Gobble-dygook

Some left-overs from Thanksgiving 2009:

*This was our first major holiday without all the kids at home.  Not easy.  Our second oldest, Taylor, stayed out east near his campus and spent Turkey Day with his aunt, uncle and cousins in Washington, DC. From the pictures, they had a great time.  Friday, he went to a friend’s house to hang out and by Saturday was back at the academic grindstone.  For us, back in the heartland, it was Wednesday night that was the most difficult.  Taylor stayed in his dorm that evening to get some homework and debate prep done.  Apparently it was rather quiet…nearly abandoned.  He talked about watching The Shining but, wisely, let that idea float away in the Red Rum of his imagination.  Instead, after his work, he microwaved a frozen cheese potato and watched The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.  Taylor said it reminded him of being home.  Not sure who is who.

**Driving home from work on Thanksgiving morning, I noticed how packed the grocery store parking lots were.  It made me think back to when everything…I mean EVERYTHING…was closed on holidays.  If you needed gasoline you’d better fill up the day before.  If you needed more yams you’d better get them the day before.  If you needed beer, cheese curds, new playing cards, coffee, new antenna for the TV so you can see the Packers trounce the Lions more clearly,  you’d better stock up the day before.  (That’s a Wisconsin list, by the way.)  The idea that you can dash off to the store for something on Thanksgiving is still astonishing to me.  Then, again, I find the idea that health clubs would be open on Thanksgiving morning to be nearly sacrilegious!

***Back in olden times, when I was just a tiny giblet myself, we always went to my Little Grandma’s apartment for the big feast.  The second we came in the door, my dad and brothers would start asking if it was time to eat, yet, and, why was it taking so long and “next year, we’ll just order chicken from Stub Lang’s diner the day before if it’s going to be this way!”  Little Grandma would just look at all of us and cackle.  It was all very Rockwell-esque:  good food, good football, good naps.  But, for me, Thanksgiving also meant one of my brothers would take me out in our oldest brother’s Corvair and let me drive around the retirement village.  It was a safe time for such under-age motoring since nobody was anywhere near outdoors.  Unlike today, when it seems everyone thinks it’s necessary to take that big, healthy walk before and after the caloric intake, in those days, you just ate until you could no longer move on your own and then collapsed into a state of semi-consciousness until the smell of coffee and shuffling of cards roused you back to coherency.  Anyway, whichever brother came to first, would take me out for a little tooling about the grounds.  A child behind the wheel with a teenager, still in a stuffing stupor, supposedly in charge cruising about in a Corvair:  Ralph Nader would toss his tofu turkey slices and range-free cranberries if he knew about it!

****Around our house, the Friday after Thanksgiving is Decoration Day.  We put on our heavy winter coats, scarves, mittens…grab the hatchet and head out to find the perfect Christmas tree.  We do this every year despite the fact that we use a fake evergreen stored in the basement.  But, tradition is tradition.  I do NOT take part in the shopping hysteria we see on the news.  I only did such a thing once…by accident…more than 20 years ago.  My wife’s family was in town and we decided to see a movie at Crown Center.  It was the Bill Murray holiday classic, Scrooged.  I had interviewed Mr. Murray in New York about this movie on one of those movie junkets I used to do for Channel 9, so, I was feeling pretty puffed up…”Yeah, Billy told me he loved makin’ this flick.  ‘Course he was asking me for my opinion and I was honest with him.  ‘Billy,’ I said ‘It’s inspired!’”  It was at that point I noticed that my entire family had left me in the parking garage.

Before leaving the house on that Friday, I thought the shopping center would be mostly empty.  I had never really heard of such a thing as Black Friday in regards to shopping.  The phrase, Black Friday, meant one of two things to me:  The financial panic of 1869…Fisk & Gould: naughty boys!  Or, just about any Friday there was a dance during my high school days because I knew I’d be sitting in the ticket booth reading a book while the rest were dancing to Color My World.

We didn’t do much shopping on the day after Thanksgiving when I was a punk.  Sometimes my dad would have to run to the hardware store and get some more hooks for the Christmas Tree ornaments.  He also would stop for a bottle of Five-Star Brandy, for medicinal purposes only,  knowing that it was time to fight that tree into the tree stand and make it appear as straight as possible. 

Flash forward  to that movie-going Friday: the place was packed.  It shocked me.  Who goes out on the Friday after Thanksgiving?  When did this start happening?  Does anybody know about this? 

Needless to say, after that, I’ve made a point of NOT being anywhere near a cash register on that day-after-day.

*****That just about does it for our holiday weekend.  Hope you had a great one with your family and friends.  Oh, I did call my mom and, when she answered–her caller ID must be on the fritz–I hollered  ”Happy Turkey Day!”  She replied, calmly, “Oh, Joel, you know this isn’t your birthday.”

Gobble. Gobble.

 

Happy Thanksgiving 2009

I’ve printed this particular bit of noshing nostalgia before but what’s the holiday season without leftovers?  So, here goes:

Thanksgiving is the day for food. Too much food in some cases, but enough about me. Not too many years back, a viewer was kind enough to share a menu that her husband had enjoyed when he was serving our country on the USS Sierra on Thanksgiving Day, 1944. Here’s what those heroes were served:

Cream of Tomato Soup
Ripe Olives
Saltines
Chow Chow Pickles
Roast Young Tom Turkey
Baked Virginia Candied Ham
Giblet Gravy
Apricot Dressing
Cream Whipped Potatoes
French Peas
Buttered Whole Kernel Corn
Parker House Rolls
Mince Meat Pie
Pumpkin Pie
Vanilla Ice Cream
Bread
Butter
Lemonade

After all those food were listed, at the bottom, were three more items:

Cigars
Mixed Nuts
Cigarettes

While most of those tasty treats are familiar to us, a few may raise a question. For example, Chow Chow Pickles. To the best of my understanding it has nothing to do with a breed of dog. I believe it is a kind of relish. Listen to me. Pretending to just know that off the top of my pointy head. Who do I think I am? Alex Trebek? I looked it up. A Parker House roll gets its name from the Parker House Hotel in Boston…half an oval of flaky goodness. As for mince meat pie…well, I know cartoon characters used to say “I’ll make mince meat outtaya!” In reality, it is a mixture of meat and fruit and spices.

The last three things on the list are, to me, the most interesting. I know a very humble man who served in the Navy during World War II. He saw action at Okinawa and many other places when he was  barely out of high school. I think of him and how excited he would’ve been to have a handful of mixed nuts and a smoke as he drifted over the waves, thousands of miles away from home. As the old song from that era put it “Little Things Mean A Lot.”

The menu is a fascinating bit of history but it is also a reminder to use part of our Thanksgiving to say thanks to all this country’s veterans as well as today’s generation of men and women serving in faraway lands. Just a prayerful thought or two in the middle of all the food and football and lighting ceremonies. It may not seem like much but…well, you know the song.

Four Little Words

Tuesday morning on FirstNews, one of the questions of the day for viewers was: “What do you do to keep your kids occupied on a long car trip?”  Nowadays, a traveling tot has plenty of options.  Hand-held devices.  Lap-tops.  In-vehicle DVD players.  Back in my day, it was not such a potent potpourri of peppy possibilities.  Although we did tend to use alliteration more readily.

My dad had been a truck driver for a time and really enjoyed the act of driving, especially in the overnight hours.  If we had a long trek ahead of us,  we knew we’d be herded into the car about two in the morning.  In those days before everyone automatically used seat-belts, my brothers would race to the back-seat to see which of the three could really stretch out and force the others to wedge their way into some level of discomfort.  Being the baby, I often ended up sitting in the middle of the front seat…well, slumped over onto my mom’s lap, actually.  As my brothers got older and slowly left the nest, I was, eventually, able to commandeer the entire rear davenport…uh, I mean seat.

My dad’s routine was to cruise along with the radio tuned to whatever music station came in clearly.  Later, when he upgraded to an 8-track tape deck, he played a lot of Big Bands and Charley Pride.  He’d smoke Kents and drink black coffee.  Very rarely, he would pull off to the side of the road and take a couple of brisk walks around the car before getting back in gear.

There was not a lot of worry about making sure my brothers and I had “fun” during the car-trip.  Because of the hours, big chunks of the sojourn were spent snoozing.  When we were awake, we’d read or talk or tell jokes (dirty ones in whispers so our mom wouldn’t hear them…or so we thought.  Sometimes we’d hear a snort from the passenger seat and know she was in on the whole thing.) or play “Name-That-TV-Theme.”  On one trip, we started taking turns reading passing billboards in the worst, stereotypical DJ voices possible.  After about a mile, our dad acted as a one man ratings service and cancelled our program.

As I recall, we were pretty good riders.  It usually took one little look from our dad in the rear-view mirror and we knew to knock it off.  If that glare was DEFCON 3, then those four little words, “I’ll Stop This Car” was DEFCON 2.  He didn’t raise his voice.  He just said those four little words…calmly and dripping with menace.  DEFCON 1?  That’s when the car actually pulled to the side of the road.  That didn’t happen very often.  One time, before I was born,  it did.  My second oldest brother, Craig, about six at the time,  had allowed his inner Jerry Lewis to escape once too often. 

My Dad pulled over and took Craig out of the car, intending to emphasize the driver’s displeasure with the rider and, I suspect, make Craig’s sitting a little less comfortable for a time.  Instead of being corralled, Craig took off into the mid-summer cornfield.  He was a true Child Of The Corn for quite some time.  This was before the Corn Maze Craze.  Craig was, apparently, ahead of his time.  Our dad was not impressed with this particular brand of entrepreneurship.

I really shouldn’t make our family car rides sound quite so much like a scene from Hitchcock’s Lifeboat.  It’s just that my dad viewed the trip as a job to be done safely, quickly and efficiently.  He was not without his little surprises, however.  In my case, being the youngest, if he felt I’d been “a real trouper” in the car:  Sitting still…Not whining…Not asking “Are we there yet?” …Training my bladder to go into David-Blaine-In-A-Plexiglas-Box-Hanging-Over-Time’s-Square mode…then, when he ran into the Shell Station to get the thermos refilled with coffee the consistency of mud, he just might come out with a present:  A SLIDE PUZZLE!  Red and white numbered tiles!  All mixed up!  Just waiting for a brilliant kid like me to solve!

As I think about it, a better prize would have been the opportunity to accompany him into the Shell Station and make my bladder, gladder but I wasn’t about to argue or look a gift-dad in the mouth.  Especially since there wasn’t a cornfield handy.

10 Million Steps In The Right Direction!

Times are tense.  That’s not exactly a newsflash.  It is easy to  feel overwhelmed by our personal and particular on-the-job situations.  Sometimes that frame of mind morphs into taking oneself a bit too seriously.  I think it happens in every line of work including the TV biz.  Now, if you are a firefighter or police officer, nurse, doctor, EMT, pastor, teacher, mom or dad, your work in those fields is, often, life and death.  Taking it seriously, at all times, is a prerequisite.  But, in most cases, we can afford to step back and take a deep breath before deciding the world is coming to end just because things aren’t perfect around the office.

Back when I first started at KMBC, there was a guy…important guy with an important title…who used to say, about TV, “It ain’t brain surgery.”  I always took that to have two meanings.  First of all, it is not all that complicated to do interesting, engaging television:  Just Tell A Good Story!  And, secondly, at the end of the day, we are all going to survive and there sure should be other parts of our lives–like spouses & kids–that are more important to us.

I happen to see him the other day and wanted to wish him a Happy Thanksgiving.  He simply didn’t have the time.  He looked harried and hurried.  I was put in mind of the look on  Ebenezer Scrooge’s face after Marley flew into the bed chamber!  Frankly, the man looked terrified.  I sure hope all is well with him and he has not lost that healthy perspective he was so quick to share many years ago.

We all want to do well at our work and, in this economy, it is more important than ever to make that extra effort.  But, if it is killing us or our relationships, what’s the point?

Last Friday morning, after leaving the station, I got the chance to celebrate with some people who have a much clearer idea of what matters in this life than some of the rest of us demonstrate at times.  For the most part, they were not high-powered executives or exemplars of what we too often call success.  These were clients of several area mental health agencies.  As a group they had taken part in the Ten Million Step Challenge over the last three months.  It was an effort to encourage health and fitness by walking a grand total of 10 million steps!  Guess what?  These super strollers logged closer to 60 MILLION steps!

There was a true sense of community and cooperation among these pedometer-wearing wonders.  They had spent the last three months rooting for each other and that support continued on Friday morning.  Some of the trekkers shared their stories like the fellow who reported his arthritis pain had just about disappeared and the woman who felt so much more in touch with nature from her walks and the man who couldn’t quite explain how he could have actually gained four pounds with all the ambling he’d been doing.  The audience shouted “It’s muscle mass!”  (I did share that I do a lot of walking and have also put on some weight but my constitutionals are generally from the couch to the fridge and back again.)

For some of the people attending Friday’s event, any given day can be filled with toil and trouble.  Taking that first step of the morning can be the most challenging of all.  Despite those burdens, they continue to move ahead and, for the most part, do it with a knowing smile.  “Knowing” that the rest of us sometimes get pretty worked up over nothing.

Congratulations to all of the Merry Marchers who took those Ten Million PLUS Steps.  In this Thanksgiving week, you are helping all of us keep our priorities straight and feet moving in the right direction.

Smarts & Soles

Paradox:  any person, thing or situation exhibiting an apparently contradictory nature. 

Here is an example:

When I first visited my future in-laws’  home, I was struck with how amazingly clean and orderly the place was…despite having four children and many of their friends roaming about on a regular basis.  The white walls were still white.  The carpet was stain-free.  The kitchen sparkled.  Frankly, it looked like a model the day before the Parade of Homes starts. 

In retrospect, this observation is even more pungent, by which I mean “mentally stimulating or appealing” and NOT “sharply affecting the sense of smell, acrid, biting.”  Having four children, two dogs, occasional friends of both the dogs and kid in and out of our home, I can tell you that keeping the walls mark-free is a nearly impossible task.  At this point, our walls look like Alley Oop’s cave after he described a particularly harrowing mastodon hunt.  Or, add a couple of royal-looking kitty-cats and you have the inside of King Tut’s tomb.

Our carpet could be used as the Jolly Green Giant’s Rorschach Test.  Trust me, you hang around long enough outside in a loin cloth made of leaves with some twerp like Little Green Sprout angling for your job and you’d need some therapy, too!

There are times when the counters in our kitchen have so many varied drips and dribbles…coffee and juice and chocolate and salad dressing and salsa and so on…that it would be a great location for the new TV series, Betty Crocker: CSI!

Don’t even get me started on our kids’ bedrooms.  I’ve mentioned our daughter’s lair before.  It remains in the running for the Top Seven Wonders of the World.  The main question being: How can such a sweet, cute, creature (our daughter) exist in what appears to be the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius?  She’s the princess of Pompeii West.  It is, also, from time to time, rather pungent, by which I mean “sharply affecting the sense of smell, acrid, biting” and NOT “mentally stimulating or appealing.”

I’m not saying we live in a Deffenbaugh dumpster.  Just that our house looks, well, lived in compared to my in-laws’ abode. 

So far, this has all been prologue or toelogue.  The aforementioned paradox has to do with a messy little secret that my mother-in-law allowed to exist in that house I first visited way back when which has made its way to the home I currently live in.  Let’s just say that there’s no business like shoe business.

On the first floor of my in-laws’ home, the entryway, there was a huge pile of shoes.  Of course, that helped keep the carpets and floors pristine upstairs and, since they were kicked randomly into a mostly hidden area, nobody was the wiser.   In our case, this tradition is not quite so well-controlled.

Most of our family shoes get foot-flung into a heap in the garage.  Now, I keep my pair of dress shoes and my pair of tennis shoes off to the side so I can more quickly locate them but the other five in the family are just fine with inter-shoe-mingling.  Sounds almost naughty.  This pyramid of ped- coverers, seems to grow each day.  I’m afraid that if I were to dig to the very bottom of his slipper stockpile, I’d find the remains of Dr. Scholl.

Most of the time, this hill of soles and sagging tongues is just an eyesore but, every now and then, like this morning, it becomes a true hazard.  At least, for me. 

As I was leaving the house for work, this morning around two something, I did what I always do…I locked the door from the garage into the house, turned off the garage light and made my way into my car.  Yes, I do take those last few steps in the dark.  But, I’m in the dark so often, that it is usually not a problem.  Thursday morning, those last few steps almost became my last few steps. 

My shoes became entangled in a bunch of sneakers.  I should mention that all of my sons have bigger feet than I do which makes their shoes seem boat-like compared to my tootsies.  If they were put away in a systematic manner, they’d look like some luxurious port of call.  But, they are not stowed like that.  They are just everywhere.  These little yachts have been through quite a storm at sea.

This morning, I was mugged by this jumble of jumpers…this pile of pumps…this hill of high heels!  Fortunately, I fell into my car and not onto the concrete.  No, I did not invoke the name of St. Crispin, the patron of shoemakers but I did unleash something of a…well…litany of displeasure.

You know, forget about paradox.  It’s the pair a shoes that’s going to get me.