I Have Dreamed.....

365

Three hundred and sixty five days ago she needed to go to the hospital for a routine bug or something.  The hundredth such visit.  No worries.

Sometime tonight I was reading to her as I always did at bed time.  It was a bit later in the night than usual.  She smiled at me and rolled onto her side.

Three hundred and sixty five days from tomorrow morning I walked out of that building.  A dazed expressing on my face.  Carrying her pillow.  It was all I had left.

A blink of an eye and one of the brightest candles ever.  Just. Went. Out.

I don't think that tomorrow is going to be a very good day.

Signs of the New Age

I figured it was time.  My ring was there for 30 years.  That mark will probably never go away.  And I hope it doesn't.

First Christmas

Hello to all Epics everywhere with my best wishes for a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

I suppose a lot of you are wondering how this first Christmas of the New Era has been for me and for the Future Rock Star.  The truth is, it was rougher leading up to Christmas Eve and today than I imagined it would be.  The Irish Redhead and I just adored Christmas and our entire family was always swept along in her enthusiasm as was usually the case.  The returning reader may recall my post about driving all the way back to Florida from Wisconsin just so I would not miss our tradition of attending evening services on Christmas Eve.  I had hoped that the heartache of the other special days this year which have come and gone would be cumulative and would in some way insulate my feelings on the greatest day of our spiritual year.  I was wrong.  The week or two leading up to today were filled with special challenges and trepidation, at least for me.

The first thing of course was to resist the temptation to bury my head in the emotional sand and skip Christmas altogether.  As on a roller-coaster [if I were to ever ride one] to close my eyes and just hold on until New Year's Eve brings the turbulent ride which has been 2017 to a merciful close. It would have been pretty easy to opt for that approach.

But Christmas remains.  It is and always will be my favorite holiday of the year. And, despite the cool exterior obtained over twenty years of life, the Future Rock Star loves it too.  So I decided to put up our tree, and decorate the house.  A bit.  I admit that I did not have it in me to get out all of my wife's favorite decorations for the tree.  I'm not sure that I will ever use them again.  But Christmas remains.  I bought gifts, wrapped them [horridly, I admit] and did my best. 

Part of the problem is that I so vividly recall what we were doing a year ago.  The IR was discharged from the hospital on Christmas Eve after an awful three week admission.  After getting her home and properly installed in our bed for some real rest, I faced the daunting task of trying to get a particular time-released pain medication that, even with her very high pain threshold, she absolutely had to have to stay out of the hospital for Christmas.  For all the charms of small city living, access to medication the evening before Christmas is not one of them.  I drove to every pharmacy in our county that was open without success.  Then, on a tip from a benevolent pharmacist, I drove to the adjoining county where, at midnight, I got the medicine.  Amazingly, we had a very fine Christmas with gifts, a great dinner prepared by me and the Future Rock Star, the works.  The Irish Redhead was in her full Christmas mode, delighting in every moment.  The spirit continued unabated [with usual post-hospital recuperation time each day of course] through New Year's Day.  Three weeks later, she was gone.  Along with half my cell structure as I have previously mentioned.

Santa can do a lot of things but he can't give you that cell structure back.  Santa can, however, give you the restorative gift of a lovely day.  I am so pleased to report that that is exactly what I have received for the past twenty-four hours.  Yesterday I had a nice breakfast and then went to see a special new friend who's company I have enjoyed on a few recent dates.  I gave her a gift that I bought for her in New York a couple of weeks ago and she was as delighted with it as I had hoped she would be.  I seem at the very least not to have lost my gift for paying attention to the nature of a lady.  We chatted for a couple of hours and had a lovely time.  Then I went to pay my mom a visit at her Assisted Care place as I do every Sunday afternoon.  We had takeout food and gabbed about nothing in particular. After leaving my mom's I was invited over to the home of a pally where I used to perform Christmas standards with him at the piano.  It was a gasser [as Frank would have said] to re-start that tradition.  My singing was not quite up to par but after a couple of cocktails nobody much noticed. Then I went to church for the late service and back home to enjoy a great baked ziti prepared by the Future Rock Star.

By the time we finished eating it was already into the wee small hours of Christmas morning and the FRS said "can I play the eight year old card and open my presents"? I balked initially because I was YAWNING but I eventually gave in.  It is the New Era after all.  All of the presents were his anyhow, and he had specifically asked for most of them in the weeks leading up to Christmas.  That said, there was one gift he requested that was whimsical even by his standards.  An Irish Penny Whistle.  He seems to have developed the notion that he should learn to play pub songs on it.  I am very happy to report two things.  First, that he was just as happy when he unwrapped that whistle as he was by any present I have ever seen him receive on Christmas.  It revealed a boyishness that I haven't seen much from him this year.

Second, I can say that the finest Christmas present I have ever received was the distant sound of random tootling on an Irish whistle from the living room while I drifted off to a very contented sleep around 2:30 this morning.  I know his mother was smiling.

A very happy New Year to each and every one of you!! 

Armistice Day, Far in the Mist

At 11:11 a.m. on this day in 1918 the worst blood letting the world had ever seen came to an end.  There were a lot of people killed that morning although nobody really knew why.  All over the world the mothers and fathers, wives, children, sisters and brothers wept in thanksgiving or in bitter loss. There was one good thing though.  Laws were passed outlawing war forever.  The laws only lasted twenty years. 

On this day, now devoted in the U.S. to all of the military veterans who fortify our liberty with their lives, please thank someone.  Pray for someone.  Shake someone's hand.  Remember someone who died over 100 years ago to save the world.  The memorials are still there all over the globe.  We mostly pass them by nowadays without a thought.  Stop by one today and look...and remember...

To all Veterans.  Thank you so very much.

Happy Birthday A.J.!!!

Today is the birthday of one of my literary and gastronomic heroes...A.J. Liebling!!!  He lived in Paris between the wars and wrote the marvelous book "Between Meals, An Appetite for Paris" about that time.  He wrote superbly about boxing, politics, and any other topic that came his way at the old New Yorker magazine.

He was a fountain of great quotes such as:

The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down.

Liebling, not Hemingway, is the writer who ignited my enduring love affair with Paris.  And even if he had been a lousy writer, I would owe him a huge debt of gratitude as a result.

Epic Dining: Bates House of Turkey, Greenville, Alabama

The Epic diner is always on the alert for fine food.  So it was that, years ago, my "spider sense" for restaurants went off strongly while I was driving up Interstate 65 from Mobile to Birmingham, Alabama.  I saw one sign for Bates House of Turkey and immediately took the next exit.  That single decision placed me into an incredible eating experience that I am proud to say has not changed one little bit in the twenty years since.

Bates is one of those small town classics that has managed to stay in business for generations.  That sort of longevity is always founded upon great food, reasonable prices and fine service.  Bates House of Turkey provides all of that at the highest level.  The customers are all friendly too.  They are all just happy eaters and they are happy you are eating too.

When you walk in the door one of the very friendly and well trained counter helpers gives you a big smile and asks for your order.  Don't look for roast beef.  Don't look for ham.  Don't look for salami.  This place is all about Dr. Franklin's "respectable bird".  The turkey and only the turkey.  Sandwiches, chili, lasagna, open faced sandwiches, dinner plates.  You name it.  As long as it features turkey.

I love everything about this place and I stop in every time I pass by.  They open at 8:00 am.  No scrambled eggs here.  Turkey.  Breakfast, lunch and dinner.  This week I had the delightful experience of having lunch at BHoT on the way north to Birmingham on Monday and then again today on the way back south to Florida.  I always get the carved turkey plate which includes FINE cornbread stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy and two side dishes. On a plastic plate with plastic forks and knives you get out of one of those devices with handles that dispenses them to you.   Monday's lunch was... 

Sliced tender, perfectly cooked turkey, perfect dressing, perfect gravy, green beans, and the most wonderful sweet potato casserole you ever tasted.  And the dishes are all easy on the salt content as well. Oh did I mention the little cornbread muffin you get?  And the little home baked roll? Both perfect.  With tea and a slice of [wonderful] coconut cream pie.  For just under $15.  This place is like every southern grandma ever put all their cooking karma in one cute little building.

Day two lunch [south-bound] was...

Same plate but with fresh English peas and the best hash brown potato casserole you ever tasted.  Oh, and a slice of chocolate cream pie this time.  Just to mix it up. 

This food is so good that when you finish you want to walk right up and order it all again.  If anyone who calls themselves an Epic drives down I-65 and fails to stop at Bates House of Turkey [absent some very legitimate medical reason....and I want to see a note from the doctor] I'm going to read your name out in public.  Because Bates House of Turkey is just about the best place you can be.