Daily Bread

[Tybee]

I like the old metal Sunbeams. My mom used to keep extras in the basement for when they broke and just bring up a new one.

That is the kind of thing we look for at estate sales.

I also buy enamel ware cookware from the 70's--just found a CathrineHolm of Norway skillet yesterday at a garage sale--looks like this only brown:


The internet calls it "iconic midcentury modern design." I call it a return to my happiest years, which is what I suspect many of us may be doing in the near future as we discard outdated things and suit up for the last part of ourlives. I am enjoying cooking with Quistgaard design, drinking from iitala glassware, and buying the things I could not afford when they were new.

I share your desire to return to a better time, when things we made to last, and made beautifully. And I also have a Baby Ben clock, for the reasons you mention!

[Williamsmith]

The toaster thing came up on this board, before. Both Dualit (made in UK) and Bugatti (non traditional, expensive toaster you could cook a steak in).

Thanks for the information. I looked both up ....prices from mid 200 to 1,000 dollars. If I can buy an entry level guitar for the price of a toaster.......it’s too expensive for me.

This is the toaster I met at the fall festival. She had the curves in all the right places, was not too heavy and not too thin. She looked like she would improve the appeal of any kitchen counter just by her mere presence. I mistaken said she was born in Michigan....looks like Minnesota. I will not soon forget her.

[Tybee]

Very nice toaster! There are some beautiful vintage toasters on ebay.
This gives you something fun to look for in your travels.

[Teacher Terry]

I just read a good book called Downsizing the Family Home and is recommended by AARP. I have been shedding stuff for a long time because I don't want to leave a mess behind for my kids. My DH on the other hand has a large shed, 1 car garage and his office full of junk. Ugh! so if I buy anything something like it has to go.

[Williamsmith]

There has never been one thought of visiting a counselor, although you’ve needed one on occasion. Sure, the job provides debriefing from critical incidents.......a prison riot, Flight 93, the ambush of a coworker. But you don’t trust the officers who were trained to screen for problems. You’ve heard that they have a tendency to share sensitive and personal information with people who don’t have a need to know card. You don’t go to a private counselor even though your health insurance would pay for most of it. That would be admitting weakness and exposing you to a career crisis. What if the good doctor really does think your are crazy?

And so, you handle your demons yourself. Sometimes adequately and sometimes not. There are times when you truly believe the answer will be at the bottom of the next bottle. And times, you wish you didn’t have to take a look. So when you walk into the office of the Assistant Pastor at your church, it is an act of extreme trust that you have been mulling over for a long time. You’ve driven to the church before with intentions of going in and veered off perhaps out of lack of courage or maybe you just aren’t ready to hear the truth.

This time, you ask if he’s in. The night before you found yourself rolled in a ball in the corner of your dining room doing a primal scream. You’ve started to sleep walk. Your wife found you outside with a hammer at two in the morning working on the new addition. Things have been intense at work. On the holiday, they took you out of plainsclothes and put you in uniform. The Department likes to say they “beefed” up patrols to discourage dangerous driving like DUI and speeding, tailgating and road rage. They just shift criminal investigators onto the road taking away valuable time for you to catch up on cases. This past holiday you chip in and go out and write warnings. No citations....that could get you Court time later.

Having put in your time, you go home. It’s early, about three or four in the morning and they haul you out of bed. You never did wake up in a good mood. You toss around your usual f-bombs while you try to get dressed in the dark. Someone has been murdered. It’s not your turn to be lead investigator, that’s good but you realize this is the beginning of possibly a long run without sleep. Sleep deprivation is just something that goes with the job. This case will have plenty of that but it will be the circumstances of the homicide that drives you to the Assistant Pastors Office.

You manage to make it to the scene with what tools you think you will need. The scene....it’s somebodys house. This is where someone made a life, raised a family and had reunions. It is now a scene. That someone was mid eighties, a great grandmother, grandmother, mother, sister and friend. She was an active senior who still drove her Buick LeSabre around the community shopping, attending church and vistiting friends. You go inside and start assisting. What you see, and the things you do are necessary but they don’t get forgotten, ever.

You are paired with another investigator and sent to a city. The suspect attempted to use the victims ATM card at a bank. You hope to get his photograph. You also hope to retrieve items that were stolen. These are the goals but it would take four days without sleep and a hotel room you only see to take showers in order to get them.

What has brought you to the Assistant Pastors Office is this. He is the former chaplain for the New York City Police Department. You feel comfortable with him. You ask, “Will you pray that a piece of evidence will be found that will close this case solidly?” He smiles. Of course. Together, you bow your head and earnestly plead with the Almighty to intercede and give guidance to your investigation. When it is over, you ask, “Pastor, will you keep me in your prayers?” He nods and hands you a token. A four leaf clover. He asks you to put it in your identification holder. He tells you to look at it and know someone is praying.

Thats as close to counseling as youve ever gotten but the result will make you a believer for the rest of your life.

[razz]

WS, I am aware of a little 8 year old boy who needs someone to give him a little 4-leaf clover to remind him that he is being loved. I will do that so thank you for the suggestion. It is amazing to me what people can endure and still function in a day-to-day life.

[Williamsmith]

Life without parole. You are torn. If anyone deserved the death penalty it is this beast. But a plea avoids the cost of a capital punishment case, endless appeals and the risk something could go wrong with the trial. It was all made possible by the hard work of a team of investigators.....and one single hair. You go see the Chaplain to thank him. Not so much that you make a direct correlation between his prayer and the discovery of this tiny piece of powerful evidence....maybe more just to let him know he made a difference in your life. You are sad to hear of his death not long after you last see him. Struck down by a quick moving cancer.

Years later in the box, among the other items you find the clover. It reminds you of what really matters. A little faith, a good family and a caring friend.

+++++++++

Its apple pie season:

[Williamsmith]

I am now officially a creature of habit. I like to keep things simple. Go to bed at relatively the same time every night, get up the same time. I eat breakfast before going to the gym. In fact, I have a morning ritual right down to the sequence I take my supplements. I am very “Monk like” as in the television detective from San Francisco.

Before I retired, I couldn’t relate to Monk or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Why did he have to have all the blinds at the same height and level with a bubble? Why did he like Tupperware so much? Why did he never have the top button on his shirt unbuttoned?

Before I retired, I never had any consistency in my life. It was one big struggle from morning to night. Like having too many whiffle balls coming at you at once to catch all of them. It didn’t make any sense to try to have organization.

Well, now it’s different. Now, my truck is meticulously washed, waxed, swept and dusted. All my guns are spotless. My slippers sit in the exact same spot every day. And any rattle I hear in the car gets addressed immediately.

I have an idea all this compulsion for order is unhealthy. It hasn’t gotten out of hand yet. I mean, I’m not rearranging the spice rack alphabetically or waxing my gutters. But I am concerned enough to take some precautionary action. I’m going to purposely leave a dirty fork and a bowl in the sink for a few hours and see how it goes. Hmm. Maybe I’ll start with just the fork.

[Williamsmith]

Some random thoughts on a Sunday morning:

When You were a kid Sunday’s we’re perfectly suited for reflection and quiet activities. Every Sunday morning you knew exactly how the day would unfold. A little cereal with milk, orange juice and a trip upstairs to get ready for church. The night before you had taken a tub bath. Not leisurely soaking, a quick in a out without enough time to even steam up the mirrors.

You dressed in the same Sunday outfit mom assigned you. Probably a tie. From about 8:30 am to 10:30 were Sunday School activities. Your Sunday school teacher was likely your public school teacher also. And then up to the main sanctuary for big church. You sat beside dad right on the end of the pew. You liked that spot because the fire and brimstone sermons sometimes got real personal. Sitting in the middle made you feel trapped....like you couldn’t get away from it in an emergency. What the emergency could be was never clear. Because you never could relate to the guy or gal in the pulpit yelling about how vial and evil you were, you daydreamed. What’s he so angry about anyway?

At noon both hands of the clock would be straight up and screaming for the preacher to release his God fearing people. But not until an extra few choruses of “Nothing But the Blood of Jesus” and a deft alter call. Plenty of parishioners would stream down to the alter weeping and repenting. As a kid you thought about how nice it was you lived amongst all these humble and caring people. As an adult, you suspect they streamed down there more out of the need to hasten returning home for the roast in the oven and an afternoon of watching football. The evangelist could get stubborn if nobody showed up at the alter. A good congregation was pliable enough to take cues and hit the carpet on their knees at the precisely perfect time. Much like tipping a good waitress.

Youd have a nice lunch because dad was home on the weekends mostly. And then mom and dad would disappear upstairs and leave you with orders to stay quiet downstairs. It was time for their afternoon nap. You and your brother would invent ways to entertain yourselves but yet remain quiet enough not to wake up the folks. Going outside was usually the best alternative. You never really give it much thought about what was going on upstairs really. Well, napping of course.

Because attending church in the morning wasn’t enough to save your eternal soul, you get dressed again and head back at 6pm. You’d have a little church time for kids and then head back to the same pew for another sermon, songs and probably an alter call. The rare preacher who left you go without an alter call was especially praised. “Well done, Pastor. Great sermon.” Back home to begin another week of sinning. Don’t worry though, Wednesday night prayer meeting was place right in the middle of the week precisely to interfere with building up too much sin for next Sunday to filter out. Taking turns praying out loud was a lot like learning to sing with a big group. Timing was important.

You might think Im bemoaning my childhood existence a little. Not at all. All that repenting doesn’t seem to have hurt my out look on life. I have just enough cynicism to rightly define the truth of almost every matter. And the times I don’t, I have plenty of forgiveness.

[Williamsmith]

I grew up in what anyone would describe as the classic mid century middle class neighborhood. We weren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination, nor were we poor by the same stretch. One of the benefits of a neighborhood like this was the fact that everybody was about equal in their “privilege” or lack thereof. It felt like you were a part of a large organism where outside the home felt almost no different than inside. It wasn’t unusual to be invited to sit down for dinner or to be tossed a popsicle on a hot summer afternoon by the mother of a friend you barely knew.

You wouldnt dream of stealing anything from anybody's backyard let alone from inside their house. Your father always reminded you how hard he had to work for every little item that made life easier. But if something like that did occur, you’d likely work it out between the offenders family and the put upon. The solution would include a personal apology some extra volunteer work and not being able to sit for a few days.

This was the everyday ebb and flow of the large middleclass society I grew up in. All except for the family that lived two doors down in a shack that showed no evidence of modern conveniences, old broken down cars and siblings who ran about the neighborhood in filthy clothing, running noses...sometimes clear...sometimes green, and a stench that would curl your toes. I never went inside that house, I never invited that kid to play and he never graced my mother’s dining room table with his aromatic presence.

The explanation was that both mom and dad were alcoholics and lazy. It became a sort of real life example on a daily basis of how not to live your life. I always felt bad for the kids but suspect some generous neighbors on occasion would drop off clothes on the porch, knock and run. I didn’t feel bad enough not to create little hurtful rhymes and recite them within earshot of the house though. For that, I am genuinely guilt ridden. Well, I feel bad about it.

Now it’s strange the way I got to thinking about this. You see, this weekend I took a road trip with the wife down through eastern Ohio , looped through the panhandle of West Virginia and ended up in a quaint farming town. You know, the kind with a roundabout, one gas station, a farmers market, a diner and three antique stores selling off the estates of the greatest generation. Well, there was also something that is very rare to find....a sole proprietary bakery.

A real bakery. With the sloping glass display cases shined crystal clear. Shelves and shelves of different pastries, donuts, breakfast rolls, maple glazed muffins, cookies, bread and chocolate variations of all. And a couple standing behind it all greeting you with a smile dressed in an apron covered in white flour, confectioners sugar or a combination of both.

It was the aroma when I first walked in that brought back memories of trips to the local bakery with mom. These were infrequent enough to make it a real event. Like I said, we weren’t rich. But we were well enough off that I was allowed to pick out a simple plain sugar cookie from the tray behind the shiny glass waterfall display case. Those cookies looked as big as a large pizza and were about eye height with me. Then watching the cookie go into a pristine bright white folded paper bag, my salivary glands already had me drooling.

And it was this rememberance that got me considering that the poor kids likely never experienced the aroma from inside the bakery let alone the explosion of sugar on their tongue. So several decades down the road, I suppose they can’t reminisce about the joys of childhood like I do. Or perhaps I’m just making a big deal of it and maybe they got the same pleasure remembering when they first got a Kleenex from the teacher in school and wiped their oozing nose.

—— ——.
Not so tall.
Sleeps in the kitchen
with his feet in the Hall.

wont take a bath
not even a scrub.
Afraid he’ll slip through
the hole in the tub.