Ripe Berry

This has been a tough year for celebrity deaths, hasn’t it? It seems like every time I turn around another celebrity has passed. Well, today I saw singer-guitarist Chuck Berry’s name in the news, and based on recent trends, and based on his age, I initially thought he was joining the 2016 list. But no. Instead, Chuck, 90, is releasing an album of new material.  By my memory, other than Tony Bennett, I’m not aware of any modern performers recording after the age of 90. Tony is old. How old, you ask? Tony is so old that he sang “Fly me to the Moon” before we landed on the moon. That’s old! It would’ve been cool for NASA to send Tony on a space flight but now he’s too old. But wait. John Glenn (see 2016 list) flew in space late in his life, so maybe Tony could still go. I think he deserves a shot. Let’s send him up while he can still enjoy it. Would we ever have gone to the moon if Tony hadn’t popularized that song? We may never know that answer. But I bet Khrushchev liked that song.  

     

Every year the magazines list their celebrity deaths for the year. The problem is that these magazines come out in mid- December. If you die in the last couple of weeks of the year, you’re outta luck.

That's Swill

We are all dealing with Christmas leftovers this week.  How long do you keep some of this stuff? At what point does your refrigerator become a science project? Usually the final resting place for this stuff is soup or stew. Or what we here at Uncle Tommy refer to as "swill".  

My dad used to work with this guy who was a creative cook, kind of a pioneer of the palate as Tom Waits would say. Dad saw him cook some outrageous dishes. One winter the guy’s wife went to Florida for a month to visit relatives and left him home to work and to fend for himself. Well, the first day she was gone he started a pot of stew, or soup, or goulash or something on the stove. As legend has it, he kept that pot going for 30 days, and added a little something to it each day to keep the pot alive. I’m not sure if the 30 days was his original intent, or if he just liked his swill so much he kept it alive. As far as I recall, not only did the guy live a long life, his marriage survived.

I’ve searched the net and cannot find anyone with a greater than 30 day continuous swill. Apparently some have exceeded the 30 days but have not lived to tell about it.  

Recipe for Disaster

I just bought some special Hungarian sausage for us to eat on Christmas Eve. While I was at the butcher I noticed that my butcher and his counter woman were both wearing camouflage. So yeah, I’m hoping what I got was pork sausage and not wild boar or something! I didn’t see any guns around but on the way into the shop I did see some guys unloading a deer carcass to take in the back door. Good thing I didn’t have any little kids with me.  How would you explain that one on Christmas Eve? “Well, Santa’s gotta eat too, son…”

So I was reading online today about how to prepare this sausage. After reading for about 30 seconds a message popped up on the screen telling about a website with good recipes involving sausage.  I wasn’t ready to go there so I tried to exit the screen. I was provided the following two exit options:

1.        “Yes. I would like to learn about your new recipes.” 
2.        “No. I do not like new foods.”

C’mon! That’s not fair. Where’s their Christmas spirit? I didn’t have time at that very moment to read their recipes. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like new foods. That's OK. I didn’t have any kale on hand anyway. Those internet recipes always require kale. Lots of kale.

Merry Christmas to you all!

The Angel of Monroeville

When my wife and I married, she had a dog who struggled getting used to me, and it actually had a stress based illness due to my arrival into the household. So yeah, the dog didn’t like me much. One snowy day we took a trip to see my wife’s family, a journey of about 100 miles. We didn’t have any kids yet, and the dog liked to travel, so she came along. We stopped for gas in the small town of Monroeville. While I was filling up the gas tank, a truck pulled up on the other side of the pump island. A large, friendly man got out, saw our dog in our car, looked at me rather seriously and said, “Cute animal. You know son, there are two types of dogs in this world: those who think they’re dogs, and those who think they’re human. Your dog thinks she’s human.” I nodded to him, and ran inside to pay for the gas. When I came out (expecting to continue our conversation), the man was gone. There was no truck, no tire tracks in the snow, no sign that he had ever been there. I got back into the car and we continued our journey.

Well, beginning that day, the dog and I forged a friendship that would last the remainder of her days.  She stayed by my side, and I by hers. On future trips through Monroeville, our family would stop at that gas station, hoping for a visit from the man in the truck. He may well have known we were there, but he never visited us again. He knew his work with us had been accomplished.

Humble Jumble

Awards season will soon be upon us. The Oscars and the Golden Globes will be awarded early next year. The popular thing for the winners to say now as they accept their award is that they are “humbled” by winning the award. Wait. What exactly does that mean? Don’t get me wrong. I love humility. We should all be more humble. One of the definitions of “humbled” is “to be made meek”. How does winning an award make someone meek? What am I missing here? You work hard to accomplish something, and when you achieve it that somehow degrades you? That takes you down a notch? Somebody help me out on this one.

Now, if the third place finisher gets interviewed and says that he or she is humbled, that seems more appropriate, doesn’t it? Too bad they never get interviewed.   

Family Tree

Tis the season to bring a tree into the house. When you think about it, that's a crazy concept, isn't it? Today is only the 15^th of December but I’ve already heard of numerous cases of peoples' trees falling over and crushing ornaments and stuff. These are real trees, of course. If your artificial tree falls over, you’ve got issues, my friend.  But yeah, people put up a tree, and it stands for a few days, and then, like George Washington’s cherry tree, it somehow falls over, crushing everything in its path. The key, I think, is to not have too long of a trunk, or stub. Most professional tree guys know to not make the stub too long. It’s the “unofficial” guys who leave them too long. So yes, it’s sad for me to say, but a tree falling over can be the sign that it’s a stolen tree. Too many Americans today still pack up the kids in the station wagon and go out and randomly cut down a tree.  While I agree that this can add some excitement to the family venture, it just doesn’t feel right to me.   

Next time somebody tells you their tree fell over, make sure you still have your wallet.