I Believe Roger Clemens

I believe Roger Clemens. I believe Roger because I heard him testify before Congress last year or whenever it was and he sounded so sincere!

As a total needle-coward myself I can understand perfectly and believe absolutely in the ability of a person to block out all needle experiences. It is my habit to go off in a mental La La land any time I am confronted with a needle..thus rendering my memory of it totally void.

Even if 12 good men (or women) and true decide that he is a total prick (is this a pun?) and has needle tracks a mile wide up both arms I believe Roger because I have always liked the game of baseball and because I want to believe him.

My belief in Roger stems from a devotion similar to that of the religious faithful who believe Franklin Graham when he says he “loves Muslims”… or the Republican faithful who were willing to believe Sen. Larry Craig when he explained to the world about his “naturally wide stance”… or the Clinton devotees who took the old “I did not have sex with that woman..” thing totally to heart.

Sometimes the truth, no matter how incredulous, is just easier to take if you truly BELIEVE.

And so I believe Roger Clemens. I hope they publish the address of his new and upcoming federally funded residence so I can send him goody bags of goat cheese and homemade fudge. He might need a friend when the muscle starts to drop off and his athletic body resumes its former ordinariness. He may feel quite vulnerable there with all those long-timers who have had nothing else to do but pump iron for the last few years.

Washers, Dryers and Bubbles Galore

(The model in this photo and her location are unidentified for fear some one may come and steal her laundry off the line.)

Dishwashers are nice and I would like to have one even though, although I hate to cook, I do not hate to do dishes in the sink the old fashioned way.

Even if I can’t actually remember being present when fire was first used by man I am old enough to still fervently appreciate hot water at the sink with bubbly grease-resistant soap in a bottle. Like washers and dryers, they are wonders not to be taken lightly.

Until I was nine years old the water in the house came only to the kitchen sink and was piped from a cistern at the back of the house. The 20^th century had advanced slowly at our house, as at our neighbors’, but at one point the small hand pump at the sink had been replaced with an honest to goodness modern faucet. It was yet another six or eight years before the bathroom arrived and with it hot water. That was followed later by a shower in the tub and after that there was no stopping us.

Before all this scientific progress, doing laundry was a day long-process done in the basement where the wringer -washer and two tubs of rinse water were set up.

The basement was a wet and dreary place lighted by a bare 60 watt bulb suspended from the ceiling with a pull string to switch it on and off. A family of toads lived year round in the northwest corner and spider webs were so thick overhead I used to think they held the house up. The redeeming features of the basement were the water spigot above the washing machine and the drain in the southeast corner.

In the early years the water was heated in a great oblong pot that covered completely the double-burnered electric plate on the wooden bench in the corner. I remember Mom emptying the steaming water into the washer. How she even lifted it is a wonder. Later, the hot water heater made the job a lot easier.

The first step was to sort everything by color into piles; whites, colored, bedding, denim/work clothes etc.. equal to load capacity. We had a large family so there were generally 10-12 loads.

Then powdered soap and bleach was put in the wash water. The first rinse tub was left plain but “bluing” was put in the second rinse tub. Bluing was just that..a blueish dye that made white things really white.

The first load into the washer was generally bed linen then dishcloths, washcloths, white shirts, underwear and everything that needed a strong bleaching. The washer was turned on and the load was left to wash for about 20 minutes.

During this first wash a large pan of starch was set to cook on the stove. Almost all of the colored things: shirts, blouses, work clothes etc. were starched so there had to be quite a lot of it made up. The powdered starch came in a box, had to be mixed and cooked to a thick paste separately.

At our house a pot of beans, having spent the night soaking in the double boiler on the kitchen stove, was set to cook while the wash was going on. With cornbread, that made a ready supper after a grueling day running up and down the basement stairs lugging baskets of wet laundry.

Each load had to be run through the wringer from washer to first tub to second tub and again to starch. The things to be starched were dipped in a dishpan piece by piece after the last rinse and run through the wringer again.

After each load was finished it was taken to the side-yard. Small white things, dish cloths, washcloths etc. were spread on clean grass to bleach further in the sun. Everything else was hung. The clothesline was a set of four heavily wired lines stretched from poles about 30 feet apart. The weight of the wet laundry made the lines sag almost to the ground so 2x2 poles or just very long, trimmed branches from the woods were used at intervals to prop the lines up.

When the clothes were dry they were brought in and the things to be ironed, which was pretty much everything except the towels and wash cloths and underwear, were spread in a pile, sprinkled with water, either with your hand or with a pop bottle with a sprinkler attachment stuck into it, rolled up tightly and put into a laundry basket. Like most people’s laundry baskets, ours were used wooden bushel fruit baskets. After sitting in the basket for a couple of hours or sometimes all night they were uniformly but slightly moist and just right for ironing.

Our ironings were generally at least two baskets of tightly rolled and packed shirts, blouses, slacks, skirts, dresses, tablecloths, hankerchiefs, work clothes and blue jeans.

This was a lot of work.

Doing dishes was also a job to be remembered. Before we had climbed that last rung of the social ladder to hot water in the house and got our very own hot water heater, dish water had to be heated on the kitchen stove. This was done in a very large, heavy teakettle designed for tasks like this that far exceeded simple tea making.

Our kettle contained four steel balls, about the size of large marbles, that rattled around inside the kettle and served to keep the lime build up off the inside of the kettle.

The kettle was very heavy and for a long while, after the task of dishwashing fell to me, someone bigger had to lift the kettle and pour the steaming water into the dishpan in the sink. Even for an adult two hands with potholders were used to carry and pour the kettle of scalding water.

The modern version of dishwashing soap at the time was an all purpose powdered detergent, (we used Oxydol) that was also used as laundry soap. The fantasy of dishwater that actually had bubbles and did not immediately produce an itchy slime on your arms was just that, a fantasy.

But even more important than the actual washing of the dishes was the “scalding” In our house this was a never-to-be-neglected or carelessly done process. Mother was a great believer in the axiom Dirty Dishes Kill People. Unscalded dishes spread diseases like the plague, typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis, dysentery etc. It must be true because we ALWAYS scalded and not one of us caught the plague, typhoid, cholera, TB or any serious dysentery! We often got scalded ourselves but we never caught the plague, typhoid, cholera, etc..etc..

The scalding was done by propping the dishes up in a second dishpan, pouring the water from the kettle, then stacking to drain on a tea towel on the counter top. Dish drainers came much later. They are a wonderful invention. Every inch of every item had to be scalded. If you got lazy and missed an inch that could have been the very inch wherein lurked the germ that could have wiped out the whole family! No one wanted that responsibility.

I don’t know which is the bigger luxury: my automatic washer and dryer..or my bottle of Dawn Liquid Dish Soap with its lovely ungreasy sink full of bubbles.

Ernie Pyle-War Correspondent

Ernie Pyle Aug 3, 1900-April 18, 1945

Ernie Pyle is and will remain one of my most profoundly inspiring heroes. Pyle was no warrior, no strategist, no great thinker.

Pyle was a writer.

He was a WWII war correspondent that forced America to see and feel and understand what war really was and what it did to men who had to fight it and to people in far away places with strange names whose lives were overwhelmed by it.

His telling of the war and the stories of the soldiers who fought it did not come out of some warm and cozy press room.

Pyle's reports were born in muddy ditches and fire bombed streets and bloody roadways and were the awful truths lived by exhausted, heart-sick, home-sick men.

The words he wrote, the truths he told and the soldiers' stories, which he shared and so conscientiously reported, are still profoundly gut wrenching. LR


Excerpts from Ernie Pyle's War as he wrote it:

....to the fighting soldier that phase of the war is behind. It was left behind after his first battle. His blood is up. He is fighting for his life, and killing now for him is as much a profession as writing is for me.
Ernie Pyle

Swinging first and swinging to kill is all that matters now.
Ernie Pyle

The men are walking. They are fifty feet apart, for dispersal. Their walk is slow, for they are dead weary, as you can tell even when looking at them from behind. Every line and sag of their bodies speaks their inhuman exhaustion.
Ernie Pyle

In their eyes as they pass is not hatred, not excitement, not despair, not the tonic of their victory - there is just the simple expression of being here as though they had been here doing this forever, and nothing else.
Ernie Pyle

The front-line soldier wants it to be got over by the physical process of his destroying enough Germans to end it. He is truly at war. The rest of us, no matter how hard we work, are not.
Ernie Pyle

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Ernie Pyle

I've been immersed in it too long. My spirit is wobbly and my mind is confused. The hurt has become too great.
Ernie Pyle

It was a night when London was ringed and stabbed with fire.....
The closest fires were near enough for us to hear the crackling flames and the yells of firemen. Little fires grew into big ones even as we watched. Big ones died down under the firemen's valor only to break out again later.
Ernie Pyle

Someday when peace has returned to this odd world I want to come to London again and stand on a certain balcony on a moonlit night and look down upon the peaceful silver curve of the Thames with its dark bridges.
Ernie Pyle

He never did.

Pyle died at 45 years of age, killed by sniper fire on the tiny island of Ie Shima, off the coast of Okinawa in the Pacific, April 18, 1945, only four months before Allied Victory over Japan was declared on August 14.

A Great Day!

Well, today is a great day!

My mind wasn’t much made up on the subject for the first half of the day, (it is now 12:00pm AKA noon.)

But after thinking on it, I can come up with quite the little list of positives that keep me keeping on.

#1: It has now been 162 days since I last dropped my cell phone in the pot!

Hey! High tech stuff is hard for my generation! But I think I have truly mastered the cell-phone-in-the-pot thing.

#2: I have not fallen out of bed since September 21, 2004

(that’s when I first moved to the new house and being totally disoriented in the middle of the night, rolled over the wrong way. It could happen to anyone.)

#3 I am pretty sure I don’t have worms.

I don’t seem to have any of the symptoms of that guy on Medical Mysteries that wound up with a 30-ft long tape worm. And besides, I never travel below the Mason/Dixon line just for that reason. I understand parasites really only love places that don’t freeze your monkey shut at least four times a year.

#4 My last bank statement shows that there were 19 days last month wherein (whereat?) I was not overdrawn!!

This is a great confidence builder. Of course if you’ve never BEEN overdrawn at the bank you will obviously just have to go through life feeling inferior on the subject. Sorry about that.

#5 My sore toe doesn’t hurt anymore.

You know, (if you don’t I’ll be happy to tell you about it) the one I broke five years ago kicking that goat.

AND:

#6 That itchy spot on my head wasn't lice after all but just that gash healing where the stapler fell on me last week.

Yes, today is a Great Day!!

Eat Better and Cheaper

Save Money-Eat Better-Stress Less

“Oh Lord!,” I can just hear my grown kids groaning now.

I'm always giving advice that nobody wants and NEVER takes but for what it's worth....

Grandma’s Rules Are as Follows:

1: Quit Eating Junk

2: Treat Your Kids Like They’re Important

3: Keep Your Eye on the Goal

Just to clear the deck I will admit, and assume that everyone knows, that I was a lousy mother, my children were often starved for junk food and were forced to wear homemade clothes well into the mid-years of elementary school. My oldest son spent his first hard-earned paycheck on a store bought haircut. Of course these aren’t the only examples of my lousy motherhood but they are the ones I can bear to share publicly and the only ones pertinent here.

I was also blessed with kids that were notorious for eating three times the amount the children of my friends and relatives did and challenged with having to care for them on about a quarter of the resources.

But from all that deprivation and struggle I did learn a few things just in case anyone is interested.

Quit Eating Junk

Feed Your Family Real Food:

First of all let me suggest that you only use those fancy cookbooks that you bought at all those garage sales or got as birthday gifts, anniversary gifts etc. for night reading. About all they are good for is to make a person set such high standards for cooking that they never get any real cooking done. On top of that they make a person feel so inadequate. I have a whole shelf full and a drawer full to boot and I am totally inadequate.!!

To feed your family real food you must buy real food not what ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) and the American Cardboard and Plastic Industries want you to think is food. Don’t go up any center aisle of the store except the baking and condiment aisle. (Flour, Sugar, Lard, Tea, Coffee, Ketchup, Mustard..well you get my drift) and the canned food aisle.

The periphery of almost all stores is where everything you really need is located. That’s meat, milk, cheese, bread, vegetables and fruit. If it’s in a box, bag, or frozen it should be a small addition to any meal and/or a rare treat. Treat it like a treat and don’t do it often.

Treat Your Kids Like They’re Important

Your Children Are Not Family Pets.

Expect Them to Help. They will surprise you if they think what they’re doing is important.

Keep Your Eye on the Goal:

Don’t rob Your Family of Good Meals or Your Precious Time

The goal is to provide a fast, pleasant, nutritious meal with the time to enjoy it. For good or ill, if there are children, the home is a training ground. Good food is better food. Less stress is better than more stress.

If you work outside the home, (and who doesn’t?) don’t cook more than an hour or two a week. Here’s how: Crock Pot, Crock Pot, Crock Pot. Grill, Grill, Grill. Bake, Bake Bake.

Sample Weekly Shopping:

Buy two whole chickens, one five-pound roast, five pork chops, ten pounds of hamburger and a package of either short ribs, spare ribs or pork steak for BBQ. One pack of meatloaf seasoning (McCormicks or store brand), 5 pound bag of small red potatoes, a two pound bag of carrots, four cans green beans, four cans carrots, four cans creamed or whole kernel corn, a stalk of celery and a bag of salad greens, the darker the better, (Iceberg lettuce has little food value.) four boxes mac and cheese, one pack of spaghetti, four boxes instant brown rice, one package frozen noodles, 3 packages of pre-baked hot rolls, a big package of frozen french fries, two cans of your favorite beans, a dozen eggs and a couple of jars of Ragu.

This will give you…

2 chicken dinners

1 beef roast dinner

1 meatloaf dinner

1 grilled hamburger dinner

1 spaghetti and meatball dinner

1 Grilled Pork Chop dinner

1 Barbecue (pork or beef)

None of the above will take any more time to fix than you would spend waiting in a fast food line or waiting for the Pizza delivery boy.

This list allows for a couple of throw-out recipes (AKA My-family-wouldn't-touch-that-with a- 10-foot-pole) and one night of carry-out or eating out. They should even each other out.

In The Kitchen

The following should take about ten minutes.

Well, you've made it home from the store. Divide hamburger into five two-pound portions, put each of three portions in separate zip lock bags and freeze. These you can use to grill. Take them out the night before to thaw in the frig or..remember..the nuker does have a “thaw” thingy on it.

Take one portion and toss into a bowl with a handful of oatmeal, an egg, (be sure and break the egg) salt and pepper, and a dollop of milk. A dollop is what you get if you start to pour milk and catch yourself just in time when you meant to pour beer. Roll into little meatballs, put back into a quart freezer bag. Now I know you can buy little plastic bags of little plastic meatballs but they are about four times the cost and four times the added chemicals besides being frozen in plastic for a month or two. This process will take you about four minutes if you don’t have to hunt for the salt and pepper, or the egg etc..

Freeze meatballs, chickens, pork or beef for BBQ and beef roast.

Sample Fast Meals

Weekend Day One.

This should take about 7 minutes max.

Meat loaf, potatoes, salad and hot rolls

Mix one unfrozen portion of hamburger with meatloaf seasoning mix, a handful of oatmeal, an egg and a blob of salsa, taco sauce, ketchup..whatever. Place in loaf pan or round casserole. Drizzle catsup on top and put in 350 degree oven.

Take four potatoes, grease with any grease but motor oil, poke holes in the top with fork and put in oven with meatloaf.

Cook about an hour until meatloaf is no longer bleeding. Serve with some WASHED salad and encourage eating the skin of the potato. Potato skin is loaded with good stuff.

Toss a half dozen store bought hot rolls in to heat for about the three minutes it’s going to take you to throw the salad into a bowl. I don’t care what you put on the potato or the salad. You have already worked off any fat you might get from sour cream, Ranch Dressing etc. poking holes in the potatoes.

Weekend Day 2:

This Should Take About 7 minutes actual work and another 20 to sit and contemplate the grill and listen to the neighbor’s dog bark.

Grilled pork chops, grilled potatoes, green beans and bread and butter

Slice and boil (do not peel) five red potatoes for about ten minutes. Pour off water and put potatoes on a piece of tinfoil that you have greased with oleo. Drop a blob of oleo on top of them, salt and pepper, fold the foil around them and stick on grill.

Take pork chops and do anything fancy you want to with them..dip in dressing..season with lemon pepper..lay a slice of pineapple on top after they’ve been turned once or just grill the dang things with salt and pepper. Don’t overcook but make sure they are done. Raw pork is a real no no.

Put a blob of oleo in a sauce pan and dump in a can of green beans.

Serve with bread and butter.

Any Weekday:

Before leaving for work put whatever meat you bought for BBQ in crock pot and pour BBQ sauce over it, set crock pot on low.

Serve with your favorite canned beans and baked fries.

Any Weekday:

15 minutes

Stewed chicken. Brown rice, salad and corn or green beans.

Put frozen chicken in crock pot on low before leaving for work. Add salt and pepper,

and a branch of celery. (You can take the bag of guts out of the chicken right before serving when it is all cooked and juicy and no one will ever know the difference. In fact in later years your children will think people are crazy who don't do it like that.)

As a safety measure set crock pot on metal surface such as your stove or a cookie sheet across one side of the sink. Remember do not run water with a plugged in crock pot in the sink. If you're really paranoid put the dang thing in the garage on concrete. When you get home, ladle off about a cup of broth into a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Add some instant brown rice (follow the box direction here.) Serve with salad, corn green beans or whatever.

Any Weekday:

About 7 minutes

Roast beef, red potatoes and carrots.

Put frozen beef roast into crock pot in the morning. Peel an onion and put in whole. Peel three carrots and put in whole. Wash and put in four or five red potatoes, unpeeled and whole. Do crock pot on low as you did with the chicken.

Serve with anything else you want to.

Any Weekday:

About 15 minutes

Grill Hamburgers with mac and cheese, pork and beans etc.

If you forgot to take the hamburger out of the freezer thaw it in micro wave for grilling. Serve with cheese, cheap iceberg lettuce, sliced tomatoes etc…Mac and cheese from box per directions takes about ten minutes so start it before you put the hamburgers on. Pork and Beans..Applesauce..whatever..

Any Weekday:

About 20 Minutes

Roast chicken and Noodles, corn, salad and/or fresh celery

Plop a whole frozen chicken, salt and pepper, a branch of celery and a chunk of onion in crock pot before going to work. Set on low. When you get home remove chicken to bowl or platter and cover to keep warm. Dig out the slimy cooked celery, onions etc and do whatever you want with them. Dump a bag of frozen noodles in broth in crock pot and cook on high ‘til noodles are done. (My crock pot will come to a boil on high and the noodles cook quickly. If yours doesn’t, dump noodles and broth into large pan and boil until done.)

While noodles are cooking put a blob of oleo into a sauce pan and dump in a can of corn.

Serve chicken and noodles with corn and salad or raw celery.

Any Weekday:

15 minutes

Spaghetti and meatballs.

Set a package of spaghetti to cooking. (Just break in half and put in a large pan of water. Poke periodically to keep it from glomming together. Brown hamburger balls, (remember you made the little suckers the day you bought groceries?) turning occasionally, in a fairly large skillet. Turn skillet on low and cook with lid for a few minutes. Ad Ragu and heat until hot. Serve with Italian bread and salad or broccoli or something green.

Well, I got that off my chest!!

The Catalogue People

I was born in the dining room before the upstairs was finished on a swelteringly hot day and I was very fat.

Being my mother’s seventh child there really was no need for a doctor as she had done it six times before but he was called anyway and his contribution to the event was to tell Dad, “Well, Mike, maybe this will be the lucky one as she is “seven come eleven.”

You have to know a little bit about the game of Craps, to understand his thinking on this. Craps is a dice game played by gamblers and Dad was famous for his love of the game. In the game of Craps sevens and elevens are game changers and I was the seventh child born in the seventh month on the eleventh day. (July 11)

Shieldsy, our neighbor and Mom’s friend, assisted at my birth and tried hard to keep me cool and happy but the cooler I got the unhappier I became. As soon as Shieldsy left to fix supper for Poppy Shields and her own family Mom got me out of the basket and wrapped me up tight. She said as soon as I started to sweat she never hard another peep out of me.

I guess that’s why winters always seemed so darned cold to me. That big old house only had two zones, frigid and sweltering. Even with the huge basement furnace (as big as a modern day bathroom) that ate up the sooty coal that cost Mom $15 a ton load, the chill in winter never left and a draft always blew around our ankles and knees.

And often, on winter nights..the waiting nights..between Thanksgiving and Christmas..and then through a long January..it was just me, Mom’s sewing scissors and the last year’s Sears and Roebuck Catalogue.

Sitting at the dining room table with my legs tucked up under me and my sweater pulled down over my fingers to keep warm, I spent long, miraculous hours with the Catalogue People.

The Catalogue People were incredibly clever. They spoke, sang, played and danced with each other in an endless variety of dress, carefully selected and cut from the Men’s, Women’s and Children’s Section and played with the most marvelous toys from the Toy Section.

They pushed the baby, chosen form the Infants Section, in the most adorable baby carriage of the season. (after cutting a slit in the buggy top the baby could be slipped right in.)

The children, selected from the underwear page of the Children’s Section, wore every wonderful item of dress that I had ever desired or imagined. With their charming clothing held in place with small tabs cut at the shoulder and waist, they slept in the most exquisite nighties, swam in the most cunning swim garb and played in the brightest, most casual play clothes. For winter only the furriest, most elegant coat and hat would do.

The mother, chosen for her gentle expression and whether her arms stuck out far enough to bend the tabs in at the waist, wore incredible combinations of glamour and servitude from the Women’s Section. She always carried beautiful “Genuine Morocan Leather” purses and wore perky hats with feathers.

The father, a stalwart fellow, wore handsome hats and always faced to the right. I haven’t a clue as to why this requirement was so important but it was and I adhered to it.

All You Need to Know About Cows

The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848-1954), Saturday 7 July 1945, page 23
National Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article972861

TIE cow is a mamal. It has six sides, left, right, and upper and
below. At the back it has a tail on which hangs a brush. With
this it sends the flies away so that they will not fall in the milk. The
head is for the purpose of growing horns, and so that the mouth can be
somewhere. The horns are to butt with. The mouth is to moo with.
Under the cow hangs the milk. It is arranged for milking.
When people milk, the milk comes, and there is never an end to
the supply. How the cow does it I have not yet realised, but it makes
more and more. The cow has a fine sense of smell; one can smell it
far away. This is the reason for the fresh air in the country.
The cow does not eat much, but what it eats it eats twice, so
that it gets enough. When it is hungry it moos, and when it says
nothing it is because all its inside is full up of grass.

-Essay by t. 10-year-old boy at Klttybrewster School, Aberdeen.