Squeaky Fish Must Die

This video says it all.

About Dad

Today would have been my dad's 80th birthday. Dear Daughter says she sees him from time to time--usually in the house where I grew up. She's curiously matter of fact about it, considering he died in the summer of 2006. But I don't doubt she really does see him. I don't understand how or why, but they loved each other immensely. If it comforts here to see her Papa opening the door and sitting in a chair, I'm okay with that.

I'd give a lot to see him again myself.

No Joy In Memphis

Why no, actually I don't want to talk about the game. I'm not even an alum, and I am truly sad. The Tigers have been the Little Team That Could this year.

Read it and weep.

Britta is showing her displeasure by murdering Squeaky Fish. At least he's purple and not orange.

Don't worry, Tigers. We still love you. Even if your head coach's annual clothing allowance more than doubles the salary of the average English professor.

And besides, there's still the C-USA Tournament to play.

Happy Birthday George

I cribbed this from The Writer's Almanac. I love that tiny little show. One of my dream jobs would be to research and write for it, or perhaps my own broadcast of literature, history and humanities minutiae.

When I was a child, we honored Abraham Lincoln and George Washington separately on their respective birthdays. Presidents' Day is a nice holiday, and who doesn't love a three day weekend, but the lumping of the two together makes it easy to gloss over the lives of two truly remarkable men. Certainly they had their specific failings, and examining their lives in the context of modern values and beliefs raises particular questions. But even that cannot override the basic fact that they were, at heart, good people who accomplished quite a bit of good in their lifetimes.

Ten Things You Never Knew about George Washington, born on this day in 1732:
1. His dentures were carved from a hippopotamus tusk. They were drilled with a hole to fit over Washington's one remaining tooth, and they rubbed against his natural tooth in such a way that Washington was in constant pain, and so he used an alcoholic solution infused with opium.

2. By the time he reached 30, he had survived malaria, smallpox, pleurisy, dysentery. He was fired at on two separate occasions — and in one of them, his horse was shot out from under him and four bullets punctured his coat. He also fell off a raft into an icy river and nearly drowned.

3. During the last night of his life, a doctor friend came over to perform an emergency tracheotomy on Washington. Arriving too late, the doctor tried to resurrect Washington by thawing him in cold water, then wrapping him in blankets and rubbing him in order to activate blood vessels, then opening his trachea to inflate his lungs with air, and then transfusing blood from a lamb into him.

4. He enjoyed playing cards, hunting foxes and ducks, fishing, cockfighting, horse racing, boat racing, and dancing. He bred hound dogs and gave them names like "Sweet Lips" and "Tarter."

5. His favorite foods included mashed potatoes with coconut, string beans with mushrooms, cream of peanut soup, salt cod, and pineapples.

6. He snored very loudly.

7. He did not wear a powdered wig, as was fashionable at the time. Instead, he powdered his own red-brown hair.

8. Washington had a speech impediment and was not good at spelling. He would often mix up is and es when speaking and in writing.

9. There are 33 counties, seven mountains, nine colleges, and 121 post offices named after Washington.

10. He delivered the shortest inaugural address ever. It was only 133 words long and took 90 seconds to deliver.

Going Home, But Not Getting Far

As I posted previously, we road-tripped the Deep South this past weekend. Living in the undisputed capitol of the Mississippi Delta, we occasionally have to get out and visit some of the other micro-cultures that make up this wacky part of the country. As the hysterical Florence King wrote in Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady that those not from the South often make the error that all southerners are the same, regardless of their region of nativity. This could not be further from the truth. Although the movie and television industry is the worst offender, this stereotype is all-too-frequently depicted by those who just don’t have an accurate frame of reference. To compare, for instance, a Memphian and a denizen of Nashville (a Nashvillian, if you will, and come to think of it, I know a few Nashvillians) brings to mind the old joke about comparing Americans and Canadians. If you want to know the difference between the two, just call them both Americans. Or Memphians. Or Nashvillians, for that matter.

We left home and headed in a southeasterly direction. It was a bright Saturday morning, cool and crisp. The farmlands are mostly brown at this time of year, with the occasional flash of green where a field has been sown in a winter crop of greens or winter wheat. The ride was pleasant. The Norwegian drove so I was relegated to the role of disc jockey (serving up the best of Guy Clark, John Prine and friends) and Chief Cultural Minister. I pointed out the clumps of deer, water birds, low-perching predators, abandoned farm implements, weather changes and funny signs. The best one we saw the whole weekend flashed by too quickly in a rainstorm for me to capture. The sign said “Historical Marker” and its arrow pointed straight at a dilapidated single-wide mobile home, rusting on its moorings and attended by a fleet of, ahem, vintage automobiles in various stages of repair. It looked like Jesco White’s home, although we were in the wrong state.

We reached our destination – a small town in northeastern Alabama situated on the Tennessee River. At least one horrific battle was fought here during the Civil War, reputedly over access to the railroad spanning the bridge. The old town itself is drawing in on itself. There is still a lovely district of old houses and part of the original business district is still populated by the usual purveyors of gentrification—law and architectural firms, boutiques, specialty restaurants (an oddity here in the land of fried green tomatoes). The “modern” business district—and by this I mean Wal-Mart, Target, Kroger, Best Buy and the like—are situated out on the Beltline smack in the midst of what was, in my own childhood, farmland and woodlands.

One thing that hasn’t changed in downtown old Decatur is C.F. Penn’s Hamburgers. I’ve searched the Internet for links to anything about Penn’s, but there just isn’t much out there, save musings from expatriates who miss the…um, experience. My mother was one such person. By the time we reached her sister’s apartment, Mom was pretty much starving and nothing would do but that we go to Penn’s on Moulton Street in old downtown.

The Norwegian –who grew up all over the country, and Dear Daughter were curious. I was guarded. Been there, done that. These two had never experienced anything quite like lunch at Penn’s, and I just didn’t have the words to adequately explain it.

In a nutshell, C.F. Penn’s is a classic burger diner, and this one (there are a few scattered across north Alabama) features the original neon signage, twirling stools at the lunch counter, and probably the same frying grease they used when the place opened more than 50 years ago. Dear Daughter, having been raised in the “have-it-your-way” land of burger dining, started to tell me how she wanted her burger dressed. I laughed and stopped her. At Penn’s, there’s only two ways to have your burger—all the way, or half the way. Your only other options involve number, sides (chips or fries) and the size and flavor of your Coke (remember this is the South).

“All the way” or “half the way” refers to how far across the three-foot lake of sizzling grease you want your burgers floated. Yes, I said floated. Penn burgers are cooked in advance and are reheated when ordered by floating it from the right to left side of a commercial fryer. The time it takes to float “all the way” or “half the way” is all you get to get your lunch reheated.

This, by itself, is pretty disgusting (at least to me). But wait (as they say on late-night infomercials), there’s more.

When you collect your lunch, served on white bread buns and wrapped in waxed paper translucent with grease, and accompanied by a complimentary sheet of double-ply paper toweling, the best is yet to come. I watched Dear Daughter’s face across the booth as she unwrapped her burger. She prefers “ketchup. ONLY ketchup” on her burgers, and at Penn’s, they always come with mustard and chopped onions. She quietly scraped the offending onion and mustard off and picked up the squeeze bottle of ketchup to remedy the situation. The ketchup—apparently also original equipment—did not make her much happier. The kicker was when she took a bite. See, at C.F. Penn’s, the name “burger” is kind of a misnomer. The amount of actual “burger” in each sandwich varies from “some” to none, at least none that can be tasted. What burger is present is mixed with something approximating Hamburger Helper (which it doesn’t, really), then formed into, well, not really a conventional patty; more like a lump, then first deep-fried and then reheated in the Grease-Lagoon when ordered.

I don’t know whose face was funnier—Dear Daughter’s or the Norwegian’s. I don’t think either wanted to chew, much less swallow. Fortunately, we had ordered conservatively. No one asked for seconds, except my mom, and I was glad to give her the half I was unable to finish. Dear Daughter played with my cell phone while we talked and finished up our lunch and got ready to leave.

The service at Penn’s is friendly and unique, in the way that only a Southern diner can provide. We had a good time. It made my mother happy. I like making her happy. It made Dear Daughter grateful for what she gets back home, and it made her and the Norwegian laugh, although politely out of earshot of both my family and the staff. Later on, though, I found this message on my cell phone notepad. Apparently, Dear Daughter is not anticipating a career in reviewing restaurants.

Puppies In Action

Here are a few clips of Britta with her puppy family. Two of her sisters have yet to move to new homes, and we had the sheer joy of playing with them for a half hour before heading for home with our new girl.

Here the three girls discover the Norwegian:

Britta, Patches and Holly carry off Mom's camera case and kill it dead.

Meet Our New Arrival

This weekend we road-tripped with the Norwegian to the mystical land of Alabama. My mother grew up in the northeastern part of the state, and you still can open just about any door on any block in any small town for a 200-mile radius and find someone standing behind it to whom I can claim kinship. Mother went with us and we stayed with one of her sisters in a tiny retirement community so newly constructed on a block of former farmland that some residents carry baseball bats and even firearms to ward off the coyotes they're likely to encounter on the way to the mailbox.

The main purpose of the trip, besides hanging out with family and eating fried catfish, was to pick up this little darling. Meet Britta, a nine-week old miniature Dachshund. She's slightly smaller than my bedroom slipper, and even the ND bunnies have about a pound and a half on her. Despite her tiny size, she's loaded with personality and charm.

Britta was born to Dixie and Elvis, who are owned by these very nice people. She lived with her four sisters and three aunts and uncles in what can only be described as Dachshund heaven.

We brought her back to the homestead across a hundred miles of twisty, country roads, through one of the worst rain storms I've ever been in. The Norwegian drove while Dear Daughter and I took turns comforting Britta. She whimpered a while, most likely as much from the noise of the rain as from the trauma of leaving home. Soon, though, she snuggled down in the baby quilt she brought from home and curled up for a nap.

Despite the many changes she had yesterday, she did really well. She played in the yard, she slept on her new bed on the rest of the trip home. She visited her new grandma's house and met her new human uncle. She met her bunny sisters and decided that they were definitely big enough for her to submit to.

Finally, it was time to go to bed. Dear Daughter pulled out the trundle in her room and put Britta's bed next to it on the floor. They snuggled in their respective quilts and sacked out. Fortunately, there was no howling or whimpering from either of them. I guess both little girls were so worn out that sleep came easily.

When I woke up this morning, I was surprised to not hear crying from either of them. I was amazed. Could it really be that such a young puppy would sleep the entire night through on her first night in a new home? I tiptoed into Dear Daughter's room and found this sweet little sight. Apparently, Britta felt that she'd just make her very own puppy pile and climbed up into the trundle with Dear Daughter. Oh well. Crate training begins today.