1949, Mom Had a Rough Christmas

 

Birthdays have never meant much to me. Sandwiched between Christmas and New Year's Day, it was always overshadowed by the big holidays. Of course the day I turned sixteen meant a lot to me. I was now old enough to legally drive. I parked myself behind the wheel of my various cars after that and wasn't seen around my parent's home much. At the age of eighteen I was now considered an adult, sort of, and fodder for the Vietnam war. So that birthday meant something to me and the United States Army. Turned out that they didn't want me. The last big birthday was twenty one. I was now old enough to drink and vote, and this being Chicago, in that order. After that my birthdays meant nothing to me. Just years flowing by until recently. A few years ago I realized how fast years pass and that old age was coming at me like a Mack truck in the wrong lane.

On Tuesday I looked in the mirror and saw my grandfather. When I was a kid it seemed like he had been in his seventies for about twenty years. I was now seventy three, and things keep failing. Eyes, feet, knees, shoulder, and a few other things are going bad. So now birthdays mean something different than they did when I was young. They're just another clickity clack of the tracks under the train hurtling me towards death.

Anyway, Tuesday was my birthday and I appreciate all the well wishes, dinners, and booze. The only thing I miss about my birthday is the phone call. Each and every birthday for the last forty or so years, the phone would ring. I would answer "Hello", and my mom would start singing  'Happy birthday to you..." Over the years the voice became a bit weaker until a couple of years ago, when I didn't get the call. That's the only thing I miss, and the only person who I really ever wanted to acknowledge my birth.

Merry Christmas IDiOT

I had an almost perfect Christmas day with my family on Sunday. Well, at least with half the family. With ten brothers and sisters, having just half of them around you is pretty good. Eleven of us together is overwhelming. Anyway, I left my sister's house around nine in the evening with another one of my sisters in my car. Her car had broken down and she needed a ride so of course I took her home. But not before I stopped for gasoline. It's really cheap out in my home town, around forty to fifty cents per gallon cheaper than in the city. 

This is not a story about cheap gas, my sisters, or Christmas. It's about the Illinois Department of Transportation. Also known as IDOT, which I believe has an 'I' missing from that acronym. Illinois highways have the worst street markings, terrible signage, and poor planning. After filling up with the cheap Will County gasoline, I got on the expressway that would get my sister home. It didn't take long before we were at the exit to take her home. At seventy miles per hour, I slowly moved over onto the exit ramp. First I heard this from my sister. "You're not on the pavement." She didn't scream it, just quietly informed me that I had missed the ramp. Then I heard the rumble of the 'rumble strip' put there for people like me, to let us know we're not on the pavement. Not my fault. There are no lines marking any pavement. Not on the interstate highway, not on the exit ramp. At least IDOT put that rumble strip at the edge of the highway. Anyway, I moved over onto the pavement and we successfully made our way off the interstate highway. I soon found myself on the two lane highway that goes to my sister's house.  It had no obvious centerline, a lot of black ice, and glaring headlights of oncoming cars. It was white knuckles all the way. After I dropped my sister off, I headed east on 147th Street, towards the interstate highway. Once again, no lines painted on the pavement, no lights for much of the route, and when I finally got to an area with lights, there was snow covering half the street. No problem. Stay in my lane, head east until I hit the expressway, and turn left. I haven't had to take this route but maybe three times in my life so I'm not all that familiar with it. But it's not all that complicated. As I neared Interstate 57, I could see the traffic whizzing by on the overpass. However, there are no brightly lit overhead signs telling you what side of the street the entrance is on. No signs a half mile before telling you a major interchange is coming up. Nothing until you're right on top of it. Because I was trying to figure out the side of the street I should be on, I missed the sign hidden off to the right. What I saw was a double left turn lane onto a ramp going in the direction of Chicago, so I whipped across two lanes of traffic and turned onto the ramp. No signs at all telling me what highway I had just turned onto, just a big overhead sign telling me 'I-Pass or Pay Online'. Sonofabitch. I was on the Illinois Tollway. I turned too soon, and there is no safe way to get off the Illinois Tollway once you get on it. I had to stay on the tollway. I had to pay to get home and travel an extra ten miles.

Jeopardy and Other Things

 

Twenty three years with somebody and you pick up a few habits. Every week day Mark and I would sit and watch Jeopardy together. Mark was very good at movie, Broadway, and author questions. I was good at geography, history, mechanical, and electronic type questions. Together we did pretty well, often beating the Jeopardy champion. Our rules did not include giving the answer in the form of a question, so that gave us a leg up. Also, as much as we liked being smarter than the contestants on Jeopardy, we liked beating each other to the answers even better. Mark has been gone for over two years now and only recently have I stopped yelling out the Jeopardy answers as if he were sitting over on the sofa competing with me. He's up on the fireplace mantel, and I finally realized he can't hear me. I now just think the answers and if there is such a thing as ghosts, I assume the ghost of Mark can hear me thinking those answers.

Last week I bought a three pack of Puffs facial tissues. For the last twenty five years I've been buying only Kleenex brand facial tissues because Mark insisted they were better. So last week I'm standing in the tissue aisle of the Jewel looking for the three pack of Kleenex tissues, and it hit me. Goddamn, Puffs are cheaper than Kleenex and besides, Jewel is sold out of Kleenex. I'll buy Puffs. I'm not sure how Mark was using tissues, but I can't tell any difference. I blow my nose in them, I blot my eyes with them after my eye drops, and I do not see any difference. This morning I had another epiphany. While I was standing in front of the toilet staring at the box of Puffs tissues, I remembered something. I never, ever bought facial tissues before I met Mark. No, for decades I used toilet paper to blow my nose or blot whatever needed blotting.

Don't get me wrong, I loved Mark and miss him. But these small things that I have let go of seem to help. Like deleting Bravo from my television guide. I did that the week Mark passed away. I hated Bravo.

Maybe I'm a Bit Over Caffeinated

 

French Press coffee maker

Last week I was watching a documentary about Automats in New York City. Automats were those restaurants with the food behind little glass doors. You dropped the appropriate number of nickels in a slot and the door would open, giving you a piece of pie, a sandwich, or whatever. They also had coffee for a nickel. The coffee would come out of a brass dolphin's mouth. The guy in the documentary said it was great coffee and then started talking about something called a "French Press". He said it was the best way to make coffee if you loved good coffee. I love good coffee. However, I am rarely satisfied with the coffee I make or the brewed coffee I might buy at a restaurant. So I immediately went to Amazon and entered the words French Press. They had plenty of French press coffee makers available, so I ordered the one with the most positive reviews. On the day it was delivered, I rushed into the kitchen and prepared myself a cup of what was to be the best brewed coffee I had ever had. It wasn't. It was bitter and tasted awful. So I read the instructions. It seems that regular Maxwell house ground coffee is not good enough. The grind was too fine. What I needed was whole coffee beans that were coarse ground. 

Yesterday morning I threw on my coat and went to the Jewel store for coarse ground coffee and a plantain (Making Cuban pork again). In the coffee and tea aisle there were many whole coffee bean choices, but no grinding machine. For the last fifty six years, since I was a stock boy at Jewel, they've had a grinding machine in the coffee aisle. Not yesterday. Instead there was an empty space where it had been and the stock boy told me it was removed because it kept breaking. Grrrr.... So I stormed out of there, leaving my shopping cart with one plantain in it, sitting in the aisle. I'm not paying for a plantain if they can't fix the coffee grinding machine. I then went to another Jewel up in Evanston. This time there wasn't even an empty space where the coffee grinder used to be. Oh sure, they still sold whole coffee beans of every type, but no way to grind them. Grrrr... I was pissed and wandered up to the self checkout with my plantain, cursing out loud. But I showed them. I self scanned my plantain and paid the forty three cents for it with my ATM card. Then I made sure that I put the plantain in a big bag. I'm only sorry that I didn't double bag it.

Automat coffee spigot

Dad's Home Movies

 

My dad passed away twenty two years ago. I miss him, but at least he left us with his home movies. Dad bought an 8mm movie camera in 1965, just in time for Christmas. Over the years, until VHS video came into being, Dad took lots of movies. I have been converting those old movies to MP4 files with a machine I bought a few months ago. One thing that has become apparent is that Dad was a crappy cameraman. His style was very shaky, and blurry, and in many cases the people had the top of their heads cut off. So it's not high quality video, but oh the memories those crappy movies are bringing back. What I've found interesting are the movies of my younger brothers and sisters that Dad took after I moved out of the house. I was nineteen when my youngest sister was one year old. In 1971 Mom and Dad took those five or six younger kids on a vacation to Tennessee, while I was living on a hippie commune in Iowa. That's the part I find so interesting, what they were all doing while I was stoned and living my life elsewhere. I'm starting to believe that Mom and Dad had eleven children because as long as there was a baby in the house, they felt young. Also, the odds increase that at least one of them won't be a stoned hippie.