WALKIN', WRITIN', WIT & WHIMSY

Today it was four wheels instead of two feet for travelling. As much as I hated to do it, I took my car for a 17-mile spin. I’m laughing as I am typing since this is usually the sum total of miles I drive in a month. Of course that only makes it harder for me to catch up with the car mileage since there is 42 miles’ difference as of today. I will get it done though.

It wasn’t the tropical weather that made me reach for the car keys. My boss was out in back-to-back meetings and had left me no work to do. There were weeds (there are always weeds) that could have occupied my morning but it was too hot and sultry out, so I took care of errands instead.

I went to Loveday’s for an oil change. The guys there think it is pretty darn funny when I come in for a yearly oil change, whether I need it or not and I am the butt of their friendly jokes. No problem, but when the tech reached inside the car to slap the reminder sticker on the windshield, I couldn’t help myself and said “Norm, you really think that 3,000 mile reminder sticker is necessary since I only drove 214 miles since I was last here on September 24, 2012?” He grinned.

Really, a run on the freeway instead of rolling up and down Eureka making multiple stops would have been preferable. My boss suggested to me the other day that while it was admirable that I was walking more than I was driving these days and this was good for my health and fitness, I wasn’t doing the car any favors by letting it languish in the garage. (What a party pooper!) So I took the advice to heart and out we went.

We even topped off the gas tank at the Sunoco station that I frequent; that is, if you can call buying gasoline six times a year “frequenting” the gas station. The owner always has a joke about my infrequent visits to gas up as well. I just tell everyone that foot power rules!

After today’s respite from walking to tool around town, I will be back at it again tomorrow in the quest for the cup … (that cup would be filled with cider of course)!

Very early this morning, the weather forecasters were all aflutter about Tuesday’s potentially record-breaking, 90-plus temps. Also on the a.m. weather agenda was impending sprinkles destined to arrive Downriver about the same time I’d embark on my walk. Sigh. So, do I don my sweats, lace up my walking shoes and walk loops around Memorial Park to stay close to home, or do I stay inside and have a leisurely second cup of coffee and ease into my day? Decisions, decisions … nope, I have to meet my walking goal, but just before I removed my headphones I heard the news anchor ask the weatherman what the ominous big green blob on the WWJ interactive radar map signified? A big green blob didn’t sound too promising, but I went anyway since it was cool and refreshing and I vowed to keep an eye to the sky. It seems since Labor Day the shorter days are really noticeable, especially on an overcast morning like today when it takes forever to get light. Against my better judgment I left when it was still a little dusky out and after turning the corner in the dawn’s early light, a series of unusual items really piqued my interest and gave me cause to pause … in short, to use a popular phrase, I was “creeped out”!

Let me preface by saying it is garbage day in the neighborhood. The very first item I saw was rather macabre … a huge head rising out of a garbage can. In the semi-light, until I got close enough to see what it was, all I could see was a great horned “thing” with huge eyes. I had myself whipped into a frenzy that it was akin to “Nessy” – yes, it was nearly that big! On closer inspection, it became evident that the ghastly head was actually a large sea serpent pool toy. The critter was a cross between Dino from “The Flintstones” T.V. show and maybe some kin to the purple people eater. The head was still inflated and intact yet the rest of the flotation device had no doubt suffered a puncture because it was flatter than a pancake and rolled up behind the head. It had huge lime-green glassy-looking eyes that stared back at me. The humongous head had a pair of horns and a long tongue hanging out of its mouth. Yikes!

Happily I passed that scene and down the rest of the block it must have been an unwritten rule that every pool owner must drain their pool the weekend after Labor Day; I had to walk with my head looking down so I didn’t have a trip-and-fall because hoses, looking suspiciously like longish snakes in the lowlight, ran from backyard to curbside emptying pool water into the street. Further, it seemed to me that half the homeowners had trashed their inflatable kiddie pools and crumpled-up metal wading pools, resulting in more out-sized and sinister-looking darkish blobs every few houses in the still-shadowy morning.

I reached the street’s dead end and crossed over and started up the opposite side only to see still another strange silhouette in the gray morn. Well what have we here? A yard waste bag filled to capacity and standing on its own, but what is crawling out it? OMG! A huge bucket-like head was popping out of the top of the bag and very long tentacles were creeping down the sides of the bag. It looked like an octopus – but, no way! As I got up close, I could see it was a hanging basket, turned upside down with the hanger inside the yard waste bag. The bottom of the flower basket was sitting atop the yard waste dregs and the “tentacles” were actually the long-dead trailing stems of the plant that were creeping down the sides of the bag. What flowers were left on the vines were all parched and crispy à la the Addams Family’s floral decor.

I kept walking, then glanced down at my pedometer to check the time and my progress since I wasn’t on my regular route. While my head was bent I walked into a big spider web. Frantically, I got the sticky threads off my clothes but could not shake the feeling that its owner was along for the ride. Enough already! Mercifully, a shaft of light, albeit dim, suddenly lit up the sky; I sure was grateful for that measly sunbeam.

At least a half-dozen homes I passed already had their Halloween mojo going on and wild-haired witches on brooms and grinning ghosts greeted me along the way. Several scarecrows stood guard by the front porch stairs and I saw some plastic pumpkins plopped onto a hay bale. I have not yet toggled over to harvest mode so I couldn’t fully appreciate the decorating efforts, but by that last leg of my journey I half-expected to look up and see a large black crow flapping its wings and cawing angrily at me. I was finally ready to high-tail it home after strolling 3¼ miles on a rather coolish, but ghoulish, Monday morn.

Postscript – I did a Google image search and found a photo of the same sea monster that I encountered today. In its prime, it was a 115-foot Sea Dragon inflatable pool toy … cute of course, in its element on a sunny day in the pool or the lake … not so much on a horror-filled trip through the ‘hood.

Today is Grandparents Day. Essentially this is a Hallmark holiday started in 1978 by Jimmy Carter to honor our grandparents and it always falls on the first Sunday after Labor Day. Back in ’78, my grandmother was surprised when she got an unexpected card and a gift from me – I remember her asking “Linda, what did you say that holiday was again?” and I told her it was merely an American Hallmark holiday but no reason we couldn’t celebrate it over there. She liked that reasoning. (Smile) Besides, you should not need a calendar event to celebrate your kinfolk anyway.

At Council Point Park this morning I saw the usual groups of older women walking the path. We’ve kibitzed often throughout the Summer, never for more than a few minutes at a time as each of us are anxious to complete our walk. They called out “good morning” and waved – they were too far away or I’d have wished them happy Grandparents Day. In our first meeting along the path, each of the women mentioned their grandchildren to me and while we learned little tidbits about one another, I innocently asked if they were in the education field and had the Summer off from work as I saw them there daily. They each fairly beamed at that question, and proudly announced that they had been retired for over two decades – of the four ladies I see most frequently, they range from 85 to 88 years old. They are just as spry as any of the walkers in the Park and have been walking for years. In the Winter they walk at Southland and Fairlane Malls and they also informed me that the City clears the snow from the Park path so they sometimes walk there as well. God willing, I will still be walking that same path when I am in my mid-80s and beyond, and please may I also have my health and faculties like these wonderful women are blessed to have.

The grandparents of the new millennium are not the same as the grandparents of friends or my own were for that matter. Grandparents today are not content to sit in rocking chairs and have their grandchildren come and pile onto their lap. Modern grandparents do not resemble the characters Carol Burnett and Harvey Korman played for years; I remember laughing at these characters when they had to start each other’s rocking chairs. (Here’s a sneak peek and have a laugh on me at this funny skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvuyAGOlius).

Today’s grandparents are driving way into their 80s, are very tech savvy, many are well into second careers because retirement was “boring” and still others are into all the hobbies they never had time to enjoy while they were working and raising their families. I think this is admirable and I wish them well.

I do not have grandparents anymore. I never met my paternal grandparents who lived in Germany and died long before I was born. My maternal grandparents lived in Toronto. I saw them about once a month until we moved to the U.S. then it was infrequently – perhaps four or five times a year. Everyone I know has a similar moniker for their grandparents … I’d guess Grandma and Grandpa or Gramma and Gramps are probably the most common. I called my grandparents Nanny and Omer. This picture was taken a few months before he got water on his lungs and was admitted to a nursing home.

Omer, my grandfather, was a cantankerous old coot who hailed from Quebec. He had a vile temper and spewed venomous words more often than not – he said what he felt like without any forethought. I never addressed him by anything more than Omer, which was his first name, but that was the way he wanted it. He was not the type of grandfather that you’d beg to climb up into his lap and hear about your mom when she was a little girl. He hollered at anyone and everyone without provocation and made me so mad when I was a toddler, that I ducked under the table and bit him on the ankle one day. It was a story that was laughed about for years behind his back and after his death – the brazen little girl having shown some spunk and wordlessly told him what she thought of him. He, however, as you can imagine was not so amused. But honestly, how can one be endeared to a man who never conveyed his love to his own grandbaby? He succumbed to pneumonia in a nursing home in April of 1969, a few days before my 13th birthday. I remembered being miffed that his death sorely interrupted my birthday plans.

My grandmother was a different story. She was the type of person that people liked to go to when they had a personal problem. She’d listen to their hard-luck story or sad tale, offer counsel and a pat on the arm and a hug. Often she opened her purse and tendered money to the woebegone visitor if she thought it would help their situation. Nanny had the patience of a saint and was a much-loved presence on the street where she lived for decades. She passed away from a massive heart attack in the ambulance enroute to the hospital. She would not have wanted to linger because in recent years issues with her heart wore down her ticker and her vitality for life. Nanny was very much like a big wind-up alarm clock at the end of the day – needing help to keep ticking through another day … she was alive thanks to a cache of meds, but not really living. But, she was luckier than her eight siblings – all but one passed away with heart ailments many years before she was taken from us on a cold Winter morning in 1986, just barely past her 80th birthday.

Cherish your grandparents while they are still alive. Don’t send candy or flowers … give them a phone call, or if possible, put in a personal appearance instead. My mom and I got on the phone in different rooms to jointly call my grandmother every Wednesday night at 7:00 p.m. sharp, and in her last few years we visited as often as we could. Let your grandparents talk about the “good old days” or when they were your age and spare rolling your eyes for another time. Don’t be discouraged if they walk or talk a little slow – take them by the arm and give them your rapt attention – always. Remember your roots and respect your elders … you will reach that plateau soon enough.

Hooray! It is finally apple time and I hear 2013 promises to be a bumper crop for Michigan apples. This morning it was cool and refreshing – perfect for a trip to the cider mill for warm donuts and just-pressed cider before heading home to watch the college football games. Unfortunately the beautiful a.m. weather will not extend through the p.m. and rain and thunderstorms are on the horizon. To satisfy my own apple cravings, I walked to Meijer today to buy my first apples of the season. As in the Summer when I try a different fresh fruit each week when I shop, I’ll try each of the apple varieties offered as they become available as we head through the Fall season. My all-time favorite varieties of apples are the scrumptious Honeycrisp and the sweet, almost tropical-tasting Pinata, which come out around Thanksgiving. I decided on Gala apples for today – they were huge and I only got one week’s worth to save my shoulders since I was hauling bananas, broccoli and bread on the other shoulder. Those seven apples weighed me down but will be good eating accompanied by a few cubes of cheddar cheese. Next week it will be Fuji apples – I like them as well, but today they looked rather dull and dusty looking while the Gala apples were shiny and bright. Hey, I could just as easily have washed them off, but it is all in the presentation and the Galas just looked more inviting. As the old adage goes “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” and apples combined with a flu shot next week will hopefully ensure a healthy 2013-14 Winter for me.

The local cider mills opened on Labor Day weekend. It’s been years since I went to Apple Charlie’s Cider Mill in New Boston. Thinking of cider and donuts evokes a fond memory of goodies from the Franklin Cider Mill. One of the art directors at the ad agency where I worked in the late 70s lived near that cider mill and in the Fall he brought in cider and donuts for the whole department (forty of us) every Friday morning. We’d have the large conference room table ready with a throwaway tablecloth because he’d carry in cardboard boxes laden with big greasy bags of still-warm donuts. He’d make a second trip out to the car to bring in fresh apple cider and plastic cups. It was a much-appreciated treat and he got a kick out of doing it for everyone. The rest of the year, Dan baked a mean chocolate chip cookie and to everyone’s delight, we were often the recipients of several trays of warm cookies to have with our coffee on a frosty Winter morning.

I recently heard the proprietor of the Franklin Cider Mill being interviewed by Warren Pierce of WJR. He explained that it takes one bushel of apples to make one gallon of cider. I was amazed at that ratio! No wonder cider is pricey. I have decided my reward for reaching my next walking goal will be a half-gallon of the Honeycrisp apple cider. It is more expensive than regular cider, but this will be a little indulgence for me to celebrate attaining that goal.

As of today, in my quest to beat my car mileage with my own foot power mileage in 2013, the stats shake out as follows:

Grand total of car miles driven in 2013 as of 09/07/13: 287.00
Grand total of miles walked in 2013 as of 09/07/13: 258.25

I hope to surpass the car miles in the next few weeks, weather permitting. Sweet hot cider with a cinnamon stir stick will be the welcome reward.

Still another glorious morning – how very fortunate we are. It is too bad these beautiful weather days weren’t here last weekend for the long holiday. I walked along Fort Street this morning and saw several groups of kids trudging along to school, already looking weary and worn out from one abbreviated week of learning. They sure didn’t look motivated to be headed off to school. Perhaps as doctors and the media have been suggesting all week, students need a later start time for school to enable them to concentrate better … I, however, would counter by saying an earlier start time to head for bed, sans electronics on the nightstand, might work just as well. Sure, that’s a snarky comment but it’s true. It seems like I came home from school, did homework until dinner, a little more homework or library time after dinner and then trundled off to bed – to sleep. There were no devices to record television programs back then, so weekends were the only time to watch television or the Summer reruns. Sounds a little mundane but I don’t think I fell asleep in class unless it was very boring, but that was not from lack of sleep.

As to boring classes, in college I took an anthropology course. I was really looking forward to it, but the professor was so boring that NO ONE could stay awake in the class. He stood at the lectern and in a very monotonous voice read verbatim from a textbook he authored. No inflection in his voice – just droning on and on. No visual aids were ever used … we all would sit in lecture hall with our open textbook following him word-for-word or doodling around the page edges to keep from nodding off. All instructors cannot be outspoken like MSU Professor William Penn, who ranted and raved about the Republicans ‘til he got the boot, but it doesn’t hurt to stimulate your class once in a while either.

So many classes in high school or mandatory “core” courses in college were not my cup of tea. But, you had to take them and be present and accounted for day after day. I think now, all these years later, about how few of my courses really mattered and contained information that would eventually be applied to daily living? Perhaps none, except ninth grade typing class – you can go almost everywhere with the click of a mouse or finger graze of a touchpad, but you still have to know how to type to surf the internet or use social media.

Okay, I’ll concede that maybe basic math has also been helpful for day-to-day living, but think about it … what info have you gleaned from other classes through the years that you use on an everyday basis? As to math, I did horribly in algebra and geometry classes and I have to admit I “didn’t get it” and found it puzzling and nonsensical. I never took trig or calculus (probably a good thing) and I apologize to any math mavens out there who enjoyed these subjects.

I liked biology and zoology, but physics, physical science and chemistry didn’t interest me one iota. I liked geography but learned more from reading “The National Geographic” than I remember learning in school. In American history class the teacher spent nearly the entire school year instructing us on ancient events up through the Civil War, then suddenly it was the end of the school year and the rest of the history textbook was merely glossed over. I could take or leave my English classes; I absolutely despised dissecting or diagramming words and thought it was a waste of time. I frankly learned more about English grammar when I studied French.

As to the subject of French, I learned more about that language as a youngster in Canada where each student began studying French as a second language in second grade. Each student had an 8 ½ by 11 inch picture that matched the teacher’s large storyboard picture. We learned various scenes throughout the school year: a barnyard, a restaurant, a train station, a department store, a couple pushing a pram in the park and we learned what were masculine words versus feminine words. That teaching methodology made those French words stick in my mind, more than years of college French where it was rote and mere memorization of dialogues. I took a few semesters of practical French where no books were used and the whole class was conducted by conversing in French 100 percent of the time; this was probably more helpful than just memorizing the book. Unfortunately if you don’t use your foreign language skills you lose them. I’d be lucky if I could understand much French nowadays and unfortunately, I never did learn to trill my “Rs” very convincingly so I never spoke like a native. C’est la vie.

Alot of mandatory courses taken through the years I found to be just plain silly. A study of old-time movies like “The Great Train Robbery” or films with Buster Keaton or Mary Pickford was indeed a mandatory class for my studies and a waste of money and time. As to literature classes, I’ve had many and as to required reading … “Sons and Lovers” and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” , both which I enjoyed the first time, were read and re-read and analyzed and re-analyzed until there was no enjoyment in reading them. Please don’t get me started on “Beowulf”. Really?! Even with Cliff’s Notes I was lost! Home Economics – well we learned how to make “cheesy wienies” and how to write out a shopping list. We got to make an apron from start to finish. The one I made for my mom was bright pink and black stripes and the ugliest thing you ever saw – I’m sure she only wore it to spare my feelings.

Yup, upon pondering the importance of school through the years, the best class I ever took was typing. Life lessons, of course, are invaluable.

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” Ernest Hemingway

What an absolutely gorgeous morning, just picture perfect for a walk. Like Julie Andrews’ song “I Could Have Danced All Night” … well, I could have just kept walking and walking. While enroute to the Park, I saw a beautiful yellow Potentilla bush. I had one years ago but it became scraggly and leggy and I eventually pulled it out, but this one sure was pretty. I couldn’t remember if Potentillas had a scent, and I bent down to take a whiff of some of the flowers and I heard the unmistakable buzzing of bees. Wow! I peered through the bush and hadn’t seen the bumblebees on the other side of the bush. Wait! There were more down in between all the flowers just bobbing about partaking of sweet nectar. So … but for the buzzing, they blended right into that Potentilla bush. So what’s the buzz for this blog post? Lady luck was on my side and thankfully I heard the bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! That got me thinking about the bees buzzing and words that sound like the noises they are associated with. That dredged up a word I had not thought of since high school or college days: onomatopoeia. I think I kind of liked the way this word sounded (almost like some ornate dish of pasta or an Italian delicacy of some type) and that’s why I remembered it after all these years. Eons ago I had a delightful English teacher who fascinated our class with his extensive use of unusual words and phrases. Mr. Lorenz introduced the word onomatopoeia to us and explained its origin. He passed out a list of words, then encouraged us to think of more examples to add to his list. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz and buzz were near the very top of his list and have stuck in my head, but some others I remember were boom, fuzzy, zip and zoom. But there are many, many more – here, have a look: http://www.ereadingworksheets.com/figurative-language/poetic-devices/onomatopoeia-examples/

We shouldn’t let the school kids have all the fun learning new things! At least this doesn’t involve homework and tests.

My boss is a wordsmith and learning new words is a hobby for him. He tells a tale that growing up in Saginaw, his father, an attorney, had a complete set of the “Oxford English Dictionary” and he made his three young sons study a page daily to learn new words. The volumes of the “Oxford English Dictionary” are actually extremely over-sized books. The collection takes up an entire bookshelf and the ratio is nearly one volume for each letter of the alphabet, except perhaps X, Y and Z. That is alot of new words to familiarize yourself with. Robb has continued this practice throughout his adult life. He owns a set of the “OED” at work and home plus the CD version is loaded onto his laptop. He continues to endeavor to pepper his speech and writing with unusual, sometimes archaic or quirky words and phrases.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”…Albert Einstein

There he sat, chin cupped in his hand, while looking dejectly at the ground. From a few houses away, he looked like a clothed version of Rodin’s “The Thinker”. He was sitting there the entire time I walked down the block and then suddenly someone started the car from the house and he remained sitting there motionless, wearing a rather sullen scowl – that is, on the part of his face which was not embedded in the knuckles of his right hand. I heard a voice holler out “Kevin, get in here and eat and grab your backpack and wait for me in the car NOW” (emphasis on the NOW) – still no movement. Blue-jeaned butt glued to the cement. My butt, blue-jeaned or otherwise, would have received a swift kick to it and that would have gotten me movin’, but that was another era; besides, I would’ve been too scared to tempt fate to begin with. As an only child, I had no older siblings to set the standard of what I could get away with, so conforming to the rules and regs was the best choice. I’ve said before that I’ve gotten a few paddlings in my day, and in the long run, was never any the worse for it. I restrained myself from telling this young man that his pose greatly resembled the famous sculpture because I figured my comment would have been rewarded with a grimace and a response of “whatever”. Most likely the observation would have sailed right over his head anyway, so I tucked this vignette away to share with you in this forum and I just kept on walkin’ … whatever.

There was alot of extra traffic this morning as everyone was bustling about; the need for speed was evident until everyone settles into the daily routine now that school has resumed. There were alot of big ol’ yellow school busses rolling down the road as well. I generally try to steer clear of school loading zones if possible when I am walking, especially on sunny days. Drivers are often distracted and don’t see you. I only have to pay attention on the jaunt to and from Council Point Park – sandwiched in between there’s a glorious two-mile path sans traffic. Most all the kids should be back to school by today – happy parents versus unhappy students who will no doubt already have homework tonight. I don’t remember much about my first day of school, pictured above, but I do know I loved school and was a good student until we moved to the United States. I detailed in an earlier blog post (https://lindaschaubblog.net/2013/06/06/frown/) how bullying, because I was “different”, started in sixth grade and continued through part of junior high school. As a result my stellar grades starting declining dramatically. But until that fateful time I enjoyed school and could hardly wait to start back every September. I attribute my good grades to my mom who had endless patience and great parenting skills in my formative years. Thanks to daily learning sessions, I was way ahead of the curve by the time I started kindergarten.

I was allowed to watch Romper Room and Captain Kangaroo in the morning and after my nap, there was afternoon T.V. time with the Mouseketeers while munching on animal crackers washed down with milk. But in between television, snacks and naps, we did the Three Rs – readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic.

Of course we poured over the “Dick and Jane” series which we read and re-read countless times. My parents had always been avid readers and instilled the love of reading when I was very young. They would enjoy their newspaper or a novel, while I sat in the corner on my little chair with my basket of “Golden Books” beside me. I think I had the plots and the dialogues memorized as I read them over and over again. Then I graduated to the “McGuffey Readers” and “The Bobbsey Twins” and “Little Woman” – there was no stopping me then!

My mom gave me a daily list of vocabulary words to learn and practice in a sentence and then I was quizzed on spelling the same words. Many years later, I would recall her diligence in drilling me to build my vocabulary and learn how to spell correctly when law firm colleagues and I competed in “The Legal News” annual spelling bee. For weeks before the event, all our co-workers quizzed us on various words, legal or otherwise; any of our team of four would be walking down the hall and someone called out a word to be spelled out correctly on the spot trying to stump us. We even searched in “Black’s Law Dictionary” and the regular dictionary to ensure no unusual word would trip us up (as if we could memorize everything for goodness sake). We went several rounds at the spelling bee and tumbled down on the pesky word “recidivism”. “Rats!!” as Charlie Brown would say.

Pauline Schaub’s patience was a virtue with her young daughter, Linda, while demonstrating cursive in a wide-ruled tablet. I had to write the word on the same line directly after the word that was written in my mom’s neat, slanted writing. I knew what the word meant and how to spell it but I usually fell short though on the pretty handwriting.

And then there was math. We began adding and subtracting at the kitchen table using matchsticks (yes, we were careful), or toothpicks … or just for fun we’d use Smarties (the Canadian equivalent of M&Ms). I liked the Smarties math method the best as we’d total the numbers and gobble up the answers afterward. One year for Christmas I got an abacus so we went for “advanced math”; it also eliminated any cavities from too many Smarties math problems, but it sure wasn’t as fun!

We didn’t have preschool back then, but when the first day of school finally arrived, circa 1961, I was a ready-for-prime-time player. Hope you have happy memories of your early school days as well. I know I just passed a pleasurable few moments recounting some of mine.

I headed out early and though the humidity (ugh) was still around, the slight breeze made it feel cooler than the last few mornings. I was walking along, minding my own business, when all of a sudden the smell of bacon assailed my nostrils. I sniffed appreciatively. If my nose served me right, I believe I smelled some hash browns too, or perhaps that was my vivid imagination. The humid atmosphere made the breakfast smells linger in the air, and oh my … as I passed the house the window was up and I swear I heard the bacon sputtering and sizzling. Flies were clinging all over the screen busily hunting for some type of opening to get in and investigate. I can remember coming home from school or work and walking up the side of the house and seeing dozens of flies clustered onto our side screen door. My mom would hear me jiggle the door handle and call out to watch the *&^% flies! She’d be frying up some greasy good food like chicken tenders or pork chops and the flies were on the outside looking in and hoping for a trip inside to sample what smelled so darn good. Even the screen didn’t help air out the kitchen because we did not have a hood over the stove and the grease smell would take forever to dissipate.

I kept walking, but hated to leave behind the house where the cook, presumably the mom, was determined she’d make one last big breakfast for the family before the routine of school kicked in and sports events might encompass most weekend mornings going forward. Soon, instead of hearing pots and pans rattling in the kitchen to ready a hearty breakfast to start the day, the sounds will consist of the ding of the microwave heating up a cardboard-tasting breakfast biscuit or perhaps the toaster popping up with toast or Pop-Tarts. Running late? There’s always breakfast on the fly at Mickey D’s. I’m a bowl-of-oatmeal person myself – seven days a week and I love it.

Now I can’t remember the last time I chowed down on bacon, which was part of Sunday breakfast for years, then dwindled down to an occasional treat during beefsteak tomato season to make an awesome BLT. But that was in the microwave. No counter-space in the kitchen meant the microwave reposed in the basement. A bacon-cooking session left the basement and the coats hanging down there smelling of bacon for weeks – not so nice. We finally eliminated the greasy, yummy bacon and opted for Canadian bacon – one quick turn in the frying pan or microwave and much less muss and fuss. Then my mom cut down on our sodium intake and bacon became an even-scarcer treat. I’ve kept up with the low-sodium diet and have waved so long to bacon altogether.

But growing up, my mom and her farmer’s breakfasts encompassed half of the day. By the time we’d finish up washing the dishes and putting them away, she’d finally plop down to read the Sunday newspapers and soon my father would wander into the kitchen and announce he was hungry. She would give him “the look” and he’d say “well, … maybe later”. The prep for the farmer’s breakfast actually started the day before when she’d peel and boil up a big bowl of potatoes, then as soon as she got up on Sunday morning, she’d dice up those potatoes and put them in the cast iron frying pan to start browning them. Next, she’d chop up two small onions and toss them in there as well; it smelled heavenly as they were frying and getting crispy and occasionally I’d burn my thumb and index finger trying to remove a crispy potato out of the hot pan. In another greasy frying pan was a pound of bacon needing constant maintenance to get it perfect – not too limp, not too crisp and it was spattering everywhere, despite the screen placed atop the pan. Still another two burners were occupied by smaller frying pans cooking scrambled and fried eggs respectively. My mom would lament that it took a good hour to cook our farmer’s breakfast, a half-hour to enjoy it and another two hours to clean up. We never owned a dishwasher – we were the dishwashers. After years of making a farmer’s breakfast every Sunday morning, my mom finally threw in the towel and we settled on a trip to Kate’s Kitchen in Flat Rock a few times a year. Kate’s is famous for its huge breakfasts, all served up with fresh, hot biscuits and white country gravy – mmmmmm. The never-ending crowd on a Saturday morning curves all around the parking lot. We’d leave sated and feeling unable to move, but the biggest plus in this cholesterol-laden-but-delicious breakfast was no clean-up!

Since the topic today is bacon, we’ll go from eating bacon to bringing home the bacon – what a segue, eh? Today we salute those who bring home the bacon. It’s a day to be toes up, kick back, relax a bit and unwind from the daily grind … there are so few three-day holidays during the Summer and now we’ve used ‘em all up. Happy Labor Day (or Labour Day if you are a Canuck like me), for tomorrow it’s back to the salt mines.

While walking, I often pass by a corner lot with a sizeable veggie garden out back. During the course of the Summer, I have watched the tiny plants morph into huge vegetables. It has been interesting to gauge the progress of the plants, especially the corn which has really shot up the last few weeks. I’ve often seen an elderly gentlemen, wearing a straw fedora, who tends to this veggie garden in the a.m., before it gets too hot to toil in the sun. His backyard is always colorful with brightly colored perennials and flowering kale, and now even more so with some cucumber plants with their pretty yellow flowers, and which are already supporting tiny cukes. The cucumber plants are winding here, there and everywhere, threading through the green and purple cabbage, dark-green kale, red cherry tomatoes and even some still-green beefsteak tomatoes. This morning he had a wide, brown wicker basket brimming full of freshly picked veggies and he was walking toward the house as I passed by. I called out to him that he looked like Farmer Jack himself. He grinned at that comment and said “I’ll take that as a compliment.” Alot of younger people would not know who Farmer Jack was, but he was the trademark icon and face of Borman’s Supermarkets for years until they went out of business in 2006. Well, my farmer friend told me he was having fresh corn-on-the-cob, dripping with butter and coated with salt tonight for his dinner, even though his cardiologist and his wife would take issue with that meal. I told him that was the only way to eat corncobs and have them taste like anything. My mom and I would limit ourselves to three corncob-eating sessions each Summer; whew … all that salt and butter, but you have to indulge in seasonal bi-colored corn as it is such a treat. The Lincoln Park City Attorney annually has a small veggie garden in front of his office right out on Fort Street. This year, his kale is extra large but two corn plants tucked in the back of the garden are trying valiantly to each produce one full-size corncob. There are two puny corncobs only, certainly not enough to have a corn roast on Labor Day

I subscribe to Meijer grocery store posts on Facebook and there is always chatter on their store-brand products or seasonal foods and I usually follow those posts. I had to laugh one day when they asked “how do you eat corn-on-the-cob … spiral-style or typewriter-style?” I immediately thought of this picture of the “mini-me” eating a corncob in my high chair, and probably ending up with more corn on my face or the floor than in my mouth. I believe I adopted the typewriter-style of eating corncobs judging from this picture above. So …

“’EARS LOOKIN’ AT YOU KID.”