The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

The Leaning Tree – typo

Der Bingle once said to me that he could not believe I did not have a bookmark for a blog I had. Actually, I bookmark very few things – reference places that have a complicated address or are fairly esoteric in that they relate to a kid’s school project and entailed a Google search. I guess, quite honestly, that I make myself go through address steps just to keep tabs on my memory – a little less costly in terms of gas then waiting until I head out to Shipshewana and wind up in St. Louis. And the police won’t have to call and say, “We think we have your senile mother/wife here.” Of course, they wouldn’t say senile, it would probably be more along the line of “confused” or whatever kind word came to tongue.

Anyway, every now and then when I sit down to type in www.theleaningcow.com, I will have recently been by or seen an and for The Dollar Tree, a store in which everything costs a dollar and where I have found great hardback books that originally sold for in the $25-$30 range, A few times I have typed in – you got it – www.theleaningtree.com. On such occasions, a generic sort page pops up –  no one is here  but here are some ads and suggested sites.

Well, this morning, I did the tree instead of cow thing and much to my surprise, this picture came up:

map3

This is what I saw at the top of the window: The Leaning Tree Restaurant (Chinese characters) Fulong, Taiwan. There was no other content on the site.

Fulong???? Is this any connection to the Foo Bar here at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse, not to mention the franchised Foo Bar & Grille in Grover’s room at The Ohio Redoubt of the West Facing Cave? We will have to keep tabs and see if what we can find out.

Just Me - AmeliaJake, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

From the fairground – a fair exchange

Just a while ago, Der Bingle returned from the fairgrounds with Sydney, the last trip until next weekend. And he brought with him something he had found on the bleachers by the old Merchants Building. This:

from-the-bleachers

Yesterday, people had gathered for a giant garage sale and I guess this got lost in the commotion. Der Bingle didn’t quite know what it was, but I told him I thought it was from a puzzle for very little people, hence the handle on the piece. I asked, “Is this a sign?” and he said he didn’t know, but he couldn’t leave the little cow over there – that it seemed to be destined to come to the leaning cow. He added, “Especially with the little smile.” Then he said  he had left a dollar under a rock where it had been. I doubt anyone will come looking for it; quite possibly it was out of a box filled with this and that of toddler toys. Perhaps the farmyard of its home puzzle has been long gone for some time now.

I don’t know who will find the dollar, and maybe there will be a reward for a lost cow . . . but, right now, she is here and she is leaning.

Just Me - AmeliaJake

A vignette from comments

Yesterday, I mentioned buying an old  mallet  – with a do-it -yourself repair – at a rummage sale. This morning I found a warm, charming  and extremely well-written story in the comment left by Pottermom:

I understand the mallet.  As I was helping clean out the upstairs of the family machine shop before the ranch sold I came upon a hoe.  It was just a short hand hoe, rusty, kind of wobbly with the name Ted carved in the handle.  It had been left and forgotten for years, a remnant from when the ranch was a vegetable farm back in the 1930s.  Ted resides in my garage now and helps me on a regular basis in my garden.  I like Ted.  Old and wobbly, nicked and scarred.  He fits me.

I have read it several times, drawn by the rhythm of the words and the smile those words bring forth.

This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

April at 60 . . . and a mallet, too

1 Comment

April is a good part over, but this morning it is here – stepping out into the back vestibule, I was met with warm, gentle, moist air. Not one thing harsh about it. When I was 30 – and younger, and some older – I would have been aware of it in the back of my mind. But I would not have felt it like a warm bath. Not that I don’t have worries, but I noticed noticing it. I think it is an age thing.

Oh, yes, I forgot about the Trinity Methodist Rummage Sale yesterday until about four in the afternoon. Today is bag day, but judging from the slim pickings I found at four, I doubt that I will go. I did spend a dollar and donated another one, and came away with these four things:

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A book I already have, but one I can stuff in the glove compartment for emergency reading; a mallet that screamed “I’ve been waiting here for you”; a flat thing with a handle and this muffin thing for Mother.

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I am particularly pleased with the mallet. Can you see? The head is held on with a rusty nail bent to serve as a cotter pin. How did this treasure go unclaimed? Oh, yes, I guess it is because it is sooooo AmeliaJake. That might scare some people.

This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Another applicant to the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

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full

Of course we aren’t a vegan eatery or hang-out or whatever you want to call the PBC&R, but we do know a fellow who is green and is not Kermit. Now he is thinking of working around the place , making it jolly, dontcha know. This Green Giant is a reincarnation of the the one that my mother sent away for when my first son was quite little. When she went out to the mailbox, she found a transparent bag on which was written, “Here’s your everloving Green Giant.” She said she wondered what the postman had thought. We never found out.

Time went by and the everloving GG got a little threadbare, so I sort of cloned him – a bit of seam cell research. I am no longer the person  who sat there making a pattern and cutting out leaves for his little Tarzan suit and his hat. I don’t know if I have changed or just grown tired, but the idea of making one does not appeal. Perhaps that is because I have already made one and see no need to do it again. That would mean I haven’t changed that much since I usually enjoy only the first figuring out process and not mass production.

I once made a Raggedy Andy – Jake – because the first one had a material fatigue problem and his head was ripped 90% off. It was impressive. The original donated his shiny black eyes and his heart to the project. I mean he literally donated his heart; I cut out the  “I love you” heart and stitched it on the new one.

I have made more than one “raggedy” – some pieced together in a Frankensteinish process and others fitted with new legs and arms. To this day, I can still be surprised while rummaging around in some box by a red and white stockinged leg, or an arm . . . an unfinished wig, salvaged eyes.

I have no real way to end this bit of rambling, so I think I’ll just sit here and chat about old times with his nibs . . .

This and That at The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

My car could be a sundial

Today, for the first time this year, I parked facing the west because of the brightness of the sun.  And, from time to time, the glare on the big flat windows of  noseless school buses  travelling east on the highway to the north would cause me to blink and avert my eyes.  The air outside was soft and with the sun behind me, the colors of spring were brighter. Sydney and I stayed a long time. Soon enough, we will be seeking shady spots, ones on rises so we can catch the breeze of morning. Soon enough we will have to share our fairgrounds with Bluegrass festivals, and 4-H and little leaguers and the fair and people out for a stroll. We will compensate by going earlier and earlier. Fortunately, I like the early dawns with the day lying fresh before you – not in the way gung-ho, productive people do – more in the personal quirk sort of way.

Now, I am going to look up some rules of punctuation, not because I intend to heed them, but I am curious about the technicalities regarding the inside/outside of quotation marks. Sometimes what is right looks so wrong and  you just have to bite the bullet and do it, even though you know some folks are thinking, “Poor dear, she doesn’t understand that point . . . “

Just Me - AmeliaJake

I know I was just here

The weather. I had to come home and look it up. At the fairgrounds the sky was cloudless and the sun glanced on the grass at an angle that caused the morning dew to shimmer silvery. Silvery? That is a word? I am not getting the dotted redline so I guess it is. I think I normally say silverish, but, then, I probably don’t say it that much at all. Oh, wait, nevermind . . . It seems I leaned on my tangent button.

So, the weather. The prediction is for a day of sun and then two windy days of almost hot weather that will dry out the lingering dampness of recent rains – and maybe take the moss off the south side of the trees.  Yes, it’s true; there really is moss on the south side of the trunks. I turned into the drive yesterday and was thankful I was not my pioneering Indiana forebears or I might have become lost.

Well, this is the next three days . . .  I hope.

Today
Apr 23
Sunny
Sunny
61°
50°

Fri
Apr 24
Partly Cloudy / Wind
Partly Cloudy / Wind
80°
59°

Sat
Apr 25
Partly Cloudy / Wind
Partly Cloudy / Wind
83°

Just Me - AmeliaJake, Special Memories

Chukar

I saw a reference to chukar hunting that led me to a site about hunting in Upland Idaho and a video (called A Fistful of Chukars) of a man and a dog and chukars falling from the sky.  I learned a little about chukar hunting – not much – and saw that there was a reference on the site labelled “If you are out hunting by yourself and feel you are having a heart attack… this is how to handle it.”

That is probably there because of this description of an outing:

You just climbed to the top of a mountain.  You didn’t get there taking a hiker’s path, the slow rhythmic pace along a trail.  You got there cross-country chasing a dog that is chasing a bird.  Your steps fall downhill to get to the dog on point and hopefully the flush of a covey.  Your steps fall uphill racing to get above the feathered creatures you admire so much.  Once you are on top or even crest a high vantage to look down on the rolling ridges and water below you know what it is to have earned something.  It isn’t the bird in the bag you will think of at this very moment, it’s the view.  The stark beauty of the place you are in settles into you.  Once you feel this you have found another piece of the puzzle that is chukar hunting.

Karl DeHart
UplandIdaho.com

But getting back to chukars, when I first saw the word and that they were hunted, I thought it sounded like something you should do with a khyber knife. And when I checked a Cornell site to learn abou chukars, I exclaimed, “I knew it!” because the first thing I read was this: A native of southern Eurasia, the Chukar was introduced into the United States from Pakistan . . .

I then went to the shopping part of the site and found a new phrase: CHUCKING FUKAR! It was printed on hats.

By the hilt and the haft of the khyber knife, what in the heck does fukar mean? I looked it up. This proved a difficult task. Most results on the Google search engine referred me back to the place on Upland Idaho I had come from. When I put in “fukar definition” it asked me if I meant FUBAR – and we have been there before . . . Foo Bar and all that.

The best I could come up with was a reference to a post titled  Sand Merchants Baned in a blog titled Corax’al.

“Fukar” is the noun form of the verb (that we of Vra’Akar came up with) for the action by which mothers and fathers engender children. But in usage just as common, one might hear ‘jalla‘ used to mean ‘copulate’. Since it also means ‘to strike’ or ‘to beat’, it shares an etymology analogous to that of the infamous English F-word.))

cfhatorange

So how this happened to get on hats, I don’t know, but next to the picture, they have noted this:

If you have chased chukar then you understand the meaning.

Well, at least if a tornado carries me, like Dorothy, far away – say to Peshawar –  I will know two words. I think I’d better just say “Chukar”.  Although, “Take me to the American Embassy” would probably be best.

Ack, some of the pheasant hunters here are gearing up for chukar . . .

The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

We are bummed

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Cloudy
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Updated: Apr 21 04:25 p.m. ET
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Rain showers this evening changing to mixed rain and snow overnight. Low 31F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of precip 70%.


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