The Cluck Stops Here

Here's a Thanksgiving fable for all pilgrims to enjoy!

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Thanks For The Memory


It was three years ago, or maybe it was two. Thanksgivings come and Thanksgivings go.
I overslept and missed the family gathering at my uncle's house out in the country.

Country folks like to eat early, and like I said, I overslept.

B.A. called about 1 in the afternoon. He was down in Savannah, alone.

"Had lunch yet?" I asked him.

"I was just going to pick up a hamburger," he answered.

"No Thanksgiving feast?"

"No. I had some work to catch up on and couldn't get to Montgomery to my mother's. What are you doing?"

"No plans," I said.

"Catch a plane," B.A. said. "The Hyatt bar is open even if nothing else is."

I was at the Savannah airport three hours later.

We never made it to the Hyatt bar. We stopped instead at a little beer joint just outside the airport. Silent men playing pool

There were a couple of pool tables inside and young men wearing hats with the names of various heavy equipment companies sewn on them were playing. Cigarettes dangled from their mouths. They were silent and expressionless. One got the idea heavy stakes were involved.

A few old men sat around the bar drinking beer. A man and a woman worked behind the bar. There was a jukebox playing country music.

"Keep your mouth shut," B.A. said, "and we'll probably be OK."

Probably.

We had a few beers and played a few tunes of our own. Nobody had spoken to us until a graybeard sitting a few stools down looked up from his can of Budweiser and asked, "Y'all ain't from around here, are you?"

We said we weren't.

"Y'all going to stay for supper?" the man went on.

"Stay for what?" I asked.

"Supper," he said. "We have it here every year on Thanksgiving. It's mostly for the regulars who don't have nowhere else to go, but I'm sure nobody would mi nd if y'all stayed." We didn't say yes. But we didn't say no, either. Lining up for the feast

A half hour later, the door to the joint opened and in walked five or six ladies bearing plates of food. Lots of food. They set up a table near the jukebox. Turkey and dressing. A ham. Mashed potatoes and gravy. Green beans. Butterbeans. Creamed corn. Homemade rolls. There were also cakes and pies.

The customers put down their beers and cuesticks. They lined up, plates in hand, for the feast in front of them.

"Y'all more than welcome to eat," said the woman behind the bar. We got in line.

The food was wonderful. We went back twice.

"You do this every year, huh?" I asked one of the ladies that brought the food.

"They's lots of people don't have nowhere to go on Thanksgiving," she said. "Some of 'em come in here to drink 'cause it ain't as lonely as staying home. We all live in the neighborhood, and we just try to share what we got with others."

We stayed until 9 or 10. We tried to pay extra for the food, but nobody would take our money. Thanksgivings come and Thanksgivings go and, occasionally, one comes along that is very special.

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With thanks to http://www.lewisgrizzard.com

Laugh Lines

Hello World,

And so here we find ourselves, right on the brink of Thanksgiving, which will be next Thursday, and anyone who isn't already prepared for the annual Tom Turkey Trot had better shake a leg - or should I say, a drumstick. An even more remarkable event occurs on the Sunday following Thanksgiving, which will be November 27th, and is the earliest that you can have the first Sunday in Advent, and only happens when December 25 falls on a Sunday. This generally happens about every 6 years, although there was a gap from 1995 to 2004 that it never happened, and personally, I blame the Y2K bug. (Now THERE'S a pop culture reference that's lost on young people nowadays, that's for sure!) So this is just a warning to everyone that once Advent begins, the holiday countdown has really started ticking in earnest, and while it may seem way too early (as I'm sure it did also in 2005) you can believe me when I say that there's no time to waste. My advice to you is to get out there and shop like it's 1988!

Also not wasting time, the World Series has just recently wrapped up, and already they're naming the Cy Young award winners for the best pitchers in both leagues. The AL winner from the Detroit Tigers made the front page of the Sports section with this gushing announcement:

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Justin Verlander unanimously won the AL Cy Young

Award, as was expected. Now, the far more intriguing

question is whether he will also take the league MVP

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Now, I leave it to the purists to argue whether a pitcher can be a valid choice for MVP, compared to position players who play every day. My question is where was Detroit when St. Louis was winning the World Series? Oh, that's right - they had already been eliminated from the playoffs before the Fall Classic ever started, and I think anyone could hear the ghost of Branch Rickey saying the Tigers could have done that without a Cy Young winner in their ranks, by golly. Not to downplay Verlander's contributions to Detroit's season, but I can't help but feel that a league MVP should at least be on a team that gets to the World Series, if not win the darned thing, because otherwise the "most valuable" part of that is just completely incomprehensible. Meanwhile in the National League, the Cy Young was awarded to Clayton Kershaw of the LA Dodgers, although no mention was made of the league MVP in his case - which was just as well, since the Dodgers finished the season at .500 and a full 11-1/2 games out of first place in the West. I have the feeling that somewhere Cy Young and Branch Rickey are both having a big laugh.

Speaking of laughs (or perhaps "nervous laughs" might be a better choice under the circumstances) alert readers of the AOL Welcome screen on October 31 couldn't help but notice this startling tidbit about pop singer Jessica Simpson:

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Simpson finally confirms big news

After months of rumors the star has

finally revealed that she's expecting --

and she did it with Halloween flare

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Gee, I sure hope not! I realize that times have certainly changed, and not always for the better, but I'm sure that the wisdom of modern pre-natal care would be to absolutely keep the mom-to-be away from flares of any kind, holiday or otherwise. And for a relatively obscure word with specific and arcane uses, somehow "flare" gets the call more often than not, when people are reaching for "flair" instead, as if "flare" has the better publicist or something. Next it will be winning the league MVP, and then we'll really all be laughing - except Justin Verlander, that is.

In other Halloween news, I admit that I was disappointed at having only 50 visitors for the event, although bringing in the left-over candy from the remaining goodie bags could not have been more popular at work if I tried. I thought it might have been the cold that dissuaded the youngsters from tramping about in their costumes, but I found out later this was not the case at all. Many coworkers said that they had the usual crowds showing up for trick-or-treat, several with over a hundred, and in some places they had to close up early because they had already run out of candy after 150 callers. (Although it must be said that one colleague admitted to me that they packed it in at 8:30 so they could go inside and watch Dancing With The Stars - which I think we can all agree with Jessica Simpson, is no one's idea of Halloween flare, and that's not just a lot of Monster Mash, believe me!) And while I was glad to find out that the holiday is still going strong in the local area, it made me feel even worse about our paltry turn-out, which was the lowest in the last 10 years, except for 2009 when it rained all night. So this was no MVP year around the old homestead, and Justin Verlander has nothing to worry about, in fact, even Clayton Kershaw might have a shot at it.

It was that same weekend that the northeast had been pounded with a freak snowstorm on October 29, which was a minor nuisance and historical curiosity for us, but which turned into a major disaster for many other areas. There were accumulations over a foot around New York, while New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts saw that and much more, with a high of 31 inches in New Hampshire. Transit came to a standstill, as planes were grounded and trains stopped dead on the tracks, stranding travelers in record droves. Over 2 million customers lost their electricity, many of them for more than a week, mostly from the welter of trees that toppled in every direction, not only taking the power lines with them, but closing the very roads that the emergency crews needed to fix the wires. Schools closed, events and sports were canceled, and even businesses that were open found that their employees couldn't get to work. An unexpected victim of the catastrophe (or, what sounds like "How the Grinch Stole Halloween") numerous municipalities imposed a curfew on Monday and wouldn't allow their residents to trick-or-treat for Halloween, citing slippery sidewalks, downed trees, and lack of electricity for street lighting as too hazardous conditions for roaming bands of revelers in costume. So I suppose I should consider it lucky that Halloween wasn't canceled here, and be grateful for the 50 intrepid souls who braved the cold and came to the door, because otherwise, it would have been the zombie apocalypse version of the holiday along the deserted streets - and no amount of Halloween flares would turn that trick into a treat, Jessica Simpson or not. And in the immortal words of Branch Rickey, "We could have done that without you, Grinch."

Elle

Hot Enough For Ya?

Hello World,

Happy Veterans Day! This is about half a red-letter day, compared to how it used to be, with about half of the banks closed, half of the schools closed, half of the businesses closed - and the other half, wondering what all the fuss is about. It's also Bill's birthday, and we both took the day off from work, and it turned out to be an absolutely beautiful day to be outside and enjoy the glorious weather. Unfortunately, it was not such a great day to spend hanging around the house, as it was no holiday for the porch contractors, who showed up early and spent the whole day pounding and sawing, banging and drilling, and stamping about up and down ladders, until you just about couldn't hear yourself think. (And which we all know, is already hard enough on my two poor addled brain cells any more - which I have renamed Dickens and Fenster for the occasion - until I felt like nothing so much as that old Anacin commercial with the hammers in the head, which I probably hadn't thought about in 40 years.) And for the numerologists out there, it was another very special day, where we could observe and be part of a unique moment in time when the clocks struck 11:11:11 on 11/11/11, which certainly made it a holiday for the rest of the numbers, by golly.

Of course, last weekend we finally reached the point when we get to switch back over from Daylight Saving Time, so all of you nocturnal wastrels out there can go right back to wasting all the daylight that you want once again with impunity. In fact, we should probably call this short period of the year the Daylight Wasting Time System, or DWTS, and the heck with Dancing With The Stars, is what I say. Many of us were glad for a chance to "fall back" and gain an extra hour to enjoy in any way that we liked, and it didn't even cause all that great havoc on Sunday morning, with hordes of people showing up at church at the wrong time. Now as the daylight shifts back earlier, it's nice that it's a bit lighter in the mornings, but driving home in the dark is a stone cold drag, and that's no joke. After all, if it was a joke, "The Comedy Rule of Three" would apply, and we'd have the time changing three times a year instead of twice, and the poor daylight wouldn't know if it was being saved or wasted or dancing with the stars, for heaven's sake.

Speaking of jokes, last week was really one for the record books, but for those of us who lived through it, it's going to take a while before we care to laugh about it, I can tell you that. Of course, everyone knows that the ancient rattletrap of a flea-bag where I work is so antiquated that it pre-dates the invention of elevators, and is constructed entirely of mud and straw. It features an old steam heat system to provide heat and hot water, but without any way to regulate it, so once the heat is turned on, the building is many hundreds of degrees too hot to work in, and everyone spends the entire winter with their windows wide open and their air conditioners running at full tilt, just to ward off some of the intense heat radiating from the walls. So it was totally unexpected when the boiler developed a valve problem, and there was literally no heat in the whole building for an entire week, for the first time since I've been there, and to say that it was uncharacteristic for this building would be an understatement of epic proportion. I don't mind saying that in the beginning, people rejoiced (and I was certainly one of them) because it finally wasn't too hot for a change, and people made the best of it by wearing coats and sweaters, and toughing it out in a grim spirit of misery loves company. But it turned into a long cold week, and one day was so uncomfortably frosty that they actually sent us home, which is just about unheard of in healthcare, I can tell you that. (Especially since they were nice and toasty in the main hospital building, where it was probably great sport for them to watch us out their windows, as we huddled outside in the sun in a vain effort to warm up before braving the icy chill in our offices once again.) So while it was interesting for it to be too cold instead of too hot, it really was a textbook example of "too much of a good thing," until even the diehards like me were ready to call it quits.

Meanwhile, alert readers may remember that this was the exact same week that the asbestos team dismantled our furnace at home, while the plumbers didn't install the new furnace until the following week, so guess what - there was also no heat at home, during the very same long cold week, and I'm sure it goes without saying, thanks oh so very much not. All week, the cats were doubled up on afghans, we were bundled up in long johns, and the electric blankets and portable heaters were working overtime, I can assure you. It was too cold in the kitchen to cook, so we ate out a lot, and you can bet that we asked for the warmest seats that they had in the place, that's for sure. Some days, it was so cold in the house that it was actually warmer outside, which I personally thought was just adding insult to injury, and made me wish for a Climate Control Board that a person could complain to. It really was an unprecedented and coincidental double-whammy that I never would have expected in my life, that there would be no heat at home and no heat at work in exactly the same time period, and completely out of the blue, where usually the heat is the least of our problems. I said to Bill that you know things are completely upside-down when the warmest place I go all week is church, which has always been so chilly that everyone routinely wears their coats through the whole service, and people cluster around the coffee urn downstairs for warmth. I have to tell you that as much as I complain about the heat, I was glad when the Engineering department fixed the boiler valve at work, and even more delighted when the plumbers finally finished hooking up our new furnace at home, and it will take a long time before I lose the thrill of those wonderfully balmy BTU's wafting all over me, I can tell you that. Now I can save my long johns for church, where they belong.

And while we're on the topic of the long and short of it, we all received a broadcast email at work to let us know about events around our friendly neighborhood health system, which encompasses four separate institutions in two cities, with thousands of employees and numerous buildings on their sprawling campuses. This particular notice was about the nursing school, which is named for its benefactor, the estimable Dorothea Hapsburg, where the students had created an awareness program for health issues facing the community. Unfortunately, it all ran aground on the rocky shoals of a well-known email drawback, which is the size limitation of the email subject line - so that what we all saw in our Inbox was a memo with this startling subject:

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Happenings! Hapsburg Promotes Breast Cancer and Domestic Violence

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..... and that was where it stopped. It was the "Awareness" part of it that didn't make the cut, as it ran out of room in the field that was allotted to it, and was swallowed up in the rampaging bits and bytes of the hospital network. In their defense, the complete title was actually included in the email itself, and showed up big as life if anyone took the time to print the message out on paper, so it wasn't that they left the word off like a bunch of incompetent illiterates or anything. But it certainly got our attention on Wednesday morning, in spite of the frigid conditions at the time, and for all the wrong reasons, I don't mind saying. In fact, it's exactly the kind of thing I would expect out of Dickens and Fenster, but before I can let them use the computer, I'm going to have to get those hammers away from them.

Elle

Play Money

Hello World,

Happy November! I don't know about where you are, but around here, it seems to have settled into a consistent routine of crisp clear days and cold nights that make you glad for warm blankets and fuzzy slippers, or even better, relaxing in front of a crackling fire. I'm thinking that we really need to apologize to everyone, because much to our surprise, in the course of the furnace replacement and asbestos abatement process here, our ancient wheezing furnace was dismantled on Monday morning, and the way things are going, we won't have any heat until next week, and I don't mind saying, thanks so very much not. So that certainly explains this entire week full of cold weather, and let's not forget, after they finally do hook up the new furnace, it will no doubt usher in a new geologic era of sweltering tropical temperatures, most likely with erupting volcanoes and steamy hot water geysers all over the place, I shouldn't wonder. We'll all be wearing tank tops and flip-flops to Christmas shop, and taking the rapid-transit lava flows to work, and it will be known as The Furnace-olithic Age forevermore. So I won't say, "Don't blame me," but I will say, "Don't say I didn't warn you." Sweat bands, anyone?

Of course, Monday was Halloween, and I do hope that a ghoulish time was had by all in your neck of the woods. I had long since given up on my original costume idea, and bought a replacement costume as an emergency backup, which was better than nothing, but I really couldn't talk myself into wearing it. So I was casting about for another idea that I would like better, and scanned the online costume stores for inspiration, but really didn't come up with anything but the same old humdrum and shopworn retreads as always. (It occurs to me just now that nobody even knows what "retreads" are anymore, it's like a rotary dial phone or a button hook to people nowadays.) Inspiration finally struck me from an unlikely source, and that is, ripped from today's headlines, where I realized it had been staring me in the face all along. So if you had been at the hospital on Monday morning, you would have seen in the Purchasing department, instead of the usual secretary, there was the renowned Mr. Monopoly (from the game of the same name) along with his very own protester. The protester in question (actually an 18-inch doll named Robyn) sported her own OCCUPY WALL STREET sign (thanks to Bill, and also said I AM THE 99% on the back) and a $20 bill taped over her mouth, just like the real protesters. This protester's most convenient feature was that she would stand up all by herself, even carrying a sign, so she was an entertaining prop on her own, when not trailing about after Mr. Monopoly in silent reproach.

The burgeoning protest movement had made such an enormous splash in the media, that when I showed up with this costume in the morning, people flew into hysterics everywhere I went. That is to say, the people who understood the concept thought it was absolutely the funniest thing they had ever seen - but for anyone who missed the point, there was just no explaining it to them. For an idea that I came up with basically at the last minute, and had to pull all of the elements together at the eleventh hour, I have to say that I have never had a reaction like that to a costume in my entire life. People laughed so hard, I thought they would hurt themselves. Nobody quibbled over costume details as they often do (as if there's a definitive interpretation of Uncle Sam, for instance, who is after all, a fictional character) or carped that Robyn looked too much of a sissy to be any good at protesting, which I happened to agree with - but you know, it's hard to get good help these days, especially at the last minute. Everyone just seemed to embrace the whole idea with open arms, and have a lot of fun with it.

Going out on my usual rounds of trick-or-treating around the campus turned out to be more complicated than I expected, and don't forget, I've done this in a grass skirt, ecclesiastical robes, and clown pants with a 54-inch waist. But Mr. Monopoly really needed three hands (or an assistant) to carry his walking stick, protester and goodie bag, so getting in and out of doors was especially challenging. Even worse, the costume jacket and hat came with a mask, and it was comfortable enough, but I could only see straight ahead, I couldn't look down and I had no peripheral vision at all. I was afraid of stairs, and even getting on an elevator was anything but routine, I can tell you that. I wouldn't dare cross the street in a mask like that, and I found that if I dropped anything, someone else would have to pick it up. So it turned into a kind of a long afternoon of traipsing about, but I was still glad to bring joy to dreary offices, and the usual parties in Adult Day Care and the nursing home, where they always have so much fun.

In keeping with Mr. Monopoly's reputedly vast fortune (actually, he is often referred to familiarly as Rich Uncle Milburn Pennybags) I eschewed the plan of trick-or-treating this time around, and instead of asking for anything, gave out gaudy plastic gold coins everywhere I went, much to the amusement of the recipients. This turned out to be a good thing, because the treats were even less forthcoming than usual in my travels (and after 20 years of this, that's saying something) and when someone did give me some candy anyway, it made it even more endearing. (One embarrassed staffer gave me a dollar, rather than leave empty-handed, while another offered me his lunch, and I give both high marks for generosity of spirit, however misguided.) It was a fun day, and I didn't have any mishaps along the way, as I thought I would, but all too soon it was time to hurry home and get ready for being on the opposite side of the annual trick-or-treat-a-thon.

Monday night was cold but clear, and I was hopeful that we'd have a good turnout to snatch up the 100 goodie bags that I had assembled beforehand. They started earlier than usual, with the first callers at 6:00 PM, and I thought that was a good sign, but they came in dribs and drabs after that, and in the end, we had exactly 50 and no more. It was all over by 8:30, without even the late stragglers of older kids coming up to 9:00 like they often do. With such a small group, there was no clear favorite, and very few duplicates, unlike other years full of witches and space aliens. Notable by their absence were Scream, Michael Myers, Freddie Krueger, any ninjas or video game characters like Super Mario. In fact, there were only two witches, four princesses, four vampires and five super heroes - including the neighbors' irrepressible Emmett as about the most adorable Batman ever. His little sister Fiona was Elmo, and other visitors turned up as Minnie Mouse, Frankenstein, Smurfette, a puppy, monkey, ladybug, bumble bee, rat, skeleton, cheerleader, cowgirl, zombie, Barack Obama, and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. My personal favorite was the very timid, plump white boy dressed as Michael Jackson, of all things, which you really had to see to believe, and even then, it was a tough sell. People showing up with no costume won the day with 17 - and here I mean, a boy in street clothes wearing a party hat, or unidentifiable people describing themselves as "demon hunters" or "working stiffs." But everyone seemed to be having a good time, and at least we unloaded half of our bags, so that was the best part. I brought the left-overs in to work, where the staff pounced on them like, well, homeless people infiltrating an Occupy Wall Street protest for the free food, and I ought to know, or my name isn't -

Milburn Pennybags