Enjoy Your Flight!

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome aboard. We know you could have flown on any other airline, but that would have cost you fifty cents more, so thanks for choosing us.

And before you blame us for today’s miserable flying experience, isn’t getting there as cheaply as you can the game you play when you spend all those hours on Orbitz and Kayak and Travelocity? We’re simply helping you win that game!

A special shout out to those of you that paid extra money for comfort class. Oh sure, there’s still not enough space to get up and go potty without everyone else on your  aisle getting up too, but there’s room enough for your knees! Think of those poor chumps in the back that will be sitting catty-cornered for the next 5 hours!

Also, a special welcome to those of you that are First Class, Second Class, Gold Plated, Free World, Unified, Dignified or Petrified Club members. And if you’re a Medallion flyer, be sure and upgrade to our Swinging Medallion Club status. That ensures you’ll get a seat on the plane where the headphone jack actually works, and you can listen to music!

Get it? Swinging Medallion… music…? No?

By the way, coming soon is a new class of service called R&R. The first ‘r’ is for ‘rest’, and the second ‘r’ is for ‘room’. Ahhhh, some of you have already guessed it, it’s restroom seating. Scoff if you wish, but it will offer way more seating room than you have right now.

For those of you that aren’t already members of our frequent flyer program, we encourage you to sign up. Every time you fly, you’ll get points you can redeem for stuff. Sometimes. Not always. I mean, you always get points; that’s our way of thanking you for your loyalty. It’s that we don’t just let you use them. Think of it as our “thank you” but with strings attached.

How many points, you ask? It’s difficult to say. Corporate likes to change the rules when it looks like you may actually be getting some benefit from them. But it’s always to your advantage!

For example, we used to offer one point for every mile flown. So if you flew from Atlanta to LA, for example, you would get around 2000 points. But now, we offer you one point for every dollar spent. So if you bought your ATL – LA ticket for $800, you’ll get 800 points. That cheap Priceline-ing rascal next to you that only spent $350 will get only 350 points. See? The more you spend, the more you benefit! You win again!

We do encourage you to buy as many tickets as possible as quickly as possible, as we’re changing our rewards program again next week so that you will only get points for the minutes you spend online booking your flight. But - pssst! - here’s an industry insider secret: type your information in s-l-o-w-l-y. That way, it will take you ten minutes – earning ten points – instead of just five minutes, earning only five points.

Don’t let me catch you sharing that on TripAdvisor!

We will be offering cabin service today. If you’d like a drink , we have those little bottles you pay $1.50 for at the liquor store. We’re selling them for $8. If you’d like food, we’ll sell you a 1-oz. bag of potato chips. Water and napkins are free. We don’t give you extra napkins if you eat the first one.

But hey, whatever you do, please don’t fuss at your flight attendant. You think this is any fun for us? Working those 6-inch wide aisles, pushing that cart saying, “watch your elbows, watch your shoulders, watch your knees” with every step?

Cramped for you cramps us, too. That’s our unofficial slogan.

Besides, they’ve cut our pensions and extended our hours. We’re here to serve you only because McDonald’s isn’t hiring this week.

Hey, but enough about us! This is about you and your experience with us. To help you enjoy that experience, we remind you this is a no smoking flight. Oh sure, there are some ashtrays onboard, but that’s just an indicator of how old this plane really is! Seriously, who remembers when you could smoke on a plane?

While this bird may be old, though, she has been retro-fitted with new seats! As a means of helping get more people to more places and spending less money to do it, we’ve installed narrower seats and added more of them. Now, this will leave those of you with aisle seats tending to lean out into the aisle as a means of grasping for enough space to be comfortable.

Don’t do that. There are people walking sideways trying to get to the bathroom.

Instead, overlap your shoulders with the person sitting next to you. Heck, you’re practically sitting in their lap already. Go ahead and get intimate! Sure, it squeezes you a little but takes the squeeze off our bottom line! Ha ha! A little corporate humor there!

Speaking of corporate humor, a special welcome to those of you that once owned stock in our airline. You know, before we went bankrupt, declared your stock worthless and issued new stock. In a few minutes, our CEO will appear on the screen to tell you how much you mean to us and how much we care.

Enjoy your flight.

A Friend Indeed

Recently, I was recognized for my too-many years on the radio. It’s an annual affair that honors a handful of folk that were incapable of holding down a real job, and therefore, opted to settle for a low-wage gig that made us feel important.

From a post on social media, I learned that Kim was coming.

Kim and I worked together for a few years, but that was probably twenty years ago. During those years, we were decent friends. Not terribly close, but I recall sharing a beer together a couple of times, and we always got along well.

As Kim left the radio station and moved away for a career in something more meaningful, she pretty much slipped off my radar. That happens a lot in radio; people move in and out of the business, often, in pretty short order. Some of those you remember, some you don’t. I wouldn’t forget Kim, but we didn’t stay in touch. We just weren’t that close.

Still, because Kim took a job with a large charitable organization, and my radio work sometimes partnered with her charity, we would bump into one another occasionally. Kim’s smile is 10-feet wide, so it was always nice to see her. We’d hug big, I’d ask how she was doing, she’d ask how I was doing, we’d ask how each other’s spouses were doing, and that would be it for the next five or ten years.

As social media became a gathering place for former cronies to come together, I would occasionally see a post from Kim. They usually involved her dog, but I tend to zone out on dog/cat/hamster/wolverine posts, so I didn’t pay much attention.

But now we have this upcoming event, and Kim was coming. Since she is no longer in radio, I couldn’t imagine why she would be attending, but it made me happy. It would be nice to see her again, and it meant there would be someone to pal around with at this event where I would not know many people.

My wife and I greeted Kim and her husband as they took their seats next to us in the auditorium. I was anxious to know why she was there.

“What’s your affiliation with this event?” I asked.

“You,” she said. “You’re being honored and we wanted to be here for it.”

Hm. Wasn’t at all expecting that.

Here’s someone I’ve seen maybe three times in the last two decades, buying tickets (that weren’t cheap!), driving in from another city, all just to be there to show support.

Hm.

It was a fun night. Besides catching up with Kim, it turns out there were several people there I knew, and we made a few new friends.

I was grateful to be nominated for recognition by the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame. It’s nice to be honored for your work, even if it probably is just because you were able to stay with it for so many years. But the highlight of the night was getting absolutely schooled in what it means to be a friend.

I hope that lesson sticks with me.

There She Is, Miss America!

On the title song of her recent album, Pageant Material, Kacey Musgraves sings about being a southern girl who won’t compete in beauty pageants.

And it ain't that I don't care about world peace
But I don't see how I can fix it in a swimsuit on a stage

It’s a light-hearted song that echoes the sentiment of 99.9% of the female population that feels like they couldn’t win a beauty pageant if they tried. So they joke about them. Heck, we all joke about them.

Some of the ridicule heaped on beauty pageants is deserved. The reality show, Toddlers & Tiaras, was a joke. Oh, the pageants are real, but I’m guessing Honey Boo Boo will have a standing date with a therapist for years to come.

We were channel surfing we when happened up on last weekend’s Miss America pageant. In our twenty-five years of marriage, we’ve never watched a single minute of this parade, yet here we were. Seeing the pageant was down to its final half-hour, we settled in for the finale.

Bonus: Contestants from Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Louisiana were all finalists. It seemed a good bet that the new Miss America would be a Southern girl.

Double-bonus: Miss Georgia Betty Cantrell was a former 4-H’er. As I’ve written before, my wife is a former director of Georgia’s Cooperative Extension Program that oversees 4-H and, she remains passionate about its mission. For that reason alone, Betty Cantrell had to win. She must represent!  

You likely know by now that she did. But let’s double-back to the lighter side of pageants.

“It’s not a beauty pageant, it’s a scholarship pageant.” Many years ago, that line became the pillar and the defense of the Miss America pageant. “This isn’t just about parading beautiful girls across the stage, it’s a display of talent and knowledge, as well.”

Give the contestants their due. Indeed, it takes a fairly well-rounded young woman to compete on the national level. Much work and prep goes into getting your face on national TV. And the stakes are high. As the new Miss America, Betty Cantrell won a $50,000 scholarship.

But while pageant contestants may be the subjects of songs, sitcoms and silly movies, it’s the pageant – the show itself - that’s the real joke.

This year’s Miss America pageant officially apologized to former title-holder Vanessa Williams for stripping her of her crown over thirty years ago after some nude photos of her were published. Good for her that she went about her life, becoming an enormously successful entertainer (with her clothes on), but why the apology? I suspect if similar photos of the new Miss America were to surface, they would again snatch away the crown.

I also suspect that the reason they apologized to Vanessa, gave her a new crown and made her lead judge for this year’s pageant is because she won, anyway. They took away her crown, but she grabbed the brass ring. She succeeded despite the scandal. She became bigger than Miss America or ‘former Miss America’ and the pageant felt it could benefit from her star power.

Questions from the judging panel were off-the-chart odd.

To Miss Georgia: did Tom Brady cheat?

Huh? Does Miss America need to have an opinion on Deflate-gate? I don’t even have an opinion on that, other than, of course, he cheated.

To Miss South Carolina: do you support a ban on military assault weapons?

If I’m Miss South Carolina, I’m thinking, “Whoa. I’m about to lose the Miss America title because I do - or do not - support someone’s right to own an assault rifle.” That’s pretty heady stuff for 20-year old college students.

But hey, it’s not a beauty pageant, it’s a scholarship pageant. One that big chicks cannot win no matter how smart they are or what instrument they play. One that assumes you need scholarship money because that really cute bikini you wore on stage didn’t come from Macy’s, honey!

I like that Miss Colorado thought Ellen Degeneres should be the face on the $10 bill. I like Ellen. In fact, I could support any Ellen: Degeneres, Pompeo, Page, Barkin. If you’re named Ellen, you’re pretty, apparently. Though I realize it’s not a beauty contest.

Damn Yankees!

From somewhere behind us, a golf ball came sailing past as we waited for the green ahead of us to clear. We were on a part of the golf course where you always need to ride up and take a look before hitting your next shot.

“What the hell are you doing?” Pete bellowed to the offending golfer as he approached.

“Sorry, I thought you had moved on,” he responded.

That wasn’t the way Pete saw it. “No, you didn’t! You’ve been pushing us all afternoon. Can you not see that we are waiting on golfers ahead of us?”

The older gentleman who hit into us was playing alone and indeed seemed to want us to let him through, but there was simply no place for him to go. Several holes earlier, he had pulled up to us while we were teeing off, something most golfers do not appreciate. Pete had warned me that if it happened again, he was going to ask the guy to leave.

I suggested to Pete that if it happened again, he should let me handle it. He knew why. He knows he’s a bit ‘direct’ in such situations.

This is not a story about golf. It’s a story about Yankees.

It’s about people who have migrated to the South, yet retained their northern mannerisms: curt, terse, blunt. Because Pete knows he’s a little of all that, he laughed when I tried to call him off. He knew I would handle it more passively.

So why didn’t he let me? Because he’s a Yankee!

Southerners, in general, like to avoid conflict. Sure, you’ve got your factions of fighters, like drunken rednecks. But even they tend to soften up when they sober up.

Northerners, by contrast, almost seem to enjoy being combative. It’s like their way of life is to snipe at one another.

If you are born and raised in the South, identifying someone from this country’s unloved-by-God regions is simple. Just a few words from their mouth, and you’re thinking, ‘you ain’t from around here.’

And manners? Fuhgeddaboudit!

As an example, another golf story (my group has a lot of migrants). Chuck hits an exceptionally good tee shot. “Great shot!” I shout to him. He says nothing as he reaches down for his tee, so I follow-up with some gentle instructions.

“Chuck, this is the South. When someone compliments you, you say ‘thank you.’”

Chuck responded, “Why should I have to thank you for stating the obvious?”

I took out my 9-iron with the intent on teaching Tiger Woods yet another lesson but was held back by others in the group.

The word we’re missing here is ‘genteel.’ It’s a general term for being polite, respectful, graceful, refined.

Know any genteel Yankees?

It’s all about your upbringing. Just as a Southerner can thank his or her mama for raisin’ them properly - with manners, Yankees can blame their mamas for raising them to be social misfits in any place south of Virginia.

That attitude would probably lead some to think us’ns in the South are a clique, but I would argue that we are in fact different, that our interaction with others is handled in a gentler, more respectful way.

I do think Chuck learned a lesson that day: that disrespecting someone who is being nice to you can cause you to have a flat tire. Or two.

Being raised in the north almost seems to somehow corrupt the mind. It’s like they were never taught to play nice. And that never leaves them, no matter how long they live in the South. It’s ingrained.

I have a friend who has lived in Georgia for well over fifty years. He claims that after that length of time, he should no longer be considered a Yankee. Spend five minutes with him, though, and… ‘he ain’t from ‘round here.’

Wesley Snipes’ character in “White Men Can’t Jump” pretty much nailed it: "You can put a cat in an oven, but that don't make it a biscuit."

Barking Spiders and Stepping on Ducks

The conversation turned to flatulence. Let me rephrase… the conversation turned to the subject of flatulence. That’s better.

About fifteen or so fully-developed humans had gathered to celebrate the clock’s journey to 5 p.m., and someone had seen a recent episode of “The Doctors” that discussed the “embarrassment of flatulence.” The doctors opined that everyone has it, it’s a very natural process of digestion, and there’s nothing wrong with it.

Oh, yes, there is.

Before I lay out my case, let me confess to being very – yea, extremely – knowledgeable about this subject. In fact, if there were a kingdom of methane makers, I would be their ruler. Erect a totem pole of the top violators in the world, and you’d need a ladder to see my face.

I blame my short colon, but mostly because I can. A little dance with colon cancer in my 30s claimed about a foot of my digestive tract. I figure that leaves me with less time for the final product to manifest itself. Not so, I’m told by my cousin, Dan. He says it’s a family trait.

That’s comforting to know. At least, I’m not alone. It’s also an excuse not to hang around my family too much.

So, then, let’s assume that some of you that are reading this might consider yourselves challengers to the throne. While this is not really a contest, in fact, as with sin, we are all guilty.

We all learn ways to hide it. Personally, if you ever see me in the grocery store aisle that sells bleach and detergents, yeah, I don’t buy bleach and detergents. That’s an aisle where there aren’t a lot of people.

Company at the house for something off the grill? “Let me go check on the coals.” I don’t really need to do that. The way I prepare charcoal takes 45 minutes. All I really need to do is look at the clock.

Riding down the road with someone else in the car? “Wonder what the temperature is like?” Roll down the window, stick my hand out for a few seconds. Then, pretend they don’t know what I just did by announcing, “Yep, still hot.” Or, “Hey, I think it’s getting cooler.”

So, if it’s something that everyone does, what’s the problem? I’ll tell you what the problem is.

WHO JUST DID THAT???

It may well be that everyone does it, that it’s just natural, that it’s part of the digestive process, but somebody just committed a crime on the entire universe of all mankind and they must be called out!!

“What is wrong with you?!?!”

Fortunately, for me, no one ever knows. During several of the years I was on the radio, I had two female partners that sat together on the other side of the desk. One year, for Christmas they gave me a charcoal filter cushion. They giggled about it a bunch, but I think it was just because I have a boney butt, and they knew I needed some padding.

My brother-in-law has literally fallen out of the golf cart when riding with me, but I think he has balance issues.

Yes, friends, we all suffer, but we do our best to suffer silently. Silence is golden. Silence is also deadly.

Good luck.

Money for Nothin' (That Ain't Workin')

“Man, you work hard!” my neighbor yelled out as he passed by.

Immediately, two thoughts struck me. First: wow, what a compliment. Second: wow, what an idiot.

OK, maybe idiot is too strong, but come on, man. You know me! I don’t know what I was doing at the time – maybe pulling nails from a board or something, but working hard, I was not. I do not do. 

Not ever.

I made a career out of doing radio. Maybe, had it been talk radio, where you should at least know what you’re talking about, you could accuse me of ‘working’. But I spent my time at music stations. Play a few tunes, say something stupid, play a few more songs, repeat.

Here’s how hard it was: when I started in radio, we played records. Records became CDs, CDs became digital bytes. By the time I finished my career, music was simply a computer file. Touch it with your finger and it would play. Further, when it finished playing, it automatically triggered the next file (song) to play. It was - and still is - a process that would continue running itself until it was time for me to interrupt the flow and say something stupid again. I got paid for that.

That job required getting up early in the morning, but hard work? Hard-ly.

If you want a hard worker, I’ll introduce you to my workaholic wife.  She will not sit still and constantly has projects going. Drive me nuts.

Before her retirement, she oversaw the Georgia 4-H program in which thousands of kids gather at camps and do things that kids do.  Some of it is stupid, some of it inappropriate, but mostly, it’s just kids being kids, trying to have fun and learning the ropes.

But times being what they are, nowadays, when kids go off course, parents must be notified, counselors and administrators work overtime, and in some cases, cops must be called. Societal changes dictate that. 

She also was in charge of staffing county extension (county agent) offices during a period when state legislators were slashing budgets. She dealt with deep budget cuts. That meant deciding which counties would have agents, which could go without, and which could share agents. Egos were being bruised.

I won’t forget the evening a legislator approached her, asking when his county would be getting a new agent.

“You keep cutting my budget,” she said. “I don’t have enough money.”

“You’ll have even less if I don’t get a county agent soon,” was his response.

Feel free to take a moment, and consider that logic.

That stuff kept her up at night. Even as we both have retired, remembering that stuff is the reason I still roll over in bed and put an arm around her. Sometimes I toss a leg over her, too. Then, a kiss on the neck. Then, she throws me out of bed, thinkin’ I wanna be starting something, got to be starting something…

That I give up so easily means I won’t even work hard for that.

I think, though, I’m going to hold on to this. This one time someone accused me of working hard. In fact, I’m going to own it. When the day finally comes that I stand before my Maker, and he asks how I would define my life, I’m going to say, “I worked hard.”

Then, I’m going to hope he has a pretty good sense of humor.

Change of Seasons? Who Cares?

Two of my neighbors have just upgraded their TV service to HD, high definition. A third is on the verge. Big-screens are reasonably cheap, but that 55-incher you got ain’t no good if you can’t read the numbers on the shirts or see the ball in the air.

Welcome to football season.

If you’re on Facebook, your feed is likely filled with posts of mascots, flags, jerseys, and all manner of animals and emblems. Sports-talk shows have been giddy with their picks and prognostications for what’s going to happen over the next few months.

And as usual, I’m sitting here in my underwear, trying to figure out what it all means. And it does mean something. For one, it’s fall, by golly.

We could probably toss a coin over whether we love fall for the football or football because it happens in the fall. Glance around and see that the sumacs, dogwoods, and sourwoods – maybe even your maples – are signaling a change of seasons. Especially in the South, by the time kick-off comes around, we’ve had an evening or two where a cool breeze has dropped hints that this year’s hell-hot days are almost behind us.

Football season also makes us more social. If you go to the games, you may have met up with friends prior to the game for some food, toddies, and maybe a silly lawn game. Some of these friends are not friends any other time of year except at tailgate time. You likely sit with friends at the game. Even for those of us that simply watch the games on TV, it’s almost always with a gathering of friends.

Our usual bunch is mostly a Southeastern Conference crowd: Georgia, Tennessee and Auburn are represented. We try not to gloat when someone’s team loses, especially when they lose to our team. We all feel especially blessed that we have no one in our crowd rooting for Alabama or Florida, because then things might get really ugly.

And with the social aspect of pigskin season, there is food. Special food. Garbage food. Stuff you don’t normally eat because, really, isn’t your butt already large enough? But it’s football food! Gotta have it.

Finally, this time of year is about hope. World peace, financial market meltdowns, even your day-to-day struggles to pay the bills be damned! This is the year my team is going to win the national championship!

Not. Probably not. But maybe?

 The friends, then. The food. The color in the leaves, the change in the temperature, and especially the lower humidity that make being outside a pleasure all happen in tandem with our alma maters getting down to the business of what matters most: kicking somebody’s tail into next year!

Blow that whistle, ref! ‘Tis the season.

Being Thrifty

My wife’s addiction, I’m trying to understand it. Trying to figure out what fuels it. What started innocently enough as a fun way to spend time with ‘the girls’ has now consumed her.

She is addicted to thrift stores.

Let me be honest: we’re DINKs. Double-Income-No-Kids. DINKs are not necessarily rich, but with both spouses working and no kids to suck money from their pockets, DINKs are not your typical thrift store customers. Oh, they can be spotted there, for sure, but it would usually be because they were donating to that store, not shopping.

Through the years, we’ve made a hundred donations to thrift stores. Dishes, clothes, beds… you name it. Most thrift stores support charitable organizations, and it’s a wonderful way to help those groups while uncluttering your home of no longer needed or wanted items.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, that’s true. But constantly taking trash and calling it treasure is a sickness. And it needs a cure.

This tale of woe began in the hills of North Georgia. We have a little cabin and spend a fair amount of our free time there. There are other cabins, and some are owned by couples very close to our age. It’s made for a tight-knit group.

The ‘boys’ have always been able to burn their days with useful projects: building sheds, burning sticks from the yard, all day grillings, or bourbon-tastings. The girls have had a more difficult time finding such interesting things to do.

Until now.

Nowadays, when the girls are together, day one is spent plotting which stores in which cities will be hit on all the subsequent days they are together.

I thought this was good. All the husbands did. If the girls were off doing their thing, our thing became anything we wanted our thing to be. This was especially useful if there were televised sporting events to be watched or golf to be played. Everybody had something they wanted to do. Life in the hills was good, easy.

But this is just how this disease develops. It starts as a small adventure, a simple thrill to see if you can find that ‘treasure.’ But just hitting one store isn’t enough. Good lord, there are thrift stores everywhere! They must all be hit! What if we miss the big bargain?

That’s today’s issue. Thrift store visits have become junkin’ journeys, and my wife has become a junk collector. So have her friends. Knick-knacks and doo-dads that other people have discarded - because it’s junk! – have now become ‘discoveries’.

Well, you can give it any name you want; what it is, is crap. Furthermore, it’s crappy crap.

Let me ask you this: how many colanders do you have? Probably, one. Every household needs a colander. But all you need is one. You don’t also need a cute little red one, a rubber one, a collapsible one. One size fits all, and just one will do.

Further, the rubber colander she brought home won’t stand up by itself. Best I can tell, the only way to make it work it to put it inside a sturdier colander. OK, in that case, it makes sense to have two colanders, maybe. “Well, this rubber one doesn’t work on its own so I had to have another colander to put it in.” Pretzel logic, but let’s go with it.

On a recent outing, she brings home a rocking chair. I love rocking chairs, and this one she’s bought (“you won’t believe what I paid for it!”) is a good one. Quite comfortable. The problem? We already have seven rocking chairs in this house! What in the world are we supposed to do with #8?

She buys things, not out of necessity, but simply because it’s ‘a bargain’. Lamps, candle-holders, pots… the collection of unnecessary or duplicate… stuff… just grows.

I’ve tried intervention. Upon returning from a junkin’ outing, I sat her down and asked very calmly, “Honey, how may snuff glasses do you need?”

She has a sentimental fondness for those leaded glasses that used to be sold full of snuff. She remembers drinking juice from them at her grandma’s house. As a lot of us grew up, jelly jars became our juice glasses, so I get it. But here’s the number ‘8’ again. We now have eight snuff glasses – at the cabin! We don’t have eight friends at the cabin.

I’ve hatched a plan. I’m going to join her subtle little game. You see, in most cases, she doesn’t show me her ‘finds’, they just appear. One day you open the drawer and there’s a whole set of knives you never seen before.

That’s how it works.

So like a magician, I’m going to quietly start making some things disappear. Like a stealth magician. A stealthy ninja magician. My work will be invisible to the naked eye, under the radar. Only the worthless, crappy garbage I deem worthy of keeping will remain.

You like my plan? Oh, yeah. Game on!

Meanwhile, stay tuned. Pretty soon, I can give you some good advice on where to find a great buy on colanders.

French Fried and Vilified

On the road, I popped into Mickey D’s for a quick bite. The snack wraps looked like the right amount of food, so I ordered two grilled chicken wraps for my wife and two fried chicken wraps for me.

“OK,” says the dude at the counter, “so that’s two grilled and two crispy.”

Oh, yeah. I forgot. We don’t say ‘fried’ anymore. So, yeah, ‘crispy’ works as long as the reason they’re crispy is because YOU FRIED THEM!!

I don’t blame McDonalds, honestly. I blame Kentucky Fried Chicken. I think they started all of this when they decided to change their name to KFC.

“Sh-h-h... Let’s not use the f-word anymore.”

I’m a Southern boy. Not only do I use the f-word, if you could f-f (French fry) my dirty socks, I’m sure I would eat them. With ketchup.

But fried has become evil. Actually, it’s not frying that’s evil, it’s the word itself. We still fry food – a lot. But we do everything we can think of to disguise the fact that it’s fried.

We use olive oil. We call our food by cute names like ‘crisps’ or ‘chips.’ You can go into a place that serves fried pickles, and they might refer to them as pickle chips. The menu might even say they are “the dill pickle taste you love, battered and lightly cooked in oil.”

Fried, fried, and fried.

By the way, ‘crisps’ and ‘chips’ should only be used under certain circumstances. Here’s my personal guide for the world to use:

-crisps: baked
-chips: fried, no batter
-fried: fried with batter, or just fried with no excuses

If you think about it, we fry some interesting things. I mean, who was the first person to say, “I simply cannot wait for this tomato to ripen. I think I’ll pick it now, batter and fry it.”  Who gets that credit?

Do the French really get credit for deciding to fry bread? “Gosh, Pierre, we have spent all our money on wine and, all we have in our kitchen is this loaf of bread and a bottle of oil. Que pouvons nous faire? (What can we do?)” Ta da! French toast.

About the only sociable use for ‘fried’ seems to be for novelty food. I was in a restaurant in Boston that offered fried mac and cheese. I jumped in with both feet on that one.

At fairs across the county, it’s a contest to see who can successfully fry something odd. Jelly beans, ice cream, fried Coca-Cola, fried Oreos… the list is endless. But the stuff God intended us to fry, like chicken? Please use KFC. Or crispy. It’s just healthier if we don’t say that word.

By the way, ‘sauteed’ is also fried. The picture you see is one I took in Mexico recently. We didn’t order them but were served them anyway. The menu called them grasshoppers, but I know a cricket when I see one.

Again, the question: did Jose, one day, just up and say, “Dang, I want to eat these things, but they don’t taste good?” Did his wife respond by saying, “Here, let me stir them in hot butter. Then they will be delicioso.”

If that’s what happened, she was right. Because they were.

Here’s the problem with fried grasshoppers. When you eat anything, let’s stay on subject and say fried chicken, you wind up with crumbs on your lips. With grasshoppers, you also wind up with crumbs, but they are a piece of leg or wing or its head. You can lick your lips to clean it all up, but you know darn well what you’ve just taken in your mouth.

And expect repercussions. Best I can recall my wife has never refused to kiss me after eating fried chicken. Mexico was two months ago. I’m still waiting.

The Gay Apocalypse

Hello, and thanks for inviting me. Just for funsies, I brought my crystal ball. Thought we might rub this thing up and gaze into the future. Be forewarned, something big is on the horizon! (I peeked.)

It will have some dancing in celebration, others mourning in prayer for what must surely be the end of time, and the talk shows will have a field day.

This event will likely occur at some point this summer when the Supreme Court of the United States will rule on questions surrounding the legalization of gay marriage. One of the questions they are expected to address is whether states can limit “marriage” to the traditional definition of being only the union of a man and a woman.

I think I see the outcome and some of you are not going to be happy. If the legalization of gay marriage troubles you, stay with me. I once felt just as you do now, and I have come to help you cope with….

THE GAY APOCALYPSE! (Bonus: bacon is involved.)

For this writing, allow me to use the word “gay” in a broad, general sense to refer to all same-sex relationships. I’m sure some would prefer a delineation of gay, lesbian, bi-, etc.
I seek only to simplify.

Being raised a Southern Baptist served as the backdrop for the way I long felt about homosexuality. Now, you know we Christians, especially those of us in the genteel South, we love everybody, even them gay people; we just don’t agree with their ‘lifestyle choice’ (words we’ll address shortly).

I must admit that for many years, I had a hard time getting comfortable with it being OK to be gay. While I reject any accusations of homophobia, I do have to confess to being insensitive with some of the things I have said on the radio. I could always hide behind words like, “come on, I’m just kiddin’!!”

By the way, gay people have a terrific sense of humor about themselves if it’s humor delivered with love and understanding. I’ve learned that.

So what has changed for me?

Through the years, I’ve had several gay co-workers that I got along with very well, personally and professionally. We became… friends. Yes, I have gay friends! I said it, are you happy now?

Gee, I hope they don’t try to convert me. (I promise a good story on that before we finish.)

Having gay friends allowed me to ask some very honest questions about their sexuality, as if it was any of my business. In one such conversation with a lesbian co-worker about whether people can or do choose to be gay, she asked, “Why in the world would anyone choose to be ridiculed for being who they are?”

Those words stuck.

I am close friends with a lesbian couple, both of whom will tell you they were never anything other than gay. (It’s apparently a common question from a straight dude: were you always gay?)  One of them remembers being at a wedding at the age of 5 and wishing she could walk down the isle with the bride. At that age, it’s not a sexual urge, it’s an innate feeling. So, born this way? That is certainly her truth.

To that end, it’s important for heterosexuals to understand that being gay is as natural to gay people as being heterosexual is for straight people. It is simply what you are. Or who you are.

But now comes the hard part, especially for many Christians.

How do we reconcile accepting homosexuality with what the Bible has to say about it? As Christians, we are basically taught our prejudice against gays. There are, after all, scriptural references on these matters and those scriptures say homosexuality is wrong.

When you see Christian opposition to gay marriage, a popular stance involves Leviticus 18:22. Of homosexuality, the verse says, “It is an abomination.” (KJV). With that, opposing voices will declare that ‘it’s in the Bible,’ and the discussion is over, period.

Keep reading.

Two chapters later, Leviticus 20, it is written that not only is it an abomination, but the participants in homosexual activity should be killed. So how does a Christian justify simple condemnation when there is specific biblical instruction for more action? If Lev. 18:22 is our armor of righteousness against homosexuality, why isn’t Lev. 20:13 the sword we use against it?

My guess is that killing people doesn’t sit well with most of us, even if it is scriptural.

Leviticus is in fact a book of much instruction. We are told not to cheat, not to lie. (Good.) We are told not to wear clothing made from two kinds of material. (Really? Hm.) We are told that the promiscuous daughter of a priest should be burned with fire. (That seems a bit unnecessary.) It tells us adulterers should be killed. (It’s happened but is not generally acceptable practice.) We are told that a woman on her period is “unclean”. (Now that’s just downright old fashioned!)

Right? Are we pretty much on the same page?

Fact of the matter is, that fourth book of the bible is full of instructions that most Christians find – even if not admitting it – outdated.

Leviticus contains instruction about what animals we are to sacrifice and how the blood of these animals is to be handled by the priests. It tells us that rabbits are not fit to eat. It also says pigs are unclean for consumption, an idea that many people reject but others hold as being the reason they will not consume pork. And that leads us to these questions:

What portions of the bible can we reject as no longer relevant for our world today while holding other verses up as God’s absolute law?  Further, on whose authority are those decisions made?*

It may just be me, but I’m having trouble with demands that God’s law must be obeyed as it relates to homosexuality but not as it relates to eating a pork chop.

So is it okay to change the laws (rules)? I think it is. I think our understanding of all things is an evolutionary process. We know that science evolves. With that, medicine evolves. Mechanics evolve. Why can’t our thinking, our understanding, evolve?

If we can make ourselves understand that the Bible didn’t drop onto Moses doorstep one day, fully written; if we will accept that much of the Bible is the written words of ancient stories and traditions passed through generations, often orally; if we can embrace the knowledge we have that the Bible has undergone many revisions, additions, omissions, rewrites and changes in translation through the years, then yes, I believe the Bible can still be used as an underpinning to the Christian faith without demanding that certain words must be taken as the absolute law of God while we completely reject others as no longer applicable.

It’s a fact that the contents of the Bible has historically been largely affected and directed by the man or men that were in charge at any given time over the many centuries it took for this great work came together as we now know it. Most were likely heterosexual. The vast majority of society has always been – still is – heterosexual. Heterosexuals often have a hard time understanding homosexuality.

Especially in an earlier time when those men of authority had absolute power, anything that felt uncomfortable or weird to them could simply be outlawed. Better yet, let’s make it not only against the law, let’s make it against God’s law.

And so it shall be written.

There was a time in this country not so long ago that the black man couldn’t vote. Even more recently, women were denied that right. Some “rogue judge” would then make some “ill-informed” decisions that everyone should be treated equally, and the whole world went straight to hell!

It’s about to happen again. The Supreme Court is going to once again rule that treating one group of people differently than another group of people is discrimination, and another wall will come down. At least, that is what I think will happen. In America, we seem to have a tradition of dealing death blows to discrimination, even if it takes a long time to get to the knockout punch.

I also believe that we will one day look back on our past treatment of gays much as we do now on the past treatment of black men and all women. And we’ll shake our heads in disbelief that we passed laws that allowed us to treat certain people differently, especially in the 21st century.
By the way, for the most part, your kids are already doing this.

In sharing some long-ago Sunday School conversations  about gays with my lesbian friend, I recalled during my teenage years one of our teachers, a truly lovely, older Southern lady putting it like this: “I don’t really have any problem with gay people as long as they don’t try to convert me.” My friend laughed, then, responded with, “That’s a shame. I’ll bet The Lesbian League had just upped their quota of converting 80-year old straight women that week.”

Amen.


*These are loose variations of questions posed by Dr. John Shelby Spong, a retired bishop of the Episcopal Church, in his book, “Living in Sin?: A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality” (Harper Collins. 1990)

Mommy Dearest

Jenny (not her real name) is not happy.

Wait. Yes, it is her real name. Sorry, lady, but when you post it on social media, you’re fair game.

Jenny’s 4-year old son has decided to change her moniker from ‘Mommy’ to ‘Mom’.

Ever the voice of reason, I try to counsel that this is just the natural progression for a child. Frankly, though, I don’t ever remember calling my own mom anything but ‘Mom’.

I recall a discussion with a fellow co-worker a while back (she’s also a mom) whose son still referred to her as Mommy even though the boy was turning seven. She didn’t mind at all as her biggest fear was that she would one day be called ‘Mama’.

My admonishment was stern.

“Lady, you live in the South. Mother is Mama. Mommy is Mama. Mom is Mama. One day, you’re gonna have grandkids and they’re going to call you Grandmama. Or Grannymama. Or Big Mama. Get over it, and get used to it.”

She wasn’t buying it. Today, as the kid hits 10-years old, she’s still ‘Mommy’. That’s creepy. It’s also the stuff that school-ground whuppin’s are made of. “Hey, boy, I got a little somethin’ for you. Then you can go runnin’ home and let your mommy kiss it and make it all better!”

I keep waiting to read about ‘Mommy’ in the newspaper. Something involving wire coat hangers.

Still, I’ve heard this discussion enough through the years to know that this change of name is meaningful. Indeed, several of Jenny’s friends agree that the event is traumatic.

Jenny has another child that is eight. He calls her ‘Mom’, but he’s eight, and to her, that’s the difference. One kid is old enough, the other is not. She’s a bit of a control freak, too, so there’s that issue.

Jenny has decided to deal with this new development by calling her youngest son by half his own name. He’s not Davis, anymore, he’s Dave because isn’t retaliation what all moms are supposed to do?

I sort of doubt Dave cares. He’s a second-born. I’m a second-born, and I wouldn’t care. We’re fun, funny, independent, and care-free.

And we’re smarta**es.

Cover Me In Chocolate and Call Me a Fudgesicle

Let me spare you the long set-up. On a recent getaway to Mexico, we did a couples chocolate massage. I don’t know why. We were on vacation, and it seemed like it could be fun.

Besides, it had the word “aphrodisiac” in the name. Who can resist “The Warm Chocolate Melt Aphrodisiac (If This Doesn’t Work, You Must Be Dead) Rubdown For Couples?”

For what they were charging for it, I thought Willy Wonka might make a personal appearance. Always wanted to meet him.

“Does this come with a guarantee?” I asked.

It didn’t. But I’m a guy whose body shape is roughly thirty years past its prime. If making me a walking chocolate bar makes me yummy, let’s rock.

Here’s the way it works. You take off all your clothes, get slathered in chocolate, get in the shower – together – wash it off, get slathered in chocolate again, get in the shower again, wash it off again, then get in a hot tub. In the hot tub, you eat chocolate-covered strawberries and drink champagne.

We’re all in. With naked bodies on separate tables (not really how I imagined the couples chocolate massage would start) the rubdowns begin.

It’s kind of fun. The first part is called a chocolate scrub, so the chocolate has a grit of some sort. They tell you it’s sea salt, but we’re at the beach, and sand is much more plentiful. Just sayin’.

 But the smell of chocolate permeates the room, and who doesn’t love that? Hey, and the towels you lay on and that cover you are chocolate colored. Whee!

It’s pretty standard stuff: lay facedown, and they smear the legs, arms, back and butt. Flip over and they rub down the tummy, chest and face. Then, it’s off to the shower.

Rubdown, part two, is where it falls apart.

It’s good in the beginning. Warm chocolate syrup is being massaged onto your body. Maybe it’s a chocolate oil. Regardless, it has been heated and it feels really nice. But if you’ve had a massage, you know that when the masseuse finishes one part of the body, that part is covered with a towel or sheet.

In this case, the towel is placed over a portion of your body that is coated in chocolate syrup. Syrup that is starting to cool down and soak in, heavy and sticky on the towel.

By the time your entire back side is covered, you don’t want to turn over because she’s going to lift that gooey towel off your back, hold it up while you flip over, then lay that thing down on the only part of your body that is clean, and oh god, she just did it!

Now, she will lift up each portion of that chocolate-drenched towel, ladle on more chocolate, rub it in, then put that towel back over it.

No mas! I want to quit. I want out. I want my money back. On second thought, keep the money. Just let me get this over with!

It gets worse.

You know how a massage ends on your head? They massage your neck, your face, your ears, and finally, your scalp? Yeah, it’s all done with chocolate.

She is massaging my scalp with chocolate syrup.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have this now-cool 40-pound chocolate-soaked towel laying on me like a nasty wet blanket on a naked baby.

Finally, the masseuse whispers in my ear the sweetest words I have ever heard: “You can now go to the shower.”

I meet my wife there and we’re both putting a happy face on the experience. We say things like, “that was interesting” and “well, we’ve done that.”

The shower is probably where the aphrodisiac part is supposed to kick in. There is a lot of touching each other. After all, there’s chocolate in places you cannot reach and certainly cannot see.

A half-hour of shower-sharing and finally free of the chocolate that had covered our entire torsos, we head to the hot tub. It is filled with bubbles, and there are flower petals all around. As promised, chocolate-covered strawberries and champagne await. Mood music is playing.

It is scalding. Way too hot to sit in. We can’t find the controls and there’s certainly no one around to ask. This is, after all, our alone time.

We sit on the edge of the tub with only our legs in, clink our glasses together and knock back the champagne like it was tequila. Then, it’s off to the locker rooms to get dressed.

Time to find some real tequila and forget this ever happened.

The Con Man Cometh

I once asked a friend that worked in telemarketing who the ideal person was to get on the phone.

“Grandmothers”, she said without missing a beat. “They’re kind and receptive.”

Aha.  So they want to get to my mom.  

It’s those same qualities that make grandmothers targets for scam artists, and it’s for that reason I try very hard to be protective of my mom. Even when she suspects something might be amiss, her kind nature makes her want to trust that everything is good.

If I hear of a scam going around, I usually will send Mom an email. “Remember, your bank is never going to call you to confirm your social security number.” Or whatever the scam of the day making the news might be.

But now, it was my turn to be warned by my mom. She has forwarded an email that showed up in her neighborhood listserv, and it’s a classic!!

The email warns of a gentleman goi
ng door-to-door selling small bottles of wine that are in a “woozie”, defined as a wine koozie. The sender of this email had been suspicious enough to enquire as to why the wine bottle was so small.

“It’s a port wine”, the seller said.  He went on to explain that port wine is a dessert wine and is typically sold in smaller bottles. The neighbor knew that part was right, so she ponied up for a bottle.

Once inside her house, she discovered that she had paid $27.50 for a Bud Light, so she sent out the scam alert. Included in the alert was the man’s name. However, her email goes on to say, it was only after googled the name she realized who Gordon Shumway was. And if you don’t know the name, it’s because you didn’t watch the TV show that carried his nickname as it’s title: ALF.

The 'Opposite' Family: Role Playing

Chicks in charge. I’m used to it.

When a guy marries ‘up’, he gets used to being the lieutenant. I actually like the role. Something goes wrong? Hey, not my fault!

It’s just part of the social evolution, for the most part. Women shattering the glass ceiling stuff. Good for them. I think they are more level-headed than men, anyway.

Our house is almost completely opposite of my memories from childhood. My wife does the heavy lifting, I cheer her on and make martinis at the end of the day.

If you’re old enough, the first television cooking show you likely remember is Julia Childs. She glorified the woman’s ‘role’ in the kitchen. Nowadays, there’s w-a-a-ay more men cooking on TV.

In fact, get outta my kitchen.

I embrace my role as chief cook in our house. I’m much more creative. Tell my wife to serve burgers and fries, you will get a good hamburger and, most likely, tater tots from a bag. Do not dismiss this as being anything less than the perfect meal! 

But…

Put me in charge and the burgers will be part venison or buffalo, seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic and probably more. They will topped off with a slice of Maasdammer cheese. The fries might well be hand-cut sweet potatoes, sprinkled with cinnamon and sea salt.

You get the picture. Even if you don’t, what are you doing in my kitchen?

We’ve laughed at our household roles a lot recently. My wife has decided the basement needs a remodeling and the process is underway.

It is important. We spend ZERO time down there, and once every two or three years we have enough guests that someone needs to ‘go downstairs’ to sleep, so it should be perfect.

Besides, why waste money on fine bourbon when you can replace perfectly good carpet?

I’m not bitter.

My part in this project is to stay out of the way. While she talked to contractors, I played golf. While she packed boxes, I paid bills. While she pulled up carpet, I did the grocery shopping.

In fact, it is while she has gone to buy sandpaper that I write down these thoughts. I have nothing else to do. I’ve already folded the clothes.

Mind you, I have not abdicated the throne. I am still king of the castle! Lord of the manor! Etc., etc.

I still have my man card, and she knows it. In fact, I think she may keep it in her purse.

Follow me on Twitter @AllenTibbetts

Lessons in Wine Snobbery

“Can you pick up just a hint of vanilla?” asks the director of the wine tasting.  

Why yes, I think I do. But I would never have come up with that on my own. Therefore, I will sometimes read tasting notes for a wine I have recently enjoyed. “I like this wine, but why?” 

Apparently, my palette so unsophisticated that I need someone to tell me what I’m tasting.

People that write tasting notes are full of it. They are snobs, and they go to great lengths to put their snobbery on display.

I was reading tasting notes for a particular cabernet sauvignon, and it said I should ‘experience’ licorice (yuck), chocolate (yum), leather (uh..) and lead pencil.

Seriously? I haven’t had a lead pencil in my mouth since second grade, and best I recall it wasn’t to see if the #2 lead tasted better than the #4. (Leather, by the way, is popular in whiskey tasting notes, but we’ll do that some other time.)

Right now, I want to up your status in life.  With my help, you too can be a wine snob. Let’s get started. 

It all boils down to proper verbiage. For example, while it’s proper to call a wine ‘red wine’, you never us the word ‘red’ to describe its color. Use purple, violet, even ruby.

It was recently written of a particular red wine that it “pours a lovely violet color with some light reddish rusty hues on the edges”. That’s wine snobbage for, “reckon why they call it red wine when it ain’t red at all?”

It’s very popular to relate what you’re tasting to the ground. ‘Earthy’, ‘foresty’, ‘loamy soil’ are common ways to do this. It’s even OK to use the word ‘dirt’, but you want to be careful. There’s a big difference in saying, “I taste the dirt” and “this wine tastes like dirt”.

Wine snobs use key words, like ‘notes.’ This word is often used for plant material, from fruits to grasses: notes of sawgrass, or notes of pear, even notes of underbrush, because I was just eating some underbrush yesterday and it tastes just like this wine.

Another popular word is ‘hint’. Tasters will sometimes use ‘hint’ for flavors that might not be so appealing but are there, nonetheless. A hint of tobacco or a hint of tar.

This is just a start, but I encourage you to put your new knowledge to work. 

Go forth, nose held high in the air, and impress everyone in the room at your next gathering. Proclaim aloud and with confidence, “This wine taste like grapes! With notes of pine straw and a hint of dog poop.”

That wine would be from a southern winery, likely. One with a dog.

Shopping With Grumpy Cat

I do the grocery shopping. My wife hates it, and I actually kind of like it, so that’s my domain. But I have grocery store issues.

More correctly, I have people-in-grocery-store issues.

It’s the woman waddling down the isle with her cell phone attached to her ear that you can’t get past. It’s the person perfectly capable of getting out of their car, walking across the parking lot and into the store, but then plop their rump into a motorized shopping cart. I can’t get past them either.

Just the other day, I waited to get a shopping cart while the guy in front of me spent a half hour wiping down his cart with a Sani-Wipe. You’re not washing your car, man, get out of my way!

I don’t like kids in grocery stores. I don’t blame the kids, I blame you. You are a terrible parent and let them run around like a pack of wild dogs. Or you are a wonderful parent who makes them sit in the cart and keep their hands to themselves, and they cry the whole time. Either way, you should have chained them to the bumper while you shopped.

Check-out is a whole ‘nother issue.

Pick a line. Doesn’t matter. You’re going to be behind that person that needs to pay for the first one hundred items one way, then pay for next one hundred another way. Or the lady with 4,000 coupons. Or the lady that pays with just the right amount of cash. It’ll take her four years to count out 23 cents she needs because it’s mostly pennies. Pennies should be outlawed.

Here’s another favorite: me waiting in line while you argue with the clerk that grapes are supposed to be 30 cents off this week.  The clerk then has to find a newspaper insert so that together you can find the page it’s on so that you can point out to her that you are right and she can point out to you that it’s the green grapes that are 30 cents off, not the red ones.

Bonus points for you if you then want to go back and swap for the ‘on sale’ grapes while I wait.

If you’re in the ‘15 items or less’ line, I’m behind you counting your items. Though I must admit I was recently “that guy.” I’m waiting to check out with an almost full buggy when the cashier at the 15-or-less line motioned me over. She had no one waiting and assured me it was fine.

How long do you think it took for someone to come up to that line with just three items?  If you said, “about 10 seconds”, you’re a winner every time.

Palmetto Bluff: Living Large and Beyond My Means

Palmetto Bluff is a playground for the rich, and occasionally, the famous. Pop singer Kelly Clarkson supposedly was here recently playing golf. 

The 20,000 acre development in Bluffton, South Carolina, oozes Southern charm. With the May River as a backdrop, enormous live oaks drip with Spanish moss. Beautiful homes are tastefully set along well-manicured fairways; paved pathways allow walkers, bicyclists and golf carts to navigate safely separate from traffic. Much of the land is a nature preserve. 

The place smells like money.

My wife and I do not qualify to live in such opulence, but apparently we have friends that do. For the weekend, we pretend we belong.

The occasion is an annual event called ‘Music To Your Mouth’. It is an event that Caligula would have approved of: an orgy of food and drink. (We’ll let the orgy references stop there.)

Noted – and unnoted – chefs gather to show off their skills of preparing Southern fare.  

Beer artisans offer snooty beers. Wineries from the East to West coasts offer unlimited tastes of their best reds and whites. And there is a bacon forest, where bacon – plain, smoked, candied, and drizzled in chocolate – hangs from lines, waiting to be ‘picked’ and eaten.

 Admission is the cost of a year’s tuition at UGA. We took out a loan.  

When it is over, the whole affair has lasted only four hours, but that was enough. Decadent indulgence has its limits.

Another time, for another event, I would tell you that we all went back to the house and passed out for the remainder of the afternoon. But this is Palmetto Bluff. The top drawer. The upper end. 

We napped.

Grits and the People That Eat Them

As Southerns, we enjoy a special infatuation with our food. Especially those that are uniquely our own. Like grits.

For most of time I was on the radio, I co-opted Lewis Grizzard’s line that inferred grits grew on trees. I don’t know if anyone else found it funny, but it never got old for me.

Recently, on a trip through North Carolina, my wife and I wound up at a nice little bed and breakfast. For breakfast, they served very traditional Southern fare: biscuits, gravy, eggs, waffles… and grits. Grits with your choice of redeye gravy or a cream gravy.

Hearing the ‘you’re not from here’ people discover that grits were a part the buffet was a lot of fun. 

“Hey, look at this. He says it’s grits!”

For them, grits was more of an attraction than it was food. One lady took a picture but didn’t eat any, despite my insistence that it was only corn.

I chose cream with mine, only because that’s an option not usually available. I usually eat grits with butter, cheese, salt, pepper, and sometimes bacon or ham. On this day, I decided to be a sophisticate of some sort for no apparent reason. Besides, I was having milk gravy with my biscuits. If I had redeye gravy on my grits, the gravies would be confused. 

I have personal litmus test for the proper way to load up on biscuits and gravy, by the way. If you can still see biscuit, you ain’t got enough gravy! Feel free to co-opt that as your own.

Full disclaimer: I have had triple bypass surgery. 

I do not believe it has anything to do with gravy.

Doing Disney, Part 1

My wife and I have just returned from her first trip to Disney World. If you have never been but have thought about it, in this article we will discu$$ the cost. Hang on to your wallet.

This was not my first trip to Disney, but for quick context on how long it had been, on my last visit I paid $8 to get into the Magic Kingdom. Today, a one-day pass is $105. PER PERSON!! 

Is it worth it? 18 million-plus people a year think so.

I knew I was in trouble when I started researching the trip and discovered there are actually finance plans to help you pay for your Disney vacation. You can even set up a Disney savings account to start putting money aside now to pay for your future visit. You know, sort of the same thing you’re supposed to be doing for retirement.

Further warning signs: the two of us spent $161.52 on dinner the very first night there. I blame me. I insisted on a bottle of wine and not wanting to appear to the Disney staff to be the Two Buck Chuck-er I am, I opted not to get the cheapest wine on the menu. No, that would have been the $49 bottle of… swill, probably.

I ordered the $51 bottle.

I’m sure the staff was impressed. I suspect they talked about it in the kitchen. “Hey the guy at table 27, he’s really upping his game tonight!” They may have also discussed that we asked for a red wine to go with the fish we ordered, but for the record, I do not drink white wine. Unless, of course, that’s all you have. 

My snootiness has its limitations.

Disney is expensive. But here’s the brilliance of it all. You don’t need money! You don’t. For visitors to a Disney resort, you get a wrist band, and that cute Mickey-eared bracelet takes care of everything.

Tap your wrist band to your door, that’s your room key. Want a drink? Tap your band to the machine and out comes a $3 Coke. A beer, you say? Tap. Entrance to the parks, your entry on the rides, meals, snacks, hats, shirts, pins… anything and everything can be bought with just a tap.

Oh, sure, that wrist band is tied to some personal information like, say, a credit card you’ve put on file. But at no time do you ever have to pull out cash or a card. Spending has never been so easy. 

It’s genius on a level Walt Disney himself would be proud of.

I must admit, I do think it was worth the money. We had a great time! But yeah, that mouse got away with a little bit more than just my cheese.

The Alcohol Prescription

A long-time listener from the time I spent on the radio emailed recently. “I’ve got something for you,” she wrote.

I know her just well enough to know we share a similar sense of humor, so we set up a meeting: Wednesday, 1 p.m. in the beer and wine aisle at a local grocery store. (Why not do some meaningful shopping while you wait, eh?)

What she had for me was a prescription for alcohol. I had no idea such a thing existed. Dated 1927, that would place this artifact squarely in the middle of the prohibition era for the United States, a time when alcohol became mostly illegal.

Best I can tell from my twenty seconds of research, the government did allow for alcohol – mostly whiskey and brandy – to be distilled for pharmaceutical use during prohibition, starting in 1920. Cancer, indigestion, depression… it apparently was the fix for numerous ailments.

This particular prescription called for one tablespoon three times a day. Pardon me for saying so, but that amount would be just about enough to pi** off a real drinking man. (I’m guessing.)

It did, however, start me wondering about the creative ways one might have obtained such a prescription back then.

“Doc, my Model T’s done throwed a wheel, so looks like I’ll be walking to work. Can you give me something for my sore feet?”

“Doc, my girl’s done hauled off and joined one of them travelin’ hoochie-coochie shows. Can you give me something to ease the shame?”

“Doctor, my best layin’ hen ain’t puttin’ out eggs no more. What am I gonna do?”

“You’re gonna get you another hen”, says the doctor. “Meantime, take this three times a day.”

Historians seem to generally agree that prescription alcohol was a racket. You paid your doctor for the prescription then you paid the pharmacist for the elixir. The doctors and druggists were getting rich; you were getting your buzz on.  Everyone was happy, I suppose.

I wouldn’t be. And here’s why:

A tablespoon is half a fluid ounce.  Therefore, three tablespoons would be an ounce and a half. A standard jigger is an ounce and a half. A jigger is also known as a shot glass. Conclusion: the doctor was prescribing a shot a day that you would basically divide into three sips.

One. Shot.

If my doctor prescribed that for me, I’d take it. But then I’d fling the shot glass at his head. Let’s see if one shot is enough for his pain.

I'm a Cowboy

That’s right.  I’m a cowboy.  Got me some chip-kickers (sorry, they allow me only so much editorial freedom) to prove it. Tony Lamas, baby.

A friend gave me these nice cowboy boots over twenty-five years ago, and until recently, I had worn them maybe twice. I’m a sneaker dude. What I am is a lazy dresser, but sneakers are the preferred shoe of slobs worldwide.

A wedding I attended back in the fall was loosely Western themed, so putting the boots on seemed the appropriate thing to do. Problem is, those boots are size 11; my foot is now a 12. It was a tight fit, but my wife encouraged me to gut it out for the night.  After all, I’m a cowboy, right? We laugh at pain.

Wearing those boots for 8 hours that day either stretched them out a bit or shrunk my foot. The boots still don’t fit but feel fine enough that I recently wore them when I accompanied my wife to a dinner with a bunch of her redneck friends. 

I fit right in.

Here’s the thing: I’m different when I’m wearing my boots. Maybe I just don’t pay attention, but do I always point my toes out when I walk? In my boots I feel like I’m bow-legged. Like I just got off a horse.

I talk differently, too. Instead of a “nah” to your question, you will get “naw”. “Hey” becomes “howdy” as I greet you. Being raised in the South, I tend to say “ma’am” to women most of the time, regardless of their age, but when I’m wearing boots, it becomes a two-syllable word: ‘may-yum’.

The very act of wearing cowboy boots invokes a certain swagger in your personality that you don’t normally display. It’s how we get popular 5-foot, 2-inch country singers. They may be wearing a t-shirt and a necklace, but put on them boots, a cowboy hat, and give ‘em a git-tar, and they are by-god ranch hands that just drove the herd across Montana right before hopping on stage to sang you this here song.

I get it. ‘Cause I too am a cowboy. So if you see me in the saloon, go ahead, call me out for being an imposter. But be aware, I’ve got a six-shooter. I mean, I’ve had six shooters.

And if you’re wearing flip-flops, I’ll trade you. These boots are killin’ my feet.

Real Man Food!

It’s no great revelation that our tastes change as we, uh… mature.

Think about the first wine you drank. Pink right? Or peach or strawberry or whatever Boone’s Farm blend you could get your hand on. 

White zinfandel, which is pink, is still popular with novices. In fairness to white zin, it’s still popular with girls and gay guys, too. No offense intended; I have girl friends and gay guy friends. I know what they like.

My own wine experience started with sauterne, which is a dessert wine. I recall drinking it over pizza with a girlfriend. It’s really sweet and a terrible choice with pizza, but it’s where your taste buds are. Or were.  

These days, I prefer syrahs, zins (not white), and cabernets: rich, hardy, almost heavy wines with lots of big tannins and a warm alcohol feel.

Coffee is another good example of changing tastes. It’s pretty common to start drinking it with lots of milk and sugar which, except for it being hot, makes it more like a coffee milk shake. I’m a late-in-life coffee drinker, but I only want it one way: black and strong.

Chocolate: I will eat creamy milk chocolate if you offer it, but I would marry a Hershey’s Special Dark bar if the law allowed and it could say “I do”.

Syrup: Aunt Jemima is for sissies. Give me a buttered biscuit and some blackstrap molasses - or sorghum, and get out of my way!

Anchovies: Like most folks, I grew up thinking they were yucky. Now, I routinely use anchovy paste in certain dishes. Sardines? Nothing but big anchovies. Open a can and let’s eat.

Spices and herbs: more, more, more! Pepper, cumin, and cilantro. Garlic could duke it out with dark chocolate for my deepest affections.

But you see the trend, yes?  Bigger, bolder, richer... words already used.  Here’s another word that applies: stinkier.  I want my cheese to stink. Bleu, gorgonzola… give me any cheese with mold in it. That seems odd to even say.

But ‘stinky’ seems like a good place to stop and begin to address the elephant in the room. And that is how all of this affects us. More importantly, how it affects the people around us. Or we could just ignore it. 

Either way, COULD SOMEBODY PLEASE OPEN A WINDOW AND GET SOME FRESH AIR IN HERE!?!?

Doing Disney, Part 2

Welcome to our show, boys and girls! Today’s game is called Disney World: Addiction Or Devotion?

Let’s meet our contestants. (Y’all, these are actual people and real stories. They share information on the promise their real names would not be used.)

Today’s first contestants, the Benjamins! The Benjamins are in their upper 30’s, both work, no kids and consider themselves devotees to The Happiest Place on Earth. They stay at the same place and eat at the same places each time they go. Because they own a travel agency, they do get a few price breaks but will spend approximately $3,000 for an 8-day trip that they take once a year. Or twice, if the mouse moves them.

Let’s take a commercial break so that I can cuss the Benjamins. My 4-day trip cost almost $3500, although I suspect the Benjamins don’t have the same beverage bill that my wife and I are capable of running up.

And we’re back!

Our next contestants are the JJs, James and Joanne! The JJs hail from Utah and are retired. While raising their three children, the JJs always took their family vacations at either Disney Land in California or Disney World in Florida. “The kids loved it, so it was a really easy choice for us.” Now, the JJs are here once or twice a year on their own. They stay in an off-Disney property to mitigate costs, but they generally do not worry about expenses. They are devotees.

Let’s take another break while we ponder why a retired couple in their 70s hops a plane twice a year in Salt Lake City and flies to Orlando to frolic with Cinderella and Goofy.

Next, let’s meet the Double Ds. These people look normal: good looking, gainfully employed, and like the Benjamins, also in their upper 30’s. They however, have a child. They are looking forward to going to Disney World in just a couple of weeks for spring break. It will be their 21^st trip (not a typo) to Disney World. The DDs also enjoy a financial break at Disney World, theirs being a military discount. Still, for their 4 day stay the DDs will usually spend well over $2,000. With a 6-year old child, they can be forgiven for making Disney a regular vacation spot, but 21 times in 8 years?!? And because they plan to renew their wedding vows at Disney World in a couple of years, we have labeled them the Disney Dorks!

And now meet our final contestants. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the STDs!  Seriously Trained Disney-ites. Looking like average people of a similar age to me and my wife, we struck up a conversation with the STDs while waiting in line at the popular attraction at Epcot known as Soarin’. What we learned was that Disney World was every single vacation they ever took with their children. In the first two years of retirement, the STDs made 12 trips to Disney World, at which point they decided to move to Orlando. They now visit one of the Disney parks – Epcot is the favorite – two or three times a week! And they love it. No golf, no tennis, no Europe, no Mexico… Disney World is their world.

Stop the game.  I think we’ve found our winner.