Autumn in Paris, 2002

While you are reading this, we should be in Florence, Italy as the third part of our Trifecta of Travel. Last week I wrote about a trip we took to London in the spring of 2002. The following autumn we went to Paris with a few days in London at the start of the trip to see some of the things we missed the first time or repeat our favorites.

One of the first things we did was go to the British Museum. I had no idea how many famous pieces from history and art were here; things I’ve seen in pictures all my life and never thought much more about. Of course, they were all stolen from another civilization and that kind of grated on me. Most of the stuff in this museum was “discovered and claimed” from Egypt, Greece, Turkey and other places that the early British Empire felt they could supervise or whatever you want to call stealing. I reconcile myself with the excuse that they have been protected all these years in a safer environment than the host country could have provided. But none of this stuff was “purchased” or originated in England.
If I had to single out my favorite it would be the Rosetta Stone. It was discovered in Egypt around 1800. This is the tool that unlocked communication to understand the Egyptian hieroglyphics. It has the same message in three different languages: the discoverers understood two and knew this would help them learn the third. Scientists were able to take the royal decree from 196 B.C. and develop the ability to read Egyptian hieroglyphics. Beaven had never heard of it before but once he understood, it became his favorite, too.
One of the concepts this trip helped me solidify was the idea that communication and invention are the two greatest tools a civilization can have. You don’t have any kind of progress without both of these working hand in hand. You can have an invention but it doesn’t go anywhere without communication. And civilization goes nowhere without invention.
We went to hear the Brandenburg Concertos at St. Martin in the Fields Church. Whenever I’m in a new city I like to pick out my temporary “home church” and SMIF is mine in London. I went to Sunday worship there in April. Consequently, I am able to truthfully say that I have sung with the Choir of St Martin In the Fields. Sure, I wasn’t in the choir loft or wore a robe, but I sang while they sang. Doesn’t that count? But, even though the church is well known for their outstanding acoustics, choir and organ (and sell their CD’s in the basement) this is a real church with a real congregation and a real ministry . They do a lot of work with the homeless.
All the churches have basements except they call them crypts. And a lot of people are buried in their crypts--you can be standing in line in the coffee shop and notice you are standing on top of a stone with the engraving of something like “Edwin Martin, 1755-1814” They’ve got people buried in buildings all over this country. I would find out that Paris has a problem with dog poop and you have to be careful of where you step. But in England, it’s dead people.

In exchange for the artsy fartsy stuff I had to go with Beaven to visit the Tower Bridge. I never really paid attention to it until we actually got there and I realized it’s one of the icons you associate with London. It was built around the same time as the Brooklyn Bridge so it used the same construction methods. They had a really neat tour of the tower that appealed to Beaven’s engineering soul. We got to climb all through the innards, and see pumps and pistons and motors and all sorts of metal things. The real highlight of the tour for me came when we realized we had fallen into the line to meet and greet none other than Bob the Builder. Don’t ask me why he was there that day; it was some kind of special appearance. All I knew was that my granddaughter would bust a gut to think her Granny knows Bob the Builder. We stood in line for almost an hour to get our picture taken with him. When we got home and showed her the picture of us with Bob she wasn’t impressed in the slightest.

I found these things to be absolutely true about the English people: They really ARE incredibly polite and they do love their lines. We sat across a couple of women in a restaurant once who couldn’t get their food. They kept waiting and waiting for their order. We ordered, got ours, ate and were ready to leave and they still didn’t have their order. And as we left, they were saying for the fifth time “We’ll just give them five more minutes.” I heard more apologies for bumping into or otherwise invading my space than I’ve heard in my entire lifetime here in the US. And the other thing about them is their obsession with ques, or lining up for things. They absolutely love to line up for things. And woe be unto anyone who tries to break in line. Beaven and I were standing at a bus stop in Cambridge. We were the only people at the stop. An elderly couple came up to settle in for their own wait for the bus and, I swear to God, the lady asked me “Are we a que?” I got the impression she was making sure we both understood that she was behind me in whatever line might form.

I guess if you hang around enough places, eventually you will see everything. We ate at Wagamama Noodle Parlor, one of those trendy, yuppie-type Oriental restaurants that has communal seating. This was the kind of place that automatically gives you chop sticks and you have to beg for a fork. I loved the place. Beaven hated it. But what this kind of seating did was make one big family of us all, privy to individual conversations of all sorts. The couple of women across from us were talking just loud enough that I could hear them if I really tried but could tune them out if I wanted also. I could hear bits and pieces, enough to hear that somebody had brought their parents to meet her and her boyfriend because “we’re just about the only normal people they know.” But soon after this comment I sensed a commotion and they called the waitress over. In a very forceful but dignified voice she proclaimed: “I ordered a vegetarian dish and if I’m not mistaken that is a SHRIMP here in this bowl!!” I thought the lady was going to have a cow. Even after the waitress took the bowl away and promised to rectify the situation she kept going on and on. I started to wonder if she might barf or something. She kept moaning, “I ate it. I ate it” and “I’ve been a vegetarian for 16 years.” Then “Maybe just that one bite won’t hurt me.” I thought of engaging Beaven in a loud conversation about things like deer hunting just to make things livelier. I even thought of standing up and screaming, “Get a life, lady!” but knew this might cause an international incident and I had left my passport back in the room.
We then went through the Chunnel under the English Channel and started our organized tour of Paris. This was our second ride on what I call the biggest non-event you can witness but Beaven loves the trains.

The first day in Paris we had quite an orientation to the Paris Metro system. Our tour group, all 22 of us, gathered at the station for a lesson in how to use the system. Then heard a long announcement on the PA system in French. Our guide told us there was a sort of a strike that day which meant that the service had been severely curtailed. The first train that came was so crowded you couldn’t get on. By the time the next one came our guide told us we would have to get on it, no matter what. Which we did. I’ve never been on anything that crowded in my life. We didn’t worry about pickpockets. Nobody could move their arms.

We survived our first strike in Paris. There would be one on our last day by the garbage collectors. I think going on strikes is a hobby of sorts in Paris.

We proceeded to spend a week of visiting about a billion churches and museums—far more than the couple of things I wanted to see. When you see three once-in-a-lifetime things in one afternoon they all kind of blend together. Sainte-Chapelle stood out for the beautiful windows, which were not nearly as dramatic as they could have been because it was a really cloudy and rainy day. They had a really cool circular staircase. I loved that part. I enjoyed the flying buttresses at Notre Dame but have to be honest and say I can’t remember much more than the walk around it outside. I know we saw lots of stuff inside, I just can’t remember it all. The Cluny Museum I will always remember but only because it was the most boring place I’ve ever been. I guess I shouldn’t admit that. Beaven, on the other hand, loved this place. It had a bunch of really old, medieval stuff. Maybe I was just tired. One thing I learned on this trip was what a low threshold I have for getting bored when I’m tired.

In the middle of this day we had lunch at a tiny restaurant that our group of 22 filled completely. The owner did all the cooking and waiting on tables himself. It made for a really intimate and homey atmosphere. And the food was delicious.

My favorite museum of the week was the Orsay where the majority of the Impressionists are displayed. I just like the looks of this art better; things are brighter and ‘cheerier.’ Of course we saw the Louvre and Mona Lisa. What struck me at the Louvre was seeing Whistler’s Mother in one of the rooms. You never think you’re going to see a classic American painting at the Louvre.

We stayed in the Rue Cler area of Paris, a very residential part of town. The one-lane streets were all cobblestone. Our hotel was as small as they come. The shops are tiny and very specific. One store sold only cheese, one only meat, one fish, chocolate, bread, etc. There was even a store devoted solely to olive oil. It was a small store, how many kinds of olive oil can there be? I went to the chocolate store and was a little worried at first when the shop lady didn’t speak English. Then I realized “All women speak Chocolate,” and we got along famously.

One of the things I was very aware of in visiting these two cities was that London was bombed during the war and Paris wasn’t. I’m not sure how many great buildings London lost but Paris lost none. A huge chunk of St Paul’s Cathedral in London was blown up and rebuilt. Consequently, there are more “new” buildings in London. “New” would mean built in the 50’s and 60’s after recovering from the war. Paris doesn’t have any new buildings, and here “new” means anything built since the turn of the century. There’s one exception: there is a single skyscraper at the edge of the city. Almost as soon as they had built the Montparnasse Tower they regretted what it did to the city’s skyline and passed a law against anything over six floors within Paris. Consequently, the Paris skyline showcases the great churches and monuments since they are the only things over six stories

Beaven loves trains. I think I may have already mentioned that. He loves the ability to be able to get somewhere on his own. He loves moving around. I particularly enjoyed being up close and personal with the average citizen of the city we were in. We traveled at all times of the day including the rush hours when people were just trying to get to work. I loved watching them read their morning paper or novels. I loved the variety of people I saw: just about every country on the planet.

We never attended a concert while we were in Paris but that didn’t mean we lacked for entertainment. Paris’ best entertainment is found in the metro stations. I’ve heard that musicians have to audition for the right to play in the hallways and on the trains. The underground passageways provide such great acoustics that you would be walking through the connecting passageway and hear them in advance so you could be ready to toss them a coin if you enjoyed them. On the train they might jump on at a stop, play their guts out and jump off at the next stop. We heard several different guitars, saxophones and accordions. But there were also a Marimba band, an electronic synthesizer that sounded like a grand piano and a three-piece jazz band complete with a string bass. And the fascinating thing about the three-piece jazz combo is that they were ON our train. When you think of how much space this must have taken up and how much is available on a train, you can see how interesting a sight this was. I heard a lot of guys singing Beatles’ songs and more than one saxophone playing “Midnight in Moscow”…. in Paris.

We were in a different world for these two weeks. We became temporary citizens of Europe whether we wanted to or not. There were NO magazines or newspapers from the US. Especially in Paris it was hard to even find anything written in English so anything from Britain was received with gratitude. We read the British newspapers and watched TV in our room. In Paris there was only two channels that had programming in English: CNN and BBC. Both of these had a very limited array of stories they covered. There were only about three stories they reported and they did it in a loop so the same stories were reported over and over and over. We heard about the Washington DC sniper, the hostages in Moscow and the vote on enlarging the European Union. Enlarging the EU? I’ll bet this was stuck on page three of the Dallas papers. I tried to look it up in the Dallas Morning News when we got home. I couldn’t find any coverage on this at all. It was a HUGE deal over there. They were voting to enlarge from 10 to 25 countries, I think, and waiting for the key Irish vote.

I need to mention the facilities. There are a lot of pay toilets in Europe. I paid everything from 20 pence at an automated turnstile in London’s Victoria Station to a whole Euro at one of the Paris Museums. At one (I think it was a 40 cent one), I was given a ticket with a number on it like I was going to the theatre or something. At Sacre Coeur the charge was 41 cents and I couldn’t help wonder why the odd amount. They also had a kind of public urinal for the men that only cost 30 cents. The guys deposited their coins and walked behind a waist high wall to do their business – both men and women used the same area so I could see this set up. But the women got their very own stall with a door.

The way you flush the toilet was also different. When we moved into our hotel room in Paris I saw this square of white plastic mounted against the wall behind the toilet. I couldn’t figure out what it was and set to exploring it. Was it a shelf, a door, did it hold something inside? I tapped and pushed and pulled felt all around it. Suddenly the toilet flushed.

On our last day there I was checking my e-mail at a kiosk in London’s Easy Access. Out of the blue a guy started screaming in French and I could hear people trying to drag him out of the building. Everyone stood up at once to watch. I couldn’t understand anything he said but the tone of voice was a plaintive wail. He could have been a pickpocket that got caught. He could have been a distraction for other pickpockets. He could have been having a really bad day. It freaked me out and I was ready to come home.

One other unusual thing on our last day was the gale winds that blew into London. It killed five people (by falling trees). I can honestly say I have never been in weather like that. The wind literally blew me across the sidewalk, thankfully away from the street. When we got back home the TV said the gales reached 95 mph. I saw one family holding their five year old between them while the mother held a baby in her arms. The five year old was in tears from fear.

Europe was getting weird and I was ready to come home.

Jet lag is real and it’s sneaky. On our first morning in London we slept until 11 and took the train to Cambridge. Then we missed the last scheduled bus back to the train station for the return trip because our concept of time was so distorted; we thought it was lunchtime. We had no idea what time it was. We finally started setting the alarm to wake up. It was just the opposite once we got home. Our first day home we woke at 4 am just as alert and awake as though it was mid-day. We had chili for breakfast that day. It took a whole week to re-set our body clocks.

SPECIAL NOTE: Attention fans! Elizabeth here. Stay tuned next week for a special column written by yours truly. But don't worry - Mom will be back and ready to dish about her Italy trip the week after next.

Spring in London, 2002

If you’re reading this it means that Elizabeth figured out how to post to my blog, which is no surprise since their generation is so vastly more technically competent than mine. I was on a youth retreat last weekend and learned a lot about Ipods but that’s not what you’re here for today. I want to tell you about traveling in Europe. Right now we’re in Boston on our way to London and eventually to Italy where we will celebrate Easter. How cool is that?

The first time we visited London was 2002. We had never been outside the country before unless you count our honeymoon in Mexico City in 1969. We weren’t exactly paying attention on that trip. I suspect we could have gone to Grand Prairie, Texas for our honeymoon and wouldn’t have noticed any difference.
The first thing we noticed about flying to Europe is how long it takes to get there. We were in the air long enough to watch two movies and read half a book. We had studied how to books on travel. Beaven had researched all the smart things to do to avoid having his pocket picked. He had money belts and hidden pockets with zippers. He was prepared. But when we checked in at the hotel he couldn’t find his wallet. He knew he had it in the cab because he had paid the driver out of it. We both went out to the street and there it was lying on the sidewalk. After all his preparation he lost his wallet all by himself right off the bat, without help from anyone. What an overachiever he is.
I guess the next startling discovery was to see in person how old the European countries are. There are many buildings in London built in the 1700 and still in use, and not as historical monuments, either. The floor of our room was carpeted but you could hear the wooden floor creak underneath the carpet. The floor was buckled in places, giving it a slope at times. The plumbing had been added after the building was built and there was cabinetry built around the pipes on the wall. There had been a fireplace in the room, now covered up. The building was three or four floors with no elevator. Fortunately, we were only on the second floor. The bathroom was the most remarkable. Most hotels are converted old houses and bathrooms had to be added to each room-- so, in the give and take of life, they had to be necessarily as small as they could be in order to still have room for a bed. This bathroom saved room by having the smallest shower I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how Beaven did it. He dropped the soap once and had to open the door in order to bend down to pick it up. The toilet was angled off in the corner between the sink and shower.
The stairs in this hotel were delightful. I love stairs, the older the better. Don’t get me started on stairs. Anyway, these stairs were perfect: my size, smallish and with low handrails. And they gave the most delicious creak when you walked. Everything in London creaked: the wood is so old that it is worn loose and rubs against itself. Musical stairs. Don’t get me started on creaking noises, either. More about creaking floors when I describe Windsor Castle.
The first thing I liked about London was the law they have that anyone who rents out a room has to offer breakfast. So all I had to do in the morning was dress and go downstairs. The waitress would bring me coffee and everything else. They had really good toast in those cute little toast racks you see in the movies. The toast doesn’t stay hot but it does stay crisp that way. I understood for the first time what I had heard about the food in England. Their “cuisine” is not what we call tasty. In fact, people and books had all said that the best food in London is “Ethnic”, meaning anything not from there.

Beaven has fairly earned the title in our family of “Mister Transportation.” Any time we travel he wants to ride every available form of transportation. On our first morning, he got us tube, bus and train passes. Then, at Trafalgar Square we found an Internet Café called Easy Access. They had branches all over London and for a pound you could get about an hour’s worth of Internet use. This turned out to be the biggest bargain of the whole trip. We can’t figure out how they make any money for this price, except that they’re open 24 hours a day and were always full. Once we had our transportation and cyber life taken care of, we were ready to experience London.

Trafalgar Square is kind of the town square. It’s a solid block of plaza with a huge statue in the middle of Lord Nelson. The guide told us during the week that all you had to do to get a statue of yourself erected in England was “beat the French” and the worse you beat them, the bigger your statue. Lord Nelson beat the French in a big way and I think his is the tallest statue. I think it was a victory at sea and I think he may have died in the battle; he fought the French a bunch of times—once he lost an arm, once an eye and finally, his life. I had to wonder what the French had done to deserve this but I was scared to ask At any rate, Lord Nelson’s statue is huge and it’s surrounded by four gigantic lions so big that children climb on their paws.
The plaza hosts 600 pigeons on a normal day. The mayor of London has decided that this is a health hazard. He is quoted as referring to pigeons as “flying rats.” The city recently passed a law against feeding the pigeons. There were still 600 pigeons in the plaza, along with what else you would expect to have with 600 pigeons. And there was also a woman sitting beside the “Do Not Feed the Pigeons” sign holding a sack of birdseed. She had pigeons perched on her head, shoulders and arms. I took her picture.

I wanted to attend worship at St. Martin in the Fields. The church got this name because when it was built it was so far on the outskirts of town that it was literally “in the fields.” I’ve heard their choir all my life and loved their soft gentle sound. This was going to be my “church” while in London. About the only differences I noticed was the Church of England Eucharist with going to the rail for tasteless wafers and a sip of real wine. But the biggest difference that jumped out at me was the concept of a state supported church. The congregation at St. Martins in the Fields is very small, maybe 200 (said the preacher) but with tourists there, the sanctuary was full and held about 500 worshippers. The sermon was geared to their annual stewardship drive and the preacher pointed out that, while the church does get money from the government, it is still appropriate for the congregation to kick in their fair share. What a foreign concept to me. Later, at St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, this was echoed by the fact that there are very small “congregations”, if any at all, in London. Mostly because no one lives in London. Like other big business cities, everyone lives elsewhere and commutes. The big historical churches get all their money from the state.
I visited the gift shop in the basement (they’re called crypts here) and bought a tape of the choir. The crypt was a reminder of the building’s age. I think it was built in the 1700’s. Mostly stone. The pews were out of that old, old wood that creaks and moves when you sit. I feel like the pew is wrapping its arms around me.

For dinner we went to Wagamama Noodle Parlor. We had heard the best food in England was ethnic. And it’s true. We went all the way to London to eat Chinese food. The food was great and I had a lesson on Beaven’s comfort level. Let’s just be gracious and say that it is not the same as mine and that he hates crowded communal tables in noisy restaurants. We also had a glimpse of the notorious politeness of the British. The couple sitting next to us had ordered when we got there. Since we were sitting so close we noticed they had trouble getting their order. They brought one lady’s food but not the other. We ordered and got our food. The other lady told the waiter very politely that she hadn’t gotten her food. The waiter apologized all over the place. We ate and, after three times of asking the waiter for her food without success, she was still saying “Let’s just give them five more minutes.” When we left she was still sitting without food and saying she would give them another five minutes.
We went to see Phantom of the Opera that night and got the worst seats in the house. I didn’t think it was possible to get seats this bad. We were the next to the last row of the highest balcony—we could have touched the ceiling. If I sat in my chair normally I literally could not see the stage. In order to see the stage at all I had to lean forward. In order to see actors I had to lean forward and bend my body to the left and tilt my head. Watch the cheap seats in London.

At 3 p.m. Sunday the tour started. There were 20 of us, including the guide. The orientation reinforced our hopes for the trip and we felt that it was a good fit for our travel style. We could participate in as much or as little as we wanted. We would be using public transportation and the guide knew what he was talking about. We heard a lot of good stories from him, too.

We walked to Buckingham Palace and Martin, our Welsh guide, told us the story of the guy who broke into the palace and made it all the way to the Queen’s bedroom. We heard about it here years ago. But the things the folks in the U.S. didn’t pay much attention to was how and why he did it and whatever happened to the guy. He did it on a bet that he could “kiss the Queen” because “somebody needed to”. And he just climbed over the wall and walked into the palace and by some miracle out of all the hundreds of rooms, managed to walk into hers. Supposedly he said, “Give us a little kiss.” Other footnotes we never heard in the USA are that she sleeps with a black eye mask and without Prince Phillip. The poor sap served time in jail briefly but they had to let him go because, strangely enough, he had not broken any laws. He didn’t “break--.” he just “entered” and that’s not against any law in Britain. He eventually died of alcoholism. Everybody in the pubs wanted to hear his story and would buy him a drink.

We started out the morning with a group walking tour that ended with a little time to shop. This was when I managed to get lost and separated from the group on almost my first opportunity. Getting lost is no big deal with me, I do it all the time and am very accomplished at it, meaning it doesn’t usually fill me with panic. But this time we were on such a tight time schedule I did panic. We all separated to look around a bit at the shopping opportunities. Even Beaven and I split up, with me going into Fortnam and Masons while he went somewhere else. This is supposedly where the Queen buys her groceries. In case you’re getting a picture of the Queen pushing a cart around and putting things in it, forget it. It’s not that kind of store. But they do sell a lot of cool stuff. I got lost in the store and went out the wrong door and lost my bearings. This could have happened to anyone. Beaven eventually found me.

When we visited Westminster Abbey it was exactly a week after the Queen Mother’s death and the funeral had been at the Abbey. There were still flowers on the lawn. The funeral bouquet from her coffin had been placed on the grave of the Unknown Soldier.

This grave is inside the church. They all were. I’m not used to burying people inside buildings. I wouldn’t want anybody buried inside my house. Nor my church, either, for that matter and the flowers were still there and were still fairly fresh. I know because I leaned way down and got up eyeball to petal to make sure they weren’t fake. But they looked very real to me; I finally found a slightly brown edge to one petal that told me I was looking at a real flower.

We visited the British Library and saw the Magna Carta. The writing was so small I couldn’t read it. I wondered if they were rationing paper or something.

We visited Windsor Castle. We had to take a train out of town to get there. Yes, the Queen lives in the suburbs. It’s kind of built on this huge hill and everything around it is at the bottom of the hill. It’s surrounded by this quaint little village desperately trying, but ultimately failing, to keep the franchises at bay. There was a McDonalds and a Hagen Daz among the shops. We took a tour of the castle but wisely decided to forego the side trip to St George’s Chapel inside. Good thing, the line on a normal day took an hour but today it was even longer because of the recent death of the Queen Mum. St. George’s Chapel is where all the royalty is buried. Inside again, what is it with these people that they bury everybody inside buildings? Are they afraid of the rain? It was a nice visit and I got to hear more creaky floors.
Here’s the deal on floors that creak: There is only one way to get a really creaky floor-- time. Time for the wood to shrink and loosen so it rubs against the next plank. And here’s what proved it to me: about ten years ago there was a huge, devastating fire at Windsor Castle. Part of the building was destroyed and had to be totally rebuilt. They did such an excellent job of restoration that the only way you can tell the old and new sections apart is that the floor doesn’t creak in the rebuilt part. I heard it with my own ears. See, I told you not to get me started on creaky floors.
We went to a Mozart Concert at St Martin in the Fields. I read in one of the guidebooks that this was the church where Richard Burton’s funeral was held. I told Beaven how exciting it was that we might be sitting in the same pew as Elizabeth Taylor sat. His reply was that he doubted they made Elizabeth Taylor sit in the cheap seats. But it didn’t matter which seats we had here since the acoustics were so great and the church sanctuary so small; every seat could hear equally well. And the sound was awesome. .

We took the Chunnel to Paris to depart Europe from Paris, not knowing if we would ever have another chance to visit France. Beaven loves trains so much that I knew I could get him to Paris if I made a train part of the deal. And it worked. The underground train to Paris was definitely a different train that any we had been on. All the announcements were in both French and English. The scenery was like a postcard picture (once you got outside the city): green grass and quaint houses—even some with real thatched roofs. The 20-minute trip under the English Channel was kind of a non-event: dark outside the windows but the lights in side the train made it not noticeable. A very smooth and gentle ride. Once we were up on land again and in the outside world, it was again beautiful countryside but France. We had made it to France.
One thing that surprised us is that there is graffiti near every train station in the world and they all seem to be in a separate language of its own. The same style of writing and symbols in England and in France, as well as the USA. I couldn’t tell any difference at all. It wasn’t either English or French; it was a totally unique language.
We also had minor excitement when one fellow confused tourist walked off and left his bag. It was interesting to watch everyone’s reaction to an abandoned suitcase in a train station. People were talking about it and pointing at it while they backed off from it. Train stations and airports are very different places post-9/11. Then when we went through security in Paris they questioned us extensively because I think we triggered a lot of extra questions: Why were we flying out of Paris when we came to Europe via London? What had we seen in Paris? Why were we leaving without seeing anything? Why come to Paris at all? And, of course, the crowning question asked of Beaven was “Did he pack his bag himself?” I had to resist the urge to shout indignantly that “No, indeed, he did not, I had. How many husbands pack their own bags?” But I knew enough to keep my mouth shut.

Trixie and Truthiness

There’s a couple of things I’d like to discuss with you this week.

I changed my name to Trixie about this time last year and I don’t think it worked. I didn’t do it legally; that is, it didn’t cost me anything but I informed all my friends that hereafter I would be known as Trixie. I signed all my correspondence “Trixie.” I thought of adding a middle name like Belle, Trixie Belle Els. Has a certain ring to it, dontcha think?

As you will remember, this time last year both Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Camilla Parker-Bowles got new names. They made it seem so easy. You just send out a notice that you’re taking a new name and voila! Everybody is now calling you Pope Benedict or Duchess or whatever you ask. Can I get a tiny little “Trixie”? Not on your life.

And I thought the name suited me so well. Kind of spunky, perky, spicy. Full of personality. I thought it fit me. I thought sure that would become my new nickname and friends would be saying, “Oh, come on now, Trixie let’s not be so radical…” or obnoxious or whatever dark trait would come with the new name. I expected to become more forthright or confident. My new alter ego would be able to send dishes back to the kitchen in restaurants. With a name like Trixie I could get out of speeding tickets and get individual attention at Wal-Mart. I expected my clothes to fit better.

I obviously misjudged my own personality. I guess I’ll have to resume the boring name I was born with.

The other thing I need to get clear to readers of this blog is the issue of “truthiness.” I just love this new word. It sounds kind of cute and playful. Let me go on record that you have come to the wrong place if you want the absolute truth from me. No, I am a hearty advocate of truthiness. I revel in it. I bask in it. I do not apologize for my truthiness. I will never claim that anything I write is accurate.

I think I’m the only person in the US who thinks maybe we’re giving James Frye a hard time about his book A Million Little Pieces. I haven’t read the book but I saw the show when Oprah confronted him for presenting bold lies as the truth. This was probably his main problem. You just don’t lie to Oprah. You’re not supposed to lie to America, either-- though, God knows, we should be used to it by now. Our politicians lie to the American people all the time and we keep electing them to office.

His problem was the lies. But, as a writer and teller of tales myself, I know the temptation. In trying to get to the essence of a scene we sometimes have to magnify the picture. When the facts fail us, we exaggerate. To me the details aren’t all that important and I like to keep facts from blurring my story. Facts have a way of getting in the way when you’re trying to make a point. I get confused myself about the facts. So I will make a solemn vow to you today that I will never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

One last word: Beaven and I are about to go on a trip to Europe. I may be able to send stories of our adventures to you by email. When I’m not able to do that I’ve left a few columns about travel with Elizabeth who will be able to post them for me. I can tell you about our past travels. But I don’t want you looking for the absolute truth in those stories. Just the truthiness.

Blue Bologna

Being at home all day with young children can get pretty boring. Life on most days isn’t usually filled with blood-drenched races to the emergency rooms or projectile vomiting. Sometimes kids really do just sit there and play with their toys or watch TV. I wasn’t working outside the house when my girls were young and I could get really bored. This was especially true on Wednesday nights the year they were five and two years old. Beaven was taking a class at college on those nights and there was no adult coming home at the end of the day. I decided I had to find some way to put a little zip into our Wednesday evenings.

One evening, I decided I would make dinner as different as I could possibly make it. We started out by eating underneath the table on the floor. Not really a picnic, more like and upside down dinner. I turned out the lights and lit candles. Because Emily was so young, we ate only finger foods that night. I chopped up fruits, vegetables and anything else I could find, including Bologna.

During our dinner, Elizabeth asked where Bologna came from. I never missed a beat. “Bologna”, I told her very matter of fact “comes from a shaggy animal with blue fur; kind of like Grover on Sesame Street. They’re very friendly animals. And not very big. But big enough to sit on them. As a matter of fact, my grandfather had once had a Bologna herd and he used to let me ride them. They are very gentle animals.” By the time I got this far into the story, I was off and running. And by the time the meal ended, the girls knew all about Bologna ranches and how they have three horns and one eye, and the story of how my grandfather had once rescued me from a bologna stampede.

When Beaven came home that night he went to tuck them in. He heard all about Blue Bolognas. At the end of the story, he asked them if they had believed me. “No, but we had fun telling stories,” was their answer.

I had started a family tradition. The girls and I still have Blue Bologna Dinners. It’s probably time to indoctrinate the grands but the girls and I have such strict standards we’ve been wary that the new generation may mess up our routine. A Blue Bologna Dinner is always finger foods but we always try to include a new food that at least one of us has never eaten. We always eat by candlelight, but, now that the girls are grown, it can be a challenge to sit under the table. One year Elizabeth almost caught her hair on fire leaning over the candle. So, a lot of times we’ll put the food under the table and sit slightly at the edge. But the best part is the stories. Toward the end of the meal, we always tell tall tales—the taller, the better. Our favorite is the saga of “Supercat” who always bears a strange resemblance to whatever cat we own at the time. Supercat, by day, appears very normal but rises in the night to fly through the air (with a cape, of course) swooping down here and there to rescue children from wicked mothers who won’t buy popsicles at the grocery.

The girls have grown and so have their stories. Supercat’s latest adventure included reconfiguring a hard drive when it crashed. But, always, always, the stories. You wouldn’t expect grown women with careers to spend an evening on the floor eating chopped up apples and telling dumb stories. But you might understand if you could hear us laugh. Sometimes even a really dumb tradition can serve a most sophisticated purpose. Start a really dumb tradition now.

Louisiana

Here’s a thousand words or so. I’m still typing out the notes I took and can give you more words and pictures than I have here—if you really want them. Let me know if you do and I’ll send you the long version when I finish.
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It’s hard to type the word “Louisiana.” There’s so many “i’s” and they’re in weird places. I have to put a lot of thought to where the “i” goes. I guess it’s better than having to write about Mississippi but I still secretly wish we had gone to somewhere like Utah for this mission trip where the letters line up more easily.

Still, we had a good time even if it is hard to type the state’s name. The people are delightful and we all fell in love with the Louisiana culture. (Please don’t expect me to use this state’s name very much). They have the most delightful Cajun accent. I could sit and listen to them speak all day. And sometimes it seemed like we did because we talked to one guy about “modular” homes for close to half an hour before we figured out he was saying “modular.”

I can say now from first hand knowledge that this was a disaster and it was horrible. We heard enough stories to know that what we saw on TV was only the tip of the iceberg. One elderly lady told of her sister waiting on the top of her house for a day and a half until she was rescued. The drama of the hurricane increases a notch when you hear it in person from the lady who just cooked your evening meal for you and see the fresh tears in her eyes six months afterwards. Elizabeth Lyman, an expert in traumatized church congregations, told us that Katrina was not a “normal” trauma. Most traumas change only one aspect of your life. You get up the next morning and go to the grocery story and the beauty shop and keep going. But Katrina took the hairdresser and the grocer and the doctor. Your whole environment has changed. Rev. Lyman said that the “secondary trauma” is now hitting six months later. Suicides were up in the last two weeks. They are seeing heart attacks in people with no history of heart problems. And people are very aware that the next hurricane season starts in less than 90 days.

This really happened. It was bad. It will take a long time to heal and rebuild. But I have never been more proud to be a Presbyterian than I was last week. And it wasn’t just the cool shirts we got to wear, though I suspect some of us do this stuff simply for the shirts we get. I could look in the parking lot at the volunteer village and see vans from Michigan, Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina and Missouri, all sporting signs that said “Presbyterian Disaster Relief..” I watched trucks deliver equipment to set up housekeeping for 80 volunteers at a time to come to live and work. The church is planning to be there as long as it takes to get people back into their homes. We continue to build new camps and haven’t even started in New Orleans yet.

The two houses we worked on were across the street from each other. Miss Ellen is 76 years old and volunteers at the school during the day as a Foster Grandparent. She is one of those typical southern women whose hug just enfolds you. She’s lived in her house 36 years. Her house backs up to the bayou and this is the fourth time she been flooded. She woke up in the morning and looked outside, turned to her sister and said she thought they had dodged the bullet once again but her sister told her to come look out the back door where the water was rising. By the time she could collect her purse and car keys the water was so high against the door that she couldn’t open the door. A neighbor had to come and help pull on it from the outside. She described the race to get to the top of the hill before the water got too high to drive through it.

Miss Linda lives across the street with her son, Charles who is 21. They’ve lived there about 25 years which means that this is the only home Charles has ever known. Charles’ father was a Baptist preacher who died about a year ago. They lost all of their pictures of him in the flood.

I’m not sure if what we did is considered “mucking.” By the time we got to the houses we worked on FEMA had brought them a trailer and people were able to come home from wherever they had been staying. They had new roofs. The carpets had all been pulled up and the furniture was in piles or moved out of the house. The toilets and kitchen appliances were gone or disconnected so the house was basically an uninhabitable shell. Our job for the few days we were there was to pull out the old walls and the insulation. Then we sprayed the exposed wall studs with a chemical cocktail of bleach and Tri Sodium Phosphate. I’m kind of proud of that word.-- Tri Sodium Phosphate. It’s actually much easier to type than the name of the state. No one could remember it so I went out to the trash pile and found the empty bottle and wrote the word down. It’s a cleaning chemical of some sort. This blend of cleaners will keep the mold from growing back. After the TSP dried overnight we put in new insulation and sheetrock and mudded the seams. The walls were ready for paint when we left. Just as a team from South Carolina had brought the house to the stage where it was ready for us, we will leave the next step of rebuilding to the PDA team following us. I was able to tell Charles we wouldn’t stop until his house was finished.

We only worked on the houses for 3 days. The first thing we had to do when we got to the state (you know which one) was finish building our own living accommodations. We stayed in Camp #7 in Luling and drove out each morning to Camp #8 in Houma. Eventually our plan was to work on two houses in Houma but we had to commute for a couple of days until we could get water connected at the camp where we were supposed to stay at night. The camp had tents and utilities. Our guys spent one whole day putting the plumbing together. Our team was a lot more relaxed than some of the others we ran across. It’s one thing to share a kitchen with your sister in Christ or any sister for that matter. It’s a very different thing to try to set up cooking facilities with about 40 women you’ve never met who have different ideas on where the sugar should be stored and who should be boss.

I had brought my dancing chicken with me. I always like to take a tension breaker with me when I suspect things might get too heavy. When you pinch her wing she makes the tune of the Chicken Dance (You know: it from weddings receptions and other silly stuff) and lifts her legs while waving her wings. It’s a fairly accurate duplicate of the real Chicken Dance. There’s nothing like a dancing chicken to perk you up when you’re taking things too seriously. Sadly, few people took the bait. Some people take disasters so seriously that a whole flock of dancing chickens wouldn’t have relaxed them. We have to learn to pace ourselves if we’re going to be any use to anyone.

The food was terrific. Everybody wanted to thank us with food. Charles made us a cake in his tiny FEMA trailer which was about the size of the trailer I’ve been camping in. Miss Ellen commissioned a huge batch of red beans and rice from a friend. This was the same friend who visited one day and sang Amazing Grace for us in the true Gospel style. We had Jambalaya, bread pudding, Gumbo, and a Crawfish boil. I don’t think there was a single local dish we didn’t get to sample.

We stayed in interesting quarters. All the Volunteer Villages used the same kind of corrugated plastic tents. I’ve never seen anything like it before. The idea is that you can run ductwork to six tents from a central unit and have heat in the winter and cold in the summer – and corrugated plastic works better for this than canvas. There were also three other huge tents for dining, storage and a kitchen. About the only thing the camps didn’t have was an oven and dishwasher. It’s kind of interesting to look inside a tent and find a refrigerator. Girl Scout camping was never like this.

I have to say that Beaven was a trooper on his first mission trip. He was a good sport about the idea of mosquitoes which would normally unnerve him. He bought himself a mosquito net and slept like a baby except for the night his cot collapsed under him in the middle of the night and the night the heat went berserk. The heat, which was a great idea and worked perfectly, was set at 60 degrees, which is a pretty conservative way to do things. But what they didn’t know was that the thermostat was Celsius, not Fahrenheit. Sixty degrees Celsius is about 140 Fahrenheit. You can understand Beaven’s concern at 2 am that he had prematurely gone to Hell.

We got home late Tuesday night, hot, tired, sore, sunburned and emotionally exhausted only to find a plumbing leak in the hall bathroom that provided us with our own little bayou. We were so tired at this point about the only thing we could do was throw every bath towel we had on the floor and turn the water to the toilet off. After turning the water off Beaven stood up and hit his head full force on the towel cabinet above the toilet. That’s when the emotional baggage of the week fell as he loudly broke the third commandment. Who could blame him?

I have often tried to posit that the term “God Damn It” is actually a sort of prayer of intercession but I can’t get anybody to buy it. May God damn hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes. May God damn humans who can’t get their act together and rescue people faster than three days. May God damn the whole lousy situation.

Maybe God would worry a little more about the shape of our planet if we took better care of it ourselves. Maybe we wouldn’t have a flooded Ninth Ward if we had left the marshlands where God put them. Maybe we wouldn’t have extraordinary hurricanes if we left the temperature of the earth alone and quit heating things up. Maybe we shouldn’t choose to live right on the coast line.

In the end we can’t call upon God to damn anything. We’re stuck with the earth God gave us. We just have to take better care of it and each other.

Mission- Part Two

I just got back from our trip to Louisiana and it was awesome. Since I knew how tired I’d be tonight I wrote the following ahead of time so I can just post it now and go on to sleep in a real bed. I’ll start writing in earnest over the next few days. I will tell you now that the trip was great and we had fun and we’re glad we went. And we’re already planning the next one. Here’s what I wrote before the trip. Tune in next week for stories of what we saw and did.

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We will be working on a brand new work site in Houma, Louisiana. We are the eighth “village” of volunteers the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance has built in the hurricane area. Surprisingly, most of them are in Mississippi. Apparently there’s a lot more red tape to set up a recovery camp in Louisiana. Our camp will be the second one in the state. The other one is in Luling. While the first six teams are already working on drywall, painting and roofing in Mississippi, the teams in Luling and Houma are just now setting up housekeeping.

PDA calls our housing village “the Good Earth.” Gives it a kind of happy, campy name. We will be the first team to actually stay in it. First we have to finish building it. Once we get it habitable we’ll go out into the community of Houma and start helping with the mucking and demolition. Now, I’m not familiar with mucking. Well, I mean, I know what it means, at least, I think I do. I’ve just never actually mucked before. I hear it is nasty and smelly work.

What we expect to face in Louisiana will be minor in comparison to some of the trips I’ve been on to Guatemala. The beds won’t be what we’re used to at home. We’re not sure if we’ll have electricity. But, actually, we’re the people who are scheduled to install the electrical wiring so that’s kind of in our control.

I said before that mission is not “taking Christianity to the savages” anymore. Mission is now standing alongside others in need and helping them or just being with them. Just “being” with someone is a hard thing for us to do in our action oriented culture. It took me quite a while to understand this concept. It doesn’t seem like much of a contribution. But sometimes it’s all we have to give.

I expect the hardest part will be to see citizens of my own country in the same shape as people in a very poor country far south on the world globe. That’s what I expect. We’ll see what happens.

Mission

Beaven and I are going to Louisiana this week with about 10 other folks from Presbyterian churches in East Dallas. I expect to have lots to tell you when we get back.

One of the first things I learned on a mission trip was a really good definition of what mission is. It used to be missionaries went to take the word of God to a bunch of savages who didn’t know about Jesus. Nowadays, especially in the Christian cultures where the “savages” may know more about Jesus than you do, mission is more of a solidarity thing. Mission is going to people in need and helping them meet those needs or merely standing beside them and holding their hand in their need. And there are lots of ways to do that. A mission trip to the Presbyterians in Guatemala is different from a mission trip to hurricane-devastated Louisiana. But each trip performs the same basic function.

I went on my first mission trip in 1999 and I’ve been going ever since. Many people have asked me why I go and I never could find the words to describe it as well as the short and simple way Ila Hitt did last week. Ila is going to Louisiana with us and here’s what she said when we were each asked to describe why we’re going;

“I have the time and the energy and it would be a shame…no, it would be a sin, not to go.”

I use a whole lot more words to say basically the same thing. Here’s my version of why I’m going to Louisiana:

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It all started because Linda Terpstra went to Guatemala. Linda is a nurse anesthetist for a doctor who does cataract surgery. He got interested in a non-governmental organization called Helps. He asked Linda to go with him to assist. After her first trip she came back and gave an excited report to our church congregation. It all sounded very dramatic and dangerous. The country was climbing out of a 30 year old civil war and there were men with guns everywhere. There was a lot of poverty and crime on the streets. There was malaria, dysentery and cholera. But in the midst of all the hazards Linda described there was also the sense that God was at work everywhere she went. And, most exciting of all was the idea that God was using her, working through her simple talents to help the people of Guatemala. It sounded very exotic. Did I mention it sounded dangerous? I thought to myself in a very detached way: How nice of Linda to do this. Maybe I can contribute some money but I’m not at all interested in going myself. I knew in the back of my mind I was afraid to go.
But I didn’t count on the power of the Holy Spirit.

One Sunday in October of 1998, we had a special worship service at First Presbyterian in Garland, Texas where I’ve worshipped since the year Elvis died. (Women my age tend to date things that way.) Marj Carpenter was our guest preacher that Sunday. She had served the Presbyterian Church as Moderator of the General Assembly once, which made her a really important figure to the average Presbyterian. She has a huge interest in the mission of the church and in her year as moderator she went just about everywhere in the world there was a breathing Presbyterian. She’s a mesmerizing speaker. And also one of the most unimposing speakers I’ve ever seen; small, gray haired and very grandmotherly looking. She walks with a pronounced limp and always appears visibly tired. Because she is tired. She’s been all over the world, only spending about 15 days in her own home in a year’s time. She then spent the years afterwards speaking in churches and telling about what the Presbyterians are up to in the mission field.

I knew she had a bad back. By the end of her speech she was literally holding on to the pulpit to remain standing up. I had seen Marj speak before and knew the effect she has on people.

I gave the Childrens Story that morning and I told the kids about the important work Marj does in mission. I tied it into the charge of the congregation we say at the end of worship every Sunday.

Like many churches, we have a charge at the end of our worship. It’s based on Thessalonians with a few instructions added from here and there in the bible and since we’ve said it every week for the last 20 years everyone knows it by heart. We even teach the Confirmation Class how to say it in sign language, which gives it an added boost.

Go forth into the world in peace. Have courage. Hold on to what is good. Return to no person evil for evil. Strengthen the faint hearted. Support the weak. Help the suffering. Honor all persons. Love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.

I told the kids how important mission work is and how hard it is. But, I told the kids, God gives Marj the strength to do it because it’s so important.

At the end of worship that day a friend reached across the aisle and touched me on the back and said to me “You could do that.” In a burst of ego, I readily agreed and thought to myself what fun it would be to explore all those places and tell people all about them. What held me back was the same fear everyone has of under developed countries. Crime, war, disease, poverty…. It was all too easy to cross that project off my list.

But later that day my words came back to literally haunt me. I was driving alone in my car with nothing to do but think. What had I said in my Children’s Story? And did I really mean it? I wondered how much conviction I had in those words. After all, I had said them to the children of our church. Had I told a lie to the children? Did I really mean what I said? Was I a hypocrite or merely chicken?

The words came back to me: “Rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.” Can we really step out in faith and rejoice, depending only on the Holy Spirit to accompany us? The travel Marj Carpenter does is hard but the power of the Holy Spirit helps her. Not only does she step outside her comfort zone, she does it with joy. That’s what I had told the children. Could I do it?

Driving on the quiet highway I moved my hands in the sign I had taught the kids: “Rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit”. I moved my hands again, emphasizing the “Rejoice” movement. Then again, exaggerating the “Power” motion. Sign language is a very powerful way to understand what you are saying. At that moment the sign for “Power” sealed the deal.

The next thing I knew, I was waiting for a 5 a.m. flight to Guatemala.

And tomorrow at 7 a.m. we leave for Louisiana.

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:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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.

Boring Stories

Kenna Sue Groebe was a woman’s woman. She was the most attractive woman in our small group of friends at church. Yet she had simply horrible luck with men. This gave her a humility that made her as easy to love as butter sliding off a hot knife.

We all had children the same age. Instead of trying to find babysitters we just brought our kids together to play and enjoyed each other while they were playing. Every year at Christmas we would gather at my house late Christmas Eve. The kids would play while we enjoyed a glass or two of wine. A few came without the kids because there was always that shared custody thing with the ex-husbands. And I think it helped that the women, at least, were together to share the evening even when their kids were away. Laughter would pour from all corners of the house. As 11 o’clock approached we would pile into our cars and leave for worship. It was the most magical night of the year for us.

I remember one bitterly cold Christmas Eve when Kenna either didn’t have a good coat or her car was not running. It was one of those occasions where you could feel really sorry for yourself. Yet all I could see in Kenna was her excitement in being among friends at times like that, when you’re alone and broke. This is when good friends shine through the cloudy cold night like the Christmas Star.

Kenna died of cancer—as they say, “after a long and courageous fight.” The cancer started in her breast and eventually spread, the way cancer does, to the places that make life hell and eventually kill you. Her friends knew what kept her alive. She had a teenaged daughter and Kenna was waiting for her to finish high school. I think she lasted only a few months after that.

Her friends walked alongside with her while she was sick. Some took her to the doctor and chemo. Some delivered lunch. Some cleaned her house. Some bandaged the sores on her back that she couldn’t reach. Some listened to her questions late at night on the telephone; questions women ask without embarrassment like “Will I get to meet Cary Grant in heaven?” And there was still laughter in those times. Linda and Jan spent one dark night trying to coax her cat out of the bushes when they accidentally let it out while cleaning. I still love to hear them tell the story because they are notorious for their indifference to, if not actual distaste for, cats. And the cat knew it. There was no way that cat was coming out of the bushes. Kenna was in the hospital and it was her favorite cat. It’s stories like that that women love to tell and re-tell.

After about 4 or 5 years of fighting the cancer Kenna arrived at her last night on earth. When Kit called me to come she told me this was it.

When the end came for her, we were all there: the Christmas Eve party friends, others she had made at her daughter's school and in the neighborhood. There were so many of us that we had to rotate between the room and the waiting area as we watched her struggle for each breath. The nurse cautioned us that even though she appeared unconscious we couldn’t really be sure. It was possible that she could still hear and understand us right up until the moment of death. With this in mind we sought out comforting conversations to have there in the room. There is a gentleness about death when women are attending it. As our vigil wore on into the morning we spent time softly reminiscing over our friendship with Kenna. We told stories about kids, husbands, childhoods…stories women tell when they are together. Quiet stories in a dark room.

I think everyone has their own particularly long and boring story that they tell many times over. They know it’s boring but they tell it anyway just to relive the story in their own minds. It was 2a.m. and we had pretty much come to the limit of what we had to say. Even women can run out of things to say. I came to my own boring story.

I started out with “I know I’ve told Kenna this story before…” and in fact, I had indeed told it far too many times to her. I was two sentences along when she stopped her labored breathing. Her body relaxed. A small dot of foam gathered at the corner of her mouth. Eleanor lovingly dabbed it with a Kleenex. But someone else realized what had happened and rang for the nurse while still another ran down the hall to the nurse’s station.

And all this time, may God have mercy on me, I’m looking around the room and thinking, “Wait, don’t you want to hear the rest of my story?”

None of us had ever seen anyone die. It was so peaceful yet it still brought about an enormous sense of panic. Once the nurses had made the final pronouncement our minister led us in prayer. Her friends filled the room as we held hands in shock and disbelief.

It wasn’t until months later when the shock had worn off that I realized the last thing Kenna heard before she died was me winding up to tell my story. I realized to my horror that she probably thought something like “Oh my God! Do I have to listen to this boring story again?” And God, with all the gentleness in the universe, answered her prayer.

The Fat Wallet Evening

For some reason that I can’t remember I was driving tonight. We were discussing how fat Beaven’s wallet is. I guess we’ve been retired long enough now that we’ve fallen into the “really boring” stage where you spend a lot of time discussing stuff like that. A few years ago we noticed that we’ve had some of the same conversations over and over and over again. Especially with our kids. I told Emily to clean her room so many times that I ended up assigning it Number 8. That way I could just poke my head in the door and simply say “eight.” Or, if I was really upset, I could say “Eight Thousand Eight Hundred and Eighty-Eight” Of course it never got the room cleaned but it saved a lot of time. So, here we are in the car with me giving him monologue number 25—the fat wallet monologue.

I quit carrying a purse years ago through a kind of gradual transition. I realized a purse wasn’t doing much for me but collecting a lot of loose garbage. Emily sent me the perfect wallet when she was in college. For what we spent to send her to a private college I should have gotten more than a wallet and about 15 credit hours out of the deal. But I love the style and I look for them now in every college bookstore I visit. It’s got a key ring connected to a thin wallet with (I love this part) a Velcro closure. It’s perfect for the no-makeup, no-hairstyle, no-checkbook life I lead. I have room for a couple of credit cards and my car keys. It fits in my pocket while I’m not driving and I never have to worry about having my purse stolen out of the cart at Wal-Mart.

Beaven, on the other hand, has ever piece of plastic and paper he’s ever owned in his wallet. The wallet is so big he can’t sit on it so he takes it out while he’s driving and is always leaving it somewhere. That’s what started the fat wallet conversation- he had left it somewhere. Does he really need his SCUBA diving card driving around in Sulphur Springs in the winter? Or his membership cards for the three or so professional organizations he belongs to and never goes to meetings? His Dallas Public Library card when we haven’t lived in Dallas for 30 years? Or his discount cards to stores that have gone out of business?

I’m going on and on about all the clutter he carries around with him and hear a funny noise. A kind of “blurp.” Three little blurps and I look in my rearview mirror. There’s a cop with his lights on to tell me that I’m going 43 in a 30 mph zone. Thirty miles an hour! On a street as wide as an airport runway and smooth as glass. With nary a school or hospital or old folks home in sight. Who in their right mind drives anywhere at 30 miles an hour?

Anyway, of course the first thing he asks me for is my insurance card. I’m OK with that because I always have it in my glove compartment. Right here in the tidy little group of Mapquest maps with the tidy little pink folder neatly wrapped around it with the word “Maps” on it in marker. I always keep my insurance card in there. Here’s 2003’s card. And 2001 and even 1996. Here’s the map to all my friends’ houses and all the businesses in weird parts of town with tricky turns. And my church directory. Hey, even gloves right here in my glove compartment! Don’t you think it’s cool I have a pair of gloves in my glove box?

Of course, I never found the insurance card and Beaven had one in his wallet. So I had to shut up permanently about the fat wallet.

But my day just got worse when I lost the temporary crown I got yesterday. I think this was the crown that put me officially in possession of more crowns than the Queen of England. Now I have to drive (very slowly) back to Dallas tomorrow and hope the dentist can put it back in. In the meantime, I’m scared to eat or drink anything. I’m scared to do a whole lot of breathing since the bare tooth is sensitive to cold and it is, after all, winter, whether it feels like it or not. And talking would call for breathing so that’s out. When you cut out talking, eating and breathing, there aren’t a whole lot of fun things to do in an evening.

So, here is your wit and wisdom for the week. Please don’t expect anymore from me. It’s been a hard day. Tune in next week and I’ll tell you the story of how I bored somebody to death once.

Numbers

I’ve been trying to figure out what to write this week. I thought about telling you about the time I bored a friend to death. But that’s kind of a downer for the first of the year. Then the idea of numbers came to me when a friend recommended the television show by that name. I’ve written two very different pieces based on numbers so I’m combining them here. Maybe they have more in common than I thought. Just remember when I start talking about fires that I wrote these pieces years ago so it will have no relation to our extremely dry and dangerous weather out here. For that you can read the piece I wrote in July.

$362.11
Three Hundred Sixty Two dollars and eleven cents… $362.11. Remember that number. We’ll come back to it later.

A few years ago Beaven was driving down the road when a horrible noise came from under the hood. He couldn’t figure out what was happening-especially since the car was operating perfectly. He turned off the airconditioner and the noise stopped.
He continued down the road, calculating the cost of a new air conditioner motor. He wasn’t too worried since the car was fairly new and everything mechanical was covered by a warranty. All he faced was inconvenience. We keep all the bases covered at our house. Foolish mistakes don’t happen to us.

The next morning he got in the car to go to work and immediately smelled that something was dead somewhere. Really dead. And it was dead in just about the worst possible place-the airconditioner ducts. It was going to be a hot day. To put it mildly, his options looked bleak. There are a lot of succinct ways to describe his situation but all the ones I know involve hard-core cussing.

I volunteered to switch cars for two reasons: (a) I had more time to take it to the shop and (b) I had changed more dirty diapers than he had. The few dirty diapers that he managed to change involved the use of an old gas mask he brought home from the Air Force. I, however, was used to smells. Or so I thought.

I had to drive with the window rolled down and my head out the window, breathing in puffs of fresh air as needed. In the words of the repair bill, the car was “engulfed” by a foul odor. That’s putting it nicely. It cost $362.11 to undo the damage a small but acrobatic mouse had done. Mousie had climbed under the hood and inside the AC motor. When Beaven started the car it literally shredded the mouse into bits. Bits that now lay in the motor as rotting and dead meat.

Now, who could we blame? That was the hard part. $362.11 is nothing to sniff at. (As if we wanted to sniff at it.) This was just about the one thing our fool-proof extended warranty didn’t cover. We couldn’t file against our insurance. We couldn’t sue anyone. We just had to suck it in and pay the money. We couldn’t blame God. We couldn’t even blame the mouse. Someone suggested we could blame the cat. She yawned at our accusations. Chasing mice had never been in her contract. We were left holding the bag. I didn’t like it one bit.

I have petitioned God to open a special complaint department. Maybe even one complete with apologies and a magic wand. In the meantime, I’m left with the words of the great bumpersticker philosopher, “Stuff Happens.” It’s not a happy feeling.


----------but sometimes things happen exactly the way they are supposed to happen and it all unfolds so easily that it almost makes it seem boring: ---------



Notes from my life:
August 8, 2002
Sulphur Springs, Texas
$9.96

I was driving into town this morning and saw a crowd of cars stopped on either side of the road ahead. “Must be one of those used tractor sales they have out here all the time.” I thought. One of the things I love about the country is how relaxed their pace is. If they want to have a tractor sale they just do it right where the tractor sits. No fanfare, no fuss. Then I noticed people running toward the side of the road.. “Must be a loose horse” They get those out here all the time, too. People will often pull over to help get a horse or a cow back inside the fence when it’s loose. Then I saw flames and realized there was a fire under the hood of one the cars.

Without so much as a second thought I only had to move my left hand six inches to the silver button by the door handle. Before my car had come to a complete stop the trunk door popped open and I was able to go straight to the fire extinguisher I knew would be in my trunk.
I seldom pay attention to it but I know it’s there. For the last thirty-plus years I’ve been married to Beaven I’ve always had a fire extinguisher and a set of battery cables in the trunk of my car. Beaven takes care of us that way. Sure enough, there it was exactly where I knew it would be.

I took it out of the box and was examining it while I walked toward the burning car Across the road a woman was yelling out “Will that thing explode?” And another woman was running over with the only liquid she had in her car: windshield washing solution. Another car pulled over to the side of the road in front of the burning one. Just about every car that came down the road pulled over to help in some way.

The man from the burning car saw me and ran toward me. “Is that a fire extinguisher?” “Yeah, but I’m not sure I know how to use it.” “That’s OK” He took it and ran back to the car.
The woman who was worried about explosions was now yelling out asking if he needed a cell phone. I saw a burst of white under his hood and the fire went out. Behind me stopped a uniform delivery truck and two men jumped out, one was carrying a five gallon water cooler and the other had another fire extinguisher. They went to where the grass had caught fire under the car. Another man running up behind me called out “Do you need a cell phone?” I looked and saw another man standing by the burned car already speaking on a donated cell phone.

By this time the fire was out. The whole process had taken less than five minutes. I found myself wondering what there was to do next. I decided nothing. There wasn’t any point waiting around for the empty fire extinguisher. I don’t think you can refill them. So I just got back in the car and continued down the road.

Less than five minutes. Ten strangers. Three cell phones, two fire extinguishers, a bottle of windshield cleaning solution, one bucket of drinking water. Less than 20 words had been exchanged.

I had been heading to Wal-Mart anyway. I added another fire extinguisher to my cart. $9.96 dues for being a member of a loving society.