You (Damn Well) Better Watch Out

His riveting eyes, endearing smile and impassioned talks worked to rally the outcast and downtrodden as he moved among them in urban neigborhoods.

He energized and united the youth with his outpouring of love and finely honed trust-building skills.

His speeches were like a single ribbon uniting all these otherwise unconventional factions, enabling him to roll over his political adversaries and rise to the country's highest calling.

He asked the middle class to trust and get behind him as he forged a restrengthened nation, infusing hope for better daily lives to people starving for the fruits of his efforts-to-be.

You know (or should) that he reeled-in the tail of the automobile industry, even creating a car for the masses (called 'Volkswagen'), and that his name was Adolf Hitler.

And you know the rest, and the adage that tells us "History repeats itself," or should.

Phoenix' Nighttime Meals from Wheels

Strings of unfrosted bulbs, a few flimsy tables and chairs, and foods ranging from 'Sonoran-style' hot dogs to tacos, menudo and burritos are shibboleths of the impromptu restaurant boom that's emerged and been sustained in commercial parking lots and on corners, all over Phoenix.

The mobile fonditas seem to cater to Mexican palates, efficient little kitchens-on-wheels whose operators are themselves, Mexican-American (or Mexican?), and the number of these food-stands is staggering.

The Ramirez Brothers used to operate one helluva fine taco trailer along a side street in the 'Old Town' section east of thee Rio Cuale in Puerto Vallarta, and I enjoyed their fare countless times without hesitation or illness.

My friends--even licensed travel agent colleagues--know my love of Mexico, its beaches, sleepy coastal towns, warm and generous populace, a love I rationalize (in Spanish) as "In my heart, I'm really a Mexican" to the laughing agreement of my Mexican-national friends who tell me when I'm tan enough to resemble a native.

That said, it's a little unsettling to drive down the streets of Phoenix, Arizona, USA, and see that, at nighttime, it looks so much like the streets of 'old' Mexico, except that these patrons can enjoy their alfresco repast with relatively little fear of gunfire.

These eateries represent an emerging, local industry and have discovered a customer base that seems accustomed to eating regularly at these outlets, as I did in Vallarta, except that--unlike our Canadian and Michigan-Minnesota-Wiconsin snowbirds---the customer base won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

I couldn't make this up.

Priests come by every few days to comfort her as calendar pages fall closer to a 93rd birthday she may not see.

Her eldest daughter's calendar is about to mark the thirty-day anniversary of a double mastectomy. The daughter's daughter, just 40, continued to nurse her son of ten months until exploratory surgery revealed a rare cancer thriving within her.

Three women...mothers...daughters, all in one bloodline, all waging different battles with different defenses and strategies and chances, with compromised defenses.

Worded comfort seems to offer little, leaving me to provide presence and prayers--yet I'm feeling as flat as those calendar pages which eventually, relentlessly render extinction to all known memories.

Parachutes don't guarantee soft landings, especially the times you know y0u can't even jump.

Under a New Orleans Storm Called 'Lee'

Curtains of rain gave closure to each side of the port cochere as I stood awash in breezes carrying the aroma of freshly laundered air.


It knows how to rain in New Orleans, and the proof was audible in thunder-boomers articulating different movements of The Downpour Symphony better than the cannon of the "The 1812 Overture."


The squall intensified and lessened, delivering staccatoed percussions to the sidewalk and street with different timbres, as if Mother Nature were free-form dancing to the music of an unpredictable beat of a song whose performance delivered continuous tranquil enchantment.


Day into night, into next and the next, it rained on, diminishing traffic by foot, car and rail.


Flood and fear mixed a biting cocktail for residents turning their backs on TV sports to see tornado watches and warnings flashed on every local channel's screen, with pictures of neighborhoods evacuating while ships pawed at the gulf's rough waters unable to make port, unable to clear their superstructures under the bridges due to the Mississippi's water level.


Wind and rain and thunderstorms were quieting and disquieting, not dampening spirits as much as reconstituting, rehydrating, exhuming ininvited memories from six years before.

Aunt Ann's Pit

The back yard of the 1910 Victorian home consisted of a treacherously cracked composite stone and concrete walkway dividing two 12x25 rectangles. One side was grass and the other was a garden in the center of which was a 5x10 pit nearly two feet deep.

Surrounding the pit were neat rows of flowers, fruit and vegetables, with small plasic labels sunk into the soil on miniature plastic pickets. Anything organic that came out the back door of that home was in a big pail, travelling down the sunken porch's steps and back up, over the uneven walk, and across to the pit where the pail's contents were distributed, "For the birds!" Aunt Ann said.

On hands and knees, gardening in her mu'u-mu'u and glittery, elastic-topped floral slippers, a Bel-Air menthol cigarette clenched with rolled red lips coiling smoke around her head, she'd toil away caring for melons and beets and squash, carrots and peas and beans and tomatoes and rhubarb and flowers, producing a garden that seemed to beam the liveliest greens of leaf and stalk up through dappled daylight's cover of hardwood trees; the broadest selection of green hues in all of plantdom, I decided, as a pre-schooler at her side.

Kentucky's soil may have grown the best corn to ever birth bourbon, certainly conducive to Kentucky Burley tobacco growing, but I doubt it rivalled the richness of my Aunt Ann's pit, a woman whom the Commonwealth should have recognized as the Mother of All Compost, whose heart was as giant and gentle and generous as her sunflowers.

"brain-dead"

The phrase hit me a couple of times, lately.

Last night, thinking about nothing in particular, the phrase came to me and I laughed about it. Abject fatigue was probably the reason it hit me, verbalized by the thought that I was 'dead tired' and "brain-dead" just attached itself onto the end of that like an automated caboose to a rail car.

Molding language into story form as a pasttime...using complicated software to compose a fugue, ballad or overture. Not exactly leisure-time pursuits of the hopelessly brain-dead, methinks.

If "brain-dead" is two too many drops of isolated invention splashed into the intellectual chemistry, I'll testify it's one hell of a productive and pleasurable demise.

IIXL in New Orleans

My überheightened trip-planning, research and internet skills have been working full-tilt as if they've been munching mental steroids. To claim it I'll name it, 'Traveller's Pre-Trip Adrenaline." Every to-pack item. Sightseeing. Meals. Free time. Commemorating a birthday. I love every second spent delving into these considerations, convinced my trip experiences will be better for them.

AAA had a sale and I declared a 32" Samsonite Roller Duffel to be a birthday present (60% off!), and under the same banner, purchased two T-shirts (NFL New Orleans Saints; LiquidBlue's 'Clowns').

The shoes I can't find anywhere in town have shipped from an Amazon.com merchant, an expense rationalized by serving double duty in the workplace as well as supporting my cane-assisted gait through 'The Crescent City.'

The list-builder who dwells within me has produced three:  restaurants by budget and day-part; tourist attractions missed or unavailable (closed) during my 2010 visit; and notions of how I'll spend time not budgeted in the foregoing two lists. While that last list may seem vague, it contains some of the following:

• Arrival Day: get to the corner of Canal St. and South St. Peters to purchase two 3-Day 'Jazzy Passes' from the vending machine, 'neutral ground' [local for 'median'] for unlimited buses and streetcars' use;
• design a memorable "IIXL" birthday-for-1;
• Pray away flooding and hurricanes;
• Do I take my own apron for my 4-hour stint in cooking school?

Two weeks and a few days. Breathe in. Breathe out. Remain in relatively good health.
Stay employed.

Ahhhh, the thoughts of returning....

Sudden Valley Storm

It came on so quickly, my eyes refused to leave a sky that was changing like a painting done in time-lapse photography. A sheet of black and grey was being pulled over the bed of the valley, filtering lightning into flickers. Stillness stood erectly, replaced a finger snap later by gusts of sapling-bending wind exceeding 60 miles per hour carrying the desert’s dust, as saguaros arms flexed with impenetrability. Another stillness struck, until the clouds answered rending rain with strength of a handful of BBs flung angrily onto a tile floor.


When the saturating downpour overhead let up, I saw columns of inundating showers pelting other parts of our valley, as lightning now shed its cloud cover, undisguised bolts shooting laterally and downward like tracers of electrified arrows flying wildly in a battle of unseen sky gods.

It was over in an hour, leaving 'that' smell of dust and moisture and that of a desert which has gotten its quenching swallow, whilst another battle ensued, one of air fighting to hold its humidity as the twilight's heat strangled and squeezed to wring out its damp existence ever so imperceptibly.

120° Degrees in the Shade

That's the weekend forecast and I'm trying to figure out a strategy that will keep the house relatively cool without hearing a boom from the electric meter going supersonic: should I set the thermostat at 35° cooler than outside (like anyone can stand an 85°-house?) or be cool at the risk of an aged 5-ton roof-mounted refrigeration unit succumbing to overexposure, which could be a $10,000 day.

Maybe I should aim lawn sprinklers at shingles on the half of the roof that faces West.

I know from guys messing with a laser thermometer, once, that it was 112° in the shade and when they pointed their gadget at the concrete, out in the sunshine, the readout registered 148°.

I sure won't be frying my eggs on the sidewalk because, just like pancakes, pebbles, ants and grasshopper turds don't do much for my teeth or appetite, and anyone worth his gourmet sea salt knows the wrong texture...well... it can just ruin a dish.

Poor folks, old folks and smart folks usually turn off their A/C and flee to the mall, but I fear food courts more than legal ones, and my car upholstery would explode in their lot while my wealthier neighbors back home in North Vista would be sapping all the neighborhood's power with their homes at a comfy 72°.

Brown-outs (electric company, not my skivvies) occur on days like this, so I think I'll set the sprinklers and hunker down at home throwing darts at the face of Al "I Invented the Internet and Global Warming" Gore, prepared to empty the refrigerator, scoop up the pooch, and--only as a last 'resort'--head for the closest Motel 3 if God's bake sails though here like a Blue Diamond match skipping along a brass zipper in a room full of propane.

The Visual Serenade of St. Charles

Festivities for the long, Labor Day weekend found New Orleans aswarm with tourists afoot on the walks and stuffed into cabs and buses in the ‘CBD,‘ Central Business District.

I wagered the weather maker’s winds would repel thunderheads in the distance, giving me fluffy whites above as I spotted the outbound St. Charles line street car--for which I had waited 20 minutes--grinding against its steel rails, so many people aboard that they spilled from its ends like sausage escaping an uncrimped casing perforated with imperfections.

I looked at the sky, the gone-by street car, the sidewalk ahead, and chose to walk toward the Carrollton levee, miles away, despite icepicks of pain that snarled, ‘Tings just ain’ so in yo’ ankle ‘n knee joint, Mistah Joe.’

Leafed twigs and pods scooted along and across the sidewalk, a path with miniature hills created by fissures from roots of old cypress and maples dead-lifting the jagged concrete, a concern to only us infirm, the aged, and toddlers atop tricycles.

Decorative ironworked fencing segregated the public from the period-perfect homes, spear-tipped vertical rods providing an occasional hand-hold to steady my determined gait, completing the four-and-a-half mile trek to The Superior restaurant in a time I hadn’t kept or cared to know, a walk interrupted by readings of bronze plaques boasting respective histories of the impressive architectural wonders they fronted.

Arriving dehydrated, hurting, and spent, the eatery seemed too crowded for mid-afternoon, and I was lucky to commandeer a barstool to immediately down two tumblers of lemon garnished water, gulping with as much savor as a child in a two-handed, cold milk clench, chasing a warm brownie, and I reflected upon how--like the water replenishing me--I had drunk-in and absorbed the majestic charms of St. Charles on that humid, warm and blustery September afternoon, feeling my soul, too, had been quenched.

Perfect Martini Perfectly Named

The menu bragged of a martini consisting of a top-shelf vodka and gin sharing the reservoir of an expensive stem, anathema to my respect for the mixocological arts of spirited beverage.

I'd have to catch a perfect cab home.

I'd need to steer my way perfectly, straight-through the front- and bathroom doorways.

I'd have to keep my eyes squinched perfectly and lightlessly closed to keep from seeing swirls of half-digested olives and pimiento.

A perfect martini would probably lead to another and another and another, taking me to all these places before delivering a perfectly aimed and miserable hangover of dispirited regret.

God bless the distiller's and God's own respective perfections in three fat fingers of Booker's bourbon over ice, with a splash of Kentucky branch water.

Numbday Morning

The absence of tasting salted blood is about the only clue I have, an hour after getting home from the dentist, that I haven't chewn into my lip or inside of my cheek from novacaine injections that evoke eye-twitching just north of the affecteed side's needled agony.

I hadn't been to the dentist, but a restless night found me awakening to reach for the last book in Stieg Larsson's trilogy, three books that took me less than six days to absorb, my task completed between dreamless rounds of sleep that seemed to land my thinking on the same plane as a novacained face.

After my final bout with the pillow, I awoke emotionless, void of any sense of any urgency 0r willpower to do much of anything, lacking the conscience's voice of a Saturday 'To Do" list, knowing all sleep was behind me.

It was the first day in probably four calendars at home that my lungs hadn't started the day with alternate inhalations of Peet's "Major Dickason" blend brewing in my Technivorm Moccamaster and exhalations of bluish grey smoke from two Marlboro 72s providing consumable timers until the aromatic liquid could deliver the first cup to my salvific spot in the daily lineup of Team Caffeine's overachievers.

All day, my thoughts seemed to steep from mush of wet clay, spun from clouds of shoulds and coulds of what may have been a promising Saturday but, after a too-long shower procrastinated until 1:30PM, my days-long yearning for pancakes coupled with food abstinence for more than 24 hours propelled me into clothes and behind the wheel of the car, heading toward Denny's.

Marie Callender's was the emptier of parking lots at the near-adjacent restaurants and the Almighty served-up a waitress named Tina who read my gummy-brained mood as if silent Morse code had been sent and answered while she engaged me in playful exchanges that elicited my promise of a return visit next Saturday (to which she said she'd look forward), after her declaration of the impossibly captivating notion, "I really want to write a book, too!"

Nature's Hand and Faces

Rain riveting the ribbed, metal Quonset serving as an emergency room was so deafening that the MD and I sought shelter in the back of a double-roofed field (‘cracker box’) ambulance.

We left the doors open to watch the road, the storm, and to let the smoke escape, smoke from local greenery we had rolled in a yellow Zig-Zag and incinerated.

A med battalion jeep carrying a litter, a man and someone on the litter fought gravity, sliding and swerving up the sloppily mudded hill toward us, flashing its brights.

The doc, jeep driver, G.I. boyfriend and I got the soaked canvas litter cradling the very pregnant woman into the Quonset just as the storm blew out our electricity.

Each of us dedicated one hand to holding a candle, while our free hands served to deliver the baby girl without complication or incident.

Ten minutes later in the flickering glow of four candlepower, two medics a doc and a new father stood with silent, streaking tears at the miracle of such an innocent’s birth in the fury of a paralyzing monsoon, less than 10 miles from the DMZ.

Irretractable

A month after Memorial Day weekend, it was in her second sweep of the condo that Lana found something the police had missed : a small sticky-note on the partially obscured side of the refrigerator.

The investigator thought "S note" likely meant "suicide," but her subsequent, frantic searches hadn’t turned-up a suicide note or the merest hint or crumb trail toward the shadow of a clue about her missing sister.

Gibson turned out to be an attorney who had a generic, store-bought will with nothing out of the ordinary.

The lady at the Humane Society had been kind enough to look-up the records listing Jana’s reason for leaving her cat of 12 years as, “Found animal starving in neighborhood,” not adopted but destroyed which only brought on more crying jags from Lana for Jana.

Jana seemed moody and withdrawn before disappearing and--after analyzing the sticky note-- police surmised that she may have taken her life in the ocean, reasoning that no bank transactions occurred, no travel could be linked to timing in the vanishing of the early-30s executive assistant and, frankly, the woman didn’t have a reason or enough liquidity of assets to drop out of view, society or even life.

A razor-sharp knife separated the skin from the flesh of the overripe mango, hitting the cutting board with a loud rap as Jana contemplated how long she could hide-out in Belize, after purchasing a no-questions-asked passport and citizenship from that government with money she’d embezzled from L.A.’s most accomplished and unsuspected cocaine importer.

I'll Be Back to Join You, Jack

Dan’s discerning eye for naked, natural beauty took great care to select one long, unblemished, mahogany plank.

In spare time over three months, Dan kept me from severing my fingers as I sawed and sanded and sanded, and I finally convinced the skilled wood crafter to do the finishing work so I wouldn’t bungle the final aspects of bringing out all the beauty of the grain in the mahogany’s staining and lacquering.

As the sun set on Thursday the 19th, Spring had clothed Kentucky oaks and maples with the vibrance of new leaves, and it was the perfect time on a perfect evening to transfer my brother’s ashes from a plastic rectangle into the handcrafted mahogany box, topped simply with a pewter cross I found in New Orleans during the HoW trip.

I wood-glued the top, and gently waxed away my fingerprints, avoiding teardrop strikes.

Intent on his task, the grave digger didn’t see me 30 yards away, leaning against the hood of the oversized SUV, as he lifted a square, green mat and dropped the box to the bottom of the hole dug earlier by a tall auger, poised at-the-ready for the next someone’s loved one.

He shoveled and I wept and drove, neither of us wanting to look up or back.

Valentine's Day Confession

I'd describe myself as pretty good in the kitchen and watched Meryl Streep's portrayal of Julia Child several times in a movie called Julie & Julia because I'll watch anything with Streep.

That movie could aptly and proudly sport a 'chick flick' label and Streep was brilliant.

The embarrassing part is...well, how many straight, non-chef men do you know who can recognize an orange Dutch oven as a French-made "Le Creuset" that retails for about $249.00 USD?

It's Valentine's Day, I need to get ready for work, and I'm sitting here hungry for beef bourguignon prepared in strict adherence to Julia Child's recipe, and baked in a kitchen pot I don't own but suddenly want.

Today, millions will be moved by demonstrative acts of love shown by gifts and chocolates and roses and my mind's on an orange "Flame," 5.5 quart Le Creuset Dutch oven wafting an aroma from beef bourguignon I know Burger King won't be serving tonight.


I hate chick flicks and Valentine's Day.

Shadow of a Valentine

At best, my slice of the current thousand years of past and developing history is miniscule. In my portion of that millennium, there are 38 years I have loved you.

My pledge to "...love you forever...." has been neither chore nor much of an effort.

As with all things good, there is never enough time.

Among the innermost secrets we've held in each others' keeping is that singular reason you needed to leave in order to fulfill the only something I could never give you.

The love for you I had, I still have...and with enough sustenance for this and the next thousand years, despite what it took to heal enough for awakening in each new day only to trudge on without you.

Quick! Check That Kid's Diaper!

Annie's brother was born just 18 days after her 3rd birthday and newly born Peter Jackson L****** has just arrived home.

Annie was staring at him when her grandmother turned to the little girl and asked, "Is there anything you want to tell your new little brother, Annie?"

The riveting blue eyes under the 3 year-old's explosion of blonde curls focused on the baby as she thought for a second.

"You were supposed to be a girl so I could have a sister. So, Abracadabra, you're a girl!"

Peter's circumcision went without incident.

Downed Angel Rebound

Jim would be self-conscious to hear me describe him as a 2-legged angel with "Awww, shucks" humility and selfless energy to help and empower others, just the kind of friend one's always sought.

But Jim is unconscious, in ICU, and has been on a respirator since December 2nd.

Jim, my brother's best friend since before my birth, and who helped me through my brother's death, had just left a Louisville restaurant when a car ran a red light and, at 45mph--without any evidence of braking--stuck Jim's car in the driver's door.

His exercise classmates, his walking buddy, his fellow retired teachers, church friends, neighbors, his fishin' buddies, his golf cronies, and his life-long friends all suspect a cellphone may have been the secondary cause of carelessness that's left Jim teetering on the frail thread between this life and the next.

My grief week in Louisville was spent in daily contact with Jim, in his company on the phone and in person, with him and his family.

Our conversations included a 6S discussion, leading him to my writing and this site, and awakening a voracious appetite to express himself in this form albeit on legal pads with a pen, and with exhuberant zeal I pray he'll recover to enjoy.

Precip

The drizzle is cold on my skin. Summer temps in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert exceeded 140 degrees Fahrenheit (in the sun) during summer months. The signal that Fall has arrived is falling on, and cooling the desert. Transformations are forthcoming from flora and fauna. Dusty gulches will gulp Nature's elixir, even flow with it. The desert has changed masks, will again become life-giving instead of life-taking.

[Twenty-seven minutes after this was posted online, I received the phone call that Jack--my brother, my hero--was dead.]