#51

Yesterday, I turned 51. Seeing that I've already had my mid-life crisis, it wasn't that big of a deal. My daughter, The Ogre, came over with her husband, The Huntsman, and their two kids, The Boy & The Girl. My wife, Lady-Nottaguy-TYG, had made cube steaks in gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, & biscuits for supper. She also had picked up a "Cake Boss" cake from Kroger. The meal was great and so was the cake.

On Saturday, which is the actual date of my birth, My wife set up a date with a couple from our church to go to Logan's Roadhouse in Mansfield. I don't usually use the real names of establishments here, but the service was astounding and the meal was great. I figured I'd give them a shoutout.

Anyway, once we got there, we ran into four more of our friends. After a meal of salad, steak & baked potato, our waiter talked us into ordering dessert. i was content to come home and eat some more cake, but why not. We order a peanut butter ice cream thingee and were astounded when they brought it out.

Huge does not begin to describe this. We each had ordered one to share with our spouse. We could have shared this with the whole table. There's a Veggie Tale episode where a resturant opens up and advertizes "Food as big as your head". This very nearly was.

Lastly, as we were heading to bed, it dawned on us that we needed to set our clocks back for daylight savings was ending. There's nothing like getting an extra hour's sleep for your birthday.

Flashback Friday #253

 

Bart Moves Again

Hello, Welcome once again to "Minutia Matinee" where you get to hear about people that you don't know and places that you've never heard of. Today, I'll attempt to entertain you with a tale of horror. My best friend told me that he was moving.

I showed up at school like any other normal day.  I filed into my home room class where Bart is talking to a couple of other kids. He motions me over.

"I was just telling them that my family is moving." said Bart. Were moving to a different town. Dad says our landlord won't do what he's supposed to do so he's not staying another month in that house."

With this information, my heart nearly stops beating. My best friend moving away? Say it ain't so.

After seeing the effect of this bomb that he dropped on the folks that were listening to him, he smiled and said, "We're moving from Marengo back to Sparta." A collective sigh went up. Sparta was still in our school district. Bart was moving away, just moving. They lived in Sparta the first time I went to his house.He was going to live so close to the school that he could walk there. Which to him was a great relief because he had a girl on his bus that he called "Frog" that annoyed him to no end.

I don't mind if my friends move, I just don't like them to move away.

How's That Again?

The other day we were sitting down to supper with two of our grandkids, "The Boy" & "The Girl". The Girl, who is five, turns to Lady Nottaguy_TYG and asks her, "Nana, where are your kids?" My wife told her, "Honey, My kids are grown up. My kids are your mommy and Aunt Lemon." The girl processed that for a moment, then replied "So,... you're old?" I really did LOL.

Flashback Friday #252

A Bad Choice For Bart


Hello again. Yes, I realized that I missed last week. Busy, busy, busy.

Anyway, this post is about a choice that I offered Bart. In retrospect, he chose wrong. However, neither of us could have known just how wrong at the time.

My on & off girlfriend, Toni, had gotten me interested in collecting baseball cards. I had also been buying football cards. This was the second year that I had  collected. I had many cards that were the same. These are called "doubles".

Bart also had some older cards that his older brother had given him when he got married & moved out. The gem of his collection was Mickey Mantle's last card. I asked him if he would like to get into collecting current cards. He said he would, but he was more of a football fan than a baseball fan. I told him that I could hook him up with some of my football "doubles".


He especially liked the Philadelphia Eagles. I had a few doubles of them that I let him have. He also liked quarterbacks (the most popular position on the field). I dug through my stash to find some quarterbacks for him. I didn't have very many, but I offered him one from each team that I had. Each of the teams had a card of their starting QB and most had a card of the back-up. There were a couple of bad teams that had two quarterbacks with similar stats.

I offered Bart his choice of one particular team. After looking at the stats on the back, Bart chose the guy that had passed for the most yards because he must have been the starter. The card he chose was Steve DeBerg who passed for 1,998 yards for the San Francisco 49ers. The card that he passed up was of a guy that had thrown for 1,795 yards for the same team. This was DeBerg's third year in the league and the other QB had been in the league for two.

The other guy was some guy named Joe Montana. What I didn't realize was that since he wasn't pictured the previous year, this was his rookie card. Yes, I talking about THE Joe Montana that was Super Bowl MVP three times and threw for over 50,000 yards in his NFL career. DeBerg had an OK career, but lost the starting QB gig three times to younger quarterbacks. The first was with the 49er losing out to Montana. He then went to the Broncos for a few years and a youngster named John Elway beat him out for the job. That lead him to the Buccaneers where a transplant from the USFL took his spot. That quarterback's name was Steve Young. I guess if you're going to lose a job, getting beat out by three Football Hall of Fame quarterbacks is the way to do it.

Making Apple Butter

Friday night, "The Girl" stayed with us a little later than normal to help Lady Nottaguy-TYG make homemade apple butter. She had purchased a half-bushel of apples from a local orchard in preparation for this night.

We attached our apple peeler/corer/slicer on the little table that we have in our dining room. "The Girl" got to turn the crank.

Everyone know that the workman is worth his wages, so she ate her fill of peelings and small pieces of apple that would find themselves on the table.

The filled two containers with apples slices. A large pot for the stove to make right away and my wife's large oval crock pot liner. That batch was going to cook all night as we slept.

Once the apples were sliced, and to table cleaned off, the pot was taken to the stove where the other ingredients would be added. Lady Nottaguy-TYG measured out the ingredients and let "The Girl" put them in.

Once the apples had cooked for a while, it was time to mash them. We had to remind "The Girl" several times that the apples were hot, as she tended to get a wee bit excited about "mashin' dem apples."

After the apples were mashed and cooked some more, they were mashed again. By this time you could tell that "The Girl" was getting tired as she was getting giddy. After some more cooking, the apple butter was ready to can.

She was really pumped that she got to take some home with her when "The Woodsman" came to pick her up. She told him that she would share with him. How nice.

Flashback Friday #251

Going To Church


Greeting to all who just happened to stumble by this way. If you read last week's post (and if you didn't, you really should for this to make sense.), you'll see how my best friend, Bart, tricked me into attending church with him. But there's more to the story...

Sunday morning came and I got dress, dreading the decision I had made to got to church with Bart & his family. I had packed a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt, not realizing that I would be going to church the next morning. I was told not to worry about what I was wearing.

It took about 30 minutes to drive to their church. We passed several churches along the way. Why were we going so far away?  I had only ever been to two churches before, not counting a VBS that I attended when I was about seven. Whenever the church down the road from us (the Wesleyan church where Aunt Shelly went) was giving away something, I would go for the freebies. Then I went with Doris just because she was pretty. It was Pentecostal. This was neither. It was some church that started with an "A". Abostol, Apostoc, no, wait, Apostolic. Yeah, that's it.

When we got there, I noticed something strange. All the people called each other "Brother" and "Sister". Was everyone in this church related? I was told that since we were all God's children, that made us brothers & sisters. OK. Whatever.

Bart escorted me down to the Senior High Sunday School class where I saw several of the kids that I had seen at the hayride the night before. The teacher was a big, burly guy they called "Brother Simmons". He was quite jovial and laughed a lot. Sunday School was over before I knew it and, unlike Aunt Shelly's church, there wasn't more church after Sunday School. We piled in the car and headed home.

In the car, Bart's mom asked if I wanted to stay for lunch. She was planning to make pot roast, mashed potatoes & green beans. Even the picky eater that I was liked all of those offerings. I told her that I'd stay.

While she was cooking lunch, Bart showed me the movie player that they had check out of the library. This was the days before home VHS players. It was an interesting contraption. Most of the "movies" that came with the player we greatly abridged versions of classics. When you can get through "Around the World in 80 Days" in about 30 minutes, that what I call abridged. There were also several "Little Rascal" silent shorts. We watched these until it was time to eat.

After lunch, we commenced to watching more while Bart's mom cleaned up. About 5:30, Bart's mom asked if I was going with them to church that evening. She said that if they tried to get me home before they went to church, they would be late for church. What? Church at night? Who had ever heard of such a thing? Aunt Shelly's church didn't do that. If the church that I went to with Doris met at night, I hadn't gone.

Great. Here I am again getting guilted into going to church again. They had fed me well and I hated to make them late. Oh, OK. I'll go. Once again we made the 30 minute trip and got there just before church started. I think there had been some behind-the-scene planning going. They sang some songs and then the pastor, "Brother Kramden" preached.

I couldn't tell you what he preached, but I was convicted. However I wasn't going to go up and pray. So I put my head on the back of the pew in front of me. Shortly thereafter, the pastor came over to me and asked if I had ever been to a Pentecostal church.Pentecostal, this wasn't Pentecostal, it was Apostolic. I told him that I had attended a church in Mt. Gilead that was Pentecostal. He said the pastor there had left this church to begin a work there.Wait. Apostolic and Pentecostal were the same type of church? I was assured by the pastor that they were. They followed the Apostles doctrine and were Pentecostal in their worship.

 I thought to myself' This is really weird. I've only been to two churches in the last two years and they are the same denomination. Coincidence? I don't think so. I think God is trying to tell me something." I made up my mind right then & there that I would start coming with Bart's family every Sunday. That was the 1st Sunday of November in 1980. I'm still at that church.

Farewell To A Friend

On Monday of this week, we said farewell to our fierce dragon and protector of the realm. Sparky crossed over the Rainbow Bridge.I hadn't had a dog this long since Peanut, the dog of my childhood. Thanks to the invention of the camera phone, he was the most photographed pet we ever had. Here are some pics of my little buddy:

He was always the protector of the weaker or smaller. My MIL's therapist didn't like him because Sparky thought that he was trying to hurt her during rehab for a shoulder injury. Kids were safe from bigger kids & parental reprimands. He also patrolled the back yard and played :Nanny Dog" when the kids were in it

All of the furniture belonged to him. If you didn't want dog hair on you. Too bad. Any blanket or pillow was a comfy spot to take a snooze (especially if there was a sunbeam involved). He even had us trained to lay out his big stuffed platypus on the floor so he could be with us while we watched movies.

Sparky was always willing to pose for us. What a photogenic pup. I'm glad I have all the happy memories with him. He really was a great dog. I'm going to miss you. You were a good boy.