the cbayer primitive meets franksolich

[MOKOFACE]

A boat small enough to get to the middle of Nebraska isn't built to take on the seas of the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico

Portage !!

[youtube=425,350] dGLoAKotGOU[/youtube]

[vesta111]

Portage !!

[youtube=425,350] dGLoAKotGOU[/youtube]

Portage, my my, interesting story's about portage can be found in the diary's from Lewis and Clark.   

[franksolich]

Obviously considering me an idiot, he went back to putter-putter-putter-splutting around.

The boat was up a little ways from where we were, and since he was ignoring me, I thought about going to look at it, to see how two people could possibly live in a space about the size of the living room here.  The living room has a couch, a recliner, a coffee-table, and a set of bookshelves; most consider it “barely furnished,” while I tend to not use it, feeling it cramped and crowded.

Suddenly one of the cats appeared, having wandered over from the house, probably wondering what I was up to.  The bird-watcher, upon seeing it, lost his temper, throwing the magnifying glass at it, cursing.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” I said; “that’s my cat, here on my property, and where the cat wants to go, the cat has the right to go.”

He sputtered indignantly, pointing out their predatory nature and some other data about cats versus birds, but he talked so fast I couldn’t keep up with him.

“Wait, wait, slow down,” I said; “remember, I’m deaf.”

After uttering that, I suddenly remembered no, I hadn’t told him that, and since my hair’s long, covering up the absence of ears, he wouldn’t have noticed.

He contemptuously looked at me as if I were Bozo from Outer Space.

“Now, that’s a dirty, knavish thing to do,” he snorted, “playing games like that.

“It’s a miserable affliction, deafness; you have no idea what it’s like.

“The gloomy eternal silence, the isolation from other people, the confusion about one’s surroundings, the social and intellectual retardation, the inability to engage in the arts and culture, the ulcerating stresses of trying to get along, no sense of belonging, the melancholy that one can‘t articulate.

“It’s a bloody different life.

“I had a friend once, who was deaf, but that was forty years ago, and he’s been dead for a long time now.

“You have no idea what it’s like, being deaf.”

I looked at him as if he were Bozo from Outer Space.

“And besides,” he continued, “you speak too well, unusual among sloppy Americans and their abominable accents and dialects.  If you were deaf, you’d have no idea what sounds sound like.

“It’s impossible to be deaf, and to speak with more clarity and preciseness than hearing people.”

Sorry, I mumbled, backing down.

Now, the temperature had been 22 degrees when I’d gotten home from work, and it was drizzling.  Supposing I was going to be down by the river only a short time, I hadn’t dressed for the outdoors, instead rushing out wearing a sleeveless t-shirt, gym shorts, and tennis shoes.

No point in wasting time dressing for the weather if one’s going to be out only for a few minutes.

But I’d by now been outdoors longer than only a few minutes, and was starting to get cold.

Time to get inside, but I needed an all-important question answered first.

I wanted to say, “Well, you’re welcome to stay here, no problem, but how long do you plan on being here?”

Unfortunately, I hadn’t even gotten half the first syllable out, when his cellular telephone rang.

It was obviously his wife, as he seemed engaged in an argument.

Well, I wasn’t going to get my question answered, so I walked back to the house.

[franksolich]

Okay, I'm explaining the origins of this story as I go along.

The conversation about birds actually happened, maybe three summers ago, but with a primitive who wasn't the cbayer primitive's husband.  He was an old hippie camping here, and found my "lack of appreciation" for my surroundings deplorable.

After a long recitation on his part, I answered that I respect nature very much, more than most people do.

"I leave nature alone; I don't intrude upon it, I don't mess with it, I don't interfere with it, I don't snoop on it."

The second part happened about a year before that, and is remembered with much relish and glee, as "the time that one hippie tried explaining to [franksolich] what being deaf is like."

When I was young and green in judgement, and entertained fantasies of being a writer, I had a professor in college who constantly sputtered at me because I wanted to write facts, not fiction.

He constantly urged me, "Meet someone at the post office?--make a story out of it.  Get shorted in change at McDonald's?--make a story out of it.  Caught in an embarrassing situation?--make a story out of it.  Discovering one of your shoes has a hole in it?--make a story out of it.  Changing the air in your car's tires?--make a story out of it."  And so on.

I suppose by now, most readers understand the cbayer primitive meets franksolich is a work of fiction, but it's based upon real-life observations and experiences; I don't have the imagination to make these things up.

[GOBUCKS]

He constantly urged me, "Meet someone at the post office?--make a story out of it.  Get shorted in change at McDonald's?--make a story out of it.  Caught in an embarrassing situation?--make a story out of it.  Discovering one of your shoes has a hole in it?--make a story out of it.  Changing the air in your car's tires?--make a story out of it."  And so on.

He wanted you to write bouncies.

[franksolich]

He wanted you to write bouncies.

Maybe he thought I had some talents in that direction, but no.

[franksolich]

The femme and I went out to supper in the big city; because she likes to talk, chitchat, converse, gab, and because I’m not especially communicative, I insisted that a second couple come with us, to keep her occupied.  

After telephoning around to see who was available, she latched onto the older brother of the neighbor and his wife, who weren’t doing anything in particular.

The neighbor is perhaps my best friend, having known me the longest, but relations between his older brother and myself can be tenuous.  His older brother’s my age, well-educated, been around about as many places as I’ve been, met about as many people as I have, but he thinks I’m, uh, a little peculiar.

However, probably because of my decrepitude, he was warm and genial this evening.

The weather’s pretty bad, but we made it to the big city, forty-two miles away, without mishap.

As the femme wanted it, we decided to go to a particular restaurant where the cook, Juanita, is famous for her German cuisine.

After being seated, I noticed the bird-watcher at another table, with who was apparently his wife, a mousy but assertive little woman, the cbayer primitive.

I pointed them out to the neighbor’s older brother, who recognized them.

“You know,” he said, “I don’t understand their reasoning.

“They insist it’s cheaper and more ecologically sensible to live on a boat rather than in a real house.

“But because of the weather and other conditions, they seem to spend an awful lot of money on motel rooms and car rentals, probably as much as what a monthly mortgage would cost them, if not more.

“And environmentally, I’m not seeing where anything’s being saved.”

I agreed.  â€œBut these are primitives, after all,” I pointed out.  

“Yeah,” he replied.

After a while, there seemed to be an argument evolving, much carrying-on between the cbayer primitive and the waitress.

And then soon Juanita, all 400 pounds of her, came out from the kitchen to join in.  She crossed her arms over her expansive bosom, a wooden spoon in each hand, and glared at the cbayer primitive.

I of course can’t hear, and my curiosity inspired, I asked the femme what it was all about.

The femme, who’s used to such inquiries from me, replied that the woman had ordered jagerschnitzel, one of Juanita’s most popular dishes, and appeared upset that it had no almonds in it, “like they make it in California.”

“Well, that’s pretty dangerous,” I said; "if anybody knows Teutonic fare, it’s Juanita, and Juanita’s not the sort of person one wants to challenge.”

“Well, she’s still saying it’s supposed to have almonds in it.”

Them came the denouement; Juanita picked up the plate of jagerschnitzel, and walking past the table-clearer’s cart, turned the plate upside down, dumping the whole thing into the plastic tub.

And then she turned to hiss at the cbayer primitive, indicating she wouldn’t be served that night, and went back into the kitchen, her enormous rear end stopping a split-second to wiggle at the unfed primitive.

[franksolich]

A hand suddenly clenched my shoulder, and I jerked around.

It’s a very good thing I usually wear brown pants.

This computer sits on a large table in an alcove between the dining room and the living room.  One comes inside the house from the front porch into the dining room, and when one’s at the computer, one’s back is to the front door.

It was the cbayer primitive’s husband.

“I knocked on your front door, and could see you sitting there, and then pounded on the door, and then battered on the door, and you didn’t react.  I even tapped on the windows.

“Good God, man, you are bloody deaf, aren’t you,” he remarked.

Sorry, I mumbled.

Getting up, I meant to remind him that while it was okay that the two of them stayed here, no problem, it’d be nice to know for how long they planned, but before I could get a word out, he inquired of the terrain beyond this property.

I took him out to the back porch, and pointed to a tree way far to the southwest on the edge of the river.

“This property ends there; south of that is someone else’s property.  The owners, in New Jersey, haven’t been out to see it since they first bought it--or their parents or grandparents first bought it--back in 1948.

“They’re never around, but two times every year, the county treasurer gets a check from a law firm in New Jersey, to pay the property taxes.

“But even though you wouldn’t be bothering anything, I suggest you don’t go beyond that tree, because the sheriff might drive by and toss you out.  It’s the same sort of stuff that’s on this property, minus any buildings.”

Then I pointed to another tree way far to the northwest on the edge of the river.

“That’s where this property ends, and what’s beyond that is rented by a farmer, but he hasn’t done anything with it all the years I’ve lived out here.  You could probably go that way, north towards the highway, but best to ask his permission first.

“Since he’s divorced, he eats supper at the bar in town every evening, seven days a week.

“If you say I sent you to ask, he’ll probably say okay, no problem.”

He asked about the opposite side of the river.

“Well, all of that’s owned by another farmer, an old guy, a widower, who spends all of his time out in California.  He doesn’t do anything with the land, and actually, in his absence, I’m the one paid to watch it for him.

“I suppose it’s okay if you want to go look on the other side.”

“Good God, man,” he ejaculated again; “all this land, and nothing’s done with it.  It just sits there.”

It’s been this way in Nebraska all my life, I reminded him.

And decades before, going clear back to the New Deal.

“You see, it’s a consequence of our system, which taxes productivity and subsidizes non-productivity.

“And it doesn’t look like it’s going to change any, until at least 2017.”

But of course he was a primitive; he’d have no idea what I was saying.

Having shown him the world he was free to explore, I asked if there was anything else I could do for him, to make his stay here more comfortable.

Well, yes, he said; actually he’d come here to borrow two tablespoons of sugar, as his wife, the cbayer primitive, was fixing dinner on the boat.

I inquired if they were going to stay on the boat now, at the same time suggesting it was rather too cold for that.

No, I was told; they were still staying in a motel in the big city, but his wife was tired of rude service at restaurants around here, and decided they should dine on the boat instead.

We went into the kitchen, where I opened the refrigerator and pulled out an unopened two-pound package of sugar.  “Here, take this, the whole thing,” I said.

“It’s new and unopened.  I don’t do sugar, but bought it in case someone was here, and needed to make something with it.”

He glared at the bag of sugar.

“Good God, man, there’s no room on the boat for that much sugar; it’ll crowd us out.

“When the wife brings on board one wooden match too many, we’re jammed elbow-to-elbow until it’s used.

“Just two tablespoons, please; the boat’s no Cunarder.”

[Chris_]

“Good God, man, there’s no room on the boat for that much sugar; it’ll crowd us out.

[franksolich]

When I drove up to the front yard this afternoon, I spotted the cbayer primitive’s husband walking around east of the house (the river is west of the house), dressed, incongruously, in lederhosen.

Or perhaps not incongruously, even in the Sandhills of Nebraska, given the temperature, the snow, and that the William Rivers Pitt looks as if a miniature Alpine Jungfrau on the other side.

He was walking around the base of the mound bent over, stopping every so often to pluck a piece of winter-dried foliage, examining it with his magnifying glass.

Again, I’m aware that people really don’t make noise as they move around, but I like to imagine they do, based upon body language, and in this case he’d changed from the putter-putter-putter-splut to something like “wut-wut, wut-wut, wut-wut, wut-wut.”

I waved at him before going inside the house, but he paid no attention.

He did however come up to the front porch after some minutes, while I was making coffee, and I invited him inside, to sit down and visit a spell.

He told me that his wife had gone to Omaha, as she wanted some kale, and there’s no kale to be had in the big city.

Yeah, I said, kale’s not exactly a hot item in [the big city], but on the other hand, it was too bad the cbayer primitive was driving all the way to Omaha to get some.  â€œShe’ll probably have to go five or six places there before she finds any.

“She could’ve gone to Yankton, just over the border in South Dakota, which is considerably closer.

“Kale’s more popular than French fries in Yankton, and all the grocery stores there have it.”

Pouring himself a cup of coffee, he too sat down at the dining room table and related a dolorous event that had taken place the previous evening.  

He and she had gone to a Chinese restaurant in the big city, because they’d heard the moo goo gai pan there was incomparable.  â€œBut then when she noticed that the chocolate chips, the way it’s served in California, were absent, some big Hibernian chap came out of the kitchen and ordered us out--”

Oh, I said; “Wolfgang.  He’s not Irish, but of Austrian derivation.

“You met Wolfgang, the premier chef of Chinese cuisine outside of Peking.

“I don’t do Chinese, but his reputation among those who do, is stellar.

“In fact, every year--it’s always in the newspapers--the Red Chinese and the Free Chinese send delegations here to Nebraska, to look over our agriculture and to steal our ideas.  

“And no matter what part of Nebraska they’re in, they insist upon coming up here, to dine on Wolfgang’s Cathayan delicacies.  

“Both the Red Chinese and the Free Chinese insist Wolfgang’s cooking is the best they’ve had anywhere, including what their mothers used to make them on the mainland or in Taiwan, probably the only thing they agree on.”

[Dori]

Oh good, I was hoping the kale made an appearance.....

[BlueStateSaint]

Oh good, I was hoping the kale made an appearance.....

I was kinda hoping for VRWC Agent Cab Bage . . .

[GOBUCKS]

“Kale’s more popular than French fries in Yankton, and all the grocery stores there have it.”

That is inspired prose. Worthy of being printed on a T-shirt.

[franksolich]

The cbayer primitive’s husband glanced around the dining room while twiddling with his cup of coffee, blinking his eyes, but I wasn’t sure if he was looking out one of the two picture-windows to the south, or at the large framed photograph of Clare Boothe Luce on the wall.

Because I can’t hear, I have to rely upon analysis of body and body-language. 

If he had a pipe, I thought, he’d look like an older version of Lord Curzon.

Taking off his magnifying-glass, which hung with a string around his neck, he finally said, “That’s not a natural mound out there, that pile about a block and a half away from here.

“It’s man-made.  I wonder what it is.”

Whoa, I thought.  To non-natives of the Sandhills, it’s just another bump in the ground, if they notice it at all among the hills.  Natives intuitively recognize it as not natural, and then stop thinking about it.

The cbayer primitive’s husband was the first outsider I’d met, to see that distinction.

Yes, it’s man-made, I said, circa 1875 when this place was first settled, up until 1950. 

“The William Rivers Pitt, decaying old barn junk.”

Then he asked the question I most dreaded.

“What’s its composition, what’s it made of?”

Trying to delicately skirt the subject, I described how the first people here raised pigs, and that there’d once stood a very large barn--the largest barn in the county--near where the mound is.  These people raised not blue-ribbon, but purple-ribbon, pigs, tens of thousands of them over seventy-five years.

The enormous barn, which had been the first building erected on the premises (the family lived in a dugout, and then a sod house, until about 1890, when waxing rich and prosperous from the pigs, they put up a regular house, the core of this one), caught fire and burned down the Sunday morning that the socialists invaded South Korea in June 1950.

Rather than rebuilding the barn, since pigs were on their way out and cattle on their way in, the family switched to raising beef instead.

I hope that satisfied him, but it didn’t.

“But it doesn’t strike me as decayed timbers and whatever else might’ve been a barn--and besides, there’s far too much of it--it’s a fine sort of soil, blacker and more adhesive than the natural soil around it.

“And obviously it’s very fertile, even warm, as one notices plants are already starting to sprout on it, despite the cold weather and the snow.  I imagine the other end of the year, as winter descends, it’s also the last place here where the foliage dies.”

Yes, I said; the foliage on the William Rivers Pitt starts coming forth about mid-February every year, and stays green until about mid-December.

“It’s been measured at 740 cubic yards,” I said, hoping to steer the conversation elsewhere; I didn’t care where else, only that it would be somewhere else.

[franksolich]

“That’s a lot of offal,” the cbayer primitive’s husband said.

I was gratified I didn’t have to tell him.

“And yet it sits here, unused, just like the land.”

Well, there’s nobody around here who needs it, I told him, other than the occasional recreational gardener, such as the retired banker’s wife, who comes here three or four times a year with a dozen steel bushel containers and fills them up.

“Otherwise, they can generate their own--and do, whether they want to or not--but for the most part, this area’s naturally rich fertile black soil.  Go a few miles west, and one reaches the Sandhills, but this isn’t quite the Sandhills yet…..and we all know what happened when man tried to farm the Sandhills.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, for some reason inserting a monocle.  “The famous Dust Bowl.”

I reminded him there’s also wreckage--found to by now been decayed to dust--in the William Rivers Pitt of the once-tallest windmill in northeastern Nebraska, put up in 1888 and blown down in 1934 (it was mostly wood, not metal).

I described it as the ancient elderly gentleman had seen it, being a boy at the time, standing at the doorway to the cellar, enduring the howling wind, the blinding darkness, the flying soil striking the skin as if sandpaper, and the infernal noise, as if from Hell, of the wind madly spinning the blades high above, creating showers of electrical sparks, making it look as if a gigantic 20’ tall lit pinwheel firework in this darkness at noon.

And then the collapse, which seemed to shake the ground.

Ruminating a while, he finally asked, “Well, has anyone else ever thought of selling it?”

I looked at him as if Bozo from Outer Space.

“What I mean,” he continued, “is if it can be proven to be 100% pure natural fertilizer--and surely they weren’t feeding swine pharmaceuticals or chemicals even as late as 1950--it would be a bonus selling-point, in 20-pound bags, to gardeners all across America.

“And that it’s antique, one could charge even more for it.”

Its composition’s already been scientifically proven, I told him, back in the summer of 2009, when the William Rivers Pitt was the subject of a Ph.D. thesis by someone in soil science--that’s how come I know its exact dimensions and what’s in it.

“It was fascinating,” I said, “when I was shown samples created when Rutherford Hayes was in the White House, and then Theodore Roosevelt, and then Calvin Coolidge, stuff pumped out by pigs during Custer’s Last Stand, during the Spanish-American War, during the Roaring Twenties.

“It all looked the same to me, but still, I felt as if I were glimpsing history.”

“Well, you or the owners should consider selling it,” he said; “organic gardeners in Vermont would eat this stuff up.”

He took off the monocle and slipped it into a pocket of his shirt.

“By the way, why ‘the William Rivers Pitt’? 

I was taken aback; being a primitive, surely he’d know the literary light of Skins’s island.

But apparently not; even though a regular visitor on Skins’s island, he’d never noticed the Bostonian Drunkard.

So I explained the name to him, much the same way I’d explained it to people around here many years ago.  This is an internet-savvy area, but Skins’s island had fallen through the cracks, nobody having any idea what it is, or of the personage of the literati.

However, happily, the name took; as the retired banker’s wife said, “It’s better than referring to it as ‘that big pile of old pig shit.’”

[franksolich]

Just as the cbayer primitive’s husband was getting up to leave, the neighbor came by; the furnace here had inexplicably quit working.  It wasn’t cold inside for me yet, but as the cats were huddled under the bedcovers, that was a pretty good clue.

Cats are great for people who can’t hear; they let one know when something’s wrong.

The property caretaker was out on the other end of the county, doing something else, and as the neighbor had some idle time, he came over instead.

He greeted my guest, and pointed out it was a pity they weren’t staying until the end of April--my hair stood up on end--so as to see the blues festival in the big city.

“It can get like 125th Street on Manhattan, people coming from inner-city Omaha, Kansas City, and even Minneapolis, to rap and hip-hop and reggie around.

“But mostly they come for the food.  

“Paddy O’Brien, who works at the post office, makes ham hocks, hushpuppies, and sweet potato pie soul-food enthusiasts die for.”

[franksolich]

This morning, when surveying the world to the west of the house, to the river, in the telescope I caught the figure of the cbayer primitive’s husband putter-splutting and wut-wutting in the grove of walnut trees.

He was wearing a kilt, with the plaid of the Sutherland clan, and incongruously, a Ukrainian peasant’s intricately-embroidered blouse.

It reminded me of an episode in the socialist paradises, when my guide and I, in a part of the country with which he wasn’t familiar, both needed new pairs of socks.  Socialist-made socks, which were expensive, tended to not last long.  We found them after much searching, a twin matching pair.

On them were sewn really nice designs.

While hiking around, we noticed that people seemed to want to laugh at us, and were suppressing it because of their good manners.

The mystery was solved later in the day, when we learned that for this particular Carpatho-Ruthenian area, this was a pattern used by virgins “advertising” for a husband.

Whatever.  Excresence happens.  One accepts, adapts, and moves on.

The cbayer primitive’s husband was too far away for me to imagine him as making noises when he walked around, inspecting each tree, but I did discern a faint imaginary “rickety-rickety-room-room” in his movements.

Tiny puffs of smoke burst from the smokestack on top of the boat; I imagined the cbayer primitive was in there, cooking a breakfast of borscht and kale.

Since I wasn’t doing anything in particular, I decided to walk down there to visit.

[franksolich]

This time, I was dressed better for the weather.  I debated whether to approach the boat and meet the cbayer primitive first-hand and up close, or to go over and speak with her husband.

Since I hadn’t been formally introduced to the cbayer primitive yet, I figured it would be good manners to leave her alone, and so went to her husband in the grove of walnut trees.

“They’re sorry-looking things, aren’t they?” I said, as I neared him.

“All the years I’ve lived here, they’ve given me the impression they’d rather be somewhere else.

“And it’s true that nature never meant for walnut trees to be in Nebraska.”

He looked at me and harrumphed, although I have no idea why.

“These trees are over a hundred years old,” he insisted; “quite obviously they’ve adapted.”

“Right,” I said; there’s exactly sixty of them, planted in a rectangle six trees by ten trees, with twenty-five feet in between each one.

“They started as seedlings in 1888, bought off an itinerant peddler who couldn’t unload them over in Iowa, and wanted to get rid of them before they died on him.

“As it’s turned out, there’s never been anybody living here a walnut fancier, and so every autumn, the walnuts just fall off the trees and rot back into the ground again.  I dunno why they don’t sprout new trees, but they don’t.  These are still the original sixty trees, and there’s been no new ones.”

Then changing the subject, I asked, “How’s the wife?”

Out of sorts, I was told.  They’d gone to dine at a French restaurant they’d been told was superlative, where the cbayer primitive had ordered bourride de fruits de mer, and when it came without chicken gravy in it, like it’s served in California, she’d gotten upset.

Which upset the cook in the kitchen, Wu Fen-shen, who cursed at her.

“Well now,” I said, “Wu’s a wonderful French chef, studied under Alain Senderens in Paris.

“There isn’t anything about French cuisine Wu doesn’t know.”

Just then, the cbayer primitive popped up from belowdecks of the boat, hollering at her husband.

“You know, I haven’t met her yet,” I reminded her husband.

He looked at me sadly.  “Now’s not the time.

“It’s that time of the month again, and even long after women are overage, they still get those ‘that time of the month again’ foul moods.”

[franksolich]

The business partner was in town, so he and I went out to dine at the bar last evening.

It was my first time there since Christmas, given that I’d that day been keeled over by a disease usually only teenagers get, and am still recovering.  Everyone had known however that franksolich still lived, because occasionally someone went there to pick up a take-out order for me, the usual-and-standard hamburger and French fries but not with sour cream, because I always have an ample supply of that here.

Upon seeing me, Swede, the cook of Norwegian derivation who’s famous throughout several states for his Italianate cuisine, dropped what he was doing and came out from the kitchen to greet me, reminding me it’s not the same, catering to my tastes by stuffing it into a brown paper bag, and seeing me in person.

Then he looked beyond me, out to the crowd in the dining room.

“You have guests, and I don’t want them in here,” he said, in a voice loud enough for the behemothic “Tiny” Gustl, sitting on a bar-stool at the doorway, to hear.  “Tiny” yawned; bouncing in a bar’s pretty boring work, nothing to do, and even though one’s paid for it, he’d just as soon be bellied up to the bar spending money rather than earning it.

The business partner ordered bistecca alla Fiorentina and zuppa Inglese, at which Swede beamed, while I ordered my usual, at which Swede grimaced.

As we were sitting down--being nice guys, some of the nicest guys one can ever hope to meet, we’d ordered at the bar, with Swede there, to save the waitress the time and trouble of coming to take our orders--the business partner commented, “You make that poor man v-e-r-y unhappy…..”

“Don’t worry,” I said; “he’ll be happy soon enough, with my birthday next week, when I’ll come in and order the most expensive Italianate delicacies on the menu.”

The bar serves customers a free meal on their birthdays.

“Maybe he’ll think something’s up, though.”

No way, I said; even though I’ve been coming here for years, I’ve never once taken a free meal, and so he doesn’t know my birthday.  “I’ll invent some excuse for ordering something other than my usual, and then I’ll announce it’s my birthday.”

Swede condescended to bring our dinners to our table himself, carefully and fussily arranging the table around the business partner, smiling as he gently put down each plate.

Then at my side of the table, he slammed down the plate with a hamburger, pressed down hard on the grill so as to squeeze out every drop of grease, and French fries cooked on the grill, not in the fryer.  The plate wobbled and rattled before coming to a rest. 

“You know,” I said, “Swede’s got a problem, and I mean to break him of it.

“Other than pepperoni pizza from the convenience store, I don’t do Italianate cuisine, but at the same time I’m the first person to stand up to remind others that Swede’s an excellent cook, the best there is, based upon what others, including professional Italians, say about it.

“He’s a great cook, a wonderful cook, an extraordinary cook, based upon what those who enjoy Italianate dishes say.  I trust their judgement; if they say he’s sans peer among Italian chefs, well, he is, and he rightfully needs to be proud of it.

“But it seems to stick in his craw, that I, a nobody, a nonentity, a non-connoisseur, self-admittedly with no ‘taste’ when it comes to food, never dine on any of his creations.

“It drives him nuts, and it shouldn’t.

“I wouldn’t know good Italianate chow from bad Italianate chow.  Not that I can’t discern the difference, but simply and only because it’s unimportant; I don’t care.

“He’s got gold medals, purple ribbons, newspaper write-ups, and the acclaim of professional Italians; he doesn’t need [franksolich]’s seal of approval for his food.”

[BlueStateSaint]

This caused me to chuckle:

professional Italians

I guess that makes me (1/4 Italian, and 1/4 Irish, among other things) an 'amateur Italian,' eh?

[Skul]

Every time the mention of Swede, the cook, pops up, I get this mental image of a hot platter of spaghetti and lutefisk balls. 

On another note.
The walnut trees bring back memories of the woods next to a neighbor's house in ONeill.
The neighbor's kid and I played there many times. Several old, natural, black walnut trees grew there.
It's all gone now, taken over by houses. 

[franksolich]

I was pretty ill today, but no big deal, as the day outside was white or grey, or grey and white.

Some time in the morning, while out on the back porch, I saw the cbayer primitive’s husband walking along the shore of the river, but on the other bank.  I dunno how he got over there, as one can’t just take a boat and row over.

The only other way is via automobile, up to the highway two miles north, then crossing a bridge, and coming down two miles to here, or rather, to across the river from here.

He was wearing Oshkosh bib overalls, and a red flannel shirt, a straw stuck in his mouth.

No smoke wafted from the boat, so I assumed the cbayer primitive wasn’t around.

Because I was low, the femme dropped by in the afternoon, bringing with her one of those plastic milk-crates with four gallons of pure orange juice, and a separate fifth gallon, enough to last me maybe until Sunday evening.

It probably doesn’t help mononucleosis--I really don’t know, and if it doesn‘t, at least it doesn‘t hurt--but damn, ever since the afternoon of Christmas Day, it seems I developed an insatiable thirst for orange juice.  Forget coffee, forget milk, forget Diet Dr. Pepper, forget any other liquid; this at the moment’s been all I want to drink.

When looking at grocery-store receipts since December 26, I see that I’ve spent 72% of the grocery money on…..pure orange juice.  (Of course, it needs pointed out “grocery money” doesn’t include dining out, which is “eating out money.”)

She mentioned she’d had lunch with a friend at a Mexican restaurant in the big city.  I asked her which one, and she told me.

“Oh,” I said; “that’s where Rajanigandha cooks.

“Exquisitely lovely, Rajanigandha, from Hindustan, in her silken sari.

“And the best cook of Mexican cuisine in the spinal column of America, from the top of North Dakota down to the bottom of Texas.”

The femme mentioned she’d seen that woman there, although her husband was absent.

“She ordered a taco de pollo y enchilada de pollo, along with a ensalada de la casa, and was upset when chutney and pickles didn’t come with it.

“Rajanigandha almost broke out crying in vexation.  She knew what pickles were, but she had no idea what chutney is, and when it was described to her, she thought it was disgusting and wouldn't dare insult customers by serving them anything like that.”

[franksolich]

Early in the morning, the cbayer primitive’s husband showed up here, just in time for fresh coffee.

He was dressed in a government-surplus uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, although I forgot to inquire why.

“I say, do you have any maps of Nebraska?” he asked.

Of course I did, and I pulled out two of them.

He didn’t pay attention to the second map, the one specially made for the Hollywood and movie production interests, but intently studied the map of the rivers of Nebraska, as if it were a road-map.

“I dunno if you know this,” I said, “but of the fifty states in the Union, Nebraska has more miles of rivers than any of the other forty-nine, and that includes even Alaska and Texas.

“This just shows the major rivers, navigable ones.  An aircraft carrier’s not going to float on one, but a 300-square-feet boat would have no problem, no problem at all, floating on them.”

I was hoping he wouldn’t think I was trying to push him to take his snobbish wife and boat and go on his way, even though really I was.

We discussed the qualities of the various rivers, but I got the impression he rather liked this sort of river that goes by this house, and suggested that the Niobrara River, much larger, might have a greater abundance of avian life, including those species long ago thought extinct.

“And also, dutch508’s cattle barony is alongside that river, way over on the other side of the Sandhills.

“dutch508 sets a good table, and he’s always looking for company.”

Then I remembered something; “Oops, you can’t do that, getting there from here, because the Niobrara and the Elkhorn don’t meet anywhere.

“You’d have to go back down to Omaha, and then further up the Missouri River, to get on the Niobrara.”

But I thought of an ameliorating circumstance.

“One of your pals, Omaha Steve, lives right where the Platte River (into which the Elkhorn flows) and the Missouri meet; maybe you could tie up the boat near his front yard and visit him a while, too.

“His wife, the long-suffering poor dear Marta, makes great pies.”

The cbayer primitive’s husband snorted.  “Loser,” he said.

I was impressed.  He didn’t know the Bostonian Drunkard, but he knew the big guy.

He asked if he could borrow the map, and I said yeah, sure, no problem.  After which we sat at the dining room table drinking coffee and dining on whole-wheat toast with real butter.  I inquired how things were going; was he finding his stay here on the roof of Nebraska pleasant?

It seems it’s getting harder and harder for the cbayer primitive and her husband to find a decent place to eat, they having been expelled from so many establishments by insulted cooks.

“Last night, for supper, we had to use the drive-thru at McDonald’s, but then when the wife insisted their Whopper was supposed to be served with anchovies, the girl told us not to bother coming back again, and slammed the window shut in our faces.”

I thought of something.

“There’s one restaurant famous for its Australian cookery, but it’s little-known.  The few Australians who come here insist that it has the best Australian food they’ve had since leaving terra australis incognita; that there’s nobody on the top hemisphere who’s captured the essence and taste of their native cookery, more than our own Ja’maal.

“Ja’maal’s been written up in the Melbourne and Sydney newspapers.”

Then I thought of something, growing alarmed.

Ja’maal’s, uh, somewhat temperamental, fretful about what diners think of his cuisine.

Just as quickly, I said, “We can’t do it today, or Wednesday evening, which are booked up for me, but perhaps sometimes the next few days we can go there together.  I haven’t met your wife yet, and I’ll be happy to pick up the check.”

[franksolich]

By the way, the top picture was taken while standing atop the William Rivers Pitt, looking to the east.

One can see the tip of the William Rivers Pitt, bottom, left side.

This is my front yard.

(disclaimer: the picture's not from this morning, and was actually taken a couple of years ago--but it's an accurate depiction of what this morning looked like.)

[franksolich]

“I need your help,” I told the neighbor’s wife when she was here this morning.

“And you owe me one,” I reminded her.

She sat patiently as I explained.  I’d offered to take the cbayer primitive and her husband to the Australian restaurant in the big city as guests of mine, but it’s nothing I wanted to deal with all alone. 

I’m ill.

“[the femme] said ‘no way;’ she doesn’t like me dealing with primitives, always afraid one’s going to hurt me, or worse.  I asked [the business partner] and he said ‘no way’ too, because he doesn’t like me dealing with the primitives, always afraid I’m going to give them something.

“I can’t handle this alone.  You have to come with me.”

She looked at me, surprised.

“But last November, you were the one who suggested I hire a woman to come and cook and clean and take care of the children while I was to lay in bed all day and take care of myself because I’m pregnant.

“And now, eight months along [the infant’s due in April], you want to drag me out to dine with primitives?”

I repeated it’s an emergency. 

“It won’t upset the infant,” I promised.  “And I really need somebody with me.”

Much to my relief, she agreed that her husband could watch the four children, and barring any unforeseen event, she’d go with me, for morale support.