It's Christmas Eve again already, and here is my annual Christmas blog . . .
Finding Peace
“Peace on Earth” this Christmas?
Don’t think so. So many Christmas cards I’ve mailed, promising “Peace on
Earth.” Hasn’t happened in my lifetime. I have seen Christmas cards in family
scrapbooks from the 1940s, including 1943, the year I was born. They promised
“Peace on Earth,” in the middle of World War II, with the first tactical atomic
explosion at Hiroshima still two years away. I haven’t and wouldn’t be able to
document it, but I’ll bet Earth has not had a moment of peace since then.
Maybe if we narrowed it down. “Peace in the Christian World.” Nope. “Peace in
America.” Daily murders, violence and crime, in streets, in movies and on TV.
“Peace in California.” Road rage capital of the world. “Peace in San Diego.” Har
de har har. Corruption City. “Peace in La Mesa.” La Mesa is where I live, and
we do have our quiet moments, but why would I offer that as your Christmas
wish? “Peace at my house.” Now we’re getting close, as long as we don’t watch
the news, but peace at my house doesn’t do you much good, and your good is
my wish.
No, once again this Christmas, peace anywhere on Earth has to be portable, and
that peace is achievable. Insurance follows the car, and peace follows the
person. “Peace in your mind” is totally possible this Christmas Day, or if not this
Christmas (it takes a little work), then by next Christmas. If peace follows all the
people who come to sit down at your Christmas dinner, then you will have
“Peace at the Christmas dinner table.”
At many Christmas dinner tables, though, including many in my past, you might
as well ask for “Peace on Earth.”
So many people go through life wired with buttons to be pushed. Such buttons
can be pushed from a range of a thousand miles. All it takes is the right word
traveling through the air. Get a dozen button-wired people at a Christmas dinner
table, and watch out.
The buttons can be unwired. All you have to do is take back the power you have
given to some other person to push it. These can be very important and powerful
people: mothers, fathers, etc. But it isn’t their power they use to push your
buttons. It is yours. You gave it to them years ago, probably starting in
childhood. With that power, they can push your buttons at any time and make
you feel small, cheap, insignificant, selfish, ungrateful, undesirable, inferior, a
lifelong waster of every opportunity you ever had at achieving the greatness that
you were born for, if you had only listened to the person leaning with all his or her
weight against the thumb pressing your button.
You gave that person that power and weight, and you can take it back. All it
takes is forgiveness. Appropriate, at the Christmas season, and the figure it
celebrates, that the route to peace involves forgiveness. But it works. I don’t
know exactly how it works, and it takes some work and willingness to get there,
but when you forgive, you take power back, and peace is there waiting.
Forgiveness, power, surrender, peace and freedom are all different spellings of the same
human condition: happiness.
When you are ready, and it very well could require some professional guidance,
you come to a point where you simply say in your mind to a person: “I forgive
you.” At that instant, the button becomes unwired. The person may say the
same things as before, words that for years you felt as sandpaper in your ears or
an arrow through your heart. But now the words pass right through you and out
into space. Left behind is a feeling of liberation you have known only in your
dreams.
You haven’t said a word to the person about forgiveness. The person knows
something has happened, though, because the button doesn’t work anymore.
So he or she quits pushing, and it is a relief. It was your power, but it required
their energy to keep their thumbs on your buttons all those years, and at some
point, inside themselves, they will feel relieved.
But this Christmas story about reachable peace is not about them; it is about you.
It is a true story.
December 24, 2009
December 23, 2009
Snoopy season
Our house is directly below the approach path that various aircraft follow when doing a flyover at Qualcomm Stadium, about nine miles to the northwest. In 1998, when San Diego hosted a Super Bowl, I walked outside about five minutes before kickoff and saw a black speck southeast of us. The speck grew rapidly into a Stealth Bomber, about 1,000 feet above me, streaking toward the stadium. Too late to run for the camera, but before bowl games now I never go outside without it. Tonight, the Poinsettia Bowl is being played at Qualcomm. At 3:30, in the vicinity of our house, Snoopy was warming up. Click on the images for a close-up.
December 21, 2009
Not your typical school day
On the one hand, nobody who works or goes to school at Abilene High would choose to be in school today, Monday, when Christmas Day is Friday.
On the other hand, in 1954, when the Eagles won the state championship on Saturday, Dec. 18, Monday, Dec. 20, was a school day. But it wasn't just any school day . . .
Monday, Dec. 20, 1954
"Not much reading, writing or arithmetic got done Monday at Abilene High School. Instead the school day was more like a progressive pep rally. Members of the bell team starting ringing the Victory Bell at 8 a.m. and it didn’t stop all day. Assistant principal J.H. Nail said the students 'walked on air' all day Monday.
“ 'We had to pick them off the ceiling every once in a while,' Nail said. 'They had something going all day long.'
"At 4 p.m., members of the Eagle Booster Club, mostly business and professional men in the community, arrived in convertibles to take the team on a parade through downtown. The parade crossed the T&P tracks to North First, then up Cypress and down Pine with the Eagle Booster Club banner and the Victory Bell leading the way.
"In the lead convertible were Eagle tri-captains Twyman Ash, Jim Millerman and John Thomas. A reporter said the players looked uncomfortable with all the attention from the thousands of Abilenians lining the streets. Behind the string of cars came hundreds of AHS students and the Eagle band. Students carried a 'State Champions' banner that stretched almost all the way across the street.
"It was the Eagles’ fourth state championship, to go with titles won in 1923, 1928 and 1931, but this was the first in the more formalized statewide classifications introduced by the University Interscholastic League for the 1951 season. It was different to be from a town whose high school team had emerged champions from a system that more or less insured that only the best teams from all corners of the state moved forward through the playoffs.
"Moser never shrugged, but a typical eyebrows-up quizzical look came to his face when there was a question he couldn’t answer.
"A newspaperman asked him if he thought the Eagles could win the District 1-AAAA championship and get into the playoffs again in 1955. Up went the eyebrows. 'It just depends on how the boys develop,' he said.
"The school, the Eagle Booster Club, and other sponsors hosted a football banquet for the team at the end of every season. For many adults, the banquet was just another obligatory event to attend. The 1954 banquet was different. Moser and the Eagles for a second time presented Abilene High principal Escoe Webb the District 1-AAAA championship trophy, and then the state Class AAAA championship trophy, Abilene High’s first since 1931.
"In turn, the Eagle Booster Club presented gifts to the coaches: checks, ranging from $1,500 for the varsity coaches to $400 for B Team assistants like Tommy Morris, who was only a couple of years out of Abilene Christian College. It didn’t sound like much, but $400 put a big grin on the faces of assistants like Morris, whose annual salary was $3,500.
"The Booster Club had a gift for the head coach as well. Moser was presented the keys to a new 1954 Buick."
On the other hand, in 1954, when the Eagles won the state championship on Saturday, Dec. 18, Monday, Dec. 20, was a school day. But it wasn't just any school day . . .
Monday, Dec. 20, 1954
"Not much reading, writing or arithmetic got done Monday at Abilene High School. Instead the school day was more like a progressive pep rally. Members of the bell team starting ringing the Victory Bell at 8 a.m. and it didn’t stop all day. Assistant principal J.H. Nail said the students 'walked on air' all day Monday.
“ 'We had to pick them off the ceiling every once in a while,' Nail said. 'They had something going all day long.'
"At 4 p.m., members of the Eagle Booster Club, mostly business and professional men in the community, arrived in convertibles to take the team on a parade through downtown. The parade crossed the T&P tracks to North First, then up Cypress and down Pine with the Eagle Booster Club banner and the Victory Bell leading the way.
"In the lead convertible were Eagle tri-captains Twyman Ash, Jim Millerman and John Thomas. A reporter said the players looked uncomfortable with all the attention from the thousands of Abilenians lining the streets. Behind the string of cars came hundreds of AHS students and the Eagle band. Students carried a 'State Champions' banner that stretched almost all the way across the street.
"It was the Eagles’ fourth state championship, to go with titles won in 1923, 1928 and 1931, but this was the first in the more formalized statewide classifications introduced by the University Interscholastic League for the 1951 season. It was different to be from a town whose high school team had emerged champions from a system that more or less insured that only the best teams from all corners of the state moved forward through the playoffs.
"Moser never shrugged, but a typical eyebrows-up quizzical look came to his face when there was a question he couldn’t answer.
"A newspaperman asked him if he thought the Eagles could win the District 1-AAAA championship and get into the playoffs again in 1955. Up went the eyebrows. 'It just depends on how the boys develop,' he said.
"The school, the Eagle Booster Club, and other sponsors hosted a football banquet for the team at the end of every season. For many adults, the banquet was just another obligatory event to attend. The 1954 banquet was different. Moser and the Eagles for a second time presented Abilene High principal Escoe Webb the District 1-AAAA championship trophy, and then the state Class AAAA championship trophy, Abilene High’s first since 1931.
"In turn, the Eagle Booster Club presented gifts to the coaches: checks, ranging from $1,500 for the varsity coaches to $400 for B Team assistants like Tommy Morris, who was only a couple of years out of Abilene Christian College. It didn’t sound like much, but $400 put a big grin on the faces of assistants like Morris, whose annual salary was $3,500.
"The Booster Club had a gift for the head coach as well. Moser was presented the keys to a new 1954 Buick."
December 20, 2009
The state championship feeling
Abilene High won a Texas state football championship last night, beating two-time defending state champion Katy High, 28-17, at the Alamodome in San Antonio. I listened to the game on the radio, just like I listened in 1954 when Abilene beat Houston's Austin High, 14-7, in Houston. Only in 2009, I listened to an audio feed over the Internet that could be heard globally by anyone with an Internet connection. With the Internet, there is no more local news.
How does it feel, in the locker room, or on the ride home, after winning a state championship? According to H.P. Hawkins, it's something you never forget . . .
Dec. 18, 1954, Abilene 14, Houston Stephen F. Austin 7
"That morning, at 11 a.m. before the 2 p.m. kickoff, the Eagles had gathered in their hotel for their pre-game meal of dry roast beef, a dry baked potato and dry toast. Now, as state champions, they ate what they wanted in a private room in a restaurant.
"It was all our teammates and coaches alone in one room together,” Hawkins said. “There was a feeling of happiness, of closeness, and of accomplishment that I will never forget.” Twyman Ash had in his possession the game ball. In the locker room he had approached Moser with it. 'Coach,' Ash said, 'you take it.'
" 'No, sir,' said Moser. 'You boys earned it.' So Ash, who had three catches in the winning drive, carried the ball home. At 7:30, the Eagles boarded their chartered Martin 202 for the flight back to Abilene. Waiting for them at the airport that night was a crowd of 3,000 people.
"The crowd started building about 8 p.m. when radio stations said the team plane was due about 9:30 p.m. The crowd overflowed the airport lobby area onto the tarmac and grassy areas around the terminal building. It was cold, but nobody cared.
"The crowd got to cheer twice. A shout went up as an airliner’s lights appeared, on approach. The plane landed and taxied back to the terminal and the crowd roared. But it was a plane chartered by Eagle fans for the Houston trip who nevertheless hugely enjoyed their reception.
"The team plane appeared several minutes later and the crowd roared again as the twin-engine aircraft parked and this time deplaned the players down stairs in the tail of the Martin 202. The players were reserved but all smiles as they waited to collect duffle bags containing their pads, helmets and cleats from the plane’s baggage hold."
Dec. 17, 1955, Abilene 33, Tyler 13
"Milstead, approached after the game by a young Tyler fan wanting an autograph, told the boy he should go get Abilene players to sign instead. 'Everybody on that team was great,' Milstead said, 'simply great.' He said the Lions 'could play Abilene every day in the week and never beat ‘em.'
“ 'They hit hard and never let up,' said Trimble, the Tyler end. 'They’d knock you down, and when you got back up, knock you down again. It was tough.'
"In the Eagle locker room, senior co-captains Caudle and Colwell were blubbering into their coach’s shoulder. They and the other seniors were the first class to play all three years under Moser. 'Coach, I can’t play any more,' said Caudle, a starter on both offense and defense for both the 1954 and ’55 champions, and a two-way all-district selection as a senior. 'Sure you can, son,' Moser said. 'You’ve got college games ahead.'
"But that’s not what Caudle had meant. He couldn’t be an Eagle any more, part of a team that had won 23 straight games and a second state championship. It was a feeling of achievement and of belonging that might be part of this black and gold gang for a long while, with junior players like Gregory, Jimmy Carpenter, Stuart Peake and Rufus King in the room. It was not an easy thing for an 18-year-old to leave behind."
Dec. 22, 1956, Abilene 14, Corpus Christi Ray 0
"At the end of the game Hayseed Stephens was jumping up and down on his crutches. Line coach Hank Watkins, who had a nickname for just about everybody, came up and hugged 'Old Poker Face,' his name for Jimmy Carpenter. 'Hate to lose you, Jim,' Watkins said. 'Hate to leave, Coach,' Carpenter said. 'Wish I could play two more years.'
"The players let the coaches strip to their underwear before throwing them in the showers. Teen music issued from the Eagle bus as it rolled out of a silent Memorial Stadium. Stuart Peake on guitar, singing 'Never Felt More Like Singing the Blues,' a Guy Mitchell radio hit. Peake sat in the back of the bus with the seniors: Rufus and Boyd King, Jim Rose, Kenny Schmidt, Charles Bradshaw, Jimmy Carpenter, Glynn Gregory, Bufford Carr, Hubert Jordan, Ervin Bishop, 21 seniors in all.
“ 'The juniors and sophomores sat in the front and talked about next year’s team,' said Moser of the ride home. 'Those young kids are ready to go. John Young came up to me and asked when spring training would start. I told him I didn’t know, and he answered, ‘I wish it was starting Monday’.”
Now it is Sunday morning, Dec. 20, 2009, in Abilene, and Eagle players have that state championship feeling again. Their winning streak stands at 15, they believe in their coach, and there are lots of juniors in the room. Don't know when spring training starts.
How does it feel, in the locker room, or on the ride home, after winning a state championship? According to H.P. Hawkins, it's something you never forget . . .
Dec. 18, 1954, Abilene 14, Houston Stephen F. Austin 7
"That morning, at 11 a.m. before the 2 p.m. kickoff, the Eagles had gathered in their hotel for their pre-game meal of dry roast beef, a dry baked potato and dry toast. Now, as state champions, they ate what they wanted in a private room in a restaurant.
"It was all our teammates and coaches alone in one room together,” Hawkins said. “There was a feeling of happiness, of closeness, and of accomplishment that I will never forget.” Twyman Ash had in his possession the game ball. In the locker room he had approached Moser with it. 'Coach,' Ash said, 'you take it.'
" 'No, sir,' said Moser. 'You boys earned it.' So Ash, who had three catches in the winning drive, carried the ball home. At 7:30, the Eagles boarded their chartered Martin 202 for the flight back to Abilene. Waiting for them at the airport that night was a crowd of 3,000 people.
"The crowd started building about 8 p.m. when radio stations said the team plane was due about 9:30 p.m. The crowd overflowed the airport lobby area onto the tarmac and grassy areas around the terminal building. It was cold, but nobody cared.
"The crowd got to cheer twice. A shout went up as an airliner’s lights appeared, on approach. The plane landed and taxied back to the terminal and the crowd roared. But it was a plane chartered by Eagle fans for the Houston trip who nevertheless hugely enjoyed their reception.
"The team plane appeared several minutes later and the crowd roared again as the twin-engine aircraft parked and this time deplaned the players down stairs in the tail of the Martin 202. The players were reserved but all smiles as they waited to collect duffle bags containing their pads, helmets and cleats from the plane’s baggage hold."
Dec. 17, 1955, Abilene 33, Tyler 13
"Milstead, approached after the game by a young Tyler fan wanting an autograph, told the boy he should go get Abilene players to sign instead. 'Everybody on that team was great,' Milstead said, 'simply great.' He said the Lions 'could play Abilene every day in the week and never beat ‘em.'
“ 'They hit hard and never let up,' said Trimble, the Tyler end. 'They’d knock you down, and when you got back up, knock you down again. It was tough.'
"In the Eagle locker room, senior co-captains Caudle and Colwell were blubbering into their coach’s shoulder. They and the other seniors were the first class to play all three years under Moser. 'Coach, I can’t play any more,' said Caudle, a starter on both offense and defense for both the 1954 and ’55 champions, and a two-way all-district selection as a senior. 'Sure you can, son,' Moser said. 'You’ve got college games ahead.'
"But that’s not what Caudle had meant. He couldn’t be an Eagle any more, part of a team that had won 23 straight games and a second state championship. It was a feeling of achievement and of belonging that might be part of this black and gold gang for a long while, with junior players like Gregory, Jimmy Carpenter, Stuart Peake and Rufus King in the room. It was not an easy thing for an 18-year-old to leave behind."
Dec. 22, 1956, Abilene 14, Corpus Christi Ray 0
"At the end of the game Hayseed Stephens was jumping up and down on his crutches. Line coach Hank Watkins, who had a nickname for just about everybody, came up and hugged 'Old Poker Face,' his name for Jimmy Carpenter. 'Hate to lose you, Jim,' Watkins said. 'Hate to leave, Coach,' Carpenter said. 'Wish I could play two more years.'
"The players let the coaches strip to their underwear before throwing them in the showers. Teen music issued from the Eagle bus as it rolled out of a silent Memorial Stadium. Stuart Peake on guitar, singing 'Never Felt More Like Singing the Blues,' a Guy Mitchell radio hit. Peake sat in the back of the bus with the seniors: Rufus and Boyd King, Jim Rose, Kenny Schmidt, Charles Bradshaw, Jimmy Carpenter, Glynn Gregory, Bufford Carr, Hubert Jordan, Ervin Bishop, 21 seniors in all.
“ 'The juniors and sophomores sat in the front and talked about next year’s team,' said Moser of the ride home. 'Those young kids are ready to go. John Young came up to me and asked when spring training would start. I told him I didn’t know, and he answered, ‘I wish it was starting Monday’.”
Now it is Sunday morning, Dec. 20, 2009, in Abilene, and Eagle players have that state championship feeling again. Their winning streak stands at 15, they believe in their coach, and there are lots of juniors in the room. Don't know when spring training starts.
December 19, 2009
The winners' week
Abilene High coach Steve Warren had the best quote of the week, best because it is a true statement.
"This has been unbelievable," he told a Friday night pep rally crowd of 4,000 at Shotwell Stadium. "This whole week has been awesome and then some."
Warren spoke with the mind, the experience, and the voice, of a professional athlete. When you sift through the stories in the week before a championship game, whether it's the Super Bowl, the BCS championship, the World Series, the College World Series, or prep championships like Abilene vs. Katy, it's a common theme: getting to the championship game is the real story.
I first became aware of this in writing about major league baseball. Players, managers and coaches kept saying the World Series is important, but it's important like a really good sauce on an entrée, the best gravy you ever had on (choosing a Texas measure of superlatives) a chicken-fried steak. The league championship is the chicken-fried steak. Win the National League or the American League pennant, you have won what really counts. It was a championship that took months, not one week. As Steve Warren said, it is a week to savor. There is nothing not to remember about this week. It's all good. Next week, well, someone will have won, and someone will have lost.
Based on their speed, defense, skill players, and penchant for getting better as the game goes on, I pick Abilene, by a score of 35-14. Whatever that score turns out to be, this week has been 100-to-nothing, for both sides.
"This has been unbelievable," he told a Friday night pep rally crowd of 4,000 at Shotwell Stadium. "This whole week has been awesome and then some."
Warren spoke with the mind, the experience, and the voice, of a professional athlete. When you sift through the stories in the week before a championship game, whether it's the Super Bowl, the BCS championship, the World Series, the College World Series, or prep championships like Abilene vs. Katy, it's a common theme: getting to the championship game is the real story.
I first became aware of this in writing about major league baseball. Players, managers and coaches kept saying the World Series is important, but it's important like a really good sauce on an entrée, the best gravy you ever had on (choosing a Texas measure of superlatives) a chicken-fried steak. The league championship is the chicken-fried steak. Win the National League or the American League pennant, you have won what really counts. It was a championship that took months, not one week. As Steve Warren said, it is a week to savor. There is nothing not to remember about this week. It's all good. Next week, well, someone will have won, and someone will have lost.
Based on their speed, defense, skill players, and penchant for getting better as the game goes on, I pick Abilene, by a score of 35-14. Whatever that score turns out to be, this week has been 100-to-nothing, for both sides.
December 17, 2009
A game with a life of its own
In Abilene High history, state championship games have had a way of taking on a life of their own, which may be true of all state championship games. Excerpts from "Warbirds" follow.
Dec. 18, 1954
"The juggernaut from Abilene was favored to beat Stephen F. Austin by three touchdowns in the state championship game at Houston.
"Instead, with 5:49 remaining in the game, the Mustangs on fourth down lined up at the Abilene six-yard line to kick a field goal that would put them ahead of the Eagles, 10-7.
"No one in Houston was surprised. Maybe they were having heart attacks, but they weren’t surprised.
"While Abilene was pounding two playoff foes by a cumulative score of 107-0, Stephen F. Austin in bi-district barely squeaked past Galveston Ball, 21-20. In the semifinals, the Mustangs faced a Corpus Christi Miller team that had beaten them soundly, 25-6, in the third game of the season. The Mustangs won, again by 21-20.
"It was the team that wouldn’t quit. Just to get into the playoffs, in the last game of the regular season the Mustangs had to beat the defending Class AAAA champions, Houston Lamar. And they did, 16-14.
"If these nail-biters were hard on the Mustangs’ fans, it was hell on the 3,000 fans that had followed the Eagles to Houston’s 20,000-seat Public Schools Stadium . . ."
Dec. 17, 1955
"During the week in the statewide media, Abilene was established as a one-touchdown favorite over Tyler, and the feeling was that it would be something like 21-14, based on the Eagles’ power to score. Moser himself felt that way. For several weeks he had been telling his coaches (but no one else) that the 1955 Eagles were the best offensive team he ever saw.
“ 'If we can hold them to two touchdowns,' Moser told the Eagle Booster Club, 'we’ll win, I believe.'
"Abilene, in West Central Texas, and Tyler, way over in East Texas, had never met on a football field. They had some mutual adversaries in Waco, Wichita Falls and Dallas Highland Park, but their meeting at Amon Carter Stadium for the 1955 state championship would be their first.
"Having won the Love Field coin toss, Abilene, as the home team, got to pick its jerseys. Moser told his team leader, quarterback David Bourland, that new white jerseys had arrived. Bourland quickly voted in favor of the old gold jerseys. The belly series depended on deception, particularly on the part of the quarterback, and Bourland had become very good at it. He always liked to wear the gold jerseys, because the ball was too easy to see against the white.
"Abilene and Tyler both had 12 straight victories against no defeats. In the playoffs, Tyler first defeated Corpus Christi Miller, 22-7, then Baytown, 20-0. Abilene had averaged 39 points a game, Tyler 29. The Eagles had surrendered 10 fewer points than the Lions, 77 to 87. Against their lone common opponent in 1955, Abilene had beaten Highland Park, 34-0, in the season opener; Tyler beat the Scotties, 33-13, in their next-to-last district game. Abilene’s scouts, Blacky Blackburn and Wally Bullington, told Moser the Lions were a great team. Moser told the Eagles they would have to do 'everything right' to win.
"The Lions were big and fast. Center Jim Davis and tackle Billy Sims both weighed 200 pounds and both were all-state candidates, as was 186-pound halfback Joe Leggette, who had 980 yards rushing. But the star of the team, and probably the best all-around high school football player of the 1955 season, was 6-2, 190-pound quarterback Charles Milstead.
“ 'Another Walt Fondren,' Jack Holden wrote, 'a Doyle Traylor,' comparing Milstead to star Southwest Conference quarterbacks of the era. Tyler ran the same belly option offense as Abilene, and Milstead’s ability to run or pass gave the Tyler system a dangerous extra option.
"Members of Abilene’s state championship teams of 1923, 1928, 1931 and 1954 were special guests at the Friday pep rally. The team left for Fort Worth on the Eagle Bus right after the pep rally and headquartered at the Texas Hotel. More than 5,000 Abilenians made the 140-mile trip the next day, including almost 1,000 on a special Texas & Pacific train. The Victory Bell went in a truck and the 100-plus members of the Eagle Marching Band went in buses. After about 8 a.m., two-lane U.S. 80 was lined up with cars going east, through Baird, Cisco, Eastland and Ranger, streaming black and gold crepe decorations, headed for Fort Worth. About the same number of fans came from Tyler. Crowd estimates at kickoff went as high as 30,000 in the 37,000-seat stadium, meaning as many as 20,000 people from Fort Worth and other parts of the state came to the game. It promised to be a big game between two powerhouse teams, maybe even a classic. It turned out to be a classic, all right, one that had fans shaking their heads that afternoon and 45 years later."
Dec. 22, 1956
"The Eagles rolled into Austin on Friday, Dec. 21, with two streaks and a record on the line.
"Their streak of consecutive games won stood at 36. They were playing to become only the third high school team in Texas to win three straight state championships, after Waco (1925-26-27) and Amarillo (1934-35-36). And by winning, the Eagles would become the school with the most state championships – six – in Texas schoolboy history.
"Twenty of 23 Texas sports writers picked Abilene to beat Ray, which was in a state title game for the first time. The margins ranged from one point to 'no doubt.' Amarillo’s Putt Powell thought it was reasonable to suppose the Eagles would score more touchdowns than Ray made first downs. . . . "
The final score was 14-0, and the game became memorable for a play sequence in the first quarter that involved what is called a "14-point turnaround." Back to the book:
"The Texan offense came to the line breathing fire. In five plays they had gained the Eagle 19 and looked like a team that could beat the Eagle defense. Then end Stuart Peake broke through and hit quarterback Arthur McCallum. The ball came loose and bounced all the way back to the 44 before McCallum could fall on it. Unperturbed, McCallum threw to end Sonny Davis at the Abilene 21. He threw again to Davis, this time to the Eagle 4. Abilene was very much a team in trouble. McCallum kept on a quarterback sneak to the 2. Sub halfback Bart Shirley rammed to the one. McCallum tried another sneak and was piled up at the one-foot line.
"On fourth down, the two teams massed at the goalline, Abilene in its gap-8 defense. The center Christian snapped the ball, the lines charged, and suddenly the ball was in the air above the tumult, floating free, describing a lazy parabola toward the left end of the Texan line. It landed directly in front of Eagle linebacker Gerald Galbraith, who smothered it at the 3 as fans on both sides screamed. The ball appeared to have simply squirted through McCallum’s hands at the snap.
"The Eagle backs lined up in the end zone. Gregory improved things somewhat with a three-yard dive to the 6 In the huddle, Galbraith looked at right tackle Boyd King. 'I asked old Boyd if he could take that old boy out (tackle Walter Beck),' Galbraith said. 'Sure, run that old 4-play,' King told him.
"Galbraith called it: '4 Straightaway, on Set, on Set.' The Eagles in their gold jerseys, standing in their end zone, broke the huddle with a clap of hands, trotted to the line of scrimmage at the 6, fell into the hands-on-knees 'ready' stance. 'Down,' Galbraith called, with the downward inflection. The team dropped into its three-point stance. 'Set,' Galbraith yelled, but without time for the rising, anticipatory inflection, because the Eagles had charged. Galbraith took the snap from Jim Rose, pivoted right, handed to Carpenter going by, and going by so fast that Galbraith barely got the ball to him. Boyd King got position on Walter Beck, just like his coach had taught him, and knocked Beck outside. Jordan blocked Floyd Brown inside.
"Carpenter, all 153 fleet pounds of him, hit the hole in a flash and burst into the clear on the other side. A Ray halfback came up. Carpenter spun to the outside, flaring slightly toward the right sideline, and in a couple of strides was in high gear. It was a footrace with the Ray safety that Carpenter won easily, 94 yards to the end zone. His teammates sprinted all the way down the field after him, and after Gregory’s kick, Abilene led, 7-0.
"Men who have played football, for the rest of their lives may refer to a particular kind of traumatic event as 'a 14-point turnaround.' A team is on the goalline, about to score, when something happens – an interception runback, or a fumble and a 94-yard run. Not only has the team lost its seven points, the other team has scored seven, more or less in the same breath. It is a terrific 'what if' shock, and it had happened to the Ray Texans . . ."
"The 14-point turnaround works both ways. After Carpenter’s run, the energized Eagles took control of the game . . . "
Saturday's game between Abilene and Katy will have acquired some sort of signature that will be remembered 50 years from now. What will it be?
Dec. 18, 1954
"The juggernaut from Abilene was favored to beat Stephen F. Austin by three touchdowns in the state championship game at Houston.
"Instead, with 5:49 remaining in the game, the Mustangs on fourth down lined up at the Abilene six-yard line to kick a field goal that would put them ahead of the Eagles, 10-7.
"No one in Houston was surprised. Maybe they were having heart attacks, but they weren’t surprised.
"While Abilene was pounding two playoff foes by a cumulative score of 107-0, Stephen F. Austin in bi-district barely squeaked past Galveston Ball, 21-20. In the semifinals, the Mustangs faced a Corpus Christi Miller team that had beaten them soundly, 25-6, in the third game of the season. The Mustangs won, again by 21-20.
"It was the team that wouldn’t quit. Just to get into the playoffs, in the last game of the regular season the Mustangs had to beat the defending Class AAAA champions, Houston Lamar. And they did, 16-14.
"If these nail-biters were hard on the Mustangs’ fans, it was hell on the 3,000 fans that had followed the Eagles to Houston’s 20,000-seat Public Schools Stadium . . ."
Dec. 17, 1955
"During the week in the statewide media, Abilene was established as a one-touchdown favorite over Tyler, and the feeling was that it would be something like 21-14, based on the Eagles’ power to score. Moser himself felt that way. For several weeks he had been telling his coaches (but no one else) that the 1955 Eagles were the best offensive team he ever saw.
“ 'If we can hold them to two touchdowns,' Moser told the Eagle Booster Club, 'we’ll win, I believe.'
"Abilene, in West Central Texas, and Tyler, way over in East Texas, had never met on a football field. They had some mutual adversaries in Waco, Wichita Falls and Dallas Highland Park, but their meeting at Amon Carter Stadium for the 1955 state championship would be their first.
"Having won the Love Field coin toss, Abilene, as the home team, got to pick its jerseys. Moser told his team leader, quarterback David Bourland, that new white jerseys had arrived. Bourland quickly voted in favor of the old gold jerseys. The belly series depended on deception, particularly on the part of the quarterback, and Bourland had become very good at it. He always liked to wear the gold jerseys, because the ball was too easy to see against the white.
"Abilene and Tyler both had 12 straight victories against no defeats. In the playoffs, Tyler first defeated Corpus Christi Miller, 22-7, then Baytown, 20-0. Abilene had averaged 39 points a game, Tyler 29. The Eagles had surrendered 10 fewer points than the Lions, 77 to 87. Against their lone common opponent in 1955, Abilene had beaten Highland Park, 34-0, in the season opener; Tyler beat the Scotties, 33-13, in their next-to-last district game. Abilene’s scouts, Blacky Blackburn and Wally Bullington, told Moser the Lions were a great team. Moser told the Eagles they would have to do 'everything right' to win.
"The Lions were big and fast. Center Jim Davis and tackle Billy Sims both weighed 200 pounds and both were all-state candidates, as was 186-pound halfback Joe Leggette, who had 980 yards rushing. But the star of the team, and probably the best all-around high school football player of the 1955 season, was 6-2, 190-pound quarterback Charles Milstead.
“ 'Another Walt Fondren,' Jack Holden wrote, 'a Doyle Traylor,' comparing Milstead to star Southwest Conference quarterbacks of the era. Tyler ran the same belly option offense as Abilene, and Milstead’s ability to run or pass gave the Tyler system a dangerous extra option.
"Members of Abilene’s state championship teams of 1923, 1928, 1931 and 1954 were special guests at the Friday pep rally. The team left for Fort Worth on the Eagle Bus right after the pep rally and headquartered at the Texas Hotel. More than 5,000 Abilenians made the 140-mile trip the next day, including almost 1,000 on a special Texas & Pacific train. The Victory Bell went in a truck and the 100-plus members of the Eagle Marching Band went in buses. After about 8 a.m., two-lane U.S. 80 was lined up with cars going east, through Baird, Cisco, Eastland and Ranger, streaming black and gold crepe decorations, headed for Fort Worth. About the same number of fans came from Tyler. Crowd estimates at kickoff went as high as 30,000 in the 37,000-seat stadium, meaning as many as 20,000 people from Fort Worth and other parts of the state came to the game. It promised to be a big game between two powerhouse teams, maybe even a classic. It turned out to be a classic, all right, one that had fans shaking their heads that afternoon and 45 years later."
Dec. 22, 1956
"The Eagles rolled into Austin on Friday, Dec. 21, with two streaks and a record on the line.
"Their streak of consecutive games won stood at 36. They were playing to become only the third high school team in Texas to win three straight state championships, after Waco (1925-26-27) and Amarillo (1934-35-36). And by winning, the Eagles would become the school with the most state championships – six – in Texas schoolboy history.
"Twenty of 23 Texas sports writers picked Abilene to beat Ray, which was in a state title game for the first time. The margins ranged from one point to 'no doubt.' Amarillo’s Putt Powell thought it was reasonable to suppose the Eagles would score more touchdowns than Ray made first downs. . . . "
The final score was 14-0, and the game became memorable for a play sequence in the first quarter that involved what is called a "14-point turnaround." Back to the book:
"The Texan offense came to the line breathing fire. In five plays they had gained the Eagle 19 and looked like a team that could beat the Eagle defense. Then end Stuart Peake broke through and hit quarterback Arthur McCallum. The ball came loose and bounced all the way back to the 44 before McCallum could fall on it. Unperturbed, McCallum threw to end Sonny Davis at the Abilene 21. He threw again to Davis, this time to the Eagle 4. Abilene was very much a team in trouble. McCallum kept on a quarterback sneak to the 2. Sub halfback Bart Shirley rammed to the one. McCallum tried another sneak and was piled up at the one-foot line.
"On fourth down, the two teams massed at the goalline, Abilene in its gap-8 defense. The center Christian snapped the ball, the lines charged, and suddenly the ball was in the air above the tumult, floating free, describing a lazy parabola toward the left end of the Texan line. It landed directly in front of Eagle linebacker Gerald Galbraith, who smothered it at the 3 as fans on both sides screamed. The ball appeared to have simply squirted through McCallum’s hands at the snap.
"The Eagle backs lined up in the end zone. Gregory improved things somewhat with a three-yard dive to the 6 In the huddle, Galbraith looked at right tackle Boyd King. 'I asked old Boyd if he could take that old boy out (tackle Walter Beck),' Galbraith said. 'Sure, run that old 4-play,' King told him.
"Galbraith called it: '4 Straightaway, on Set, on Set.' The Eagles in their gold jerseys, standing in their end zone, broke the huddle with a clap of hands, trotted to the line of scrimmage at the 6, fell into the hands-on-knees 'ready' stance. 'Down,' Galbraith called, with the downward inflection. The team dropped into its three-point stance. 'Set,' Galbraith yelled, but without time for the rising, anticipatory inflection, because the Eagles had charged. Galbraith took the snap from Jim Rose, pivoted right, handed to Carpenter going by, and going by so fast that Galbraith barely got the ball to him. Boyd King got position on Walter Beck, just like his coach had taught him, and knocked Beck outside. Jordan blocked Floyd Brown inside.
"Carpenter, all 153 fleet pounds of him, hit the hole in a flash and burst into the clear on the other side. A Ray halfback came up. Carpenter spun to the outside, flaring slightly toward the right sideline, and in a couple of strides was in high gear. It was a footrace with the Ray safety that Carpenter won easily, 94 yards to the end zone. His teammates sprinted all the way down the field after him, and after Gregory’s kick, Abilene led, 7-0.
"Men who have played football, for the rest of their lives may refer to a particular kind of traumatic event as 'a 14-point turnaround.' A team is on the goalline, about to score, when something happens – an interception runback, or a fumble and a 94-yard run. Not only has the team lost its seven points, the other team has scored seven, more or less in the same breath. It is a terrific 'what if' shock, and it had happened to the Ray Texans . . ."
"The 14-point turnaround works both ways. After Carpenter’s run, the energized Eagles took control of the game . . . "
Saturday's game between Abilene and Katy will have acquired some sort of signature that will be remembered 50 years from now. What will it be?
December 16, 2009
School of Eagle Fame
Somewhere in the mid-20th century, there stands a cultural watershed, a technological Continental Divide, beyond which people in general, but young people specifically, started moving indoors for their entertainment.
I wouldn’t be so bold as to say it was that Friday night in Abilene when “Blackboard Jungle” and “Rock Around the Clock” came to the Paramount Theater, but I would think that event was somewhere in the vicinity, because it was totally non-local. The main physical feature of the Divide is the ability to separate oneself from locality, and the galvanizing force of “Rock Around the Clock” made it an arrow pointing young people down the yellow brick road of media toward radio, and then television, and then the Internet, whose arrival in the 1990s really sealed the deal. Many young people today spend far more time in the Internet distance than they do in their locality, a troubling social reality that has become the subject of books.
I may be a year off about this, but I believe that television arrived in Abilene the same year Chuck Moser did: 1953. Both had an immediate effect, but I am sure that Abilenians between the ages of 10 and 20, who today are in their 60s and 70s, when they think about the ‘50s, remember more about Moser and the Abilene Eagles than they do television. Famous people on television were, and are, a dime a dozen. Famous people locally are, well, REALLY famous.
By Christmas of 1954, Moser and the Eagles were not only famous locally, but they were putting Abilene on the map, and it’s hard to generate much more community appeal than that. The Eagles created not only a football, but a social, dynasty. Pete Shotwell, a legendary coach whose retirement after the 1952 Eagle season brought about Moser’s hiring, was given a new job in the Abilene schools. From my book, “Warbirds:”
“Abilene had experienced significant growth during and after World War II, and there were more elementary schools and two junior highs with a third planned to open in 1955, plus a black elementary school and a black high school, Woodson High. But there was no centralized physical education system. To Abilene school administrators, Shotwell, or ‘Shot,’ as he was affectionately known, made a proposal to create a new administrative position that would oversee physical education and health education in the growing Abilene schools system.
“It would give him official authority over a program he had already helped create, elementary school football. Football, in uniform, was played as a strictly recreational program in all the city schools. By 1950, boys as young as fourth grade in Abilene could start playing organized football, in city school leagues, that played to championships and awarded championship trophies and jacket patches.”
I was in 6th grade when Abilene won the 1954 state championship. I was also a second-year player on the feared Central Elementary Wildcats. In seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, I played for the South Junior High Coyotes. By ninth grade, we played road games as far away as San Angelo, and we had cheerleaders, bands and pep rallies. The three Abilene junior highs played to a city championship, which South – ahem – won my ninth grade year. We beat the North Junior Broncos, 27-15, after trailing, 15-0, at Fair Park Stadium – same place the Eagles played – before a crowd of 4,000 people.
This was youth – and community – involvement that I am not sure the 2009 social network can support. Someone in Abilene would have to write that story. One thing: fame has not changed much, except to become more influential in young lives. One hears horrifying stories of six-year-old girls talking their parents into spending $2,000 for Hannah Montana concert tickets. Kids still are whelmed by fame up-close. Abilene kids this week are seeing quite a fuss over the team playing for a state championship in San Antonio on Saturday. It’s totally possible that Eagle football in 2009 can still pry kids away from cyberspace for a little while.
It’s the same, and it’s different. In the 1950s, fans would send telegrams to the Eagle teams, wherever the championship was being played, for the players to read before the game. This afternoon, on Facebook, I discovered the “Abilene Eagles 2009 Support Group,” to “show a collective support for the Warbirds to be victorious over Katy High School.” When I found the group, two hours ago, the membership was 1,401. Just now, it was 1,749. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
I wouldn’t be so bold as to say it was that Friday night in Abilene when “Blackboard Jungle” and “Rock Around the Clock” came to the Paramount Theater, but I would think that event was somewhere in the vicinity, because it was totally non-local. The main physical feature of the Divide is the ability to separate oneself from locality, and the galvanizing force of “Rock Around the Clock” made it an arrow pointing young people down the yellow brick road of media toward radio, and then television, and then the Internet, whose arrival in the 1990s really sealed the deal. Many young people today spend far more time in the Internet distance than they do in their locality, a troubling social reality that has become the subject of books.
I may be a year off about this, but I believe that television arrived in Abilene the same year Chuck Moser did: 1953. Both had an immediate effect, but I am sure that Abilenians between the ages of 10 and 20, who today are in their 60s and 70s, when they think about the ‘50s, remember more about Moser and the Abilene Eagles than they do television. Famous people on television were, and are, a dime a dozen. Famous people locally are, well, REALLY famous.
By Christmas of 1954, Moser and the Eagles were not only famous locally, but they were putting Abilene on the map, and it’s hard to generate much more community appeal than that. The Eagles created not only a football, but a social, dynasty. Pete Shotwell, a legendary coach whose retirement after the 1952 Eagle season brought about Moser’s hiring, was given a new job in the Abilene schools. From my book, “Warbirds:”
“Abilene had experienced significant growth during and after World War II, and there were more elementary schools and two junior highs with a third planned to open in 1955, plus a black elementary school and a black high school, Woodson High. But there was no centralized physical education system. To Abilene school administrators, Shotwell, or ‘Shot,’ as he was affectionately known, made a proposal to create a new administrative position that would oversee physical education and health education in the growing Abilene schools system.
“It would give him official authority over a program he had already helped create, elementary school football. Football, in uniform, was played as a strictly recreational program in all the city schools. By 1950, boys as young as fourth grade in Abilene could start playing organized football, in city school leagues, that played to championships and awarded championship trophies and jacket patches.”
I was in 6th grade when Abilene won the 1954 state championship. I was also a second-year player on the feared Central Elementary Wildcats. In seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, I played for the South Junior High Coyotes. By ninth grade, we played road games as far away as San Angelo, and we had cheerleaders, bands and pep rallies. The three Abilene junior highs played to a city championship, which South – ahem – won my ninth grade year. We beat the North Junior Broncos, 27-15, after trailing, 15-0, at Fair Park Stadium – same place the Eagles played – before a crowd of 4,000 people.
This was youth – and community – involvement that I am not sure the 2009 social network can support. Someone in Abilene would have to write that story. One thing: fame has not changed much, except to become more influential in young lives. One hears horrifying stories of six-year-old girls talking their parents into spending $2,000 for Hannah Montana concert tickets. Kids still are whelmed by fame up-close. Abilene kids this week are seeing quite a fuss over the team playing for a state championship in San Antonio on Saturday. It’s totally possible that Eagle football in 2009 can still pry kids away from cyberspace for a little while.
It’s the same, and it’s different. In the 1950s, fans would send telegrams to the Eagle teams, wherever the championship was being played, for the players to read before the game. This afternoon, on Facebook, I discovered the “Abilene Eagles 2009 Support Group,” to “show a collective support for the Warbirds to be victorious over Katy High School.” When I found the group, two hours ago, the membership was 1,401. Just now, it was 1,749. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
December 15, 2009
Eagles story: details of the day
Yes, I know, this blog is turning into "Abilene Eagle Week." It is also, I am sure, Abilene Eagle Week in far-flung parts of the globe, wherever live Abilenians who were there in the 1950s, following their team into state championship games, and, 53 years after Abilene's 1956 championship, the last of three consecutive, are enjoying the hell out of being there again.
But I wonder, 53 years from now (I hope it is not that long), if the Eagles are in a state championship game again, if the young Abilenians of today will attach to it in the same way I and my peers are feeling today. I wonder if it is culturally possible.
I keep going back to my book, "Warbirds," as these questions arise, because the book is a history of that 1950s era, gleaned from information compiled in long hours of research. I wrote the book because most (all but about six, actually) of the details of the Eagles' 49-game winning streak had been forgotten. Of course, as I did the work, I found that not only details of the games had been forgotten, but details of living in Abilene, Texas, in the 1950s. Example (from the book):
"To people with only a general attentiveness to history, the 1950s have receded into memory as a quiet time, a period of Eisenhower-era tranquility. The tumultuous 1960s by contrast certainly did what they could to enhance that memory.
"In fact, the 1950s were themselves tumultuous with change. The media and consumer driven world of the late 20th century could trace its roots directly to events of the 1950s. The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author David Halberstam saw so much happening in the 1950s that he wrote a complete book, titled, simply, 'The ‘50s.'
"It is true that at the time, in Abilene, much of that change occurred with the force of a pebble dropping unheard into a distant pond, such as the unanimous Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954, that ended the 'separate but equal' doctrine of educational facilities for whites and blacks. That ripple would not reach Abilene for another decade.
"Other changes, like television, advertising, and longer, sleeker cars, were more apparent. But there was one change that more or less blew the others away. It occurred on a Friday night in April, at the Paramount Theater downtown. Friday night was the traditional movie night for high school and junior high students. Admission was a quarter, Milk Duds were a nickel, cokes and popcorn a dime. Each teen group had its chosen area, its turf, in which to sit in the large theater, built in the popular fashion that suggested an ornate outdoor playhouse under a dark blue sky. In the sky were 'stars,' and across it moved floodlight-generated 'clouds.' It could get noisy, and ushers with their flashlights were on constant patrol.
"The movie this Friday night was 'Blackboard Jungle,' starring Glenn Ford and Anne Francis. Also in the cast were two young actors, Vic Morrow and Sidney Poitier. None of the kids in the theater knew anything about the movie; they were there because it was Friday night. First there was the black-and-white newsreel, then the cartoon, then the curtain fell in preamble to the feature. The effect was to set up anticipation, and in fact the crowd became quiet. There were two or three moments of relative calm. Then:
'One two three o’clock four o’clock ROCK!
'Five six seven o’clock eight o’clock ROCK!
'Nine ten eleven o’clock twelve o’clock ROCK!
'We’re gonna ROCK around the CLOCK tonight!'
"It was music, very loud and urgent, and it thundered on into its first verse – 'When the clock strikes one, join me hon' – but the kids in the Paramount Theater sat rock-still, stunned, staring at the rising curtain, transfixed by the energy blasting at them from Bill Haley and the Comets.
"These young people knew there was something happening to music out there somewhere. They could catch snatches of it on local stations KRBC and KWKC, but they had better luck if they searched for stations in New Orleans, Oklahoma City and Nashville, that came in sometimes with remarkable clarity through a still-uncluttered sky. This was high-energy music that came from people with exotic names like Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, and it didn’t sound at all like what they were accustomed to hearing from Gisele MacKenzie, Mitch Miller, Les Baxter, Perry Como, Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney.
"They were intrigued by the new music, but it had come from somewhere else far away across the sky. Now they sat in their very own Paramount, with its big speakers and this high-speed music rocketing at them, and for several seconds they were frozen by it. Then they reacted. They jumped up and yelled and the cooler ones got into the aisles and danced in frenzy. It was a before-and-after moment that no one there would ever forget.
"The title of the song was 'Rock Around the Clock,' and it came to Abilene and all the other cities as a nice example of cross-media marketing. The recording industry’s principal marketing outlet was radio. Listeners who heard a song on the radio might then go buy it at a record store.
"But there were only 24 hours available in a day, and not many radio stations. In 1955, Abilene had only two, meaning there were only 48 music marketing hours available in any given day. Worse, the stations used much of their time to broadcast soap operas, news, and shows like 'Farm Roundup,' 'Mixing Bowl,' and 'Arthur Godfrey.' Their music playlists leaned to proven artists and songs like 'Hard to Get,' 'The Yellow Rose of Texas,' and 'Love is a Many Splendored Thing.' It would be years before enough radio stations existed to develop what came to be called 'narrowcasting.' In 1955, on KRBC and KWKC, you took what you got, in a very mixed bag.
"So 'Rock Around the Clock' rode a movie into town, and the results were instructive to future students of cross-media marketing. 'Rock Around the Clock' became the first example of this new music to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Magazine rating charts, and it did so very quickly, reaching No. 1 in June.
"The movie was electrifying, too, about gangs in schools not only challenging, but intimidating and literally attacking authority. The teacher, Richard Dadier, played by Glenn Ford, wins in the end, the punk Vic Morrow is hauled away, and Sidney Poitier (a black kid!) leaves the bad guys and becomes a good one. The movie was so controversial that many communities would not allow it to be shown, including, of all places, Memphis, Tennessee.
"But Abilene did, and kids who came out of the Paramount that night weren’t the same kids who went in. They came out in possession of a new kind of music, and they knew a new word: 'daddio.' It was the first night in Abilene of a new extension of culture that would become a culture unto itself. It can only be imagined what the parents thought on Saturday morning, encountering this change for the first time. Parents were one thing. Chuck Moser was something else. Daddio? Not in a hundred years would the Eagle players have uttered this word within earshot of their coach. But it was out there. Many new things were out there."
Many new things were out there. Hmpf. How little we knew. And that's where we will continue this story tomorrow night . . .
But I wonder, 53 years from now (I hope it is not that long), if the Eagles are in a state championship game again, if the young Abilenians of today will attach to it in the same way I and my peers are feeling today. I wonder if it is culturally possible.
I keep going back to my book, "Warbirds," as these questions arise, because the book is a history of that 1950s era, gleaned from information compiled in long hours of research. I wrote the book because most (all but about six, actually) of the details of the Eagles' 49-game winning streak had been forgotten. Of course, as I did the work, I found that not only details of the games had been forgotten, but details of living in Abilene, Texas, in the 1950s. Example (from the book):
"To people with only a general attentiveness to history, the 1950s have receded into memory as a quiet time, a period of Eisenhower-era tranquility. The tumultuous 1960s by contrast certainly did what they could to enhance that memory.
"In fact, the 1950s were themselves tumultuous with change. The media and consumer driven world of the late 20th century could trace its roots directly to events of the 1950s. The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author David Halberstam saw so much happening in the 1950s that he wrote a complete book, titled, simply, 'The ‘50s.'
"It is true that at the time, in Abilene, much of that change occurred with the force of a pebble dropping unheard into a distant pond, such as the unanimous Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954, that ended the 'separate but equal' doctrine of educational facilities for whites and blacks. That ripple would not reach Abilene for another decade.
"Other changes, like television, advertising, and longer, sleeker cars, were more apparent. But there was one change that more or less blew the others away. It occurred on a Friday night in April, at the Paramount Theater downtown. Friday night was the traditional movie night for high school and junior high students. Admission was a quarter, Milk Duds were a nickel, cokes and popcorn a dime. Each teen group had its chosen area, its turf, in which to sit in the large theater, built in the popular fashion that suggested an ornate outdoor playhouse under a dark blue sky. In the sky were 'stars,' and across it moved floodlight-generated 'clouds.' It could get noisy, and ushers with their flashlights were on constant patrol.
"The movie this Friday night was 'Blackboard Jungle,' starring Glenn Ford and Anne Francis. Also in the cast were two young actors, Vic Morrow and Sidney Poitier. None of the kids in the theater knew anything about the movie; they were there because it was Friday night. First there was the black-and-white newsreel, then the cartoon, then the curtain fell in preamble to the feature. The effect was to set up anticipation, and in fact the crowd became quiet. There were two or three moments of relative calm. Then:
'One two three o’clock four o’clock ROCK!
'Five six seven o’clock eight o’clock ROCK!
'Nine ten eleven o’clock twelve o’clock ROCK!
'We’re gonna ROCK around the CLOCK tonight!'
"It was music, very loud and urgent, and it thundered on into its first verse – 'When the clock strikes one, join me hon' – but the kids in the Paramount Theater sat rock-still, stunned, staring at the rising curtain, transfixed by the energy blasting at them from Bill Haley and the Comets.
"These young people knew there was something happening to music out there somewhere. They could catch snatches of it on local stations KRBC and KWKC, but they had better luck if they searched for stations in New Orleans, Oklahoma City and Nashville, that came in sometimes with remarkable clarity through a still-uncluttered sky. This was high-energy music that came from people with exotic names like Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, and it didn’t sound at all like what they were accustomed to hearing from Gisele MacKenzie, Mitch Miller, Les Baxter, Perry Como, Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney.
"They were intrigued by the new music, but it had come from somewhere else far away across the sky. Now they sat in their very own Paramount, with its big speakers and this high-speed music rocketing at them, and for several seconds they were frozen by it. Then they reacted. They jumped up and yelled and the cooler ones got into the aisles and danced in frenzy. It was a before-and-after moment that no one there would ever forget.
"The title of the song was 'Rock Around the Clock,' and it came to Abilene and all the other cities as a nice example of cross-media marketing. The recording industry’s principal marketing outlet was radio. Listeners who heard a song on the radio might then go buy it at a record store.
"But there were only 24 hours available in a day, and not many radio stations. In 1955, Abilene had only two, meaning there were only 48 music marketing hours available in any given day. Worse, the stations used much of their time to broadcast soap operas, news, and shows like 'Farm Roundup,' 'Mixing Bowl,' and 'Arthur Godfrey.' Their music playlists leaned to proven artists and songs like 'Hard to Get,' 'The Yellow Rose of Texas,' and 'Love is a Many Splendored Thing.' It would be years before enough radio stations existed to develop what came to be called 'narrowcasting.' In 1955, on KRBC and KWKC, you took what you got, in a very mixed bag.
"So 'Rock Around the Clock' rode a movie into town, and the results were instructive to future students of cross-media marketing. 'Rock Around the Clock' became the first example of this new music to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Magazine rating charts, and it did so very quickly, reaching No. 1 in June.
"The movie was electrifying, too, about gangs in schools not only challenging, but intimidating and literally attacking authority. The teacher, Richard Dadier, played by Glenn Ford, wins in the end, the punk Vic Morrow is hauled away, and Sidney Poitier (a black kid!) leaves the bad guys and becomes a good one. The movie was so controversial that many communities would not allow it to be shown, including, of all places, Memphis, Tennessee.
"But Abilene did, and kids who came out of the Paramount that night weren’t the same kids who went in. They came out in possession of a new kind of music, and they knew a new word: 'daddio.' It was the first night in Abilene of a new extension of culture that would become a culture unto itself. It can only be imagined what the parents thought on Saturday morning, encountering this change for the first time. Parents were one thing. Chuck Moser was something else. Daddio? Not in a hundred years would the Eagle players have uttered this word within earshot of their coach. But it was out there. Many new things were out there."
Many new things were out there. Hmpf. How little we knew. And that's where we will continue this story tomorrow night . . .
December 14, 2009
Title game week in Abilene
Five years ago, I published "Warbirds – How They Played the Game" – a history of Abilene High's 49-game winning streak from 1954-57. Three of those games were for state championships, in 1954-55-56, and the Eagles won all three.
Little did I realize at the time, that if the Eagles made it to another state championship game, it would enable me, and all Abilenians living in Abilene in the 1950s, to go back and feel the experience again. Now that has happened. The 2009 Eagles meet the Katy Tigers on Saturday for the Texas 5A state championship. I can go back and read my own book, not as a history, but as an experience in the here-and-now.
For example, I know what the Katy fans feel like this week. They are going for their third straight state championship. As a result, they have a certain confidence this week that it can be done, just as Abilenians in December of 1956 had that certain confidence. Hell, by 1956, the Eagles had become so good that we enjoyed something MORE than confidence. It was after the 1955 state championship game, when Abilene trounced Tyler, 33-13, that Waco High coach Carl Price said, "Abilene's state champions of this year are 30 points better than the 1954 champions. If they improve another 30 points next year, they might as well get in the Southwest Conference."
That quote is in my book, and the Eagles of 1956 turned out to BE that good. It became pointless to talk about how good the first team was. Instead, people began to wonder if Abilene's second team might finish third in District 2-AAAA, behind San Angelo and of course the Eagles' first team.
I also wrote about what it felt like, in Abilene, the week before the 1954 championship game, against Stephen F. Austin High School of Houston. There was confidence – the Eagles had a very good team – but there was also apprehension, of this new playoffs territory, playing teams outside the well-known environment of West Texas. There were legends lurking out there, legends like Hunter Enis, quarterback for Fort Worth Poly, whom the Eagles were to meet in the semifinals. In the book, I wrote:
" 'Hunter Enis' was a name to be feared, even more than the name 'Wahoo McDaniel,' because Enis was a quarterback and a bona fide star.
"Everybody in Texas who cared about high school football knew who Hunter Enis was. He was big and athletic and so good a passer that his school, the Fort Worth Poly Parrots, ran something called the 'spread formation.' Nobody in West Texas had ever heard of the 'spread formation,' in which ends and backs lined up from sideline to sideline and then ran downfield to catch passes from the strong, deadly arm of Hunter Enis.
"All week, Abilenians read the newspaper and wondered: 'We can stop Fort Worth Poly, but can we stop Hunter Enis?' They were the kinds of thoughts that could bedevil fans of upstart teams suddenly plunged into the rarified atmosphere of the state semifinals. Only three other teams left. And boy, they must have been awfully good to get here.
"And Poly was there because of Hunter Enis, who was so skilled that in college, at Texas Christian, he would make all-Southwest Conference and eventually play quarterback in the National Football League. Enis had passed for 1,111 yards and it didn’t matter that Poly had been beaten badly, 34-0, by San Angelo, or that the Parrots had lost three other games. Those were early in the season.
"The game was in Fort Worth, at 20,000-seat Farrington Field, the biggest stadium in which any of the Abilene Eagles had ever played. Around 2,500 Eagle students and fans made the trip and of course the Victory Bell was there. Thousands more listened on the radio at home, anxious to see if the Eagles could survive Hunter Enis and get into a state championship game for the first time since 1931 . . ."
The 1954 Eagles survived. They beat Poly, 46-0. Hunter Enis finished nine-for-20 for 99 yards with three interceptions, and Poly collected only 15 yards rushing and 10 first downs. It was a confidence-builder. But oh my gosh, now they had to play Houston Austin, whose QB Vince Matthews was supposed to be better than Hunter Enis . . .
That is the kind of excitement that stirs in the minds of Abilenians this week, who can't wait for Saturday, even if Katy has players who can leap tall buildings at a single bound. I saw a picture of a Katy player in the Houston Chronicle today who was roughly the dimensions of DeMarcus Ware.
This is so much fun. Thank you, 2009 Eagles. A lot of people, even a lot of Abilenians, don't give a hoot about football and wonder now, as they did in the 1950s, what the fuss is about. I can only say that if you are an Abilenian who likes football, winning a state championship gets into your blood, and it never goes away.
Little did I realize at the time, that if the Eagles made it to another state championship game, it would enable me, and all Abilenians living in Abilene in the 1950s, to go back and feel the experience again. Now that has happened. The 2009 Eagles meet the Katy Tigers on Saturday for the Texas 5A state championship. I can go back and read my own book, not as a history, but as an experience in the here-and-now.
For example, I know what the Katy fans feel like this week. They are going for their third straight state championship. As a result, they have a certain confidence this week that it can be done, just as Abilenians in December of 1956 had that certain confidence. Hell, by 1956, the Eagles had become so good that we enjoyed something MORE than confidence. It was after the 1955 state championship game, when Abilene trounced Tyler, 33-13, that Waco High coach Carl Price said, "Abilene's state champions of this year are 30 points better than the 1954 champions. If they improve another 30 points next year, they might as well get in the Southwest Conference."
That quote is in my book, and the Eagles of 1956 turned out to BE that good. It became pointless to talk about how good the first team was. Instead, people began to wonder if Abilene's second team might finish third in District 2-AAAA, behind San Angelo and of course the Eagles' first team.
I also wrote about what it felt like, in Abilene, the week before the 1954 championship game, against Stephen F. Austin High School of Houston. There was confidence – the Eagles had a very good team – but there was also apprehension, of this new playoffs territory, playing teams outside the well-known environment of West Texas. There were legends lurking out there, legends like Hunter Enis, quarterback for Fort Worth Poly, whom the Eagles were to meet in the semifinals. In the book, I wrote:
" 'Hunter Enis' was a name to be feared, even more than the name 'Wahoo McDaniel,' because Enis was a quarterback and a bona fide star.
"Everybody in Texas who cared about high school football knew who Hunter Enis was. He was big and athletic and so good a passer that his school, the Fort Worth Poly Parrots, ran something called the 'spread formation.' Nobody in West Texas had ever heard of the 'spread formation,' in which ends and backs lined up from sideline to sideline and then ran downfield to catch passes from the strong, deadly arm of Hunter Enis.
"All week, Abilenians read the newspaper and wondered: 'We can stop Fort Worth Poly, but can we stop Hunter Enis?' They were the kinds of thoughts that could bedevil fans of upstart teams suddenly plunged into the rarified atmosphere of the state semifinals. Only three other teams left. And boy, they must have been awfully good to get here.
"And Poly was there because of Hunter Enis, who was so skilled that in college, at Texas Christian, he would make all-Southwest Conference and eventually play quarterback in the National Football League. Enis had passed for 1,111 yards and it didn’t matter that Poly had been beaten badly, 34-0, by San Angelo, or that the Parrots had lost three other games. Those were early in the season.
"The game was in Fort Worth, at 20,000-seat Farrington Field, the biggest stadium in which any of the Abilene Eagles had ever played. Around 2,500 Eagle students and fans made the trip and of course the Victory Bell was there. Thousands more listened on the radio at home, anxious to see if the Eagles could survive Hunter Enis and get into a state championship game for the first time since 1931 . . ."
The 1954 Eagles survived. They beat Poly, 46-0. Hunter Enis finished nine-for-20 for 99 yards with three interceptions, and Poly collected only 15 yards rushing and 10 first downs. It was a confidence-builder. But oh my gosh, now they had to play Houston Austin, whose QB Vince Matthews was supposed to be better than Hunter Enis . . .
That is the kind of excitement that stirs in the minds of Abilenians this week, who can't wait for Saturday, even if Katy has players who can leap tall buildings at a single bound. I saw a picture of a Katy player in the Houston Chronicle today who was roughly the dimensions of DeMarcus Ware.
This is so much fun. Thank you, 2009 Eagles. A lot of people, even a lot of Abilenians, don't give a hoot about football and wonder now, as they did in the 1950s, what the fuss is about. I can only say that if you are an Abilenian who likes football, winning a state championship gets into your blood, and it never goes away.
December 13, 2009
These Eagles resemble those Eagles
If you watch it long enough, football – the game, played as it should be played – exhibits a remarkable consistency. Whether it's 1954, or 2009, when the best teams are involved, it comes down to making a play.
In Waco, on Saturday, the Klein Bearkats made a couple of plays. With nine seconds left in the game, the Bearkats were on their own seven-yard line, trailing, 29-21. In those nine seconds, with no time-outs, they made it from their seven to the Abilene High one. Going 92 yards in three plays (one a spike to stop the clock) in sudden-death is a stunning example of football's consistency at the playoff level.
Then Abilene made a play – a bigger play – and, with it, won the game that put them into the state championship versus Katy next Saturday. With no time left, a Klein receiver made a catch at the Eagles' 13 and fought toward the end zone. The Eagles made the tackle at the one-yard line, ending the game much the same as an Eagle team 55 years earlier had ended a big game.
In 1954, Abilene was playing Houston's Stephen F. Austin High School, in Houston, for the state championship of Class AAAA. The score was tied, 7-7, and Austin had just missed a short field goal. Abilene got the ball at the 20-yard-line with 5:49 left in the fourth quarter. Coach Chuck Moser was not optimistic. "I didn't think we could score again," he said. "It seemed like everything was turning against us."
Instead, the Eagles, led by quarterback H.P. Hawkins, stormed 79 yards to the Austin one-yard line. It was third down. Hawkins dived straight ahead on a quarterback sneak and crossed the goal line. But then the ball was rolling free. The Mustangs recovered in the end zone. The officials huddled, ruled it a fumble, and awarded the Mustangs the ball at the 20. The Eagle offense came off the field and Hawkins trotted up to Moser.
"I expected him to come out of the game heartbroken, maybe even in tears," Moser said. "I was afraid he'd lose his confidence. But instead he came up to me, put his arm on my shoulder, and said, 'Don't worry, Coach, I'll get a touchdown for you.' "
Here, from my book, "Warbirds – How They Played the Game," is the way the rest of the game went:
"The Eagle defense, playing ferociously, stopped the Mustangs on three downs and Matthews had to punt into the wind. On the crisscross return play, Henry Colwell wound up with the ball at the Eagle 45 and found a lane down the sideline. He ran 55 yards and scored easily with 2:40 remaining in the game.
"Eagle fans erupted as Colwell sprinted toward the end zone, but back upfield, there was a flag. Abilene was called for clipping. In barely a minute, the Eagles had had two touchdowns called back. The referee stepped off the penalty and placed the ball on the ground at the Abilene 31-yard line. If there was to be Eagle tenacity, this was the time for it. One more time, the Eagle offense came back onto the field. On the scoreboard behind the end zone, the clock showed 2:40. A state championship was 69 yards away.
"Eagle left end Twyman Ash, No. 81, during the season had earned a nickname, 'Old Glue Fingers,' because the tall blond senior who was also a starter on the Eagles’ basketball team never dropped a pass. In the championship game, Hawkins had gone to him only once. But now, with the title on the line, Hawkins threw twice to Ash, once for 38 yards and again for 17. After five plays, the Eagles were poised at the Mustang 16, with a little over a minute left on the clock.
"Hawkins called another pass. He took the snap and rolled right. Colwell, split to the right, went down and out. Millerman from his left halfback position went straight down the field between the safeties. Ash followed along behind and found himself open. But Mustang defenders had caught Hawkins. They threw him for a 13-yard loss back to the 29-yard line.
"Now there were 56 seconds left. Ash trotted back to the huddle and told Hawkins he could get open again. “We were trying to split their safeties,” Hawkins said. “We had a split to the right, Twyman on the left and Jim (Millerman) running a flag up the middle to split the safeties.” Hawkins called the same play. On the sideline, sophomore Glynn Gregory was getting ready to try a field goal.
"The Eagles came to the line. Hawkins took the snap and rolled right. Both Colwell and Millerman were covered. Mustang coach Kotrola had dropped one of his defensive ends into secondary coverage, giving him five defenders covering three receivers. 'The first two guys weren’t open,' Hawkins said. Then he saw Ash at the five-yard line. He threw.
"The ball was high, but Ash leaped, arched his back and snared the ball on his fingertips between two defenders. On the sideline, Reporter-News photographer Don Hutcheson caught No. 81 in that fully extended instant that became probably the most reproduced photo in Abilene media history.
"As he came down, Ash had a step on the defenders and hustled five yards into the end zone. There were no flags. The Eagles led, 13-7. On the sideline, the Eagles were jumping up and down. Someone in the excitement came back with an elbow that caught Moser squarely on the brow above his eye, splitting it open. Blood gushed, but Moser quickly found a towel and pressed on the gash as he watched Hawkins kick the extra point to make it 14-7.
"The Victory Bell rang and rang. A drained crowd watched the Eagles kick off and bat away the Mustangs’ last efforts and then it was over. The Abilene Eagles were the Class AAAA state champions . . . . "
Abilene went on to win two more state championships, in 1955 and '56. Now, 53 years later, the Eagles have an opportunity to win another. It remains to be seen if they will. But at Waco, on Saturday, they showed they have the old consistency.
In Waco, on Saturday, the Klein Bearkats made a couple of plays. With nine seconds left in the game, the Bearkats were on their own seven-yard line, trailing, 29-21. In those nine seconds, with no time-outs, they made it from their seven to the Abilene High one. Going 92 yards in three plays (one a spike to stop the clock) in sudden-death is a stunning example of football's consistency at the playoff level.
Then Abilene made a play – a bigger play – and, with it, won the game that put them into the state championship versus Katy next Saturday. With no time left, a Klein receiver made a catch at the Eagles' 13 and fought toward the end zone. The Eagles made the tackle at the one-yard line, ending the game much the same as an Eagle team 55 years earlier had ended a big game.
In 1954, Abilene was playing Houston's Stephen F. Austin High School, in Houston, for the state championship of Class AAAA. The score was tied, 7-7, and Austin had just missed a short field goal. Abilene got the ball at the 20-yard-line with 5:49 left in the fourth quarter. Coach Chuck Moser was not optimistic. "I didn't think we could score again," he said. "It seemed like everything was turning against us."
Instead, the Eagles, led by quarterback H.P. Hawkins, stormed 79 yards to the Austin one-yard line. It was third down. Hawkins dived straight ahead on a quarterback sneak and crossed the goal line. But then the ball was rolling free. The Mustangs recovered in the end zone. The officials huddled, ruled it a fumble, and awarded the Mustangs the ball at the 20. The Eagle offense came off the field and Hawkins trotted up to Moser.
"I expected him to come out of the game heartbroken, maybe even in tears," Moser said. "I was afraid he'd lose his confidence. But instead he came up to me, put his arm on my shoulder, and said, 'Don't worry, Coach, I'll get a touchdown for you.' "
Here, from my book, "Warbirds – How They Played the Game," is the way the rest of the game went:
"The Eagle defense, playing ferociously, stopped the Mustangs on three downs and Matthews had to punt into the wind. On the crisscross return play, Henry Colwell wound up with the ball at the Eagle 45 and found a lane down the sideline. He ran 55 yards and scored easily with 2:40 remaining in the game.
"Eagle fans erupted as Colwell sprinted toward the end zone, but back upfield, there was a flag. Abilene was called for clipping. In barely a minute, the Eagles had had two touchdowns called back. The referee stepped off the penalty and placed the ball on the ground at the Abilene 31-yard line. If there was to be Eagle tenacity, this was the time for it. One more time, the Eagle offense came back onto the field. On the scoreboard behind the end zone, the clock showed 2:40. A state championship was 69 yards away.
"Eagle left end Twyman Ash, No. 81, during the season had earned a nickname, 'Old Glue Fingers,' because the tall blond senior who was also a starter on the Eagles’ basketball team never dropped a pass. In the championship game, Hawkins had gone to him only once. But now, with the title on the line, Hawkins threw twice to Ash, once for 38 yards and again for 17. After five plays, the Eagles were poised at the Mustang 16, with a little over a minute left on the clock.
"Hawkins called another pass. He took the snap and rolled right. Colwell, split to the right, went down and out. Millerman from his left halfback position went straight down the field between the safeties. Ash followed along behind and found himself open. But Mustang defenders had caught Hawkins. They threw him for a 13-yard loss back to the 29-yard line.
"Now there were 56 seconds left. Ash trotted back to the huddle and told Hawkins he could get open again. “We were trying to split their safeties,” Hawkins said. “We had a split to the right, Twyman on the left and Jim (Millerman) running a flag up the middle to split the safeties.” Hawkins called the same play. On the sideline, sophomore Glynn Gregory was getting ready to try a field goal.
"The Eagles came to the line. Hawkins took the snap and rolled right. Both Colwell and Millerman were covered. Mustang coach Kotrola had dropped one of his defensive ends into secondary coverage, giving him five defenders covering three receivers. 'The first two guys weren’t open,' Hawkins said. Then he saw Ash at the five-yard line. He threw.
"The ball was high, but Ash leaped, arched his back and snared the ball on his fingertips between two defenders. On the sideline, Reporter-News photographer Don Hutcheson caught No. 81 in that fully extended instant that became probably the most reproduced photo in Abilene media history.
"As he came down, Ash had a step on the defenders and hustled five yards into the end zone. There were no flags. The Eagles led, 13-7. On the sideline, the Eagles were jumping up and down. Someone in the excitement came back with an elbow that caught Moser squarely on the brow above his eye, splitting it open. Blood gushed, but Moser quickly found a towel and pressed on the gash as he watched Hawkins kick the extra point to make it 14-7.
"The Victory Bell rang and rang. A drained crowd watched the Eagles kick off and bat away the Mustangs’ last efforts and then it was over. The Abilene Eagles were the Class AAAA state champions . . . . "
Abilene went on to win two more state championships, in 1955 and '56. Now, 53 years later, the Eagles have an opportunity to win another. It remains to be seen if they will. But at Waco, on Saturday, they showed they have the old consistency.
December 12, 2009
November 23, 2009
Under Treatment
Last Friday was a bizarre day.
I had had a cold all week, but still looking forward to going to Denver. Tyler had 50-yard-line tickets to the Chargers-Broncos game and had asked me to come visit him and Kathleen and go to the game. Friday morning, getting up and getting ready to go to the airport, I actually felt better. But as Karen drove me down, I felt some real congestion starting up.
She let me out, I got into a curbside line, but was coughing so hard I had to step out of line twice. I couldn't get my breath and felt like I might throw up. I started to feel totally isolated, alone in a crowd. I got upstairs and through security, but on the concourse it really hit me. It felt like I had a column of warm, salty water, bubbling in my windpipe, and it was coming up to drown me. Coughing did no good. The water was right there, bubbling just beneath my throat, and I couldn't breathe.
I stopped and sat down. I envied the people passing by, completely unconcerned with their health or immediate future. I had my boarding pass in my pocket but realized that I was not going to get on the airplane. My seat was 25A, and I could see one of these futile coughing fits starting up as the plane left the gate, and I could not get up to go the restroom and put my head between my legs to let the mucus drain and get some air.
I took my pass up to the gate and handed it to the boarding agent. "I am sick and can't go on your airplane today." I called Karen to come get me. "You're kidding!" she said, knowing how I had looked forward to this trip. Tyler and I had been figuring menus all week, and he had asked me for a recipe for elk chili. I made one up and sent it to him, without any confidence it would be edible.
An hour later Karen and I were on the phone to Kaiser, begging to see my primary care physician. When I told the screening nurse what had happened, she referred me straight to the emergency room. I felt so bad for Karen; she had been looking forward to some quiet time, and now this. Talking to the registration nurse, I could barely breathe. Half an hour later, in Bed 13 of Module D in the emergency area, a nice, engaging doctor named Chiang confirmed I had pneumonia. "But I had a pneumonia shot last year," I said. He shrugged. "There are different types of pneumonia."
He and a wonderful nurse named Rhonda took care of me, getting xrays, studying histories, taking blood cultures out of one arm and feeding antibiotics into the other. I told her I had really wanted to be on an airplane on this particular morning, but the way I felt, this emergency room, under her care, was really the place for me to be. And then I had an epiphany. Money is the combat issue in the health care debate, but to anyone in a situation like mine, there are two words that are priceless: "under treatment." Until those two words are available, on any given day, to any given citizen, this country is not prioritizing correctly.
I had had a cold all week, but still looking forward to going to Denver. Tyler had 50-yard-line tickets to the Chargers-Broncos game and had asked me to come visit him and Kathleen and go to the game. Friday morning, getting up and getting ready to go to the airport, I actually felt better. But as Karen drove me down, I felt some real congestion starting up.
She let me out, I got into a curbside line, but was coughing so hard I had to step out of line twice. I couldn't get my breath and felt like I might throw up. I started to feel totally isolated, alone in a crowd. I got upstairs and through security, but on the concourse it really hit me. It felt like I had a column of warm, salty water, bubbling in my windpipe, and it was coming up to drown me. Coughing did no good. The water was right there, bubbling just beneath my throat, and I couldn't breathe.
I stopped and sat down. I envied the people passing by, completely unconcerned with their health or immediate future. I had my boarding pass in my pocket but realized that I was not going to get on the airplane. My seat was 25A, and I could see one of these futile coughing fits starting up as the plane left the gate, and I could not get up to go the restroom and put my head between my legs to let the mucus drain and get some air.
I took my pass up to the gate and handed it to the boarding agent. "I am sick and can't go on your airplane today." I called Karen to come get me. "You're kidding!" she said, knowing how I had looked forward to this trip. Tyler and I had been figuring menus all week, and he had asked me for a recipe for elk chili. I made one up and sent it to him, without any confidence it would be edible.
An hour later Karen and I were on the phone to Kaiser, begging to see my primary care physician. When I told the screening nurse what had happened, she referred me straight to the emergency room. I felt so bad for Karen; she had been looking forward to some quiet time, and now this. Talking to the registration nurse, I could barely breathe. Half an hour later, in Bed 13 of Module D in the emergency area, a nice, engaging doctor named Chiang confirmed I had pneumonia. "But I had a pneumonia shot last year," I said. He shrugged. "There are different types of pneumonia."
He and a wonderful nurse named Rhonda took care of me, getting xrays, studying histories, taking blood cultures out of one arm and feeding antibiotics into the other. I told her I had really wanted to be on an airplane on this particular morning, but the way I felt, this emergency room, under her care, was really the place for me to be. And then I had an epiphany. Money is the combat issue in the health care debate, but to anyone in a situation like mine, there are two words that are priceless: "under treatment." Until those two words are available, on any given day, to any given citizen, this country is not prioritizing correctly.
November 12, 2009
Stretch Cooking: The skillet pork fat starter
I'm not sure I want you to try this at home, but I want to tell you about a cooking technique that worked for me, and it is one I will use again, maybe with one modification.
It started with four big country-style pork ribs, but you could also use pork shoulder or baby back ribs. Any other cut would be too lean. I seasoned the country-style ribs with salt and pepper, put them in an 11-inch cast iron skillet, and baked them for three hours in a 250-degree oven. They came out tender, crunchy and delicious.
I put the skillet on the range and didn't think about it until the next day. I was about to wash it when I saw quite a bit of nice fat and jellied juices in the skillet. That evening, I heated the skillet on the range, just above medium. I had two leftover ribs. I cut each into two pieces and fried them in the leftover fat. They came out better than the original ribs, crunchy and redolent, true carnivore candy.
"Hmmm," I said. Karen, who might have balked at this sort of idea, was out of town for a few days. So I decided to leave the skillet on the range, covered, for another day. The next day I fried bacon in the fat. Delicious. In the evening, I fried a couple of slices of pork loin in the fat. Delicious. On Sunday, I cut a thick chunk of sirloin into two thinner slices (thus doubling the area for the crunch effect) and fried them in the fat and had them with some black-eyed peas. Delicious.
It reminded me of bakers and their sourdough starters. You can keep a sourdough starter around for years. Why couldn't you keep a black skillet of pork fat around for years? Or at least weeks. Or days. At this point, I would remind health officials that in the first paragraph, I said I wasn't sure I would want anyone to try this at home. I certainly, however, plan to do it again, this time starting with some of that great CostCo pork shoulder.
The modification: I'll keep the skillet of fat in the refrigerator, covered with foil, between uses. I am seriously considering dedicating one of my black skillets to this theme full-time. If Karen will let me.
I know I have not blogged in awhile. I am going to start again, but with different material. I had hoped to grow readership with the old format, which I put in place last spring. But it didn't happen. Starting next week, I'll be posting columns written during my 20 years at The San Diego Union, plus some graynation material as it materializes, and of course the various cooking adventures.
I will use the available time to write novels. This is the time to learn to write novels, and write one, before I die. I have a couple under way, including one that has really focused my attention. I hope someday it will focus yours.
It started with four big country-style pork ribs, but you could also use pork shoulder or baby back ribs. Any other cut would be too lean. I seasoned the country-style ribs with salt and pepper, put them in an 11-inch cast iron skillet, and baked them for three hours in a 250-degree oven. They came out tender, crunchy and delicious.
I put the skillet on the range and didn't think about it until the next day. I was about to wash it when I saw quite a bit of nice fat and jellied juices in the skillet. That evening, I heated the skillet on the range, just above medium. I had two leftover ribs. I cut each into two pieces and fried them in the leftover fat. They came out better than the original ribs, crunchy and redolent, true carnivore candy.
"Hmmm," I said. Karen, who might have balked at this sort of idea, was out of town for a few days. So I decided to leave the skillet on the range, covered, for another day. The next day I fried bacon in the fat. Delicious. In the evening, I fried a couple of slices of pork loin in the fat. Delicious. On Sunday, I cut a thick chunk of sirloin into two thinner slices (thus doubling the area for the crunch effect) and fried them in the fat and had them with some black-eyed peas. Delicious.
It reminded me of bakers and their sourdough starters. You can keep a sourdough starter around for years. Why couldn't you keep a black skillet of pork fat around for years? Or at least weeks. Or days. At this point, I would remind health officials that in the first paragraph, I said I wasn't sure I would want anyone to try this at home. I certainly, however, plan to do it again, this time starting with some of that great CostCo pork shoulder.
The modification: I'll keep the skillet of fat in the refrigerator, covered with foil, between uses. I am seriously considering dedicating one of my black skillets to this theme full-time. If Karen will let me.
I know I have not blogged in awhile. I am going to start again, but with different material. I had hoped to grow readership with the old format, which I put in place last spring. But it didn't happen. Starting next week, I'll be posting columns written during my 20 years at The San Diego Union, plus some graynation material as it materializes, and of course the various cooking adventures.
I will use the available time to write novels. This is the time to learn to write novels, and write one, before I die. I have a couple under way, including one that has really focused my attention. I hope someday it will focus yours.
October 26, 2009
graynation: stories from sovereign neighborhoods
Editor's note: graynation has its roots in a project I started three years ago called Sovereign Neighborhoods. It was – is – a community memoir, written by the Class of 1961, Abilene High School. It is about being 10 and 11 years old in Abilene, Texas, in 1953 and '54, when kids still found their recreation mostly out of doors, before television and later computers started to pull kids out of their neighborhoods and into their living rooms. Our neighborhoods were well-defined, sovereign worlds in which we went to school, played, and found adventure. In graynation, the global version of Sovereign Neighborhoods, there are literally millions of memories and vignettes not present here, but it is time to publish the material we do have because a) it is fun, and b) people reading it may be inspired to send their own stories of life as kids in Abilene, or in communities around the world . . .
We moved into a new house at 1502 Green Street in 1953. The street behind us was Burger, and past that only pasture land. I remember the red dirt that would not come out of our clothes, especially white socks, and red ants that could sting like crazy.We then moved just across Catclaw Creek to 1517 Graham Street. Our “block” ran from North 12th Street to North 18th Street. I remember David Winkles lived on one end and Travis Cranfill at the other end, and so many others in between. Donna Day lived down the street and she had a piano. (My one wish in life that we could never afford) She and I went to the movies on some Saturdays and almost always went to the book store next to the theatre. I think I bought every Nancy Drew book that was published during that time. Can you imagine, I had 25 cents to spend. I went to the movie, bought a drink and Jr. Mints and still had money left over for a book. Sometimes we would venture across the street to Minters or Grissoms and try on hats. My mother would have had a hissy fit if she knew we did that!- Ann CoppedgeOur address was 1926 South 19th. Evidently Abilene wasn't prepared for all the "war babies" so the schools were overcrowded when I started to 1st grade. I went mornings only in 1st grade at Alta Vista and in 2nd grade I was an afternoon student. My husband says we were the Alta Vista Roosters but I don't remember that. He was a year and a grade older and was in the old building. First and second graders were in the new building and really didn't take part in much since we only went half a day. When I went to third grade Bowie Elementary was finished so I became a Bowie Bobcat.The community seemed to be a lot safer for kids in those days than it is today. I guess Mother drove me to Alta Vista and picked me up in 1st grade, (no school buses) but I remember walking home by myself in 2nd grade, and it was pretty far to our house. I always hurried so I wouldn't miss my favorite radio program--Big John and Sparkie. It came on at 5 or 5:30.-Holley PurcellIt was a late June evening in dry, dusty West Texas. The year was 1951. "Daddy, Are we there, yet? It smells like we are home," I asked my father as I stepped over my sleeping brothers and popped my head up between my father's head and the open window. Smelling the tell tale smell of the Paymaster Feed mill on Treadaway Street woke me up. "Yes we are in Abilene now, Sister. Just a few more minutes and you will be in your bed." From Highway 80 he would turn onto Treadaway, following it to South 20th Street, just a little further and turning right to 1933 Belmont Boulevard. Then I could smell the mimosa blooms that told me I was really home.
No one was hungry because Aunt Faye in Ranger had seen to that earlier in the day. Not only did we have a cowboy breakfast of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, eggs, bacon, orange juice, homemade biscuits, toast from homemade bread, milk and coffee, but as we were leaving in the late afternoon, she sent a sack of sandwiches along with peaches from her trees to eat on the road. We always loved to visit Aunt Faye and Uncle Kirk in Ranger.- Karen LusbyMy world was ending; I had to move from North Louisiana where my extended family lived way out west to Texas. I only knew about Texas from cowboy movies. When we finally got to our new home, Abilene, we lived in a rented house at 1641 North 21st St. My mother enrolled me in College Heights School. My new second grade teacher was Mrs. Morton. For the first time in my life I was in a new school that was really new. My classroom was in a new addition that had been recently opened. I didn’t get to know many people before school was out for the year. I do remember Allison Kay Tartt; it is hard to forget a pretty girl, even at seven years old. That summer my folks bought a house on the south side of town, at 818 Grove St.
-Larry Scott
San Angelo was my birthplace and for the most part my known universe. Then on an early spring day in 1952, I learned that my father was moving us lock, stock and barrel to a town called Abilene. I clearly remember hearing him say that the family and his new shoe store would fare better in this far off place.For an eight year old boy, moving was a fate worse than death. How could a person possibly survive a summer in a strange place and with no buddies to explore for good crawdad fishing holes?
San Angelo was my birthplace and for the most part my known universe. Then on an early spring day in 1952, I learned that my father was moving us lock, stock and barrel to a town called Abilene. I clearly remember hearing him say that the family and his new shoe store would fare better in this far off place.
For an eight year old boy, moving was a fate worse than death. How could a person possibly survive a summer in a strange place and with no buddies to explore for good crawdad fishing holes?
My father rented us a place on Jeanette Street, not far from South Junior. There were few kids my age on the block. So, my sister and I entertained ourselves by listening to music on the Motorola. There were nighttime serials along with frequent updates on General Eisenhower’s run for president plus how things were going in another far off place called Korea.- Dale Thorp
We moved into a new house at 1502 Green Street in 1953. The street behind us was Burger, and past that only pasture land. I remember the red dirt that would not come out of our clothes, especially white socks, and red ants that could sting like crazy.We then moved just across Catclaw Creek to 1517 Graham Street. Our “block” ran from North 12th Street to North 18th Street. I remember David Winkles lived on one end and Travis Cranfill at the other end, and so many others in between. Donna Day lived down the street and she had a piano. (My one wish in life that we could never afford) She and I went to the movies on some Saturdays and almost always went to the book store next to the theatre. I think I bought every Nancy Drew book that was published during that time. Can you imagine, I had 25 cents to spend. I went to the movie, bought a drink and Jr. Mints and still had money left over for a book. Sometimes we would venture across the street to Minters or Grissoms and try on hats. My mother would have had a hissy fit if she knew we did that!- Ann CoppedgeOur address was 1926 South 19th. Evidently Abilene wasn't prepared for all the "war babies" so the schools were overcrowded when I started to 1st grade. I went mornings only in 1st grade at Alta Vista and in 2nd grade I was an afternoon student. My husband says we were the Alta Vista Roosters but I don't remember that. He was a year and a grade older and was in the old building. First and second graders were in the new building and really didn't take part in much since we only went half a day. When I went to third grade Bowie Elementary was finished so I became a Bowie Bobcat.The community seemed to be a lot safer for kids in those days than it is today. I guess Mother drove me to Alta Vista and picked me up in 1st grade, (no school buses) but I remember walking home by myself in 2nd grade, and it was pretty far to our house. I always hurried so I wouldn't miss my favorite radio program--Big John and Sparkie. It came on at 5 or 5:30.-Holley PurcellIt was a late June evening in dry, dusty West Texas. The year was 1951. "Daddy, Are we there, yet? It smells like we are home," I asked my father as I stepped over my sleeping brothers and popped my head up between my father's head and the open window. Smelling the tell tale smell of the Paymaster Feed mill on Treadaway Street woke me up. "Yes we are in Abilene now, Sister. Just a few more minutes and you will be in your bed." From Highway 80 he would turn onto Treadaway, following it to South 20th Street, just a little further and turning right to 1933 Belmont Boulevard. Then I could smell the mimosa blooms that told me I was really home.
No one was hungry because Aunt Faye in Ranger had seen to that earlier in the day. Not only did we have a cowboy breakfast of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, eggs, bacon, orange juice, homemade biscuits, toast from homemade bread, milk and coffee, but as we were leaving in the late afternoon, she sent a sack of sandwiches along with peaches from her trees to eat on the road. We always loved to visit Aunt Faye and Uncle Kirk in Ranger.- Karen LusbyMy world was ending; I had to move from North Louisiana where my extended family lived way out west to Texas. I only knew about Texas from cowboy movies. When we finally got to our new home, Abilene, we lived in a rented house at 1641 North 21st St. My mother enrolled me in College Heights School. My new second grade teacher was Mrs. Morton. For the first time in my life I was in a new school that was really new. My classroom was in a new addition that had been recently opened. I didn’t get to know many people before school was out for the year. I do remember Allison Kay Tartt; it is hard to forget a pretty girl, even at seven years old. That summer my folks bought a house on the south side of town, at 818 Grove St.
-Larry Scott
San Angelo was my birthplace and for the most part my known universe. Then on an early spring day in 1952, I learned that my father was moving us lock, stock and barrel to a town called Abilene. I clearly remember hearing him say that the family and his new shoe store would fare better in this far off place.For an eight year old boy, moving was a fate worse than death. How could a person possibly survive a summer in a strange place and with no buddies to explore for good crawdad fishing holes?
San Angelo was my birthplace and for the most part my known universe. Then on an early spring day in 1952, I learned that my father was moving us lock, stock and barrel to a town called Abilene. I clearly remember hearing him say that the family and his new shoe store would fare better in this far off place.
For an eight year old boy, moving was a fate worse than death. How could a person possibly survive a summer in a strange place and with no buddies to explore for good crawdad fishing holes?
My father rented us a place on Jeanette Street, not far from South Junior. There were few kids my age on the block. So, my sister and I entertained ourselves by listening to music on the Motorola. There were nighttime serials along with frequent updates on General Eisenhower’s run for president plus how things were going in another far off place called Korea.- Dale Thorp
October 23, 2009
Stretch Cooking: Seeing "Pasta Pronto" again
Somewhere along the way, I got separated from one of my favorite cookbooks, "Pasta Pronto." Then, lately, Karen has been whipping up a very mean Spaghetti Carbonara, and it reminded me of my old friend, and inspired me to look for it at Amazon. The book is out of print, but I bought a used one from an Amazon dealer for $5.95.
Italians have been masters of stretch cooking for hundreds of years, and "Pasta Pronto" follows that theme, with a twist. The author, William E. Massee, focuses on recipes that require little or no cooking, other than boiling the pasta, and that can be ready pronto, many in 10 minutes or less. "You just dump everything in a bowl," writes Massee. "You can do it all while the water boils."
In the book, the carbonara recipe is called "Trenette alla Carbonara," or, in English, "Noodles, Woodcutter's Way." What could sound better? That is one of two recipes I had remembered specifically over the years, with "Spaghetti a la Mode de Grand Mere," or "Spaghetti, Grandmother's Style." I was also partial to "Spaghetti alla Salsa di Tonno," or "Spaghetti with Tuna Sauce," which is really good, if you haven't tried it, and "Spaghettini alla Funghi," or "Spaghettini with Mushrooms: Fine spaghetti with mushroom sauce that includes bacon, garlic, cream, cheese, and parsley."
For Noodles, Woodcutter's Way, put on 6 quarts of water to boil, with a tablespoon of salt. Dice 4 ounces of lean salt pork, or 6 slices of lean, thick bacon. Melt half a cup of butter in a small skillet and lightly brown the salt pork or bacon. Dump one pound of trenette, or linguini, into the water and cook 5-6 minutes, until done but still firm. Have ready 2 eggs, lightly beaten, and 4 ounces (about a cup) of Pecorino Romano or Parmesan. Drain the pasta and dump into a warm bowl. Add the eggs and toss to coat the pasta. Add the butter and bacon and toss again. Add half the cheese and toss thoroughly. Add a few twists of freshly ground pepper and the rest of the cheese and toss once more.
I may like Spaghetti, Grandmother's Style, even better. Put the salted water on to boil (Massee estimates this will take a half-hour). Dice 2 slices of thick, lean bacon and 6 ounces of cooked ham in half-inch cubes. In a large skillet, slowly cook the bacon with the ham, until the bacon is crisp. Remove the meats and drain on paper towels. Cut three slices of French bread into half-inch cubes. To the bacon fat in the skillet, add a tablespoon each of butter and olive oil. Add the bread cubes and stir until slightly brown on all sides. Drain on paper towels. Cook spaghetti 8-9 minutes until done but still firm. Drain, and dump it into a warm bowl. Toss with 4 tablespoons butter and a quarter-teaspoon black pepper. Add bacon, ham and croutons and toss. Serve grated Parmesan on the side.
Besides the "pronto" recipes, Massee includes recipes for things like "Roman Beef Stew," "Chicken Tetrazzini," "Lasagne," "Veal Marsala," and several slow-cooked red sauces. Now all we need is some fall weather.
Italians have been masters of stretch cooking for hundreds of years, and "Pasta Pronto" follows that theme, with a twist. The author, William E. Massee, focuses on recipes that require little or no cooking, other than boiling the pasta, and that can be ready pronto, many in 10 minutes or less. "You just dump everything in a bowl," writes Massee. "You can do it all while the water boils."
In the book, the carbonara recipe is called "Trenette alla Carbonara," or, in English, "Noodles, Woodcutter's Way." What could sound better? That is one of two recipes I had remembered specifically over the years, with "Spaghetti a la Mode de Grand Mere," or "Spaghetti, Grandmother's Style." I was also partial to "Spaghetti alla Salsa di Tonno," or "Spaghetti with Tuna Sauce," which is really good, if you haven't tried it, and "Spaghettini alla Funghi," or "Spaghettini with Mushrooms: Fine spaghetti with mushroom sauce that includes bacon, garlic, cream, cheese, and parsley."
For Noodles, Woodcutter's Way, put on 6 quarts of water to boil, with a tablespoon of salt. Dice 4 ounces of lean salt pork, or 6 slices of lean, thick bacon. Melt half a cup of butter in a small skillet and lightly brown the salt pork or bacon. Dump one pound of trenette, or linguini, into the water and cook 5-6 minutes, until done but still firm. Have ready 2 eggs, lightly beaten, and 4 ounces (about a cup) of Pecorino Romano or Parmesan. Drain the pasta and dump into a warm bowl. Add the eggs and toss to coat the pasta. Add the butter and bacon and toss again. Add half the cheese and toss thoroughly. Add a few twists of freshly ground pepper and the rest of the cheese and toss once more.
I may like Spaghetti, Grandmother's Style, even better. Put the salted water on to boil (Massee estimates this will take a half-hour). Dice 2 slices of thick, lean bacon and 6 ounces of cooked ham in half-inch cubes. In a large skillet, slowly cook the bacon with the ham, until the bacon is crisp. Remove the meats and drain on paper towels. Cut three slices of French bread into half-inch cubes. To the bacon fat in the skillet, add a tablespoon each of butter and olive oil. Add the bread cubes and stir until slightly brown on all sides. Drain on paper towels. Cook spaghetti 8-9 minutes until done but still firm. Drain, and dump it into a warm bowl. Toss with 4 tablespoons butter and a quarter-teaspoon black pepper. Add bacon, ham and croutons and toss. Serve grated Parmesan on the side.
Besides the "pronto" recipes, Massee includes recipes for things like "Roman Beef Stew," "Chicken Tetrazzini," "Lasagne," "Veal Marsala," and several slow-cooked red sauces. Now all we need is some fall weather.
October 19, 2009
Media Literacy: Peering at 2059
The Internet, after the alphabet, the printing press, and the telegraph, is only the fourth revolution in media history. The alphabet gave the media distance, or portability. The printing press gave it volume. The telegraph gave it speed. The Internet is turning the direction of information around 180 degrees, and eliminating hours in the day and the edges of the page. And computers continue to shrink information, moving information storage and retrieval toward the infinite.
That's where we are in 2009, riding the crest of a media revolution still in its semi-primitive stages. Now let's turn around, away from the past, and look from 2009, into the future, 50 years distant, to 2059. Using the differences between 1959 and 2009 as a reference, what is the media world of 2059 going to look like?
It will be faster, smaller, fuller. If visitors from 2059 swooped in, picked us up, and carried us forward to their world, could we survive? I doubt it. We would be literally in the dark. There will be visible evidence of media. No screens, no print, no hardware clutter, no snarl of cables under the desk! No download times!
But mainly, information will be moving too fast for us to see, and in strange forms we would not have thought possible in 2009. We will have learned to process two tracks of information at the same time. The tracks will be coded, informing our brain which is which, then woven together and delivered. Today, it would be like the CBS Evening News assigned one code, the commercials another code, and then the two merged and run at the same time. We would get 30 minutes of news and 30 minutes of commercials, and we would understand both clearly.
Only in 2059, it won't be the "CBS Evening News." In 2009, we already know what it feels like to find channels of information tailored to our specific interests and demographic profile. It started in the 1970s, when cable television introduced "narrowcasting." The growing number of channels made it possible, and a good business deal, to dedicate channel content to specific interests, such as news, sports, business, weather, shopping and music. Advertisers loved the new focus, because it enabled a more direct connection with their target audience, which saved money and, most importantly, increased consumer response rates.
But even the cable world needed a relatively large audience base, a Neilsen rating of 3 or 4, to stay in business. That meant 8 to 10 million provable sets of eyeballs to attract enough advertisers to stay in business (remember the First Law of Media).
The Internet is changing all that. This is just so fascinating. In the 15th century, the printing press turned the direction of media information flow around 180 degrees. No longer did people walk to a central place to hear a speaker deliver the news; the news was now sent out to them from a central place. It was the dawn of broadcast. Now, the Internet is turning the information flow around again, by 180 degrees. In the media-public delivery system, a circle has literally closed. We are living in the twilight of broadcast, and, as it turns out, going in to the information is the vastly superior system, as long as you can do it at the speed of light through Internet connections, and not on the back of a donkey.
By turning the direction of information around 180 degrees, the Internet is removing all that broadcast transmission expense, and moving narrowcasting into the next phase. No longer does media have to broadcast content out to consumers. Consumers come in to the content, which in the emerging media world is only a directory in a computer. The result is an incredibly cheap connection with an incredibly focused audience. In this world, an audience of 100,000 hits a day may be enough to be a great business deal both for the content provider and the advertisers. In this world, a single individual with a good idea, a computer, and an Internet connection, can create fabulous wealth with businesses like FaceBook, YouTube and Google.
Even as we speak, all of these businesses, connections, content, advertising, and wealth, are based on media codes. Right now, the time has come, after the thousands of years bringing us to the 2009 media world, with its speeds and access, for the reader to become aware of this strange, ironic, ominous screen between your eyes and this page, and of the media codes embedded in all the media content you consume. The greater the access of media to consumers, and the faster consumers can absorb content, the more powerful the codes become.
Above all, as this world begins the voyage toward 2059 and phenomena such as parallel information processing – all content, and all advertising, 24 hours a day – people need to acquire information and knowledge about the codes the media uses to attract us, inform us, persuade us, and threaten us. In professional hands, the codes have enormous power, and that power needs a check and a balance that only an educated, informed public can provide. In the media-public relationship of 2009, the power equation leans heavily toward the media side. When the public starts to understand the media codes, and the media starts to realize the public knows what the media is doing, that equation will start to change, just slightly at first, then more. After that, the public will be positioned to influence the equation at will, and the final great irony will arrive when the people, laughing and embarrassed, realize just how much media power they have, and where it comes from.
If media literacy and education projects do their job, then that awareness will have become part of the 2059 media world, and it will be a good thing. In 2009, media delivery devices were becoming quite small, and wearable, and there was success reported with research showing that a switch could be turned on or off simply by thinking about it.
That is a stunning direction, and if it is followed, by 2059, it is reasonable to suppose that the media delivery system could be a microscopic, internal coating on a key nerve in or near the brain through which the wearer connects with a media of choice, or two or three mediums – visual, audio, print – the wearer being capable of processing and understanding all three simultaneously – read, watch, listen – at any hour or any place without the slightest disturbance to neighbor, office colleague, seatmate, or sleeping spouse, unless the media might be an ancient Monty Python piece and laughter, spontaneous and disembodied, erupts.
In that world, it will be crucial that a person knows how the media works, how to turn the media off, and has the power to do it. People need to start thinking about this. Standing in 2009, at the exact center of this history, I am glad the ninth-graders of this world are going to be getting to 2059 only one day at a time.
That's where we are in 2009, riding the crest of a media revolution still in its semi-primitive stages. Now let's turn around, away from the past, and look from 2009, into the future, 50 years distant, to 2059. Using the differences between 1959 and 2009 as a reference, what is the media world of 2059 going to look like?
It will be faster, smaller, fuller. If visitors from 2059 swooped in, picked us up, and carried us forward to their world, could we survive? I doubt it. We would be literally in the dark. There will be visible evidence of media. No screens, no print, no hardware clutter, no snarl of cables under the desk! No download times!
But mainly, information will be moving too fast for us to see, and in strange forms we would not have thought possible in 2009. We will have learned to process two tracks of information at the same time. The tracks will be coded, informing our brain which is which, then woven together and delivered. Today, it would be like the CBS Evening News assigned one code, the commercials another code, and then the two merged and run at the same time. We would get 30 minutes of news and 30 minutes of commercials, and we would understand both clearly.
Only in 2059, it won't be the "CBS Evening News." In 2009, we already know what it feels like to find channels of information tailored to our specific interests and demographic profile. It started in the 1970s, when cable television introduced "narrowcasting." The growing number of channels made it possible, and a good business deal, to dedicate channel content to specific interests, such as news, sports, business, weather, shopping and music. Advertisers loved the new focus, because it enabled a more direct connection with their target audience, which saved money and, most importantly, increased consumer response rates.
But even the cable world needed a relatively large audience base, a Neilsen rating of 3 or 4, to stay in business. That meant 8 to 10 million provable sets of eyeballs to attract enough advertisers to stay in business (remember the First Law of Media).
The Internet is changing all that. This is just so fascinating. In the 15th century, the printing press turned the direction of media information flow around 180 degrees. No longer did people walk to a central place to hear a speaker deliver the news; the news was now sent out to them from a central place. It was the dawn of broadcast. Now, the Internet is turning the information flow around again, by 180 degrees. In the media-public delivery system, a circle has literally closed. We are living in the twilight of broadcast, and, as it turns out, going in to the information is the vastly superior system, as long as you can do it at the speed of light through Internet connections, and not on the back of a donkey.
By turning the direction of information around 180 degrees, the Internet is removing all that broadcast transmission expense, and moving narrowcasting into the next phase. No longer does media have to broadcast content out to consumers. Consumers come in to the content, which in the emerging media world is only a directory in a computer. The result is an incredibly cheap connection with an incredibly focused audience. In this world, an audience of 100,000 hits a day may be enough to be a great business deal both for the content provider and the advertisers. In this world, a single individual with a good idea, a computer, and an Internet connection, can create fabulous wealth with businesses like FaceBook, YouTube and Google.
Even as we speak, all of these businesses, connections, content, advertising, and wealth, are based on media codes. Right now, the time has come, after the thousands of years bringing us to the 2009 media world, with its speeds and access, for the reader to become aware of this strange, ironic, ominous screen between your eyes and this page, and of the media codes embedded in all the media content you consume. The greater the access of media to consumers, and the faster consumers can absorb content, the more powerful the codes become.
Above all, as this world begins the voyage toward 2059 and phenomena such as parallel information processing – all content, and all advertising, 24 hours a day – people need to acquire information and knowledge about the codes the media uses to attract us, inform us, persuade us, and threaten us. In professional hands, the codes have enormous power, and that power needs a check and a balance that only an educated, informed public can provide. In the media-public relationship of 2009, the power equation leans heavily toward the media side. When the public starts to understand the media codes, and the media starts to realize the public knows what the media is doing, that equation will start to change, just slightly at first, then more. After that, the public will be positioned to influence the equation at will, and the final great irony will arrive when the people, laughing and embarrassed, realize just how much media power they have, and where it comes from.
If media literacy and education projects do their job, then that awareness will have become part of the 2059 media world, and it will be a good thing. In 2009, media delivery devices were becoming quite small, and wearable, and there was success reported with research showing that a switch could be turned on or off simply by thinking about it.
That is a stunning direction, and if it is followed, by 2059, it is reasonable to suppose that the media delivery system could be a microscopic, internal coating on a key nerve in or near the brain through which the wearer connects with a media of choice, or two or three mediums – visual, audio, print – the wearer being capable of processing and understanding all three simultaneously – read, watch, listen – at any hour or any place without the slightest disturbance to neighbor, office colleague, seatmate, or sleeping spouse, unless the media might be an ancient Monty Python piece and laughter, spontaneous and disembodied, erupts.
In that world, it will be crucial that a person knows how the media works, how to turn the media off, and has the power to do it. People need to start thinking about this. Standing in 2009, at the exact center of this history, I am glad the ninth-graders of this world are going to be getting to 2059 only one day at a time.
graynation: Sovereign Neighborhoods
Editor's note: graynation has its roots in a project I started three years ago called Sovereign Neighborhoods. It was – is – a community memoir, written by the Class of 1961, Abilene High School. It is about being 10 and 11 years old in Abilene, Texas, in 1953 and '54, when kids still found their recreation mostly out of doors, before television and later computers started to pull kids out of their neighborhoods and into their living rooms. Our neighborhoods were well-defined, sovereign worlds in which we went to school, played, and found adventure. In graynation, the global version of Sovereign Neighborhoods, there are literally millions of memories and vignettes not present here, but it is time to publish the material we do have because a) it is fun, and b) people reading it may be inspired to send their own stories of life as kids in Abilene, or in communities around the world.The project will be updated and re-published as new material arrives. We begin with Nancy Shoemaker . . .
My block, 1800 Chestnut, was the perfect place to grow up. There were playmates to find and adventures to be had in nearly every house on the block. Traffic was light and there were concrete sidewalks populated with horned toads. It was easy to learn to skate, ride a bicycle, and to find one's place in the social structure of the time. I had Kay Altman across the street, Bob Denham next door, Alice Fisher across the alley behind, and Teresa Smith one house away. There were others and I loved to play with all of them.
- Nancy Shoemaker
I went to Bowie. I started there in the 3rd grade and we lived at the very end of Sayles Blvd. It was a perfect place to ride our bikes all over, play football, baseball and walk to the Metro Theater. Linda Simmons moved in in the 4th grade and I was forever late getting home because I had to see one more show. She, Max Mossholder, my brother David and I used to do everything together. We would usually meet at Linda's house because her parents and ours were friends and would play croquet for hours.
- Barbara Stevenson
We lived on Sycamore Street, I believe it was off of East South 11th. When I was about 9 years old we moved to the South part of Abilene. I lived on Over St. which was one block south of South 20th. I went to Bowie Elementary (which was built in 1951) We moved into a brand new house and the only thing beyond our backyard was a pasture with horses in it. We put the lawn and trees in after we moved there.
When growing up, there was a vacant lot on the corner across the street, with mesquite trees and we would play and play and play over there. Play jacks on that cold front porch, ride our bikes and stay out late and watch the lightning bugs and sit on the front porch and enjoy the evening breeze. I would rather be outside than inside. But would of course go in to watch I Love Lucy.
- Edna Cole
At one point we had a “club” and built some sort of underground “fort” across the street from the school. To be a member of the exclusive club one had to be initiated. This entailed having hot wax dripped on your ankle. If the initiate yelled, you might not get to be a member. I’m sure the fort situated on a vacant lot covered a very small number of square feet, but to us it seemed massive, a complex of underground rooms in the darkness. It was probably no more than a few feet deep, covered with boards and metal, with dirt thrown on top. But it served its purposes to hide out and use when we had “clod fights.”
- John Odam
Our house was at 1118 Green St. Four blocks to the west of Green St. was Mockingbird Lane, and west of there was the Planet of the Unknown: BB-gun territory.
What we considered a good workout was chasing a DDT truck dispersing a cloud of toxic smoke for 16 blocks, while devouring an Eskimo Pie we had retrieved from the neighborhood ice cream wagon. DDT also went good with a Dreamcicle. After hosing down for 30 minutes in the back yard sprinkler, we made our way into the house for the best home-cooked meal in town. You were always welcome to stay.
Then it was out the doors for the neighborhood sunset. We played marbles, tops, yo-yos, kite flying, Red Rover, kick the can, while it was still light. As the sun set, it was hide and go seek, and the gathering of lightning bugs. On our backs, we could make a wish on a falling star, how far is far, how is there no end, I wish I may, I wish I might . . . “You kids get inside and clean up, it’s past your bedtime!!”
- Jerry Grider
My block, 1800 Chestnut, was the perfect place to grow up. There were playmates to find and adventures to be had in nearly every house on the block. Traffic was light and there were concrete sidewalks populated with horned toads. It was easy to learn to skate, ride a bicycle, and to find one's place in the social structure of the time. I had Kay Altman across the street, Bob Denham next door, Alice Fisher across the alley behind, and Teresa Smith one house away. There were others and I loved to play with all of them.
- Nancy Shoemaker
I went to Bowie. I started there in the 3rd grade and we lived at the very end of Sayles Blvd. It was a perfect place to ride our bikes all over, play football, baseball and walk to the Metro Theater. Linda Simmons moved in in the 4th grade and I was forever late getting home because I had to see one more show. She, Max Mossholder, my brother David and I used to do everything together. We would usually meet at Linda's house because her parents and ours were friends and would play croquet for hours.
- Barbara Stevenson
We lived on Sycamore Street, I believe it was off of East South 11th. When I was about 9 years old we moved to the South part of Abilene. I lived on Over St. which was one block south of South 20th. I went to Bowie Elementary (which was built in 1951) We moved into a brand new house and the only thing beyond our backyard was a pasture with horses in it. We put the lawn and trees in after we moved there.
When growing up, there was a vacant lot on the corner across the street, with mesquite trees and we would play and play and play over there. Play jacks on that cold front porch, ride our bikes and stay out late and watch the lightning bugs and sit on the front porch and enjoy the evening breeze. I would rather be outside than inside. But would of course go in to watch I Love Lucy.
- Edna Cole
At one point we had a “club” and built some sort of underground “fort” across the street from the school. To be a member of the exclusive club one had to be initiated. This entailed having hot wax dripped on your ankle. If the initiate yelled, you might not get to be a member. I’m sure the fort situated on a vacant lot covered a very small number of square feet, but to us it seemed massive, a complex of underground rooms in the darkness. It was probably no more than a few feet deep, covered with boards and metal, with dirt thrown on top. But it served its purposes to hide out and use when we had “clod fights.”
- John Odam
Our house was at 1118 Green St. Four blocks to the west of Green St. was Mockingbird Lane, and west of there was the Planet of the Unknown: BB-gun territory.
What we considered a good workout was chasing a DDT truck dispersing a cloud of toxic smoke for 16 blocks, while devouring an Eskimo Pie we had retrieved from the neighborhood ice cream wagon. DDT also went good with a Dreamcicle. After hosing down for 30 minutes in the back yard sprinkler, we made our way into the house for the best home-cooked meal in town. You were always welcome to stay.
Then it was out the doors for the neighborhood sunset. We played marbles, tops, yo-yos, kite flying, Red Rover, kick the can, while it was still light. As the sun set, it was hide and go seek, and the gathering of lightning bugs. On our backs, we could make a wish on a falling star, how far is far, how is there no end, I wish I may, I wish I might . . . “You kids get inside and clean up, it’s past your bedtime!!”
- Jerry Grider
October 16, 2009
Archives: A reunion to remember
October, 2006 - I wasn’t sure I would go to my 40th college reunion. But I did, with my bride-to-be, and this morning I pulled on my new red Stanford sweats and went outside to drink coffee on the glider and think about the weekend.
Stanford University, Class of 1965. We had a good turnout, at least 300 (felt more like 500) alumni and spouses and in some cases kids, at the main party Friday night at the Sheraton across El Camino Real from the campus.
They call Stanford “The Farm,” because it was built on a farm – a very large farm – owned by Leland and Jane Stanford. The university was founded in 1891. It was beginning its 70th year when I and my ’65 classmates matriculated in 1961. Today, the university has passed more than a third of its existence since we left. Over the weekend, we meandered in the Quad among familiar stone buildings that had acquired not just the wear of middle age, but the splotchy patina of history, that you would expect to see on the porticos of Florence and Madrid. It placed in me a sense of awe, and respect, that had not been there before.
We munched and moseyed at the party with our own splotchy patinas, looking for a few old friends in a throng of old strangers, 99 percent of us connected in life by only one bond, names on a class list, not enough to allow us to remember each other.
But I didn’t go to see them. I went to see and be with classmates I did remember, brothers in the Class of ’65 who lived together in the old Delta Upsilon House on Salvatierra Street. There were 13 of us there. Dick, Joe, Paul, Steve, Mike, Tom, Rich, Ted, Terry, Bill, Dirk, Brooke and me. We came from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Texas, Washington, Santa Monica, San Francisco, Piedmont, and San Diego. During the weekend, we candidly reviewed our collective academic performance. Only one of us, Joe, graduated with any honors, something called “distinction,” he said, and he only did that because, he said frankly, “I gamed the system.”
My Stanford performance was the essence of marginal. The university has always striven to maintain a diverse population, and I have long suspected that was why I was admitted. To balance the brilliance, they needed a white male freshman from a lower middle-class family who attended Texas public schools. When I go back to Stanford, I have to hide my eyes from the things I missed as a student there. I go only to celebrate the experience of simply being there, which was still a true difference in my life.
We are now all professionals, a lot of lawyers, two doctors. Rich is a neurosurgeon at the University of Connecticut medical complex. I had not seen him in 40 years and probably didn’t talk to him more than 20 minutes total – he could only be at the Friday night function – but it was worth the trip.
There were a lot of old stories waiting to be told again, which is why I almost decided not to go. I didn’t want to hear the old stories of the hell raised in those days and nights of the early 1960s. They belonged to a place in my head that I have worked hard to get away from in the last 15 years, and I like 2005 so much, it didn’t make sense to go back to act out the drunken frat-boy indifference of 40 years ago.
Eventually it was curiosity – and something else – that made me decide to go. In the pre-reunion email chatter there was a lot of talk about the old stories and roaring thirsts and a special Saturday afternoon retreat at Zott’s, still there with the same plank tables and pitchers of beer from 40 years ago. But I wondered if the others might also, at this 40th reunion, have felt a shift forward, a preference for our seasoned 62-year-old selves in 2005, over the gifted under-achievers of 1963.
Then Saturday morning I was showing Karen the Quad, and we walked across it toward Memorial Church, and as we reached the arcade and the steps up to the doors, Sandy and his wife Anne walked out. On Sandy’s face was a look that could be interpreted as awe, gratitude, surprise. It was a look that belonged not to the old stories, but to a new story about interacting with an old place and, in Eliot’s lines about the end of our exploring, “to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.”
There were others of us, exploring. Across a distance we would spot them, the brothers, strolling the Quad as we were, looking this way and that, most of us eventually winding up at the Bookstore and joining long lines (the old grads got 10 percent off) to pay for sweats and t-shirts, many of them in small sizes for grandchildren.
Some of the brothers did make it to Zott’s Saturday afternoon. But I was both exploring an old place and celebrating a new one. I loved introducing Karen to the brothers and their wives, and they were happy to hear about our marriage coming in December. We thought about going to Zott’s, but we needed more to make our first trip to San Francisco together, in the new lives that we have. We drove up for lunch, and it was perfect. Driving back down, it was after 4 and we didn’t try for Zott’s. But that night, at our own special reunion party, I was talking to Brooke, who is the new president of the Washington state bar association, and he told me simply that it was “Perfect.”
There is a mood about “Perfect” that implies summation, something not to be improved on, and I was happy it was the word that a man like Brooke would use about the afternoon at Zott’s. I think the word might also be the best one to summarize the weekend. A college homecoming is not like a high school homecoming. In high school, it was the community that united you. In college, you must create your own family. I believe the people in families are like threads bundled together at the starting place, then each thread following its own direction, the threads spreading far apart, in all manner of directions, each picking up its own colors, then at the times they return to the bundle, sharing their colors with the others. When we were bundled again this weekend, as different as we were, I saw that each of the brothers had given me some of their colors. And I have given them some of mine. The ”something else” that made me go was wondering if I belonged. I found that I do.
Stanford University, Class of 1965. We had a good turnout, at least 300 (felt more like 500) alumni and spouses and in some cases kids, at the main party Friday night at the Sheraton across El Camino Real from the campus.
They call Stanford “The Farm,” because it was built on a farm – a very large farm – owned by Leland and Jane Stanford. The university was founded in 1891. It was beginning its 70th year when I and my ’65 classmates matriculated in 1961. Today, the university has passed more than a third of its existence since we left. Over the weekend, we meandered in the Quad among familiar stone buildings that had acquired not just the wear of middle age, but the splotchy patina of history, that you would expect to see on the porticos of Florence and Madrid. It placed in me a sense of awe, and respect, that had not been there before.
We munched and moseyed at the party with our own splotchy patinas, looking for a few old friends in a throng of old strangers, 99 percent of us connected in life by only one bond, names on a class list, not enough to allow us to remember each other.
But I didn’t go to see them. I went to see and be with classmates I did remember, brothers in the Class of ’65 who lived together in the old Delta Upsilon House on Salvatierra Street. There were 13 of us there. Dick, Joe, Paul, Steve, Mike, Tom, Rich, Ted, Terry, Bill, Dirk, Brooke and me. We came from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Texas, Washington, Santa Monica, San Francisco, Piedmont, and San Diego. During the weekend, we candidly reviewed our collective academic performance. Only one of us, Joe, graduated with any honors, something called “distinction,” he said, and he only did that because, he said frankly, “I gamed the system.”
My Stanford performance was the essence of marginal. The university has always striven to maintain a diverse population, and I have long suspected that was why I was admitted. To balance the brilliance, they needed a white male freshman from a lower middle-class family who attended Texas public schools. When I go back to Stanford, I have to hide my eyes from the things I missed as a student there. I go only to celebrate the experience of simply being there, which was still a true difference in my life.
We are now all professionals, a lot of lawyers, two doctors. Rich is a neurosurgeon at the University of Connecticut medical complex. I had not seen him in 40 years and probably didn’t talk to him more than 20 minutes total – he could only be at the Friday night function – but it was worth the trip.
There were a lot of old stories waiting to be told again, which is why I almost decided not to go. I didn’t want to hear the old stories of the hell raised in those days and nights of the early 1960s. They belonged to a place in my head that I have worked hard to get away from in the last 15 years, and I like 2005 so much, it didn’t make sense to go back to act out the drunken frat-boy indifference of 40 years ago.
Eventually it was curiosity – and something else – that made me decide to go. In the pre-reunion email chatter there was a lot of talk about the old stories and roaring thirsts and a special Saturday afternoon retreat at Zott’s, still there with the same plank tables and pitchers of beer from 40 years ago. But I wondered if the others might also, at this 40th reunion, have felt a shift forward, a preference for our seasoned 62-year-old selves in 2005, over the gifted under-achievers of 1963.
Then Saturday morning I was showing Karen the Quad, and we walked across it toward Memorial Church, and as we reached the arcade and the steps up to the doors, Sandy and his wife Anne walked out. On Sandy’s face was a look that could be interpreted as awe, gratitude, surprise. It was a look that belonged not to the old stories, but to a new story about interacting with an old place and, in Eliot’s lines about the end of our exploring, “to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.”
There were others of us, exploring. Across a distance we would spot them, the brothers, strolling the Quad as we were, looking this way and that, most of us eventually winding up at the Bookstore and joining long lines (the old grads got 10 percent off) to pay for sweats and t-shirts, many of them in small sizes for grandchildren.
Some of the brothers did make it to Zott’s Saturday afternoon. But I was both exploring an old place and celebrating a new one. I loved introducing Karen to the brothers and their wives, and they were happy to hear about our marriage coming in December. We thought about going to Zott’s, but we needed more to make our first trip to San Francisco together, in the new lives that we have. We drove up for lunch, and it was perfect. Driving back down, it was after 4 and we didn’t try for Zott’s. But that night, at our own special reunion party, I was talking to Brooke, who is the new president of the Washington state bar association, and he told me simply that it was “Perfect.”
There is a mood about “Perfect” that implies summation, something not to be improved on, and I was happy it was the word that a man like Brooke would use about the afternoon at Zott’s. I think the word might also be the best one to summarize the weekend. A college homecoming is not like a high school homecoming. In high school, it was the community that united you. In college, you must create your own family. I believe the people in families are like threads bundled together at the starting place, then each thread following its own direction, the threads spreading far apart, in all manner of directions, each picking up its own colors, then at the times they return to the bundle, sharing their colors with the others. When we were bundled again this weekend, as different as we were, I saw that each of the brothers had given me some of their colors. And I have given them some of mine. The ”something else” that made me go was wondering if I belonged. I found that I do.
October 15, 2009
Stretch Cooking: a comfort food mood
We actually had a little cool snap around here recently. Temperatures dropping into the 50s. I’m not kidding. No rain, but some nice clouds and brisk winds. It all clicked on my comfort food switch.
There are tons of comfort food recipes that take some preparation, time, and effort. There are others that can be baking in the oven in 10 minutes. These are the recipes I like when you walk in the door after work on a blustery afternoon with hunger pangs and a thirst for Scotch.
You just need to have a few basics on hand. In the freezer, a stack of Porkyland corn tortillas. In the cupboard, a can of Hormel chili (no beans), a can of refried beans, a can of green chile enchilada sauce, and a bottle of Trader Joe’s red enchilada sauce.
In the refrigerator, you will have grated cheese such as the Mexican Blend variety from CostCo, a jar of salsa, and a package of Porkyland’s 10-inch flour tortillas. Wherever you keep them, you will have onions and tomatoes.
Last night I poured a Scotch and snapped off three corn tortillas from the Porkyland’s stack in the freezer. They really do just sort of snap off, very easily, one by one, when you place the tip of a dinner knife just between the edges of the top and second tortilla, and twist. I let these thaw while I opened the Hormel’s, got the cheese and Trader Joe’s red sauce, chopped a quarter of a medium onion, and pulled out a shallow, 8-inch Corningware baking dish.
I heated a skillet and poured a teaspoon of olive oil in the baking dish. I painted the tortillas on both sides with the oil, then softened them one by one in the skillet. I scattered some chopped onion in the dish, laid a tortilla in, smeared it with a big tablespoon of chili, then generously scattered onion and cheese over. I repeated the layer and finished the stack with the third tortilla. Over this, and down the sides, I poured the red sauce and scattered more cheese on top. I finished my Scotch while this baked for 30 minutes at 350, then chopped a tomato and dressed it with some salsa. I lifted the steaming tortilla stack onto a plate and scattered the tomatoes alongside.
Last Friday, getting home late, I took two of the Porkyland’s flour tortillas, warmed them in a skillet (no oil), and zapped some frozen chicken strips. I rolled the chicken, cheese and chopped onion into the tortillas, burrito-style, nestled them into that same 8-inch baking dish, poured green chile sauce over them, sprinkled cheese on top, and baked them, foil-covered, at 350 for 25 minutes.
Today, all the makings are sitting in their places, waiting for the next comfort mood to strike. Shouldn’t be long, but now it is the weekend, and I will probably cook. Maybe Spanish Porkchops tomorrow night. One of my favorites.
There are tons of comfort food recipes that take some preparation, time, and effort. There are others that can be baking in the oven in 10 minutes. These are the recipes I like when you walk in the door after work on a blustery afternoon with hunger pangs and a thirst for Scotch.
You just need to have a few basics on hand. In the freezer, a stack of Porkyland corn tortillas. In the cupboard, a can of Hormel chili (no beans), a can of refried beans, a can of green chile enchilada sauce, and a bottle of Trader Joe’s red enchilada sauce.
In the refrigerator, you will have grated cheese such as the Mexican Blend variety from CostCo, a jar of salsa, and a package of Porkyland’s 10-inch flour tortillas. Wherever you keep them, you will have onions and tomatoes.
Last night I poured a Scotch and snapped off three corn tortillas from the Porkyland’s stack in the freezer. They really do just sort of snap off, very easily, one by one, when you place the tip of a dinner knife just between the edges of the top and second tortilla, and twist. I let these thaw while I opened the Hormel’s, got the cheese and Trader Joe’s red sauce, chopped a quarter of a medium onion, and pulled out a shallow, 8-inch Corningware baking dish.
I heated a skillet and poured a teaspoon of olive oil in the baking dish. I painted the tortillas on both sides with the oil, then softened them one by one in the skillet. I scattered some chopped onion in the dish, laid a tortilla in, smeared it with a big tablespoon of chili, then generously scattered onion and cheese over. I repeated the layer and finished the stack with the third tortilla. Over this, and down the sides, I poured the red sauce and scattered more cheese on top. I finished my Scotch while this baked for 30 minutes at 350, then chopped a tomato and dressed it with some salsa. I lifted the steaming tortilla stack onto a plate and scattered the tomatoes alongside.
Last Friday, getting home late, I took two of the Porkyland’s flour tortillas, warmed them in a skillet (no oil), and zapped some frozen chicken strips. I rolled the chicken, cheese and chopped onion into the tortillas, burrito-style, nestled them into that same 8-inch baking dish, poured green chile sauce over them, sprinkled cheese on top, and baked them, foil-covered, at 350 for 25 minutes.
Today, all the makings are sitting in their places, waiting for the next comfort mood to strike. Shouldn’t be long, but now it is the weekend, and I will probably cook. Maybe Spanish Porkchops tomorrow night. One of my favorites.
October 12, 2009
Media Literacy: Past and future
I am standing in the year 2009, at the exact center of 100 years of American media history. Behind me, into the past, I am looking at 1959. When I turn to face the future, I am looking at the year 2059.
I can't imagine what America will look like in 2059. I can barely believe what it looked like in 1959, and I was there, 16 years old, in the 11th grade. When I tell you about it, I am truly a visitor from another planet. The cars had radios, but radio stations were few and far between, and they were all AM. My town had three stations, presenting a grab-bag of news, farm news, cooking shows, Arthur Godfrey, "The Breakfast Club," and music.
The music was an intriguing mix of standards and the new music, rock and roll. It was the most interesting shock, to hear a Vic Damone song end, and in the same breath hear a Little Richard song start. When the atmosphere was right, kids cruising in their big Chevys and Fords (gasoline was 13 cents a gallon) could bring in the real rock, and blues, stations, from New Orleans and Nashville, and the background static imparted a sense of distance, and adventure.
Most towns and cities had newspapers, and cities over 50,000 had both morning and evening editions, with strong local and regional coverage. The post office delivered Life magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Look. The library had many books.
Television still had a novel feel. My town had a station, that came on the air at 6 a.m. and went dark, after "Vespers," at midnight. All the content was black-and-white. Watching television in 1959 required some technical skill. There were two tuning knobs, a big one for the VHF channels 2 through 13, and a smaller one for the UHF stations at channel 15 and above. To watch television, you turned it on and selected a channel, almost always VHF. You adjusted the antenna, that sat on top of the television set, either a "rabbit-ears" or, if you had the money, a control knob that rotated an antenna on the roof of the house.
Then you adjusted the horizontal hold control, the vertical hold control, and the fine tune control, so the picture was fairly clear, no snow, and hopefully free of a double-image. To switch channels, you got up from the couch, clicked the VHF knob, rotated the antenna toward the new source, adjusted horizontal, vertical and fine-tune controls, and hoped for the best. Most shows were 30 minutes, so at the end of the half-hour, if you wanted to go back to the first station, you got up and repeated the process.
Our local station was an NBC affiliate. The other networks were CBS, ABC and Dumont, and if you had a good ChannelMaster antenna, sometimes you could bring in the Dallas and Fort Worth stations.
And for media, 50 years ago, that was it. The planet still turned under a relatively quiet sky.
But things were happening. Television was revolutionizing advertising. Elvis Presley and other rockers were revolutionizing not only music, but creating an extension of the culture that would become a culture unto itself. Entrepreneurs were developing a product called videotape. Hugh Hefner was developing a new magazine. Research and development people were thinking about wiring, not television affiliates, but homes themselves, with cable. A federal highway system, intended to move armies efficiently in the event the Cold War turned into a hot one, instead started moving people, and products, efficiently, from coast to coast.
And computers were starting to get smaller. In the quiet sky of 1959, after tens of thousands of years of human development, conditions were starting to appear, and fall into place, for a perfect storm of media codes.
It would take time. It took 50 years, one day at a time, no faster, to get from the bizarre world of 1959 to the autumn of 2009. It is the only way people from that planet could survive the trip. If you were on Earth in 1959, imagine visitors from 2009 swooping down, beaming you up, and carrying you forward to their planet, this planet, in the blink of an eye, and dropping you off in the current media world. Could a human brain survive, that could process information only at 1959 speeds? I don't think we could survive the hour. I think our brains would blow up.
As fast as this world is, and as fast as we can process information now, we still are in a primitive age. The Internet in 2009 is like television in 1959, or telephones in 1889. You have to know something about it, in order to use it. And the Internet, for a little while longer, is still totally primitive, basically a print medium with fascinating bells and whistles developed for sale by every entrepreneur who knows a little code.
Very quickly, though, the Internet is racing toward a convergence of print, video, and audio. What will happen to media then? Well, the television and computer screens will be one and the same, and the remote will also be a mouse, or whatever the mouse, or the "interface," evolves into. But what will that mean to us? Technology is so far ahead of the user, in 2009, that no one really knows. Next week: Looking at 2059.
I can't imagine what America will look like in 2059. I can barely believe what it looked like in 1959, and I was there, 16 years old, in the 11th grade. When I tell you about it, I am truly a visitor from another planet. The cars had radios, but radio stations were few and far between, and they were all AM. My town had three stations, presenting a grab-bag of news, farm news, cooking shows, Arthur Godfrey, "The Breakfast Club," and music.
The music was an intriguing mix of standards and the new music, rock and roll. It was the most interesting shock, to hear a Vic Damone song end, and in the same breath hear a Little Richard song start. When the atmosphere was right, kids cruising in their big Chevys and Fords (gasoline was 13 cents a gallon) could bring in the real rock, and blues, stations, from New Orleans and Nashville, and the background static imparted a sense of distance, and adventure.
Most towns and cities had newspapers, and cities over 50,000 had both morning and evening editions, with strong local and regional coverage. The post office delivered Life magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Look. The library had many books.
Television still had a novel feel. My town had a station, that came on the air at 6 a.m. and went dark, after "Vespers," at midnight. All the content was black-and-white. Watching television in 1959 required some technical skill. There were two tuning knobs, a big one for the VHF channels 2 through 13, and a smaller one for the UHF stations at channel 15 and above. To watch television, you turned it on and selected a channel, almost always VHF. You adjusted the antenna, that sat on top of the television set, either a "rabbit-ears" or, if you had the money, a control knob that rotated an antenna on the roof of the house.
Then you adjusted the horizontal hold control, the vertical hold control, and the fine tune control, so the picture was fairly clear, no snow, and hopefully free of a double-image. To switch channels, you got up from the couch, clicked the VHF knob, rotated the antenna toward the new source, adjusted horizontal, vertical and fine-tune controls, and hoped for the best. Most shows were 30 minutes, so at the end of the half-hour, if you wanted to go back to the first station, you got up and repeated the process.
Our local station was an NBC affiliate. The other networks were CBS, ABC and Dumont, and if you had a good ChannelMaster antenna, sometimes you could bring in the Dallas and Fort Worth stations.
And for media, 50 years ago, that was it. The planet still turned under a relatively quiet sky.
But things were happening. Television was revolutionizing advertising. Elvis Presley and other rockers were revolutionizing not only music, but creating an extension of the culture that would become a culture unto itself. Entrepreneurs were developing a product called videotape. Hugh Hefner was developing a new magazine. Research and development people were thinking about wiring, not television affiliates, but homes themselves, with cable. A federal highway system, intended to move armies efficiently in the event the Cold War turned into a hot one, instead started moving people, and products, efficiently, from coast to coast.
And computers were starting to get smaller. In the quiet sky of 1959, after tens of thousands of years of human development, conditions were starting to appear, and fall into place, for a perfect storm of media codes.
It would take time. It took 50 years, one day at a time, no faster, to get from the bizarre world of 1959 to the autumn of 2009. It is the only way people from that planet could survive the trip. If you were on Earth in 1959, imagine visitors from 2009 swooping down, beaming you up, and carrying you forward to their planet, this planet, in the blink of an eye, and dropping you off in the current media world. Could a human brain survive, that could process information only at 1959 speeds? I don't think we could survive the hour. I think our brains would blow up.
As fast as this world is, and as fast as we can process information now, we still are in a primitive age. The Internet in 2009 is like television in 1959, or telephones in 1889. You have to know something about it, in order to use it. And the Internet, for a little while longer, is still totally primitive, basically a print medium with fascinating bells and whistles developed for sale by every entrepreneur who knows a little code.
Very quickly, though, the Internet is racing toward a convergence of print, video, and audio. What will happen to media then? Well, the television and computer screens will be one and the same, and the remote will also be a mouse, or whatever the mouse, or the "interface," evolves into. But what will that mean to us? Technology is so far ahead of the user, in 2009, that no one really knows. Next week: Looking at 2059.
October 11, 2009
graynation: Twenty-four months
I just received a summary of my Social Security Earnings Record, and its first entry is for 1955, in the amount of $109. I was 12 years old. That summer, I worked for Abilene Reproduction Co. They printed blueprints, and other schematic documents, in a room filled with big machines that reeked of ink and ammonia.
It was my job to deliver the tightly-rolled-up documents to offices around town, mostly downtown, either on foot or on my bicycle. The secretaries gave me a lot of attention, which I enjoyed but was too young to fully appreciate. I liked the routine of being outside in the heat, then inside the cool office buildings, then outside again. It was a good job.
Since I was a delivery boy, I lobbied my mother for a motorbike. No, in 1955, that was not an unusual thing for a 12-year-old to do. Several of my friends had motorbikes or scooters. Gerald Williamson, my icon, had one. He let me ride it, or tried to. I couldn't get a grip on the clutch. I sat there on the sidewalk, engine screaming, Gerald screaming, "Let out the clutch!" I did, finally, and got under way, sort of.
Frank and Bruce Teagarden had Cushman Eagles. Many graynation men remember the Cushman Eagle as their last most desirable thing in the 12-year-old male world before the puberty tsunami swept through and replaced all male thought with the image of a leg protruding from a skirt. Frank, who was my age, had a black Eagle. Bruce, a year younger, had a pink one. They were the epitome of cool.
Johnny Richardson, who lived in the very next block from me, had a Vespa. This is the machine I lobbied for. There was no way, I knew, that my mother was going to put me, a mild-mannered church-going boy, on a Cushman Eagle. The Vespa was very cool, too – hell, anything with a motor on it was cool – but compared to the Eagle, it looked downright conservative.
Eventually, my mother caved, and she put me on a kind of motorbike – motorbikes had spoked wheels – called a Simplex. It was belt-driven, for Pete's sake. It had some kind of automatic transmission, or maybe because it was so slow it only needed one gear. I just turned the throttle, and down below a drivetrain slowly meshed, in a stately sort of way, and motion was achieved. YouTube being what it is, you can see an actual 1955 Simplex in action. As soon as I saw it, I remembered the centrifugal clutch, whirring away inches from my right thigh.
I rode it for about two months, without incident. Then seventh grade started, and I parked the Simplex in the school lot, and that afternoon it wouldn't start. Somebody had put sugar in my gas tank.
I haven't owned a motorbike since. On my SSN Earnings Report, it shows I didn't earn anything in 1956. I think that is the summer I went to camp. Then, 1957 shows a contribution of $92. That would be from Lucile Gerber, owner of Lucile's Flowers. In two years, I went from a bicycle-riding, secretary-delighting 12-year-old, to a hormone-besotted delivery boy for Lucile's Flowers, careening around Abilene in a green 1957 Chevrolet panel truck in which I could get rubber in all three gears. At the time, I don't believe I appreciated the rate of change. Looking at it now, it stuns me.
It was my job to deliver the tightly-rolled-up documents to offices around town, mostly downtown, either on foot or on my bicycle. The secretaries gave me a lot of attention, which I enjoyed but was too young to fully appreciate. I liked the routine of being outside in the heat, then inside the cool office buildings, then outside again. It was a good job.
Since I was a delivery boy, I lobbied my mother for a motorbike. No, in 1955, that was not an unusual thing for a 12-year-old to do. Several of my friends had motorbikes or scooters. Gerald Williamson, my icon, had one. He let me ride it, or tried to. I couldn't get a grip on the clutch. I sat there on the sidewalk, engine screaming, Gerald screaming, "Let out the clutch!" I did, finally, and got under way, sort of.
Frank and Bruce Teagarden had Cushman Eagles. Many graynation men remember the Cushman Eagle as their last most desirable thing in the 12-year-old male world before the puberty tsunami swept through and replaced all male thought with the image of a leg protruding from a skirt. Frank, who was my age, had a black Eagle. Bruce, a year younger, had a pink one. They were the epitome of cool.
Johnny Richardson, who lived in the very next block from me, had a Vespa. This is the machine I lobbied for. There was no way, I knew, that my mother was going to put me, a mild-mannered church-going boy, on a Cushman Eagle. The Vespa was very cool, too – hell, anything with a motor on it was cool – but compared to the Eagle, it looked downright conservative.
Eventually, my mother caved, and she put me on a kind of motorbike – motorbikes had spoked wheels – called a Simplex. It was belt-driven, for Pete's sake. It had some kind of automatic transmission, or maybe because it was so slow it only needed one gear. I just turned the throttle, and down below a drivetrain slowly meshed, in a stately sort of way, and motion was achieved. YouTube being what it is, you can see an actual 1955 Simplex in action. As soon as I saw it, I remembered the centrifugal clutch, whirring away inches from my right thigh.
I rode it for about two months, without incident. Then seventh grade started, and I parked the Simplex in the school lot, and that afternoon it wouldn't start. Somebody had put sugar in my gas tank.
I haven't owned a motorbike since. On my SSN Earnings Report, it shows I didn't earn anything in 1956. I think that is the summer I went to camp. Then, 1957 shows a contribution of $92. That would be from Lucile Gerber, owner of Lucile's Flowers. In two years, I went from a bicycle-riding, secretary-delighting 12-year-old, to a hormone-besotted delivery boy for Lucile's Flowers, careening around Abilene in a green 1957 Chevrolet panel truck in which I could get rubber in all three gears. At the time, I don't believe I appreciated the rate of change. Looking at it now, it stuns me.
October 09, 2009
Archives: October, 2006 - When the Chargers played Martyball
October, 2006 - Marty Schottenheimer is compelled to get his team to play mediocre football perfectly.
Yes, this is a complaint, but it is not the complaint of an ordinary sports fan. Sports fans are people who want to enjoy success without doing any work, and when they complain, it is with little or no license.
This complaint, which I am about to put into the record, is issued in behalf of a group of men who remember how it felt as a kid, whose goal was to play without making a mistake. We were tentative. We held back. We took our stance at the scrimmage line hoping the camera couldn’t see us. We stepped up to the plate scared to death of striking out. We prayed in the outfield that the ball wouldn’t be hit to us. We didn’t want our parents ever to come to the games. When we did get into the game, we may not have made a mistake, but with other boys, other athletes, flying around with reckless abandon, we stood out in our motionlessness, our mediocrity. In the game films, we never created a blur.
It may have been esteem, or confidence, or fear. It was deep, whatever it was, and it was a barrier between us, and what our performance might have been. How would it have felt, just to go out and play? Men like us wonder about that now, with a real regret. We might have won a letter, but we weren’t really on the team. We were a team of one.
Marty Schottenheimer coaches like he was one of us. We wonder: was he a kid like us? Did Marty Schottenheimer fumble at the goal line in the ninth grade and swear, never again? His mantra in 2006 is, “Control the football.” Do not drop the football. He grades his quarterbacks by how well they can not drop the football. His first offensive value is not scoring touchdowns, but controlling the ball.
To us old controllers, it is uncomfortable to watch. It is not fun for anyone to watch. You could stuff a few pillows, with the hair left on San Diego living room floors in the second half of the game at Baltimore.
If it’s hard on us, what must it be like for LaDainian Tomlinson? How does one ask LaDainian Tomlinson to play mediocre football perfectly? How does LaDainian feel, lining up in an offense dedicated to not dropping the football? The Union-Tribune had a contest to come up with a name for the Chargers defense, but it fizzled. The U-T was just focused on the wrong side of the ball. They should have asked for a name for the Chargers offense, and inside of 30 minutes someone would have emailed in, “The Mediocre Corps.” And of course, following naturally after that, the defense would have become “The Other Guys.”
Most of us old controllers weren’t very good athletes, so today we don’t imagine playing with the skill, speed and grace of an Antonio Gates. We watch players like him just as ordinary fans watch him, vicariously. He plays football the way we can’t, the same way Tony Bennett sings the way we can’t, Sean Penn acts the way we can’t, Andre Watts plays the way we can’t, Pat Conroy writes the way we can’t. What the controllers want to see, specifically, is Antonio Gates doing what we might have done, which is to make a play, any play, with reckless abandon. But when Gates goes downfield, he might as well be wearing a mink coat and high heels. Imagine Marty Schottenheimer coaching Andre Watts. No Mozart, no way. Nothing riskier than Sondheim, I don’t care what the tickets cost.
Dan Fouts was wonderfully ferocious. I would pay to have seen his reaction if a coach asked him to play Martyball. Philip Rivers is a young quarterback and has a way to go before being compared to Dan Fouts. But he is tall, appears to have a fierce streak, throws a tight spiral and is learning to throw to spots. Waiting at those spots would be Gates, McCardell, Parker, and out of the backfield Tomlinson and Turner. It would be interesting, and most entertaining, to see if Rivers turned out to be a quarterback that could light things up, and what would that do for the running game? It makes my teeth ache, watching him run plays drawn up by Charlie Brown.
This team is lightning in a Martybottle. All us old Charlie Browns, the men in my group, know it would be more fun to watch them lose recklessly, than win carefully. Of course, with this offense, you’re not going to lose many recklessly, with a defense like The Other Guys.
Yes, this is a complaint, but it is not the complaint of an ordinary sports fan. Sports fans are people who want to enjoy success without doing any work, and when they complain, it is with little or no license.
This complaint, which I am about to put into the record, is issued in behalf of a group of men who remember how it felt as a kid, whose goal was to play without making a mistake. We were tentative. We held back. We took our stance at the scrimmage line hoping the camera couldn’t see us. We stepped up to the plate scared to death of striking out. We prayed in the outfield that the ball wouldn’t be hit to us. We didn’t want our parents ever to come to the games. When we did get into the game, we may not have made a mistake, but with other boys, other athletes, flying around with reckless abandon, we stood out in our motionlessness, our mediocrity. In the game films, we never created a blur.
It may have been esteem, or confidence, or fear. It was deep, whatever it was, and it was a barrier between us, and what our performance might have been. How would it have felt, just to go out and play? Men like us wonder about that now, with a real regret. We might have won a letter, but we weren’t really on the team. We were a team of one.
Marty Schottenheimer coaches like he was one of us. We wonder: was he a kid like us? Did Marty Schottenheimer fumble at the goal line in the ninth grade and swear, never again? His mantra in 2006 is, “Control the football.” Do not drop the football. He grades his quarterbacks by how well they can not drop the football. His first offensive value is not scoring touchdowns, but controlling the ball.
To us old controllers, it is uncomfortable to watch. It is not fun for anyone to watch. You could stuff a few pillows, with the hair left on San Diego living room floors in the second half of the game at Baltimore.
If it’s hard on us, what must it be like for LaDainian Tomlinson? How does one ask LaDainian Tomlinson to play mediocre football perfectly? How does LaDainian feel, lining up in an offense dedicated to not dropping the football? The Union-Tribune had a contest to come up with a name for the Chargers defense, but it fizzled. The U-T was just focused on the wrong side of the ball. They should have asked for a name for the Chargers offense, and inside of 30 minutes someone would have emailed in, “The Mediocre Corps.” And of course, following naturally after that, the defense would have become “The Other Guys.”
Most of us old controllers weren’t very good athletes, so today we don’t imagine playing with the skill, speed and grace of an Antonio Gates. We watch players like him just as ordinary fans watch him, vicariously. He plays football the way we can’t, the same way Tony Bennett sings the way we can’t, Sean Penn acts the way we can’t, Andre Watts plays the way we can’t, Pat Conroy writes the way we can’t. What the controllers want to see, specifically, is Antonio Gates doing what we might have done, which is to make a play, any play, with reckless abandon. But when Gates goes downfield, he might as well be wearing a mink coat and high heels. Imagine Marty Schottenheimer coaching Andre Watts. No Mozart, no way. Nothing riskier than Sondheim, I don’t care what the tickets cost.
Dan Fouts was wonderfully ferocious. I would pay to have seen his reaction if a coach asked him to play Martyball. Philip Rivers is a young quarterback and has a way to go before being compared to Dan Fouts. But he is tall, appears to have a fierce streak, throws a tight spiral and is learning to throw to spots. Waiting at those spots would be Gates, McCardell, Parker, and out of the backfield Tomlinson and Turner. It would be interesting, and most entertaining, to see if Rivers turned out to be a quarterback that could light things up, and what would that do for the running game? It makes my teeth ache, watching him run plays drawn up by Charlie Brown.
This team is lightning in a Martybottle. All us old Charlie Browns, the men in my group, know it would be more fun to watch them lose recklessly, than win carefully. Of course, with this offense, you’re not going to lose many recklessly, with a defense like The Other Guys.
October 08, 2009
Stretch Cooking: losing Gourmet
Hearing of the demise of Gourmet magazine delivers the same sense of loss as hearing of the death of Fred Astaire.
People who like to eat look at the pages of Gourmet Magazine the way that people who like to pretend look at Brad Pitt and Juliette Binoche on the screen. Movies let us experience star-studded stories bigger than ourselves, sometimes for entertainment, sometimes for escapism.
Gourmet, for one more month, at least, is that way. People who like to eat, also like to eat with their eyes, and Gourmet offered beautiful plates of that fare. It was stuff we might never prepare at home, but it was satisfying to look at the pictures, sometimes for entertainment, sometimes for escapism. The economy being what it is these days, and that effect on home dinner tables, establishes the mood for monthly Gourmet escapism, just as Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and those dazzling sets and silly plots provided a couple of hours of visual happiness to people trapped in the Great Depression.
Some critics discount Gourmet as elitist, yet I find evidence the magazine is tuned in to the times. I picked up the April issue this morning, the one with the strawberry tart on the cover that I wouldn’t attempt at home but was a great treat for hungry eyes. The very first recipe, on the “Contents” page, was “Ham and Rice Croquettes,” deep-fried nuggets whose purpose is to help use up leftover ham, which is a very stretch-cooking thing to do (the “Joy of Cooking” famously defined “eternity” as “a ham and two people”), and something I would cook at home in a heartbeat.
Editor Ruth Reichl’s column that month assumed a “renewal” theme, of spring goodness to soothe the sting of a hard winter “as dispiriting as the one we’ve just endured,” that collapsed on us from the skies and from Wall Street. She spoke of ham as “reassuring,” and of lemon and egg desserts as “spectacular (and inexpensive).”
There is also a reference to a Gourmet online feature called “Extreme Frugality,” a blog written by W. Hodding Carter of his experiences feeding a family of six for $550 a month. One of his first moves was to acquire some chickens, for eggs and occasionally for the table. I don’t know if Carter dispatches the chickens with a broom handle, as my grandmother Susie did, but it goes to show, with stretch cooking, some things never change.
In the meantime, I keep flipping back to the “Contents” page and looking again at the Ham and Rice Croquettes, which also incorporate parmesan cheese. I feel an impulse growing to go buy a ham, planning for a near-future brunch of Ham and Rice croquettes, soft-scrambled eggs, asparagus, and orange-beet salad with cilantro and feta cheese.
Speaking of ham, I was a visitor in a Southern household some years ago, and was privileged to a plate of the best baked ham I ever ate. My host said it was from a Southern cookbooks. She gave me the name, but I have never been able to find it. Is anyone out there familiar with a recipe that calls for baking a ham by starting it in a 500-degree oven for half an hour?
People who like to eat look at the pages of Gourmet Magazine the way that people who like to pretend look at Brad Pitt and Juliette Binoche on the screen. Movies let us experience star-studded stories bigger than ourselves, sometimes for entertainment, sometimes for escapism.
Gourmet, for one more month, at least, is that way. People who like to eat, also like to eat with their eyes, and Gourmet offered beautiful plates of that fare. It was stuff we might never prepare at home, but it was satisfying to look at the pictures, sometimes for entertainment, sometimes for escapism. The economy being what it is these days, and that effect on home dinner tables, establishes the mood for monthly Gourmet escapism, just as Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and those dazzling sets and silly plots provided a couple of hours of visual happiness to people trapped in the Great Depression.
Some critics discount Gourmet as elitist, yet I find evidence the magazine is tuned in to the times. I picked up the April issue this morning, the one with the strawberry tart on the cover that I wouldn’t attempt at home but was a great treat for hungry eyes. The very first recipe, on the “Contents” page, was “Ham and Rice Croquettes,” deep-fried nuggets whose purpose is to help use up leftover ham, which is a very stretch-cooking thing to do (the “Joy of Cooking” famously defined “eternity” as “a ham and two people”), and something I would cook at home in a heartbeat.
Editor Ruth Reichl’s column that month assumed a “renewal” theme, of spring goodness to soothe the sting of a hard winter “as dispiriting as the one we’ve just endured,” that collapsed on us from the skies and from Wall Street. She spoke of ham as “reassuring,” and of lemon and egg desserts as “spectacular (and inexpensive).”
There is also a reference to a Gourmet online feature called “Extreme Frugality,” a blog written by W. Hodding Carter of his experiences feeding a family of six for $550 a month. One of his first moves was to acquire some chickens, for eggs and occasionally for the table. I don’t know if Carter dispatches the chickens with a broom handle, as my grandmother Susie did, but it goes to show, with stretch cooking, some things never change.
In the meantime, I keep flipping back to the “Contents” page and looking again at the Ham and Rice Croquettes, which also incorporate parmesan cheese. I feel an impulse growing to go buy a ham, planning for a near-future brunch of Ham and Rice croquettes, soft-scrambled eggs, asparagus, and orange-beet salad with cilantro and feta cheese.
Speaking of ham, I was a visitor in a Southern household some years ago, and was privileged to a plate of the best baked ham I ever ate. My host said it was from a Southern cookbooks. She gave me the name, but I have never been able to find it. Is anyone out there familiar with a recipe that calls for baking a ham by starting it in a 500-degree oven for half an hour?
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