Just Me - AmeliaJake, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Okay, I got misted, but that’s okay

It was chilly, very chilly, and raining on and off this morning . . . and the Apple Festival opened. I was sitting here all snug with warm feet and I thought, “Well, if I’m going to be alive, let’s be alive.” And so Der Bingle and I walked over to the fairgrounds; I wore a camisole, a turtleneck, a heavy hooded sweatshirt and tied a lined windbreaker around my waist. It spit rain and it misted but we made it over in pretty good shape. Of course, there were no lines for anything, so I filled up my Bayou Billy cup from previous AF’s with peach-flavored soda and then got a buffalo burger.

One of the men waiting on us looked familiar and so I said, “I think I know you,” and he replied his name was Mike Kramer. I was quiet for a moment and then put it all together and realized he was Judge Kramer of whom I have a very high opinion. He looked different I guess in a sweatshirt than in a black robe. Actually, he is not what you would call a handsome man at all. I interviewed him once for an article and when I first sat down it occurred to me right off the bat that he wasn’t handsome. I’m sorry but that’s the way it is; the funny thing is I rarely notice people’s looks unless they are strikingly attractive or, forgive me Sydney, real dogs . . .  and he’s not in the “dog” category.

He’s just a very friendly, polite, intelligent and kind man . . . and I’ll take that kind of “just” anytime.

Munching my buffalo burger and sipping my peach soda, I headed down the fairground lane with Der Bingle. He was doing the same, but right across from the Merchant’s Building, he tried to breathe a chunk of buffalo burger and choked. Momentarily. Then bits of burger flew out of his mouth and hes was just breathing and coughing. One of the thoughts that ran through my mind was to be glad the festival was not crowded because it would be easier for people to spot the screaming short woman calling for the EMS. As I said, though, he unchoked himself and just coughed for awhile and then off and on for a while.

We went into the Settler’s Roost (Swine Barn) and sat on bales of straw for 15 minutes while a group which shall remain unnamed warmed up and tuned. Then they played and we realized the only good thing about having sat there was it kept us out of the more heavily- falling rain outside. The Swine Barn is also home to oodles of craft booths and I bought a rectangular piece of wood – oh, about four inches by two – that was painted white with black spots, said “COW”  and had a little wire by which to hang it. I also got a wooden cut-out that says “MOO” and a pathetic reindeer because I felt so for him. AMELIAJAKE! The reindeer is not real, he is a piece of  WOOD. I know my inclination to personify gets me too involved; I need to do something about that before I start a charity drive for pathetic wooden reindeers and primitive stuffed dolls and mooseheads on springs that stick into flowerpots.

We did more stuff, but I’ll get to that later. However, it was in this time that I first saw the coyote scalp with ears that is now sitting on my head. I DON’T UNDERSTAND IT MYSELF.

heading out with mug

Der Bingle and the Bayou Billy famous refillable mug for only one dollar, heading back over to another festival. He got Cherry Wine – I got peach.

small crowd

Last year I could not have taken this picture; the lane then was a moving snake of people. The picture would have been of somebody’s shirt.

booth

Waiting for customers.

crafts

Notice the “cow”.

wes linenkugal band

Wes Linenkugal band. Very good, happy music.

Just Me - AmeliaJake, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

furniture

I moved some furniture today – oh, a loveseat and a couple of chairs. And then I toted boxes too, boxes in which I am collecting the tools I find around the house. I transported afghans from the porch to the living room . . . I steam cleaned as well. Almost forgot, I moved the little fire stove out of the corner and about two to three feet south against the east wall. So now we have a speakeasy alcove in our cafe and roadhouse, our little Foo Bar. It is the place where we are refined, where we think of poetry and poetic prose, where decisions are made, where we frown inwardly when we fall into being our second-rate selves and  . . . well, that is yet to be seen.

But wait a moment, speakeasy seems not the right word for these sentiments, yet it came right to me and I like it just fine. It’s okay . . . we tend to pull odds and ends together because we like them and because they usually work out. At least for us.

Just Me - AmeliaJake

Oh, festival, oh festival, your rainy days may be coming

It is raining now; it was raining last night; it is supposed to rain all day and then tomorrow morning and maybe tomorrow afternoon.

The is the weekend of Apple Festival; two years ago the sun was out both days and the temperature was at record highs. The Lutheran folks could only spend 10 minutes a shift at the apple fritter cooking vats. Last year the weather was unremarkable in my memory so I suppose it was suitable weather, but not the Goldilocks “just right” weather we had three years ago.

So, this year it looks like a chilly. rainy Saturday and a chilly – with left over Wet –  Sunday. This is the year to find a spot on the hay bales in the Swine Barn (they call it Settler’s Roost or Open Prairie for Apple Festival) and listen to the Possum Trott Orchestra and other good fiddling groups with nifty names. The craft booths are in the Swine Barn as well, lots of them. That’s where Cameron started the tradition of getting Grandma GiGi (Mother) an Apple Festival birthday present. The first year – even though he was quite little – he summed her up pretty well by stopping in front of a “Grow Dammit” garden sign and pointing out she would like it.

This year she is teetering on how she feels and mentions going on Sunday if the weather is okay. Of course, she hasn’t been feeling well and is spending a lot of time resting and being nagged to eat. BUT, an echocardiogram has shown her heart to be “strong” – let’s hear if for a 65% ejection fraction. Now we are looking at the stomach . . . but that stomach is thinking soft festival pretzel with cheese.

Ack, they tell me I have to drive to to Albion for a court Colin judge conference . . . So I guess I’ll comb my hair.

Just Me - AmeliaJake

Hershey’s kisses

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When I was little, my parents would give me a dime or nickel and let me walk all by myself over to the General Store and buy candy corn. I think there is some story about my pronunciation causing a problem in the transaction.  I do remember that I never really cared all that much for the orange and yellow and tip of white stuff because it was too sweet. I don’t think I verbalized this at the time because I think I didn’t have enough experience to know that people have different preferences.

Over the years, I would occasionally pass a dish of candy corn and, against my better judgment, pick up a piece with the idea that maybe, just maybe, I might join the majority of people who liked candy corn. It had never worked with watermelon and pumpkin pie, but it was a quick little test. Each time it was too sweet as always.

And then Der Bingle brought home a bag of candy corn flavored Hershey Kisses and I thought, yeah, right, whatever. But, hey, they are good.

I took pictures of a couple in their foil and then naked and when I get around to it I will post them here below.

candy corn

Candy corn kisses

nakey corn

Nakie corn

Just Me - AmeliaJake

ooooooh, a little miscue

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We kind of all realize that Alison has a little problem with over-reminding people of things and events. Kind of like: gonna do that now? gonna do that? gonna do that? not gonna forget to do that? Then, today, September 30, when I took her to work at 6:30 am. she didn’t have anything to remind me about. Nothing, nil, zip?

Mother drove home this morning by herself because she said she felt better and then I sat down and leaned over and slipped into a nap – actually, I may have taken my medicine twice. Anyway, I was in the tar pits of napping. Eyes opened but re-closed.  TV movies slipped from one to another. And then I felt a demanding thought flogging through the murky trails of neurons: MUST  . . . WAKE . . . UP . . . MUST  . . . MOVE. So I staggered to the shower and then set about getting some food for the horde of two coming from school.

Summer came in the front door and just a couple of minutes later, the doorbell rang. She went to check and said, “Oh, it’s some Chinese people.” You never know with Summer, so I went to the door and there were two ladies who are involved in Colin’s placement and casework. They were here at the house for a meeting with the family. Okay . . .

Actually, I think we handled it quite well: I settled them in a the table at the fair end of the kitchen and when Robert came in I plopped him in a chair and then we grabbed Summer and Cameron and put them on the two antique stools I had scored at an antique place for only $23 each even thought they are really strong with good ball bearings and thick, wooden, round seats that rotate.  Then I leaned up against the trestle table and just puttered around as we had our little confab.

Then, about 90 minutes later, they left. And I looked at Summer and said, “Chinese?”

(The ladies were very nice.)

Just Me - AmeliaJake

just a quick word

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I was watching “Any Given Sunday” with Al Pacino and Dennis Quaid because I was trying to figure out with which movie I had confused it. And then I sat on the remote and I am now watching a Ken Burns special on Mount Desert which I think is a part of a series on National Parks. Yes, that is what it is: National Parks and I am no longer seeing stuff about Mount Desert. Most times I would enjoy watching a documentary on National Parks and Stephen Mather’s push for a national park system, but right now watching this educational program is striking chords in my nervous system on a par with sitting through a Cotton Mather sermon. So I am going back to Pacino and Quaid and perhaps mind rot.

Oh, wait, now we get gossip: Mather had mental problems and “was sent to an asylum” outside of Baltimore. He had had his first breakdown in 1903 and three subsequent episodes had been prevented from escalating by trips to the wilderness of national parks. So, what about Mather and this fourth onset – did he get better or not? Okay, now they are talking about Mt. McKinley and in a filmed clip, an oldtimer explorer said the mountain had the “Heart of an Old Whore”.

Bears! There are bears pictured. I see no cows, though. Mostly I think the scenery and inspiration of the land and the talk of wealthy people are just asking me to be more than I feel like being at this moment. On the phrase “power elite” I click over to Pacino and Quaid. Sometimes you just have to tie one on.

This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

The situation

A while back, I mentioned in a post that the patrons of the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse (and the Foo Bar) were distressed that I appeared to be ignoring them, going off in my own fugues and distractions. Heck, take my word for it; I’m not going to search and link to it. (Well, okay, I got curious and did just that.) Now, the opposite seems to be the case: I walk through the PBC&R and look in the door of the Foo Bar and everyone is in suspended animation. Lydia is at the piano, but her fingers are just above the keys; the checker game is forever at the same move and the special sarsaparilla keeps flowing out of the spigot but the glass never overflows. It’s weird . . . kind of like a Stephen King or Dean Koontz opening chapter.

HEY, YOU GUYS . . .PERK UP. I need you. There, I’ve said it. You folks are important to me. I need help, especially since a group of singing sisters (biological, not nuns) came to door asking for a place to perform and bunk and eat. They call themselves the SighClones and if I can get them all together at once, I’ll take a picture. (They were all here with me watching “Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison” yesterday but I didn’t have my camera.)

So, guys, there’s a need for a real surefire cure . . . We need a party.

Just Me - AmeliaJake

Trip to Indianapolis

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Alison and I headed on down to Options today to see Colin for the first time now that he has settled in. He has lost weight and is a lot calmer and seems content. After about 30 minutes he told his mother he guessed we had seen everything and could go. Then he talked for about 30 more minutes and gave hugs with no tears and we headed back north, reassured in his state of mind.

It was a great day for the trip – all four lane and mostly interstate and, wow, the place is just right off the exit ramp. Now we need to scout out the city via the internet so we can take advantage of our trips down there. This time we thought we’d better play it safe and get right back on the entrance ramp, though.

Just Me - AmeliaJake

Out behind Mother’s

I was following Mother up through the yard to the back deck when I heard a loud shout. I ignored it and we went inside and did a few little things and then I looked out back through the screen and exclaimed, “Holy Smoke!” And smoke is what it was, only I didn’t have my camera. There was black smoke and flames and the fire department came and all I had was my cell phone and I haven’t fully figured out the camera.

2

And I don’t want to go to the trouble of rotating either. But, if you hold your head sideways, you can see black smoke. Now aren’t you excited? Oh, and that black circle in the forefront? Well, that’s the burn pile site. Last time we scorched the leaves on a maple . . . this time it was a willow. You’d think we’d learn.

Okay, okay, okay . . . I did the right thing and flipped it.

Snapshot 2009-09-26 08-03-37

This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Walter Cronkite’s voice

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There is a good thing about being in my early sixties: I know Walter Cronkite’s voice the second I hear it. So if the television is playing in the background on the Military Channel or the History Channel International as it so often is, I am alerted that there is a good show coming on by the sound of his voice.

I stopped what I was doing this morning to watch a show that covered the time from the Japanese Attack on Port Arthur through WWII. Cronkite referred to the ‘unity and disciple” of the Japanese culture standing out among Asiatic groups. And that triggers a memory of a 60 Minutes episode about Japanese businessmen in training being required to stand on a busy street corner shouting out about mistakes they have made.

Generals came from all over to view how Japan had mastered the strategy of Western war and modern weapons. Nine years later, as Cronkite announced, they would be at war with each other.

Yes, I remember the Schlieffen Plan – the assumption the Russians would take six weeks to deploy and that France would fall in that time. I like hearing Cronkite explain it so much better than any history professor I have had. I remain fascinated by the first engagement of that August begun war: an airplane spotted Germans in Belgium and British Cavalry was sent in which was repelled by a German group traveling on bicycles. There were pictures – pictures of these young Germans  – four abreast – pedaling along a road. Pictures of men on horses.

The Battle of Mons and the audio recording of a British soldier who won the Victoria Cross as he held the Germans off at the bridgehead long enough for the British Army to fall back. And I’m thinking of that man who had that voice – “He’s dead now, been for some time.” Cronkite is dead too, now . . . as are the 20,000 British who went “over the top” at the Somme and died in the very first hour.

And somewhere in the narrative I hear him mention that Napoleon had 20,000 shells at Waterloo; the British stocked up 3 million in preparation for the Somme.

Despite himself, there is pride in Cronkite’s voice as he speaks of Midway  when the battle seemed going Japan’s way until “Thirty-six American planes spotted the Japanese fleet . . . On that day, Japan started to lose the war.”

The show went on and ended talking about the month and year of ’45; I was born in ’48. I saw the generations of the time from 1905 to 1045 through the lens of accomplishment without visible war wounds. The maimed were hidden away in Veteran’s Hospitals; we didn’t see them. We saw the prosperity and vitality of the GI’s turned students. For awhile America was still the America of small towns and girls still wearing skirts and Currier & Ives holidays. There was energy and church going and laden dinner tables smelling of roasts and turkeys and pies. Autos were big and heavy. Shoes were leather and high-tops until the were bronzed and made into bookends.

I went to college in the era of Western Civilization; within a decade,  multi-culturalism would be re-witing the curriculum.  Political correctness would discourage questions. Citizens of the world . . . but I think it might be a facade – that we are still leaning toward our tribes. And, quite frankly, I wonder about what was remarked upon over a century ago – that Japanese “unity and discipline”.  I wonder, too, about just what the American spirit is now.

I guess I’m not being so political correct, mentioning something like this. But I see it; I think I do – in my electronics, in garages, in quality. I don’t think what I’m viewing is an optical illusion.

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