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
October 26, 2009
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?
October 05, 2009
Media Literacy: Conflict - you could die laughing
I couldn't help but laugh at myself for laughing at the people in the audience who were laughing at David Letterman's confession of sex relations with co-workers. It sounded so bizarre. But the people couldn’t help themselves. They are attenuated to hearing Letterman use the “conflict” media value to produce hilarity. When he tried to speak seriously about conflict, they couldn’t make the shift.
In media literacy studies, we learn the Human Reaction Package (HRP), which consists essentially of 12 media values – conflict, progress, disaster, consequence, prominence, proximity, timeliness, human interest, novelty, sex, sensationalism and curiosity – and a definition: news is any thing that changes, or threatens to change, the status quo. These values and definition can be found in any Journalism 101 textbook. I created the HRP to provide convenience and flexibility to the package, which drives all three media products: information (news), entertainment, and manipulation (particularly advertising).
The 12 values are not presented necessarily in order of importance, though most would agree that conflict is, in fact, the first value because of its ubiquity. Conflict is certainly felt by all people. We are born with it. Very soon after we are born, we understand that we are going to die. By age 5, children talk about dying. Life and death is the essential conflict. Because conflict is such a strong news value, in a news story in which someone has died, the death is always in the first paragraph.
Survival is another strong example of conflict, because survival means staying alive. Stories about staying alive, or how to stay alive, are very important to us. Stories about new treatments or drugs to use against diseases like cancer or AIDS are always big news. We see stories all the time about living longer by eating right or developing good habits of exercise. We see stories about global warming and other threats to planetary survival. When nine miners in Pennsylvania became trapped 300 feet underground, the media followed the story without interruption because people wanted to see the miners survive. When they did, it was the biggest story of the day. Survival is also a very strong value in entertainment media. One of the most popular shows in television for the past three years is in fact named “Survivor.”
People also pay a lot of attention to other kinds of conflict. The first mass media product ever created was a book about the conflict between good and evil. It was the Gutenberg Bible, printed in 1452, the first book ever printed using moveable type. The Bible is still the best-selling book in the world today. People are also very interested in good-and-evil stories such as crime and murder. Novels about crime and murder earn their authors millions of dollars. Crime and murder movies make even more money. Murders become particularly strong stories because they have in them both the life and death conflict and the good and evil conflict. Of course those are the two types of conflict that made the World Trade Center attacks the biggest news story of 2001.
The conflict between winning and losing is the key value in many different kinds of media stories. All sports stories are essentially conflict stories about winning and losing. In politics, election stories are all about winning and losing. Since we live in a democracy in which we send representatives to government to vote on important issues, stories about those issues are very much about the win-lose conflict. Those stories are also about the kind of conflict that exists when there are two sides arguing about how to best get something done.
There are many other kinds of conflict based on people being on two sides of an issue. War is a classic example of this kind of conflict. War also presents us a good example of a conflict about a conflict. This is the “hawks and doves” conflict. For several years, the Iraqi war has been an excellent example of this type of conflict.
There is also conflict where you might not expect it. Love is full of conflict. Shakespeare made a career of finding the conflict in love, “Romeo and Juliet” being a famous example. Anyone who was ever married, or even went steady, knows about conflict in love. This is another strong conflict value found in novels and movies.
Conflict is also a very dependable source of humor, as long as it is someone else’s conflict (people laughed maniacally at Lucy Ricardo, but could you imagine living in the same building with that woman?). Many sitcoms on television are based on a conflict that is funny. In a famous “Seinfeld” episode, Seinfeld mugs an old lady for a loaf of rye bread. We laugh hysterically. George’s fiancé dies after licking adhesive on envelopes. We laugh darkly, but we laugh. Now David Letterman admits sex with co-workers. Funny as hell, coming from him.
In media literacy studies, we learn the Human Reaction Package (HRP), which consists essentially of 12 media values – conflict, progress, disaster, consequence, prominence, proximity, timeliness, human interest, novelty, sex, sensationalism and curiosity – and a definition: news is any thing that changes, or threatens to change, the status quo. These values and definition can be found in any Journalism 101 textbook. I created the HRP to provide convenience and flexibility to the package, which drives all three media products: information (news), entertainment, and manipulation (particularly advertising).
The 12 values are not presented necessarily in order of importance, though most would agree that conflict is, in fact, the first value because of its ubiquity. Conflict is certainly felt by all people. We are born with it. Very soon after we are born, we understand that we are going to die. By age 5, children talk about dying. Life and death is the essential conflict. Because conflict is such a strong news value, in a news story in which someone has died, the death is always in the first paragraph.
Survival is another strong example of conflict, because survival means staying alive. Stories about staying alive, or how to stay alive, are very important to us. Stories about new treatments or drugs to use against diseases like cancer or AIDS are always big news. We see stories all the time about living longer by eating right or developing good habits of exercise. We see stories about global warming and other threats to planetary survival. When nine miners in Pennsylvania became trapped 300 feet underground, the media followed the story without interruption because people wanted to see the miners survive. When they did, it was the biggest story of the day. Survival is also a very strong value in entertainment media. One of the most popular shows in television for the past three years is in fact named “Survivor.”
People also pay a lot of attention to other kinds of conflict. The first mass media product ever created was a book about the conflict between good and evil. It was the Gutenberg Bible, printed in 1452, the first book ever printed using moveable type. The Bible is still the best-selling book in the world today. People are also very interested in good-and-evil stories such as crime and murder. Novels about crime and murder earn their authors millions of dollars. Crime and murder movies make even more money. Murders become particularly strong stories because they have in them both the life and death conflict and the good and evil conflict. Of course those are the two types of conflict that made the World Trade Center attacks the biggest news story of 2001.
The conflict between winning and losing is the key value in many different kinds of media stories. All sports stories are essentially conflict stories about winning and losing. In politics, election stories are all about winning and losing. Since we live in a democracy in which we send representatives to government to vote on important issues, stories about those issues are very much about the win-lose conflict. Those stories are also about the kind of conflict that exists when there are two sides arguing about how to best get something done.
There are many other kinds of conflict based on people being on two sides of an issue. War is a classic example of this kind of conflict. War also presents us a good example of a conflict about a conflict. This is the “hawks and doves” conflict. For several years, the Iraqi war has been an excellent example of this type of conflict.
There is also conflict where you might not expect it. Love is full of conflict. Shakespeare made a career of finding the conflict in love, “Romeo and Juliet” being a famous example. Anyone who was ever married, or even went steady, knows about conflict in love. This is another strong conflict value found in novels and movies.
Conflict is also a very dependable source of humor, as long as it is someone else’s conflict (people laughed maniacally at Lucy Ricardo, but could you imagine living in the same building with that woman?). Many sitcoms on television are based on a conflict that is funny. In a famous “Seinfeld” episode, Seinfeld mugs an old lady for a loaf of rye bread. We laugh hysterically. George’s fiancé dies after licking adhesive on envelopes. We laugh darkly, but we laugh. Now David Letterman admits sex with co-workers. Funny as hell, coming from him.
October 04, 2009
graynation: Sunday chicken dinner, and other amusements
Every other month, Susie would fix fried chicken for Sunday dinner. I started to pay close attention to this when I was about three, which would have been 1946. After breakfast, she would go behind the swinging kitchen door, next to the water heater, and bring out the broom.
Seeing this, I would follow her out the back door and down some steps to the back yard. She had a chicken coop built onto the back of the garage, and there were always several chickens in residence. During World War II, and after, men in the area, mostly friends of her son, my uncle, Clyde, who was a cavalry colonel in the South Pacific, would visit the house, bringing Susie firewood, produce, meat and chickens.
Susie would go among the milling chickens, select one that I am sure she had already picked out days before, and grab it by the neck. She carried the chicken away from the others, then put its neck down on the ground, lay the broomstick across it, and put her foot on the broomstick. Then she reached down and pulled the chicken's head off. It never ceased to amaze me, how easily the chicken's head came off.
She lifted the broom handle and the headless chicken ran around for some moments, then fell over. She placed the chicken in a paper bag and carried it inside, at which point I lost interest. The rest of it involved routine stuff like scalding the chicken, pulling out the feathers, washing it and cutting it up for frying.
At 10, I was taken to Sunday school, no matter how much I protested, and at 11 Susie, her three daughters, and I, went to church, St. Paul Methodist, on the north side of the tracks. After church, we stopped by Mack Eplen's Restaurant, across the street from the First Baptist Church, that you could hangar a blimp in, and picked up a pan of rising yeast cloverleaf rolls.
Autumn afternoons were nothing like today. We had a radio, and a piano, and sometimes my mom or aunts would play the piano. Professional football teams played games on Sunday afternoon in the east, but nobody in Abilene paid much attention. Of course there was no television and no computers. Clyde was a polo player, and after the war we spent many Sunday afternoons watching teams play polo on fields south of town, where South 20th is now.
On other afternoons, I would play outside or listen to the radio. It didn't matter what was on, though as time went by, I really got attached to shows like "Sky King," "The Green Hornet," and "The Shadow." The radio provided a bit of foreshadowing. Sometimes, when a favorite show was on, I took my dinner into the living room and ate it listening to the radio.
Otherwise, we always ate as a family at the big dining room table. There was a story in The New York Times this morning about the benefits to children when families all eat together at the dining table. I suppose that is true, but I also witnessed quite a number of dysfunctional things that can occur among family members eating around a dining table. Susie's other memorable employment of the broom was to chase her daughters around with it once in a while.
There was also something about touching food that made it non-consumable, and this was most apparent on fried chicken night. I suppose kids today would have some vivid mental picture of where that golden chicken on the table came from, but in those days it was no big deal. It was just fried chicken, with cream gravy, the cloverleaf rolls, and green beans or black-eyed peas, a couple of vegetables like that. Susie always ate the back and the neck, which none of the others would eat, and at the end, there always seemed to be a leg left on the platter. Susie would say to me, "Why don't you have this last piece? Nobody's touched it."
It still seems important to me, not to offer anyone food that I have touched. I also know how to cut up a whole chicken – it's a lot cheaper that way – and to cut it so there is a pully bone to wish on at the end. The short bone got the wish.
Seeing this, I would follow her out the back door and down some steps to the back yard. She had a chicken coop built onto the back of the garage, and there were always several chickens in residence. During World War II, and after, men in the area, mostly friends of her son, my uncle, Clyde, who was a cavalry colonel in the South Pacific, would visit the house, bringing Susie firewood, produce, meat and chickens.
Susie would go among the milling chickens, select one that I am sure she had already picked out days before, and grab it by the neck. She carried the chicken away from the others, then put its neck down on the ground, lay the broomstick across it, and put her foot on the broomstick. Then she reached down and pulled the chicken's head off. It never ceased to amaze me, how easily the chicken's head came off.
She lifted the broom handle and the headless chicken ran around for some moments, then fell over. She placed the chicken in a paper bag and carried it inside, at which point I lost interest. The rest of it involved routine stuff like scalding the chicken, pulling out the feathers, washing it and cutting it up for frying.
At 10, I was taken to Sunday school, no matter how much I protested, and at 11 Susie, her three daughters, and I, went to church, St. Paul Methodist, on the north side of the tracks. After church, we stopped by Mack Eplen's Restaurant, across the street from the First Baptist Church, that you could hangar a blimp in, and picked up a pan of rising yeast cloverleaf rolls.
Autumn afternoons were nothing like today. We had a radio, and a piano, and sometimes my mom or aunts would play the piano. Professional football teams played games on Sunday afternoon in the east, but nobody in Abilene paid much attention. Of course there was no television and no computers. Clyde was a polo player, and after the war we spent many Sunday afternoons watching teams play polo on fields south of town, where South 20th is now.
On other afternoons, I would play outside or listen to the radio. It didn't matter what was on, though as time went by, I really got attached to shows like "Sky King," "The Green Hornet," and "The Shadow." The radio provided a bit of foreshadowing. Sometimes, when a favorite show was on, I took my dinner into the living room and ate it listening to the radio.
Otherwise, we always ate as a family at the big dining room table. There was a story in The New York Times this morning about the benefits to children when families all eat together at the dining table. I suppose that is true, but I also witnessed quite a number of dysfunctional things that can occur among family members eating around a dining table. Susie's other memorable employment of the broom was to chase her daughters around with it once in a while.
There was also something about touching food that made it non-consumable, and this was most apparent on fried chicken night. I suppose kids today would have some vivid mental picture of where that golden chicken on the table came from, but in those days it was no big deal. It was just fried chicken, with cream gravy, the cloverleaf rolls, and green beans or black-eyed peas, a couple of vegetables like that. Susie always ate the back and the neck, which none of the others would eat, and at the end, there always seemed to be a leg left on the platter. Susie would say to me, "Why don't you have this last piece? Nobody's touched it."
It still seems important to me, not to offer anyone food that I have touched. I also know how to cut up a whole chicken – it's a lot cheaper that way – and to cut it so there is a pully bone to wish on at the end. The short bone got the wish.
October 03, 2009
A weather worthy weekend
Click on the images for a close-up.
It looks like we won't have an Acorn Fever season at all, this autumn in Southern California. Now it is Oct. 2, and we have yet to experience that first cool snap that triggers the Fever. That snap is forecast to begin later today, with the arrival of a cold front coming down the coast from the Gulf of Alaska. If the weather bureau is right, tomorrow will be cloudy, cool and rainy at our house. Given the late date of this cool snap, it has a chance to endure for three or four days before temperatures warm again. This is key. When a snap like this hits in early September, it may be only 24 hours before the temperatures have gone back up into the 90s, trapping Southern Californians in the flannels they pulled on in the gray, cool dawn.
Now, in early October, we may have a few days to adjust. We can enjoy the warmth of our flannels, long enough to be willing to put them away, this time in the front of the closet, when temperatures climb again, into the 80s or 90s, by Thursday or Friday.
Meanwhile, as the weather forecasters focused on the north, a tropical storm named Olaf spun up off the southwestern tip of Baja California, and then headed north, straight for us. I pray for such events, but they are exceedingly rare, when tropical storms - what we call monsoon moisture - reach us from the south and east. As a weather freak, I was ticked off when the weather bureau said Olaf would be steered east, away from us, by the very system that was promising to bring us our first cool, rainy experience of the season on Saturday and Sunday.
It turns out that Olaf had some swagger, and sent streams of clouds into our area before the front from the north could do its steering work. By noon yesterday, there was talk of sprinkles. By 3 p.m., light showers were possible, and by 4, there was a mention of thunderstorms. At our house, east of downtown San Diego, all this talk amounted to about 47 wet dots where raindrops hit our flagstone. The sky, on the other hand, was alive with Olaf. The showers didn't hit the ground, but they were up there. "Virga" is what the weather people call showers that don't reach the ground.
These showers do unique things, however, with sunlight. I have lived at Alta Mira since 1992, and I have seen some amazing scenery in the sky. Yesterday, though, brought something entirely new, that Karen, who snapped these images, called "sun showers." I hope I am lucky enough to see something like this again, someday, in the skies west of our house. And this weekend, we still have a rainy Sunday to look forward to.
It looks like we won't have an Acorn Fever season at all, this autumn in Southern California. Now it is Oct. 2, and we have yet to experience that first cool snap that triggers the Fever. That snap is forecast to begin later today, with the arrival of a cold front coming down the coast from the Gulf of Alaska. If the weather bureau is right, tomorrow will be cloudy, cool and rainy at our house. Given the late date of this cool snap, it has a chance to endure for three or four days before temperatures warm again. This is key. When a snap like this hits in early September, it may be only 24 hours before the temperatures have gone back up into the 90s, trapping Southern Californians in the flannels they pulled on in the gray, cool dawn.
Now, in early October, we may have a few days to adjust. We can enjoy the warmth of our flannels, long enough to be willing to put them away, this time in the front of the closet, when temperatures climb again, into the 80s or 90s, by Thursday or Friday.
Meanwhile, as the weather forecasters focused on the north, a tropical storm named Olaf spun up off the southwestern tip of Baja California, and then headed north, straight for us. I pray for such events, but they are exceedingly rare, when tropical storms - what we call monsoon moisture - reach us from the south and east. As a weather freak, I was ticked off when the weather bureau said Olaf would be steered east, away from us, by the very system that was promising to bring us our first cool, rainy experience of the season on Saturday and Sunday.
It turns out that Olaf had some swagger, and sent streams of clouds into our area before the front from the north could do its steering work. By noon yesterday, there was talk of sprinkles. By 3 p.m., light showers were possible, and by 4, there was a mention of thunderstorms. At our house, east of downtown San Diego, all this talk amounted to about 47 wet dots where raindrops hit our flagstone. The sky, on the other hand, was alive with Olaf. The showers didn't hit the ground, but they were up there. "Virga" is what the weather people call showers that don't reach the ground.
These showers do unique things, however, with sunlight. I have lived at Alta Mira since 1992, and I have seen some amazing scenery in the sky. Yesterday, though, brought something entirely new, that Karen, who snapped these images, called "sun showers." I hope I am lucky enough to see something like this again, someday, in the skies west of our house. And this weekend, we still have a rainy Sunday to look forward to.
October 02, 2009
Archives: Baseball in a blizzard
August, 2005: I had not been to the San Diego Padres’ new ballpark, which opened last year. Then last week, friends, and they are dear friends, gave us tickets and we went. The game – Padres vs. St. Louis – was a totally new experience for me.
Well, not totally new. I took a bite out of a bratwurst and momentarily considered placing it back in its plastic container and taking it to the city attorney to see if there were any laws against calling a very pale, cool to the touch length of dense protein colloid a bratwurst and selling it for $7.95 in a public place.
But I went ahead and ate it. No sense having the city attorney stalking the concourse, waving handfuls of dense protein colloid under the noses of employees, when I’ve eaten equally remarkable fare at any number of sports events in San Diego. No one who has spent several hundred dollars over the years on what stadium concessionaires call “Nachos” can speak too severely against the PetCo bratwurst.
What was new was the tenuous hold that the game of baseball had on the event. Since I last attended a major league baseball game – four years, at least – the half-innings of actual play seem to have become miniaturized intervals between promotions. Looking around the place, I thought about pinball machines I played as a kid, including one that was a baseball pinball game. Lots of lights flashing, and lots of noise effects, and, oh yes, the game itself.
That’s how this event felt. Many other new ballparks have opened recently in other big-league cities. If PetCo is the typical ballyard of the 2000s, baseball’s executives have engineered for real baseball the look and sound and feel of having a seat behind first base inside a pinball game.
But it was more comprehensive than that. The ultimate business model of entertainment media technology is to turn the outdoors into the indoors, the ominous “virtual reality.” You get a feel of that sitting outside at PetCo.
In the old days, 10 years ago, it was the difference between going to a live event and watching it at home on television. At the live event, the viewer enjoyed the freedom of subjective choice. At any moment, your eyes could go where they would, in the setting before you, to a player, to the dugout, to the sideline, to the stands, to the moon. Watching it on television, you lost that subjective freedom. The cameras and the screen objectified the view: you could only see what the camera was showing you.
At PetCo, there were constant video demands for your attention. It never stopped: screens and bright quick-cut montage visuals demanding attention from your eyes, enforced by booming digital-fidelity surround-sound commands from extremely high-energy speakers. Before last week, the loudest sustained noise I ever heard at a sports event was the crowd at Jack Murphy Stadium in 1984 when Steve Garvey hit the home run off Lee Smith to beat the Cubbies in Game Four of the NLCS.
That was a natural sound, the analog output of 45,000 throats, and lovely to plunge into and get squeezed and scoured by until you couldn’t breathe or feel, and eventually surface into the night air and survival, carrying with you out of the ballpark a sound you would tell about for the rest of your life, because there was a reason for it.
At PetCo, the sound was ear-ringing but couldn’t compete on the Garvey scale for loudness. As sustained sound, however, it was surpassing, and tireless, barrages of sub-woofing, subjectivity-gobbling sound scouring you not in a passage of glory, but with promotions, commercials, goofy quizzes, heavy metal riffs and aggressively mediocre humor shots. Just like TV. Visuals and sounds, objectifying space. On the field, interludes of miniature baseball. Beyond the outfield, a city skyline. Both were hard to see, through the digital blizzard.
Well, not totally new. I took a bite out of a bratwurst and momentarily considered placing it back in its plastic container and taking it to the city attorney to see if there were any laws against calling a very pale, cool to the touch length of dense protein colloid a bratwurst and selling it for $7.95 in a public place.
But I went ahead and ate it. No sense having the city attorney stalking the concourse, waving handfuls of dense protein colloid under the noses of employees, when I’ve eaten equally remarkable fare at any number of sports events in San Diego. No one who has spent several hundred dollars over the years on what stadium concessionaires call “Nachos” can speak too severely against the PetCo bratwurst.
What was new was the tenuous hold that the game of baseball had on the event. Since I last attended a major league baseball game – four years, at least – the half-innings of actual play seem to have become miniaturized intervals between promotions. Looking around the place, I thought about pinball machines I played as a kid, including one that was a baseball pinball game. Lots of lights flashing, and lots of noise effects, and, oh yes, the game itself.
That’s how this event felt. Many other new ballparks have opened recently in other big-league cities. If PetCo is the typical ballyard of the 2000s, baseball’s executives have engineered for real baseball the look and sound and feel of having a seat behind first base inside a pinball game.
But it was more comprehensive than that. The ultimate business model of entertainment media technology is to turn the outdoors into the indoors, the ominous “virtual reality.” You get a feel of that sitting outside at PetCo.
In the old days, 10 years ago, it was the difference between going to a live event and watching it at home on television. At the live event, the viewer enjoyed the freedom of subjective choice. At any moment, your eyes could go where they would, in the setting before you, to a player, to the dugout, to the sideline, to the stands, to the moon. Watching it on television, you lost that subjective freedom. The cameras and the screen objectified the view: you could only see what the camera was showing you.
At PetCo, there were constant video demands for your attention. It never stopped: screens and bright quick-cut montage visuals demanding attention from your eyes, enforced by booming digital-fidelity surround-sound commands from extremely high-energy speakers. Before last week, the loudest sustained noise I ever heard at a sports event was the crowd at Jack Murphy Stadium in 1984 when Steve Garvey hit the home run off Lee Smith to beat the Cubbies in Game Four of the NLCS.
That was a natural sound, the analog output of 45,000 throats, and lovely to plunge into and get squeezed and scoured by until you couldn’t breathe or feel, and eventually surface into the night air and survival, carrying with you out of the ballpark a sound you would tell about for the rest of your life, because there was a reason for it.
At PetCo, the sound was ear-ringing but couldn’t compete on the Garvey scale for loudness. As sustained sound, however, it was surpassing, and tireless, barrages of sub-woofing, subjectivity-gobbling sound scouring you not in a passage of glory, but with promotions, commercials, goofy quizzes, heavy metal riffs and aggressively mediocre humor shots. Just like TV. Visuals and sounds, objectifying space. On the field, interludes of miniature baseball. Beyond the outfield, a city skyline. Both were hard to see, through the digital blizzard.
October 01, 2009
Stretch Cooking: Chicken Fried Steak
Some places you swear you’ll never forget, but I have. I can’t remember the name of the café in Cross Plains, Texas, where the chicken fried steak was so good. Cross Plains was 45 miles southeast of my home town, Abilene, and we would make the drive regularly to Cross Plains for chicken fried steak at this place.
There was one trip in particular. I was alone, except for a decent thunderstorm, which stayed about five miles behind me as I drove at moseying speed on Highway 36 out of Abilene toward Cross Plains. The country turns hilly down that way, green clumps of mesquite and red swatches of clay, intensified when there are storm clouds around.
Every few miles I would pull off on the highway’s wide shoulder – state highways in Texas are designed as linear viewing points – and drink in the color and texture, congratulating the random cattle for this fine home they had. Five miles ahead of a Texas thunderstorm is always a still, warm, zone, no wind, no sound, into which low thunder rolls from the dark cloud wall to the north. Heavenly. I would watch until the first fresh gusts arrived, running just ahead of the cold rain. Then I would get back in the car and drive on, five more miles, then stop again.
In this way I would reach Cross Plains, and the Café of the Forgotten Name so that I was just sitting and opening the typed menu when the thunder rose from rolling to roaring, the lightning and rain crashed, and the café became a cave where some of the best chicken fried steak in Texas was served. It was one of the luckier noontimes of my life. And now I can’t remember the name of the place.
Wait a minute. It was the White Castle. I would almost swear. I know, White Castles are tiny steamed hamburgers famed in the East. Besides, why would somebody in Cross Plains, Texas, name their place the White Castle? I couldn’t say, but I know there was a White Elephant in Eastland, up on I-20, and it had pretty good chicken fried steak too. And in Abilene, we had the Dixie Pig. Massey’s, in Fort Worth. Threadgill’s in Austin. The Alamo Café in San Antonio. Chicken fried steaks as big as dinner plates, covered in cream gravy.
People like me, with memories like those, don’t go too long without making chicken fried steak at home. I put the recipe in my cookbook, which is a collection of recipes I developed after I moved to California so I could eat, whenever I wanted to, like I was in Texas. My Texas pal Ray just last month sent off for the book, and now it has arrived, and it was so nostalgic for him because it’s all the recipes his mom cooked. He also, he said, was inspired by the chicken-fried steak recipe to head for Massey’s. Lucky duck.
If you have chicken fried steak at my house, you start with a round steak, about a pound and a half, three-quarters of an inch thick. Trim the fat and cut the steak into four pieces. Tenderize the pieces with a meat mallet. You can buy round steak pieces already tenderized, if you’d rather. Salt and pepper the meat, and give it a dusting of garlic powder.
Have ready a pie pan with flour in it, and another pie pan in which you have beaten two eggs and half a cup of milk. Heat a half-inch of oil (lard, Crisco, peanut oil) in a large black skillet on medium-high heat. Dredge the meat pieces in flour, then in the wet mixture, swishing it around on both sides, then back in the flour to coat. Fry the pieces until golden brown, about five minutes per side. Turn down the heat if the oil gets too hot. Drain the pieces on newspaper.
Gravy: Pour off almost all the oil, leaving a sheen of it across three-quarters of the bottom of the skillet. Set the heat at medium-high. Add three level tablespoons flour and stir constantly until the flour loses its raw smell. If the flour mixture is dry and crumbly, add a little more oil. When the flour is smooth and cooked, add two cups milk and stir constantly until the gravy thickens. Season with salt and generous pepper, and serve on the side. Choose your own side dishes. At my house, it might be mashed potatoes and green beans.
There was one trip in particular. I was alone, except for a decent thunderstorm, which stayed about five miles behind me as I drove at moseying speed on Highway 36 out of Abilene toward Cross Plains. The country turns hilly down that way, green clumps of mesquite and red swatches of clay, intensified when there are storm clouds around.
Every few miles I would pull off on the highway’s wide shoulder – state highways in Texas are designed as linear viewing points – and drink in the color and texture, congratulating the random cattle for this fine home they had. Five miles ahead of a Texas thunderstorm is always a still, warm, zone, no wind, no sound, into which low thunder rolls from the dark cloud wall to the north. Heavenly. I would watch until the first fresh gusts arrived, running just ahead of the cold rain. Then I would get back in the car and drive on, five more miles, then stop again.
In this way I would reach Cross Plains, and the Café of the Forgotten Name so that I was just sitting and opening the typed menu when the thunder rose from rolling to roaring, the lightning and rain crashed, and the café became a cave where some of the best chicken fried steak in Texas was served. It was one of the luckier noontimes of my life. And now I can’t remember the name of the place.
Wait a minute. It was the White Castle. I would almost swear. I know, White Castles are tiny steamed hamburgers famed in the East. Besides, why would somebody in Cross Plains, Texas, name their place the White Castle? I couldn’t say, but I know there was a White Elephant in Eastland, up on I-20, and it had pretty good chicken fried steak too. And in Abilene, we had the Dixie Pig. Massey’s, in Fort Worth. Threadgill’s in Austin. The Alamo Café in San Antonio. Chicken fried steaks as big as dinner plates, covered in cream gravy.
People like me, with memories like those, don’t go too long without making chicken fried steak at home. I put the recipe in my cookbook, which is a collection of recipes I developed after I moved to California so I could eat, whenever I wanted to, like I was in Texas. My Texas pal Ray just last month sent off for the book, and now it has arrived, and it was so nostalgic for him because it’s all the recipes his mom cooked. He also, he said, was inspired by the chicken-fried steak recipe to head for Massey’s. Lucky duck.
If you have chicken fried steak at my house, you start with a round steak, about a pound and a half, three-quarters of an inch thick. Trim the fat and cut the steak into four pieces. Tenderize the pieces with a meat mallet. You can buy round steak pieces already tenderized, if you’d rather. Salt and pepper the meat, and give it a dusting of garlic powder.
Have ready a pie pan with flour in it, and another pie pan in which you have beaten two eggs and half a cup of milk. Heat a half-inch of oil (lard, Crisco, peanut oil) in a large black skillet on medium-high heat. Dredge the meat pieces in flour, then in the wet mixture, swishing it around on both sides, then back in the flour to coat. Fry the pieces until golden brown, about five minutes per side. Turn down the heat if the oil gets too hot. Drain the pieces on newspaper.
Gravy: Pour off almost all the oil, leaving a sheen of it across three-quarters of the bottom of the skillet. Set the heat at medium-high. Add three level tablespoons flour and stir constantly until the flour loses its raw smell. If the flour mixture is dry and crumbly, add a little more oil. When the flour is smooth and cooked, add two cups milk and stir constantly until the gravy thickens. Season with salt and generous pepper, and serve on the side. Choose your own side dishes. At my house, it might be mashed potatoes and green beans.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)