Latino extraordinaire 

 

Let’s just call her Julie.  A 21-year-old Latina who was born in America to Mexican immigrants.  She is now enrolled in a nearby four-year university on her way to becoming an interpreter for the deaf and blind.  She should graduate in 2025 with a BA degree.  And is bilingual.  Fluent in both English and Spanish.

Her father is a painting contractor and Julie has painted many a house herself, inside and out.  She and her family know what work is.  She has a real sense of family and pitches in often to help her father with his painting business.  Not at all afraid to splatter paint on herself. 

And this is just one Latino family out of thousands that had come to Norte America to find their place in the great American dream.  Don’t tell me immigrants can’t make their own way. .  Immigrants like Julie and her family are key to America’s success.  I am proud to count myself one of her friends and a beneficiary of her keen sense of caring.

 

 

Not so beautiful dreamer. 

Where do they come from?

I have the craziest dreams and have no idea where they come from or what prompts such whacky scenarios.  Is it wishful thinking or watching too many Roadrunner cartoons.  Or maybe from reading too many Mad Magazines back in my misspent adolescence.

One dream I had it was dark and gray and a man smoking a cigarette came up to my father-in-law and shot him width his cigarette.  Crazy, huh?

Another was I was sleeping on a carpeted floor in an empty room and a horse came in and laid down next to me like a dog or cat and we both fell asleep.  Nuts huh?

Then another reoccurring dream was showing up on the last day of a college class after not being at the earlier classes totally unprepared for the final test.  I hated this one.

Then another reoccurring dream was suddenly I discover when walking outside out in the middle of the street I either had only a T-shirt on or nothing at all.  Trying how to run back to my house without anybody seeing me.  Oh, so embarrassing.

Another was going into the men’s room, which seemed once inside to be cavernous with hundreds of wall urinals.  This one was a total mystery.

The one I hated the most and occurred several times was losing my youngest daughter when we were walking out in the wilderness or in a huge neighborhood.  Yuck.

Plus losing my guide dog Rickles or just having to hold the ring on his chain collar.  Holding with no leash or harness.  However, in actuality, he did get away from me one time and a neighbor helped me find him.  He had wandered around the block and found him with kids who were playing with him.  Whew!

Then sometimes I would be sleeping with the radio on with someone reading the news.  As I was dreaming it was all about me standing on the roof looking down below, was my father-in-law out on the sidewalk delivering the news.  Speaking to no one in particular.  I have had many of these radio dreams involving different people I know.

I have had numerous dreams driving a car and approaching a stop light and attempting to push the breaks to no avail and couldn’t stop.  Then I would wake up with the sheets and cover pushed off the bed.  No wonder I couldn’t stop.  I was trying to break the sheets.  Crazy.

Lastly but not all of my nutso dreams, I would be standing in my mom’s kitchen and I could see huge trucks and buses coming down the hall passing the kitchen door going out the side door to the driveway.  Then there were other dreams where trucks came out the front door as well.  Now how could you get big semi-trucks coming from down the hall?

And to let you know I do not use drugs or alcohol.  Not even mushrooms.  Too much Mexican food maybe.  Yes, it was that green chili sauce for sure.

Care to interpret my dreams?  Boy howdy.

 

 

With a dill pickle on the side. 

 

So, you work with what you got.

In my early days of learning to cook, improvisation was the key.  If you do not have the correct items as specified on a recipe, then improvise.  Right?

Well I would try to come close to the recipe as possible.  That was my mantra as a 12-year-old.  Never mind missing key components that could alter a recipe drastically.  If you are making a hot fudge sundae and have no ice cream then improvise with cold mashed potatoes.  Right?

But anyway we Ayers’s  had gotten off on these boxed Chef Boyardee food cooking kits.  One of our favorite boxed kits was one to make pizza.  I love pizza.  We ate these things long before we had gone to a local pizza joint.  We had no Shakey’s nor any Pizza Hut.  Just boxed kits from Chef Boyardee. 

In the box was a packet of yeast, flour, grated cheese, and some red pizza sauce.  Everything one would possibly need to make an appetizing pizza.  The pizza dough, the cheese, and sauce was spread on a rectangular cookie sheet.

But the downside is I was limited in what goes on a pizza.  Do I use lettuce or carrots or what?  I noticed when my older sister made one of these things it had chopped green stuff on top.  Not sure what it was.  

So I found some green stuff in the fridge, chopped it up, and sprinkled it all over the pizza sauce.  Then I placed it in the oven at the right temperature and set the timer to the right cooking time.

As soon as I took it from the oven my  youngest sister came in the kitchen and exclaimed, wow, pizza with chopped green bell peppers.  Let’s cut a piece and eat it.  So we did and I didn’t tell my sister the green stuff was a big sour dill pickle.  Surprise!

Well, it looked good to me.  Really didn’t taste bad.  Nor did it taste good.  But we did eat the darn thing.  Nex time I might try green beans instead.

 

 

Sent from Mail for Windows

 

Hey boy, give me a bale of hay

Summer 1961.
It was summer break between my junior and senior year of high school and a friend and I were way up in northern California working on a cattle ranch. The ranch was approximately 40-miles south from the Oregon/California border and approximately 700-miles north from Los Angeles. Ranch was somewhere between metropolitan Weed and the smaller town of Gazelle. The city of Weed was in the shadow of Mount Shasta and its population was about 2000. A one company town that processed and made newsprint paper. Paper rolled into huge rolls and sold to newspaper printing companies.
The city of Gazelle mostly was a farmer’s stop-and-fix-it tractor tire sort of place. If you weren’t a farmer or rancher, you had no business there. Feed stores, tractor parts, and the farmer’s Grange.
Our employer was called Grass Valley Ranch. It was my friend’s uncle’s ranch. Otherwise we would not have been invited to come all the way up from L A and work. And work we did. They called this work, “Bucking Hay.” Mowing hay, raking hay, baling hay, hauling hay, and stacking hay. The hardest work I had ever done up until that time and ever since. I never want to see that place again. Never! Take your bale of hay and stuff it.
Then one mid-summer morning my friend’s uncle and we teen boys were driving towards Gazelle and the uncle suggested we stop for a cup of coffee and a donut. We pulled in to a smallish café just off US-99. , got out of the rancher’s very old 1950 beat up and rusted Chevy pick-up and shuffled towards the small cafe. Inside was just a long counter and bar stools. We each mounted a stool and waited for the hired help to come and take our coffee order. But much to our surprise and certain admiration and delight, a twenty-something young blond woman came out from behind the cook area and asked how she could help us. Never mind what we really thought. None the less, let me mention here this young woman’s face could have been on any popular glamor magazine . Blond hair up in a twist, rich voluptuous red lips, intelligent looking but sympathetic eyes, and a cute slightly turned up nose. This is not to mention her well-formed slim figure. She certainly was something to behold. Photogenic, Rosey cheeks, and reasonably tall.
The first thing that comes to mind is why on earth is she here. This is no place for a statuesque goddess to be. She should be in Hollywood or in an ad agency’s studio on Madison Avenue in NYC. But again, why was this beauty here in cow town?
Never the less, she quickly took our order and filled our cups with steaming hot coffee.
But as this scenario was later related to others by my friend’s uncle, my friend and I never took our eyes off her stunning presents. Our gaze followed her from one end of the serving bar to the other. Our synchronize stare back and forth was as if a pair of windshield wipers. Right left, right left. I don’t even remember drinking any coffee during that mesmerizing moment. She too also noticed our boyish stares and enjoyed the moment as well. But then my friend’s uncle brought us back to “hay bucking land and Certainly a wake-up call as if being hit by a bucket of ice water. Boys, let’s go back to work.

I will take another slice with pepperoni.

A Pizza Story.
I first began to visit this place when I was in junior high in the late 1950s. I would ride with my friend and his parents. They called it pizza. The restaurant was called Deluca’s. But they mostly had pizza and some other ordinary pastas and salads. The pizza was in a squarish rectangular pan. About the size of a cookie sheet.
This pizzeria was located in eastern suburb next to East Los Angeles in a dining room about the size of a double car garage. Maybe a triple car.
But anyway, success was easily measured in remodeling increments. First came the red and gold flocked wallpaper. Velvety and looked expensive. Next came the impressive ornately framed oil paintings of the owner and his family. Himself, his wife, and his two lovely daughters dressed in their best formal wear. Spaced out evenly on all four red and gold walls.
And again, I must mention, mostly rectangular pans of cheese and tomato sauce were being ordered and served to hungry patrons and all in plain sight beneath the oiled portraits. An incongruent sight to behold. You could almost see the DeLucas twitch their noses in response to the magnificent pasta aroma.
Then coming a bit later as business grew, to this modest dining room was an enormous crystal chandelier Possibly weighing about a ton. . A fixture with seemingly thousands of hanging crystal bobbles hung in the room’s center ceiling. There must have been hundreds of tiny clear candle-looking lights. This mass of crystal seemed to overwhelm the smallish dining room and possibly make the room look smaller. However, this ornate light fixture was to impress and hopefully delight the pizza eating customer.
None the less, the entire inside was elegantly decorated as if Don Corleone the Godfather himself had it done. But as mentioned in a relatively small eating space.
But wait, out back under a modest sized car port was parked a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. An automobile worth more than any ten new cars on the street. It was parked just steps from the employee entrance. Either the owner was doing quite well or some other operation was going on at this place. Don’t really know. Oh yes, pizza was good. The little family’s business was almost always busy. Hold the anchovies and Pass the Parmesan cheese please. This unique dining experience was just a delight by the slice.

He wore his glasses on the end of his nose.

Walter the genius boy.
It was fall 1963 and I had just transferred from a junior college in Los Angeles. Transferring to a small private college in Oklahoma City. I did this in part to get out of L A plus my cousin, a recent grad of this small school, thought it could work for me.
There were a number of interesting characters at this small institution. But none so obvious and obnoxious as Walter, whose last name I cannot spell. I just called him Walter the genius boy. Walter had just turned sixteen as he entered our college as a freshman that fall. As school progressed Walter was able to manipulate a number of vital things. He liked his dorm room nice and toasty. So he was able to bypass the thermostat and set it where he wanted . Never mind his jerry-rigged wiring affected the temperature in our dorm suite, a couple of doors down the way from his. It was so hot in our room we had to open doors and windows wide even though the temperature was below freezing outside.
Plus Walter the genius boy was able to rewire a connection with the pay phone downstairs enabling many calls for free for himself only. And his screwball antics went on and on.
Another friend of mine at this school wanted me to come along with him and watch Walter the genius boy teach an advanced class in Fortran programming at what was then called Central State college in Edmond. Again, Walter was barely sixteen, wore his glasses on the end of his nose, and looked every bit of a pimple face nerd.
So my friend and myself went to Central State to watch this genius boy in action. Probably the youngest teacher adjunct in Central State history. In the class were mostly older men . Most of them were graduates, engineering majors, and people wanting to learn Fortran. An advanced programming language. So my friend and I sat there in a classroom and watched with wrapped amazement. The advanced students at Central State asked many difficult questions and Walter the genius boy answered their questions to their satisfaction.
Then later on during our school’s semester, Walter the genius boy received a B-grade in a required physical education class Much to Walter’s displeasure and annoyance. . A grade point average wrecker for sure. A bowling class. Never mind, Walter was a lousy bowler.

The medicine store

A bottle of Dr. Good.
My grandmother lived in Wilson, Oklahoma. Next door to the towns pharmacist and his family. If my memory serves me their name was Pfeffer. Pfeffer’s Drug store on Main Street in Wilson. A modest store with soda fountain, drugs, sundries, and paperback books and magazines.
When I was in college in Oklahoma City and visiting Wilson before heading to school, I ran into Mr. Pfeffer’s daughter. A recent graduate of the Pharmacy school at Oklahoma University. She knew I was new in town since town was just a bit under 2000 population and seemed most helpful. Really, I don’t think she was interest in me. A dopy sophomore at OCC and looking for a few paperback books in their store. I remember I bought the paperback, Dr. Strangelove. .
But anyway, the reason I bring this up it was back in 1950 when our family was in Wilson on one of our regular trips from the west coast to visit our grandmother. A most quiet woman who we grandies call Granny. I was about six-years-old. A first grader.
It was during that 1950 visit we were in town one Friday evening and walked to the end of town to an empty lot and saw a real live Medicine Show. A colorful horse drawn wagon with a fold down performance stage in back. There three individuals performed and sold bottles of Elixir. Elixir that would promise to cure almost everything. Cure everything from gout to baldness. A nice-looking man and woman sang and sold bottles of this miracle stuff right off the back of the wagon. A third person was a comedian of sorts and drew some laughs
For only fifty-cents you could buy a pint bottle of this magical elixir.
There were about twenty or thirty people standing and watching this somewhat entertaining pre-television infomercial. In retrospect many years later I would guess this Medicine Show sold their wares and quickly left town.
But anyway going back to Pfeffer’s Drug store in WilsonOk, it was discovered that Mr. Pfeffer really didn’t have a college degree in pharmacy and was told by the state’s health board to stop filling drug prescriptions. Never mind Mr. Pfeffer filled thousands of prescriptions over the decades. So his daughter took over the business. Mr. Pfeffer obtained his knowledge by shadowing another pharmacist. A pharmacist Who, himself did the same. It was the way things were done back in the early twentieth century. Many doctors also did the same thing without a MD degree. Oh, how things have changed.
Look up the song by Cher titled ‘Gypsies tramps and thieves.’ In the song Cher sings of her father selling “bottles of Dr. Good.” An elixir claiming to cure most anything.

Shakey’s pizza went down

It was a Saturday June 8, 1974.
I had just gone on the air at radio station KXXO in Tulsa. My shift started just before six PM. The news services teletypes were clicking and dinging . Weather was the big news at the moment. So my shift started out just reading weather bulletins. The full news staff was on site and bumping into each other.
Instead of the usual music and commercials I read non-stop weather bulletins until the lights literally went out.
At approximately 6:20 all power went off at our transmitter. Our big wall clock stopped at 6:20. Only twenty minutes into my on-air shift. Dead. We were off the air.
Tornados were spotted coming towards the Brookside area just west of where our radio station was and took out many power lines, trees were uprooted, roofs taken off, and my favorite pizza place, Shakey’s, was completely flattened. A pancake rubble. Sirens had sounded just moments after I got on the air. Heavy rains were coming down. Some low-lying areas were already flooding. I was obligated to stay at the station to finish my shift. However I had no way to get back home due to the rains and flooding anyway.
Our sister station, KMOD, was still on the air so we were able via telephone line to send our signal with news and updates and kept our listeners apprised of what was going on with the weather. Yes, phone lines were still alive.
Many radio stations as well as ours also were blown off the air.
We were a CBS affiliate and we fed them updates in New York as well. Then as the weather began to subside, All I could do is just sit in the hot seat and hope the transmitter comes back to life. But it wasn’t until Monday morning when our transmitter came back to life. But all through that time from Saturday evening and until Monday morning, I was stuck at the radio station, unshaven smelly sleeping on the bosses sofa all with no way to get back home.
Backing up, the interesting thing was when I came to work the previous Saturday evening, all was dry . No rain yet but a few wall clouds were off in the distant western sky. Yes, weather does quickly change in Oklahoma.
Looking outside after the weather alert skies were a greenish gray. We were covered in a tornadic wall cloud. A bad place to be but we luckily made it through with modest damage. Where’s my all-steel safe room?

Overnight listening

Do I have a hobby?
If you want to call it that. My hobby goes way back long before the internet. Long long before Apps that play a gazillion radio stations on my iPhone around the world. Long before ‘Tune-in Radio.’
When we had moved from Hawaii in 1974 back to the mainland it has always been known that radio signals travel farther at night than in the day. It has something to do with the ionosphere, clouds, and magic. This is the best way to explain this radio signal phenomena.
Knowing this night time radio thing and just after going to bed I would get out my portable radio and headsets. Then I would tune up and down the AM frequencies. The phenomena only occurs on the AM frequency. Not on FM.
But anyway I would start at the low end of the radio dial at about 550 KHZ and start scanning up the dial. I would find radio stations in Denver, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Omaha, all over Illinois, Michigan, and on and on. Hearing from stations with an omni directional signal and mostly from the big wattage stations. Fifty-thousand watts being the highest wattage.
To me it is most interesting to hear people from other parts of the United States and what they are up to. What music they are playing. What local events they talk about. You can hear about the good and the not so good. The larger cities usually have the most interesting radio personalities. WGN in Chicago had way back when a morning guy named Wally Phillips. WBBM, an all-news station, had a news guy with a really good voice named Pat Cassidy. There was this overnight guy up in Denver on station KOA and during the severe winter months would spit off his high-rise balcony and could hear crackle when it hits the ground. Then if the ionosphere and clouds were shifting the far away signals would fade in and out. Which is part of the fun.
I did this for many years before hearing about others doing the same. They called it DX’ing. Not sure what it means. None the less still like to check in on what others across our great radio spectrum are saying and doing.
But now I cheat. I have an App on my iPhone that can conceivably pick up thousands of radio stations around our globe. Recently I have been listening to our northern neighbors in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. And, yes it’s true, they are very polite.
Try this. You might like it. You might discover what others are thinking. Escape your bubble and listen to ‘Tune-in Radio.’ This is not an endorsement. There are other radio Apps as well.
Or go buy a small portable radio and try DX’ing over the airwaves. It’s most fun.

Book report

Book Report

No courtroom drama. No arguing attorneys. Just banter, bluster, and bereavement. I would call this where “Friday Night Lights’ meets “News from Lake Wobegon.” But yet it is writings from the famed attorney author, John Grisham.
It goes something like this, former football jocks return to hometown to pay respects to their beloved football coach who is on the brink of passing on. The jock boys gather up in the bleachers to reminisce and recount crucial plays during various games in the past. The coach was the winningest coach in the school’s football history.
Title, Bleachers by John Grisham, sports fiction, Bestseller 2003
Library of Congress annotation:

After fifteen years former high school quarterback Neely Crenshaw returns to his hometown, where he learns that legendary football coach Eddie Rake lies dying. With other Spartans he reminisces about the “glory days” of their youth while contemplating his own lost potential.
A short read but good. Read it. You will like it. Low grade romance. Some naughty words. I liked the book.