Bob, Quid, Guinea

When I arrived for the first time in Nigeria, there was a lot of adjusting to do.

I had to adjust to an unfamiliar climate and unfamiliar food.  I had to teach in a school system based on the British school system, and I had to very quickly learn how to deal with a non-decimal monetary system.

Nigeria --- just like Britain at the time --- used pounds, shillings, and pence.  (Pence if you are talking about an amount of money, but pennies if you were talking about the metal coins.)  They also had a half penny, sometimes called a ha’penny just like in the old folk song. 

This system was an arithmetical challenge: there are 12 pence in one shilling.  And 20 shillings in a pound.  Stop --- multiply 12 times 20 in your head --- that makes 240 pence in a pound!

To make things interesting, there were nicknames --- A pound was called a quid, and a shilling was called a bob.  Even more interesting: the abbreviation for a penny was “d”.

Plus, there was a unit of charity.  One never donated a pound; one always donated a guinea to a charity.  A guinea equals a pound plus a shilling, which would make it equal to 21 bob, or maybe 252 pence, or 504 ha’pence.

As an American who grew up with a decimal monetary system, learning all this was formidable. 

I once saw a Nigerian elementary school arithmetic textbook; it contained page after page of currency problems.  I pitied the Nigerian kids in second grade who spent an enormous amount of time multiplying 12 times 20.

Physically, the Nigerian pennies and ha’pennies were quaint: they were circular with a hole in the middle.  I made fun of these coins until the day I saw someone carrying a bunch of pennies on a string.  Then I realized that the hole in the coin is not quaint; it is practical.

Design-wise, the Nigerian pennies and ha’pennies had the Star of David on them.  The Star of David was ideal for a coin with a hole in the middle.  However, the design did make me wonder if I was living amongst one the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.

I loudly proclaimed the superiority of decimal currency to my Nigerian friends.  They did not believe me when I said that decimal currency was simple.  Pounds-shillings-pence was second-nature to them.

Luckily, the Central Bank of Nigeria believed that decimal currency was simple.  They switched the country to a decimal currency in 1973.

Now I no longer need to pity the Nigerian kids in second grade.


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SONG: If you haven't got a penny, then a ha'penny will do.  A young woman plays guitar and sings the old folk song (1.5 minutes):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbIbjLGEas8

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

Brains - 25 Cents

I entered a Chinese restaurant and ordered a St. Paul sandwich.  It was a big moment --- the moment when I finished my list of foods to try that are only found in St. Louis.

Actually, it is a list of vegetarian foods to try.  Therefore, my list did not include a Brain Sandwich, once so popular that ads for it were painted on buildings.  Crispy pig snoots did not make the list.  Pork steaks, a staple of St. Louis BBQ, are also not on the list.

My vegetarian list contained five unique St. Louis foods: gooey butter cake, St. Louis pizza, toasted ravioli (cheese-filled), concretes, and St. Paul sandwiches.

Gooey butter cake is easy to find in St. Louis, but there are dozens of variations, and it took a long time to find a really good version (at Sugaree Bakery in Dogtown).

St. Louis pizza was invented by a man who was changing his career from laying floor tile to making pizza.  He hated stringy pizza, so he invented a cheese called provel that would not be stringy when melted.  He did not cut his pizza in wedges; he cut it in squares, just like floor tiles.  St. Louis pizza crust is thin and crispy, reminiscent of a saltine.

Toasted ravioli was not really new to me; it was featured on the menu of a restaurant near the place where I worked near Boston.  Toasted ravioli there was an appetizer or an entrée, and you could get it with red sauce or white sauce.  How toasted ravioli made it from St. Louis to Waltham, Massachusetts, I do not know.

When I moved to St. Louis, concretes became an instant hit with me because they are made of frozen custard.  Frozen custard was a summertime treat back when I was a kid on Long Island.  St. Louis has ramped up the idea of frozen custard, adding in a wide range of mix-in choices: fruit, chocolate, nuts, coconut, malt, gummi bears.  The frozen custard in St. Louis is thick --- so thick that it does not fall out of the cup when you turn the cup upside down.

The last item on my list of foods to try that are only found in St. Louis, a St. Paul sandwich, is only served in a few Chinese restaurants. 

I lived in St. Louis for 15 years before I tracked one down.  I ordered the vegetarian version, and here is what I got: an egg foo young patty, along with mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, and thin sliced pickles, between two slices of white bread, wrapped up in a sheet of sandwich paper.  It was surprisingly good.

I couldn’t wait to tell my St. Louis friends that I had achieved a milestone and had eaten a St. Paul sandwich.  Most friends were dumbfounded; even though they had lived in St. Louis all their lives, they had never heard of a St. Paul sandwich.  I had to describe the sandwich, and they cringed when they heard the ingredients. 

In fact, one friend said I should have followed up my sandwich by swallowing some Tums --- Tums, after all, were invented in St. Louis.

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A man filmed a 1-minute YouTube tribute to his St. Paul sandwich.  Raucous music by Dutch Jackson, a St. Louis hip hop artist:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK4QqnJ7MZQ

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

In Praise Of Mud

The head of the local chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians knows that I used to live in a mud house. 

So, I have been asked to give a lecture about mud architecture in West Africa.  In my lecture I will be praising mud.  I will start off with a picture of the grandest mud building in Africa: the Friday Mosque in Djenne, Mali (see photo above). 

The mud house I lived in was not grand.  It was one-story and small, but I was fond of it.

Mud is an excellent building material for the tropics.  It is readily available and inexpensive.  Thick mud walls absorb heat during the tropical day, keeping you cool.  At night, they give off the heat they have trapped, keeping you warm ---- warmth is important for the aged and the infirm.

Ceilings were made by laying straw mats across white palm timbers (the only wood that African termites do not eat).  Then a layer of mud is laid on top of the mats to make a roof.

The enemy of a mud house is rain.  In the tropics, the rainy season only lasts about two months; it may rain every day, but it only rains for a couple of hours.

My roof was protected by metal spouts that stuck out over the courtyard, directing rain water away from the roof and keeping rain water from running down the walls.  For extra security, I had all the exterior walls covered in a semi-waterproof plaster made from crushed locust beans.  It was a lovely shade of dark brown. The plaster was applied with sweeping hand motions, which gave the walls an interesting visual rhythm.

An American house is surrounded by a yard.  My African house was the opposite; it was a courtyard surrounded by a house.  The courtyard had flowers and trees and was pleasant.

A 9-foot-high wall went all around the lot, and each room of the house was placed up against the outside wall.  The rooms had only one door, which opened into the courtyard.  So, if you wanted to go from the living room to the dining room, you had to walk through the courtyard to get to the dining room.  Likewise, to get from the dining room to the bedroom, you could only get there by walking through the courtyard.

Some rooms had windows, which all faced the courtyard

There was one entrance room, the only room with two doors: a door to the street and a door into the courtyard.  There was no doorbell or door knocker.  When someone came to visit me, they would stand at the front door and shout a blessing: “Peace be upon you.”

Then I would welcome them with a blessing in response: “And upon you, peace.”

The visitor would go through the entrance room, and then bend over to go through the door into the courtyard.  This second door was purposely built low, so that the visitor must bow to enter the house.

In the courtyard, the visitor would find peace.  The tall surrounding walls kept the noise and bustle of the outside world at bay; the flowers and trees gave off serenity, the dark hand-plaster lent an air of dignity.  

Yes, it was like finding peace.

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YouTube video of me describing how I came to live in a mud house in West Africa (11 minutes):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw16p1HQnc8

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

Bob Dylan's Son-In-Law Increased My Appreciation For My Father

In the springtime, the call went out to all Boy Scout fathers: they were invited to Camp Wauwepex for Camp Fix-Up Day.  The fathers would help get the boy scout camp ready for summer.  They were asked to bring their tools with them.

When my brother heard this, he turned to me and said, “What tools will Dad take to Fix-Up Day?  Sharpened number two pencils?”

Around our house, we had seen our father unplug a toilet with a plumbers’ helper and shovel coal into the furnace.  But we had never seen him use tools; as far as we knew, he had never drilled a hole in something or pounded a nail with a hammer.

We often saw him with sharpened number two pencils.  Our father was an accountant, and he would bring his work home.  He would carefully sharpen his pencils and then line them up on the kitchen table.  Out would come a large 13-column columnar pad, with its fine horizontal and vertical lines.  He would commence accounting.

I don’t think any other father in our neighborhood brought their work home with them. 

My brothers and I got to see Dad’s work up close, but his work wasn’t very interesting.  Deep down inside I wished that my father would abandon his pencils and columnar pad and take up a different career, such as stock car racing or lion taming.

When I was nine years old, I was snooping through my father’s wallet and found a T-Man ID card.  

My father a T-Man?  Just like Dennis O’Keefe on the radio?  T-Men were special agents of the US Treasury Department.  On the T-Man radio show, Dennis O’Keefe was a skilled fighter against crime and a relentless enemy of the underworld.

Could my father have been some sort of mild-mannered Clark Kent accountant who had to bring his work home because he was too busy fighting crime during the day to get his accounting done at the office?

Somehow, my nine-year-old mind thought it was more likely that this T-Man ID was a fake, something given to my father as a joke.

When I was sixty-eight years old, I heard a children’s song: “My Father Is An Accountant”.  The song was by Peter Himmelman, who is married to Maria Dylan, and is, therefore, Bob Dylan’s son-in-law.  Peter sang about how he used to think his own father was dull because he was an accountant, but now he knows his father is a hero.

Peter Himmelman realized that his father is a hero because of what his father really did; his father spent his whole life taking care of his wife and kids.

So did my father.  My father was a hero. 

My father didn’t race stock cars; he didn’t tame lions.  He was an accountant.  However, I never found out if he secretly was a relentless enemy of the underworld, and I never found out what tools he took to Camp Fix-Up Day.

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Here is a 3-minute video of Peter Himmelman singing "My Father Is An Accountant":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbLoVOBx-eM

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com