you don’t make so much of a mess, but the flavor is just light, and fresh, and , well, CLEAN.

This week, we went a little deeper. We had Pork Loin with mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli, yellow squash and carrots.

First, I had her chop fresh parsley and rosemary.

Then she sliced the pork loin into medallions and we marinated it with the herbs, olive oil, and some garlic.

She cut the potatoes for mashed potato, and got them on the boil, the water slightly salted.

She cut the carrots, broccoli, and yellow squash…some good knife work with no blood, that’s good.

Then she heated up the skillet and started sauté on the pork medallions.

As they were browning, I explained to her  there was another way to do this.

 That this was the “ala minute’” way to do it, when she had no time, like just getting off work.

But with even less effort, she could roast the pork loin.

She could just season the loin, and rub it with the herbs she had chopped, then brown the whole loin on all sides in the skillet, throw some cut up potatoes and baby carrots in there with it, cover it and put it in a 250 degree oven for two hours.

“Lets say its Sunday afternoon, and you and your husband want to eat after the game. Just come in the kitchen at halftime, brown the loin, throw the veges in, cover and put it into a 275 degree oven. Go back to the TV in time for the 3rd quarter, and about the time the game is over, dinner is ready!”

She nodded her head. “Is it good like that?”

“Hoh-Hoh-Hoh! Is it good? Mais oui, madame! But yes!”

Then I told her to step aside from the stove, and I opened the oven and I pulled out the other half of the pork loin she had sliced up that I had put in the oven to roast two hours before!

You should have seen the look on her face!

She says “You mean you have me doing all this, and you already have dinner ready?”

I said “That’s how we learn, baby, thats how we learn!”

Of course, the roast makes a nice jus, and I pulled to cover off, and had her taste the juices in the bottom of the pan. Her eyes lit up.
“Oh, that’s good!” she said.

“Hoh-Hoh-Hoh!” I laughed in my best French Chef laugh. “You must learn to laugh “Hoh-Hoh-Hoh””.

“Hoh-Hoh-Hoh” she laughed back, and I had her get down on one knee, and I christened her with a wooden kitchen spoon, tapping her right, then left shoulder, and a third tap on her bowed head.
“I make you Sous-Chef, Hoh-Hoh-Hoh!” I said.

I had also made an Apple-Fennel slaw to garnish the pork with. Total cooking time for Cara was just about an hour, but we had leftovers enough for them to take home, and I ate the leftovers the next two nights as well. The pork loin cost about 9 bucks @ 1.99 a pound. That's less than a dollar a serving.

I got a message from Cara last night:

"I made chicken with cilantro and lime and zucchini and squash. I almost cut my finger, the knife chopped my finger nail instead. Cooking can be a bit dangerous"

Keep those fingers tucked in Cara, just like I showed you.
And follow your dream.

GOODBYE SEAFOAM GREEN SWEATER

 My old blog buddy UF Mike hasn't been posting much lately, but he does do some music reviews at a DC rag, THE VINYL DISTRICT.
Today he did one on Elton John. Its worth a read, done in Mike's old unmistakable style, and it brought back memories for me. Click here to check it out.

I was 17 in 1974, and I had this job as a busboy at a posh restaurant at the local Ramada Inn. They had a swinging combo going on weekends, two brothers each playing piano, and chick singer, just like in the Fabulous Baker Brothers.  Only these guys were like 70 and 72 years old respectively, and they did Perry Como songs, and a great rendition of "Come Fly With Me". Standard hotel bar cocktail music ya know? And all these old fogeys, drunk on Mateus wine and full of well done prime rib would hit the dance floor after dinner.
I remember there was one old guy who was a really good dancer, but his partner, who looked to be about 90 years old and recently deceased, just sort of hung limply in his arms, and he swished her around the dance floor, her feet dragging the whole way. I remember watching this, and thinking that old codger must be a lot stronger than he looks.
But the high point of the evening was when they played "Benny and the Jets" on two piano's.
Man, that guy could really go, and his partners feet would fly up every time he did a tun, and her one arm he didnt have a hold of would wave out to the crowd. it was fantastic!

My friend Brad was a huge EJ fan. We would cruise the loop in his Ford Pinto with the Quad turned all the way up, and during "Funeral For A Dead Friend" Brad would reach over into the glove box, pull out a huge pair of sparkly sungalsses, and play keyboard on the dashboard with his eyes closed, blissful, while we begged him to put his hands back on the steering wheel and drive before the song came true for all of us.

 Brads mother had knitted him a sweater for Christmas that year  with a big "EJ" initialed on the front.  Brad waited in anticipation for this sweater and opened it Christmas morning. The colors were Seafoam Green and a kind of pastel Canary Yellow  for the big "EJ", and none of us really knew what gay was in 1974 , but one look at that sweater and we knew that what ever it was, that sweater was it. 

He only wore it twice.

PRAYER IS A FUNNY THING

Surprisingly, we had good weather and a cool evening for the outside concert last night.It had looked like rain all day. Someone said she had prayed for good weather, and pointed upwards to the sky, giving thanks to God.

I was rude, and said sarcastically, “Oh Jesus, help me”. And it bothered me that I would do that. Its not what I’m shooting for. Its easy enough to be cynical about prayer for me. My program teaches me to be open-minded and willing about it. I don’t know if a prayer can change the weather, or stop Obamacare. It doesn’t matter. What I have learned is what a friends grandmother said so well… "Prayer doesn't change God, but it does change the hearts of the people who are doing the praying" I like that. I like that a lot.

When I first came to Narcotics Anonymous I hadn’t prayed in 25 years.
Then one day I got mad at work and started throwing stuff. I told my sponsor about it. He taught me a prayer, my first prayer in 25 years, and it goes like this:
“God, give me just enough serenity and patience to get through this situation with a little dignity left”
And it worked! After 5 years of learning to pray again, I still say it from time to time.

See, prayer for me keeps me from throwing a chair through a window at work. It keeps me from walking out of Albertsons with something I didn’t pay for. It keeps me from lying when it would be easier than telling the truth.
If I pray hard enough at the right time, it can keep me from saying hurtful things. I don't use that prayer near enough.
Prayer just might have kept me from running into a concrete wall at 70 mph on purpose a few times.
It helps to keep me from picking up that first drug.
Mostly, prayer helps me live the principles the twelve steps are about, and to improve my conscious contact with God as I understand him.

I was having breakfast with another addict this morning. I told her that the person in charge of the cookout today at the NA group had called a few days ago and asked where we could get a grill for the cookout.
I had told her “I’ll put the word out on Facebook for a grill”.
So I post a status that says: “Attention all my NA peeps- we need a couple grills for the Saturday cookout-please contact myself or Connie if you have a grill we can use”
You know how many responses we had?
ZERO! ZILCH!
So poor Connie had to cancel the cookout and order pizza.

As we were leaving breakfast, I said to my friend "Maybe I should have just prayed for a grill".
I said it in a sarcastic manner, another little slam on prayer, like the one I threw at my friend who had prayed for good weather.
But I got to thinking about the hundreds of responses you get on Facebook whenever you put out a prayer request, and it occurred to me that if I had asked for PRAYERS for a grill instead of a grill, we probably wouldn’t be having pizza today. If I had posted “Requesting prayers for God to provide a grill for us today”...
We would be having hamburgers and hot dogs.
On a grill. I'm sure of it. 

They call that faith.

See, the thing about prayer is that people respond to it. 

People respond to prayer. 

And maybe on some level, the universe does too.
They call that faith.
Prayer sure is a funny thing.

If there is anything you can ask for and always get a lot of, it's prayer.

"We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us, and the power to carry that out."
Step Eleven

NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH

I guess this was before Makers Mark announced they were going to lower the alcohol content.
Reminds me of a trip to Toledo Bend where I hooked my wife in the top of the head while some sandies were schooling. We were hittin' 'em pretty good.
She said it didn't hurt, so I clipped the hook off the lure, and picked my rod up, figuring to take care of it when we got back to shore.
“What are you doing?” she says.
“What? You said it didn't hurt.”
“You take me somewhere right now and get this hook out of my head”
Women.
I guess this was before Makers Mark announced they were going to lower the alcohol content.

BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE I DID THE STROLL

I went to the local pub Saturday night to see Swan Song, the Led Zeppelin tribute band.

A girl asked me if I knew how to dance to Led Zeppelin.

“Sure” I said "Its easy....just unbutton your shirt, stick a sock in your pants and pretend you are Robert Plant."

LOVE AT FIRST BITE

Aunt Laura Lee. She specialized in drop biscuits and fig preserves and raucous laughter. When I went to Alto, the little town where she and all my folks on my mothers side hail from, back in May, my cousin Khim told me a story about her I’d never heard. 

It seems back in the 30’s, during the Great Depression, she and her mother, my grandmother, opened up a little roadside café. My grandmother cooked, and Laura Lee Williams, she waited tables. When business was slow, she would go out to the side of the road, Highway 69, and she would sing. If you'd have blinked you would have missed Alto, but you could not miss Laura Lee in her apron, belting it out. In 1935 she would have been 24, with legs that went all the way to the ground, and flashing blue eyes, and hair that hung down in ringlets. She sang everything from “Cheek-To-Cheek”, the song made famous by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, to Shirley Temple's “Animal Crackers in My Soup”; she would sing at the top of her lungs at the side of the road. 
(this may explain a lot about yours truly) 
And that is how she came to meet her future husband, Jack Phillips. 
She sang him into the café one day, and it was love at first bite!
After he retired some 50 years later, Jack Phillips was County Judge for Cherokee County, and she was his secretary for about 15 years. He was one of these West Texans that basically talked with his mouth shut, between his teeth. They are different from East Texans that way. Laura, she talked with her mouth wide open, and when she laughed it was a big laugh, raucous, with her head throwed back.
Me and Shila passed through one year on our way to a fishing trip at Toledo Bend. We stopped at the Court House to visit them. While we were there, the phone rang. All we got was one side of the conversation:
"County Court, this is Laura, how can I help you?" "Hello Harlan, how is Phyllis?" "You don't say?" "Bless her heart, you give her our love. What can I do for you?" "Yes, I know that bridge, its Andersons Crossing" "Did they? Oh no, not again" 
(raucous laughter) "Is the fire out?" “That's good they had some barricades to put up. Wouldn't want anyone running off into the Angelina river.” (more raucous laughter) "Well, Harlan, they burn that bridge down every year just before deer season" 
(more raucous laughter; apparently burning Andersons Crossing somehow enhances the deer hunting in that region between Cherokee and Anderson County) "We'll let the roads department know, thanks for calling Harlan" (hanging up phone, more raucous laughter, hollering to Jack through the door to the judges office) "Jack, they burned Andersons Crossing down again last night!" (silence from the judges office, then a soft whisper, like a man talking through clinched teeth echoes back) "Well, shoot, they do it every year. When are we going to get us a metal bridge?"

Uncle Jack, you may recall from a previous story, is the "the good man with the barbed wire wit and big heart" who had told me when I was 4 years old that my mother had fallen into the well, and the only way to get her back was to go in the house and turn the faucet on, which I did, crying my fool head off.

BULLET HOLES ART

My tapestry. Finally hanging on a wall again, MY wall, after many many years. Its one of a set of four. I used to have two of the four, the first having belonged to my grandmother. I was completely fascinated with it from when I was a little boy. I ran across the second of the set (the one pictured above) a long time ago, and it became my life ambition to find the other two.
I have since lost, through neglect and dissipations of a personal nature, one of the two I had. It is still my life ambition to replace that one, and to find the other two as well.
Take a good look at this. Should you ever run across one of the other three that go with it, you will know immediately, and I hope will make haste to contact me.

********

I wrote the above a while back, and posted the image to Facebook. It was a desperate plea to replace the one I lost, and maybe find the other two that go with the set.

That very week i was looking on EBAY and found the missing Tapestry, one just like the one my grandmother had given me, the one I was so fascinated with as a boy. 

100 bucks, an auction item on EBAY. 

With much excitement, I placed my $100 bid an hour before the auction expired, and was over joyed to find that I had won, and the missing tapestry would be replaced....

From the picture you really can't get a feel for the scale. The piece is almost 6 feet long and  2 feet wide.
But not so fast...
It was my first experience with EBAY, and imagine my disappointment when the seller contacted me and said he was withdrawing the item, cancelling the sale.
His reason? He says he did not ask for enough for the tapestry, and it was worth much more that the $100 he had started the bid at.
"How much more?" I asked, because I want that tapestry more than anything in the world.
"Five-Thousand Dollars!" he said "Thats what it appraised at in 1978"
"Well, sir " I said "Your $5000 tapestry didn't garner much interest at $100. In fact, if it weren't for me coming along with my interest, and my interest being solely sentimental, you would have had zero bids at the $4900 discounted price. so why don't you go ahead and name a reasonable price, and we can go from there"

It didn't do any good.
I never heard back from him, saying he might take two hundred, or two thousand for it. I really can't imagine what his deal is.
I don't believe for a minute this tapestry is worth $5000 to anyone but me.
But one thing is for sure....that tapestry is out there somewhere, and I'll bag it.
I will bag it one day.

The one pictured at the top of the post that I still have, I bought that one in a junk shop back in 1983 for 40 bucks. Funny about that one...I've actually seen it in a movie one time, but it was a movie I'm best not to discuss, even here at Bulletholes...

Anyway, as I said earlier, take a good look at these. If you should run into one of the set it will be obvious, and I hope you will make haste to contact me.

Oh, here is a painting I have hanging on my wall. It is the same painting that is above the mantle in this image. it was my grandfathers. I wish I knew who the artist was.

DAD FISHING

I thought I had lost this picture a few years ago. It was very upsetting because I don't have too many pictures left of the old man. I don't even have much stuff of his left, like the tackle box that sits in front of him here, and all the lures that were in it. I enjoyed them for a while, and lost them, and I wish I'd set them aside, just so that I could look at them one more time, and show them to my boy, that he might enjoy them too.

But after I moved last month I came across the envelope that had gone missing, the envelope that said "Dad Fishing" on the outside, and to say I was overjoyed to find what was in it would be an understatement.

I don't know why I am such a sentimental fool, and so full of nostalgia, except to say that I love my memories, even the ones that hurt, even the ones that make me so crazy sometimes.  This picture was taken in March of 1958, I wouldn't be a year old yet, and as I remember Dad is at Lake Benbrook, pulling out of the Marina in Uncle Perk's boat, and I cant tell you how cool it is to think he fished wearing a tie and a fedora hat, like Rock Hudson in "Man's Favorite Sport".

 I can tell you that one of those lures in the top tray is a Heddon "Crazy Crawler" and it fetches about 80 bucks these days. but that is nowhere near the value this picture has for me.

248 WITH MY SHOES ON

Another good Dr. visit.
I lost another 2 pounds, and broke 250 for the first time since sometime in 2008. For the first time since I got the diabetes, for the first time since I had wild weight fluctuations from being on the “Jenny Crank” diet.
I've lost almost 30 pounds since April.

FYI, if you find yourself suddenly extremely thirsty and peeing all the time for a week or two, this is a warning sign of diabetes. If you are drinking 2 gallons of tea a day and still thirsty, and suddenly your vision goes blurry while you are peeing (because you are peeing all the time), well my friend, you are having diabetes.
One day while I was drinking and peeing, not knowing I had diabetes, I wrote this little song to the tune of Steppenwolfs “The Pusher”.
Seems almost prophetic now.
I sent it to Buddy Whittington a long time ago to see if he might want to use it, but he turned me down. Damn.

THE BAKERMAN
You know I smoked a lotta’ Perch,
Oh Lord
You know I mopped a lotta’ spills
But I never Poached nuthin’, noooooo,
That would have been better Grilled
You know I seen a lotta’ people walkin’ round
With Pate’ a Choux in their eyes
But the Baker don’t care, if they live or if they die

Got dang, mmm, the Baker
Got dang, hey hey, the Baker
I said got dang, got dang, the Bakerman

You know the Pastry Chef is a man
With the Love Dough in his hand
He’s got Eclairs an' Tarts an' Pastries
Good God, he’s not a Protein man
Aww, The Baker for a nickel Lord,
will sell you lots of Sweet Creams
You’ll get the Body Fat
And the Dia-bee-tees
There'll be little sprinkles and Confection Sugar
When you Sneeeeeeze

I said, Got dang, the Bakerman...

Well now if I were the Manager of this Hotel
You know I’d report the Bakerman
Immediately to “Personnel”
I’d toast him if he stands and
I’d truss him if he runs
I’d kill him with my Butchers mallet,
I'd Saute’ him till he’s done…

I said Got Dang, the Bakerman...

MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

— Sylvia Plath, “Mad Girl’s Love Song”

--- Image Elizabeth Gadd

Both lifted at Liquid Night

Don't think for a minute....

...that I don't remember,  or that it didn't feel just like this.

God, how I love this song on this day.
That's all I can say.

THE SPORTSMEN'S BANQUET

I had never been to a Pottery Barn before yesterday. I had read about them, seen pictures, and heard stories, even heard a story one time about how someone left the Pottery Barn door open, and all the pottery was getting out. But it was in that estrogen soaked environment that my mind began to wander, and I thought I’d share some of my thoughts, and describe to you what happened at the Pottery Barn yesterday.

I should say straight away that I prefer the company of women to men. You can make of this what you like. I know that at dinner parties and various functions, invariably the guests will split up into two groups. Usually the women will congregate to the kitchen, or perhaps a sewing room if one is available, and the men will wind up in the garage, or perhaps repair to a new type of room I keep hearing about…the “Man-Cave”.

I’m not sure I like the sound of that one at all.

Once there, the men, perhaps smoking cigars and drinking cognac as they did on the Titanic, will begin to discuss various manly enterprises (enterprises that I really don’t seem to have much interest in),such as muzzle velocities, gear ratio’s of the ’68 Olds Positrac rear end, and how much they made on E-Trade last week. Of course the conversation eventually degenerates into some discussion over “pussy”, with huge clouds of smoke and many loud guffaws. This may sound hypocritical from a guy with Facebook albums such as “Fully Clothed Women” and “Its Not Safe Here”, but I just don’t care for it. Perhaps there was a time in my youth that I might tolerate this kind of talk, join in even, but those years seem to be past me.

There is a moment in most relationships with guys I call the “Screeching Record” moment, where you are chewing the fat with your good buddy you have known for years, and out of the blue he points to some nice looking soft woman and whispers huskily, “Man, I’d like to have me some of that”. And in my mind, its like a record just skipped across 3 songs, including “Color My World” on my Chicago III album. I’ve known him for years, but didn’t know he needed to talk like that. I’m stopped in my tracks,and wondering if I’ll ever be able to look him in the eye again.

Anyway, like I said, the women go to the kitchen, and sip chamomile tea, and talk about education for children, world peace, how to get a coffee stain out of a white shirt, dust ruffles, and recipes for Blackberry Shortcake. I find all this, and the way they say it, endlessly more fascinating than the men in the garage discussing .22 cal varmint loads and where Goodyear gets its rubber.

But finally to the Pottery Barn, where I learned yesterday the difference between a pillow case and a “Sham”, which is, not much. I bought some way overpriced dishes, and got to talk with the lady as she wrapped them for me. She found out that I had been a chef, and wanted to know what my “specialty” was. I told her that my specialty had been cleaning out the walk in.

“What is that?” she said, having expected for me to give her a recipe for Blackberry Shortcake, or Balsamic Vinaigrette maybe.
“That’s where I go through the refrigerator, and determine what needs to be thrown away right now, and what we need to use up before it goes bad.” I tell her.
“Oh” she says “Like I have to do at home sometimes. I’d hate you to see my refrigerator right now”
“Oh, I know” I said “It reminds me of the Sportsmans Banquet they had every year at a country club I used to be chef at.”

‘”What’s a Sportsmen’s Banquet?” she asked, and that’s all it took to send me flying.

“The Sportsmen’s Banquet is an event held every year, where all the manly men have their wives pull from the freezer all the meats and fishes they have killed and frozen over the years, all in various stages of decay and neglect,and they bring them proudly for the chef, being me, to cook for them at a big manly banquet, where they smoke cigars and drink cognac and talk of their safari they will be taking to the Trophy Game Ranch down by Kerrville. They bring you fish wrapped in newspaper, the headlines which read “JFK ASSASSINATED”, or frozen in a milk carton cut in half; they bring unknown meats in Walmart bags that are disintegrating in front of your eyes. They bring you an elk shank or bear tenderloin, freezer burned so badly you just want to cry. It is a "wound to the heart", as the great chief Sitting Bull would say, watching his beloved buffalo disappear slowly from the plains. There are big zip-lock bags of dove and quail that seem to be all liquid,except for the feathers. As they bring it to you, its pretty easy to imagine it sat in an ice chest for five days as they sat around a fire and told fart jokes at night, then on the counter for a day once home, then finally into the freezer 4 years ago where it settled to the bottom next to Uncle Jacks beef tongue from 1965. And now you have it, the duck that was shot in Nova Scotia all those years ago, and the beef tongue that the proud huntsman would like you to make into some kind of garnish for a smoked salmon tray, the same salmon that was caught on the duck expedition in 1972. It’s a deadly mess, it really is”

Now during this little speech a group of women has gathered, because , well, I dont really have an inside voice, and it just tends to draw a crowd sometimes

“So what do you do with all this bad meat?” one asked.

“Put it on a cart and take it straight to the dumpster, get on the phone and order some elk, bison, Smoked Salmon, duck, quail and beef tongue from a local purveyor, pretend that you are serving these guys exactly what they brought in. But these guys are smart. They run oil companies and stuff . They know what you are doing, and they just pretend what they are eating is what they brought in. Everybody is happy and no one dies the next day.”


I turn back to the clerk, who has finished wrapping my dishes.
“My husband has some elk in the freezer. I’ve been asking him to get rid of it for years” she says.
“They have Elk at Central Market” I tell her.
We exchange knowing looks.
“Thank you so much” she says “Have you seen these Egyptian Bamboo place mats? “They would look very nice with your new dishes.”

THE THERAPIST

He asked me "What is the goal, what is it you want out of all this, Bulletholes?"
I said "I just want what everyone else wants Doc."
"And what might that be?"
"You know, a love that lasts forever, till the end of time."

One of us laughed, and one of us didn't.
Right now I can't recall who did what.

DON'T BE A JERK

Back in 2009, I told you about how my son had come to me, and asked if he and his girlfriend, Maddie, could come over and set up a little love nest in my middle room, because he was living with his mother, and she wasn’t going along with his romantic pursuits happening under her roof.

I told him that was fine with me, but that he and I needed to get my apartment cleaned up a bit first, that it really wasn’t presentable in its current state.
So that night I’m sitting there watching TV, and there is a knock at the door, and its Maddie. She has brooms and mops, spray bottles and towels, and we set to cleaning my apartment, including getting the middle room set up as some kind of honeymoon suite for them. She really is a swell girl, and we went shopping and bought groceries, and I made a little cheese and fruit tray for them to have the next evening when they were together. It was all very sweet, ya know?

So they would come over a few times a week for about a month, and then they stopped. A week or two went by, no lovers setting up in my middle room.The next time I saw the Rip (my son) I asked him about where they had been.
He says “Oh, that’s done”
“Done?’ I ask ‘Whats that mean, “done””
“Done” is his one word answer.
So I say:
“Don’t just say “done” boy, like you finished changing the oil, or finished up a deadline. Say “she broke my heart”, or “We split up” or “Oh, it just didn’t work out”. Give it the respect it deserves. Don’t be a jerk. We are talking about a nice soft sweet woman here, not a steak dinner. Don't say "Done". Please don’t be a jerk.”

So the Rip, here a few years later, he’s watched me fall in love with this woman the last two years.

Back at Christmas, he came over to where I was living, and had dinner, and she came over too. We had  a nice dinner, and she left, and later he asked me “Pops, what are you doing with her?”
And I told him “You know I love her to death. I really do. I'm flat crazy about her." 
And I went on to try to explain what I thought the relationship was about, and what I thought I was trying to do.

 “I can see that. But Pops, you are too sensitive a guy for all that” he says.

“After everything I been through, what do you think she could do to me?” I said.

And he just shook his head.

So I been finding out the last few months what she could do to me. Love just goes its own way, and you can try to control your feelings, and keep your heart safe, but maybe for guys like me it just don’t work that way, and at some point loving a girl can take root in your heart, like a Tanglewood tree, and it grows into something that's too big, too wild, too deep-rooted and its huge and hungry like a crow in the corn, and one day they come and tell you you need to cut it down, you need to cut it down for your own good, and you know if it comes to that, them telling you to cut it down, then they are probably right. They must be right. They must be right or they wouldn’t be telling you, would they? But you have no idea how to cut it down, this thing you been watching and growing and loving all this time. Its been out of your control the whole time anyway, and you are just now finding THAT out.

Anyway, I’m talking to the Rip about it last week, and I remember what he said back at Christmas about me being “too sensitive a guy for that” and I asked him how he knew back then. How did he know I was too sensitive?

He says “Because I’m just like you Pops.”

“What do you mean?” I says.

“Well, I have these girls that come to me, and they want to have sex with me; they are nice and soft and smell so good and they look at me with those big caring eyes and I fall in love with them. And then they break my heart.”

I’ve never been so proud of him all my life.

My boy, he’s not a jerk after all.

MY NEW NEIGHBOR

I finally met a neighbor worth knowing. He is into fitness products. We talked for some time, decided that there is not much better than a nice swim on a hot day, mustard is the way to go for a hot dog, metallic blue is the best color for cars and bikes,and stuff, that girls are pretty much for the birds (until you find a nice one), and that 1000 jumps on a pogo stick isn't that hard, but it is something to shoot for and, and that growing up is a really bad business.
His name is Riley, and he is 9 years old.