What’s On Your Mind?

 

Today is gray and rainy so I’m sitting here eating an oatmeal/raisin cookie and drinking instant coffee with instant creamer powder and imitation sugar and decided to write down what has been on my mind recently.

As any of you who have read my previous post, pondering the Golden Years has been foremost on my mind. Without distractions and nothing pressing to do except rocking and watching the world go by, one has time to test your memory and contemplate your legacy. You may remember the good times and even exaggerate in your mind how good they really were. You may suppress the bad times, but they are still there because histories don’t change.

So, good reader, here are a few remembrances to entertain and amuse on a fall day.

 

Thrill Rides

Here is a conundrum. I don’t like ‘thrill’ rides. They don’t thrill me. My mom loved them. She would ride a rollercoaster forever. I always saw the potential for death, so why buy a ticket.

The first ‘thrill’ ride I remember was the merry-go-round. The painted ponies go up-and-down to calliope music, but all they do is go round and round in a circle then stop. It doesn’t go fast or tilt or offer any danger. I guess you could get dizzy?

The second ‘thrill’ ride was bumper cars. The circular track held a dozen cars the size of go-carts with a pole running up the back touching the metal ceiling. When they fired up the electricity the cars could go around in a circle, rumbling like electronic football players vibrating across the field, but the theme of this ride was to bump into each other. Maybe this was a psychological aggression release or a method of bullying others (like so many games are). This must be the same thrill of watching demolition derby, or for that matter, NASCAR? It is not the rubber necking to watch the destruction of General Motor’s products, but to participate.

Since rides were not on every corner (except that little horsey in front of the 5 & Dime you had to be fed a coin for it to rock) the yearly State Fair was the only time to ride the rides.

The carnies would arrive and set up tents and build the Ferris wheel, roller coaster and other machines that would spin you around, pull you up and down so each rider could scream their lungs out. When your time on the ride was over, it would stop and you would leave allowing some other poor sucker get their cheap thrills. The rides were run by diesel engines with rumbling sound and smelly smoke. Each was built, then deconstructed, and then rebuilt between every city. Did we miss that bolt? Yes, I’m that guy who worries at the top of the Ferris wheel swinging in a metal chair with only a thin bar between you and the grown and there is no Superman to swoop down and save you if you spun too far.

The State Fair was also where crowds could walk around on sawdust because there were also live animals to smell with whiffs of popcorn, cotton candy and anything that can be fried. If the rides or the animals or the junk food wasn’t enough, there were tents with barkers advertising wonders of the world to view for a charge. There were emancipated women and big fat hairy guys in dresses. All the freaks of nature were paraded for your amusement and mockery.

I was never fond of the circus either.

My conundrum is the automobile. I learned how to drive like everyone else my age. There were classes held in a cargo container parked on our schoolyard. There were two rows of fake bumper cars facing a movie screen. Government PSA films were shown with all the gore to persuade the young minds the danger of driving. A policeman would come in and read us the law. We were taught how to use turn signals, when to turn the wheel and what the ‘right a way’ meant. On Saturday, there was a real car complete with an instructor and driving around on a parking lot. To graduate they’d let us take the car out into traffic and drive around the block. In addition to the proper training, my mother would let me take one of the cars into a quiet neighborhood to practice parallel parking. On the day of the final test, went down to the DMV, took the written test, had my eyes tested, then a guy with a clipboard climbed in the car and we drove down Broad Street, turned onto the Boulevard, up to the I-64, east to Lombardy and back again. I don’t remember if I had to parallel park or not. I was told to take a seat while my driving skills were evaluated. My name was called and I was handed a little paper card with my name typed on it. No photo or lamination, but I had past.

My mother drove the car home.

Even with two cars, I rarely was handed the keys. I could drive to the grocery store and back or occasionally drive to the country club, but never took friends out for a road trip. When my mother was in the car, I was very careful. When she wasn’t?

I found out I had a ‘lead foot’. On a few of these grocery trips I would take a detour to the local hangout spot. As kids do when they have cars, we bet who was the fastest, so we would pair off, drive to the edge of the city, then ‘drag’ back to the T-Room. Luckily there was that much of traffic at night and we never wrecked, but we floored it side-by-side down city streets, running lights and testing speed limits. After enough complaints, a police car was parked just beyond the railroad tracks. Being a law abiding good boy, I’d always slow down, pull over and was very polite while he wrote me a ticket. I’d leave it on the dining room table with the keys. After a number of these, my dad and I were summoned to traffic court and my brief adventure of driving an automobile was taken away.

Being a two-wheeler now I rarely speed because I remember the gore from those driver’s ed. movies. Two-wheelers ALWAYS lose, yet I get out there every day with the speeding monster metal mobile machines checking their text or having a sandwich dodging the pot holes and swinging doors. I guess that is my ‘thrill’ ride.

I’m not a fan of fast car movies because they always crash or blow up or are silly. I do like police chases. Not the ones with the helicopter overhead, but the cop cam following the speeder through the town. That is my adrenaline rush.

You want me to drive?  

Food

We talk about food. We watch other people cook food. We read books on food. We go out to let strangers prepare food for us to pay for. We compare our food taste. We judge each other by our food experiences. We have to eat food to keep the engine running.

The kitchen is the most popular room in the house (except for the bathroom). We entertain in the kitchen. We stock shelves with food in boxes and cans. We have special cold boxes to store food that will perish in the open. We have drawers full of stabbing, slicing and scooping food. We have an array of pots and pans in various sizes and shapes to cook food. We cover our counters with appliances that heat, grind or mix food in preparation to fry, boil, bake or burn on the necessary stove. Then we slop our results onto plates for a presentation to the consumer, and then fill a sink with the crusty remains.

 I was raised in a ‘beef and potato’ culture. Beef could be fried steak; roast beef or grilled hamburger and potato could be baked, fried or mashed as the main source of nourishment. Bird meat was reserved to turkey on Thanksgiving or Southern fried chicken. Ham was available on Christmas, but no one like the salty dried pig. Vegetables were a rarity.

My father ran a club so I was exposed to the fine dining prepared by professional chefs and presented to people who could afford the best. My mother was not a good cook so our daily grog was not very appetizing.

Then fast food came along and hamburger and French fries were affordable and available in wrapped paper and cardboard boxes everywhere. Pizza became popular because it could be shared with your friends. None of it was very tasty.

I’ve had the opportunity to dine in some of the best restaurants with meals prepared by 5-star chefs and also enjoyed the mom and pop diners with down-home cooking. I’ve tried every junk food place in town and even had meals delivered.

My wife became enhanced by cooking (thanks Rachael Ray) and studied every method for preparing a meal. From Chinese dim sum to handmade pasta to marble chill rolling pin to baking were purchased along with every renowned chef’s recipes to refer to. At the same time she became a vegetarian, so if I wanted meat, it had to be cooked on the grill. I was introduced to taste that would have to travel around the world to sample.

Now I go to the grocery daily to find something to devour to survive. I walk through the aisles and look at the base products of noodles, rice, potatoes, and bread and wonder what would be good to place on top of that. I bypass the meat and fish counter. I bypass the sweets (never had a sweet tooth). I bypass the cereals. I bypass the dairy. I stop and stare at the shelf and ponder. There are the mixings for tacos. I know what tacos taste like. I can taste every ingredient to decide whether to fill the cart or move on if not in the mood.

Maybe it is age or pallet, but I avoid much due to the bother of fixing a meal-for-one or the leftover clean up. A prepared salad or a bowl of soup and I’m done for the day.

My refrigerator is empty, except for a frozen pizza. Maybe I’ll heat that up tomorrow? Maybe, not.

Earth

The ‘climate change’ conversation is all the rage these days. All the ‘Save The World’ fads come and go between the sport games and the economy woes. Politics have their season as do the holidays and then we return to the fact that our home is dying and we will become extinct like the dinosaurs. We buy the tee-shirts and make the protest signs and walk around then listen to speakers while throwing a few bucks in the bucket passing around then feeling we had done our part by driving our hybrid back home. We are too busy with our daily life to teach the next generation how to live without an automobile or turn the thermostat to zero or how to grow your own food.

When the pandemic first appear and everyone went into lockdown the street became a parking lot. I was very pleased because there was very little traffic to avoid. People in mask still walked their dogs or pushed their babies or even jogs, but most stayed inside with all the lights on burning up the coal-fueled electricity. With the possibility of breathing to death becoming safer, the roads are again are packed with hundreds of cars and trucks with one occupant each. We show that the problem of this ‘climate change’ thing is someone else’s problem (as long as the air conditioning works).

Yes, we are still killing whales and seals.

I’m not the savior, but do notice the rise in summer heat. I can’t avoid the news of the flooding, wild fires, pollution, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc., but know I won’t be around that much longer to play a part in the next horror movie. I can only guess that teaching your kids to watch our extinction is entertainment for the disaster scenario (see above).

Heaven

I was listening to John Prine singing “When I Get To Heaven” and wondered. Did he shake God’s hand? Did he have a cocktail, vodka and ginger ale? Did he smoke a cigarette that was nine miles long?

We all have been told about a place called Heaven and all have our own opinions of what happens in the afterlife. Is Heaven ‘Oz’ or ‘Neverland’? When someone ‘passes over’ or ‘goes to the Lord’ or even ‘joins Heaven’s Rock & Roll Band’ it is good to fantasize going to a better place.

I only thought of this because of John Prine dying and reflected on his song. What will you do when you get to Heaven?

Will you see all your long lost relatives? Will you see your old dog (or do you have to fly over to ‘Doggie Heaven’ subdivision)? Will you see your first wife? Will she be with her last husband? Will you see your last wife? Will she be with her first boyfriend?

Will you be able to get a drink in Heaven? Where do you eat? Do you eat? Do you sleep? Do you have sex (after all this is Heaven)? Where do you plug in your electric guitar? Are there birds? Where do the feathers come from for the angle’s wings?

As you can see I have many questions about a place we made up to relieve the pain of dropping the carcass in the ground. If your vision of Heaven brings hope for the future or an excuse for the present, I hope you are not disappointed.

I hope you get that cocktail and a cigarette nine miles long.

 

Well I wasted enough of your time with my daily ramblings. Tomorrow is suppose to get back to sunny again so I can get outside and breath the fresh air.

I’ll still be wondering the thoughts.

 

More on that to come. Happy Halloween.