Hail & Farewell.

Lest we forget.

The Love Of Dog.

Author: December 6, 2024 6 Comments

Everybody loved Teller.

Dalmatians have been described as “aloof” and “polite but reserved with strangers”. Teller never met a stranger and thought reservations were for snobby restaurants. My wife called him “the social butterfly” because he loved being in big groups of people and going around saying hello to everyone and telling them how happy they were to see him. It’s why people were happy to see him, though it helped that most of the people he was around were dog people. We had a neighbor who was indifferent to dogs. He didn’t dislike dogs but he wasn’t interested in them either. Teller would stand at the fence and stare at him and wait to be acknowledged and after a few minutes of being ignored Teller would give a disgusted snort and wander away to do other things. On the other hand when we took him to the vet’s office people in the back would literally come running when they heard Teller was in the building. He was just as happy to see them. If they had treats that was a bonus but if they just wanted to pet him and tell him what a good dog he was that made him happy. He was that way right up until the very end, which made it hard to say goodbye.

Early in October we took Teller for a routine check-up and one of the veterinary assistants greeted him with, “Hey, old man!” Because Teller was, mostly, still his funny, outgoing self, I had managed to ignore the toll the years had taken. I knew he slept a lot more. I knew he’d lost weight. He’d always been slender but as he got older he lost muscle, as most of us do, though he always had a healthy appetite. I knew getting up in the bed wasn’t as easy for him as it had been even just a few years ago. Sometimes laying down wasn’t easy for him either; arthritis splayed out his hips and going out into the yard he didn’t always run so much as bumble along. He was still a mighty pursuer of squirrels, though, and always a clown who’d go around and mark several trees and wait for me to say, “Are you finished?” before he’d give me a wry smile and stand in one spot and pee for what seemed like half an hour. I’ll always believe he did it because it made me laugh. Teller loved laughter.

He was also an intense dreamer. Most dogs twitch, shake, and even occasionally bark in their sleep. Teller, especially as he got older and his sleep got deeper, would lie on his side, usually taking up half the couch, and go at a full gallop, maybe chasing imaginary squirrels. Fortunately I’m a heavy sleeper so if he did it in the bed he rarely woke me up. When I did wake up he was right there next to me. Sometimes what woke me up was that he’d pulled all the covers off of me to build himself a nest. And his head would be on the pillow next to mine. Half my body would be cold. The other half would be warm, Teller pressed up against me.

The end was also full of surprises. Teller had a heart condition that we’d managed for years, but the last check-up revealed a tumor on one of his kidneys. If it stayed it could rupture and cause a massive hemorrhage at any time, so of course, in spite of his age, it had to go. Things seemed fine for a couple of days after that, then he started panting heavily after we’d gone to bed. My wife took him to the pet emergency clinic where he, of course, was a favorite of all the staff. And things seemed fine after that. He didn’t seem to mind wearing a canine onesie to keep him from chewing or licking his stitches. It was better than the big plastic cone of shame. When my wife took it off he had bruises on his chest that were initially diagnosed as a clotting issue that could cause internal bleeding. We were told he had a matter of days, maybe hours. That was early November. He seemed fine so we took him to a dog agility event where a couple of vets said any dog with the clotting issue would be lethargic, but Teller was his usual self, wagging his tail as he made the rounds, saying hello to everyone. After a few more days the bruises disappeared and he was still a happy dog.

As long as he was happy and able to get around everything was fine. Well, not fine, really. He refused food more and more and he spent more and more time asleep. He had to be helped off the couch, and onto the bed. As long as he was able to amble around the yard, as long as he still ate string cheese out of my hand, as long as he wagged his tail and smiled at us, we let him be. Keeping a dog in pain alive is a selfish act but it would be just as selfish to deprive Teller of one happy day, even one happy hour. And then came the day when it was obvious he wasn’t happy. Teller, named for the silent half of the magic duo Penn & Teller, told us when he was ready. From the moment my wife brought him home as a puppy, when he popped out of the pet carrier and licked my face, I knew we’d have to face this point eventually, but there was no way to know when. There was no way to know we’d be lucky enough to have him for thirteen years.

Even though I’ve dealt with it before every loss is different because every dog, every cat, and, for that matter, every person is different. There are some things I’ve learned are true in every case, though. I know this is going to hurt for a long time. I know it’s going to still hurt even after I stop looking for him, even after I see things that remind me he’s really gone, after those reminders send me into a breakdown. I know that every loss leaves a scar.

I also know that, even though I’m dwelling on the end now, it’s going to be the first thing I forget. A year from now, maybe, his last few days won’t be as clear in my mind as they are now. What I’ll remember are all the things he did that made me laugh: the time he pulled out a dog toy he’d ignored for years and destroyed it, how he’d paw at the quilt on the couch to make a cozy spot then curling up on the opposite side, how he leaned sideways to listen when my wife talked in the other room. I’ll remember how happy he made us. That’s what Teller would want. That’s what Teller deserves because he loved us.

Hail & Farewell., The Weekly Essay

Slip Slidin’ Away.

Author: October 30, 2024 6 Comments

The only time in my life I’ve ever eaten anything from White Castle is when a truck handing out free samples showed up near where I work a few years ago. Even when I was a kid I thought small square sliders only came from Krystal, which, having been founded in the south, was more common around here even if White Castle had been around longer.

I’m not saying I contributed to the demise of the White Castle on the corner of White Bridge Road and Charlotte Avenue here in Nashville—I’m just saying I didn’t help it survive. I’m a little sorry to see it go, though, because whenever I passed it I always remembered that one of the first times I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show I’d never heard of or been to White Castle. So someone had to explain this audience participation bit to me:

AUDIENCE: WHAT’S WHITE AND SELLS HAMBURGERS?
BRAD MAJORS: Didn’t we pass a castle just up the road?

And seeing Rocky Horror in Nashville, or even in the Franklin Theater which is about twenty miles to the south, a lot of the audience’s line was a very local “SELLS HAMBURGERS ON WHITE BRIDGE ROAD?” Because there just weren’t that many White Castles in the area.

I was still young—especially compared to what I am now—and somewhat naïve but at least I understood what followed:

However it’s soon followed by one of the funniest audience participation lines:

JANET WEISS: I’m coming with you!
AUDIENCE: FOR A CHANGE!
JANET WEISS: Besides, darling, the owner of that castle might be a beautiful woman—
AUDIENCE: HE IS!

It’s a little strange to me that it’s now easier to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show than it is to find a White Castle. Or even a Krystal. But it’s definitely the healthier option.

Adventures In Busing., American Graffiti., Hail & Farewell.

Unhaunted.

Author: October 25, 2024 2 Comments

House By The Railroad by Edward Hopper, 1925. Source: Wikipedia

I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind—and that of the minds of the ones who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.

—William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

Any time I go into an old house I can feel the weight of years of lived memories. It’s not ghosts—I’m skeptical about their existence. When I was young I really believed in ghosts and really wanted to meet one, though I also didn’t want to meet one because that would be terrifying. Aside from Casper The Friendly Ghost most of the ghosts I’d read about or seen on TV or in the movies were terrifying, or at least as terrifying as semi-translucent wisps can be. And anyway most of them turned out to be Old Man Jenkins who would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids, but that’s another story.

To get back to what I was saying old houses always seem to have a certain character from years of being lived in. No matter how much people scrub, clean, vacuum, sweep, mop, and renovate it’s inevitable that an old house will have discolored spots, crumbling bricks, ivied walls. These aren’t flaws. They’re part of what make a house a home.

My family moved when I was four, just old enough to remember the old house without having ever really had a chance to build up any memories that made me sad to leave. Moving was exciting. The new house was bigger, with a bigger yard and more places to explore. It was a relatively new neighborhood too and there was a house across the street that was still under construction that I explored. I know you’re never supposed to go into a house while it’s still being built but in my defense I was only four years old and it was the middle of summer and the construction crew disappeared for long periods of time so what was I supposed to do?

It was intriguing to wander along the bare plywood floors and among walls that were only partially covered, the wooden bones of the framework visible, like seeing the interior of a body. In one of those coincidences almost too strange to be true some other kid had left a toy skeleton sitting up on a crossbeam. I was very imaginative—that is, I was really easily scared, especially terrified of skulls, but somehow that toy skeleton just seemed like it was hanging out, as interested in checking out the new house as I was. Maybe the memory has been colored by the intervening years but it seems like I felt a house under construction was as unhaunted as it’s possible for any place to be. Nothing had happened there yet so there was no chance for anything, good or evil, to have left its trace.

The people who live next door to my wife and I have just told us they’re planning to move soon. I’m sorry to see them go—they’re nice people, older, but the guy and I have bonded over Doctor Who and we’ve traded books and jokes over the fence. Their house is very much like ours: rectangular, single floor, more than half a century old now but still sturdy. They also have a tool shed at the very back of their yard. It’s rusting and they’ve wrapped a bright green tarp around one corner, held on with bright yellow pieces of tape so it looks like the shed’s being consumed by a giant caterpillar from a childhood nightmare, which we’ve laughed about.

Unfortunately we know the house’s fate once it’s unoccupied. It’s the same thing that’s happened to every house on our block, every house in our neighborhood, that’s been sold over the last decade or so: it’ll be knocked down, scraped away, and a newer, bigger, probably multilevel beast will take its place. The new house will, like all the other new ones, be painted white. This makes them a blank slate for the new owners but also, in places where they’re between older houses of reddish and brown brick and dark roofs, a ghostly quality. But they’re not ghosts.

Not yet, anyway.

Hail & Farewell., Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

Strangers On A Train.

Author: October 21, 2024 2 Comments

Source: Amazon UK

The combination of Halloween and the recent passing of Donald Sutherland reminded me of one of my favorite horror films, Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors, and, in a roundabout way, that reminded me of Dame Maggie Smith who also passed away recently.

Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors is about six strangers in a train car, played by Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Max Adrian, Peter Madden, Roy Castle, and Donald Sutherland. Cushing, the eponymous Dr. Terror, produces as pack of Tarot cards and tells each man’s future. This provides a frame for a series of stories dealing with werewolves, witches, monstrous plants, and even a disembodied hand. Sutherland, who gets a vampire story, was the last survivor of the main cast; they’re now all reunited which is, if you’ve seen the film, darkly fitting.

It’s a fun watch, especially if you like Hammer films–Amicus Productions was kind of a rival–and because it’s an anthology you can jump in and watch the stories in any order; only the opening and closing are connected, and it always makes me think about at least part of what gives trains their romance. The number of stories about trains is seemingly endless, ranging from Murder On The Orient Express to Silver Streak and I think Hitchcock even made a film about an encounter on a train. From the very beginning trains offered a mobility no one had ever experienced before and also brought together a whole spectrum of people. That’s why one of my favorite parts of living in Britain was taking trains regularly.

On one trip I sat next to a man a few years older than me and across from a woman who, well, looked like the sort of character Dame Maggie Smith would grow into. She had a nice dress and a large hat, also a pair of owl-like glasses, and even walked with a cane. But unlike the Dowager Countess this woman was friendly; she didn’t say anything about my scuffed shoes and jeans, but chatted nicely with both of us. The man next to me told us he was from southern India. She said she’d been there and had always wanted to go back because she loved it so much. Then she turned to me and said she’d never met an American before but was “gratified” I was so polite and charming.

Source: The Guardian

When we got to Waterloo Station we all got out. The Indian man let her hold his arm and I carried her very large suitcase. While we were doing that she yelled out, “Oh porter! I say, porter!”

A guy in a railroad worker’s uniform came over and she said, “My dear porter, these lovely young gentlemen have been kind enough to assist  me with the stairs and my valise. Would you please hail a hansom cab for me?”

I was trying so hard not to fall apart laughing, feeling like I was suddenly in an E.M. Forster novel. It got even funnier when the railroad worker asked if we were together and the Indian said, “Oh no, we’re just strangers on a train.”

“No criss-crosses, though” I said and we smiled at each other.

I know this has taken a lot of turns, from horror to Edwardian manners to, well, a joke about a murder mystery, but that’s what’s great about trains. The lines and destinations are fixed but inside you never know what can happen.

Adventures In Busing., Hail & Farewell.

Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, Wherever You Are.

Author: July 30, 2024 6 Comments

The last receipt.

Every Thursday afternoon I have a ukulele lesson. Learning anything, especially music, requires a lot of repetition so it’s fitting that after each lesson I call the same restaurant and place a to-go order. Even more fittingly it’s almost always Taylor who answers the phone, and, after several months of repetition, she and I often laugh at the fact that I order the same thing every time.

The last time, though, was different. After my lesson I called the restaurant and Taylor answered with, “Hi, Chris! I’m ready so go ahead with your order.” They’d added some new menu items my wife wanted to try so what I asked for was completely different. And I added a piece of cake. Taylor, who’s occasionally suggested I change my routine, said, “This is the single greatest order I’ve ever gotten.”

I was laughing all the way to the restaurant but when I went in to pay and pick up my food Taylor told me it was her last week. She’d enjoyed living in Nashville, she said, but she had three kids and decided it was time to move back to the small town in Pennsylvania where she grew up. She wanted to be closer to her family who could provide support and she also wanted her kids to have a childhood similar to hers.

It was the longest conversation we’ve ever had and it didn’t last five minutes. I wasn’t in any hurry—the food could wait—but she had work to get to, and, having worked in a restaurant myself, I know there’s never a lot of downtime. She was also in the middle of training her replacement which meant she had even less time. We’ve had other brief conversations before. One night I told her I was such a regular customer because I was learning the ukulele and she said, “Oh, it’s really good to take up a new hobby late in life.” I smiled and said, “Yeah,” and I was on my way home before I thought, How old does she think I am?

It’s a bit like going from one song to another: a lot of notes will be the same but the tune will be different. Thank you for all you did, Taylor, and good luck.

Adventures In Busing., Hail & Farewell.

I Really Shouldn’t Be Doing This.

Author: July 19, 2024 4 Comments

The scene: under a large red sign reading THE INFERNO a shadowy figure holds a telephone receiver…

-Hell-hello, is this Gabriel?

-Hi Gabe, it’s Bill from downstairs. How’s it going up there?

-I said it’s Bill. From downstairs.

-Zeebub.

-That’s right. Yes, it has been a long time. Listen, Gabe, the reason I’m calling is, well, you know how in the old days when we were still sorting out who went where and we talked about the possibility of a mixup? When you look at the numbers and now long we’ve been doing this it’s amazing we haven’t had any. I mean, just the law of averages…

-Well, Gabe, what I’m getting at is it looks like it finally happened. You know, somebody who got sent to the wrong place. See, there’s a guy who just arrived named Bob Newhart…

-Sure, I’ll give you a minute to check your list.

-Did you just say “I’ll be damned if I can find anything”?

-No, I won’t tell anyone you said that.

-Well, is there anyone up there you can ask?

-No, I’m not trying to get you in trouble. You know, I hate pulling door duty too. That’s why we’ve got to look out for each other.

-Well, listen, this guy may not be on your list, but I can’t figure out why he’s down here. He’s a family man, always lived a pretty clean life. I mean, yes, he was a comedian.

-What’s that? No, he’s Catholic.

-Yes, I know, you hear ‘comedian’ you automatically think they’re…

-Sure, Gabe, I know, you don’t discriminate. We don’t either.

-Yes, I remember you took Don Rickles when he arrived. We were grateful too, Gabe. We really didn’t want him either.

-No, I won’t tell anyone you laughed at that. You know, Gabe, it’s a funny thing, some people show up here and they’re surprised we’re not more restricted. I mean, you’d think they’d know we’ve got a pretty open door policy. And you and I can both say we’ve got people dying to get in.

-No, I won’t tell anyone you laughed at that.

-What’s that, Gabe?

-No, most of his act was pretty clean. He did these, well, these monologues, like one where he was a bus driving instructor and showing the new drivers how to close the door right in a passenger’s face.

-No, I won’t tell anyone you laughed at that.

-Well, he started out in radio, and then he worked nightclubs. He did pretty well, too. He even had a couple of his own TV shows.

-Television.

-Yes, that “new thing all the kids are talking about”.

-Well, in one he played a psychiatrist in Chicago and he mostly played straight man to a bunch of wacky characters, and in the other one he played an inn owner in Vermont and a writer and he mostly played straight man to a bunch of wacky characters. The second one ended…well, let’s just say you should really watch both.

-Did he what? Did he do anything else? Well, I’ve checked the records and before he started doing comedy he did some work in accounting.

-Oh, that’s it. Okay. That’s why he’s down here.

-Yes, Gabe, that does make sense. Thanks for helping me work this out.

-You bet, and, hey, Gabe, let’s not let it go so long this time. How about we do lunch one of these days?

-Bye for now, Gabe!

-What’s that?

-No, I won’t tell anyone we talked.

Hail and farewell Bob Newhart.

 

Hail & Farewell., Not Non-Fiction, Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

Annual Report: 2023/2024.

Author: April 1, 2024 4 Comments

April 2023-Staff assembled in the conference room to mark the occasion of the 28th year of Freethinkers Anonymous and to try and answer the question, What are we doing here? There are a lot of excellent blogs out there on a wide variety of topics that, thankfully, are still going while others, sadly, have dropped off. If anything makes Freethinkers Anonymous distinctive it’s longevity. What started as a random assortment of jokes emailed to a distribution list has grown into something resembling an internet landfill. It predated and survived the dot-com boom and, like those early internet companies, has never had a plan, purpose, or profit. On this note everyone cheered and went back to work.

May 2023-Staff assembled in the conference room to mark the occasion of the 28th year of Freethinkers Anonymous before realizing we just did that, but since no one had gotten any work done in the last month everyone cheered and went back to work.

June 2023-Everyone remembered that every year there’s a vague plan to sample as many local milkshakes as possible to try and determine the best one. And every year an argument breaks out over what defines “local”. Or whether it should be limited to ice cream places since a lot of restaurants serve milkshakes. There was also a side discussion of how some years the plan is to sample every gyro to determine the best one in the area which would be a lot easier, and another side discussion of how to define “best” and a further side discussion of what the definition of “ersatz” is but no one could remember how that came up in the first place.

July 2023-Work was put on hold for the 4th of July. Also July 1st, since it’s Canada Day, and also the 2nd through 3rd of July, and everyone just called in sick from the 5th through 13th. Then everyone took off for Bastille Day, and planned to get back by July 20th, but that’s National Moon Walk Day, and the 21st is National Creme Brulee Day and of course everyone had to celebrate that, as well as the 26th which is National Coffee Milkshake Day, and finally everyone made a solemn vow to get back to work at the start of the next month.

August 2023-Toată lumea și-a amintit brusc că acum vreo douăzeci de ani ne-am propus să învățăm limba Romanian. Nimeni nu-și putea aminti de ce și, în loc să se întoarcă prin arhive, toată lumea a decis să se întoarcă la muncă.

September 2023-Side effects include swelling, brusing, pain or tenderness, itching, dizziness, fainting, blisters, lumps, hives, bee hives, drowsiness, headache, insomnia, autodidacticism, nocturnal cake baking, dehydration, foaming of the ears, hair growth on furniture, and spontaneous decomposition. Seek medical help immediately if you become ersatz.

October 2023-The staff Halloween party was such a great success it lasted the entire month. This year the theme was “Aposematism” and resulted in several people being hospitalized.

November 2023-Staff assembled in the conference room to discuss whether “No Shave November” should be celebrated. Everyone agreed that it should but that staff would only grow sideburns. This led to a discussion of why they’re called “sideburns” since no one wants burns on their face, not even on the sides. Large sideburns are also called “muttonchops” but this was considered problematic for vegans and causing potential copyright warnings from the estate of Shari Lewis. Staff finally unanimously agreed that from now on sideburns should be called “earbrows”.

December 2023-The preponderance of holidays in the month of December meant no one got any work done.

January 2024-Recovering from the preponderance of holidays in the month of December meant no one got any work done.

February 2024-Staff assembled in the conference room to begin the disassembly of a jigsaw puzzle everyone had been working on for over a year. This proved surprisingly challenging as no one could decide whether we should start from the center or go out or from a corner and work inward, and if we did go in from a corner which one should be start with? Finally everyone decided the best solution was to just flip the table over.

March 2024-Staff assembled in the conference room as Freethinkers Anonymous prepared to start its 29th year. The team leader reminded everyone he’d read something once about how the average life of a blog is three years and the realization that we’d almost but not quite gone ten times that put everyone in a somber mood. All things must come to an end, even things without a plan or purpose. And yet it was decided unanimously that Freethinkers Anonymous would go on for another year. On that note everyone cheered and went back to work.

https://media3.giphy.com/media/AxVvk3UlCVPiPxtGLK/giphy.gif?cid=6c09b9527bfmkxwmt1t066j2so3jrrgcc0lssdr7b163qftp&ep=v1_internal_gif_by_id&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g

Adventures In Busing., American Graffiti., Hail & Farewell., Happy Birthday., Not Non-Fiction, Quick Takes., Ramble With Me., Submitted For Your Approval., The Vault

Public And Private.

Author: February 10, 2024 2 Comments

I just took that picture of flowers attached to a lamppost a few days ago but it’s not the first time I’ve seen flowers in that same spot. It’s near where my dentist is so I’ve seen flowers there before. I have a previous picture I took a year ago although, at the time, the flowers were looking a little shabby. They were plastic but still the elements had taken their toll. Why were they there, though? And this time they’d been freshened with a new more elegant cord wrapped around the lamppost. Someone’s keeping them up but who? It makes me sad to think this is probably a memorial, that someone died in that spot, or nearby, and someone who cared for that person, who loved them, is putting these flowers there as a tribute, and a way of dealing with their own grief.

And I don’t want to know who that person is. They’ve never left any information, nothing that says what happened. I sometimes see homemade roadside markers where people have been killed in accidents, and many of them have names. This one doesn’t and I respect that the person who made this memorial wishes to remain anonymous.

It reminded me of the “Poe Toaster”, a mysterious figure who, every year on January 19th, would leave roses and a bottle of cognac at Edgar Allan Poe’s grave. The figure was first noticed in 1949, one hundred years after Poe’s death, and in 1999 a note left at the grave said the original person had passed away but that the tradition would continue.

The person, or persons, who took over, however, treated the tradition as a joke, making a Superbowl prediction in 2001 (which would be wrong) and a snide remark about the French in 2004 (Poe is more respected in France than the U.S., earning praise from none other than Charles Baudelaire, who’d also lead a turbulent and tragically short life). The Poe Toaster stopped appearing in 2010, which was a good thing. It was fitting–after all 2009 was the 200th anniversary of Poe’s birth–but also the torch should never have been passed. The person(s) who took over didn’t take the responsibility seriously and never should have carried on.

The tradition was revived by the Maryland Historical Society which held “auditions” in 2015, and while I think it’s nice that it’s being carried on it started as something deeply personal, meaningful in ways we’ll never know—in ways I don’t really want to know. A memorial may be in a public place but the privacy should still be respected.

Here’s the earlier picture of flowers in the same spot:

American Graffiti., Hail & Farewell.

Not Over, But Easy.

Author: December 23, 2023 6 Comments

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.

American Graffiti., Hail & Farewell.

What Remains.

Author: September 15, 2023 2 Comments

Source: Wikipedia. I’m sure I’ve got pictures of my own somewhere.

Along I-65, at the border of Tennessee and Alabama, there’s the small town of Ardmore. There’s a rest stop that’s a good place to stop and stretch your legs. Like most rest stops it has shady spots, a few covered picnic tables, a visitors’ center with moderately clean restrooms and pamphlets on where to see the world’s largest sweet potato, which is the official vegetable of the state of Alabama. And there’s also a Saturn 1B rocket, just a little over eighty-feet tall, that stands next to it.

Or did, anyway. The rocket has slowly been rusting—but at least it’s not orbiting the Earth where it would be space junk—and is now being dismantled with an eventual plan to replace it with a replica.

I’m not sure how many times I’ve passed by it. I’m sure when I was a kid we went by it on one of several trips to the U.S. Space And Rocket Center in Huntsville, although I usually fell asleep on those trips so I missed it as we went by. More recently my wife and I passed by it on our way to the beach. The symbolism there, even in my own head, seems less than subtle: the ocean and space are still considered the last two great unexplored frontiers. The ocean is closer and more limited but still remains more mysterious than space. More people have walked on the Moon than have been to the deepest part of the ocean. It’s funny to me too that before the first submarine descended to the Challenger Deep a lot of scientists assumed there couldn’t be anything alive down there, that the cold, extreme pressure, and lack of oxygen would make life impossible. Now we know that, sparse as they may be, there are starfish, sea cucumbers, isopods, and other things that feed on whatever floats down from above. As for space, well, it seems like humans have always had a sense that something’s out there—we just haven’t found it yet.

All that aside the rocket’s dismantling seems like a sad end. The space program used to be so exciting, so aspirational. The Moon was just a first step. Now it seems like we’ve taken a step back. Mostly, anyway. There are still plans to return to the Moon, and if we could establish a base there Mars is, well, it’s not close, but at least it would be easier to reach.

When I told a friend of mine about the Ardmore rocket being dismantled he said, “That reminds me of Shelley’s poem, Ozymandias.”

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Why do we want to go into space? There are a lot of noble and important-sounding reasons: exploration, a better understanding of ourselves and our place in this vast universe, even, possibly, to save ourselves. If we can make it on another planet we extend our chances of survival as a species.

I think it’s also because we want to know we’re not alone. If we can’t share who and what we are with other worlds then, really, why are we here? And if we destroy ourselves before we meet those others, or if we just fizzle out, unable to make that great leap beyond this little sphere we call home, maybe those others will find whatever it is we’ve left. Maybe they’ll despair over having missed us, but at least we’ll have left something that says, we were here.

American Graffiti., Hail & Farewell., Ramble With Me., Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay