2.18.2020 – simple pleasures

simple pleasures
what does innocence smell like
bake those biscuits brown

Sometime in my life a romance with biscuits began.

Maybe it was just the name of Paul Bunyan’s head cook, Hot Biscuit Slim (and the dessert cook, Cream Puff Fatty) that got me going.

Maybe it was the reoccurring theme of biscuits and gravy, biscuits and RED EYE gravy on the Beverly Hillbillies.

Maybe it was Atticus Finch calling to Jem, “Son, why don’t you come down out of there now and have your breakfast. Calpurnia has a good one. Hot biscuits.”

Maybe it was reading how Mrs. Truman was told they didn’t serve biscuits at the White House.

At least they didn’t until Mrs. Truman showed up and gave the kitchen hell over store-bought cold dinner rolls and hot biscuits turned up for the President’s breakfast.

In my brain somewhere is a memory of coming home from a summer trip in Northern Southern Michigan or was it upper – lower Michigan, the Sleeping Bear area.

My Dad spotted a Kentucky Fried Chicken and pulled over.

Taking the family out to eat must have been a bit of gut check for my Dad, what with wife and nine or ten kids and most likely a cousin or two for the fun of it.

Seems like there was a Lower along this trip.

We got buckets of chicken and boxes of biscuits and sat out on picnic tables on a summer night.

The biscuits came with packets of honey.

I ate about a dozen biscuits.

Okay, not a dozen, but I know I took more than I should have.

And so it started.

I wanted to learn to bake biscuits.

Not just any biscuits, but the biscuits that were the stuff of culliary legend.

The food stuff that built a country.

My Mom let me try Bisquick first and we moved on to Pillsbury biscuits in a cardboard tube.

Good but not good enough to create legend.

I moved on to baking powder and cooking oil and got pretty good making a biscuit I really liked.

One summer, before going back to school in Ann Arbor, I wanted to bring the taste of summer with me.

Like Grandma in Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury who would be “drawn to the cellar of winter for a June adventure”, I wanted something that might be a sudden patch light in the Michigan snow.

So I learned how to make blueberry jam.

Blueberries that had grown up along the shore of Lake Michigan and sucked in sunshine until they were ready to burst.

That jam and my biscuits were my secret weapon that winter.

Loved my biscuits but I didn’t mind when my friend Salle stopped by with a loaf a bread.

She said she saw the bread through a bakery window as it came of the oven and all she could think of was my jam.

We ate the whole loaf and a jar of jam.

My body misses those days, but I digress.

My biscuits were good … but not (yet) great.

I kept studying the cookbooks and came away with a missing ingredient.

Lard.

Remember lard?

When Cousin Vinnie goes into the diner and the menu lists, BREAKFAST, LUNCH, DINNER and orders breakfast, the cook starts by dropping a cup of lard onto the grill.

Lard and a hot, hot oven.

Now my biscuits were something.

Brown, crunchy, soft, flakey all at the same time.

Biscuits and gravy.

Sausage gravy.

Ham gravy.

White pepper gravy.

CHICKEN GRAVY.

I get hungry in an awful bad way just thinking about it.

For Christmas my son gave me a cast iron skillet.

I had been looking at it for a couple for weeks.

Thinking this was just the thing for biscuits.

Finally got around to trying it.

I am near 60 years old.

After years of trying I have it.

A simple recipe.

A simple skillet.

A simple pleasure.

And the smell of the biscuits baking.

Down south there was a comedian named Jerry Clower.

Some of his stuff is just poetry as comedy.

But the sound of his voice telling stories of the south is a thing of near mythology.

I came across an interview with him done by Mississippi Public Radio when he was asked what was his fondest memory of growing up.

He talked about a day where you had to work in the fields but it rained.

It rained and so you couldn’t work.

You would sit on the front porch, watch the rain and smell the biscuits cooking.

Smell the biscuits cooking.

Biscuits.

A simple innocent pleasure.

Biscuits cooking.

The smell of innocence.

Boil em cabbage down
Bake em biscuits brown
The only song that i can sing is
Boil em cabbage down

Someone asked, all this and no recipe?

Whups.

2 cups of flour
3 teaspoons of baking power
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup of lard

Cut the lard into the dry ingedients

Add 1 cup of milk and knead into a dough
Flatten and cut out biscuits with a glass or a jar or a biscuit cutter
Place tight together so they raise in an ungreased iron skillet or baking pan
Bake in a hot 450 degree oven until brown (about 20 minutes)

Smell those biscuits baking and relax

2.16.2020 – From 1920

From 1920
Forward to 2020
Dad’s Century Mark

Yesterday my Dad would have celebrated his century mark.

Instead, he died back in 1988.

Far short of the mark.

I not sure, aside from the grand kids born after 1988, that he missed much.

I am sure that he felt he had had a full life and he wouldn’t miss much of the world left behind.

He lived through the depression.

Graduated from Creston High School in 1936 (having been ‘advanced’ two grades – something he always regretted and spoke out against – not only did it make him the smallest kid in school it also made him eligible for World War 2 earlier than he might have been)

Graduated from the University of Michigan in 1942 and spent the next 3 years as an army dentist here in the United States and in Europe.

He would say he was ready to go back and see Europe as soon as the Government was ready to pay for the trip like the first time.

Got married in 1946 and raised 11 kids (8 boys and 3 girls).

Lived long enough to see and enjoy a lot of Grand Children.

So many stories.

I remember once he was sitting at the top of the stairs looking down at the TV in the basement.

The Chicago Cubs were playing and Dad was watching the TV with binnoculors.

I asked him, ahhhh, what was he doing?

“Watching the Cubs”, he said, “I am sitting in the bleachers.”

I said I don’t think he would have missed much, but there was one thing, one person.

Let me tell this story of the night he died.

He had had a stroke on Wednesday and I think he came to terms with what had happened to him the best he could.

This was the following Monday and we had all (AND I MEAN ALL) had been in the hospital most of the day.

It is my feeling that he hung around long enough for us the come to terms with the situation as well.

Monday night, one by one, my brothers and sisters said goodnight and left.

My Dad couldn’t talk but communicated with us by squeezing our hands.

My Mom stayed for a bit then also said goodnight and kissed him.

My brother Paul and I stayed behind.

And my Dad let go of this world.

It was quiet and still and almost peaceful.

At this moment he seemed to be asleep and the only noise was the beep of the monitors and the hum of hospital machines.

Dad’s heart rate had been steady all day but now I noticed a slow steady slow down.

It was like when you were working on your bike with the bike upside down,

You could work the pedals and get the back tire spinning and when you stopped pushing the pedals, the bike would slowly, so slowy, spin to a stop.

I said to my brother Paul, “Do you get the feeling he is slowing down?”

We stood up on either side, me on the right and Paul on the left.

The heart rate on the monitor dropped to 60 and an alarm sounded which brought in a nurse.

She took one look.

Paul said to the nurse, “Should I call my Mother?”

The Nurse nodded and Paul left for a minute.

The heart rate continued to drop.

Paul came back and we held his hands.

The heart on the monitor went flat, beeped once or twice and went to a steady flat line.

My brother leaned down close to my Dad’s ear and said, “Dad? Can you hold on? Mom is coming.”

The heart monitor perked back up and for 3 or 4 seconds, the monitor showed a jagged line of activity.

Then it went flat again.

I do think my Dad missed Mom.

I think of my Dad getting on the bus to heaven and he heard my brother and he looked back .

Looked back for 3 or 4 seconds.

Would have liked to see my Mom.

But he didn’t want to miss that bus.

I think of that often.

It was one last amazing moment in a wonderful life.

During the days since the stroke, I had, in the way people do, said to myself, “I can handle this. But I do not want to be told that Dad died.”

It worked out that no one ever did.

My last gift from my Dad, I like to think.

Another note, when my Mom died, everyone was there with her in the room.

Everyone but me and my brother Paul.

So many stories.

Dad (Robert Hoffman) and his sisters Millie (Lower) and Marion (Glerum)

In Henry the V, Big Bill writes, “

This story shall the good man teach his son;
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered”

I tell the stories to my kids and my grandkids.

I remember.

I miss him every day.

2.14.2020 – There is a place where

There is a place where
love begins and where love ends
and love asks nothing

Is love worse living?

Is love worth living?

Is life without love worth living?

Is that so hard?

Why is that so hard?

In the movie, “Shenandoah”, Doug McClure ask Jimmy Stewart for permission to marry his daughter.

Jimmy Stewart, who is sitting on his front porch, tells McClure to sit down as he doesn’t like people looking down on him, says to McClure, “Do you like her?”

“Sir, I ….”

“No, no. You just said you loved her. There’s some difference between lovin’ and likin'”

Why is that so hard?

Why is that so hard to understand?

Alicia Keys is the same ball park with the lines, “I keep on fallin’ In and out of love with you. Makes me so confused.”

All these questions.

Even after being married 30 years, all these questions.

I am in love, no question there.

Am I making this way to complicated?

It’s a bit of shock that I had the answer 30 years ago.

Back in the day it was a big deal to have the wedding program laid out on a computer.

What today is a word document with different fonts and sizes was seen as really cool.

My soon-to-be-wife asked me if there was anything I would like to included on the program.

I asked that Carl Sandburg’s Poem, Explanations of Love, be on the back.

The final line of this poem?

“love asks nothing.”

Explanations of Love
Carl Sandburg

There is a place where love begins and a place
where love ends.

There is a touch of two hands that foils all dictionaries.

There is a look of eyes fierce as a big Bethlehem open hearth
furnace or a little green-fire acetylene torch.

There are single careless bywords portentous as a
big bend in the Mississippi River.

Hands, eyes, bywords–out of these love makes
battlegrounds and workshops.

There is a pair of shoes love wears and the coming
is a mystery.

There is a warning love sends and the cost of it
is never written till long afterward.

There are explanations of love in all languages
and not one found wiser than this:

There is a place where love begins and a place
where love ends—and love asks nothing.

2.13.2020 – windshield rain splattered

windshield rain splattered
dark, wind, water, spray covered
little world, alone

My commute this morning was made more interesting by the arrival of a monsoon.

The rain was predicted to start around 7AM but it started early just for me.

Rain isn’t the word I want.

Coming down in buckets.

Pouring.

The floodgates of the heavens were opened.

I could see the lights of the car in front of.

I could the the white lines on either side of me.

I could see my trip odometer that I had reset to zero before I left so I had a good idea where I was.

In this little world, I concentrated on the car in front of me and kept up with the traffic around me.

I was alone.

Felt like I was in this little cocoon.

Cut off and on my own.

I did not recognize this brave new wet world I was navigating through.

I was focused on that car in front me and those two white lines.

Of course this is my week to be on call for online issues.

Of course I got two calls.

I debated not answering.

Things are such that I did take the calls.

I was talking about online issues.

I was thinking BOY ARE YOU DUMB.

I took care of the calls best I could, promising to take care of the issues as soon as I got to the office.

The rain kept coming.

I kept driving.

From my trip odometer I knew I was getting close to my exit and I maneuvered over to the right.

Merged without issue and made to my exit mostly by feel.

When.

The rain stopped.

It was clear.

I took advantage of the clear spell and a red light at the end of the exit ramp and grabbed my phone to start the processes I would need to take care of the phoned in online issues.

Rain was gone.

The light turned green and I tossed my phone into the passenger seat.

As I moved forward slowly I had the time to think.

“What happened to the rain?”

I pulled out and BANG the rain was back and in force.

I had been under the freeway overpass and never noticed.

2.10.2020 – blank, empty plaques

blank, empty plaques
reminder to remember
the why, the reason

In the Old Chapel at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, there are granite shields on the wall.

Each shield displays the name and rank of each of the Generals that served in the United States War of Independence.

One those shields is blank.

Its is blank on purpose.

It is a shield in remembrance of Major General Benedict Arnold.

A man who served and fought on our side in the Revolution.

A man who played a major role in the fighting in the American victory over the Red Coats at the Battle of Saratoga.

A man promoted to Major General by George Washington.

A man whose name now is used to describe another as a traitor and turncoat.

Arnold sold out.

For his rank and efforts before he switched sides, Arnold still gets a plaque in the Old Chapel.

For his acts and deeds, Arnold’s name has been removed from the plaque.

When anyone asks why the plaque is blank, Arnold’s story is told.

Where am I going with this?

Once again Pete Rose is trying to get into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Above almost any player, based on what any player did on the playing field, Pete Rose has earned a place in the Hall of Fame.

Because of what he did off the field, well, check that as he it appears Pete was BETTING on GAMES from the playing field or at least the dug out.

Anyway, Pete sold out.

For me, it isn’t so much that Pete was banned for the rest of life from Major League Baseball for betting.

It is because of WHO delivered this judgement.

I always liked A. Bartlett Giamatti.

When I discovered his essay, short book, Take Time for Paradise, I liked him even more.

Giamatti wrote. “If we have known freedom, then we love it; it we love freedom, then we fear, at some level (individually or collectively) its loss. And then we cherish sport. As our forbears did, we remind ourselves through sport of what, here on earth, is our noblest hope. Through sport, we create our daily portion of freedom.”

And about baseball, he wrote, “It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.”

It was as Baseball Commissioner that Giamatti banned Pete Rose from baseball.

Banned from the Baseball Hall of Fame.

At the time, Rose agreed with the judgement as it stopped the investigation.

Times passes.

Point of view changes.

Memory fades.

As Rose himself said once, “How you going to keep all those hits out of the hall?”

Is it time to forgive and forget and put Rose in the Hall?

And Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire and all the 1919 Chicago White Sox?

I do think Rose deserves a plaque in the hall.

Maybe all these guys.

A nice blank, empty plaque.

Let people see the plaque.

Let people ask who the plaque is for.

Let people hear the story of why the plaque is blank.

A blank, empty plaque.

A reminder to remember.