Instinct

For being an otherwise physically uncoordinated, athletically disinclined, mental klutz, I seem to have a sharp instinct for survival – or at least for avoidance of disastrous incidents while driving.

One such notable incident occurred early in my relationship with Mrs. Farrago. We were in my old Jeep Cherokee, a reliable relic with an underpowered 4-cylinder engine that didn’t know when to quit. We were headed home on the Kennedy Expressway when we encountered a Saturday afternoon traffic jam. As I have become my father, I decided to seek an alternate route around the traffic.

We were approaching – very slowly – the Cumberland Avenue exit, and I decided to use that to get to the surface streets. I swung out in to the long exit lane leading to southbound Cumberland Avenue. I was up to about 35 or 40 mph when suddenly, not more than two car lengths ahead, another SUV swung out from the exit lane to northbound Cumberland into my lane. RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!

Mrs. Farrago braced for impact. I didn’t even have time to honk my horn, which is a sworn duty of every driver in Chicago.

But, without even thinking, I cranked the steering wheel to the right (there’s a wide emergency lane in that area), and I jammed the accelerator to the floor! At that age, the Jeep did little more than let out a disgruntled moan, but it got us out of the collision. And then I cranked the wheel to the left and straightened us out.

Why did I do that? Why hit the accelerator rather than the brake? Afterward, I knew it was intentional – reaction aside – and not an instance of pressing the wrong pedal. I had turned the wheel far enough to avoid a crash, but not so far that I could roll the Cherokee. As we drove away, it all just felt to me like I had done exactly the right thing.

Then, just Monday night the snow had been falling heavily for about an hour and a half. On my way home from work I had “played” in the snow with my Xterra in 4-wheel-drive, cutting the wheel harder on turns than I normally would, giving it more gas, hitting the brakes harder to activate the anti-lock braking system, just to feel how the vehicle reacts in those conditions. That was in an empty parking lot, and on side streets where there were no other cars nearby.

I was done playing. I was practically in the home-stretch to my apartment. I was on a residential street divided by a median, the speed limit on which is 30 mph. About an inch of unplowed snow had accumulated on this street and light traffic had turned it into a hard-packed sheet of slickeriness. Ahead of me, around a blind, gentle curve, someone had poorly negotiated a left turn in the slick conditions and slid past the break in the median and off to the right side of the lane. The driver of the car behind him braked to avoid hitting this person who was then trying to back up and complete the missed left turn!

Admittedly, I was going too fast…about 25 mph. I saw the situation in front of me and I hit the brakes a little too late. The anti-lock braking system engaged, vibrating noisily under my foot and, though I was slowing, it wasn’t enough to stop me in time before I would hit the car in front of me.

This next moment came with the clarity of thought and consideration and weighing of potential consequences that normally comes after an afternoon of contemplation. I simply turned the wheel slightly left and aimed for the median, between a tree there and the rear end of the car I had only milliseconds before been bearing down upon. As I neared the curb, my only fear was that, rather than jump it, my Xterra would have merely been deflected by the curb and back into the roadway and an inevitable crash. All these thoughts in a matter of two seconds!

But my tires ate up the curb and I went onto the median. Deep snow there, deposited by snowplows in earlier snowstorms, stopped me quickly, softly, and I ended up just about directly beside the car I otherwise would have hit! My engine died, as the Xterra has a manual transmission and I had my foot on the brake until well after I had come to a stop. I don’t know if the driver of the car I had managed to avoid crashing into even realized what had happened, but if he or she did, there must have been a loud sigh of relief in that car when I was seen lodged in several feet of snow beside him/her!


The Scene: This is where the Xterra came to rest after missing everything dangerous. Note the small tree to the left.


A closer look at how deep the snow was. And in the background, the Xterra peers sheepishly from behind a sign.

Regardless, the sigh of relief in my car was enough to satisfy us both! Certain I was now stuck, I restarted the engine, put the transmission into reverse, and I felt the 4-wheel-drive move me effortlessly back into the roadway.

I wish I could think as clearly and rationally and decisively in calm moments as I seem to have done in moments of true danger. But then again, seeing as how I’m alive and my car is undamaged (except for the leftovers of this), maybe that’s thinking enough.

A Matter of Suspense

I signed up for Netflix last week. It’s a two-week trial, but I know I’ll keep it. When I was married (still am, technically) we lost the desire to go to see movies. What’s the point of spending twenty bucks on tickets and getting raped for what amounts to a scoop of popcorn and two cups of bubble-y sugar water, only to sit in a room full of rude, noisy people who can’t shut up when the actors are talking?

And then, while we had the time and energy to sit and stare at the TV set, we didn’t want to set our favorite shows aside to watch movies. At least not that often.

But now I’m in a determined effort to catch up on seven years of missed movies!

And that brings up what I’ve been thinking about for the past few days, probably the most important element to making a successful book or film or television show: the suspension of disbelief.

People have been writing fiction and other people have been lapping it up since the first ink was set to papyrus in the Old Testament, and beyond. What magic it is that a skilled wordsmith can use the same letters as you and I, the same words in our collective vocabulary, and spin a tale to make our hearts race or our hair stand on end, or bring us to the heights of laughter or the depths of sorrow!

We’ve all been there; anyone who can read has read, and has experienced a world of sensations beyond anything we’ve done, yet entirely contained within our brains!

I’ve never watched the action-adventure serial 24 on television. I’ve only experienced the program at my whim via DVD player. I know the people I see on the screen are merely highly paid actors following a script. I know that the setting is a mocked up room within a much larger room, and that none of the computers or phones are hooked up to anything beyond the walls and in the real world. I know that the scenarios presented to me are the products of a group of very active and clever imaginations and, further, stretch the boundaries of plausibility. And yet, the story that script tells the actors to tell, the scenarios in which the characters find themselves, grab me by the throat and pull me in! The program can be addictive, and I will sometimes sit and watch four episodes back to back! On a school night!!

At what point in the expository scenes do we accept the terms of the tale? What determines the breaking point where an implausibility is ignored or is dwelled upon, where the story is moved along or it is ruined for us?

As an aspiring writer I find fascinating the challenge to imagine a scenario that is interesting enough, and to string together the right combination of words in the right order to bring a reader into my story and ignore its flaws and stretches and fantasies, and to BELIEVE. And to stay to the end.

May I someday meet that challenge.

Celebrities, Infarctions, S.W.A.T. Update & How To Lose Respect In 10 Seconds

Well, I haven’t written much lately. No excuse, really. Just haven’t had much to say…or at least haven’t felt like saying anything.

I spent five of the last seven days in San Francisco, as my company produced our largest convention of the year. I almost sorta got to meet Jay Leno, who was the day one “keynote speaker,” listed in the convention program as “Inspirational Speaker.” He simply did about 35 minutes of standup (and pretty damn funny, too!), and then about 5 minutes of “inspirational” speak, telling the audience that he loves them and what they do for America. Then he was off the stage, down the stairs and, WOOSH! out to his limo and gone! HiJaybyeJay! (passing breeze and loose papers blown erratically in the air). I took photos of him, as part of my job. I was within 10 feet of him for about 5 minutes. I might have even gotten some of his spit on me from his fevered banter. On Sunday Bob Woodruff, the ABC News anchor who got blown up in Iraq, spoke, along with his wife. Monday’s keynote was Tom Brokaw. I didn’t get to meet any of them, though I did speak to Woodruff, asking him if he was okay with me taking flash photos of him backstage. I wasn’t sure, and didn’t want to trigger an epileptic seizure or a brain short-circuit or something. He said “Sure.” That was it. Othernat, I got bupkis.

One of my co-workers had a mild heart attack on the last day of show, about 30 minutes before the final meeting started. He’s only 55, and has had a heart attack before. He knew the symptoms, knew it was most likely a heart attack, and the goofball wouldn’t let anybody call 911. Instead he had another co-worker take him to the hospital in our rented minivan. Yay Hertz! He’s “okay,” now. The doctors put a stent (SP?) in his heart (I’m guessing here), and I heard he was allowed to go home, back to the Midwest, today. Lots of rest, and perhaps bypass surgery in his future.

I finally got an update today on what the hell happened at my apartment complex last week, as detailed in my prior post. The police department wouldn’t let me look at a police report, but an officer familiar with the case did come out and tell me “what he could” about the case. Apparently an adult couple, in an apartment in the building next to mine, were suspected of growing marijuana in their place. The cops stormed their apartment, found several potted (no pun intended) plants and a pistol. The pot was… well… there, and the pistol was off to one side, with no one near it when the cops went in. The S.W.A.T. team – or whatever they were – was there just in case there was resistance…and just to put the scare in innocent bystanders who happened to blunder into their little cat and mouse game....

= = = = = = = = = =

What do you do when, all of a sudden, in one quick moment, you lose respect for someone? On our last night in San Francisco two of my coworkers and I went out with a former coworker who now lives and works in San Francisco. He’s young, tall, athletic and damnably good looking. He’s also a player. One of the coworkers out with us that night is a young, very attractive woman who is engaged to be married. I had warned her about this guy when she was about to go to one of our past conventions for which this young man had been hired by us as a contractor, but she pooh-poohed it. As a necessary part of the job, they had exchanged mobile phone numbers, and after the job was over he would – and still does – call her occasionally. On this night in San Francisco we went to dinner and then he led us around to a few places he knows, and we all had plenty to drink.

We were all buzzing pretty well when we went to a bar where there was some pretty severe club music playing, and a very crowded dance floor. After a few minutes both the young ones had disappeared. My other coworker and I, a decade or two too old for the crowd in which we found ourselves, decided it was time to go. I told him I would let the others know we were throwing in the towel.

I walked onto the dance floor and found them. She had her arms in the air, arching her back while he had his arms around her waist and, crotch to crotch, was literally dry-humping her to the beat of the music. I told them we were leaving, turned and left. I couldn’t believe what I had seen. I couldn’t believe that she would do that, that she would let him do that. I’m actually heartbroken.

I tried to blame it on alcohol, but that didn’t work. We were all buzzing pretty good. I’m a lightweight when it comes to drinking, so I’m sure I was feeling it as much as – if not more than – the others, and I wasn’t dry-humping her – or anyone, or anything, for that matter. Am I jealous? Sure, I’ll admit to that…or to envy. My former coworker has been genetically blessed with everything women find appealing before they ever meet him, and he gets way more than his share of attention in that arena. She’s off-limits, yet he focused his attention on her. And she ate it up.

He later told my other, aged coworker, “nothing happened.” Well, maybe there was nothing beyond the dance floor, but THAT happened! Maybe I’ve got it all wrong, but if I’m standing there in a crowded room grinding my stuff against a beautiful woman’s stuff (not like it’s ever happened, mind you, but IF!), number one I’m thinking I’ve made a tremendous breakthrough, and number two I’m thinking this has serious potential to continue on another horizontal surface somewhere more intimate and private. And I have to believe that a woman feels the same way in that situation.

I had lost respect for him long ago for other things as well as his player’s game. But, for me, she fell from grace in that moment. I work with her almost every day, and I can’t even look her in the eye.

So… what do you do?

S.W.A.T!

So last night, while I was online watching the Super Bowl ads I missed because I didn’t watch perhaps the most exciting Super Bowl game in 15 years, I heard a loud – and I mean LOUD – bang. It gently shook my apartment building, and then I heard its echo off to the south from me.

My first thought was “gunshot,” but a gunshot wouldn’t have shaken the building. “Explosion?” Perhaps too small for anything destructive or catastrophic.

I looked out my window down to the parking lot. There were a couple of people walking from the parking lot who kept looking back to the east. I looked in that direction and saw a strange grey truck – think huge motor home – with the letters NIPAD emblazoned on its side, inching its way further into the parking lot, with a local police SUV inching a little more quickly past it. The local gas company is Nicor, so I made a connection there and thought, “Could it have been a gas explosion?”

Too curious to ignore it, I threw on some shoes and went out to investigate. Winter is in full swing here, and a storm was announcing its arrival with winds, freezing rain and general misery for anyone out in it…especially with no coat or hat…like me. But I did get to the eastern end of my building, and I was able to stare into the wind long enough to see two more people, now looking to the north, and the same police SUV, having made its way past my building. Unable to take the wind and the cold biting me everywhere AND the flying bits of ice perforating my eyeballs, I went back inside to get my coat and hat. The curiosity was getting to me and no one in my building seemed to have noticed the rafter-rattling noise that had started it all.

Back outside and properly attired, I returned to the farthest point I had reached, and looked north. There was a small U-Haul box truck parked against apartment regulations, and with its rear door open. Around the next building I could see the three red running lights on the top of another truck of some sort. I was within about 20 feet of the U-Haul truck when I saw movement to my left. I turned and saw a man in urban assault gear! Helmet, body armor, dark uniform, boots, and carrying a short, military-style assault rifle!!

The alarm bell in my head told me to turn around! I knew by the way he held the rifle – pistol-grip in one hand, ammo magazine resting on his belt, and the muzzle pointed to the ground – that he was a police officer. I had walked right into the middle of some sort of S.W.A.T. incident! I was two steps toward the warmth and comfort of my apartment when I heard a voice behind me: “How can we help you, sir?”

I spun back around. The voice had come from inside the back of the U-Haul truck, and now there was a man, dressed as the first, standing there. “I just heard a loud noise and I was trying to find out what it was,” said I.

To my left the first officer I had seen, the one whose appearance had triggered the first thrill of mild panic in me, spoke. “You’re gonna have to go back to your apartment, sir.”

“Thank you!” I said. You don’t need to tell me twice to get out of a potential kill-zone!

As I returned to the proximity of my building I peered more intently at the hulking, grey, motor-home-looking NIPAD truck. I couldn’t quite make out the smaller lettering beneath the acronym, as that side of the truck was half in and half out of the pool of light from the parking lot lamps, but it read “Northern Illinois somethingorother Police Emergency Unit.”

Sure. NOW you tell me!

Later, from within the safety and comfort of my apartment, I called the police department and demanded to know if the emergency was over, and if there had been any point in the evening that my building was in danger. The woman on the other end of the line told me that the matter had been taken care of, and there never was anything to be concerned about, safety-wise. Except, of course, I added in my head, walking into the cross-fire zone!

Now, about 12 hours later, I still don’t know what happened. I’m guessing now that the loud, edifice-shaking bang was a concussion grenade used by the police when they stormed an apartment in one of the next buildings over, to stun, frighten and disorient the suspects inside. What they were suspected of, however, is only my best guess. First thought is drug-bust. But there are a lot of Middle Eastern people in this complex.

I’ll let your thoughts run on their own from there.

I’ll post an update if I find anything else out.

Icons*

This morning, as I tried to get out of bed, I listened to the radio. The DJ mentioned this day, February 3rd, as a landmark day in the history of rock ‘n roll, the anniversary of the Iowa plane crash in 1959 that killed J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, Richie Valens and Buddy Holly.

The DJ went on to rhapsodize the legacy left by Holly, saying that, to this day, every day, somewhere on the globe, a radio station is playing a Buddy Holly song.

What is it about human nature that, in the event of a famous life cut short – especially a talented one – we extrapolate that life, had it been lived fully, achieving tremendous things? “Oh, the music that Buddy Holly would have written! The innovations that would have continued to shape the industry!”

(Not to mention the two other famous guys on that plane, marginalized by our mainstream, white-majority sensibilities as one whose choice of a stage name locked his legacy into the era of “’50s music,” and the other as simply a Mexican also-ran.)

But would he have? Was his music really all that great? Did we feel that way about his music before he died? Sure, he was a pioneer in the halcyon days of rock ‘n roll. Sure, his music was popular in the 1950s, but back then there just wasn’t a great deal of rock ‘n roll music to choose from, yet! Do we know for certain that Holly hadn’t hit a wall creatively, and had written his last song, plane crash notwithstanding? Are we certain that he wouldn’t have called it quits upon the impending birth of his child so that he could spend the time his family needed of him?

Did we assign a greater importance to his musical contributions only because of our sense of loss at his tragic death?

How is it that someone whose career was so short, whose body of work – though promising – is so small, is revered by us as an icon as the result of an untimely death?

There are many others who died young, who we elevated to iconic status after their deaths: Jimi Hendrix. Bruce Lee. Janis Joplin. Kurt Cobain.

James Dean made only three films, and was only 24 when he died, yet at the mention of his name his image still ripples through the psyche as the personification of “cool” and “rebel,” and a great sense of what could have been.

Why do we do it? I’m guilty of it myself, especially upon hearing of the death of John Belushi in 1982. “What a shame!” I thought. “What a waste! The laughs he could have given the world…” But would he have? It became obvious after the details of his death were made public that he had a serious drug problem. Had the drugs never killed him, it’s likely he would have spiraled out of the public mind, fizzled into obscurity like so many other “rising stars” who never rose. (Britney Spears, anyone? Though her fall has been so spectacularly documented and photographed, she’ll still be “famous” in twenty years, even if she records or performs not one more note of music in that time.)

A great example here is “The King of Rock ‘n Roll,” Elvis Presley. As a rock ‘n roll star, he reached his zenith by age 25, in 1960, but since he’s the guy who essentially started it all, the spotlight was never really off him. He shifted his focus to a career in films and, by the mid-1960s, had disappeared from the stage. He was never taken seriously as an actor and as the 1960s came to a close, so did his film career. After his 1968 “comeback” as a stage performer, he quickly became a caricature of his former self. He still sold millions of records during this time, but he was a living legend whose legacy easily fed on itself.

Had Presley died tragically 1959, the world would have been spared the ugly proof in 1977 that, indeed, Presley was human; that, indeed, what goes up must come down.

And what if he had instead rehabilitated, gotten off the drugs and gotten clean again? Would we be subjected to scenes today of a 73-year-old man in a bejeweled white jumpsuit onstage, lamely karate-chopping his way through an hour’s worth of Vegas-rock arrangements of his greatest hits?

People older than I still often ponder the further greatness that could have been achieved by John F. Kennedy had he not died so young. Our nation had been seduced by the notion of “Camelot” in the White House, and was in love with the President. Let’s rewrite history for a moment and believe that Lee Harvey Oswald and/or one to three “second gunmen” got the date wrong and never showed up at Dealey Plaza when the presidential motorcade zoomed through.

It’s plausible that – as alleged in Oliver Stone’s film JFK – Kennedy would have ordered a pullout of the handful of our military “advisers” in the tiny country of Vietnam and Lyndon Johnson wouldn’t have had any power to reverse Kennedy’s order – as Stone also alleges in the film – and the lives of 58,000 young American men and women (not to mention untold hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese) over the next 12 years would have been spared.

However, in November of 1963, Kennedy was heading into an election year in which his opponents – and voters – would be looking back at his first term. There were already rumors of his dalliances with Marilyn Monroe, another star whose death in 1962 came too soon, amid circumstances in which Kennedy might have been implicated in murder as a cover-up of their affair. Who knows? Had he lived to pursue re-election, and this kind of information came to light, Kennedy may have resigned or chosen not to run for re-election, or might have been defeated in a re-election bid, or even arrested and imprisoned. He may have lived his post-White House years in disgrace much like Richard Nixon did. So much for the Boy King of America.

Though he was 30 at the time of his death in 1953, Hank Williams had only been Big Time for four years. Would we still hold him and his music in such high regard had he lived through his addictions and stumbled and staggered in and out of rehab in the public eye?

How would we feel today about Michael Jackson had some medical condition taken him from us shortly after the release of Thriller? How do we feel about Bob Dylan or Keith Richards, two men who, by their own admission and in the opinions of some who have known them, “should be dead?”

We just don’t know what would have come to a life cut short; we only know what won’t. For some reason inexplicable to me, we give a level of respect to a notable young person who dies early in a seemingly promising career higher than what we may have given that person with a long career in the spotlight and a death in comparative obscurity.

A final example: on January 19 of this year the entertainment world lost stage, film and television actress Suzanne Pleshette, age 70; three days later news outlets around the globe shouted in a pathetic frenzy about the death of film actor Heath Ledger, age 28. Of the two, who had the longer, more noteworthy career? But whose death received more news coverage and worldwide shock and sympathy? Who might we more likely see as an “icon” 20 years from now?

So it seems sadly possible that, with the examples of the longer lives lived by some of his contemporaries, and the lives of those who came after, Buddy Holly’s death on this date 49 years ago could have been the best thing for his career.



*In memory, fleeting, of Heath Ledger.

Holiday Escape

UPDATE: Since the first publishing of this post, a photo of a Volkswagen has been added.

As 2007 drew to a close I looked back on the year and realized that, as far as I was concerned, it SUCKED!

My intent for this post is not to make it a retrospective of the past year. But just as a refresher…

--In March it was determined that my father had a series of mini strokes in the prior months, and it was just such a mini stroke that my sister was finally able to witness that motivated her to take him to the Emergency Room where, after he was admitted to the hospital, it was later discovered that he has lung cancer.

--In April I finally made the decision to have my precious, old, decrepit Angel euthanized. A week later my father's peke-a-poo, Rosie, who had survived since my mother passed away in 1993, became ill and had to be euthanized.

--In September Mrs. Farrago and I decided to separate.

--And in October I moved out of the home I’ve known for the past 9 years and into a two-bedroom apartment.

So, as the holiday break loomed on the horizon I felt the need to escape the boundaries of my life for a while. I had considered the “Big Island” of Hawaii, as I really like that place, but then I figured that Hawaii is where a lot of people escape to during the cold weather of the holidays, so it was likely to be a zoo.

Then I thought to seek isolation, someplace where I could be totally alone. But since I had no interest in being dropped in the middle of the Sierra Nevada, I considered isolation in the figurative sense. To me that meant a foreign country where I would be culturally and linguistically isolated. I really enjoyed Paris, but going there at this point in my life would bring back too many memories of my times there with Mrs. Farrago. England, though I love that place, was out of the question because I couldn’t isolate myself from the language…and because remaining isolated meant choosing not to visit my good friend in Birmingham, which would have only brought me guilt.

So I thought of a place that I had been to that I really wished to revisit, and that place is Germany. I lived there for two years when I was stationed at a base there in 1986 and ’87, and I’ve hoped my frequent work travels would send me there. I came close in 2006 when I spent three days in Berlin, but there was no free time to explore, so it was a mere tease.

So, Germany it was! In the weeks prior I booked my flight, booked a rental car and booked hotel rooms across the country. I left Chicago on December 25th, hoping that travelers would be at an all-time low on THE holiday, but the opposite was the case!

I paid my airfare with my frequent flyer miles, and my frequent flyer status earned me a seat in what United Airlines calls “Economy Plus,” which means I got to sit in the section that gives an extra five inches or so of legroom to everyone. I did ask about the possibility of upgrading to Business Class, but I was told that it wasn’t allowed on fares purchased with frequent flyer miles. Oh, well. No biggie.

When I booked the ticket online I was allowed to choose my own seat, and the one I chose happened – without my knowledge – to be directly behind the “Crew Rest” seats, where some of the flight attendants are allowed to sleep during the middle of the flight when passenger needs are at their lowest. Instead of an extra five inches of legroom, I had about an extra three feet of legroom, which is about two feet more than I would have had in Business Class!

I was seated next to a German man who now lives in Chicago. As I told him of my itinerary, and of my plans to drive everywhere, he asked me what kind of car I had booked. I repeated to him what I had read on the economycarrentals-dot-com website: “Volkswagen Lupo or similar.” The friendly smile on his face morphed into a polite grimace, and the color in his face paled slightly. Then he said, “You might want to ask for an upgrade.”


The besmirched Volkswagen Lupo.

Upon arrival in Frankfurt and the subsequent shuttle ride to the Thrifty/Dollar car rental office, I was asked by the rental agent if I wanted winter tires. Germans are a little different from us when it comes to equipping their cars with tires. Where we generally choose all-weather tires for our cars and forget about them until they’re bald, Germans generally purchase two sets of tires. The expensive set is for the warm months and the higher demand for performance the Germans exact from their cars. The other set is designed to have a little bit more contact with the road and better handling on snow and ice. And in a rental situation, the choice for winter tires means an extra charge. I was going to forego the winter tires and take my chances until I saw the little notice, printed in English, that basically read, “Though it is not required by law to have winter tires on the car, should you have an accident without winter tires, your insurance will be null and void.” With my luck, I’d kiss the gate with the car as I left the rental lot, so I chickened out and said, “Yes” when the rental dude told me that the winter tires would cost me an extra 100 Euros for the duration of the rental.

When he heard my answer, he said, “Good. That will get you a nice upgrade.”

I was relieved to hear this because my flight seatmate’s warning had caused me a good deal of stress, as I had no clue what a Volkswagen Lupo was, or why it should cause such concern. With the rental dude’s words I was encouraged and hopeful that maybe I would step up to a VW Golf or something similar. Then the dude asked me if I was traveling alone, which I was, and then if I had a lot of luggage, which I did not. Satisfied with my answers, he stepped out to get my car. When I saw it, my jaw dropped, and I gasped, “No fucking way!”


Der Vheels! (Click on any photo for a full-size view!)

It also had GPS, which the rental dude “threw in for free,” despite the fact that it’s built in!

From this point I will spare my reader the typical travelogue I have crafted(?) in the past. This trip was for relaxation and decompressing. I didn’t plan out my days with things to see or do, and the ensuing avalanche of photos such an itinerary causes. I slept in most days, allowing just enough time to catch breakfast before it was collected, and, since I started each day fairly late, and daylight disappeared by 4:30 each day, I took relatively few photos.

I stayed fairly centered in the country, driving first from Frankfurt to Berlin, then from Berlin to Düsseldorf, each leg thereof about a five-hour drive. From Düsseldorf I was able to take in Köln (Cologne). From Köln I drove to the state of Rheinland-Pfalz, and the region called Hunsrück, or “Hound’s Back,” where the base was when I was stationed there. And from the Hunsrück I returned to Frankfurt.


In case you ever wondered what the autobahn looks like...


Berlin


The pension-hotel Berolina, which
was more like a flop-house than a hotel.
My room reeked so badly of cigarette smoke
that... yup... all my stuff still smells
like smoke!



Your typical city scene: The Kurfürstendamm, Berlin's
Magnificent Mile, so to speak.



House of 100 Beers! I had a mind to try every last one,
but I had the rest of the country to see before I went home....



Germans go a little crazy with holiday lights, too, just
in case you were feeling a little self-conscious over your
decorative holiday excess.


Köln



The Kölner Dom (Cologne Cathedral) is the city's main attraction. I figured that, it being the Sunday before the New Year holiday (or Silvester in Germany), no one would be out in the city, and I would have the place to myself. Of course, that Sunday happened to be the day Turkish citizens from all over Germany chose to protest some television show they found offensive. So I found myself in a swarm of Turks! They called it quits by dark, so I was able to get a few neat shots.






Hunsrück



Many towns that crop up near each other have adopted a hyphenated double name. Such is the case with towns that face each other across a river. The town(s) of Traben-Trarbach, on the Mosel river is a place I visited many times while I was stationed in the area. Above is a view of Traben, across the river from Trarbach. Any lover of white wine, especially German Rieslings, will be delighted to know that Traben-Trarbach sits right in the middle of Moselle wine country.


The restaurant Brücken-Schenke, which, loosely trans-
lated, means "bridge access," sits on the Trarbach side of
the Mosel and "guards" the bridge that crosses it.


A view from the vineyards above the town of Dhron
(Neumagen-Dhron). The entire Mosel valley
-- on both sides of the river -- is covered from
top to bottom in grape vines like these.



"Church For One?" I just can't figure this one out. On the
road between the Mosel river town of Treis-Karden
and Kastellaun.


Nine days after I left Chicago I returned to the airport in Frankfurt. Though I had flown non-stop from Chicago, I had booked myself back to Chicago with a layover in Washington, D.C. so that I could spend much of that last day in Germany. When I checked in I was of a mind to ask to be moved into the same seat I had when I flew from Chicago so I could have all that legroom again, but then I thought that was just selfish of me, so I didn’t. I received boarding passes for both legs of the trip home, but I never even looked at them.

At the boarding gate, as I waited with the rest of the USA-bound throng, a gate agent called my name out over the PA system. There is a desk outside the waiting area, and since I had my boarding passes I figured I had no need to stop there. A gate agent at the door had let me pass without question, so I thought nothing of it. Now, as I walked up to the counter to respond to being called out, I wondered if I had missed an important step.

The agent who had called my name saw me approaching, and said, “Mr. [Farrago]?”

“That’s me.”

She held up what looked like a boarding pass. “We have an upgrade for you.”

WOW! I had been upgraded to Business Class unsolicited! For a Trans-Atlantic flight! WOO HOO! It pays to accrue all your travel miles on one airline! I enjoyed the extra legroom, the slightly wider seat, the nicer meal and the free alcohol (one glass of wine with dinner) and finished Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Supremacy on the way to D.C.

After landing at Dulles International Airport I went through Customs and Immigration, collected my luggage, returned it to the airline to go back on the plane, and I headed to my gate. On the way there I purchased The Bourne Ultimatum, almost as much to see how far off the movies carried themselves from the actual stories as to follow the character to the end of his arc.

Before long, the gate agent there announced that boarding would commence in about five minutes, and I realized I didn’t even know where my seat on the plane was. I pulled out my boarding pass and was surprised as hell to see that I had been seated in First Class! All the way back in Frankfurt! WOW! A double upgrade! What a perfect ending to a wonderful trip!

Now I just want to go back.

A Clock That Goes Back In Time

In 2004, not long before he closed his barbershop, my father gave me this hanging 8-day regulator clock. It must have hung in his shop for thirty years or more while he diligently and dutifully wound it up once every week until the walls of the old building proved too crooked and shaky for the clock to keep proper time. It came into his possession, I’m guessing, after the death of his brother in 1974 or ’75, and who knows how long my uncle had that clock! All I know is that the clock is damn old! When my father gave it to me I took it to a clock repair shop to 1) see how much it would cost to restore and 2) see how much it might be worth as an antique. The clock dude seemed unmoved by my very old clock, so I could only imagine that though, yes, it is old, it must not be very uncommon. He essentially told me that, fully restored, the clock could fetch $650 to $800. The cost to have it fully restored? About $600 to $700. Thanks, but no thanks. I mentioned that to my father at the time, and he said the clock runs just fine – it just needs a good, plumb wall.










In my dad's barbershop, the clock (top, left
of center) hung from the early- to mid-1970s
until he closed his business in 2004.


I did a brief bit of internet research on it today; the only thing I knew about it prior, thanks to a torn label on the back, and small print on the clock face, is that it was made by the New Haven Clock Company. I got all excited when I saw the little star-shaped logo just beneath the center of the face; it reads “1853!” My breathing got a little shallow when I thought this clock could be over 150 years old!




However, it’s just the year that the New Haven Clock Company was founded. The closest I could find to a match was this, a model called “Bank.”


photo © theclockprofes-
sor.com, used without per-
mission

I imagine the guts are all the same, just the wrapper is ever so slightly different; sort of like many American cars today. So it’s likely that my clock was made around 1910. Not 150 years old, but still pretty damn old, just the same.

At any rate, I had decided early last week, after I picked the clock up from the house I lived in with ts2bx Mrs. Farrago, that this weekend I would clean it up the best I could, hang it up, wind it up and watch it go. I bought some Old English lemon oil, some extra microfiber rags, some screws and a stud finder (funny, it kept lighting up when I pointed it at me! Go figure!), and today I set to the task.



The hinges on both the regulator door and the clock face door are wobbly loose, so, more than anything else, I was afraid either or both of them would fall off or fall into such a position that I, in my ineptitude, might cause it to bend or break. Fortunately neither of those things happened.

I didn’t do any serious dismantling – I was merely cleaning it up, not restoring it. And I want it to run. I did take apart the pendulum. At the end of the wooden shaft is a threaded metal shaft that is used to regulate the speed of the pendulum’s swing (hence the term “Regulator”), and this one shows evidence of some abuse, or at least neglectful use.



It’s slightly bent, and one of the two tiny nails fastening it to the wooden shaft is perma-loose, allowing the metal shaft to wiggle. Using a small screwdriver and a hammer, I tried gently tapping the nail back into the wood, but at best, I think the hole has been made too large for the nail to have any kind of a grip, and at worst, I think I may have split the end of the shaft in my effort.

As I wiped away the Old English oil, I noticed a lot of brown tone on the rags, and I feared I was damaging or ruining the finish of the clock. I mean, the damn thing was so dirty, I expected to see black on the rag. So I thought maybe it was just the way the oil was mixing with the dirt, making it brown.

I got a little overzealous with the oil and managed to get some of it on the regulator window, and when I got to the part where I was cleaning the glass with glass cleaner, I couldn’t quite get the window clean of the oil.

It wasn’t until I was cleaning the window of the clock face that I realized I was getting the same brown junk on the paper towel as I wiped away the glass cleaner. Did I get that much oil on the glass? And then it dawned on me. For some thirty years in my father’s barbershop, and an untold number of years in my uncle’s house – or maybe even his auto repair shop – and even more unknown years in whoever’s hands before him, this clock hung on a wall soaking up endless hours’ worth of cigarette smoke. The brown stuff was decades’ worth – hell! Nearly a century’s worth of tobacco residue…TAR! Suddenly I felt like a great benefactor, freeing this poor clock from the clutches of a suffocating cloak of cloying clouds.

Hmmm. Too alliterative, perhaps?

Seriously, I did feel like I was rescuing it rather than just cleaning it up.



Carcinogen, anyone?

I shined up the brass disc – which, it turns out, is an iron disc with a brass face attached – reattached it to the wooden shaft, and closed everything up. I found the nearest stud to the center of the wall, drove a screw into it and hung the clock there. I hung the regulator pendulum to the pendulum hangy thingy inside the clock and, just in case the clock had been wound and never run out, I sent the pendulum swinging, which it did for about 4-1/2 minutes before it stopped. Then I tried to wind it up. Nothing. I couldn’t even turn the key. So much for needing nothing more than a good, plumb wall, Pop!


In this shot the streaks that
I couldn't remove with the
glass cleaner are visible in
the regulator window.

Oh, well, if it doesn't function as a clock, at least I finally have some art on my wall!

I will take it to another clock repair place and see how much it will cost simply to get the movement working. I don’t want a full restoration – that would put the clock into a condition in which I never saw it in my lifetime. The paper adhering to the metal face is yellowed and flaking. Half of the wood carving at the bottom left and right is missing, and what’s there – at the four o’clock position – looks itself like a fairly ham-fisted attempt at restoring missing craftwork. I want those things to remain as they are. I just want to be able to hear that steady “click-clock” of the regulator calmly rocking to and fro that I remember from the slow summer days when I was a kid and I accompanied my father to his barbershop, and business was slow, and he nodded off in his own barber chair, and all I could hear was his slow, deep breathing, and that clock.

Channeling ABBA

This is so weird I just have to post it, specifically since it involves my blog. The following all happened in the span of about ten minutes.

Say what you will, but I was listening to ABBA on iTunes while writing an e-mail. (If you must know, I never had any ABBA until ts2bx Mrs. Farrago got some while we were still together, and before I moved out she graciously put a whole bunch of music on my iTunes for me. So it was a nostalgia moment as well as a listen to some songs I had never heard before. So there.)

While writing the e-mail the song Money, Money, Money was playing. As I was writing, I really wasn’t paying attention to the music, but I suppose it could have been somewhat subliminal; I made a comment in the message I was writing where I stated, “if I could figure out the human psyche, I’d be a rich man.” And as I wrote the words “rich man,” the song reached the line “It’s a rich man’s world.”

Okay, merely coincidence? Sure, and possibly even subliminally contrived.

Then, a few songs down the list, the song Fernando was playing. I had never really listened to this song closely before, and I heard a line something to the effect of “Do you remember the night when we crossed the Rio Grande,” and other references to a fight, which made me realize for the first time that the song has something to do with Mexico or the Mexican Revolution. I had checked other e-mail, and then I went on to the now-ritual perusal of my SiteMeter hit list for my blog yesterday. I had quite a few hits and, while Fernando was still playing I clicked on one of the hits and discovered my first-ever “reader” from Mexico, in the state of Chihuahua!

This second strange occurrence involving me and ABBA caused me to pause and write down the circumstances, because now it was blog fodder! While scribbling these notes the next ABBA song in the list started, a song I had never heard before. I returned to the SiteMeter list and clicked on the next visitor, after the one from Mexico, and was surprised to see that someone had visited me from Paris, France! I was tickled… until I heard the repeated phrase in the song that was still playing: “Voulez-Vous, Voulez-Vous!”

Quickly I switched over to the iTunes list and saw that, indeed, the song playing was titled, Voulez-Vous, listed immediately behind Fernando!

Talk about a string of FREAKY COINCIDENCES! I’m almost ready to get back in bed, that was so strange!

•••---•••---•••---•••---•••---•••

And to drive home the point of my prior post, one of the hits yesterday, from Newton Upper Falls, Massachusetts; and one this morning, from Athens, Greece, were people seeking the instruction manual for the MALM bed from IKEA!

The United Nations of IKEA

Since I moved out of my marital home I’ve been living in a two-bedroom apartment with a few items the-soon-to-be-ex Mrs. Farrago and I agreed I would take with me, a few items I was allowed to take from the office, and a few items I’ve purchased since the move. Among those items was NOT a proper bed.

Until now.

I have the box spring and mattress from the house. There was a spare set – as well as the marital bed’s frame – upon which ts2bx Mrs. Farrago now sleeps. I had the basic steel frame, but the box spring sat perfectly on the floor, so I figured, why bother? (Let’s not mention that I didn’t have bolts to fasten said steel frame together….) But it wasn’t pretty, so I’ve been waiting for the right time to buy a “bed.”

That time was Tuesday.

I went to the retail mecca that is IKEA and picked up the items I had a while back picked out. They are, of course, the MALM bed frame; the matching, attaching MALM side table; and the totally unrelated BENNO CD storage tower.

I assembled the bed and the side table Wednesday evening, inevitably rearranging the room so I could walk around in it. The birch veneer smartly complements the natural pine HOL storage chest and the chest of drawers, the funky Swedish name of which I do not recall, both purchased at IKEA several years back, when ts2bx Mrs. Farrago and I were a couple.



The MALM bed and accompanying side table, sold separately.


The HOL storage bin purchased several years ago.



The chest of drawers purchased years ago.
I don't know its IKEA name.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Every time I go into IKEA, I am overwhelmed. Nearly every item I see is cool beyond words. Innovative yet simple design, clever convenience, smart storage – everything in the store seems to fall under one or more of these adjective praises. I’ve always wondered what it would look like to start with a bare dwelling and furnish it entirely with IKEA products. Well, I guess it would look much like an IKEA store. But I mean, what would a home look like? How would it feel to live in it? Would I feel transported to Sweden once I stepped inside the front door? Or, again, just to an IKEA store?

Maybe I’ll make that a goal – IKEA-ize my apartment!

It truly is an international retail company. Some may say – often with a look of disgust on their puss – that Target is an international retailer, a French-owned company. “Tarzhay,” if you will. But I’ve been to France a few times and I never saw a “Tarzhay” there, but I did see an IKEA store. And I saw one very recently in Germany.

IKEA. The name is an acronym representing the name of the company’s founder – Ingvar Kamprad – the farm where he grew up – Elmtaryd – and his home village in Sweden – Agunnaryd. But the name might as well be Swedish for “international glue.”

Consider this: IKEA largely sells the exact same products in each of its 273 stores in 36 countries (wikipedia), and, with rare exception, by the same product names. No matter which store you visit worldwide, once you’re in the door, it’s much the same experience as another. Each product requiring assembly is accompanied by a graphic instruction manual – there are no words other than the name of the product, no languages to master and subsequently mangle, only images showing how to assemble the item.


"Easy to assemble! Literacy not required!"


It turns out that the MALM bed is one of their most popular. So Wednesday evening, while I was crawling around on my bedroom floor, poring over randomly dispersed planks of fiberboard and dedicated hardware, it is very likely that in each of 35 other countries around the planet there was at least one person also rolling around on the floor, following the same wordless instruction guide, attempting to bring a bit of Scandinavian design into his or her home! We’re kin! We share the bond of MALM! We have IKEA in our blood!

And I’ll bet, even if it’s just one little item, that some of you readers are my IKEA brethren… and sistren, too.

Gimme a HUG!

A Blog About Stuff I Should Blog About

I went to Germany alone for nine days over the holidays. I rented a car and drove from Frankfurt to Berlin and points around and in between and back. I should blog about that.

I finally bought a real computer speaker system, for cheap. It sounds pretty damn good! I should blog about that.

I went to IKEA and bought a MALM queensize bedframe and side table, both in the birch veneer. I should blog about that.

I finally ordered and received a Home Styles® Nantucket™ Buffet & Hutch and put it in my kitchen, increasing my counter space and drawer space. I should blog about that.

Since early (mid?) December I’ve read Robert Ludlum’s three Bourne novels. I should blog about that.

Lately I’m taking this I’m-getting-a-divorce thing not so well. Nothing has changed in that arena, so I don’t know why I’ve been so down. I should blog about that. But I won’t.

Now you know what you’ve been missing.

Sometimes I'd Rather Not Know

As you may have noticed, I recently switched over to SiteMeter to satisfy my curiosity over who the heck reads this thing. I had learned from reading at wordnerd that, with SiteMeter, I could track the location of readers, which pages they read, how long they visited, and where on the web they came from, even including the search term they entered in their search engine that landed them in my pages. What I didn’t realize was that I can also learn what kind of computer they’re on, what version of which operating system they’re using, and their screen resolution! WTF!

Most who have visited my blog are a close corps of “regulars” who, despite my long gaps of nothing new, keep checking back once or twice a day. Thanks, you guys!

But, as far as strangers go, there is an odd pattern emerging, something I find a little disturbing about my fellow humans, for these searchers hail not only from the United States, but from points across Europe, as well. The search term which has most often resulted in someone opening a post at FARRAGO is “farting keyboard.” I’m certain that they’ve been sorely disappointed, for while they were searching for this, what they found was this post here.

Some may say SiteMeter is a great tool for learning about who you’re reaching, who’s finding you. But I find myself saying, “Be careful what you wish for!”

My fellow bloggers are discovered, and are bestowed with prestigious blogger awards by their vast readerships; I'm discovered by people searching the world over ... for fart sounds.

A Northern Boy's Tales of the Deep South, part 3

Arachnophonic

It’s interesting, really, what events I find I’m able to sleep through and what events I’m not able to sleep through. As it goes, I’m not able to sleep through the sensation of something crawling into my ear while I sleep.

Again, it was while I lived out in the boonies behind the pecan orchard in Bumph Huck, Georgia, when earlyearly one dark morning I awoke in a terror as I felt some THING crawling into my right ear, and was overcome with a dread worse than that of death as I realized it was in too far for me to stop it.

I slapped at the side of my head, tilted my ear downward while pounding on the left side of my head in the hopes that, whatever it was would fall out.

The entire time, I was in a full-body shudder of spastic proportions, a full-blown panic as I didn’t know WHAT it was or what it was DOING in my ear! All I could think of was that episode of (I think) Star Trek where all those Enterprise crew members you never saw before had their brains eaten by some insidious insects that entered hungry and exited sated through the ears of their host buffets.

And then the sensation of crawling in my ear stopped, followed by quiet, and then followed by a purring vibration. OH GOD! It was DRILLING! It was going to punch through to my brain any second now and start gorging its little self on my grey matter and by daylight I’d be babbling non-sentences at my dog!

After a few minutes the purring stopped. Returned intermittently, and then stopped all together.

I made several futile attempts to look into my ear using only one mirror. If I had an ear syringe I would have used it, but I was fresh out of ear syringes.

I debated with myself. Does this warrant a trip to the emergency room? Is whatever it is sucking brain cells through a straw-like proboscis as I think, my capacity to do so ebbing ever so unnoticeably away? Has it already left my head?

With the quiet in my ear, I calmed down and thought rationally. Whatever it is is now resting contentedly…or died in there. So I decided I would go back to bed, try to sleep, and if I could feel it moving around again in the morning, I would go to the emergency room and have it extracted.

Surprisingly, I fell asleep. When my alarm went off I awoke and lay quietly to try to hear any movement inside. Nothing. I returned to the bathroom mirror and tugged on my earlobe and pressed a fingertip into the opening of the ear canal, forming a seal and pulling outward, hoping the suction would do something positive.

Still, nothing came out on my finger or into the outer ear. Just as I was agreeing with myself that it was time to go to the emergency room, I looked down to the front edge of the bathroom washbasin and saw a little black dot. Upon closer inspection I could tell that the little black dot was actually a little brown spider, its body all curled and caked in earwax, dead. The poor little thing had crawled into the warm little hole in my head only to be trapped in the secretory quagmire within. The purring vibrations I felt and heard must have been its little legs trying desperately to beat an escape, but, mired in cerumen, the more it struggled, the more thoroughly it was encased, and soon, death.

I experienced one more gentle quivering full-body shudder, and threw the poor little thing in the garbage.

The more I think about it, the more I’m struck that, with all the places I’ve been, in all the places I’ve slept, it hasn’t occurred more than this one time that something has crawled into my head for a look around.

And maybe it has happened more than once, but whatever came in looked around and saw nothing inspiring, and so left again.

And maybe I’m not surprised, after all.

A Northern Boy's Tales of the Deep South, part 2

Arachnophobic Angel


I grew up thinking that animals, though capable of great intelligence, some even more so than we believe them capable, hit a ceiling where reason and sensibility are beyond them. They live at the level of instinct and the drive to eat. Thus, as my thinking goes, they don’t get the creeps over silly phobias, such as needles or the sight of blood or a scalpel slicing open an infected, pus-oozing limb.

Little did I know.

Angel had been playing outside somewhere on "my" 32 acres in Bumph Huck, Georgia, one particularly lovely summer day, but she had grown tired of it, or had become curious about what might be going on indoors (read: what I might have been eating that she could possibly benefit from if some fell on the floor), so she pawed at the door, begging to come in.

I opened the door and she looked up at me. As I looked down at her I noticed a familiar shape on the floor just beyond the threshold from me, practically between Angel’s front paws: a large spider. If memory serves me, its size, including leg span, would have covered most of my palm…had I the balls to let it be there! Say, roughly, 2-1/2 to three inches in diameter – not monstrously huge, but larger than your average live-in-a-hole-catching-flies-in-a-web spider. It definitely was not a "Daddy Long-Legs."

I’m not particularly afraid of or creeped out by spiders – though a story about that is coming later – so I simply shifted my focus from Angel to the spider and marveled mildly at it. Though an intelligent dog, Angel never had the smarts to look in the direction I was pointing, but instead looked at the hand I was pointing with, as that’s usually what held the object of her interest. Imagine my surprise, then, when she looked to where I was looking. She bent her head down and found the spider idling there between her paws.

And Angel S P A Z Z E D !! She frantically lifted one paw, then the other, in an effort to keep her feet away from the spider, resulting in a hilarious little dance that lasted about one second, and then she literally leapt backwards! The spider, on the other hand, never moved.

I burst out laughing at my hapless dog! She was actually FREAKED OUT by the spider just being there. Her little freaked doggie dance was every bit as pathetically hilarious as my snake-induced quivering full-body shudder(s). But I wasn’t laughing at her as much as I was at the realization that she, a dog, displayed an aversion to spiders! Of course, the freaked doggie dance was all hers; pure Angel!

I don’t know if a dog can understand laughter, what it means is going on inside the head and body of a human. They can understand anger, particularly if it’s directed at them, but laughter, I don’t know. She did seem a little embarrassed for a few minutes afterward. Certainly I accept any skepticism at my use of that word, as it ascribes a human emotion to a lowly beast. But she did walk around sheepishly for a little while after the incident.

**sigh** I sure miss that goofy girl.

A Northern Boy's Tales of the Deep South, part 1

Guardian Angel

In a recent post at No Accent Yet, Tiff shared the hilarious tale of her “harrowing” experience with a spider in her car. Unlike Tiff, I’m generally okay with spiders; I just don’t want them crawling on me…or worse.

Tiff’s tale brought up a memory for me of something involving a spider that occurred when I was living in deep southwest Georgia, and then, as a consequence, other memories of funny stuff flooded in. And so, I am inspired to share them here. But not all at once.

As far as I can recall, and as far as I am aware, I have never been in a real life-and-death situation. Okay, well, maybe once. Sure, some may say that, since I often fly commercially, I am putting my life in someone else’s hands… How does that joke go? “When I die, I want to go quietly in my sleep, just like Grampa did; not screaming and crying like his passengers on his bus.”

No. Never really life-and-death. But at least I know that, during her lifetime, Angel, my Dalmatian, was ready to defend me to the best of her abilities.

I had lived in Bumph Huck, Georgia, for just over a year and a half, paying rent beyond what I could afford simply because it was the only place I found that would take a large dog. When I started looking for another place, a co-worker of mine named Bob, a very timid, cowardly man (I am not exaggerating) approached me and said that there was a piece of property owned by his family, which they had rented out in the past. It wasn’t the prettiest structure, but it was on a nice piece of property out in the woods next to a creek. I asked him how much rent he would be asking.

He lowered his head and stammered, “Well, we’ve asked as much as a hundred and fifty dollars.”

My knees nearly buckled as, surely, I was dreaming! “A HUNDRED FIFTY?!”

This was 1996.

Bob cowered a little. “We could ask for less…it’s okay.”

“LESS?” I couldn’t help but shout. “I’ll take it for one-fifty!”

“But you haven’t even seen the place!”

“Bob, right now I’d be glad to live in a cardboard box for one-fifty a month!”

The place was exactly as he had described. Tucked away in the woods behind a pecan orchard, it was a slightly glorified hunter's shack, built of cinder-blocks, and perched atop a sloping bank, with a large, picture-window view to a wide creek below. There was a massive concrete deck wrapped around two sides of it, and the rectangular building was covered with a heavy-beam, lodge-type roof. With the exception of the drab, unpainted cinder-blocks, the house and land were actually quite beautiful!

On Labor Day weekend, with the help of a friend and a co-worker, I moved in. As all moving days are, it had been a long day. Before I could even begin to unpack, the sun sank below the horizon, so I made sure I took care of the important tasks first – I set up my TV and reclining chair in the far corner, opposite the entry door and the kitchen. There was a fireplace on the end where I had set my chair, but Bob had apologetically forbade me using it because the chimney was cracked (the whole house was on a 40-year slide down the hill, so there were fundamental cracks in the concrete). On either side of the fireplace were built-in firewood bins with hinged wooden covers, great for setting things on, like asses and glasses.

The very next day I set to unpacking and setting things out. In the afternoon I took a break to make myself a sandwich and to lunch in my recliner in front of the TV. Angel, the poor soul I had already moved three times before she was three years old, was homesick for the last place, and was constantly expectant that we were going “home” every time I stood up, and would bolt for the car. As I sat and ate, she stood about four feet in front of me and stared at me. When I finished eating and set the plate on the table beside me, she stood and stared at me.

And then I stared at her. All I saw in her eyes was expectation. And then her eyes shifted from mine to the area just to my right.

And she growled.

Angel was a gentle soul; unless we were playing tug with one of her toys, I never heard her growl a serious growl…well, at least until we moved in with the future Mrs. Farrago and her dogs, but that’s another story.

It started very quietly, but it grew louder as her gaze intensified. For a brief moment I thought she was growling at me, since I’d heard it said that you should never stare into a dog’s eyes, which I had been doing. But then I realized she was definitely looking at something to my right and… b e h i n d m e . . .

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Angel was serious. I turned my head slowly, absolutely clueless as to what she could possibly be looking at. My eyes scanned the wall until they came to rest on something in the corner which hadn't been there before, on top of the wooden bin lid...about three feet away from me. A snake.

S N A K E ! !

The human body is capable of things we can’t possibly envision ourselves doing. How do I know this? I was seated in a soft, comfy reclining chair. I was reclined in this reclining chair. I had leaned forward and my torso was twisted to look at something behind me. The next thing I knew, I was standing behind Angel. I’m certain I flew there. When the quivering full-body shudder stopped I screamed “HOLY SHIT!” …and commenced another quivering full-body shudder.

While I raced frantically around my humble abode to find something with which to kill the snake, Angel stood calmly, quietly, protectively, and watched the snake. I found a baseball bat. I ran to the corner and then I realized that striking at the snake would mean getting to within 34 inches of a LIVE SNAKE! What kind of snake is it? I DON’T KNOW! Is it poisonous? I DON’T KNOW! If I missed it with the bat (I know my own record in baseball all too well!) could it – would it strike at me?

The bat wasn’t a good idea. I didn’t really want to kill the snake anyway, I just didn’t want it to kill me! I ran around for a while more and then I grabbed a can of Raid insect repellent. I didn’t suspect I could kill the snake with Raid, but I could make it really uncomfortable. I sprayed the snake, which then made a mad dash from whence it came, into a separation between the wall of the woodbin and the wall of the house. I sprayed that crack and all of the interior of that woodbin until the can was nearly empty!

After the holiday, when I went back to work, I told my frightening story to some of my co-workers, a few of whom had spent their entire lives in Bumph Huck, Georgia. And, as one might expect, they just laughed at me.

“It was a rat snake,” one giggled at me.

“It was a king snake,” chortled another.

Even if it had actually been a rattlesnake, I think the locals would have laughed at me just the same, just because I had the double-whammy affliction of being a city-boy northerner. And then, privately, they would have experienced their own quivering full-body shudders!

The snake never came back.

Book Meme, Danno!

Professor tagged everybody with this meme in an effort to embarrass everyone over the amount of classic literature we’ve never read - not to mention some contemporary standouts worth… uh …mentioning, too. And she succeeded. It’s pretty damn embarrassing.

But there it is. And when you get to the bottom, be sure to look and see if you’re one of those I feel like tagging with this one.

Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you've read. Italicize the ones you want to read. Don't alter the ones that you aren't interested in.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) - atheist that I am, I found this a delectable read!
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee) - I think I read this for a h.s. assignment…or maybe I just saw the movie?
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown) - minus one glaring error, another delectable read!
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving) - the only Irving I’ve read is Cider House Rules and it blew me away, so I’d definitely read another Irving
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King) - this one clued me in on the secret…forget his straight horror stuff - Stephen King is simply a fantastic writer!
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) - not even in school, believe it or don’t!
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) - UGH! High school required reading. A sure cure for insomnia if I ever saw one! (Professor left no instructions how to label it if you only read some of it!)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom) - heard Mr. Albom speak at one of our clients’ conventions. Good stuff!
31. Dune (Frank Herbert) – I really, really tried to read this one, but never could get through Chapter 1 awake.
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks) - if the movie is half as good as the book, then I don’t need to read it; the movie wrecked me big time!
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell) - in h.s., though don’t remember much of it
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) - because Professor gushed about it, so I’s curious
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom) - though, being atheist, and all, I gather the premise of this one would be hard to swallow
45. Bible – have I mentioned the atheist thing, yet?
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) - because I love, love, love the sandwich!
48. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt) - I heard a lot of buzz about this one
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) - another h.s. assignment; remember little about it except the retarded guy kills a puppy and doesn’t realize it…and then… a woman? Hmmm. What’s that say about me? I remember the puppy dying, but not sure about a woman…
50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) - ?? in h.s., maybe?
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) - I keep hearing more and more about this author…gotta give him a look
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) - the movie confused the hell out of me…I only hope the book is better
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones's Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White) - when I was a kid…stoopid book made me cry
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck) - woops…or was THIS the one with the retarded guy and the puppy and maybe the woman?
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding) - h.s. again (shiver)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum) - this one is sitting on my shelf, waiting for me
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton) - I think. In h.s.
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce

The choices to put on this list are seemingly infinite, I realize, but there are some great classics missing, like Dracula (Bram Stoker), for instance. That book was way ahead of its time for its imagery and graphic detail, WAY better than any film, classic or modern, that ever attempted to retell the story. And what about The Green Mile (Stephen King)? I know, it’s not a classic in the… uh …classic sense, but it’s a damn fine read! And I highly recommend The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien.

Have you read this far? TAG! You’re it!

The Flip

In my many hundreds of thousands of miles traveled to many dozens of places across half the globe, I’ve come to observe one constant: omelet chefs.

Despite the many varieties of cuisine and the many schools of culinary thought, by looking at any omelet chef one might think they had all learned at the same cooking school. They all seem to use the same pan, the same burner, the same technique of getting the liquid egg to hit the hot pan and become solid egg…

They make it look easy. Well, they ought to…isn’t it what they do all day? Of course, their most difficult job is probably in the preparation – cutting up all the omelet fixins in order to have them at their fingertips, knowing how much they need on hand for the coming feeding frenzy at whatever hotel or event they’re working.

To me, the most dazzling part of the breakfast-on-the-road ritual is The Flip. In my personal cooking experience, any time the food has left the pan during the actual cooking has meant a serious diversion from the instructions and an emergency clean-up, so to see a chef separate food from pan, to send the food flying into the air on purpose is just enough thrill for me of an early morn! And I'm not the only one; many a fellow on-the-road-omelet-eaters watching with me has made the comment, “Well, if it were me, I’d be cleaning egg off of the floor/ceiling/sink/refrigerator/dog/whatever.” But, like any professional at his or her job, they do make it look easy. Watching any number of chefs do this I’ve only ever seen one botch The Flip, and then it was only a slightly less than perfect execution. He still got it in the pan, with only a few bits of fixins bouncing over the edge of the pan and onto the floor.

More exciting than the omelet flip is the eggs-over-x flip. It’s one thing to flip eggs that have already been scrambled – you don’t have to worry about breaking the yolks. I think it takes just a little more skill to flip eggs with yolks intact and keep them that way when they return to the pan. The typical hotel omelet chef can do this without effort as well.

This morning I decided I wanted 2 eggs, fried, over-medium, which, to you non-egg-eaters, means yolks intact, flipped over so that the egg-white is cooked thoroughly on both sides, but the yolks are still liquid (for dunking the toast!), and there’s no runny, gooey, clear fluid oozing about.

The catch? I’m not on the road.

The omelet chef is me. Is I? Am. is.

I got me these non-stick skillets, one 10-inch, the other 8-inch, at Target shortly after I moved into my apartment. Following the example of The Omelet Chef I’ve seen hundreds of times, now, I set the 8-incher on the stove (though I think The Omelet Chef uses a smaller one, even), fired up the gas and threw in a pat of butter. I cracked the eggs into a bowl, and when the butter was melted and bubbling in the pan, I deposited the eggs into it.

I perhaps had the flame a little too high, the pan a little too hot, so the whites turned white pretty quickly. I swished the pan around a little just to make sure the eggs were not sticking. Since I always seem to wait too long to turn the eggs I cook, I made a conscious effort to ignore the internal admonition to wait a little while longer. I took the pan and mentally prepared myself for The Flip. I turned and held the pan over the sink (it’s great to have confidence, idnit?). I’d flipped scrambled before, but with a slightly sticky pan that was a little too big, to mixed results.

I dipped the forward edge of the pan down and, just as the eggs slid toward the edge, I lifted and leveled the pan quickly. The eggs went up about six inches and came down… exactly as they had been when they left the pan – sunny-side up. No flip.

Next attempt. Forward edge down. Come on Farrago, this is easy. Eggs slid to the edge. You can do it, boy! Pan up! Eggs up! And…

SUCCESS! I had completed The Flip, no emergency clean-up necessary, both yolks intact! Just a few more seconds back on the heat, and then I plated the eggs.

As a meal, it was so-so. I still don’t have a toaster, so I dunked cold, “raw” bread. The eggs themselves were okay – they indeed could have used a little more time on a slightly lower flame, but they looked and smelled great!

So, am I ready to tackle a cheese soufflé?

Nah. I’ll stick with flippin’ eggs for a while.