POSTING #109

Loading

Stories from the Stash

Pat, an avid quilter, has a large stockpile of pieces of fabric left over from previous creations that she calls her 'stash'. She dips into the stash whenever she needs a bit of material of a particular colour, shape or size for a new quilt.

My 'blogger stash' is not as large---or as well organized as Pat's---but there are many stories that I have stored away that are not major enough to warrant a separate posting but are too good to throw away.

Here are a few stories from my stash.

A View of Global Warming from Emporia

While we were marooned in Emporia, Virginia, on our way home from Florida, I met a man in his 70s who had been born in the Emporia area, moved to the north for a successful professional career and then returned to his birthplace for retirement.

He seemed an engaging, well-informed fellow and we had a very pleasant give-and-take conversation about a variety of things.

Until we hit the weather!

I had mentioned that we were in a holding pattern in Emporia waiting for a series of snow storms to pass through further north.

He leaned forward in a way that suggested he was about to proclaim on a subject very close to his heart.

And proclaim he did.

On global warming.

He said he accepted that the earth was warming. "Thermometers don't lie", was how he put it.

But he didn't believe that the warming of the earth was caused by people.

"You can't blame it on the internal combustion engine and coal-fired electrical generating plants."

For millions of years, he argued, the earth had gone through cycles of warming and cooling. Glaciers had grown and shrunk, and, in response, ocean levels had fallen and risen.

His clinching argument was Greenland. According to him, it had been given that name by earlier inhabitants because it was covered with lush, verdant forests. It had gone through a cold period and was now on its way back to its former green glory.

The mention of Greenland rang a tiny bell in my head, a feeling that I had heard something about how that island received its name that didn't fit with his interpretation, but I couldn't pull the thought out.

The fellow carried on,

"The people of Norfolk", pointing east to the Atlantic coast, "will have to move to higher ground. That's the way it has always been."

I was surprised that a well-informed person would reject the views of scads of climate scientists, and also surprised at what seemed to me to be a pretty callous attitude toward the fate of coastal people.

His rant carried on until I found an excuse to leave.

That night I did some computer searches and found what had been bothering me about the Greenland argument. No one really knows how Greenland got its name but there are some theories. One is that Eric the Red, after murdering someone, was banished from Iceland to the cold, forbidding island in the north. Lonely, he decided that he could perhaps entice people to join him if he gave the place an attractive name. Ergo, 'Greenland'.

Another theory is that 'Greenland' is a mistranslation of 'Gruntland', which apparently means 'ground land'.

However it got its name, there is no evidence that an early group of humans named it Greenland because they enjoyed its idyllic green countryside.

And yet, of course, that hasn't stopped lobbyists for the oil, gas and coal industries from using the name 'Greenland' as an argument to prevent any reduction in the use of their products.

000

The next day we drove to Norfolk to see this city of 250,000 people that, according to my informant, was going to be flooded---and if you believed him there was nothing that anyone could do to prevent it.

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, we visited Norfolk's large and marvellous Chrysler Museum of Art. It is only a stone's throw from the sea and presumably will be one of the first structures to be inundated.

The officials won't be able to move the massive stone building but one can only hope that they can remove the more than 30,000 paintings, sculptures and other works of art before the sea rushes in.

000

For a time I assumed that my informant's rant was the result perhaps of a fight with his wife, or cold coffee and burnt toast at breakfast---that it was just a temporary fit of pique that he would disown when he had calmed down.

But then I read an article in the New York Times that started off "For nearly a year, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, Virginia's crusading Republican attorney general, has waged a one-man war on the theory of man-made global warming."

The state's Attorney General!

The article went on to say that energy lobbyists and Tea Party stalwarts, like Mr. Cuccinelli, are arguing that the science that supports man-made global warming is "unreliable, unverifiable and doctored".

As Jon Stewart might say, 'Well that settles it then, doesn't it!'

A Gutsy Old Lady

On a visit to a Bob Evans restaurant somewhere in Florida---I won't be more precise for reasons that will become clear later---I ordered one of my favourite lunch items, the fruit plate. It always comes heaped with a rich variety of ripe and delicious fruit.

"Is that the one with yoghurt?, the server asked.

I explained that it used to be possible to get it with cottage cheese instead of yoghurt but that Bob Evans, without consulting me, had dropped the cottage cheese option. I would therefore settle for fruit with yoghurt.

"If you want, you can have it with cottage cheese---we have it.", the server said.

"How come you have cottage cheese when the other Bob Evans restaurants don't?"

She smiled and told this story.

One of their customers, an elderly lady, had been coming in every day for years and she always ordered the same thing---the fruit plate with cottage cheese.

A new menu came down from head office that deleted the cottage cheese option, the fruit plate would be accompanied only by yoghurt.

When a server broke the news to her, the old lady blinked, frowned, thought for a moment, and appeared to be about to protest. Then her chin went out defiantly and she said, "Well, in that case, I'll bring my own cottage cheese tomorrow."

When the server reported this to her manager, he mulled it over for a time, doing, I imagine, a quick calculus of how much trouble he might get into with head office if he changed the menu versus the cost of alienating a regular customer not to mention the risk of health and liability problems if customers started supplementing dishes with their own food.

He had his staff buy some cottage cheese.

And that's how I got cottage cheese with my fruit plate.

If any of Bob Evan's suits read this blog, I hope they will not try to find the insubordinate manager---good luck, anyway, there are a lot of Bob Evans restaurants in Florida---but instead they will listen to the people and reinstall cottage cheese as an option.

Another Gutsy Old Lady

There was an elderly widow in a town near Grimsby who had decided that the time had come to sell the large, old brick house in which she and her now-deceased husband had raised their children.

The real estate agent she called pointed to some sagging floors and recommended that she have a contractor jack up beams in the basement and install some steel posts. It would not cost much and would greatly increase the selling price of the house.

A contractor we know sent one of his foremen to have a look at the job and prepare an estimate. The foreman, a young man, came back and reported that they couldn't do the job. To get at the sagging beams they would have to remove asbestos coverings on some pipes and heating ducts.

The foreman said he didn't want to get asbestos fibres in his lungs. The woman would have to hire a licensed firm to remove the asbestos before they could do the job.

When our contractor friend broke the news to the woman, she asked, "How much will it cost?".

The contractor explained that trained workers in special clothes and wearing masks would have to block off the basement with plastic sheeting, install fans to create negative air pressure so the fibres wouldn't escape, and on and on. He thought that the cost would likely be in the $6,000-$8,000 range.

The woman laughed.

"Look, I'm 82, I'm not going to live forever. Get me lots of bags, I'll do it myself."

I don't know what happened---sometimes it's better not to know---but I assume she went ahead with her plan.

Now, I know that asbestos is a dangerous product (we spent a good bit of money having it removed from one of the old houses we owned) so I can't condone what the old lady presumably did.

But I think one has to admire her spunkiness.

"Papaya with what?"

During my consulting assignment in Malaysia in 1992,  Pat ordered a serving of papaya for dessert at the very fine hotel where we were staying.

"Could I have a scoop of vanilla ice cream with the papaya?", Pat asked the server, a friendly young Malaysian woman who had often waited on us.

"Oh, you can't have papaya with ice cream", the server replied scrunching up her nose as though Pat had ordered, say, sardines with chocolate sauce.

"But they're really good together", Pat said.

They stared at each for a few moments.

"Well", the server offered, "I can bring you the plate with the papaya and a bowl of ice cream".

Pat thought that was a great idea.

"And," the server said before heading for the kitchen, "I'm going to come back and watch you eat it".

A few minutes later the server came back with the papaya on a plate and the ice cream in a bowl---and with three other servers tagging along.

The four women watched as Pat put the ice cream on the papaya and proceeded to enjoy them. The servers covered their mouths in horror.

Pat wanted to say that papaya with ice cream was no stranger than fish head soup, a Malaysian delicacy.

But she refrained, and just enjoyed her dessert.

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

See you on April 10th for Posting #110 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

POSTING #102

Loading

Back from a Winter Holiday

It's good to be back!!

I hope you had a fine holiday season and found an occasion or two---metaphorically speaking---to put your feet in the oven of an old wood stove.

A New Way to Search "Letter from Virgil"

You will notice something a little different at the top of the postings from now on, a box marked Google Custom Search.

I have been trying to find a simple and convenient way to search through the more than one hundred postings.

New readers with a special interest in stories about, say, my Immigration, Russian, Jordan or Frontier College experiences have suggested that it would be good to be able to 'pull out' all the postings that pertain to that interest.

The Google Custom Search feature seems to fill the bill.

One uses it in exactly the same way as the normal Google search---by entering one or more key words---but the search area is confined to the blog not the whole web.

I hope you find it useful, and that you will not be put off by the advertisements that help pay for the service.

Florida or Bust

We didn't actually put our feet in the oven during the blog hiatus but instead headed our car to the sunny warmth of Florida---Bonita Springs to be exact, on the Gulf coast between Fort Myers and Naples.

Driving to or from the south in the winter has always been a risky business but this year has been exceptionally tricky, with storm systems from the Gulf, California and the Arctic linking arms and doing a weekly square-dance do-si-do across the middle of the continent and up the east coast.

In this Posting I'll tell some stories about our trip south. Later Postings may pick up other stories from our Florida holiday.

Eating Our Way South.

Having celebrated Christmas with our family in early December, we began packing for a departure on Christmas Day, which, with three nights on the road, would get us to our rental condo by the start date of December 28th.

And then we watched weather forecasts---radio, television, Internet, everything but the Farmer's Almanac. Pat set up an elaborate chart with predictions for the three overnight I-75 stops we had decided upon: Columbus, Ohio; Knoxville, Tennessee; and, Tifton, Georgia.

It soon became clear that Santa was going to treat Virgil and Columbus to an old-fashioned storm on Christmas day.

So we set off two days early, on December 23rd.

It was a good decision, which helped us avoid snow storms except for a few tense hours in the mountains of Tennessee.

The problem was trying to find restaurants over Christmas.

We arrived in Knoxville on Christmas eve and the hotel clerk told us that all the restaurants were closed. He suggested we get some things for dinner in the food section at a local gas station.

We just smiled.

After last year's Christmas eve experience on the way to Hilton Head ( click here) ) we had come prepared. We heated some baked beans in the hotel room microwave and ate them with cheese and bagel chips. For dessert we had Canadian mince tarts from our stash (a Welsh tradition demands that male Hunters have to have 12 mince tarts between Christmas and New Years so they will have 12 months of good luck) and some squares of Lindt's delicious dark chocolate.

Not bad at all!

(For more on the mincemeat tart tradition click here) 

As we set out the next day, Christmas Day, we knew that it was going to be tough to find meals. Our favourite family restaurant chain, Bob Evans, was closed, as were all the restaurant chains that we consider acceptable alternatives, such as Cracker Barrel, Applebee's and Ruby Tuesday.

A USA Today article said that three chains would be open on the 25th: Shoney's, Dennys and the Waffle House. We had had unfortunate experiences at the first two and vowed never to return, and had always given a pass to the Waffle House as a place that was likely to be just too carb-intensive.

Mid-morning on the way to Tifton we needed one of those 'fuel and de-fuel' stops. Spotting a Shoney, next to a gas station, we pulled in for a cup of coffee. As we sat down, the server told us that they were only offering a buffet lunch. After some coaxing she agreed---very kindly---to let us have just coffee. As we left we looked over the buffet tables. The trays of pork chops, sausages, biscuits and gravy, salads and all the other dishes looked good---but not at 10 am. We made a mental note to try to find a Shoney's down the road for lunch.

Unfortunately, neither our trusty GPS nor Dave Hunter's excellent guide to the I-75 ("Along Interstate 75") could find a Shoney's at noontime but the GPS did locate a Waffle House, 10 kilometres off the I-75 in a rundown area of a small town.

The sign was a bit battered and the restaurant could have used a paint job---hell, the whole town could have use some paint!---but it was open.

And busy.

As we waited for a seat at the counter or at one of the round bar tables at the back, we listened to the staff bickering and shouting orders back and forth (it reminded me of the now deceased Nate's Delicatessen on Rideau Street in Ottawa) and inhaled the fumes of a very hot, busy grill.

We were finally seated---at the counter---and tried to make sense of the huge menu with its endless combinations of waffles, eggs, bacon, sausage etc. Totally confused, hungry and low on caffeine, we opted for the first item, "The All Star Breakfast". We couldn't figure out exactly what it consisted of but since it seemed to be the most expensive item, we felt it would probably give us enough to eat.

Soon, two large plates heaped with bacon, eggs, home fries, grits, toast and jam were slapped on the counter in front of us. The food was good and although we couldn't finish everything we made a real dent in it.

As we leaned back feeling full and ready for the road, the dirty plates were whisked away and two more plates each with a gigantic waffle, accompanied by pats of butter and a pitcher of syrup, were plunked in front of us.

We looked at each other as though to say 'we don't need this' but the waffles looked delicious. So telling ourselves that it might be beans for dinner, we dug in and managed to eat a fair bit of the waffles.

We later discovered that the All Star Breakfast has a cult following on the Internet, with people blogging back and forth about the quantity and quality of the dish at different Waffle Houses across the US.

Fuelled by the carb overload, we made super time and changed our hotel reservations on the fly so that we would spend the night in Valdosta, just north of the Florida border, instead of Tifton.

As I waited to check in at the Valdosta hotel, I overheard the man in front of me being told that the only restaurant open in the whole area was Dennys, across the street. "Are you sure?", he asked. The clerk assured him that she had called everywhere.

"I don't know how I'm going to handle this", he muttered to himself as he went out to the car to get his passengers and baggage.

When we were in our bedroom, Pat and I tried to decide what to do.

Our first, last and only experience with Dennys had been some years before in upper New York State. We were on our way home from Vermont and had stopped at a small town, which we later discovered was close to the site of the famous 1969 summer-of-love Woodstock happening.

We also discovered that there had been a re-enactment of Woodstock that weekend.

As we pulled into Dennys---the only restaurant in town---we noticed that the sidewalk outside the restaurant was littered with young people asleep or stoned. We parked and carefully made our way through the bodies into the restaurant. Inside we found that all the tables were taken, some with people eating and others by people sleeping. (It must have been a great concert!)

When we finally got a table, the service was slow and the food abominable.

We told ourselves at that time that we would never again visit a Dennys.

Now, sitting in our Valdosta hotel, we had to decided whether we should give Dennys a second chance or should we dine on baked beans?

We opted for Dennys.

As we entered, we were met by a greeter who wished us Merry Christmas and gave us a specially printed Christmas menu. I was impressed with the choices offered, a good blend of traditional holiday fare with other dishes.

The food surprised us. It was attractively presented and tasty.

Our only problem was our server. She had to be in her 70s, wiry, full of frenetic energy as she whirled around the dining room with a tray--- held high on one hand---loaded with dinners.

I could see a right-winger arguing that she was proof that the Social Security retirement age could easily be raised to 70---or perhaps 80!

The problem---as we discovered later---was that she was convinced that we, as fellow 'seniors', would want---and should have---'senior' portions.

Pat ordered a shrimp brochette dish and I chose the pork cutlet dinner. As she wrote down my order, I thought I heard the server repeat to herself "senior order". I corrected her, saying I wanted a full order.

"It's more expensive', she said.

"That's OK."

Twenty minutes later, the server slipped our plates in front of us and rushed off to another table.

Pat's plate had 4 measley shrimp on a bed of rice---obviously a senior order--- while my plate was covered with pork cutlets.

When we were able to catch the server, we protested at Pat's small portion.

"Oh, have you changed your mind, dear, about having the senior meal?, she asked Pat.

Now, since Pat definitely hadn't asked for a senior order, and since she hates people calling her 'dear' there was potential for a bit of a barney, as the British would say.

In the end, Pat bit her tongue, decided not to argue or send the shrimp back but, instead, to accept my offer of some pork cutlets.

As we prepared to leave, feeling full and telling ourselves that it was better than 'nuked' baked beans, I saw the man who had been in front of me at the hotel check-in counter. He was leading in an elderly couple---his parents we assumed--- frail but elegantly dressed, with a presence that said they were used to eating at their country club or in the dining room of a five star hotel.

The son was whispering something to the couple, presumably that Dennys was the only game in town. The parents were nodding but in a confused way that suggested that they had no idea that places like this existed.

We hope that they had a good meal---and that they didn't get our server!

Back in our hotel room we reviewed our Christmas day meals. We felt grateful that people had been prepared to give up Christmas day with their families in order to feed us.

And our opinion of Shoney's, the Waffle House, and Dennys had gone up a bit. They would be OK in an emergency but, as food critics sometimes say, they would not be a destination.

But when I feel like a dietary blow-out---and even Michelle Obama agrees that every sensible eating regime has to allow for periodic blow-outs---I would think about heading for the All Star Special. (I should add that Pat has made it plain that she would not be accompanying me!)

000

On December 26th, Boxing Day, we arrived in Bonita Springs having dined a couple of times along the way at dear old Bob Evans.

Although we were two days early, the landlord generously allowed us to move into the condo.

After we had carried our bags into the house, two very tired people took off for Outback for dinner, and then to a Publix supermarket for some groceries.

Back at the condo, we mused for a few moments on how much of life revolves around eating---and then fell asleep!

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

See you on February 20 for Posting #103 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.