Author Archive: Christopher Waldrop

It’s Cold.

The cold weather has been brutal. The other morning I looked at my phone to see what the temperature was and it just said, “You don’t want to know.” When I checked back later it was negative one, and that’s Fahrenheit. I went to an online calculator to see what that converted to in Celsius and it just said, “You don’t want to know.” I know I could do the math myself since my eighth grade math teacher gave me the formula for converting temperatures from Fahrenheit to Celsius, and after working really hard to understand it and practicing several times I said, yeah, I’ll just look at the basement thermometer that has Fahrenheit on one side and Celsius on the other, although the only number I really remember is negative forty, which is the same on both scales and also happens to be the freezing point of mercury. I also discovered the big freezer we kept in the basement would never get that low no matter how far I turned the knob in the back, and also that if you spill a bottle of liquid mercury in the freezer you might as well just buy a new freezer, but that’s another story.

I know we in the US should switch to the Celsius scale since it’s the one most of the world uses, and also it would help me when I’m talking to, say, a friend in Australia, and they say, “Crikey, it’s forty degrees here, I might take a dip in the billabong then crack open a tube of the amber fluid,” and I say, “Would you mind switching to English?” But I also get the appeal of the Fahrenheit scale. I think it’s a psychological thing. What most people consider a comfortable temperature is around seventy degrees Fahrenheit, or about twenty-one degrees Celsius. That’s a forty-nine degree difference and more is always better, even if the two numbers mean the same thing.

For me there’s also something I can only call nomenclatural synesthesia. The name “Fahrenheit” just sounds warmer to me, and I’d always rather be warmer, especially when it’s really cold out. I hear the name “Fahrenheit” and I picture a big, round-faced laughing guy with a curly copper-colored mustache wearing lederhosen and holding a big tankard of foamy amber fluid. I know that’s not what he looked like but it’s hard to shake that since I never met him, and I can’t explain it but everything about that image just exudes warmth. I’ll take the warmth, even when the temperature hits a hundred degrees—Fahrenheit, that is, because if it hit a hundred degrees Celsius we’d all be dead.

And speaking of Celsius, who seems to have been a much more modest guy since he named his scale “centigrade” but it’s been relabled with his name because Sweden needed something to be proud of other than ABBA, when I hear the name “Celsius” I think of a pale, skinny guy with bluish skin and lanky white locks, which is sort of what he looked like—aside from a relatively normal complexion, at least in his portraits. The term “Celsius” with its repeated sibilants just sounds cold to me.

I’m willing to accept a compromise, though: we could all switch to the Kelvin scale. It’s the same as Celsius but instead of zero being the freezing point of water it starts at absolute zero, which is negative 273.15 on the Celsius scale, the lowest temperature matter can reach. Think of how optimistic that is: once you reach zero on the Kelvin scale the only place you can go is up, even if once you’ve reached that point you’re dead. The problem with the Kelvin scale is the name. If Fahrenheit is Sargeant Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes and Celsius is Snow Miser from The Year Without A Santa Claus the name “Kelvin” just conjures up a Dickensian villain who stuffs children in sacks and throws them in the Thames. In winter. We’d have to come up with another name.

Maybe the Australians can recommend something.

Snow Excuse.

Even though I work from home there’s something special about snow days. It’s especially true here where we only get a really heavy snowfall every five or years—enough time for me to forget what half a foot or more of snow is really like, how it feels to step into the unbroken whiteness and sink into it almost up to my knee. It’s so cold right now the snow is light and powdery, and yet when it closes in around my leg I can feel the weight of it. That’s only one of the strange things about snow. It also reflects light so even the darkness is bright. I woke up last nigh and thought it must be morning from the light pressing through the blinds. Then I looked at the clock. Three a.m. I went to an open window and looked out. The cloudy sky meant there was no moon, and yet I could see the whole backyard clearly. Only the solar-powered bird feeder was dark, its photon collecting chip covered since Sunday. Snow also muffles some sound and heightens others. This morning, the real morning, after sunrise, when I went out I stood and listened. There was no wind, no brushing of trees, but I could hear a woodpecker clearly, tapping away at a limb. A rusty female cardinal just below it gave an annoyed chirp.

In spite of the glare—the clouds are gone now and the sun is out, though it’s still bitterly cold—the cover of snow made me want to go back to bed and sleep, to hibernate until things warm up a bit. I can’t go anywhere, at least not anywhere I could drive. I do like to get out and walk in the snow but only for so long. And  thought, well, work will really be a relief—a break from the long break, a structured routine to take the place of my unstructured routine. Maybe I’d open up a picture of a nice beach somewhere to contrast with the expanse of snow before I got to work.

Then my boss texted me to say work is cancelled for the day. I guess enough people have gone back to working in the office, or aren’t able to get their home computers going. Maybe too many electrons are stuck in the snow. I’ll take the break. Maybe I’ll go for a walk.

It’s Weird, It’s Cool.

Most people I know who start a musical instrument automatically become collectors of that instrument. My brother-in-law signed up for guitar lessons a few years ago and already has, I think, four different guitars, not counting ones he’s bought and sold to other collectors, and I have no idea what my friend who’s just started playing the bagpipes is getting himself into. Getting different instruments does make sense. Even if they’re the same model two different instruments are going to sound different, especially if they’re older and have gotten more or less use and been stored in different places. And there are so many variations. In spite of that I told myself I was going to stick with the tenor ukulele I got last year and focus on playing it before I even thought about getting any others.

Then I saw this blue soprano ukulele—what most people think of as the standard size—in a consignment shop called Cool Stuff, Weird Things for twenty-five bucks. It was obviously old and a bit scratched up, but that was the appeal. It’s been through some hands and that gave it character, although I did have to tune it–the E-string in particular sounded like a surprised cat. The guy behind the counter looked it over and said, “Hey, this was made in Hawaii. You think Don Ho might have played this?” I said, “I thought I heard ‘Tiny Bubbles’ when I picked it up.” That made him laugh and he knocked five bucks off the price, which was nice because, for most sellers, even the chance that a famous performer might have touched an instrument would be enough to make them raise the rate.

This isn’t really about ukuleles, though. This is about consignment shops, or thrift stores, or whatever you want to call them. Cool Stuff, Weird Things is near me so I’ve browsed through it several times—sometimes finding cool things and weird stuff. When I told my wife I’d bought something there she said, “Please tell me it wasn’t the life-sized Elvis.” I started to say that I’d gotten the life-sized John Belushi, but that would have been worse. I didn’t even think about the buffalo head.

There are a few other thrift stores in the same neighborhood, maybe because the rent is cheap. Or maybe Nashville is just some kind of magnet for antique dealers. After all the American Pickers opened a satellite store here. The important thing is these shops are always fun, and they’re where I’ll be buying all my ukuleles from now on.

I’ll also keep an eye out for bagpipes.

 

In With The Old.

Somehow the drive in to work this morning didn’t feel any different even though it was over two weeks ago that I made the trip. Part of that, I realize, is that most of my commute to work is along familiar streets, streets that I travel down regularly even when I’m not going to work. So this morning, even though it was the coldest it’s been all winter, there were the same people taking their dogs for a walk through the neighborhood. Once I turned onto the main road there was about the same amount of traffic that it seems to get at any time of day, or night. Maybe there’s some time when the number of cars drops off but it’s a time when I’m not out driving. There were the usual businesses: the fast food places that were doing a steady business, the more upscale restaurants that probably weren’t open but still had their signs lit, and various other businesses that, well, I don’t know what they do so any time I pass them I can’t tell whether they’re open or closed. There’s that one spot where a group of construction workers is always crossing the street on their way to the job site, and I realize there’s a long stretch between traffic lights but even in their orange vests I wish they could find a better, safer place to cross five lanes of traffic. There are the other construction sites where they’ve closed off the sidewalks and have blocked off at least one lane which makes me wonder why I always choose to go the same way when a slightly longer route would probably take the same amount of time, but the force of habit is a powerful thing, especially early in the morning when, even after showering, getting dressed, and having coffee, not to mention being subjected to an arctic blast, my brain still isn’t fully functioning.

That would explain why, even though I should have known better, I still turned the corner and found the same delivery truck parked and taking up the entire left lane next to the mini-mart across the street from my office building, forcing me to take the center lane until I cross the intersection and have only a few feet to get back into the left lane.

As usual I parked on the roof of the parking garage—the sole car up there, but I’ll have a warm car to return to in the afternoon.

The ride down in the parking garage elevator was the same, the walk through the lobby of my building was the same, and the ride up in the office building elevator was the same. There was the same coworker in her cubicle by the door—I hope she just happens to always arrive before me and isn’t here twenty-four hours a day—and she gave me the same friendly wave.

I can’t explain why I expected things to be different. It’s a new year, I feel like I’ve been away much longer than just two weeks, and somehow I feel like a different person.

When I left I had successfully almost cleaned out my email inbox. I think I had ten messages that I planned to get to when I got back. This morning I had thirty-seven thousand new messages. Well, that is something new, even if most of it was the same old junk.

Not Made To Last.

Most of the graffiti I find stays around a long time because it’s painted directly on walls. Unless somebody comes and paints over it—and it seems like there’s a certain amount of respect among taggers; if something gets painted over it’s usually erasure rather than replacement—most of it lasts as long as the paint does. So I can document it in photos but it’s not like I can take it home and frame it and hang it on a wall. It would take some pretty heavy equipment to do that. And a heavy wall.

So this collection was a surprise. You can’t really see it because it’s a photo but each of these painted rectangles is a standard 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper glued to the wall. I was able to partly peel one away and they’re on heavy card stock rather than standard printer paper, but still they weren’t painted directly on the concrete. They could, if someone wanted to, be taken away, even framed and hung on a wall. I was even tempted to do that. I like the one on the top left corner a lot, but it was glued so well I was afraid I couldn’t remove it without damaging it. Also it just didn’t seem like it would be right to break up the set.

This tag was added nearby:

I don’t know if this was the group responsible for the individual pictures, although the yellow has been there for at least six months, and “Creekside Social v3” was added just a few weeks ago, never mind what I said about there being a certain amount of respect among taggers. At least they didn’t cover it up. Anyway I’m not even sure if the pictures were done by a group or a single person, but they’re so different from each other I like to think there were nine different artists—or, heck, maybe even just three, who created individual works and left them there.

The paint and heavy paper mean they’ll hold up for a while but, unlike the brick, or even paint applied directly to brick, they won’t last as long as some of the other graffiti. Of course nothing lasts forever.

Happy Twelfth Night.

It’s Terrible. I Love It!

As part of the ongoing, and slow-moving, saga of being rear-ended, I’ve now finally delivered our Honda CRV to the car repair place and I’m waiting for it to be fixed. In the meantime the insurance company has provided me with a rental car, and while the insurance company has been terrible at getting anything done the car rental place was great. They were fast, friendly, and while I said all I really needed was something small and basic that would get me from one place to another they said they’d signed out all their small and basic models so they were giving me a free upgrade: a Ford EcoSport. And after a couple of weeks of driving this thing around, getting used to how it handles, I’m pleased to say I hate it.

Every time I get in it I’m reminded that Ford is the same company that gave us the Edsel, a gas-guzzling monstrosity that was so terrible it almost sank the company that first gave the world mass-produced automobiles. The one good thing about the Edsel is they asked the Pulitzer-prize winning poet Marianne Moore for name suggestions. One of many terrible things about the Edsel is they rejected every one of her suggestions which included the Thunder Crester, the Mongoose Civique, Pastelogram, and, most famously, in her last letter she wrote, “May I submit UTOPIAN TURTLETOP?”

That was her last suggestion and I think, in addition to being very funny and more than a little eccentric, she knew a lemon when she saw one—and she was only working from sketches.

Some of my favorite aspects of the EcoSport include:

The engine shuts off every time it comes to a stop. I think this is meant to be ecologically friendly. I have no idea how. At least it starts up pretty quickly once I take my foot off the brake but I’m sure drivers around me are wondering why I’m restarting the car.

It’s really hard to adjust or move the seats. There are at least three different levers on the passenger-side seat and none of them move the seat forward or backward. Also there is absolutely zero legroom for anyone sitting in the back seats. I’m a short person. When I have friends in the backseat of the Honda they’ll say, “Hey, I’ve got plenty of legroom, you can move the seat back.” And I say, “Not if I want to reach the pedals.” Once I’ve adjusted the driver’s seat in the EcoSport, which is comparable in size to the Honda CRV, there’s about two inches between the backseat and the back of the driver’s seat.

The key is basically a screwdriver. It folds down into the fob and you can press a button to make it pop out again. Like a switchblade. The ignition in the Honda CRV has a nice ring light so you can find it in the dark. I have to turn on the overhead lights in the EcoSport to find the ignition.

The rear windshield wiper comes on at random. I assume there’s a switch but the right-hand stalk that controls the windshield wipers is covered with buttons. Presumably one of these turns off the read windshield wiper. I have yet to figure out which one it it.

The headlights detect dark and come on automatically. And go off automatically about a minute after the car is turned off. Which is nice because the headlight button is weirdly placed.

The back storage space in the back is ridiculously small, which is surprising given how little space the backseats take up. The designers must be very special magicians: they make what appears to be a mid-sized vehicle on the outside a Mini Cooper on the inside. Also the switch to open the rear hatch is so cleverly hidden it’s impossible to find if you don’t know where it is. I was just about to recite “Speak friend and enter” in Elvish when I decided instead to look it up online and as soon as I typed in “Ford EcoSport” Google autofilled “how do I open the back?”

Finally, based on the dull gray color but, more importantly, just how it moves, I’m tempted to write to Ford and say, “May I suggest you rename the EcoSport ‘The Slug’?” I wouldn’t be surprised if it even runs on lettuce.

The people at the rental place really were nice and said, “If you have any trouble with this car at all please feel free to return it in exchange for something else.” I think that was their way of subtly admitting they were giving me the worst vehicle on the lot. But I’m keeping it. For one thing I love an adventure and every time I drive this car it’s an adventure in discovering something new and terrible about it. For another they said I have to return it with a full gas tank and I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.

Leftovers.

At the end of A Christmas Story, just after the Bumpus hounds have demolished the Christmas turkey, which is really a terrible scene because, if you look closely, you can see there was a real dog fight on the set there which makes me feel guilty for laughing so much, Ralphie thinks,

The heavenly aroma still hung in the house. But it was gone, all gone! No turkey! No turkey sandwiches! No turkey salad! No turkey gravy! Turkey Hash! Turkey a la King! Or gallons of turkey soup! Gone, all gone!

And it always gets me. First I think, how in the world does a family of four get that much use out of a single turkey that wasn’t that big to begin with? Even using every part—okay, the boiled carcass would make plenty of soup, and the hash could be stretched with a lot of veggies and bread crumbs, but still, Turkey a la King? Given the Old Man’s love of turkey it’s hard to believe there’d be enough left over for Turkey a la Peasant—although you could stretch it with beef and call it Serf and Turf.

What always follows, though, is a wave of nostalgia for Christmas leftovers. We did usually have enough for a few turkey sandwiches, some broccoli casserole, a little dressing, but it’s the sweets I really remember. My mother would make piles of buttery cookies, a mountain of fudge, a whole tree’s worth of sugared pecans, and stacks and stacks of kolache. We’d nibble on these in the days leading up to Christmas, and I’d stockpile an assortment in my room for midnight snacking. It’s a wonder I didn’t have a roach infestation although for my thirteenth birthday I got a snake who would have taken care of that, although he seemed happy with his regular diet of nightcrawlers and guppies. I may even have overfed him a bit; he shed five times in a year and may be the only garter snake the size of a boa constrictor, but that’s another story. And then there was Christmas candy the neighbors shared with us, and cupcakes and frosted cookies I brought home from school. There was seemingly enough to last the whole winter, although somehow they never lasted until it was time for school to start again, not even as long as Twelfth Night.

The cornucopia of Christmas presents was fleeting, over in a few hours, but the Christmas leftovers lasted. So here’s to stretching out the holiday joy just a little bit longer. And being old enough to stockpile the leftovers in the fridge, away from the dogs and also the roaches.

Also depending on when and where you grew up this might bring back some post-holiday memories.

Not Over, But Easy.

Source: Pinterest

Every year on the day of Christmas Eve my wife has one wish: a dish of Eggs Benedict. It’s not named after either Benedict Arnold or the actor who played the Jeffersons’ British neighbor, although, in honor of the late and brilliant Norman Lear, I’ve been trying to think of one. It was on an episode of The Jeffersons that I first heard of Eggs Benedict—specifically “My Maid, Your Maid”, season eight, episode four. It just sounded very fancy and I was thrilled when I finally got to try it a few years later. That may be too tangential a connection, though. Eggs Benedict is allegedly named after a New Yorker named Lemuel Benedict who wandered into the Waldorf Hotel and asked for eggs, bacon, toast, and a shot of Hollandaise as a hangover cure.  Here’s the recipe I use for anyone who’d also like to give it a try. This recipe serves three, or six people if you’re serving it with a side dish, or one person if they’re really hungry and are trying to send their cholesterol level off the charts.

You will need:

  • About three billion eggs, or maybe only a dozen
  • A pound of butter (or two eight ounce sticks) at room temperature
  • Six tablespoons of lemon juice
  • Three English muffins (which are neither English nor muffins)
  • Canadian bacon (purely optional)
  • Wooden shoes

First halve and toast the English muffins. Classic Eggs Benedict calls for a slice of ham on the English muffin halves, but for some that may be too much. Tasty alternatives include slices of avocado or smoked salmon or nothing or whatever you want.

Poach six eggs. If you have an egg poacher you can use that. I’ve also poached the eggs by adding water and a small amount of vinegar to a shallow pan, but that’s tricky because you have to keep the water just below boiling. Place an egg on each of the English muffin halves.

You can now set this aside in a warm oven.

The Hollandaise sauce is the hard part, but it comes together quickly. Oh, wait, that’s why it’s hard. This ain’t a recipe you can walk away from. First separate the yolks from the whites or, to be more accurate, from the clears. It’s okay to leave some of the clear with the yolks. Since this version of Hollandaise sauce is basically a savory lemon custard–yes, you’re serving eggs over eggs–some albumen will help it hold together. 

Combine the egg yolks and the lemon juice in a pan over low heat.  

Add half the butter. Stir slowly.

Once the butter is melted continue stirring for about a minute then add the second half of the butter. Stir vigorously. At this point the eggs will start to cook and the sauce will thicken. This is when you have to work fast. Just after the butter is completely melted the sauce is culinary nitroglycerine. It won’t blow up but it is seriously unstable. Get it off the heat and evenly distribute it over the English muffin halves and poached eggs.

For some color sprinkle on a little paprika or some parsley or both for a seasonal red and green effect. In fact this is a recipe and those aren’t written in stone, so if you want to substitute actual muffins and Cadbury chocolate eggs go for it. Earlier this month I went out for brunch and had a version that substituted fried green tomatoes for the English muffins and skipped the Canadian bacon because it would have been too much. It was excellent, though.
Serve on hubcaps because there’s no plate like chrome for the Hollandaise.

Intimations Of Mortality.

So I’m marking another elliptical spin around the sun, another year in the rearview mirror. This isn’t a milestone year so it’ll be a quiet affair: dinner, maybe a few drinks, a quick jaunt to Sri Lanka and back. When we’re young every birthday is a major event. Turning one is worthy of celebration, even if most of us don’t remember it, at two we’ve doubled our age, at three we’ve tripled it. At four, five, and six we really start to explore the world on our own, make friends, try on and discard personas. Ten marks the beginning of the double digits but the next big step isn’t until thirteen, considered in many cultures to be the age of adulthood, although its onset usually starts earlier. At sixteen, in the US, you can drive a car, at eighteen you can vote, and at twenty-one you can legally drink. Then the way stations only come once every ten years: thirty is when you say you’ve got the whole adulting thing figured out, even though you haven’t and never will, and at forty you’re “over the hill”. The Eternal Footman who holds your coat and snickers stands a little closer. Fifty is the half-century mark and from there, well, the years roll on at the same rate but they seem to go by faster.

Thirty years ago on another birthday I wrote this poem:

I’d like to sleep late,
Warm in my cocoon, stretch,
Before throwing the sheet
Off like a lost ship’s hatch
And like a single sailor stand
Looking out over miles of empty sea
Without a single stretch of land
To disrupt any possibility.
The reality’s more mundane:
Alarm clock, dark fumbling, shower.
All through it my brain
Mutters that I have work in an hour.
A birthday passed is like death:
A miracle without fanfare.
One moment you’re drawing breath,
The next you only once were.

It’s morbid but the truth is I really do think of birthdays as something to celebrate. The older I get the more I come back around to every one being a milestone, another year that I feel lucky just to be here.