Julia Child Calling

So I was beavering away at something particularly unproductive when I got a call from mom at the HEB, "car won't start, popsicles melting". Needless to say, confronted by such pathos (save the popsicles!) I hightailed it over there pronto.

Anyway after transferring Mom and her groceries to my car, I dialed AAA. Got a sweet young thing on the phone. No, seriously, she really was a young thing: a computer and she couldn't have been more than six months old. So as is the custom among our cyborg helpers, I entered this number and pressed that pound sign and yessed and noed a bit and voila! I got a real person who sounded neither sweet nor young and of course immediately gave me the third degree: "so who's car is this anyway?"
"my mom's, I'm her wonderful son who is helping her out", bracing myself for the well earned praise.
"Who's on the title?"
"I suppose my mom"
"Well sir I'm sorry but until she calls and tells us she needs help, we can't help her"
"But I know she needs help"
"Yes"
"And she knows she needs help"
"Yes"
"And I just told you she needs help so you know she needs help"
"Yes but she has to tell us herself or we can't help"
"You mean you won't"
"Huh?"
"You won't help even though you could"
"Umm well we can't"
"Won't"
"No, can't"
"Won't"
"Can't"
"Won't, won't, won't"
And that's when she hung up.

Well if you're a regular reader you know that I was 'fit to be tied' which in my case means that I was stomping an imaginary AAA headquarters filled with little imaginary AAA ants as I flailed my arms and foamed like a rabid Irish Setter (they have good hair don't they). I was all set to call back and pretend I was my Dad who was upset because the delay in helping mom had led to the death of that Irish Setter but I decided "why should I play their game?" So instead of lying that I was my Dad I called them back as Betty Jean Savage Reeves. And boy was I savage. Affecting my best Julia Child Locust Valley Lockjaw with her patented combination of ribald condescension and aplomb I conducted a 'Tour de Force' of how dare you's and well I nevers. It was quite fun although I did it in the produce section which caused several grocery patrons to nervously edge away from me.

And this is where I had a bit of an epiphany: up until this point I had always given a hearty 'tchah' to anyone who tried to tell me that anything as central as gender (which just means sex but the dull boy OR girl kind as opposed to the fun boy AND girl kind) could be "socially constructed" which as I understand modern college speak means " made up". Because I think I could seriously pull off the Julia Child thing. After all I like to cook, have a great snotty accent in the higher register and I clearly make a profoundly ugly woman so all I really need are a few mid 20th century frocks, some sensible shoes, a boatload of makeup and Food Network here I come.

I think Big Food could use a cross dressing retro food program where a faux Julia Child. (Moi) socially cuts, dresses down, mocks and otherwise humiliates all the celebrity chefs on TV. I would particularly enjoy making that obnoxious Englishman (you know, the one with dyed hair that's always making all the other cooks cry) snivel and sob about how his mother never loved him or his Creme Brulee.

So if this Silicon Valley gig doesn't work out I've always got that going for me.

Karate

I was rambling around the local strip shopping center when a came upon a Karate studio. Actually I'm not sure if it was Karate, Tae Kwan Do, Ninja Masters or whatever, but you get the picture. It's the sort of place where the bullied are supposed to go to get the mojo to bully their bullies like they do in all the movies. Although I've never seen it work that way in real life, probably because the bullies get to these places first. It has always seemed to me that taking fencing or an NRA marksmanship course would be a better approach to making bullies scarce. Although applying what you've learned in those courses would to tend to attract the police. Life is full of trade offs.

So like I said, I was walking by this joint early in the morning and the Sensei or the apprentice to the Sensei was washing the inside windows in preparation for the wimps du jour. And me being me I simply could not resist. I stopped, rapped the window to get his attention and in my best Karate Kid went with my right hand "wax on" and then with my left hand "wax off".The Sensei - having no idea what I was doing smiled and waved at me. "No!" I said urgently, "wax on, wax off!" which perplexed him, so he went back to his washing. I rapped again and gesticulated more aggressively "I said wax on, wax off!". At that he turned around and walked off into the back of the store. I think he may have misunderstood what I was telling him to do as he ended up going into the toilet and closing the door.

But it's obvious that this place is not run by legitimate Karate experts nor by aficionados of 1980s youth cinema. Fakers.

My father died this morning. And I shall never have another.

My father died this morning. And I shall never have another.

He awoke in the wee hours with trouble breathing so we had the ambulance take him to the ER. I rode along. During the trip I had a suprisingly beautiful conversation with the young ambulance driver about life and death and loss. I guess being so close to so much death and pain gives one perspective.

Not long after we got to the ER dad lost consciousness and his vitals began to crash. We had specified do not resuscitate so the ER staff turned off all the beeping cacophony, turned down the lights and left me alone with him and my memories. For four hours I watched as his breathing got slower and shallower until it finally stopped. I spent those hours alone with him in that dark, quiet room. I held his hand and over and over I told him how much I loved him and how very proud I was to be his son. I told him it was OK to stop fighting, to go into that good night. And then it hit me: I would never hear my father's voice again. There would be no more talks with "Pop" about the weather or the Sooners or the lawn or life. And that's when the tears for him that had been bottled up in me for so long came pouring out. Alone with my father in a dark room as the last grains of his life slipped away.

For my father died this morning. And I shall never have another.

Hugh Warren Reeves

Hugh Warren Reeves passed away on Sunday, August 23rd at 11:04 AM CDT after fighting a glorious eleven year war with cancer. Hugh was born to a noted Wichita oil man and his secretary - after she became his wife, of course.  Being the eldest son of a successful oil man, Hugh was sent back east to the Taft School for his education. But rather than march lockstep with the rest of his classmates to Yale and then Wall Street, Hugh chose to follow his father's footsteps into the oil business, attending the University of Oklahoma and learning to sing "Boomer Sooner" rather than "Boola Boola".  This choice was instrumental in making him a lifelong Sooner fan and a skeptic of all things Longhorn.  In his later years he would  frighten his sons by walking up to very large men who were dressed in University of Texas burnt orange and saying:  "Boomer Sooner".

Hugh was also an outstanding golfer. It is a testament to his commitment to the Game that despite holding a student deferment by the skin of his teeth during the Korean war, Hugh chose to focus on his golf rather than his studies. Fortunately for him, the Army sent him to Germany.  As he told one of his sons much later, he spent far more time on the frauleins than on the front lines. But all that was forgotten when he returned home and met the love of his life - Betty Jean Savage.  In his telling he fell in love with her on first sight and in the fullness of time made her his bride (after he had demonstrated the ability to graduate college and get a job that paid more than an itinerant golf pro) . He never looked at another woman.

Hugh and Jeanne married on December 23rd, 1959. And as is traditional among oil explorers, Hugh promptly dragged his new bride and eventually their two sons off to a seemingly never ending series of the oddest, most out of the way places in creation:  Big Lake, TX, Roundup, MT, Glendive, MT, Williston, ND, Casper, WY, Rifle CO, Red Deer Alberta and so on. This was in spite of his sons' desire to remain in a single location that had quality Saturday morning cartoon programming and large supplies of reasonably priced Dr. Pepper. In fact Hugh helped explore what is now known as the Bakken, the first and one of the largest of the oil fracking plays in North America. Unfortunately at the time they lacked the technology to exploit the find. A fact that - reflecting back on their time in North Dakota - his family looked upon with great relief.

Eventually Hugh's career took him and his family overseas, first to Abu Dhabi back when it was so primitive it didn't even have Dhabis and from there to Singapore during its first great burst of growth and thence to Indonesia where he explored for oil in the wilds of Borneo and Western New Guinea. Eventually Phillips Petroleum called him back to Houston where he retired and where Hugh and Jeanne chose to make their permanent home.  Blessed with health and free time he devoted himself to golf and good works, principally within the Methodist Church, eventually alighting at Christ United Methodist Church in Sugar Land, Texas.  A frustrated artist, Hugh eventually gave in to the siren song of one of the best Church Choirs in the greater Houston area, touring around the world with them several times.  He said that he felt God's presence most deeply when singing God's music.

Eventually illness caught up with Hugh in the form of a series of cancers.  He reacted in his typical “never say die” style by entering an experimental treatment study and outliving every single other member of the program. Saturday before last he was with his family celebrating his younger son's birthday.  It is a testament to his long and varied life that a man who had been born in the radio age was greeted by grandchildren via iPhone video chat.  Late that night Hugh began encountering serious difficulties attributable to his illness and a short time later entered the arms of the Savior that he trusted wholly for his salvation.  He is survived by his Wife Jeanne, his Sons, Bill and Todd, his Granddaughter, Amelia, Grandsons, Sam, Jake and Miles and his Sisters Nancy and Martha and their families. Hugh was a special man from a special time and we shall not see his like again.
Requiescat in pace

Bill Reeves: Errant Knight

So I was at this community hoe down or jamboree or whatever in John - my Lord and CEO's -neighborhood. I've never heard Irish pop played by a country band before - or heard it played by senior citizens although I guess that is the fate of all Irish pop: reinterpreted Grand 'ol Opry style by Senior Strummers in places like Nevada. But that's neither here nor there, well it's here but not about here, and it's about there. Ireland, that is. But I digress.

OK Reboot: So I was at this hoe down and one of the 'party' I was with plied me with a snootful of Moscato. Now I don't know if you've ever Moscatoed - I hadn't - but Moscato is apparently the Skittles of the wine family. So with my mouth appropriately puckered I headed for the fountain mewling wwwrrrr, wwwrrrr (serious puckerage) only to be confronted (in a manner that completely blocked the sidewalk) by a moppet of seven or so who pointing to the tree above lisped "I lost my necklace" - which wasn't completely true. What she HAD done was chuck it into the tree. And not into some little sapling but into a big tree - about ten feet up. And this is where my whole damned chivalry thing falls apart because while I want to aid damsels in distress, I really prefer to do it when convenient to me. Yet here I was forced to de-damsel this moppet while seriously over puckered.

So long story made short: I ended up IN the tree, swinging back and forth on the branch like a demented macaque while two older gentlemen whacked at the offending jewelry. One of them - who probably should have been in a walker - used a vigorous back and forth slashing motion with his cane that quite impressed me until he started hitting me on the wrist and head. The other gent, who was taller and more strategic, took advantage of the additional downswing that my attempts to avoid the wayward whacks caused and expertly snagged the necklace with his umbrella to the cheers of absolutely no one. Because the junior Jezebel ungratefully pocketed her 75 cent bauble and strolled off without as much as a thank you - after all, her mother DID tell her not to talk to strangers.

So still puckered but now quite pleased with myself (lookit, I'm a hero!), I finished my jaunt to the water fountain. As I returned, I spied our diminutive Delilah: tossing the same damned necklace into the same damned tree. Well you can probably guess what I did next: I drew myself up to my full height and...forcefully strode the other way. There was no way in hell I was going to let that mite sized Mata Hari cry at me again.

The Family Line

For my father and mother.

We are all part of the family line.
Stretching far into the past.
Whatever I am they were.
Whatever they dreamt, I can be.

We don't know who came before.
We can't remember their names.
But what they were stirs inside
those of us who remain.

Fathers begetting sons marrying daughters becoming fathers.
Mothers begetting daughters marrying sons becoming mothers.
Over and over, again and again.
It's the family line. The eternal family line.

I can't imagine life without my mother and father,
for they gave me life and my brother.

Anything admirable I am was founded on them.
In anything praiseworthy they had a hand.

All that I am, all that I'll be comes from the Family Line.
From my father and his father and his father too,
to my mother and her mother and her mother who
held tightly to their dreams, tightly to the family line.

I'll always be grateful for how I was made
Loved by people who gave -
gave me their heart, gave me their soul
so that I could know the family line.

Fathers begetting sons marrying daughters becoming fathers.
Mothers begetting daughters marrying sons becoming mothers.
Over and over, again and again.
It's the family line. The eternal family line.

Get me to a Nunnery.

I was the last person on a full Southwest Airlines flight from San Antonio to St. Louis so I wasn't very optimistic about my choice of seats. My usual fate for habitual lateness was to be wedged between Mr. Big 'n Sweaty and the strange little dude that keeps muttering to himself while looking at what he has in his bag and peering up and down the aisle.  It's not that I'm necessarily opposed to thwarting terrorism per se, it's more that I would prefer the nut job be seated next to someone who has a greater need to be a hero than I because I find staring at a person so that I can intervene when he starts his detonation sequence to be tedious. I've also found from personal experience that sometimes what looks like a terrorist setting out on his date with destiny is actually just some weirdo fiddling with his fuse.  But little did I know that day something much more heroic would be required of me than simply separating some simpleton from the Semtex.  As I peered into the cabin knowing smirks and chuckles filled me with foreboding.  And then I saw it:  the tell tale gap that signified an empty seat or small child. Bracketed by two...nuns...in full habit (damn! no child), including that head thingy that the radiation poisoned humans wore in that really bad Planet of the Apes sequel.  A wimple? Yeah, that's it: wimples.

These Wimplestiltskins instantly locked on me with expressions that had successfully seen off every single boarding passenger, including the legally blind ones.  If I have a soul they definitely peered into it to verify its serial number and see if I had any recall notices.  And in clearly inappropriate behavior for women who had taken vows of poverty not to mention chastity, they were sprawled all over the window and aisle seats, leaving about six inches of middle seat open.  So, resigned to my fate, I grimaced a hello and wedged my frame in the inter-wimple space.  As I did so their staring, begrinned heads swiveled with me like searchlights tracking a crippled B-17 over Berlin.

And then it got really weird. Because these two 50 to 70 somethings (the wimple really does wimple away the years, ladies!) were in full party mode.  Apparently they were part of a fairly but not completely 'cloistered' nunnery - which as I understand it is a nunnery where none of the nuns are known outside the nunnery because the nuns don't do non nunnery things with non nuns.  And they had been sent by the Head Nun to go to some sort of nun convention. And like convention goers everywhere these girls - I say girls because their demeanor was wholly girlish - were behaving with the enthusiasm of sailors on East Indies shore leave.  They were on the nunnish equivalent of a toot - a bender - this was their "Porky's" moment.  And as it turned out I was to be their amanu...amaneu...amanuiens...I was going to be the guy they were going to toot with - in other words, their tooter.

"Well my, aren't you a handsome young man", said the big one, which was a lie in all its particulars but recognizing that my role in this shore leave scenario was that of the Subic Bay barmaid with a heart of gold, I played right along "well I'd have to be to sit between you gals". After we had dispensed with biography and the most impressive bevy of sincerely insincere compliments exchanged between nuns and backsliding Presbyterians since the Peace of Westphalia the drink lady came along.  My normal response to stressful flying neighbors (unless they're looking 'bombish') is to hand the stewardess, oops, I mean flight attendant, oops I mean Mistress [insert name here] Provider of Libation and Distributor of Pain a full book of the drink coupons that Southwest uses to sedate excessive fliers like me and tell her to "keep 'em coming".  As I was handing over the book I spied the ladies of the cloth looking expectantly so quickly called an audible "and whatever these young ladies would like as well".  "Bourbon, neat" shot the alpha nun without a moment's hesitation while her smaller sidekick held up two fingers in an expression known the world over to mean "oh hell yes". For a moment Mistress Annabelle (for that was our Flight Dom's name) looked at us uncertainly, her smile wavering - as if to say "there is something quite wrong with this picture" that she couldn't quite put her finger on but that someone, somewhere had warned her about - but she shook it off, lashed us with a couple strops of her whip and moved to the next row of flying gimps.

Which kicked off one of he most fascinating two hours in my life.  Their tongues loosened by liquor, the nuns gave me the lowdown on convent life, regaling me with tales of skulduggery and intrigue that could be profitably used by a Game of Thrones writer.  It made me a little bit ashamed that despite at the time being a partner in the Big 'n Greedy consulting firm I couldn't match their Machiavellian tales - although I suppose Machiavelli, the Medici's and the Borgia's were Catholic so it's not surprising that their full time team has a leg up in that department.  We then proceeded to their apparently inexhaustible collection of jokes.  I gamely tried to match their prodigious output joke for joke but I think all those years spent on their knees 'praying' had given them a significant competitive edge.  Eventually I simply sat back and let it all wash over me, secure in my role as audience and drink purveyor.  I honestly don't believe that we stopped talking and joking and laughing the entire time.

At one point when the Alpha Nun stopped to catch her breath the little Beta Nun leaned over and whispered conspiratorially "you know you're not the first man to buy me a drink" to which I (with uncharacteristic aplomb) replied "well how about the first to buy you two?" while waving my drink book and calling for another round.  I suppose if I were Catholic that little maneuver would have bought me an extra million laps or push ups in Purgatory but since I'm what they call a "Reformed" Christian (albeit one still needing quite a bit of additional reformation) I am convinced that "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate" which in my admittedly eccentric reading of scripture means my little nun "tootilage" was in fact all God's idea. After all, they were His nuns.

But Roman or Reformed, in Purgatory or Predestined I don't think I've ever laughed more.  Nuns are cool.