WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO FRUITCAKES?

Fruitcakes used to be as common as Christmas trees in December. But they seem to have gone out of culinary style. I still get one every year from a friend of mine in Pennsylvania, but he is a die-hard traditionalist who refuses to quit making them. He's down to making only two a year now...one for himself and one for me. I look forward to its arrival...it weighs a ton because he loads it with rum. If you slice one piece you can usually squeeze out a jigger of rum. Now that's what I call fruitcake.

My friend wraps the cake in cheesecloth and selects a nice tin to mail it in. The cheesecloth takes on a rusty look and I keep thinking it is The Shroud of Turin... I keep expecting an image of Jesus to appear. Or at least the Virgin Mary who was supposedly a great fan of fruitcakes.

Scientist thought they found a large fruitcake in King Tut's Tomb, but it turnned out to be a jelly doughnut.

My father's church sold fruitcakes every year for years and years. Claxton Fruitcakes. He was suppose to sell the cakes to raise money but instead he would buy 5 boxes of them and then he gave them away to people intead of selling them. If you were his son, like I was, you would get at least l0 of these babies. They were shaped like big sticks of butter. I tried my best to offer pieces or even whole cakes to people, but no one bit. I could eat one a month so I took to freezing them and breaking them out as the year progressed. They could have used a little rum but since it was a Methodist church that was selling them, rum was a no-no. One summer I used one as fishing bait. The fish didn't bite.

At Christmas I used to buy two round fruitcakes...one large and one small. I would put them on a cake plate, small on top of the other one. Then I would drizzle white icing over them and put a large red candle in the center hole. It made a magnificent centerpiece for the Christmas dessert table, although no one ever cut into the cakes. I got the cakes at the dime store...and whatever happened to the dime stores?? Well, they have Dollar Stores now so maybe they sell fruitcakes.

I should have signed up for The Great Fruitcake Toss they have every January in Colorado. Those people know how to get rid of unwanted fruitcakes...throw them over to Utah.

One of the best teleplays I ever saw was based on Truman Capote's story of making fruitcakes every year with his crazy cousin. They would make one and send to the President of the United States. They had to collect nuts and shell them; get the waxed fruit; go to some old Indian to get some booze to soak the cake in. Then they would wait to get a thank you letter from the President. Sweet story.

I know companies are still making fruitcakes...Assumption Abbey is one of the most famous. And Collins Street Bakery in Texas makes a nutty one that's really delicious And Dancing Deer makes a "harvest" cake that's a more contempory type of fruitcake. But as long as my friend Charlie from Pennsylvania keeps making them, I am set in the fruitcake department. And in the rum department as well.

GET THAT MAN OUT OF THE KITCHEN!

When we invited people over for dinner, they never ask "What's cooking?"  Then ask,

"Who's cooking?"

 

If I am the Cook Du Jour, they invariably find some lame excuse like: I think my Mother

died today.  Huh!  I've heard that one before.

 

As Marie Antoniette said, "Let them eat cake...from Ingles."

 

I'm creative in the kitchen.  I think of it as a chemistry lab with pots and pans.  Just because a potato is white doesn't mean you have to serve it that way.  I learned that

years ago when I was in college.  I would get home from school oftentimes earlier than

my wife got home from work.  I made mashed potatoes, but I discovered food colors so I would make them green with pink gravy.  I thought it looked great but my wife turned away in disgust.  And she threw away the food coloring.

 

I admit that I am sort of messy in the kitchen.  A chef needs assistants.  Check the ones on TV...they are never washing dishes as they go or worrying about how many

pots and pans they are using.  My oven has so many drippings on the bottom, I could

make a meatloaf.  And I think I might.

 

I love meatloaf.  (The Saluda Grade Cafe has fantastic meatloaf, by the way.)  I come from a long line of meat eaters and meatloaf is our meat of choice...perhaps it's because not everyone still has their God-given teeth and meatloaf is easy to gum.

 

Everybody in our family loves meatloaf and we have an annual meatloaf cooking contest.  We even have a shirt that says: Don't Let Your Meat Loaf.

 

I am ashamed to say that I have been eliminated more than once.  Last year I made my meatloaf in a muffin pan....12 perfect little meatloafs.  My oldest daughter is very bossy when it comes to competitions.  She put herself in charge and immediately

eliminated me without the judges even getting a taste.

 

"This is NOT a muffin-cooking contest.  It's a loaf we're looking for and these are

meat MUFFINS.  You're out of the race!" she announced.

 

Guess who won?  She did with a Mexican meatloaf.  I have to admit that it was very

tasty, but she should have shaped it like a sombrero.

 

We also have a chili cooking competition.  I have a placque in the State of Virginia for winning the chili competition there.  My chili is called "My Lips Have Taste The Glory of

The Coming of the Lord" chili.  I also won for Longest Name.

 

But in my family (with the same Bossy Judge) my chili got eliminated.  Why?  "Because it is not red, and everyone knows that chili has to be red."

 

I made White Chili.  I know it sounds like some sissy thing from California but it had real buffalo meat and three types of white beans.  And it was darn good.

 

"But it isn't RED!", my daughter proclaimed.

 

"But it will burn the hairs out of your nose and the tequila will make you hallucinate.

That's what counts."

 

"No cowboy would ever eat this," she countered.

 

"If he rode side-saddled he might".

 

 

 

PHAT PHIL FROM PHILLIE

When I was in Basic Training at Fort Jackson, S.C. years ago, we had a guy in our platoon named Phat Phil From Phillie.  We didn't call him that to his face.  But that's what everybody called him when they talked about him.  He was fat. He was from Philadelphia.  And his given name was

Phil.

 

     He was what people called a Whop.  We didn't call him that to his face either.  He was Italian.  We

were friendly with Phat Phil for one reason alone:  His Mother, a fine Italian woman herself, would send him huge boxes in the mail.  They were stuffed with all kinds of delicacies---cookies, cakes, salami, pasta sauce in jars, cheeses.  We thought pizza was the only food that Italians ate, but Phil's

momma introduced us to a world of good eating.

 

     When the mailman called out Phil's name at mail call and we would see the big box from home, we would quickly gather around his bunk in anticipation of his opening the package.  We were like little birds waiting to be fed.  Little vultures.

 

     Phil liked all the attention so he generously passed out samples, telling us what each thing on the menu was.  Usually everything was eaten within half an hour and poor Phil had to go back to being an ordinary fat soldier until the next package came from home.

 

     The packages gave us a great idea.  My friend Blair and I wrote to our mothers, aunts, cousins and most of the girls in our senior high school class.  We told them we were in the War.  (Actually we enlisted three days before the Korean War was technically over.)  We told them the Army was

starving us to death and begged them to send anything that wouldn't spoil en route.

 

      My Mother came through right away (I was an only child).  We were smart enough to pay the mailman to put our packages into our laundry bags which hung on the end of our bunks.  We didn't want a throng of guys attacking us like we attached Phat Phil.

 

      I can't tell you how happy we were to come in from a day of marching and see the shape of a

box in our laundry bag.

 

      We already Had a plan in mind.  We would carry the bag out as if we were going to the laundromat.  But instead of going there, we both crawled under the barracks which was about

two and a half feet off the ground.  We dragged our goodies behind us.  When we got under the building far enough not to be seen, we sat and carefully opened the box.

 

     My Mother wasn't Italian but she was Southern, so she knew how to put together a satisfying

CARE package for her only son.  She had cans of Vienna Sausage and Potted Meat,  Crackers of

various kinds, sardines, bananas and peanut butter.  She sent pimento cheese sandwiches already

made and wrapped in tinfoil.  They travelled surprisingly well.

 

     Our big problem was the height of the barracks.  We could take a bit of a sandwich, but our necks were bent over so much we couldn't swallow anything.

 

     I sent Blair back into our barracks to get our two field shovels.  When he came back, we dug

a hole large enough to sit in with our heads held high.  We called it our "Dining Room" and dine,

we did.

 

     Every day more packages arrived.  Some were just cookies or candy.  But we also started

getting canned hams.  We needed to get our dining room better organized for opening and slicing

ham.  I wanted to make a little table but we couldn't find any scrap wood.  So we started wearing

our ponchos to keep the grease off of our clothes.  One person asked what kind of laundry detergent we used because we always smelled so edible when we came in from one of our feasts.

 

     We didn't share our food with anybody, nor our secret dining spot.  If you went to Fort Jackson

today, the hole is probably still under the building with a lot of empty Vienna Sausage cans.  Our

mailman started making us give him monthly payments to keep his mouth shut.  We should have stuffed it with one of Phat Phil's salamis.

 

 

 

YOU WANT A ROOM ON THE ROAD OR A MEANINGFUL EXPERIENCE?

I used to travel a lot; mainly on the road.  And if I was travelling by myself, I didn't care what kind of room I got as long as it was clean.  And  I actually rejected a couple of rooms that looked like there might have been a chainsaw murder in them.  Maybe it wasn't blood on the carpet, but it looked scary.

 

I had never stayed in a motel until I went in the Army.  When my family went anywhere, we

travelled at  night.   My Father wouldn't stop at a motel.  He just assumed they cost a lot of

money and my Mother wasn't keen on sleeping where "who knows who" has slept and done

other things.  My Father would say, "Sleep in the car."  So I did.

 

I have since stayed in a lot of motels and hotels, including very upscale ones.  My wife likes

to travel first class so whenever she goes I have to upgrade my accommodations.  It's actually

ridiculous what some places charge now...$300 to $400 a night in New York is considered

mid-priced.  But I don't go to New York that often or stay that long, so I usually bite  the bullet and pick something unusual.  A big price doesn't necessarily mean you'll get a great place.

I like to stay at new hotels when they open.  We stayed at one years ago...it was so fancy,

they didn't even have a sign on the place; you just had an address.  And when you arrived,

handsome young men in black escorted you in.  It was designed by Andre Putnam, a hooty

tooty French designer.  Everything in the hotel was done in black and white.  We had what

was fondly called a Loft...a bedroom, sitting room, bath all done in black and white.  Cher

had an apartment there.  It was one of those places that you go to be see and be seen

although I don't think we were chic enough to be seen.

 

The same hotel group opened another hotel in the theater district, so we booked there once.

The rooms were tiny but the lobby was huge and filled with designer furnishings...enormous

modern chairs that were very uncomfortable.  And there were mirrors everywhere...when the

elevator doors opened,  the inside was covered with mirrors.  When they got to your floor and opened, there was a huge mirror right in front of the door.  People who stayed there not only

wanted to be seen, they wanted to see themselves as well. They had a menu in the room for ordering rental videos...x-rated, gay and straight.  They would bring them to your room.  We

didn't order any.  I didn't think they should know what we were doing in our spare time.

 

Now  the big thing is providing guests with a "meaningful experience",  not just a firm bed and a good night's rest.  One meaningful experience, for example, is  a 6-hand massage.  It's

not included  in the room rate; it's extra.  And not cheap.  I mean, it's very difficult to find massage help that has six hands. Other  meaningful experiences include aroma therapy

whereby they shoot exotic smells into your room. 

 

Mainly I just want a place to sleep peacefully.  Years ago I started staying at Hampton Inn

when I was on the road. When they first started opening them, the motels were fairly reasonably priced...then gradually (well not all that gradual actually), they started bumping up the prices.  A place I stayed at in Atlanta was soon more  than a hundred dollars a night.

I thought that was a lot for one old guy to sleep and park.  So I soon downgraded my choices

and looked for bargains.

 

But last year I switched back to Hampton Inn.  My wife told me she had stayed at one and

the rooms and bedding were so luxurious.  I thought,  "How luxurious can they be?".  So I

decided to stay in one...price be damned (plus I have an AARP card).  Well, let me  tell you,

they are luxurious...the beds especially.  They are so nice,  in fact, that I started stopping

after only being on the road for a couple  of hours. Normally I drive for 7 or 8 hours before

stopping but I was coming back from Mississippi and I started stopping before I had even

gotten on the road good.  Not all the Hampton Inns had been redone at the time, so one time

I checked out when I saw the room was the old standard.

 

You have to be careful with budget motels.  Years ago I stopped at one in Columbia, S.C.

When I checked in, she asked if I wanted a telephone.  It was extra.  I'm deaf so I passed on

the phone.  Then she wanted to know if I wanted a TV.  I  did, but they added it to my bill.

She wanted to know if I wanted toilet paper.  I asked, "Does this place have a bed with the

room?"  She said, "Yes, but sheets and pillow cases are extra."  Talk about your ala carte

services.

 

 

CAN A 70 YEAR OLD MAN OUTRUN AN ALLIGATOR?

You betcha!

 

I live on a lagoon in South Carolina and in the lagoon is an 8 foot long creature called  an

alligator.  He is so sneaky.  He moves very slowly through the water with only his nose

and his big eyeballs showing.  He looks slow, but he's only trying to get you to come closer

so he can jump out of the lagoon, grab your leg and stuff you under the bank of the lagoon

so he can eat you later.  I know how these devils work.

 

I was out one morning checking on our alligator and an old,  old woman came by. She saw

me looking at the gator so she came over and said, "Be careful.  Those things are fast.  They

can run as fast as a galloping horse." 

 

I looked at her and said, "You know I have a feeling that if that alligator was chasing me, I could run faster than a galloping horse...by a good bit."

 

She said earnestly,  "You have to zig-zag.  They can run fast for about 50 yards, but they

have trouble zigging and zagging.  So you zig-zag as much as you can."

 

I asked her if she had outrun any alligators and she just held up two arms and said, "I still

have both of my arms don't I?"

 

I have always remembered her warnings.  So far I haven't out to outwit an alligator.  I have to

walk with a cane now, so my plan is to hit the sucker in the head as soon as he makes a

move toward me.

 

An alligator down here actually ate an old woman last year.  I sort of wondered if it was the

person who had  given me life-saving instruction.  She might have zagged instead of zigged.

 

Signs are posted everywhere down here no to feed the alligators.  But tourists are fascinated

by the things and they feed them no matter what the signs say.  An alligator remembers forever where he has been fed, so they keep coming back to that spot.  And if they see a

person outdoors they just figure it is dinner time.

 

They will eat anything, too.  They have found all  kinds of strange things in alligator bellies:

cigarette lighters, coke bottles, tin cans, other alligators, baby toys.  They are scavengers.

They're like Billy Goats (except it is not true that goats eat tin cans...when you see pictures

of them with cans, they are trying to eat the paper off the cans and lick the glue...the alligators eat cans!)

 

Alligators hate poodles.  They hate their bark which is rather high pitched.  So they catch a lot of poodles.  When they catch their prey, they hold them under water until they drown.

That's when they can safely tuck them under the bank of the lagoon and come back later to

eat them.  There's a lot of poodle fuzz in my lagoon.  I can appreciate why alligators might

want to eat them.  Poodles are cute but they are so bossy.  I had friends who had a poodle.

The dog hated my guts.  He growled at me the whole time  I would visit them.  And all because I suggested that they might want to have him stuffed  and made into a nice foot

stool.  He understood every word I said, even though I told him that I didn't mean "now" but

after he croaked.  He loved to chase female dogs...he was ancient but when he was on the

move,  he could jump a 5 foot high fence to get into see his girlfriend.  But then he didn't have

the energy to jump back across to go home.  The neighbors would have to call and tell my

friends to come get Casanova.

Maine Is a Long Way to Go for a Lobster Roll

I spent the summer in Maine a few years ago.  I had always wanted to go but it is so darn far.  And when I finally went, I drove all the way up to the highest point in the state.,.,,.and also the

eastern most point in the U.S.  I rented a "camp" in a 5,000 acre wildlife preserve.  Camp is what they call cabins.  It was remote and primitive, although it was right on a body of water and I could watch the lobster boats working the area every day.

 

     The wildlife preserve had originally been owned by a  bunch of Philadelphia millionaires...they had cottages throughout the area, plus a hotel and a little chapel.  This was back in the early l900's.

They would come up by train and spend the summer there.  Wisely the heirs to the cottages had

decided to donate most of the land to the government for a preserve and keep their cottages and a small tract of land.  That way they didn't have to pay taxes on all the property.

 

     My camp was a long log cabin with two bedrooms on each end of the house...two living rooms with fireplaces and a single small kitchen.  It was June, and still cold up there.  My granddaughter went with me.  She had one end of the house and I had the other.  We would load every quilt we could find on us at night and then stay in the same spot without moving.

 

     I don't know where I was when they taught campfire building, but I could not get fires started in the big stone fireplaces.  I had logs but I was using newspaper for "kindling".  I had some friends coming to visit from Maryland...and the man was a longtime farmer.  I knew he would know how to build a fire so I asked him to bring some kindling wood and to teach me to make a fire.   He arrived with a trunk load of kindling.

 

     Maine was as beautiful as I expected but you could hardly enjoy the outdoors because of the pesky Black Flies.  They are big suckers too and they bite.  You can't kill them with a fly swatter. You need a rifle to blow them out of the air.  And the Maine Tourist Bureau never mentions the darn things.  Why would they?

 

     The people who live way up in Maine where we were are fairly...stupid.  If you doubt me,

read the book, THE BEANS OF EGYPT, MAINE.  Everybody in the book was nutty. There

was so much cross-breeding (and gross-breeding), not a single person had two eyes of the

same color.  The cattle didn't either.  They made our Southern Hillbillies seem like rocket

scientists.  Fortunately there were not a lot of locals left.  Anybody that was reasonably smart

had left years ago.

 

     The county were I was staying was the biggest producing area for wild blueberries.  They

were truly a sight to see.  I had been accustomed to blueberries that grew on bushes.  These

wild blueberries grew on very short ground cover.  The hills literally turned blue when the blueberries came on.  And then the migrant workers all the way from Florida showed up to

pick them.  We had them growing in the wildlife preserve so I picked quite a few for us to eat.

But it was back-breaking work, more suited to midget laborers.

 

     We had a little chapel in the preserve so anytime people would come visit we would take

a tour of the grounds and I would insist on taking a picture of them as bride and groom.  There

were a lot of plastic flowers there for real weddings so I would outfit the couples accordingly.

I have some same-sex photos although I did not actually marry them.  Just took pictures.

 

     I sort of expected that lobsters would be cheaper in Maine.  But they weren't.  They were plentiful, but not cheap.  Most of the cafes made lobster rolls...a delicious treat using pulled

boiled lobster from the shell and tossing it ever so slightly with mayo.  Then they would put

it in a roll shape and serve it on a grilled hot dog bun.  Even McDonald's had lobster rolls.

And they were $7 each even at McDonald's.

 

     There were lobster pounds everywhere...places you could buy live lobsters to take home

and cook.  So my granddaughter and I decided to buy a big lobster and take home.  She sort of grew attached to it and was not too keen on cooking it.  But I had paid too much to turn it into

a pet.  You cook them while they are still alive, like you do with crabs.  Problem was, we could

not find a pot that was as big as the lobster.  But I found a tall one and heated some water.  He

had to go part way and be cooked, then turned and be cooked on the other end.

 

     I asked my granddaughter, "If you were going to be boiled, would you rather go in head first

or tail first?"  She didn't want to be boiled at all, but thought we should put the lobster in head

first or we would hear him crying out for help if we put him in tail first.  So we put him in head

first and actually managed to get him all the way in once he was relaxed.  We used him to make

Lobster Thermidor.  But it was easier to buy lobster rolls.

 

     Since we were so remote, we didn't have a lot of traffic unless we tried to go to some place

interesting.  Then every tourist in Maine was backed up on the roads into towns.  Maine is a very artsy place so we found dozens of interesting galleries and artists.  We also went sailing on a

Tall Ship...these are big wooden boats with high masts.  Even on a sunny day, it was cold out on the water which of course they didn't mention until you were out on the water.

 

      There was a ferry service from the nearest town over to Nova Scotia.  We had to get up at

4 AM to get into town and get the car on the boat. I decided to book a stateroom so I could go

back to bed seeing as how it was still dark and there would be nothing to see..  I loved Nova

Scotia.  They had no black flies.  I went to the Bay of Fundy which is the scallop capital of the world.  I love scallops more than I like lobsters, so was able to have them for breakfast, lunch

and dinner.

 

    Once I was back in Maine, my wife came to visit from South Carolina and some friends came from Arkansas.  My wife immediately declared that my camp was "a dump".  I thought "primitive" was a better word.  I mean, we had two indoor toilets and showers and, by then, I had learned to build fires in the fireplace.  I think the mail problem was that my friends from Arkansas

took us to see a friend of theirs who "takes a house every summer" in a town not far away.  It

was a 14 bedroom house, not exactly a "camp".  My wife isn't what I would call "flexible". That's what she thought I should have rented but I explained that it wasn't available. I like contrasts...high life, low life...both interest me.  And to prove it, I took them on a tour of a famous sardine factory.  I called it famous because it is my brand of sardine and I as so happy to discover that they were packed near the camp.  They had their logo ... a 20 foot

high statue of a seaman...out front.  When we arrived they claimed they didn't allow tours, but

I sweet-talked them by telling them I had driven all the way from South Carolina (which I had) to see the sardines being packed (this wasn't exactly the truth...I had gone out of my way to see

the ice cream factory at Ben and Jerry's in Vermont).  I had always wondered how they got those little fish in there so perfectly.  You know, head-to-toe, toe-to-head so to speak although they don't have heads.  I could not figure out how they could get them packed like that with a machine and they don't.  They have women (see previous note regarding The Beans of Egypt Maine) who work by conveyor belts clipping off heads of sardines...and other ones grabbing the slimy little things and putting them in the cans, head-to-toe.  They finally allowed us to go inside but told us not to take pictures.  The women might have been sardine factory slaves is what I was thinking  Can you imagine walking home from work after a long day in the sardine factory and having every cat in town on your trail?  Life's not easy in Maine.

 

     I'm never going back to Maine in this lifetime.  But you can go.  Everybody should go at least once.

 

 

 

The Robots Are Coming! They're Coming!

    It's bad enough we have to worry about illegal aliens taking our jobs away here in America.  Now we have to worry about Robots taking them.  The Japanese are planning to send more than 100,000 our way by 2010.  And what are they going to be doing?  Caregivers for the elderly!

 

     I'm an elder and I didn't ask for any shiny robot to take care of me.  I want some HUMAN contact not some whirring mechanical robot bringing me my coffee.   And what do you think they'll feed me for lunch?  Sushi, probably.  And sushi is not real food.  The name doesn't sound like  anything you

would want to put in your mouth that's for sure.

 

     I don't think the Japanese have really forgiven us for dropping The Bomb, so  I especially wouldn't want to trust a Japanese robot

 

     I realize that we are far behind Japan and China in terms of our use of robots.  General Motors

had them as early as 1960 but then the robots joined the union and there went that idea out the

factory window.

 

     Robots are already big in Japan and China...mainly working to build cars.  Now they'll probably put aprons on them and send them over here as caregivers.  I need someone who can

shave me and  I'm not trusting some Japanese robot to do it, especially one that's singing show tunes from Sweeney Todd.  In Japanese.

 

     I might look more favorably on the robots as caregivers if they made them look more human.

I could see me having one that looked like Aunt Bee, for example.  Nice little old lady robot with

a bun on the back of her metallic head and pinch-nosed glasses.  And she would have to be able to cook stuff like chicken fried steak, catfish and biscuits. Although if they're going to make them

human like, I'd pay extra to get a caregiver that looks like Pamela from Baywatch.  I live on a lake and having one that's a good swimmer would be handy.  She wouldn't have to cook; we could go down to the diner for breakfast and lunch.  Or I could get two robots...one that looks like Pam to be my lifeguard and one that looks like Aunt Bee to do the cooking and cleaning. She would need to go to bed early.

 

     One of the advantages I see in having a robot caregiver is that you wouldn't have to feed them.

Just give them a squirt of WD-40 ever once in a while.

 

     We've been very slow here in the U.S.  to adopt the use of robots.  It's really no wonder.  We

sent one up in the latest space shuttle.  It had to be sent in three parts and assembled once the

space shuttle landed.  It's 7 feet tall.  And it has arms that are 15 feet long.  They don't know what they will have it do.  Maybe he can play first base if they start a baseball team. With 15 foot arms he wouldn't miss many balls that came his way.  I know the government does some dumb

things, but why would they send a robot with l5 foot arms out in space with no plans for what he

was going to be doing?  His name is Derek, if you want to send him a postcard.

 

     There may be a lot of people out there who want a robot.  I googled the word on the computer and 57,400,000 entries came up.  Some  people are apparently buying kits to build their own

robots.  That's a do-it-yourself project that could go bad.  They even have a flying robot competition...birds and insect robots.  I have enough trouble with termites and rats.  I don't want

to have to hire Terminex to get rid of my insect robots.  But I didn't see anything in all the googled entries of any old guys wanting caregiver robots.  If the Japs send all those robots over

here and nobody wants them, I guess we could modify them slightly and we could put them

to work waiting tables at Hooters.

 

 

MOVING ON UP

When I was twelve years old, we lived in the tiny hamlet of Dallas.  Life was sweet.  We didn't have indoor plumbing because we lived a half a block from where the town sewer line stopped.  But we were happy.

 

Then suddenly we were moving to Washington, D.C.  My father was always in a quest for Big Money and he heard that he could make Big Money as an electrician in Washington.  We didn't sell our house or move our furniture because this was going to be a test run to see how we liked it.  The Big City awaited.

 

All the avenues in Washington are named after states...so being from North Carolina, we moved to North Carolina Avenue and it had a lot of people from North Carolina living there so we weren't the only dumb ones. 

 

Our first apartment (and I use the word loosely) had one room and a closet that had been converted to a little kitchen.  It was a basement apartment.  We weren't all the way underground.  When we sat in our room we could see people's legs as they walked by.  And every five minutes or so, a big streetcar would go clanking by rattling our windows as it flashed by.  We didn't have streetcars in Dallas; we didn't have buses either.

 

There was no bathroom in our apartment.  We had to go upstairs and use a bathroom that was also shared by people on the first floor of the building.  At least it was indoors.

 

We had no furniture so we went to a used furniture store near the apartment.  My father bought a double bed, one rocking chair and a small  table to hold our radio.  We used to gather around the radio to listen to our favorite programs...my mother and I sat on the bed; my father in the rocking chair.  We would sit and stare at the radio as if it were a tv.  I liked radio.  You had to create your own mental pictures of what was happening and I was good at that.  We ate our dinners sitting on the bed since we didn't have a table.

 

Actually we had one other room and that's where I slept.  It was the furnace room and I slept on a roller way bed.  There was just enough room to open the bed beside the furnace.  I had never seen a furnace before in my life and especially not one that big.  There was a pilot light but when the furnace came on, it was with a blast of fire that lighted the whole room and made me sure we were all going to be blasted back to North Carolina.  Scary.  Scary indeed.

 

The apartment had roaches which we all hated.  These weren't little roaches...they were big and they could fly.  We tried spraying them but they would grab the spray can and squirt us with it.  We put out Roach Motels, but they ate them.  They came out mainly at night and when I was sleeping in the furnace room and the furnace would blaze on, I could see them scurrying all over the place.  I slept with a broom and in the morning, I would use the broom to turn on the lights and give the roaches a chance to go wherever they go in the daytime.

 

My mother  cried and wanted to go home to North Carolina.  But my father was studying to get a journeyman's license and it was time for me to go to school.

 

The school was gigantic and it looked like a big brick castle.  It had high chain link fences all around the building and the playground.  On the first day of school, I went to three different front doors and they were all locked.  I could see kids on the playground but I couldn't figure out how to get into the school.  I went home and told my mother and father that there was no way to get in.  My father didn't like that answer and just said, "Well tomorrow you will find a way in."  And I did. You went onto the playground and they let everyone in at once.  I was really so frightened.  I was a nervous kid anyway.  But eventually I found the office and they welcomed me.  I had to take tests for most of the day.  They had what they called a "track system".  They had a college-bound track; a business track and a I-Hope-You-Can-Find-Work-of-Some-Kind track.  And each track had two sections: smart and smarter.  I got put in the college bound, smarter track.  This was the greatest blessing that probably ever happened to me because it gave me some direction in my life.  I was college bound!

 

The Worst Salesman in the World

Years ago when I was a student at the University of 'Wisconsin, I got a call one day from a good friend of mine who announced that he has become a salesman.

 

 I yelled through the phone,  "You can't be a salesman."  He wanted to know why not.  I said, "You are totally devoid of personality.  A salesman has to have personality."

 

But George insisted that someone was going to teach him everything he needed to know to become a successful salesman.  I wanted to know if he was selling encyclopedias.  Those were popular with door to door salesmen back then although we didn't get too many of them because we lived on the third floor of an apartment building and carrying those books was too much for most of them.

 

George said he wasn't doing door to door sales.  He was selling only by appointments and he would be selling something every household needed: Kirby Vacuum Cleaners.  I laughed out loud.  We certainly didn't need a vacuum cleaner.  We had no rugs and very little furniture.  We were lucky to be able to afford a broom.

 

He wanted to make an appointment to come and demonstrate the Kirby Vacuum Cleaner but I

told him in no uncertain terms that we were not buying one of the things under any circumstance.

He told me he really needed some practice so he wasn't expecting us to buy.  But I figured that was what they had trained him to say.  Then he said he would give us a free case of Pepsi's if I would allow him to demonstrate the machine. I was still reluctant but in my heart I knew he would never be able to talk me into buying anything so I finally said o.k.  He wanted to know if the "lady of the house" would be there for the demo. I said, "You mean my wife, Carol?"  He said we both had to be present in order to qualify for the free drinks.

 

When he came over he really had to struggle to get the Kirby up the steps.  They weigh more than a set of encyclopedias...and I made him go back down and bring the Pepsi's up.  I didn't

trust him. I wanted the Pepsi's in the apartment before we started.

 

I kept laughing as he got his equipment out because he had memorized the sales pitch word for

word.  He said we would be amazed at how much dirt the Kirby would pick up out of the rugs.

I reminded him, pointing to the floor, that we had no rugs. 

 

"I'll do the couch then," he said, "You'll be amazed at how much dirt the Kirby will pull out of the

couch."  I reminded him that the couch was brand new; we had just got it from Sears the week

before.

 

"No matter.  You will be amazed.  I'll put the upholstery cleaner on and show you how filthy

and germ ridden your couch is."

 

He turned on the Kirby and it sounded like an airplane engine.  He made one swipe down the seat of the couch...and it sucked four buttons off!

 

"Look what you've done, you nut.  You have ruined our new couch.  This is going to cost you more than a case of Pepsi's."  I yelled.

 

He told me he could get the buttons out of the Kirby.  But getting them back on the couch was

what I wanted.

 

Next he wanted to do our mattress and moved into the bedroom.  I had painted the room.  I wanted a bold pink color but it came out more red, so I had painted watermelon seeds on the

wall.  He wanted to know if I wanted him to suck the seeds off the wall.  I made him  move out

of the bedroom.

 

We went into the kitchen and before I knew what was happening, he turned on the Kirby to

do the curtains...and it sucked them right off the rods.  "I guess I should have put it on low",

he said.  He also sucked up a three foot high bean plant.  I had been studying about germination in botany class and had germinated some pinto beans.  The bean plant was like Jack in the

Beanstalk.  It had taken off right toward Heaven and I was encouraging it by having daily talks

with it.  But now it had been sucked into a Kirby along with all  the bean seeds and what little

dirt was left in the pot.

 

"You've got to leave," I yelled at him.

 

"But we haven't talked about price yet," he insisted.

 

"We don't need to talk about price,  George, because I have absolutely no intention of buying

one of these things. It sucked the buttons off my couch, you idiot."

 

"Other than that, how did my presentation go?" he wanted to know.

 

"You were incredible.  Incrediably bad."  I felt like I was speaking from the heart.

 

George kept trying to sell the Kirby's using the free Pepsi's as a foot in the door.  He worked for

about four months and after not selling a single Kirby, he decided to quit.  He owed the company

$l87.00 for all the Pepsi's he had given away.  Probably the first salesman that had to pay his own company.  And that's bad.

 

 

 

 

The Art of Robert 7

CAROLINA VOICES

I DIDN'T SEE HOW I COULD RESIST

 

The direct mail flyer said "12 Pair of Eyeglasses Only $12...free shipping."  I couldn't believe my eyes.  Twelve pair of glasses...a

dollar each.  Sure, I know they are those cheap magnifying glasses,

but still...a dollar a pair was unbelievable.

 

I never have my glasses with me when I want to read something.  I'm always looking for them.  Last year I bought those plastic cords that you hook onto your glasses so they are always hanging around your neck. Then when I would go to read, I had to read through my breakfast oatmeal and other foodstuff.  And the cords broke within a week.  They aren't made like cafeteria trays.

 

This was the answer!  I could put glasses everywhere I roost during the day...back porch, nightstand, bathroom, kitchen, computer, car,

pocket...and I would still have five other pair to misplace. You had

a choice of 5 strengths...I've bought these things before and the lower

strengths don't do that much good.  But I was nervous getting the high

powered ones for fear they would make me cross-eyed.

 

Long ago before eyeglasses became a fashion statement...when I was a teenager...there was a saying that "boys never made passes at girl's who wore glasses."  You could tell which girls really needed glasses however...their dogs were a sure giveaway.  Actually my first love interest in the 8th grade was a girl who wore glasses.  But believe me,

nobody noticed her glasses!  She was built like a brick...well, you get the message.

 

I really hate it that glasses have become such a fashion statement because it means the frames now have designer logos and prices to

match.  When you go to an eyeglass place they've got hundreds to

choose from.  You make your selection only to discover that the price on the board only covers the frames.  The glass part is extra.

 

Last year I needed new prescription glasses.  I went to the doctor to get my eyes checked, but I went to Wal-Mart to order my glasses.

I took my old frames because I like them and they were still good.  So

when I talked to the salesperson, I told her I wanted new prescriptions put into the old frames.

 

She said, "We can do that, but it's still going to cost $180."

 

I said, "Why?"

 

She told me because I had not bought the glasses at Wal-Mart, they

would have to charge me the full price.  But I complained and told her

that I had in fact bought them at Wal-Mart.  Then she said, "Yes, but

it was more than a year ago, so I'm still going to have to charge full

price."

 

Usually at this point, smoke starts coming out of my ears and I start

ranting and raving...making a public spectacle out of myself.  But I

decided to try a different tact.

 

I looked at her very calmly and said, "You know, you are probably going to go the Hell for this."

 

She got so flustered...tried to explain to me that it was management's

decision and not hers.

 

I said, "Well, management is going to Hell, too.  There will be a whole

EyeWear Section in Hell."

 

When she wrote up my order, she said very quietly, "I'm only charging you for the glasses, not the frames."

 

I told her, "O.K.  You aren't going to Hell.  But management still is."

 

My wife laughed when I told her the story...but she was nervous because she claimed I would try to send people to Hell anytime I

didn't get my way.

 

"Damned right, Missy," I said.

 

"Why do people think you have the power to send them to Hell?" she

wanted to know.

 

I told her I had a very persuasive manner...that when I talked about Hell, I pointed to "down there" for emphasis.  Of course everyone isn't a Christian...but at Wal-Mart they are.

CAROLINA VOICES ARTICLE

Oh, Mother! What's Your Kid Doing on the Computer?

 

     Don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying that YOUR kid is doing anything strange on the computer.  But hundreds of kids are.  Probably millions.

 

    
     The computer games are bad enough.  But they should probably be the least of your worries.

 

     You've no doubt heard of MY SPACE; you might even have a page of your own.  Seems like everybody does.  It's one of the new and very

successful "friends" sites.  You put a picture of yourself and a brief profile, then people all over the world can write to you and offer to be your friend.

 

     Alyss wants to be my friend.  I can't imagine why since I posted a picture of Millard Fillmore on my site.  Of course maybe she likes the

way he looks.  I listed my age as 99.  Maybe Alyss is thinking, "It worked for Nicole Smith.  She found a multi-millionaire husband who

was 89 years old.  And found him just in time."  I don't think she met him on MY SPACE.  I think it was in a pole dancing place.

 

     People put pictures on their sites because they can easily now with their cell phones.  And, who knows?  They might be taking pictures of a checkout woman at the grocery store.  Friends are always asking for "unusual pictures" and there's where the trouble begins.  I can't imagine there's anything unusual left to show anymore.  Not that I personally look.  People have told me about the pictures (he says,

lying through his teeth).  I am really nervous about looking at pictures on the internet.  I'm afraid I will see one or more of my loved ones.

 

     I wouldn't believe anything I read or saw on these sites.  People fib

about their age.  They fib about their jobs.  They post fake pictures.

(I am not the only Millard Fillmore on MY SPACE...there are at least

eleven of us.  Will the real Millard Fillmore please stand up?)

 

     You are encouraged to chat with your "friends". I put that word in quotes because I doubt that they are really friends.  They won't come to your funeral or lend you a few bucks when you are short of cash.

And I don't like the word chat.  I wouldn't talk to anybody who came up to me and said, "Let's chat."  (A friend and I used to go to a greasy spoon cafe in Maryland called CHAT AND CHEW.  He loved the name.  There's a place near me in S.C. that's called SQUAT AND GOBBLE.  You don't have to chat there unless you really want to.

You just squat and eat.)

 

     The thing about chatting is that notices come through the computer while you are working on line that say:  "Marie wants to chat."  I'M WORKING!  And Maria knows I'm busy so why does she think I want to be interrupted to chat.

 

     The thing that really gets me is that the people on MY SPACE sound so perfect.  They are all beautiful.  They all have a great sense

of humor.  They all love to cuddle.  They all cry at sad movies.  If they are so ideal, why don't they have friends in their neighborhood? Makes you wonder.

 

     I have a friend who writes to women all over the world.  I keep telling him that anyone west of the Mississippi and across the Atlantic Ocean should be considered geographically undesirables.  But he

persists and he has a dozen Russian women begging him to send them money so they can come to America.   Scary.

 

      He doesn't send them any money.  He doesn't have any.  But he has travelled many, many miles to meet women.  And at today's

gasoline prices, you need to have honest people before you go driving off to Ohio.  He doesn't like chubby women (and that's a shortcoming

on his part)...but the woman from Ohio who sent him a picture and invited him to come visit was surely going to be overweight.  Her picture was a real close-up of her face...she looked thin.  How many

times have you heard, "She has such a pretty face" meaning the rest of her is B-I-G.  He wouldn't listen to me...drove up to see her and was surprised that she was B-I-G.  He said, "But she was a great cook."

Sure, and so is Denny.

 

 

The Whole House Was Shaking

For two days, I felt this continuous vibration.  I'm deaf so I couldn't hear anything but the house was vibrating as if we were living in a trailer on a major earthquake fault line.  Finally I went upstairs to

investigate.  My wife was in her office shredding everything in sight.  She had bought a heavy duty shredder and was systematically eliminating every evidence that we existed.

 

She claimed she was protecting us from identify theft.  But I tried to tell her if she shredded everything, we wouldn't know who we were.  She said in a couple of years we wouldn't know anyway and she wasn't so sure that I even knew now.

 

But I hated to see all the stuff shredded...she was loving the whirring sound of the shredder and she

was stuffing things into it.  She was mesmerized.

 

"Is that our marriage license you have there?" I asked.

 

She said, "Sure.  We don't need it.  We've been married more than 50 years and nobody has ever asked to see it."

 

I said, "Your Father did."

 

"He was a very suspicious man," she said, "And the license is written in German.  Nobody can

read it except Germans.  We might have registered to vote over there."

 

I tried to tell her that she might have to show the marriage license in order go get any of my goodies when I die.  But she said she planned to shred any of my goodies that would fit in the

shredder.  The woman has gone crazy!

 

She did the same thing last year with dozens of photo albums.  she ripped out pictures of our

daughters and gave them to each of the girls.  The rest she was going to throw out.  Fortunately I was able to get them away from her.  I know that in a few years I probably won't be able to remember who the people are (there are some now that I don't recognize!) but the photos are hard evidence that we had a life...and in all the pictures, we were smiling so it looks like a good

life.

 

She says people always smile when they see a camera and it doesn't mean we were having a good time just because we were smiling.  I suppose she's right.  A camera does sort of say, "Cheese".  Although prisoners don't smile when they get their pictures taken.  And my Grandmother never smiled.

 

I love the photo albums and I now have them hidden from The Grim Reaper.  I look at them and it's like a stroll down memory lane.

 

I also have a drawer full of pictures that people have sent me at Christmas time...mainly photos of their kids at various ages.  I never throw any of them away.  I may need to lock them up now that the shredder is in the house.  I think it will be a good mental exercise when I am old and in a nursing home, trying to figure out who's who.  I have a Chinese friend and I can always recognize her daughter, Gloria.  And I have pictures of her from age one until she just got ready to go to Harvard.

 

They sell a lot of shredders at Staples so my wife probably isn't the only one that's into shredding.  My wife shreds all of our junk mail.  She doesn't want anyone to know we buy

our clothes from Haband.

 

I caught her shredding a box of old love letters that I sent her years ago when I was a lonely G.I.

over in Germany.  I couldn't believe my words were being ripped apart.

 

"You're shredding my love letters?" I asked. 

 

"I've already read them," she answered.

 

"I know, but you saved them for more than 50 years, so why are you shredding them now,"

I demanded to know.

 

"I didn't have a shredder before," she said with a shrug.

 

I should have written them on unshreddable paper.

 

"Why don't you just burn them?  That would be more romantic."

 

"Bad for the environment.  Pollution, you know,."

 

I was beginning to take this personally.  "I didn't shred your love letters," I told her.

 

"You probably threw them away," she said.

 

"No.  No.  I recycled them.  I gave them to other G.I.'s who never got any mail of their own.

"I'm surprised that none of them ever wrote to you," I added.

 

I guess I should be more concerned about identity theft but the world has given me so many other things to be fearful about.  I'm afraid I'll start shaking like the shredder.  I'm not really afraid of anything and I don't want to start.

 

"I'm coming in your room next," my wife yells, "and I'm shredding all of those old newspaper

clippings you have from junior high."

 

"Those are MY clippings," I yelled back.  "They were the first things that I wrote for publication and you might need them if someone wants to write my life story later."

 

"You were the editor of the junior high newspaper," she said.  "And that's the only reason they

got published."

 

She's right about that.  But what's the point of being editor if you can't publish your own stuff?