Eating

Today, I am pleased to announce a major breakthrough in your eating pleasure. Cracker Barrel has put Reuben sandwiches on their menu here in Texas.

The second thing I need to tell you is that nobody agrees on the spelling of the sandwich. I looked it up on the internet and found food authorities who spell it both ways: Rueben and Reuben. So don’t count off for spelling today. Would you believe there is a three-page history of the sandwich on the internet? To save you time today I didn’t read it.

But I can’t tell you how excited I am that my favorite of all sandwiches in the food kingdom is now a standard at a restaurant I pass many times a week. I’ve already been there five or six times just to reassure myself that it’s real and not a dream. The last time I went they said they had run out of the ingredients for a Rueben sandwich. I was strangely reassured that it’s a popular menu item now. I’ve been on a quest for the last 30 years to evaluate every Rueben I could get my hands on. I’ve eaten them in New York at the Stage Deli. I’ve eaten them in the German capital of Texas, Fredricksburg. I’ve had one at the soda fountain on the square here in the boondocks. But I have to say the best to be had is at the Cracker Barrel. Yes, a national franchise not some little hole in the wall run by Oma and Opa Schmidt.

I had my first Cracker Barrel Rueben a couple of years ago in Ohio while visiting my kids. It had just the right amount of premium quality corned beef. Loads of sauerkraut and Swiss cheese lapping over the edges and laying on the grill long enough to fry just the tiniest bit of cheese and caramelize the sauerkraut. It spent the right amount of time on the grill and had enough grease to cause you to wipe your hands after every bite. The resulting texture is crispy in the right places and pungent throughout. I could go on but will stop myself. I’m getting drool on the keyboard. You get the picture.

The next time we drove to Ohio I armed myself with a map of every Cracker Barrel in the US. You can get one of those maps at any CB—how handy is that? The first stop on our trip was only 30 miles from home in Greenville, Texas. I couldn’t believe it when the waitress told me that it wasn’t a permanent item on their menu. It was a regional item and a seasonal item that was only offered in our area during certain times of the year. Apparently they think only Yankees eat it on a regular basis. Our second stop was in Arkansas where I still couldn’t find it on the menu. Beaven was a pretty good sport about this and insisted there were enough choices on the menu that it didn’t matter that we stopped at basically the same place as breakfast. In Tennessee we still didn’t have a Rueben as a choice and I could tell Beaven was losing patience. I think we spent the night in Kentucky and I woke up the next morning looking on my Cracker Barrel map for the nearest restaurant. There it was!-- In Bowling Green Kentucky: “Rueben Sandwich Plate - $6.99.” Yes, I had one for breakfast. I told you these are good sandwiches. Walking to the parking lot afterwards Beaven announced that I should not expect him to take me to a Cracker Barrel ever again.

But I had a mission now. I realized I couldn’t drive to Kentucky every time I wanted a good sandwich. Every time I ate at a Cracker Barrel after that trip I mentioned how great they are and how I wished they could become a permanent menu item in Texas. Last spring they were the “special” for a couple of months and I ate there more often than you want to know about.

So you can imagine my glee when I found them on the menu last week as a “new item” like they had invented the Rueben sandwich or something. I can only hope this isn’t their ‘spring special’ and it won’t disappear in a few months and sent back to culinary mothballs.

My kids say I embarrass them in restaurants with my weird and wild demands. I’m not demanding. I’m old. I’ve lived long enough to know what I enjoy eating.

I’m the same way with barbeque. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. And when it’s bad it’s just a travesty to the pallet. But barbeque is so much more than meat. That’s a point a lot of people miss. Barbeque is a cultural thing.

My standards are high not just because I have had the pleasure of eating frequently at Sonny Bryan’s original barbecue stand on Inwood by the medical school—no my own claim to fame is that I have eaten at Sonny’s father’s restaurant. And there are very few people alive today who can make that claim. Most people don’t realize that Sonny had to learn somewhere-- Red Bryan’s on Jefferson Ave in Oak Cliff. I have tasted from the man who taught Sonny how to do it. You can’t get much more purist than that.

Consequently, I have high standards for Barbeque. My three standards are the wood, the smell and the smoke. And I exercise a series of tests before I patronize any place that advertises BBQ.

First, I drive around to the back and look for a woodpile behind the building. Brisket cooked without wood is just a roast with fancy catsup. Then I roll down the window and sniff for smoke. That tells you if the meat is smoked on the premises or imported a distance and reheated. A lot more than you might think try this ruse. It’s easy enough to just pile up some hickory logs for show but you can’t fake the sniff test. You can always taste the difference but not until after you’ve paid your money and taken a bite. The last thing you check for in the smoke test is it’s age. A new restaurant may be smoking meat but the experienced places, the places YOU want to eat at, have been in business long enough to get a layer of smoke and grease over every surface in the building. It looks nasty but this is the proof of the pudding. Never trust a place that looks too clean. Cleanliness means they don’t take their barbecue seriously. Real smokers are too busy chopping wood and meat to mess with a wet rag on the tabletops. They can’t be bothered to dust off the cobwebs on the stuffed animal heads on the wall. You’re looking for a place that has smoke lacquer on the cobwebs. At Sonny’s place on Inwood there is such a layer of grime that women in nice clothes will often choose not to sit down on the benches there lest they soiled their skirts.

We vacationed in Hawaii once years ago. At the end of the week we were up to our eyeballs in pineapple and rice when we drove past a place with a sign that said “Texas Barbeque.” Our mouths watered and our eyes misted with desire. But I cautioned the family that we had to do the “Wood, Smell and Smoke” test first. We drove around back and saw a woodpile. Check. I rolled down my window and sniffed. The hickory aroma met me and I swooned. I told Beaven to park the car but not bother to get out until I performed the litmus test of seeing how grimy the place was. If this place was freshly scrubbed it would prove that they were just a bunch of Hawaiians playing Texan who didn’t know a thing about Texas or Barbecue. But I didn’t have to walk far.

As I reached for the door I saw nothing less than a 3X4 foot poster of Willie Nelson. I didn’t need to check any further. I called back to the car “It’s OK, come on in.”

You can always trust Willie.

Valentines Day

First, I have to report that Beaven scored his all-time high for Valentines gifts. This is a picture of me on my new Vespa motor scooter. I was totally surprised when he showed up with it late yesterday afternoon. We took classes last week and I thought I would have a bunch of funny stories from the class but none came to me. We had a very average class made of standard characters: a couple of yuppie Plano wives, a few mid-life crisis men, one testosterone charged teenager and a couple of retired nerds. You can guess who the retired nerds were. I don't have any motorscooter stories to bring you today but I’m sure they will come as I have a chance to putt-putt around the countryside. Scooters are smaller and tamer than motorcycles that go aroom-varoom. At this age I am all putt-putt in a varoom-varoom world. But it was red and he did bring it with a bunch of red and white balloons. It’s been a long road to get this far. As you will see:
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I discovered a few years ago on Valentines Day that men and women sometimes think differently about the same subject. You can imagine my surprise when the Nobel Prize for Social Insight did not arrive by the next UPS delivery.

This was back when we only visited this house on a rare weekend. It was just our little cabin in the woods back then. I went ahead of Beaven on Thursday to spend time alone in quiet reflection. I was going to get back to the basics of life, to “suck the marrow” from it, as Thoreau put it. I was in the midst of my “American History” phase and was doing a lot of reading up on our founding fathers and how they lived. And, to do that, I spent the entire evening in the dark, using only candles for illumination. This I found to be supremely relaxing, albeit slightly boring, as there are limited things to do when one lives the supremely simple life. About the only thing to do by candlelight is listen to music.

I tried to cook. And, while it is possible, and I did manage to actually produce something to eat, I found it dangerous. Ever try to look around inside your kitchen cabinets for the cinnamon using a candle? It’s a good thing I have short hair or I would have set myself on fire easily.

I finally settled on writing my brother a letter. I ended up with about eight pages on the glories of my simple evening. How I felt in touch with old Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin. There was a steady rain that evening and I could savor each lightning bolt and thunder roll. I was able to note with clarity each sound of our dark house and how loud the refrigerator motor is. The senses become so much more, well…sensitive, in the dark.

I was able to understand life two hundred years ago a little better. It takes a good number of candles to function in the dark, at least four dinner candles to read or write. I was constantly in fear of catching things on fire. And, of course, there was candle wax everywhere.

I got a feel for how much differently they must have thought back then. Today we just regurgitate words on a screen knowing we have a backspace and spell check and we can always go back and tidy things up a bit in the process of making sense. Two hundred years ago they didn’t even have erasers on pencils. I’m not even sure they had pencils. When they dipped their pen in the ink bottle and wrote, their thought process had to be complete and they had to know exactly what they wanted to say. There was no chance for editing the Declaration of Independence once he started writing. Actually, I think he did do a bit of editing but only about 2 times. How many great writers today can say that? It amazed me to think how deliberate and thought out they had to be. The majority of the action took place inside their minds. Today, it’s out of our mouths or on the screen. We check how it sounds or looks and then edit ourselves. Maybe life is more fluid now.

I ended up reading The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin that evening and with renewed clarity for what his daily life was like. The man wasn’t just outside flying a kite because he was curious, he was hoping to find Thomas Edison and discuss the Hoover Dam project.

It was an insightful and relaxing evening. The following night was Valentines Day. When Beaven joined me after work, I recommended this change of pace to him. “You mean sit around in the dark? What for?” He had just received a new book on Pond Management, a book that he had waited weeks for. He wanted to read his book and I wanted to pretend I was living in 1776. We compromised. Yes, we sat around the house that evening without electrical lighting, but instead of reading, we watched TV because one of us claimed that he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

My Valentines Day gift that year was not necessarily sitting around the house by candlelight. My gift was that he put down the book on Pond Management and didn’t argue too much. We had finally learned to pick our battles wisely. He knows to give me my candles for one evening without a fuss. I know to never try it again.

Waving

Lately I’ve been passing the Statue of Liberty when I drive into town. She always waves at me. I finally waved back the other day and it was interesting how much better I felt afterwards. Today when I passed Uncle Sam was with her. This was too good to pass up so I pulled over to talk to them.

They’re out there advertising the Liberty Tax Service tucked in the shopping center parking lot. I can expect to see them through April. When I asked Lady Liberty, aka Karen, where she found a job like that she told me she saw it in the newspaper advertising for “Wavers.” What does a waver do? Waves. That’s all.

But the job is more finely tuned that that. Liberty said most new hires have to watch a training video. A training video? How complicated can waving be? She didn’t have to watch it herself since she’s one of the “older” wavers. But I’m assuming that means the video explains the proper way to wave, and a few more rules. And one of the big rules is “Don’t flip anybody off” even though Lady Liberty herself gets the bird occasionally during the day. And also gets the occasional illicit offer. How could anyone proposition the State of Liberty for crying out loud? I guess they are making a political statement. It’s a free country, after all, and the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of that. “Give me your tired, your poor, your folks who want to shoot me the finger…”

By this time I was waving at cars myself. They work in rotating four-hour shifts. Karen wears dark glasses when the glare is bright so I guess historical accuracy isn’t that big a requirement. But she has a gorgeous green velour gown that makes her look remarkably like the real statue except that when it gets cold she wears layers of thermal clothing underneath. She took off one of her gloves and took my hand to show how cold her hands get even inside the gloves. Other than her green liberty gown and the green foam liberty crown on her head she doesn’t have any special equipment. However she does wear earpieces to listen to music while she’s waving. I should have asked her what she was listening to—John Phillips Sousa, maybe. A truck rolls by and blows his horn. What a rush.

I had just seen Chronicles of Narnia and come away from the movie wanting to be just like the mean old witch because she had the coolest costumes in the whole show. I think I’m into costumes now. Can you imagine getting to dress up in a green velour gown with a green foam crown and get to pretend you’re the Statue of Liberty all day and wave at folks? I was just blown away at the idea.

About 20 feet away stood Uncle Sam whose real name is Rowdy. I didn’t ask their last names. Some details would just complicate matters. Karen said he was back on this job for his second year. The pay is little more than minimum wage but they both told me it was the best job they had ever had. Karen is in nursing school and the 4-hour shift fits right into her schedule. Rowdy doesn’t need the money he says; he just enjoys the job.

And I have to admit it was the most fun I’ve had in a while. It was such an innocent gesture—waving at people. And not one of those wimpy ones the Queen does. They showed me the proper technique. All arm, up and out with a full sweep of motion with your eyes on the driver of the car all the time. Most people waved back at me when I waved at them. I couldn’t get over what a great feeling it gave me.

The boss is really nice, they said. She was even nice the day she fired one of the Liberties when she caught her sitting in her car reading the paper. This job calls for non-stop waving. I asked if their arms get tired. They both agreed and gave me some tips. I noticed that they rotate which arm they use. Sometimes they even use both at once. There is definitely a technique to this work. Truck drivers get the blow your horn signal. When I got the horn back after my signal it was a real rush.

Rowdy once started enjoying himself so much he decided to stand on top of his car by the side of the road to wave. Wouldn’t you know it but the OSHA people happen to be driving by and stopped him. I guess our government has a rule against standing on your car waving at people. Or maybe doing it for money.

It turns out this is a nationwide chain of tax preparers. I met the local owner and her marketing director. The characters are what you call “Guerrilla Marketing” which seems like a pretty strong word for folks who just wave at people.

They keep 2 sets of the costumes back in the office. I wanted to check out the costumes up close because you’re always so disappointed when you see stage stuff up close and personal. But I can testify that Lady Liberty’s gown and crown are kept in pristine condition. They’re washable and the tax ladies take real good care of them.

All of this was a little more than I wanted to know when I thought about it later. It was enough to know that the people behind the wave are happy and plainly welcoming in nature. And it got me to thinking about waving at people.

Out here in the country folks wave at each other when we pass on the road. It’s a custom that is easy to get used to. When we take our afternoon walk everybody waves as they pass us. It’s not just being friendly it also announces our presence on the road—we being the easy target and the car acknowledging that they see us and will try not to run over us. These waves take being friendly to the level of safety.

I remember the week immediately after 9/11/2001 when I visited the Vietnamese cleaners. That was a mournful week everyone shared and this man felt it more than others. He had a background that included eight years as a political prison with a long journey to the US in one of the small boats that brought people here. He told me he was part of a group who were waving a huge American flag at the street corner by his business. They went out every night for a week or so from 6 to 8pm and just waved the flag.

We used to pass a man on the state highway going to see Beaven’s Daddy in Mt Pleasant. The guy lived by the side of the road and spent a lot of his time on his front porch waving at people driving by. He became such a regular fixture that if he wasn’t there when we passed we noticed it.

There is something special about a wave. It’s one of the most selfless acts you can offer. It asks nothing in return, unless you count inviting folks to try out the Liberty Tax Service. And it gives the most amazing feeling of being connected to others.

Most Baby Boomers like myself hold in the back of their minds a fall-back job as a Greeter at Wal-Mart in case the pension doesn’t stretch far enough or maybe they worked at Enron. Me, I’m gonna be a waver.

The Wisdom That Comes With Time

Forgive me for being a little late with my post today. I just came in from the most fascinating conversation with the Statue of Liberty. I'm going out later today to take her picture and I'll tell you all about it next week. In the meantime, here's this week's words of wisdom:

Somebody told me I was smart the other day. I told them that I’m not smart. I’m old. I don’t think intelligence has much to do with it as much as just hanging around long enough and paying attention.

As my mother-in-law used to say, “It takes a lot of living to live a little life.” It used to bug the hell out of us whenever she said this (mostly because it was in the middle of some big old honking lecture) but now I know how true it is. Much wisdom comes from very ordinary places; it’s usually the result of sheer experience.

Here’s some things you may not have thought of that I offer today as a result of my own experience:

Alway keep Dental floss around.
It's the most underrated and versatile threads ever. There’s no limit to the things it can do. I put up a birdfeeder with it yesterday. You can use it to sew buttons on in an emergency when you travel. Staples can also be used to re-sew a hem. Scotchtape may work in a pinch but staples are better.

Never buy a new iron skillet.
The old ones are the best. You may have to wait for someone to die to get your own but, when Aunt Myrtle goes, be the first in line to get hers. Never wash one with soap. Never let it sit in the sink full of water. Just scrub off anything sticky, rinse them out and dry. Never, never, never in any circumstance put one in the dishwasher.

Always have a place to dump your clutter.
The majority of what you do to get your house looking clean for unexpected company is just getting rid of clutter. Closets aren’t the only place to get rid of clutter. You can put stuff inside the washer and dryer, the trunk of your car, anywhere in the garage. Get an Emergency Dump Box to throw stuff in when company is on the way: magazines, screwdrivers, miscellaneous car parts sitting on the kitchen table. An even better solution is a Junk Room where you obviously would have a lot more room but you have to make sure company never notices the room and wants to check inside. Try blocking the door with a cedar chest if necessary.

Learn to cook at least one thing well.
Make sure it uses only ingredients that you can keep on hand in the cupboard or freezer.

Here’s a recipe for fool-proof, easy and impressive Cinnamon Rolls for company:
Melt a stick of butter. Add 3/4 cup of brown sugar and a teasp of cinnamon and half a cup of chopped pecans. Spray a pan with Pam. Add a dozen or so frozen yeast rolls, leaving plenty of room for the rolls to rise and expand. Cover with plastic wrap.Leave them out on the counter overnight. The next morning cook them at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. Turn the pan upside down over a serving plate and the cinnamon syrup will cover everything.

Breast Feed your children.
Keep track of how much money you would have spent during the time if you had bottle-fed your baby. You owe yourself this much money. Buy something of that value later when the kid reaches 18. Remember to factor in 18 years of interest on your investment. Give yourself the best interest rate available while the kid was growing up. I got a new kitchen table this way.

Have a greeting card drawer.
Buy greeting cards whenever you see good ones; don’t wait until you need one.

Send your kids to out of state schools.

They will learn to take care of themselves or find somebody else to take care of them. Be prepared, however, for them to MARRY this person and go live in yet another state. This may be good, maybe not.

“If you’ve lost something, clean house.”
This quote comes from my step-mother who raised me and taught me more than I will ever realize. I lost my engagement ring twice- seriously lost-- the kind of lost that has you cutting open the dust bag of the vacuum cleaner. Both times I found it later when I was cleaning house. I’m not to going to tell you how long it took to reach the house cleaning stage.

"As you travel on through life, brother, whatever be your goal, keep your eye upon the donut and not upon the hole."

That one comes from my mother. It was a border written around the ceiling of the Mayflower Coffee Shop on Elm St in Dallas in the mid-fifties. We would go there after a trip to the movies and mother invariably read out the quote to me. Mother died when I was 14. I spent a lot of time missing her and being angry that she died when I was so young. Finally, one day I remembered her insistence on reading this to me so many times. Maybe she was trying to tell me something. I decided to be grateful for the gifts I received from her instead of angry at my loss. It made all the difference in the world.

See you next week.