Most of the folks who frequent the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse are what you might call proponents of a retro style of living known as “making do” or “hey, this works”. And that pretty much means you won’t find our domiciles featured in glossy magazines. Our places, and especially the PBC&R, are furnished, so to speak, with just stuff.

Well, you probably guessed that after reading my many references to the Chickenpox Sofa and rummage sales.

But right now, I’m thirsty and a little achy, so I’m going to go fix myself a cure – Coke, Diet Coke and aspirin – and get back to this subject later. I think it will be an “ongoing” later – as in bit by bit as I think of things.

Oh, before I hobble off to the kitchen, I have to mention one of the best compliments my husband gave me: We were about 30, had moved to Ann Arbor and I put a table in the basement laundry room. The floor slanted a little and when he came home, I demonstrated you had to “kind of kick” one of the table’s legs back a bit to make it stable.

He laughed and said I reminded him of his grandfather . . . “Oh, a little baling wire will fix that right up.”

So, a week ahead of Father’s Day, I’m going to make my cure and toast the late William A. Vance Sr. of Carthage, Illinois, known by his contemporaries as “W.A.”