Car Wash In Hades

Winters are severe in Minnesota, but cars must still be washed. So, the self-serve car washes in Minnesota have adapted to the cold weather: the bays are not open to the weather, they are closed. The bays have overhead doors.

When I lived in Minnesota, I usually washed my car at night.

Push button for door to roll up, drive into self-service bay, and have the door roll down. My car is snug inside, protected from the cold winter outside. Insert coins and start squirting my car with the hose.

That’s when my eyes and ears notice things.

The car wash has eerie sodium-vapor lights. These lights make everything a shade of gray. There is plenty of water vapor in the air, blurring everything in the building. In the other bays, people are washing their cars, talking to each other. I cannot figure out what they are saying because the echoing din of high-pressure water against metal muffles all human sound.

I figure this is what Hades must be like: eerie, gray, blurry, muffled.

I rinse the car. The door in front of me rolls up, and I pull out into the winter night. In two minutes, I have gone from Hades to what Hades would be like if it froze over.

I stop the car, and jump out to frantically wipe down any drops of water remaining on the exterior of the car. I do not want the drops to freeze to my car.

One-by-one, I slam each car door, and then the hatchback. This keeps the doors from freezing shut. Now I am ready to head out into the winter night.

I drive with a sense of satisfaction. I faced the elements, I triumphed, and now I get to drive a clean car when it is below freezing in Minnesota.

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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

Across The Wide Missouri

The history books tell us that Lewis and Clark’s first stop in the new Louisiana Territory was the village of St. Charles on the Missouri River.  The villagers were French Canadian, and they welcomed Lewis and Clark as they started their westward exploration.  The villagers welcomed Lewis and Clark by holding a ball for them.

As part of Lewis and Clark Heritage Days in 1998, I was asked to recreate the ball.  It was quite an honor because I was asked by a descendant of William Clark.

It was a formidable task:  The history books do not say exactly what dances were danced at the ball.  However, both Lewis and Clark grew up in Colonial Virginia, where they would have taken dance lessons.  Because of the US Bicentennial celebration, a lot of the dances popular in 1776 have been well documented.  I bought a book of dances from 1776, figuring that the French Canadian villagers may not have known these dances, but Lewis and Clark would have been familiar with them.

It was a Saturday evening when I headed off to St. Charles with a book of Colonial dances, a boombox, and a couple CDs of dance music.  I parked by the Missouri River, crossed over a slough on a wooden bridge, and came to the encampment.

Participants in Heritage Days had camped out for the night.  The pavilion where the ball was to be held was filled with teenaged campers, mostly members of fife and drum corps.  They were enthusiastic musicians: they were fifing and drumming as I approached.

I wondered how I would ever get these teenagers to stop playing so I could set up my little boombox.  Then I listened to their music.  It was Colonial music.  Danceable Colonial music.

I forgot about the boombox and recruited the fifers and drummers to play their favorite music.  The campers came to dance: crafts people, merchants, pirogue makers, cannoneers.  The pavilion roof amplified the music.  It was just a block away from the restaurants on Main Street in St. Charles, and some diners drifted down to the pavilion to watch us dance.

I was making progress going down the list of dances I had prepared, when the dancers started chanting.  “We want the Paddle Dance!  We want the Paddle Dance!!”  I had never heard of the Paddle Dance.  Suddenly, control of the dance passed out of my hands and into the hands of the dancers. 

The Paddle Dance was quickly explained to me: you have a line of men facing a line of women.  The man at the top of the line steps forward holding a canoe paddle.  Immediately, the 2 top women form up beside him, one on each side.  The man hands the paddle to one of the women and then dances down to the end of the line with the other woman, leaving the woman with the paddle behind.  Immediately, the 2 top men form up beside her, one on each side.  The woman hands the paddle to one of the men, and…

It was clear that the Paddle Dance was an endless loop.  Luckily, the teenaged fifers and drummers were showing no signs of fatigue.

I was also clear that I was no longer needed.  I slipped away, walking past the tents of the encampment, stars overhead.  I felt that I had provided what was requested: chance for people to do some dancing with a historical flavor, reflecting the memory of the ball held in St. Charles 194 years previously.

When I got to my car by the river, I could still hear the fifes and drums.  I looked at the Missouri River; I was sure that the dance music was loud enough to be heard on the other side, across the wide Missouri.

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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

Flying Dog Biscuits

St Louis, Summer 2011. When you open the door to go outside, you are hit by a wall of heat, a wall of humidity, and a wall of noise. The wall of noise makes my hearing aid complain.  It is the same wall of noise that I remember from Summer 1998, thirteen years previously.

When I was a kid, I knew all about plagues in Egypt because I had seen Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments”.  However, the movie did not prepare me for being in the middle of a plague of 13-year cicadas in Missouri.

I wonder if I am the equal of these insects.

They have a mind.  They know that exactly 13 years have passed, and then they emerge.

They emerge in vast numbers. They are everywhere. They smash against windshields.  They cluster on trees so that you think there is a second layer of bark.  If you brush against a branch, you release a cloud of cicadas.

They look prehistoric, and stare at you out of beady protruding eyes.

They make a sound that is not of this planet, an extraterrestrial sound. So loud, they can sometimes be heard in a car when you are driving along with the windows shut and both the air conditioning and the radio on.

And, they are tasty.  

Sierra, our Australian Shepherd, considers 13-year cicadas to be snacks, something akin to flying dog biscuits. She happily munches on cicadas that she finds on the sidewalk.

Apparently, humans think they are tasty also.  A small shop in Columbia, Missouri, went out and harvested a bunch of cicadas, removed the wings, boiled them, covered them in brown sugar, and folded them into ice cream.

The ice cream shop thought it would be a joke, but the joke was on them when the first batch sold out quickly. The customers liked the crunch and clamored for a second batch. However, the State Department of Health stepped in. They discouraged the further production of 13-year cicada ice cream, even though the State of Missouri has no statute on the books about serving cicadas to people.

Besides munching on cicadas, Sierra the Australian Shepherd also likes munching on worms. She only eats worms that have dried up on the sidewalk, not fresh worms. Maybe I should contact that little shop out in Columbia and suggest they make dried-worm ice cream. 

Should have a nice crunch to it --- and you don’t have to wait 13 years to harvest more dried worms.

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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

From Four Cannon To Four Diamonds

At the start of the Memorial Day weekend, it was time to splurge.  After thirteen years in St. Louis, I dined, for the first time, at its best-known four-diamond restaurant.

It was an experience in flawlessness.

We did not get a waiter; we got a crew. The crew made sure that everything was perfect: pushing chairs in, flapping napkins open, serving food with panache from carts that rolled out from the kitchen, and seeing that beverage glasses did not go empty.

I was eager to test the common wisdom: you could not take one single sip of water here without your glass being refilled.  I decided that the restaurant had changed its policy: it was three sips before the crew refilled my water glass.

As a nice touch, the owner of the restaurant came by, said hello, and gave us his card.  Looking at the guy, I thought he could easily fit into any television show about the Mafia.  Maybe he gave us his card because he thought we were talent scouts for CBS.

The food was impeccable: stuffed zucchini flowers, chilled white asparagus, lobster albanello, and chocolate torte with toasted coconut ice cream.

Halfway through my lobster, I realized I was getting full and I panicked. Surely it would be uncouth to ask for a doggie bag at a four-diamond restaurant. My buddy Randy had to ask for me, and they did bag my lobster - not in an elegant four-diamond bag but in a brown paper bag, just like the bags my mother had used for packing my school lunches.

Brown bag aside, it was a remarkable way to start Memorial Weekend.

On Sunday, I went to a Memorial Service. This was for the 21 St. Louisans killed at the Battle of Fort San Carlos.  I was not sure that many people knew about this battle besides myself.

It was the westernmost battle of the American Revolution, when the Spanish ruled St. Louis.  The British, hoping to gain control of the Mississippi River, gathered hundreds of Indians to attack the village.  However, the village was forewarned, and had enough time to build a watchtower, with four cannon on top of it.

May 26, 1780.  The palisade around the town held fast.  The grapeshot from the cannon scared off the Indians.  The attackers retreated, but not before killing 21 people who were working the farmland outside the palisade.

Who would come to a memorial service for these unfortunates?  I looked around and saw lots of ladies wearing hats. Why, the Daughters of the American Revolution, of course.  There was a keynote speech by an archeologist, and a nice wreath-laying ceremony with a bagpiper.

I spoke to the archeologist after the ceremony. She had never heard of the Battle of San Carlos until she was asked to be the keynote speaker. The ceremony’s goal was to raise public awareness, and had certainly raised her awareness.

Then I became aware of a connection between Friday’s lavish dinner and Sunday’s somber ceremony. Where the watchtower stood in 1780 is exactly the same spot where the restaurant stands in 2011.  From four cannon to four diamonds.

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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

The Pill Game

Watch out!  Fish oil pills wobble.  Ginseng pills roll.  Baby aspirins bounce.

Every Sunday it is my job to fill our pill containers for the upcoming week.  There are 2 containers, holding seven days worth of pills.

Because pills wobble and roll and bounce, I carefully pour them out of their jars and onto a little plate, making sure that no pill goes rogue and hits the floor, where the dogs will try to consume it.  From the plate, I put the pills one-by-one into the compartments of the containers.

Sunday after Sunday, it is the same routine – so, I made up the Pill Game.  The goal of the game: can I pour exactly 14 pills onto the little plate?  Each time I pour, I am hopeful.  Each time I pour exactly14 pills, I am exuberant --- Wow, I poured out 14 without counting!

We are told that there is a word for everything.   I found the word for getting the right number of objects without counting: subitize.

The goal of the Pill Game is to subitize 14 pills.

But now I worry that I will forget the word for getting the right number of objects without counting. 

No problem!  There is a word for forgetting a word: anomia.  If I can’t remember the word “subitize”, I can just say that I am having an anomia attack. 

Of course, that means that I definitely cannot forget the word “anomia”.

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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

They Start Loaning Pitchforks At 1 PM

Driving north in Missouri, once you see lots of fireworks stands, you know you are about to enter Iowa.

Fireworks, which are legal in Missouri, are illegal in Iowa.  So, enterprising Missourians set up stands on the state line, to lure Iowans south across the border to buy fireworks.

Once you enter Iowa, you notice lots of tidy farms, where every square foot of soil is tilled.  The soil in Iowa is rich, and the farmers are prosperous.  That means Iowa farmers are middle-class, on the same footing as the townspeople.  I think this sense of equality creates a certain can-do spirit.

I saw that can-do spirit when I visited Eldon, Iowa.

Eldon was once a thriving railroad hub, but the railroads left and the town shrank to 900 people.  This reversal of fortune did not stop the town from purchasing the old railroad workers’ bunkhouse to be used as a community center.  It did not stop the town from purchasing the old railroad station and turning it into a museum.  It did not stop the town from renovating their 1891 opera house. 

In Eldon, I drove past the Gothic Apartments and saw signs for Gothic Days.  My mind had a vision of hordes of tattooed teenagers wearing black descending on Eldon for Gothic Days.

But "Gothic" is a tribute to Eldon's gem: the house in Grant Wood's painting "American Gothic".  Eldon knows it is a gem - the town set up a parking lot and a visitors' center for all the tourists who want to be photographed in front of the American Gothic house.

Of course, that means that visitors will want pitchforks for their poses - and the visitors’ center gladly loans out pitchforks.  Unfortunately, I was there on a Sunday morning, and they don't start loaning pitchforks until 1 PM on Sundays.  So, I am pitchfork-less in my photo.

This town has 900 people, about the size of my high school.  Yet, Eldon preserved its history, predicted the needs of camera-toting tourists, and got four of its buildings on the National Register of Historic Places.  That's a lot of can-do spirit.

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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

Once Upon A Trivia Night

My career as a trivia night attendee was cut short by the music incident.

Years ago, my buddy Randy and I went to a trivia night that was a fundraiser for a friend’s daughter’s dance studio.

At this event, the lucky table with the most points was going to take home $200.  For most of the evening, it looked like our table was going to be the lucky table.  We were consistently 2 or 3 points ahead of the table next to us.  

Our friend stopped by our table and pointed out that the owners of the dance studio were seated at the competing table.  I scrutinized the owners and their tablemates; they looked rather old.

We stayed ahead of this table until the music round.  The trivia master played the opening ten seconds of a bunch of rock songs.  At the end of the round, the scoreboard showed that the owners table had zoomed ahead of us. 

No way!  The owners just did not look like the type of people who listened to rock music, much less could identify a rock song within ten seconds.  It dawned on me: the event had been rigged so that the $200 first prize, as well as the rest of the proceeds of the evening, fell into the hands of the owners of the dance studio. 

The trivia night music incident left a bitter taste in my mouth.  It was many years before we went to another trivia night.

Then we attended a trivia night fundraiser for a high school soccer team.  It proved to be a nice event – I enjoyed eating, drinking, castigating the table for not listening to me when I knew the correct answer, and really castigating the table for listening to me when I had the wrong answer.

Next trivia night was a fundraiser for Stray Rescue.  Lots of eating, drinking, and castigating.  The last round of questions was a grab-bag; the final question was: what is the hottest pepper on the Scoville chart?  Our friends Brian and Liesa lit up – “We have a copy of the Scoville chart hanging in our kitchen.  The hottest pepper is a ghost pepper”.

We put down ghost pepper as the answer.  The trivia master said habanero was the answer.

I sprang to my feet.  How could he disagree with people who have a Scoville chart hanging in their kitchen?  I whipped out my smartphone, and headed to the front of the room to argue for the ghost pepper (also known as the bhut jolokia pepper).  The trivia master accepted ghost pepper, and added a point to our score.

Walking back to our table with a big smile on my face, I was stopped by a woman who looked me in the eye, and said to me, “I hate people like you.”

She continued: “I used to run trivia nights and people would whip out their smartphones and raise a fuss over the answers just like you did.  Trivia nights are not about correct answers; they are about having fun.”

My attitude towards trivia had offended her.  Clearly, this woman needed to be educated.  I pulled myself up to my full height and looked her in the eye.  My mind returned to my roots and summoned up my best New York accent.

I said: “Lady --- when I want fun, I go bowling.  When I want correct answers, I go to trivia nights”

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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