A fine day in the big city

My Saturday watercolor class is beginning July 11th,...

Since you posted this July 26th, does that mean it already started?

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For some reason I thought you had a basement apartment.  I think it's from the time you were thinking of growing a castor plant...

Sometimes when I think of doing something I get around to actually doing it.  I did, indeed, grow a bunch of castor plants using LED bulbs that are supposed to be good for growing plants, but no dice.  The plants grew tall and spindly and didn't develop leaves the way they should have.  Another failed experiment but I think I have a few beans stored somewhere and it may be time for another attempt.  And I'm sure I have some pics of those plants; they were taken in my Pre-Beaglesonian days, I think.

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Speaking of getting around to actually doing something, where is your go-to place for art supplies, Uncle Ken?  I need advice on a beginner's set of watercolor brushes, maybe more than a beginner's set.  Cheap brushes are like cheap tools and often a poor investment.  Nothing online, please.  There are some things that I want to touch with my own hands; you know when it feels right even if you don't know why.  I think sable is supposed to be the best but I don't think I'm ready to go that far, yet.  The only art supply stores I can think of right now are Michael's, Dick Blick, and Lakeview Art Supply on Lincoln Avenue.  What am I missing?

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It appears that there is quite a bit more to be carried between the two abodes.  What is that thing on the tripod?

Ha!  You don't know the half of it.  The thing on the tripod is a TV antenna, the amplified type that requires it to be plugged into the wall.  Works pretty well.  Because of the problematic way the TV signals bounce around the courtyard a precise method of antenna positioning is required and the tripod fits the bill perfectly.  I hot glued a piece of wood to the back of the antenna, into which I installed a 1/4-20 threaded brass insert.  Easy-peasy.  And more pics for your viewing pleasure but no sign of Marina City.

 

 

great wall 8

 At first I was confused by the new and the old, but now I realize that the photos are out the window of Old Dog's new and old places.  Both your windows faced the south then?  For some reason I thought you had a basement apartment.  I think it's from the time you were thinking of growing a castor plant and I had a mental picture of it growing right outside your window. 

It appears that there is quite a bit more to be carried between the two abodes.  What is that thing on the tripod?

My morning glories are quite striking this morning.  Here are a couple pics.  I particularly like the way they twine around the sunflower.  

Haven't heard much from the Dogs about the Great Wall lately.  I hope they are enjoying it.  Here is a section with some action.

The first lull at the bar I decided that I wanted to see how Dawn was doing, and I headed out through the restaurant to the upstairs bar.

As I passed by Leon’s table the soup was just being served, the girls pulling their hardly touched screwdrivers towards them to make room for the gargantuan bowl of Special Gourmet Great Wall Won Ton Soup.  Leon had clearly put aside his worries and was telling the girls some joke, waving the ruffled sleeves of his white tuxedo for emphasis, when something behind him caught my eye. 

Annette was entering the restaurant all dolled up and carrying a huge gift-wrapped box.  She paused at the register, where the smiling young hostess pointed towards the middle of the room to Leon’s table.  Wrestling the big fancy box she plowed past annoyed customers.  I tried to head her off but couldn’t get there fast enough. When she saw Raven and Ruby she stopped still, then she slammed the big box onto the floor behind her and was at the table in a flash.

Raven and Ruby were laughing politely at Leon’s punch line as Annette came up behind him.  She grabbed two handfuls of hair at the back of his head and shoved his face into the bowl of Special Gourmet Great Wall Won Ton Soup.  He sputtered, banged on the table, and came up with noodles and bok choy stuck to his face, right in the middle of his restaurant, on his birthday.  Then just for good measure she shoved his face back in one more time.

I saw the cleavage of Raven and Ruby jiggle as they glanced at each other.  Annette was calm now, walking back slowly, almost strutting.  Maybe she should have ran because Leon had no trouble catching up to her and tackling her before she even got back to the cash register. 

I ran over to pull Leon off, but not before he got in a couple of pretty good punches at Annette.  There was some rolling around on the floor, a table or two went over, and then Annette was out the door and Leon was rubbing his face and straightening his ruffled sleeves and heading back to Raven and Ruby who had drained their screwdrivers and definitely seemed to be loosening up.    

There must have been cops right outside the door because Leon had just sat down, awaiting the next course when in came two with Annette ranting in the rear.  Raven and Ruby noticed them first and kind of tensed up but then, sensing a suddenly shortened work shift, eased back and smiled at the cops.  Maybe the cops didn’t like the looks on the hookers faces, but they liked it even less when they asked Leon, to identify himself, and he looked at them with eyes slitted by booze and anger and said, “I’m the asshole, Assholes,” and it took them less time than it had taken Annette to push his face into the bowl to slam him to the floor and snap on the cuffs.

As the cops were dragging Leon away Raven looked up at me looking down at her cleavage and said, “We’ll have another round.”

“Make them doubles,” Ruby amended.

As I was bringing the double screwdrivers to the table I noticed customers all over the restaurant were getting up and leaving. A little too much entertainment I guessed.

 

Less Urbs, more Horto

Since Monday I've been sleeping at the new place and the Old Dog's plate is full to overflowing.  The computer and internet are in one place and I'm staying in another, a problematic scenario for my regularly scheduled Wednesday posts.  I apologize, and here are a couple of pics facing directly South showing the difference between the new and the old.  Compare and contrast; much more will be forthcoming.

 

is winning everything?

 The thing is I have already bought tongs.  At the very reasonable price of a buck fifty at the new Target that has just opened up on north LaSalle.  

But I did read the Beagles instructions with much interest.  The part about pulling the grate out was problematic because mine does not pull out smoothly.  It sticks a bit so you have to apply more muscle at which point it comes out free as a bird, out of the oven and onto the floor where the pieces of toast sprawl all willy nilly.

But wait, as I recall, there are two slots the grate can be slid in, and checking it just now, I see that while the upper slot is sticky, the lower slot is smooth as silk.  However skootching the toast from grate to plate seems problematic, but because of my new, handsome, buck fifty. tongs I now can pluck them off in a dainty manner.  I will test this all out when I have lunch today and a report should be forthcoming on Friday. 

That sunflower I showed you yesterday is beginning to fill in its flower, though the other sunflowers, while taller, do not appear in any hurry to bloom.  There are juicy ripe tomatoes, bright vermillion and just a little soft, but their skin is taut, and the initial bite is sloppy, but full of tomato goodness.  Fresh off the vine, nothing like it.  This year I vowed, as I have every previous year to keep the morning glories from strangling the peppers.  But now they are completely dominated by the pink and purple trumpets.  And you know what?  I don't care.  It's not like I ever get that many peppers our of them, and I adore the viny jungle.  I think maybe next year I will just plant all tomatoes.

And now an old man rant.  Over there in Tokyo right now there are the finest athletes in the world, and among them there is one who can run the fastest, and one who can vault the highest, and one who can hurl that big metal ball the furthest.  That is all I need to know.  I don't need to know which one it is.  I don't need to which country sent them there.  If the USA wins them all, fine.  If North Korea and Iran split the prize, that is also fine.

Then there is this gymnast, Simone Miles if you choose to google it, who has done all the grunt work and kept her eyes on the prize,  but now she is feeling too much pressure and is dropping out because of mental health issues.  Well that is fine with me, I don't give a shit.  But now, as is the mode these days, she is being lionized.  How bold, they are saying, how brave, what a strong young woman.  I can assure you that this is not what I would have heard from the boss back in the day when I worked for the state, and the report was due, but I told the boss, Oh, I have a mental health issue.

What did she think it would be like, all those years doing those flips and whatnot, when she got within reach of the prize?  Isn't that what people admire in athletes, that fighting spirit?  She didn't have to be an athlete you know, she could have been a barista at Starbucks, or the CEO of some Fortune 500 Corporation.  Like I said, I have nothing against her dropping out, it's the lionizing of her for doing so that seems off to me.

Another situation, somewhat similar.  The Cubs about a month ago were leading the NL central.  Which was great, but if you looked at it with the eye of an analyst, you could see that they weren't all that good.  They were playing over their heads, and likely would soon be plummeting towards the bottom.  And that is what is happening now.

For most of my life the Cubs have been the loveable losers.  From 2010 to 2015 they ended up in last place, one of those years losing 102 games.  And you know it was okay.  I watched the games and sometimes went to Wrigley, and if we lost, well what are you going to do, and if they won, it was like we had just won the fucking world series.  

Then in 2016 they actually did win the fucking world series, which was great, and for the next five they have gone to the postseason, but have never gotten to the world series again, which is also fine, just getting to the postseason is an accomplishment in itself.

I have this email group of my old Champaign beer drinking buddies who are all Cub fans, and on game day we all email each other, that was a fine catch, let's get some runs, stuff like that.  But now that we have sunk they are bitter, and they say things like if we win today and the Cardinals lose we will pass them in the standings, and we will only be nine and a half games out of first place.

The thing is we have only lost a couple more games than we have won.  Plenty of years we would have killed for a record like that.  Just sit back and watch our heroes who have about a fifty-fifty chance of winning, and there is nothing wrong with that.

I reference them with Lukenbach Texas, and that fine song at the end of that fine movie, Nashville. a little bit of The Iceman Cometh, and a snatch of T S Eliot, all to no avail.  They are on pins and needles over getting a hit here, gaining a half game on the leader there.

Crazy man crazy.  Sometimes you win sometimes you lose, that old sweet sun comes up in the morning and shines on your sunflowers anyway.  Maybe that is what that gymnast should have been thinking.  Just do it and maybe she would win and maybe she would lose, but the sun will still come up tomorrow, so where is the pressure?

Contactless Toast

 I didn't post this last night because I had to think about how to put something into words that  I have been doing automatically for decades.  I paid attention to what I was doing when I made breakfast this morning, and here it is:  You don't need no stinking tongs, all you need is a knife, fork, or similar utensil.  Use that to flop the toaster oven door open and pull the sliding grate forward about half way.  Then, with your other hand, hold your plate under the projecting grate and use that same utensil to skootch the toast off the grate and onto the plate.   Finally, use your utensil to push the grate back in and flop the door closed.  No touchy, no feely.

  

great wall 7

 Made toast again yesterday, thick slabs carved out of a baguette.  Put them on a lower setting and had to make it even lower when I saw that tick tock thingy going slower than I thought it did.  But it turned out alright, except getting the toasties out of the jaws of hell without burning my fingers.  My sister suggested that I get some tongs.  Seems like a lot of effort, extracting from the gates of hell, reaching around the damn thing without touching it lest I get burned and unplugging it, and then it sits there still hot as hell for like five minutes, to get a few slices of toast.  Well I shall persevere, perhaps it will become so second nature that it won't bother me at all.

Illinois's rate continues to rise.  All those southwestern counties bordering Missouri are on fire.  I have friends in Kansas City and St Louis, and both those places have seemed just fine.  But when we drove from St Louis to Rolla in the middle of the state, you got that feeling that you weren't in Kansas anymore.

I get the feeling that I should be masking again, not outdoors, but inside in crowds.  But the mask only protects the wearer a little and is mainly to protect others, and the odds against me getting it after being vaxxed are slim, so what is the point?   Maybe just solidarity, if we all are wearing masks maybe the unvaxxed will be intimated into also wearing theirs and that would be a big help.

Beagles is sounding much more reasonable these days. You get the vaccine to save yourself.  If the doc suggests antibiotics, you don't google to see what Ted Cruz thinks about it.  When you buckle your seat belt, you don't feel like you are bowing your head to tyranny.  When you get drunk it is not considered your sacred personal choice to get behind the wheel.  What is it about vaxxes which have extended our life spans quite a bit?  And now there are anti vaxxers in Europe and the rest of the world.  Is it like blue jeans?

The blizzard had blown over and we were expecting a big weekend night.  To my disappointment Dawn was sent up to work the upstairs room which had its own little bar so that the waitress could make her own drinks so I wouldn’t be seeing much of her downstairs.

I got busy doing my side work, cutting up fruit and making juices.  I just came back from stocking the wine cooler and there was Sam at the bar, a fat cigar in his mouth, a big smile on his face and a buxom bookend on either side of him.  “Raven,” he introduced me to the brunette on his left, “Ruby,” was the name of the redhead on his right.  These were hot babes, fingers full of rings, rings of bracelets on their wrists, and necklaces dangling deep into their low-cut dresses. Where had Sam gotten these women?  He ordered a double scotch, and Raven and Ruby, they each quietly asked for a diet coke and then I understood, they were on the clock, they were hookers.

Which really, all my thoughts of the good life in the love cottage aside, was kind of exciting. 

Leon made his entrance in a white tuxedo, “My birthday suit,” he said laughing, passing by the bar, and when he saw Sam and the girls he stopped dead.  Sam, the city guy, with a puff and a laugh, introduced his country brother to Raven and Ruby.

Leon paused just a second, looked worriedly back over the restaurant past the cash register to the door.  Then he gave a little shrug and was all smiles and handshakes and hugs on the girls’ bare shoulders.  He announced The Special Great Wall Gourmet Dinner which I had never seen ordered by anyone before.  It was an item on the menu, in the back, with the price to be determined, and it had to be ordered at least a week in advance to give the restaurant enough time to acquire the Special Ingredients.

A table was set up in the center of the dining room.  The King of Scotland made another appearance, but the girls declined His Royal Highness in favor of dainty little orange screwdrivers.

The Special Appetizers hadn’t even hit the table when Sam slipped away to the bar and was waving to get my attention.  “Tell Leon I hope he enjoys my birthday present,” he smiled and winked.  “Got to catch a plane,” he added, and he headed out the back way through the kitchen.  I chased after him, but when I caught up to him he slipped me a five spot.  When a man has to catch a plane he has to catch a plane. 

With good company like Raven and Ruby and the King of Scotland it took awhile for Leon to notice that Sam had never come back.  He called me over to the table and asked if I knew where he had gone.

“Had to catch a plane,” I told him.

“Catch a plane?” he asked.

“Gone,” I told him.  Then I bent over and whispered that Sam hoped he enjoyed his birthday present.

“Birthday present?” Leon asked and then he saw Raven and Ruby smiling at him.

He emptied his scotch, glanced back at the door, then back to the girls and poured himself another one.    

No Danger Here

 I think that a regular toaster with slots is more dangerous than a toaster oven.  We had one catch fire once when the contents of a Pop Tart leaked and must have contacted the hearing element.  You can see at a glance what's going on in a toaster oven.  I also like the ticka-ticka timer, which hasn't been available on regular toasters for a long time.  Those timers that work off of a heat sensor always seem to either overdo or underdo your toast, and they are difficult to adjust accurately.  

I just checked the COVID numbers for Cheboygan County, and they appear to be about the same as they were the last time I checked.  I don't remember when that was, but I wrote the date down this time.  We have had 1945 cases and 43 deaths since this thing started.  There are still a few people wearing masks in the stores, but most of us ditched ours as soon as we were allowed.  I don't know how many of our people have been vaccinated, but I haven't heard of any anti-vaxx protests in our area.  I can't speak for others, but I certainly did not get vaccinated because some politician told me to, nor would I have not gotten vaccinated because some politician told me not to.  People complain about government over reach, well the best way to prevent that is to do the right thing on your own.  If everybody did that we wouldn't need a government.  Stupid people!

Uncle Ken's sunflower is sure pretty.

   

first sunflower of the year

 First sunflower of the season. It struck my eye and I thought I would begin my Monday with it.

Actually feeling a little grim this morning after getting my daily Illinois covid reading.  My Saturday watercolor class is beginning July 11th, and I am planning on having an opening for my new show October 2nd, and my my improv class was supposed to begin in the fall, and I have established a pumpkin connection for my Punkin Palooza in the tower this Halloween, and now it is looking more and more like none of that will be happening and we will all be in masks in maybe a month.

Of course that means little to those of us who have been vaxxed.  It is very unlikely that we will be getting it and if we do that the case will be mild.  But the thing is all the signs say that you should wear a mask, unless you have been vaxxed.  But clearly people who have not been vaxxed and are cheating so it continues to spread.

 Back in the day all those wide-open states claimed we had to risk the death count in order to keep the economy humming.  Well now we have the perfect thing, the vaccine, as near as your corner drugstore, and not only will it save your life but it will wipe this thing out and the economy will be humming again, but few of those Trumpist govs will come out and urge more vaxxes, and the Trump inner core, who have almost all been vaxxed themselves, refuse to utter a word.  How many lives could be saved if Trump would break from his ranting at one of his monster truck rallies to urge people to get vaxxed?  Will never happen though.

Well what do they say in those commercials? Thank you Captain Obvious.

Well that toaster oven.  I have to admit that I did not read the instructions on the knobs because how hard can knobs be?  So I didn't realize that I could just move that timer thing to turn the damn thing off instead of pulling the plug.  I will be reading the instructions before I make toast later today, and hopefully I will tame the savage beast.  Still it seems like a lot of, oh danger, just to make toast.

I love swabbing that little slice of Italian bread in the olive oil before eating my pizza, makes me feel so continental.  But standing around a table and pouring it onto my pizza to such an extent that it runs off the table?  I don't think so.

Toaster Ovens and Greasers

 We've been using toaster ovens for decades, I believe we're on our third one.  They don't last forever, but they're easy to replace unless you get one of the fancy ones with a bunch of extra features that you will never use.  Thirty bucks sounds about right.  They do run hot, and they draw a lot of current, so you may not want to run it and your microwave at the same time.  Ours has two control knobs, but a digital one should work the same way only different.  One knob selects the mode of operation, toast, bake, or broil, and the other knob is a timer.  Our timer is the old fashioned ticka-ticka kind, and you turn it off by rotating back to zero until it dings like it would do if you let it run its course.  If the toast is overdone, just set the timer to a lower setting next time. The toast will come out hot, so grabbing it barehanded is not advisable.  If you are doing garlic bread or brown-n-serve sausages, don't put them right on the grate, use the aluminum tray that came with it, but first put down a sheet of aluminum foil, which prevents sticking and makes the tray easier to clean.

Speaking of pizza, a few friends and I stumbled upon a real Italian pizza joint one night in Berlin.  Lucky for us that one of those few friends was the guy I told you about who spoke fluent Italian, because none of the workers or the other customers spoke much English or German either.  There were these small round tables and no chairs, everybody ate their pizza standing up.  I don't think they sold anything to drink there, just pizza.  I saw some pitchers on a shelf behind the counter and figured they were for beer but, when I pointed to one, the proprietor said, "You wanna da extra grease?"  I politely declined.  As we were eating our pizza, I saw one of the other customers take one of those pitchers and pour something all over his pizza until it ran off the edges of the table, which was probably why there were no chairs around the tables.  Our Italian speaker inquired about it, and reported that it was olive oil.  I had always wondered why Italians were sometimes called "greasers", and now I knew.  

great wall 6

 Very good Old Dog.  One of the first things I did after moving into Marina City was buy a telescope.  It stood before my window for a long time, but it wasn't all that handy because it was so high-powered that it was hard to aim it right.  And visitors would accuse me of peeping into windows.  Ok, I did that a little bit, but not to see nekkid ladies (I have the internet for Chrissake), but just to be nosy.

Handier is the pair of binoculars I have had since my teenage telescope days, and which did get a serious workout when I was a college freshman and my dorm was right across from a woman's dorm. Mostly I use it now when there is some disturbance down on the street.

And is that a priceless work of art I see?  Doubtless waiting to be hung in a place of honor.  Very good taste Old Dog.  And I see a couple plants in the window.  Old Dog is moving on up alright.

Any of you guys know anything about toaster ovens?  My toaster conked out the other day.  I like those banquettes but that means I have to slice them, and slice them thin enough to fit into those toaster slots and I wasn't always very accurate about and that meant I sometimes had to shove them into those slots which did no good for the bread and most likely speeded the demise of the toaster.

Well this was only thirty bucks at Target and I guess I can heat other things that the microwave makes soggy.  But I didn't realize what a monster it was until I took it out of the box.  It's only supposed to be plugged in when I am using it.  And the whole damn thing heats up so that you can't put anything atop it, and you can't brush against it.  And it burnt its first run of toast and I couldn't figure out how to turn it off so I ended up pulling the plug, and it took some derring do to extricate the toast without burning my hands.

What the fuck?  I remember Mom had a toaster oven and she, an old lady, had no problem with it.  But then of course she was used to dealing with things like real ovens, of which my experience is scant.

And now an interesting development in the story of The Heroine of the Great Wall.

This birthday was a big deal for Leon, because he had opened up The Great Wall ten years ago, also on his birthday.  “I came into this town with nothing, nothing man,” was the way he began the story he often drifted into after closing with the restaurant dark and the two of us drinking into the night.  He’d started working in a laundry in this very building, long hours of steam and sweat, until he was able to buy the place and then convert it into The Great Wall, “And look at me now,” waving his arm at the darkened dining room.  It was more than a restaurant.  It was what a Chinaman coming into a prairie town with only change in his pocket had been able to create.

And he still worked through steam and sweat, rising early, working in the kitchen, getting everything set up down to the last detail so that by dinnertime everything was just humming along and at last he could sit back in the monument to his hard work and ingenuity and watch proudly and begin drinking.

He was up now, still a little groggy from last night, sitting at Annette’s table which was strange because normally he wouldn’t have anything to do with her.  If he passed by me while she was doing her astrology romance thing he would rotate his finger near his temple and grin at me.

But here she was putting cream and sugar in his coffee and holding an ice bag on his head and talking giddily to him while he wriggled like a puppy getting a bath.  She pushed aside her little glasses and whispered something to him, little flecks of her lipstick dotting his ear.  She gave him a few more little pats and then she shrugged herself into her coat and backed away from him so that she almost ran into me.  She was saying something about a gift I think, but she just gave me an annoyed look.

I sat down across from him.  He took the ice bag off his head, looked at it disgustedly, and threw it on the table  “Sometimes,” he told me, “you get drunk and you do some really stupid things.” 

Well that was the point wasn’t it? “What did you do now?  Did something happen last night?  After I left?” I was always eager for a good story, and it looked for a second like he might tell me one, but then he frowned, shook his head and shoved the creamy sugary coffee away from him.

But I had an idea what the stupid thing was.  Annette had still been there when I’d stumbled out the night before, and though I certainly hadn’t noticed what she’d been wearing, I remarked casually wasn’t she wearing the same dress she had been wearing last night.

He gave me an elaborate shrug, how would he know.  Then he gave me a hard stare.  “Get me a drink,” he growled and he took it with him upstairs to his apartment to get dressed for his birthday party.

Pull down your shades

Perhaps Old Dog can make them out with his naked eye. 

Way ahead of you on this one, Uncle Ken.

 

when I look back on all the things I learned in high school

 So not only does Old Dog have a room with a view, but his window faces the south.  Reminds me of that venerable old Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys song.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYarHymJjL8  

Whenever I see a shot of downtown the first thing I look for is of course Marina City.  I can make out the Hancock and the soon hopefully to be renamed, Trump Tower, but not Marina City.  Perhaps Old Dog can make them out with his naked eye.  

I didn't remember the Deagan Building discussion but with the magic of the blogger search window I was instantly able to find it.  Nice memory.

I say instantly because I am now using my new computer which I bought maybe a month ago and have been very slothful about setting up and getting my stuff transferred to.  Not only is it blazing fast but I have a keyboard where half the letters are not worn away.

Sometimes when the conversation gets to high school it turns out that that was the defining moment of the other person's life and they still carry their grievances and lost loves as deeply as if it were yesterday.  I had my comfortable little niche of nerd guys, and I guess we had enough fun, but no girls of course so it was not that much fun.  

In college I lived in the men's dorms, so no girls there either.  It wasn't until I started hanging out with the hippies that there were a lot of girls.  But as we aged and people settled down their were fewer women.  Well after a certain age you don't find women hanging out in bars too much. Now here back in Chicago I am surrounded by women, not in the bar of course, but in my improv and watercolor classes and condo activities.  Women can be a little too responsible  sometimes, but they are easier to get along with than guys who have that propensity (myself included) to puff out our chests.

I think Italians have some kind of prototype of what became pizza in the United States, and some of those snobby foodies are all like we should eat that what they eat is some small village tucked into the Apennines because it is authentic, but really it looks like burnt toast with some tomatoes on it, and those folks who eat it would be happy to trade it for a fat deepdish pizza.  

And they don't do the Polka in Poland because they are proud of their symphonic heritage and the polka is just some kind of Americanish jitterbug.  And in Ireland St Patrick's Day is a solemn religious holiday, nothing at all like what goes on in Chicago.

Fond Memories

The more I think about it, I think the reason I didn't relate to the Beacon story as well as I did to the other ones is because I have more fond memories of my bar days than I do of my school days.  Lots of people look back on their school years as being the happiest years of their life, but not me.  Even when I was a kid I always thought of being a kid as a temporary assignment with no real future in it.  I remember when I turned 50 my daughter said to me, "Dad, you have been practicing to be 50 all your life."

I don't know why I made that comment last April.  I guess I wanted to say something about digging ditches, but I couldn't think of anything more to say except that brief comment.  I seem to remember that we discussed the subject more thoroughly later on, but that was the only thought that came to my mind at the time.

Our local TV weatherman says that the haze we have been seeing lately is from those big wildfires in Canada.  The smoke in the western US doesn't seem to be making it as far as the Great Lakes, but it could under different atmospheric conditions.  In our area, the haze has been staying high in the sky, but they showed a picture of a city where it was closer to the ground like in the one posted by Old Dog.

I have heard before that the Chinese cooking that is popular in the US was actually developed by Chinese immigrants after they came to this country.  I have heard the same thing about pizza, but a second generation Italian that I knew in the army said that's not true.  He said that pizza really originate in Italy.  Funny, though, when I traveled to Europe  with my parents, we spent more time in Italy than we did in England, France, and Switzerland combined, and the only pizza we found was at "The American Café" in  Paris.

Urbs in Horto

The move is going well even if I'm only hauling a little bit at a time.  I'm getting a good cardio workout, so that's go to be worth something.

For a little context, this is a picture of the Deagan Bulding, a topic that was discussed a few years ago. I'm on the same street as I was in 1956, only this time I'm three blocks further north and a few stories higher.  I'm enjoying the view immensely but the downtown has been hazy all week.  The picture looks weird because of the window screen; nothing I can do about it.

And I'm joining Uncle Ken and Mr. Beagles in sitting shiva for the recently departed Buddy.  God speed, fuzzy fellow.  

 

great wall 5

 Ever since we almost recruited Free Tim Boxer Dog, I have been watching the comments and we have had two lately.  When you click on New Post you get to a page where you have to hit New Post again to get to where you can post and on that page is a Comments option and you can see the comments and recently we have had two.

Unknown commented on my Uncle Ken's Garden post suggesting that I try popcorn, and sure enough I have thought of growing corn.  Not that I have much chance of getting an ear, but just to watch it grow.  I wonder if the morning glories would twine around it.  I have an ear of popcorn from maybe five years ago hanging in my kitchen cabinets and maybe next year I will chip off a few kernels and see what happens.

Rahul has commented on Beagles' Another Myth Trashed to send it some link about Spanish fly.  The odd thing here is that the post is from five years ago, but the comment was only ten days ago.  He(?) has a link that I was about to click on but the whole thing seems suspicious and I wonder if Rahul is some kind of bot.

I guess The Institute is on the internet and some kind of crazy search might bring it up, but it seems like an odd thing.  When I click on those two guys all I get is that they have no profile whatever that might mean.  

And curiously Beagles himself commented on a post not long ago.  I will leave it to him to explain why he did that and did not just put his comment in the body of his next post.

There is not much to the story of the Beacon guy.  Just a guy who had a talent he did not care about and a high school crush that went nowhere.  Maybe that Beacon routine is the central character of that story,  I have written a extension of the story where he does get Mary O'Connor and the two of them try to climb the showbiz latter together but I am not sure where that is.

I had a friend who had a kind of crush on Sinead O'Connor, and I told him you know she is very pretty, even with that shaved noggin, and sure, she sings like a bird, but if he hooked up with her like as not someday he would be cracking open maybe his tenth beer of the day and she would come around the corner and ask if he didn't think he had already had more than enough beer for the day.  That was on my mind when I was writing Jenn.

And now back to The Great Wall.

The cooks lived upstairs in a honeycomb of shabby little rooms, each one with a bed and a beat up chest of drawers, and most of them a bottle of whiskey standing upright on the floor, and that was pretty much it.

They were newly arrived, fresh off the boat, so they had to go out to the small towns where no reasonable Chinaman wanted to go, to the small rooms in the small restaurants where they never stayed long because surely the next small room in the next small town had to be a little better than this one. They were the last cowboys in America, spreading across and crisscrossing the emptiness, far from the Chinatowns. 

In the Chinatowns, in the big cities, where people spoke their language, where the Chinese newspapers were published, where they could go to a Chinese Opera if they chose to, where there was civilization, none of the restaurants would hire a guy just in from China, because he wouldn’t know how to cook for an American Chinese restaurant, because what they cooked for the Americans was not the food they ate in China.

And the names they took, the names we called them by, weren’t their real names. Leon and Sam, were just American names that sounded like their Chinese names.  That had to be the case with Vincent too, but I liked to think he had gotten it because he was a painter.

He hadn’t been in this country long.  He still didn’t know any English, but he was friendlier than the other cooks who were just passing through the wilderness on their way to civilization and didn’t want to waste time in idle chitchat with the natives along the way.

He had a little studio cleared out of one of the storerooms in the basement under the kitchen where he was painting a floor to ceiling canvas for Leon to hang in the restaurant. 

And as luck would have it, the unopened book that Dawn had hoped to read was an art book.   

When Annette looked down to wet her finger and turn the page I stole Dawn away.  I led her down into the kitchen, past the scowling cooks chopping and slicing, down the stairway to the basement, past rusty cans and dusty jars, and down the dark corridor to Vincent’s studio where I flicked on the light.

What he was painting was a flowery jungle full of striped and spotted animals with a sky of shining birds.  I thought it was something, but I didn’t know much about art, and when Dawn took one look at it and turned around and left, I was bummed. I stood in front of the painting.  Was there something I wasn’t seeing?

But then she came back and she had her art book with her, opened to a painting of a forest full of animals a lot like Vincent’s painting, except that they seemed friendlier.  It was the Peaceable Kingdom she explained, where the lion laid down with the lamb.

“The lion’s not going to eat the lamb?” I asked, dubiously looking into the book.

“Certainly not,” she assured me.

“What’s he going to eat?”

“Hay,” she told me.

“Hey what?”

“No hay, dried grass you know.”

“No lamb chops?”

She looked a little shocked, like when I offered her the vodka upstairs, then she smiled and lectured me, “In the Peaceable Kingdom all the animals eat hay. The hay of the Peaceable Kingdom is very tasty and satisfies everything”

How tasty and satisfying can hay be I wondered, even in the Peaceable Kingdom, but I didn’t see any point in mentioning that now.

Vincent gave us his toothy smile when he returned.  Dawn gushed over his painting, and showed him her book, and the two of them had some little conversation pointing at the picture in the book and at figures in the painting, though of course neither could understand a word each other said, but it seemed liked they understood each other better than I had understood Sam and Leon last night.

Vincent took up his paintbrushes and we started to leave, but then he pointed to a little half sofa in the corner and motioned to us to sit down.

So we sat there watching Vincent paint.  We were pretty close on that little couch and I thought about just stretching out a little and wrapping my arm around her, but it didn’t seem right, didn’t seem like the lion ought to have a hold on the lamb.  Even in the Peaceable Kingdom it seemed like it might make the lamb nervous.

This was nice though, Dawn and myself sitting together watching Vincent paint like we were in our front room watching a TV show.  This is what it would be like in our little love cottage where I’d never see another bloated cigarette floating in last night’s yellowing scotch on the rocks, where we’d dance together to Chinese opera, where I’d kiss an angel every morning, and then Dawn was shaking me awake, time to get ready for the dinner crowd.

Rest In Peace

 So sorry to hear about the passing of Uncle Ken's Buddy.  It sounds like he had a good life for a cat and a loving human to write him a touching eulogy.  We should all be so lucky.

I seem to remember reading on Wiki that a phone like I bought is sometimes called a burner phone.  I suppose that's because they are so cheap that they could be considered disposable by anybody but a Czech or a Scotsman.  We don't really need two phones since we seldom use the phone we have.  Sometimes a whole month will go by without either of us making a call.  We considered getting a nice cell phone and dispensing with the land line entirely, but decided to keep both of them so we will always have at least one that works.  I think I will use it just to make calls, not to receive them.  We have plenty of spammers and scammers regularly bothering us on our land line, we don't want to give them another opportunity.  I thought that I could prevent incoming calls by leaving the phone turned off, but that doesn't work.  What does work is to turn the volume on the ring tone all the way down past "vibrate" to "silence".  I can always turn it back up if I change my mind.

"The Great Wall" is shaping up to be another great story.  I readily identified with the guy in "Jenn", the guy in "Beacon" not so much.                                             

great wall 4

 I wonder if that phone Beagles got was what they call a burner phone, one of those things you buy when you are on a secret mission and don't want anybody to trace you.  I went through quite a kerfuffle before I got my current super phone, about phones and pay plans and ended up with an andriod, and a consumer cellular payment plan.

It's okay.  The phone itself cost a hundred bucks and the payment plan is fifty a month, which I guess is kind of high.  I thought I would save money by getting rid of my landline but when I called RCN they said it was all part of a bundle and it wouldn't save me any money so I kept it.  I give it to sources where I think they might leave a message that I would want to hear if I am not home.  My cell has a phonemail thing but when you try to receive your messages it asks for some password, which I have never given it.  I called them up about it, they are good about that and they talked me through some procedure which was a little bit complicated and then a few days later it was asking for that procedure again and I just quit fucking with that.  Anyway most of the phonemails I was able to retrieve were in Chinese.

It's kind of pesky, and it always wants to talk to me and do me some favor I don't want.  But it's nice to see what's up on the internet when you are waiting in a long line or like last night when I wanted to sit on my balcony when it was too dark to read a book.

The story is just beginning.  The tale of the waitress with her eyes frozen shut is true.  The story about Leon's brother is not, but it is the sort of thing that well could happen.

Annette had these little glasses, little square glasses that she wore perched low on her little bird nose so that when she talked to you she bent her head back and looked down past her little nostrils, and with that and her hair always pulled back, and her always dead serious manner, she was like a first grade teacher, except not as interesting. 

Every afternoon between the lunch rush and the dinner rush she sat down at the table across from the bar and laid out some stupid astrology romance magazine and carefully read out loud everything that pertained to her sign.  After each item would follow her analysis, the chances that she, herself, would find romance, that some tall dark handsome Leo would comment on the black bean sauce and their eyes would meet over the spindle where the paid dinner checks were skewered once the money was in the cash register.  She would pause, looking up from the magazine, lick her thin red-lipsticked lips, who might be kissing her this very evening?  Nobody ever had, as far as I could tell, and it was not an image I chose to dwell upon.  

I saw that Dawn was skewered in front of her now.  She had a book bag in front of her, and it looked like she thought that she was going to do some reading, but I knew that Annette would never let her get away with that, when the more pressing matter of Annette’s imaginary love life, the pressing of her thin lips, needed to be pondered. 

I had to get her back, get her away from Annette. There was something about her, something she knew maybe, some little spark of something, her heroism, her Chinese opera dancing, her own pale pink smiling lips, that I had to rescue from the dull depths of Annette’s imaginary astrology love life.  Just then Vincent, the newest of the cooks passed by the bar on the way between the kitchen and his little room upstairs.

Buddy

One of my cats died late Saturday night, Buddy the big fat guy who was a big asshole sometimes but had charm up the yingyang.  

Maybe four months ago he appeared to be on death's doorstep when I took him to the vet's, but because of covid they wouldn't let me go in with him, though later they let me sit in an empty room, and that's when they told me they were giving him oxygen, and I thought maybe that had something to do with me not being with him and I did not want him to die alone in that strange place.  And they kind of shrugged but gave him a shot and gave him back to me, and I was standing on a street corner trying to hail a cab and he was sitting in his carrier on the sidewalk on that cold windy day where it took close to half an hour to catch a cab, and who can tell but looking back at him and his dark eyes it looked like as bad as it was sitting in that carrier by the busy street, he knew that I was with him, and he trusted me to take care of him.

When I got him home he didn't seem to be any better, moped around in the front room hardly eating or drinking or anything, but a couple days later when I woke up in the morning and made a little ruckus getting up he came running in like a newborn kitty.

Of course I have been a cat man all of my life, though I don't know about the dawgs, and they just have all this charm.  I remember when I first got him and his sister Sweetie, and that night he came cuddling into bed with me, and I was like Buddy, don't you know we are both guys.  Afterwards I would tell people that I was straight as an arrow but I was bi curious for Buddy and I didn't care who knew it.

Cats don't do all that much.  They would never run for help if they saw you fall down a well.  They just lounge around and sleep and eat and piss and shit, and it is up to you to provide the food and clean the litter box, and they never show any gratitude or any sign that they are sorry when they make they make a mess.

But they frolic sometimes and they do dumb stuff that makes you laugh, and maybe they don't love you like humans love each other but they are always glad to have you around.  They trust you to take care of them, like Buddy did that wintry day by the curb when I was trying to hail a cab.

After my last cat died I wanted to have two cats and rather than get them separately and worry about them getting along, I decided to pick a pair at the anti cruelty.  My previous cat, Annie, had been a classic tabby, so my rule was one of the cats had to be a classic tabby and the other could be whatever.  And there was my classic tabby right there in that cage in the corner, but the other cat was this big fat lump, with a blotchy coat of mostly white.  It was a disappointment, but I knew if I wanted her I had to take him.

They put them into cardboard carriers and I stood on the corner hailing a cab hoping they would not be able to break out.  But they were good kitties and didn't even try.  When I set the carriers down in the front room and opened them up, they each took their own tours and decided this would do just fine and that the butler seemed like a nice enough chap.

That was eleven years ago.  They were very good years.  Every morning I would wake up and if my kitties weren't in bed with me I would call out their names and within ten seconds I would see them round the corner and come running in with their tails standing up, which I have heard is the sign of a happy cat.  Sweetie would get a tussle and Buddy would get a belly rub, and then straight to the kitchen where their food and waterbowls would be filled.  I soon discovered that Buddy liked yogurt and every morning I would spoon a bit onto that little foil top they have and give it to him and it would make his sun rise in the morning.  He only liked one kind of yogurt and when the Jewel stopped stocking it I would walk four or five extra blocks to Whole Foods to get it.  I had just bought sixteen of them Saturday afternoon and carried them back thinking of him.

He had had his last yogurt Saturday morning.  He had not been well,  Instead of him coming right to the kitchen like he did every morning he stayed in the bed, and I had to carry it out to him and tempt him to waddle into the kitchen to eat it.

He was moping most of the day.  Well he had been doing that a lot these last few days and then he would snap out of it a little and I was hoping for that.  That evening he was lying on the tiles of the kitchen floor and I picked him up and carried him to the futon which I thought must be more comfortable.  What looks more comfortable than a cat stretched out on a bed?  I was watching my Saturday night movies and everytime I went to the bathroom I would walk into the bedroom and pet him and rub his belly.  Normally this would bring on a purr, he purred like a diesel engine, but I only got one short purr out of him.

When I went to bed he was by my side and moving a little.  I normally get up a half dozen times a night to pee and at one point I noticed that his breathing was ragged, and the next time I woke he was still.  I still slept with him, and I left him lying there in state as it were until the afternoon when I put him into a pillowcase and that into a large tote back.

I'm pretty sure the vet will take him and send him off to be cremated, I want the ashes, and then I can pick him up there and put them on the shelf next to my previous cat, Annie, who was the tabby who was the reason I took him home from the Anti Cruelty.  They won't be open until nine this morning, and I'll haul him over there.

My beloved Buddy, my beer-drinking buddy who didn't drink beer, who was my pal these eleven years and always looked up to me with his dark eyes to take care of him, and now he is just a stiff thing in a bag.

Well so it goes, so it goes.  He wasn't that good a cat because he sometimes thought outside the box.  He did that sometimes when he was younger and he found some nook or some piece of plastic bag which was just too tempting.  The last year he had largely just stopped even thinking it about it.  I have tried this and that, a lower box, absorbent pads, newspapers, to only half-assed use, and the place, my beautiful condo overlooking where the river runs into the lake has stunk pretty bad at times.  Last week I went out and got a portable rug shampooer at a cost of eighty bucks but I haven't yet got around to using it.

And I have sometimes thought, well he likely won't be around that much longer. so I just sort of put up with it, because, you know, I loved the guy.  So there it is.

His sister, the tabby, is the most catlike of the two, Buddy was more doglike, which is more like a human being.  But the two of them were the best of pals.  When I first got them they would have these mock fights and even though Buddy was way stronger I swear sometimes he let her win, just to be a good guy I assumed.

And they always cuddled a lot, especially lying in my lap, licking each other's faces, that was the sweetest thing.  Often though they would get into some little spat, I always assumed Buddy had done something to start it.  They were fixed of course, but sometimes Buddy would mount her, and she would go along with it until it passed some point and she would snarl at him and run away and he would chase her, but she was faster, and sometimes I would put him into the bedroom and close the door on him and he would do his time, about half an hour, and he would rejoin society as a good citizen again.

But lately they have not been cuddling as much.  He was a little smelly and I think she just didn't like him as much.  They kind of went there separate ways.  She didn't show much curiosity when he was lying in state and she was lying just a couple of feet from him, and now I don't know what she feels.

So there it is, so it goes.  I will call the vets in about half an hour, and then I will carry him down to LaSalle and Chicago.  I just tested it and it is pretty heavy, but of course not really, he is my brother.

My buddy.

Don't Call Us, We'll Call You

 Our phone started acting glitchy a couple weeks ago.  On Thursday, July 8 I decided to call the problem in before we lost service altogether, which we did shortly thereafter.  The last time this happened was 12 years ago, although that was only for five days, and this time the phone lady said it would be six days before they could get somebody to us.  On the seventh day, with no sign of help, I bought a cheap cell phone at Walmart, the kind where you buy a card with pre-paid minutes on it.  This is what I did 12 years ago, and they came out and fixed our regular phone the same day, before I even had a chance to call them about it, so I figured it was worth a shot.  Well it didn't work this time.  Not only did they not fix our regular phone that day, but I was up half the night trying to activate the new cell phone.  Funny, I don't remember it being that difficult the last time.

On the eighth day I was preparing to take the new phone back to Walmart to find out what I was doing wrong when we got a call on the regular phone from a telemarketer-scammer.  After I greeted him with my usual, "Shut up and leave me alone!" and hung up the phone, my wife picked it back up and reported getting a dial tone.  Not knowing if the fix was permanent, I called the phone company back to inquire about the status of my previous complaint.  After checking her computer, the phone lady reported that they were still working on the problem and that they would get somebody out to our house sooner or later.  Nobody has come to our house yet, but the phone has been working ever since.

Meanwhile, I took the new phone back to Walmart to find out what I was doing wrong anyway because, like I said, I didn't know whether or not the fix on the old phone was permanent.  The first thing I found out was the cheap phones of today have way more features on them than they did 12 years ago.  I asked the guy if there was any way to by-pass all that useless crap and just make a phone call.  He said that there was and graciously showed me how to do it.  I took another look at the instructions the next day, and now I think I know how to escape the useless crap mode if I ever stumble into it again.  The next thing I learned is, the proper tool for scratching off the number on the back of the prepaid minutes card is a coin, not a fingernail, not a house key, and certainly not a pocket knife.  The nice boy even replaced my damaged card for free, even though I admitted that it was probably my fault.

The last time I bought one of those cheap cell phones, I never used it for six months and ended up giving it to my grand daughter, who promised to use up the minutes before they expired.  This time, though, I think I'll keep it.  The deal they have now is, although the unused minutes are set to expire after 90 days, they carry over if you buy more minutes before the expiration date.  That comes out to $80 a year, which is cheaper than any other phone rates that I know of.  As old as we are, and living in the country as we do, we really should have a working back up phone in case of emergency.  As one of my army buddy's grandmother used to say, "It's good if you never use it."

Anti-vaxxers

 I don't know what to say about those anti-vaxxers.  There is a certain amount of risk involved with any medical procedure but, when the risk of getting sick or dying from the disease is way greater than the risk of getting sick or dying from the vaccine, it would seem to be a no brainer.  Maybe that's their problem, no brains.  

I didn't get my annual flu shot for decades because I had read somewhere that more people die from the shot than from the flu.  Then I got the flu a few years ago, it wasn't the same flu we used to get as kids, and I have been getting my annual flu shot ever since.  At some point I looked it up and found that there was indeed one year that more people died from the shot than from the flu, but that was only one year and it never happened again.  I suppose I didn't pay a lot of attention to the news in those days and, of course there was no internet.  Catching a dose of the modern flu in my old age, however, made a believer out of me.

1976 swine flu outbreak - Wikipedia

I've got nothing to say about those Trumpists that I haven't already said, namely that, if the Republicans don't purge them from the party ranks, they're going to wind up on the ash heap of history.  Hopefully a new conservative party will rise up out of the ashes. 

Uncle Ken's stories are fine, I just haven't thought up anything specific to say about them yet.  I've been preoccupied lately with my telephone problems anyway, but that's a whole nother story.

great wall 3

 Was watching the local news last night and there was The Ravenswood.  Kind of a big deal I guess, a hip new joint for those of us thinking about hip replacements.  They had several shots of what appeared to be common rooms.  I think one of them was a library or a reading room, all looked pretty good.  I am looking forward to hearing how he is doing up there and maybe tales of interesting blokes and blokettes that he may run into.

But I am worried about Beagles.  Haven't heard from him all week, and at our age it is not nice to not at least check in at least once a week.

I was even thinking of putting in some political stuff to get his blood boiling.

There is the matter of the Trumpists backing away from their agreement over the bipartisan infrastructure deal.  Oh they are always looking for ways to back out of anything, but this time the point that they are turning up their noses at is the money for the IRS so that it can audit tax cheats so that they have to pay their fair share.  Of course they have always been the party of tax cuts for the very rich, but that apparently is not enough for them and now they want to insure that they can cheat on their taxes with impunity.

Remember when they were crying about the shutdowns because they were bad for business?  Well now that we have a vaccine that can end the pandemic and bring the country back to normalcy and get business humming again, they have become anti vaxxers.  Here is a scourge on the country causing deep illness and death and costing piles of money and they are all for it.

Beagles and I have been kumbaya-ing of late so I am not sure if he would disagree on me on both these points, but anyway wishing him the best and eager to hear from him.

And now a little more of the current story.

I didn’t finish clearing off the bar until lunch was over.  I felt a little better with that mess gone, the bar shining good as new, rows of sparkling glasses, a clean ashtray positioned in front of every other bar stool, everything ready for another night just like the night before.

“Hey Sailor,” Dawn said jumping onto a stool and pounding one of her heroic little fists on the bar, “What’s a gal got to do to get a drink around here?”  She startled me so that I jumped and then she laughed.

She wasn’t laughing at me though, she was laughing at herself, the absurdity of her, little Dawn, bellying up to the bar and doing that ‘Hey Sailor’ thing.  It was a phrase her father had taught her when she was a little girl, sitting in front of her oatmeal in the breakfast nook and asking for her orange juice.  It always got a laugh out of her folks.  Seeing the bar and the empty stools, she thought she’d try it out.

I went over to her and poured her an orange juice. I lifted the vodka bottle teasingly and she spread her hands and shook her head in mock horror.  No, no, she didn’t drink at all.

Sam had brought in a handful of empty one-ounce scotch bottles from his flight.  In cleaning up the bar I had set them aside, and now they were standing at attention in a little line on the ledge of the bar in front of Dawn who picked up their leader and squinted her eyes at his tiny label.

“Glenlivet,” she read,  “That’s the kind of scotch my dad drank,” then she went down the line turning each little bottle so that the label faced her.  “What are you going to do with these?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said, a little embarrassed now that I hadn’t pitched them with the rest of last night’s debris.

“Can I have them then?” she asked and I nodded and she picked up each one and dropped them carefully into her purse.

“It’s just that they remind me of my dad,” she explained.  “He used to call me Princess Winterspringsummerfall.  That always made me smile. Oh, when I skinned my knee or bumped my head, or any of those things kids do all the time you know that end up with them crying, he would say,” and then she paused trying to remember.  “Shrug it off.”

“Shrug it off,” I repeated, looking down at her, confused and amused.

She laughed again, her modest embarrassed little laugh.  “Sounds silly doesn’t it?  ‘Shrug it off’ what kind of advice is that to give a little girl?  But I didn’t know any better.  I guess it was like ‘no use crying over spilt milk,’ ‘don’t look back,’ ‘get on with life.’  I’d be kneeling on the sidewalk, maybe I’d fallen off my roller skates or something, and remember how bright and red your blood looked when you were a kid, and he’d kind of give me a little punch in the shoulder, and say ‘Shrug it off,’ and I would, and I’d feel better.”

I stood there in silence looking down at her blushing face, and then she added, looking straight ahead and past me, “And then he died.”

Couldn’t shrug that one off, I was going to say, but I’m glad that I didn’t.  Conversation kind of dropped off after that though.  She emptied her orange juice and then she slipped away to Annette’s table.

great wall 2

My mother used to live in The Bethany, a retirement home about a mile north of the Ten Cat.  It was a pretty nice place, and I was wondering if that is the kind of place Old Dog was moving into.  She had a kitchen, and she had kind of taken pride in her cooking, but she never used it.  Cooking was work and she wanted no more to do with it, which was fine because along with room came board, and they had a big dining room, and I think the chow was pretty good.

From what Old Dog is saying I am guessing board does not come with the room, and I am thinking maybe there is a difference between senior living and retirement homes. The Bethany also used to have things like bingo nights and they brought in entertainment sometimes, I remember an Elvis impersonator and they had a nice little Christmas/Hanukahs/something vaguely Buddhist celebration.  I wonder if the folks at the Ravenswood have something like that.  Are there any common areas?  I know Old Dog likes to spin a yarn, and you can't do that properly without an audience, of course then you have to listen to their yarns, but that can be pretty entertaining too.

At 700 sq ft is about the same size as my condo.  I remember when I moved here I was surprised at all the room I had.  Plenty of room to put all my stuff neatly into their own place, but sloth and clutter took up the slack pretty quickly.

I do almost all my cooking by microwave.  The only thing I use my burners for is making hard-boiled eggs, and I had a cooking spree a few years back and made my favorite food of my youth Rice-a-Roni which was as good as I remembered it, and broccoli and cheddar soup which was also excellent, but after that not so much.  

I was hoping to get some comment on Beacon, but failing that I will provide my own.  See I was thinking the reader would be transported to a high school auditorium (how much time have we spent in those?) and then this whole outrageous Are you from Beacon thing would play out, and tucked into the middle of it was his slipping his arm around Mary O'Connor's waist, the love interest.  And then it goes on a bit until the whole stupid auditorium is blasting it out.

And later he is summing things up,  He never had a chance with Mary, well don't we all have lost loves in our pasts, and now that is in the past, and all he has to remember is that stupid song.  Well so goes life huh?  Kind of a funny story with that extravaganza, but with a little sadness tucked in.  

That's my take but if you have a different one, that is fine too.

And here is the second installment of The Great Wall:

And in between the scotch and the food and the wine and even the cigars, were the cigarettes, the maggots in the remains of the good time, bent and stained, nestled into the gristle, floating bloated in half empty glasses, squashed on the bare wood of the bar at the end of a smear of ash.

I felt a little sick looking at it and sat down on a stool facing away from the bar, into the side room.

The sound system was back there.  Mostly nobody bothered, but Dawn, the new girl, the Heroine Who Led the Way, looked through the tapes and set aside the Tony Bennett and Johnny Mathis to play one of the mysterious cassettes with Chinese characters ball-pointed onto the scotch-taped labels and the restaurant rang with the sound of Chinese Opera.

Which seemed to suit her just fine as she bustled about to the music, getting that steam thing under control, filling the mustards and the sweet and sours, setting out the fortune cookies on their little plates.  She was wreathed with the remnants of the steam cloud like streamers and she was dancing like a character from The Red Detachment of Women.

Elbow on the bar, head aching, I watched her.  I had a job where I really didn’t have to do much and it paid the rent and I could get drunk every night.  I had it made.  But she was so happy.  Maybe I was missing something.

Movin' on up

Uncle Ken is going to spoil us with all of his stories; is this the first time they are seeing the light of day?  With all of the craziness that we can't avoid it is a blessing to read these little gems.  I'm liking them, a lot.

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It's been more than ten years since I moved into my cozy little studio apartment, and it was an ordeal, humping all my crap the quarter mile down the alley to the new place.  It was a solo effort, just me and my hand truck, and I vowed I would never move again.  You can see where this is going.

More than a year ago my sister told me about this senior housing development going up in a former hospital, located only a couple of hundred yards from my current digs.  She even called the alderman's office to get me on the "list."  I wasn't crazy about the idea but I went along with it, taking the path of least resistance.  Nothing seemed to be happening but then I got a phone call and the ball started rolling and I entered the paperwork hell of government housing.  So, now I'm in the process of moving and I'm taking it easy this time.  The end of August sounds about right.

It's a strange experience to see all these geezers; I'm not used to seeing folks my own age.  Instead of a 400 sq. ft. studio I'm now in a 700 sq. ft. one bedroom.  More space than I know what to do with, and all of the stuff is brand-spanking new.  My only critical observation thus far is that there is no gas range; everything is electric.  Maybe Uncle Ken can give me some tips about working with the glowing red coils.

I'm slowly adjusting to this new way of living, taking elevators instead of stairs.  The view isn't bad, facing south with a direct line of sight to the downtown TV transmitters.  I'm on the fifth floor, the lowest available for us "independent living" types.  The lower floors are for assisted living residents and they have their own entrance; we're not connected.

This should be an adventure; all the food and kitchen crap is in place, leaving me with nothing but instant coffee in the old crib.  Slow and steady will win this race and there is a long way to go; lots of books, vinyl albums, tools and gadgets have got to make the trip and they are all heavy.  Oh, my aching back!

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/7/6/22559807/ravenswood-hospital-refurbished-senior-tenants-cha-evergreen-real-estate-group

 

 

great wall 1

 This one is not as long as Catfish, but is set in the same place.

It was four blocks through white and wind and sneaker-soaking drifts with a Loch Ness monster scotch hangover to The Great Wall, but today was Leon’s birthday and I had to show up for that.  I pulled the door open and it banged shut behind me with a blast of blizzard.

Annette ran down from the head of the stairs to see who was coming in and she was a little disappointed that it was just me, the bartender, and not the new girl, just hired yesterday afternoon, who lived clear across town, and was already late.  And if she didn’t show then who would wait tables?

“It’s not going to be me, I’ll tell you that.” she assured me, though of course it would be.  She had climbed her way up from waitress to head waitress to managing the waitresses, and her tray toting days were over thank you very much.

I shrugged, tried to give her a sympathetic look, as if I gave a shit, and brushed on past her to the side room to punch in and hang up my coat.  Against a wall were the tea urns already fired up warm and moist and inviting after the white and wind as I poured myself a cup.  But maybe they were steaming a little too much.  The room was filling with fog so maybe something needed to be turned down.  I wandered back towards the cash register to tell Annette.

And just then the front door slammed open and shut again and Annette squealed like a schoolgirl.  Dawn, the new girl had arrived, and Annette’s dignity was saved.  Through my steam-fogged glasses I could barely make out two figures looming towards me from the dark dining room.  Annette had Dawn by the elbow and was guiding her back to the side room because Dawn had walked clear across town in the blizzard to get here and now her eyes were frozen shut.

“All the way from Vine Street,” Annette was saying, “Walked clear here in the storm with her eyes frozen shut” and she led her past me into the side room. By the time I got back Dawn’s dark hair was a nest of snowflakes, ice crystals glistened in her eyelashes, melted in the steam from the tea urns, damped her rosy cheeks, and allowed her to open her now unfrozen eyes.  Shrugging off her coat shyly, revealing her red Great Wall waitress uniform with the gold Chinese characters down the side, she looked like the heroine in one of those old Red China propaganda posters, The Peasant Girl Who Saved Her Village.  

I was just the bartender and I would be serving no food to the hungry villagers and I was no hero. I left the giggling Annette and the smiling modestly shrugging heroine, and went to my province, the bar, with its thick layer of detritus, the scene of the crime last night, the wages of sin.

Leon’s younger brother, Sam, had flown in last night for Leon’s birthday.  He had a restaurant in San Francisco and was worldlier than Leon, here in Decatur Illinois.  He’d strutted in waving a cigar like a baton while Leon had sat punching filter-tipped cigarettes out in a plastic ashtray. 

Leon had put a smile on his face and brought out this dark bottle of scotch made especially for the King of Scotland or something, the main point being it was incredibly expensive.  He poured Sam and himself a generous portion, and then because I was standing there, and the high cost of this scotch meant nothing to a man such as Leon, he poured me a generous portion also.   Normally I get in enough trouble just drinking beer, but I knew I was going to have to drink this one for Leon.

And the one that followed, and the one that followed that.  Then there were the fat black cigars, the steaks, the pricey wines, and then there was another bottle of The King’s Own Nectar.  I didn’t understand a word that was said, but the three of us had a great time.  From the looks of the bar, the good times had continued after I’d left early, decapitated by the King of Scotland.