A Five Year-Old Christmas

Like a second story burglar Christmas slipped into the high definition big screen TV of my life this year.  I'm late on just about everything.  Cards are leaving my out box like molasses in, well, December and decorations, presents and all that other stuff are all about two weeks behind.  I blame the new house and our big move from San Diego to Coeur D Alene but am willing to admit I'm just Christmas lazy.  If I'm honest, it happens most every year.

Doug, Mudgy the Moose, Katie and Dan

An early Christmas surprise has been the visit of Katie, our youngest, and her family.  They arrived this week and will head back to California this Sunday so that grandson Dan can have Christmas at home.  That means we celebrate early in rainy and cold north Idaho which should give the kid a taste of what the holiday was like for his grandparents during their Midwestern childhood.  Christmas was never 70 degrees and sunny back in pre-historic times.  As I recall, we were just happy to have enough snow on the ground to check for reindeer tracks.

"Hmmm…could this be a pool cue?"

It has been fun to experience the season through the five year-old eyes of our one and only grandchild.  He has already opened his presents which included his very own pool cue so that, with luck and training, he will always have pool hustler skills to fall back on should legitimate employment prove elusive. A Spiderman spinning rod was also in the mix in keeping with that old adage about "teaching a man to fish…blah blah blah".  I prefer to think of it as a ticket to one of the best sit down sports a boy can always enjoy.

Last night we took advantage of a boat cruise to Santa Claus Island that is a tradition here in Coeur D Alene.  Kids are treated to an unforgettable ride and light show that culminates at the North Pole where Santa and his elves greet them with a reading of the naughty and nice list for the year.  I'm happy to report that Dan made the 2014 nice list.  The relief on his face when he heard his name was priceless.  As an almost permanent occupant of the naughty list I was hoping to hear my own name upgraded to "nice" but no Ken was announced.  Perhaps my past misdeeds have been expunged?  

Dan scans the dark horizon for signs of Santa Claus Island.

Santa and one of the elves welcome us to the Island.

"And, one final name on the NICE list: DANNY!"

Dan waves good-bye to Santa, secure in his "nice" status, as the boat pulls away from Santa Claus Island.

 Like everything in life this Christmas is moving at warp speed.  The Valentines Day promotions most likely begin on December 26.  So, if you want to put this Yule in slow motion I recommend finding a five year-old to slow it down.  When you're five it seems that next Thursday will never come and no way will the anticipation exceed the reality.  The kids know that Christmas is the real deal.

Well, maybe one more trip to the toy store with grandpa.

Fatter Dummies & French Toast Crunch

It was hard to miss the irony.  There on the financial page, as I killed time waiting to board the plane home from New Orleans, were two stories that went a long way toward explaining why most of us hate to fly.  Americans are getting fatter.  The story with the Detroit dateline told of a Michigan based company, Humanetics, now introducing newer "wide bodied" crash test dummies.   According to the Centers for Disease Control 34.9% of us are obese and are sporting a much larger body mass.  A quick look around the Delta boarding area convinced me that that estimate may be slightly conservative. More than a few of my fellow passengers looked to be smuggling excess adipose tissue in their jeans.  I found myself trying to remember the approximate dimensions of the emergency exits and how I could position myself to be the first one out the door should the plane run into trouble.  "Stand aside porky, I'm comin' through!" I will confess to larding on five extra pounds in the last year but nothing that would qualify me for Ringling Brothers.  

Like my portly sky roadies, the new crash test dummies are soon to approximate a 273 pound adult.  Wow!  Think about how worried the car manufacturers must be.  A Jumbo dummy hitting an abutment at 40 miles per hour will probably take out the entire front end of any new automotive rolling stock.  It won't be pretty-- just accurate.

The other story on the same page was a release from General Mills proudly announcing the return of their French Toast Crunch cereal.  (the crack cocaine of breakfast treats)
Of course the story made a big deal of a few "modifications" made to the ever so delicious way to start your day.  They have reduced the sugar and increased the whole grain content.  Translation:  it's now only 50% sugar.  Hey, that's what makes it so damn good!

Here is what struck me as I read these two stories:  If the people who test cars know we're getting to be enormous and the management at General Mills is hip to the fact that we can't resist sugar, why the hell can't the airlines figure out that WE NEED BIGGER SEATS AND MORE LEG ROOM??!!
It's bad enough that they gouge you for checking a bag, (shouldn't they charge for carry-ons?), and cram more and more passengers on fewer flights, but they don't seem to get that seats are too small and leg room is nearly non-existent.  I understand that tickets are relatively cheap but, come on!  Raise the price a little if you must, but GIVE US A LITTLE ROOM!  Or, knock us out until we get where we're going. (Nitrous oxide anyone?)

There has to be a better way to fly.  Private jets for all!
I'm surprised Obama or another Washington phony hasn't figured out a way to promise that one.
In the meantime, pass the French Toast Crunch and put me in an aisle seat next to that skinny lady.  After all, pain is mandatory but suffering is optional.

Middle seat, anyone?

They said there would be peanuts.

Brrrr, It's Time For a WARM UP

Santa arrives in Coeur D Alene via vintage fire engine.

Fireworks over Lake Coeur D Alene announce Santa's arrival. 

Last Friday evening, after standing in the freezing rain to watch Santa arrive in our new hometown of Coeur D Alene, Linda and I decided that maybe a dose of warm weather might help ease our transition from Southern California.  My old pal, the Skipper, no doubt full of holiday cheer and Jim Beam, had recently suggested that we join him and his wife Betty in New Orleans at the Work Boat Show for some laughs.  The Skipper owns a barge and tug company in New England and often attends the event to scout new equipment and catch up with other salt water reprobates.  Knowing that the broadcast business was another bum producing industry, (second only to the carnival business), he knew I'd fit right in.  

As you read this we are on our way back to the refrigerator that is Northern Idaho refreshed and re-charged from a week in the Big Easy.  We will warm ourselves all winter long on memories and calories that cling to us as we journey home. 

After settling in at the hotel and registering at the convention, we set out for Felix's Oyster Bar which features the absolute best bi-valves in this hemisphere.  I love the place.  Though I can no longer down ten or twelve dozen in an evening like I could in the 70's, it is still necessary to call Triple A to tow me away from the place.  Oysters this good are a religious experience; maybe even a tax deductible medical necessity. 

Can you say, "Welcome sailor?"

The Skipper pretends to be interested in a Boat Show display while he grabs a free shot glass.

When you die, you smell these on God's breath.

Mother's is another New Orleans institution.

We spent Thursday at the World War II Museum, a national treasure located on Magazine street in the warehouse district of New Orleans.  Thanks to good friend, Sue Lampton, we were treated to a sneak preview of the museum's newest pavilion, Campaigns of Courage:  The Road To Berlin section, which opens next week.  If you have yet to visit this magnificent salute to the generation of men and women who saved the world, put it on your bucket list.  You won't regret it.

Linda checks out the restoration of PT boat 305 an ongoing labor of love at the WW II Museum.

Bruce Harris, in charge of the restoration, shows the Skipper blueprints of PT 305. 

Just one of many planes on display in the Boeing pavilion at the WW II Museum

It was a fantastic week to be in New Orleans.  The weather was perfect and the food superb.  I'm thinking that we need to make this an annual event.  The Work Boat Show, the World War II Museum and a few hundred of the Gulf's finest oysters consumed with other aficionados bellied up to the bi-valve bar at Felix's seems to me  an unbeatable combination.  Maybe Santa will want to join us?  Men of size--Fats Domino anyone?-- are always more than welcome in "the land of red beans and pinball machines".

Always Felix's, not Acme, for oyster heaven.

Jackson Square, ground zero for whack jobs. 

Black Friday? Count Me Out

Ah, the day after Thanksgiving and the self induced turkey coma continues.  The familiar disgust and bloat are far better embraced from an easy chair than they are from the mall and its multitudes of deal digging dimwits who insist on making shopping a sport.  In the age of the Internet who wants to fight traffic, parking and elbows seeking out 50% mark downs that leave the titans of bust out retail a mere 100% profit just for opening their doors.

Maybe it's all the football on Thanksgiving Day--yes, I watched all three games--that inspires so many to venture forth on BLACK Friday.  There should be a certain amount of "I'll show them" bubbling up in the darker recesses of the souls of the unfortunate few who admit to betting on the losers.  And, if your team won, it's understandable that you might think today would be a good day for blitzing the bargain table.  For those people there is no shame in looking like a pack of drag queens at a wig sale.  It's time to shop!

I just returned from a walk in the ultra cool and crisp of a morning in northern Idaho having made a feeble attempt at burning off at least a portion of yesterday's excess.  If I can work in another 100 miles before sunset (4:00PM) I should be back to even.  On my walkabout I took a peek at commerce on Sherman Avenue, the main artery of our town of Coeur d' Alene.  The shops are busy with tourists in town for the annual Christmas light show that kicks off this evening with 1,500,000 lights and fireworks.  This will be our first year to view the event and I'm told that our new home has an excellent vantage point.  The crowd is expected to top 100,000 so I'm hoping they've planned for enough port-o-lets.

So, now do I go to a nearby mall to peruse the holiday carnage or do I bag it and settle for the WWE?  What would Santa do?  It's a cinch he's not really in his workshop OR at the mall.  (Don't tell the kids.)  Like any guy with a "one day a year is enough" work ethic, I'm betting the porker from the Pole is on Amazon--he's a Prime member--checking his list and hitting CHECK OUT as he finds heaven by simply backing away from Black Friday HELL.

Some folks idea of a good time.

The New Emerging Geezer

I wish I had a sawbuck for every guy who told me he wears the same size pants he wore in high school.  The typical American male's capacity for self delusion is seemingly without bounds, or at least an inseam.  Almost without exception the guy still laying claim to a 32" waistline is now measuring it from a spot about eight inches south of his true mid section and must cinch his belt around his new  equator by lifting the Milwaukee goiter just north of this new line of demarcation.  Strangely, his inseam now measures 22 instead of 32.  How'd that happen?!

Male Baby Boomers like me are at that awkward stage.  Even if you don't succumb to the siren call of the south of the border waistline, there is still no denying the condemned building syndrome that is the plight of aging boomer men.  Overnight we've gone from "fair-haired boy" to the "bald-headed brother-in-law" and are dumbfounded at the consequences.  For most of us our hair is in full retreat on all major fronts with the unwelcome exception of our ears and nose.  Fat cells, now free range, have decided that the comfort of our midsection is irresistible and our asses have dematerialized to the point where the backside of almost any pair of Dockers now looks like and abandoned Gypsy camp.  

Young women, suddenly more friendly, no longer see we oldsters as a potential candidate for mattress polo (see "threat") and never miss an opportunity to tell us we remind them of their dad or, the ultimate insult, GRANDPA.  

Our wives find this all highly amusing and relish the knowledge that it's all their fault.  If they had left us to our own devices the bachelor diet alone would have put us in the ground years ago.  A few unsupervised trips to the grocery store are as good as sticking a gun in our kisser.  "Let's see…Cheetos, booze, huckleberry ice cream, cigars, pork rinds, yep, that's everything."  Obituaries for men would rhapsodise about us having "a good run" and passing away of a massive heart attack or cirrhosis at the ripe old age of 36.  Nope, wives had to insist on us eating fruits, vegetables, green stuff and laying off the sauce.  No wonder we're still around and twice as annoying.  It just ain't right.

 The Boomer/Neo Geezer is here to stay and all those of us born to it must embrace the newly shifted dunes of blubber in our now "comfort fit" jeans and new XL underwear.   (The saleswoman laughed when I asked if the XL pertained to fit in the crotch.  I can tell she thinks I look harmless.)  It takes yards more material but we did win the battle to continue dressing just as we did in sixth grade.  (If only I could find my old Hopalong Cassidy six shooter!)

  

"Hey, you kids get off my lawn!!" (Oops, that just slipped out. It has been happening more lately.)

  Have I mentioned that I
 have been forced to shop for new clothes recently? You know I have the same waist I had in high school.
Anybody seen my ass?  It was here a couple of years ago.

I wonder if Wally and the Beav are having the same problem.
Could be our wives.

"

Cold Enough to Freeze the What off WHAT?

Another frosty morn' on Lake Coeur d' Alene

When I was a young Army platoon leader freezing my ass off on the endless acreage of cow toilet that is Fort Riley, Kansas, I promised myself that I would never again live in a place where winter makes a home.  For more than forty years I have kept that promise, until now.  

What the hell was I thinking?!!  This morning I woke to an eight degree slap in the face from that bitch they call the Polar Vortex and I'm wondering if I can still find my Army mummy bag.  The scene outside my window here on Lake Coeur d' Alene, Idaho is stunning.  Just glimpsing the frigid water where the remaining "learning challenged" Canadian geese appear frozen in place causes my testicles to ascend.  Damn!  Will I ever be able to retrieve the paper from the front deck or, for that matter, will a trip to the mailbox at the curb do me in?  

When you're safe and warm it's hard to recall what it's like to be really cold.  "We can do winter", my wife and I both exclaimed when we began to plan our exit from California, a state so far gone to ruin it may never come back, but now we have to prove it.  Granted it is far easier to ignore the worst season of them all when you limit your exposure to extremely small doses such as mail retrieval and walking to the car.   It's far removed from sleeping on the ground in Kansas for weeks at a time while pretending to fight a war with the Godless Russian commies in Eastern Europe.  (Obviously I was born too soon as that is apparently no concern for the current administration.)

Another seasonal adjustment we're having to make here in the panhandle of Idaho is caused by the reluctance of the sun to make more than a daily cameo appearance.  It pops up, when there is no rain, around 7 AM and says "see ya" sometime around 4PM.   We both sleep like hibernating bears and eat like we were going to "the chair".  I'm fairly certain neither of us could make the team in Alaska. 

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not complaining.  Linda and I both grew up in the Midwest where "nice days" are counted on one hand and the snow blows sideways.  Also, not wearing combat boots, packing and M-16, and eating C-rations has me thinking that maybe my aversion to winter was just a bit irrational.  I'll give you a full after action report in the Spring.  In the meantime Christmas is coming and so is grandson Dan.  There is lots of food in the pantry and plenty of fireplace fires yet to enjoy.  Any way you stack it, it is leagues more enjoyable than scrounging for water and sending tax dollars to dumber than drywall politicians in Sacramento.

As North Idahoans say about their weather, "The wind up your ass is so cold you'll be farting snowflakes in July."

That's okay by me.  

Jerry Brown is nowhere in sight.

Pass the honey and the huckleberries, please.

I'm Melting!

"There must be some mistake.  I demand a recount!"

"Nope, you're 5' 9", the nurse explains.  

I'm already regretting taking my wife's advice about finding a new general practitioner in our new home town.  After many years in California, where I was at least 5' 10" tall, I now find myself in Coeur D Alene, Idaho towering over nobody at 5' 9".   The new doc, who I like because he tells me I am in good health "for a man your age", tells me that we all manage to shrink a little as we grow older and I shouldn't be concerned.  Of course he tells me this with at least twenty years less mileage on his odometer and enough hair on his head to add an inch or two.

  

Oh---that was the other thing---when I was at the DMV getting my new driver's license, the clerk listed my hair color as "flesh".  This re-location nonsense can really do a number on your ego.  

As my father often told me, "just sit down and shut up".  I should feel lucky to be on the right side of the sod at 66.  It seems as if each week brings more news of old friends who won't be having another birthday or are undergoing some battle with a malady that I still consider strictly for "old folks".  So what if I'm two inches shorter than I was at my high school graduation.  I've still never spent a day in the hospital, broken a bone or been more than moderately crazy.  My liver still makes a growling noise but you would too if you'd logged that many tanker cars of sour mash.  I think it appreciates being laid off 15 years ago.  

So, I am 66 and 5' 9".  So what?  One of life's pleasures is the acceptance of these things.  I've learned to laugh at many things and my capacity for rage has diminished considerably.  Ramparts are no longer to be stormed but they do make a fine place to rest up for the battles that remain.  I've had it with politicians and people I can't abide so I endeavor to stay clear them whenever possible.  My appreciation for true friends grows exponentially.  They are treasures and should be treated accordingly.

Elvis is dead; so is JFK, Robin Williams, James Dean and many others who were shy of my 66 years.  Who knows?  Maybe they are all in a better place or maybe, just maybe, they'd trade places with a guy with flesh colored hair, a few extra pounds and a towering 5' 9" superstructure.   I'm fairly certain that I would.

The great Merl Haggard may have said it best in song:

"One of these days,

When the air clears up

And the sun comes shinin' through

We'll all be drinkin' that free Bubble-Up

And eatin' that Rainbow stew."

In the meantime, if you need any perceptive perspective from  5'9" of altitude, I'm available for consultation…and lunch.

"I'm melting, I'm melting!"