A Million to One (Redux)

Song Title: High 'n' Dry (click to listen)
Artist: Black Oak Arkansas
Date that it entered the Top 100: Never
From the album: High on the Hog
Album release date: November 1, 1973
Utterly Meaningless Trivia:
Very little of importance was going on in my life in the fall of 1973. I was in the 7th grade, living in my "home county" in central South Dakota. My favorite pastime, besides reading Hardy Boys mysteries and comic books and watching our one TV channel (KPLO-TV, Channel 6, Reliance, SD), was exploring and playing in long-abandoned houses and business buildings (abandoned for decades, not just a few years) with friends. We often went on one- or two-mile hikes into the country to visit our favorite old farm houses and spend the day playing and exploring. It was tough going, walking home through plowed farm fields with arms full of "treasure."

Note of warning: Some of you may say, "Hey! I know this story!" Others won't. I cannot help it. It just fits this theme too perfectly!

Place, Date and Event with which I Associate This Song:
In the fall of 1991, I was working as a sports writer (yuck!) and photographer (not yuck) for the local weekly paper here in ______, in the Panhandle of Nebraska.

Other than that, life was dull.

The odds must have been about a billion to one that I would experience the most embarrassing episode in my life on a desolate highway thirty miles from the nearest town in "remote" western Nebraska (or anywhere else, for that matter).

But I did.

How do I convince you that such astronomical odds are not an exaggeration? Read on:

One Friday night, while I was photographing a high-school football game, a guy started talking to me on the sidelines. He was an executive with one of the region's two TV stations. As we talked, he soon learned that I was going to be tending bar the next afternoon (Saturday) at a local bar.

He showed up the next afternoon as a customer, bringing along a coworker/friend.

The more he drank, the more he kept telling me what "promise" I had and how I would really fit a particular "career" he had in mind.

Wow!

The prospect of working at a TV station, no matter how "podunk" it is, was very exciting. I asked him for more details, but he refused to say anything except "how promising" I was. He was enjoying leading me on. After about a half hour or an hour of such leading, he finally admitted that the job was not with his TV station.

What a letdown. Had he intentionally been misleading me? I should have known not to get my hopes up. Then my always suspicious brain suddenly clicked into gear. I concluded that he must be talking about some work he does "on the side."

Based on ESP skills alone, I asked him in a derogatory tone, "It's not with Amway, is it?"

"Why, yes it is!"

Blankety! Blank! Blank!

I wanted to back away from him like he had the plague, but I couldn't because I was working.

There was no way on earth I was going to let him recruit me into that line of work.

No way.

No way.

No way.

Did I say what a letdown that was?

True to the Amway stereotype, the guy wouldn't quit pestering me.

True to the MW stereotype, I kept refusing as bluntly as I could (without being rude).

After some further back and forth, he finally caught my attention.

"We'll be going to an Amway seminar in Rapid City, SD, in a few days. You should come with us."

As I say, there was no way on earth that I was going to become an Amway "disciple," but I was definitely interested in getting a free ride to Rapid City (yes, my life was that boring). I agreed to go along, but I warned him that I still had no intention of joining Amway. He was convinced that he had a new brainwashee, and I was convinced I was going to get a free ride to Rapid City.

A few days later, we departed on the four-hour drive to Rapid City in a huge Cadillac (or some other high-end car). Besides me, there were four others. They consisted of the car's owner (about age 60), who was the owner of a local jewelry store. Next came the man who was trying to recruit me (about age 35). With him was his wife (also about age 35). Finally, there was a man (age between 35 and 45) who was a low-level employee at the same TV station. This employee, like me, was also a potential Amway recruit. I'll call him Joe since I don't remember his real name. The others don't need names.

I rode in the front passenger seat, while the TV exec, his wife and Joe rode in the back (they must have been trying to butter me up by giving me the best seat). All of these people were total strangers to me, and I felt very out of place, especially since I was going to participate in something that was a total turnoff for me. I was starting to regret my decision to go along.

The five of us chatted about various nothings as we drove out of town. I soon learned that Joe (the other "recruit") was a native of New York City. I wondered how he had managed to end up at a tiny TV station in western Nebraska. I think I asked him, but I don't remember his answer.

About 30 miles out of town, in the middle of nowhere, the jewelry-store owner started talking about the barbershop quartet to which he belonged. I'm definitely not a singer and definitely not a fan of barbershop quartets, so I stayed out of that boring conversation -- for a while. [My brain starts to get dizzy, and my heart starts to pound, even now, as I reach this part of the story.] As they were discussing possible songs to sing at future events, a totally random thought entered my mind -- random, that is, according to the laws of everyday mundane reality, but fated according to the laws of the universe. I thought of a song that might sound good (in a humorous way) as sung in the four-part harmony of a barbershop quartet. During a brief pause in the conversation, I told them about High 'n' Dry, by Black Oak Arkansas. This group, as you might guess, was formed in Arkansas.

Why I thought of that particular song, out of the thousands of songs I could have thought of, I don't know. It was a certainty, though, that no barbershop quartet had ever sung it before. I knew it was a silly notion even as I said it, and I knew that the jewelry-store owner would never listen to me; however, I was just trying to make conversation with these strangers and maybe even introduce something unique into the annals of barbershop-quartet history.

The reader should know that High 'n' Dry is the only soft song on an album filled with exceptionally hard and loud rock songs, most of which have a grating edge to them. I have never been a big fan of exceptionally hard rock, and I figured a 60-year-old jewelry-store owner would be even less of a fan. Therefore, just in case he had heard of Black Oak Arkansas and was ready to dismiss me as a kook, I added an editorial comment to my suggestion:

"Everything else they sing STINKS, but that song is absolutely great."

As my utterance of the word, "stinks," was still ringing in the air, I noted an immediate and uncomfortable silence. No one looked at me or spoke a single word as we raced along that remote highway on the wide-open prairies of western Nebraska. I could tell immediately that this wasn't a normal silence, and instinct -- or, rather, ESP -- caused me to start feeling embarrassed, even though I had no idea why. Was my suggestion of a song by a hard-rock group that bad? Or had I been too crude when I used the word "stinks"?

The silence continued, and it was beginning to generate a distinctly uncomfortable quality throughout the vehicle, or so it seemed to my overactive imagination. I was growing confused and embarrassed, fearing that I had, indeed, said something terribly wrong; however, I still had no idea what exactly it might have been. I could feel my face starting to turn red. I turned around and looked at the man from New York City, as well as at the general manager and his wife.

After some more silence, I finally said something to the general manager. I can no longer remember what I said, because his reply has blotted it from my memory forever. I may have commented to him, in an extremely roundabout way, about their odd lack of a response to my suggestion. That is the only thing that makes sense now, considering his reply.

He pointed at Joe and said very uncomfortably to me, "Joe was a member of Black Oak Arkansas."

I should just stop right there and let you imagine how I felt, but that wouldn't be right. I wish I could find the right words, but I cannot.

Suffice it to say that the interior of the car started to spin as the blood drained from my head. I think I went into shock because I couldn't feel my body anymore. I couldn't see straight as I tried to look at Joe (who was from NEW YORK CITY!!!!!!!!!!! NOT EFFING ARKANSAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and tried to converse with him normally, as if I had said nothing at all; but my voice wasn't working, and my neck refused to hold my head upright. I kept thinking that everyone must surely see it tilting oddly to one side and slightly backward. I thought about trying to force it back upright, but I feared I would overcompensate, like a drunk trying to walk straight, and it would then tip in the other direction. So I left it where it was.

I may have said to "Joe," with as much fan-like awe as I could muster, and in spite of the absence of all oxygen in my body and near total loss of muscle control in my lips, "Really? You were? Wow!"

I knew it was too late to explain that I hadn't really meant it like that, because, no matter how well I explained it, it would sound like a lie. I had said it with way too much emphasis.

We drove along in terrible silence for a while, during which I stared across the back seat, past Joe and out the side window. I couldn't look him (or anyone) in the face, but I wanted to "emit" feelings of "sincerest apologies" by looking in Joe's general direction as often as possible.

After a sufficient amount of time had passed, I said, in general, to everyone (this is a very, very rough paraphrase), "You know, I really put my foot in my mouth. There's a reason I said that the way I did, but I don't think anyone is ever going to believe me now. I honestly didn't mean it the way it sounded."

Much to Joe's credit, he tried to ease my guilt.

He said, "I only joined the band in their later years. I'm not an original member of the group."

That didn't make me feel better at all because he had obviously chosen to join that particular band because he liked their music (music which I had just said "STINKS"). All the rest of that long, long night, while in the car, then in the seminar and later at a Perkin's Restaurant in Rapid City, I visited with Joe like there was no tomorrow. I tried to apologize for my comment several times without overdoing it, because I was driven by a guilt such as I had never experienced before. I even told him the truth of the matter when the others weren't listening. He continued to tell me not to worry about it, and he really seemed to mean it. He was a sincerely nice person, and once I dropped the subject, we had a good time discussing other topics (in fact, during the seminar, we had both had fun whispering obnoxious comments and jokes to one another about the various Amway speakers). I still felt like the lowest form of life on earth.

In conclusion, just think about it: The desolate plains of western Nebraska, 30 miles from the nearest town, 1,000 miles from Arkansas, 1,500 miles from New York City, a car heading to an Amway seminar in South Dakota, four total strangers, barbershop quartets, a rock band from Arkansas, a guy from New York City, a transient fool from South Dakota who manages to think of -- and then insult -- the one band, out of the thousands of bands on earth, that has a former member right there in the car with said transient fool.

Tell me: What are the odds of such a situation occurring, based on your calculations?

Final Note 1.) In spite of this horrible incident, High 'n' Dry, although it is somewhat of an acquired taste, remains one of my favorite "feel-good" songs of all time.

Final Note 2.) Oh, yeah..., and I never joined Amway either.

-----

Footnote for those who don't know: This story (with a few imperfections that have now been replaced by a few new imperfections) was originally published in this blog on January 8, 2005.

Serenade

Song Title: Ashokan Farewell

Artist: Jay Ungar

Copyright: 1984

Date that it entered the Top 100: Never

Date that it became famous: September 23-27, 1990, as the theme song to the hit PBS documentary, The Civil War.

In January 1998, I was working in the public library here in this western Nebraska town (I realize now what a transient I've been most of my life). An attractive young woman (age 29), an east-coast transplant, came in to sign up for a library card. I helped her to register, and we took an immediate liking to one another. I'll call her "Sarah."

For the next few months we carefully tested the waters with one another, neither one being brave enough to make a first move, but dropping lots of not-so-subtle hints to one another.

During one of our conversations Sarah talked about all of the different musical instruments she plays. She told me that she plays the violin, mandolin, flute, clarinet, piano, and probably one or two others that I have forgotten. I believe she said her favorite instrument is the violin.

I was very impressed, to say the very least.

On April 29, 1998, she came into the library again. As a conversation starter I told her about my favorite violin song, "Ashokan Farewell," and highly recommended that she listen to it sometime. She agreed to do so, and I told her I would loan it to her the next time she came to the library.

She returned three days later, and I gave her the tape.

As she was leaving she said, “We’ll have to go out for coffee sometime."

I gladly accepted her offer.

I didn’t hear from her for almost two weeks after that. I was beginning to think that maybe she had disappeared forever (and without even returning my tape!). Finally, she came to visit me in the library again one day. She told me she had been out of state on a long visit to her previous home (she had come to the library before she left to tell me she was going, but it had been my day off).

She told me she loved “Ashokan Farewell.” She then very proudly showed me the sheet music for the song. She had bought it in her favorite little music store while out of state. She said she had already begun learning to play it.

On the morning of June 11, 1998, I met Sarah at her house, as requested. We were finally going out for that "cup of coffee." Actually, we were going window shopping, but the difference between them is just semantics.

We made a minute or two of small talk in her "front parlor." She then stopped the conversation and invited me to sit on an old-fashioned parlor bench. She nervously took out her violin, told me to be kind, and began playing Ashokan Farewell...

After only two or three weeks of practice...

Wow...

As I sat on that bench and listened (and watched her face), I suddenly realized I was being "serenaded" by a beautiful young woman with a violin (a cruder person would say I was being "seduced" by a beautiful woman with a violin). I had never been in the presence of any violinist before, much less the presence of a beautiful young violinist who was playing only for me. So you can imagine how honored I felt, among other feelings.

She played with amazing skill. I was in awe.

Nonetheless, I noticed one very minor flaw during her performance. But it was a very endearing flaw. As she played, I could hear the bow vibrating ever so slightly in her hand. She had obviously noticed it too, because when she finished she immediately told me the vibrating was due to her extreme nervousness. She then confessed that she had learned to play that song only for me.

A Moment Lost in Time

Song Title: Strangers in the Night
Artist: Frank Sinatra
Date that it entered the Top 100: May 7, 1966
Peaked at No. 1 on: June 18, 1966, and remained there for one week.
Left the Top 100 on: August 13, 1966

In early 1982, I was a junior at South Dakota State University in Brookings. It was my first and only year in attendance there. I was living in Hansen Hall on the far western edge of the campus. At about 1 in the morning, the fire alarm went off. Needless to say, this was an extremely inconvenient time for a drill (or a prank). Many of the residents of the western half of the dorm, the men's side -- all four floors of them -- filed out the remote west exit of the building. Scattered amongst the crowd were one or two female students who had obviously stayed on the men's side past the midnight curfew.

As you might expect, we were all a pretty unhappy bunch of exiles as we stood there in the cold night air, many with no shoes, staring silently at the sidewalk or at one another. Several of the guys were wrapped only in blankets, as they had been deep asleep when the alarm went off. I believe I had been awake at the time, so I was lucky enough to have my clothes on. One seemingly unhappy guy from the first floor (my floor) was slowly milling around in circles, trying to keep warm, and bearing his usual ultra-deadpan expression. I had seldom ever seen this guy speak more than a few words. He just didn't seem to be the talkative type. One of his friends, a fairly tall guy, was standing silently, unhappily, in one place, just watching him mill around. Very few of us were speaking to one another. It was simply too late, and none of us wanted to be there. I wasn't thinking much of anything as I watched the people watching one another or trying not to watch one another.

Suddenly, the milling guy, who was standing about three feet in front of me, reached out from under his blanket, grabbed the sides of his friend's face with both hands, looked him directly in the eyes and sang with great meaning, "Strangers in the night, exchanging glances..." Then he let go and went on about his milling again, and the friend just continued to stare silently.

I don't remember what the rest of the crowd did, probably nothing, but I started laughing uncontrollably under my breath, the same sort of uncontrollable laugh that I am experiencing now, even as I write this, 24 years later.

It was one of those magical moments in life that make this annoying experience worth the effort.

Songs Associated With Places & Times

We all associate certain songs with certain times and places. For about 20 years, I've been wanting to create a list of those songs that remind me of very specific times and places -- just for the fun of it, of course. The internet has made the research a much less daunting task. It is still a big task, but no longer as daunting. A couple of weeks ago, I finally forced myself to get started making that list. I now have a wealth of potentially good blogging material (and some "so-so" material).

How did I do my research? Well, I spent several nights monotonously going through every weekly chart on the Cash Box Top 100 web site from 1970 to 1996. Luckily, I didn't have to reread each song title in each weekly Top 100 list just to find the newest entries. I only had to find the few songs on each weekly list that show "--" in the previous week's column. That means they had not been on the charts the previous week.

Without further ado, here is a quick sampling of what I intend to do on this blog occasionally (or frequently), for the foreseeable future.

Please click the song title to hear a short clip of the song. It will really help to set the mood (you may have to click the play button once the page loads).

Song Title: Wear Your Love Like Heaven
Artist: Donovan
Date that it entered the Top 100: December 2, 1967
Peaked at No. 26 on: January 1, 1968, and remained there for one week.
Left the Top 100 on: January 20, 1968

Utterly Meaningless Trivia:
When this song entered, peaked and left the Top 100, my family was living in Pierre, SD. I celebrated my 7th birthday during that time period. [Note: I don't remember ever hearing this song until much later in life; but it clearly has a 60s "feel" to it, so I automatically loved it immediately.]

Place, Date and Event with which I Associate This Song:
In the spring of 1991, I was a student-teacher at the high-school level a small town here in western Nebraska. I was a pretty busy person because I was teaching in two different subject areas: English and history. During my two months of teaching, I believe I was only able to show two videos to my students. In one of those instances, I showed an episode of Our World, which is one of the best TV series of all time (critics agree with me wholeheartedly). Therefore, naturally, it only survived for one season (1986-1987 on ABC).** The hosts, who are masters of their trade, were Linda Ellerbee and Ray Gandolf.

The series shows only those episodes of American history that were captured on film; therefore, it only covers topics dating back to the late 1930s. This is very good for many reasons, not the least of which is that high-school students are more fascinated with recent history, especially the history of popular culture, and "Our World" always includes plenty of that. Popular culture is the bait that entices the little buggers to watch and learn. Furthermore, each episode covers only a particular season of a particular year, for instance, Summer 1972 (please, I urge you to click that link! maybe it will jar a few of your memory cells). A number of episodes deal with the 1960s and 1970s, including the hippie movement, war protests and many aspects of our modern popular culture (such as movies, music, fashions, fads, etc.) to which most Americans are still addicted today.

On that day in April 1991, four years after the series ended, I was showing an episode on the late 1960s to one of my history classes. I believe it was the "Winter of 1968." It is one of my favorite episodes of the series. At one point, while showing the hippie fashions and dancing styles of 1968, the Donovan song, Wear Your Love Like Heaven, is playing in the background.

Shortly after that song clip ended, someone knocked on my classroom door. I paused the video and said, "Come in!"

About three students from the math class next door (seniors, I believe) opened the door and walked a few steps into the room. I didn't know any of them.

The "spokesperson" asked in a somewhat awestruck voice, "What are you watching?" I explained. He replied somewhat along these lines, "We could hear it through the wall, and it sounds really cool! Is it OK if we come in and watch too?"

Struggling to hide my happiness, I replied, "As long as your teacher says it's OK, you are perfectly welcome to come in."

He replied excitedly, "Hey, he's fine with it. He's the one who let us come over here and ask you. A few other students want to come in too. Is that OK? They're waiting for me to tell them what you said."

I replied, "You bet. I'll wait for you all to come in before I start playing it again."

I think 75 percent of that math class came into my room to watch the video.

It's extremely rare moments like that that made my student-teaching experience memorable in a nice way.

-----

Footnotes
**One of these days, I hope to do justice to the "Our World" TV series in a blog entry. I started one two or three months ago, but I haven't been able to do justice to it yet. This amazing series, which was a favorite on college campuses (that being exactly where I was located in 1986-87) is barely mentioned on the internet, and it is not available on DVD.

Anniversary Gift

I've been very busy for the past week putting together a 50th-anniversary gift for my uncle and aunt. I've barely been online in all this time. I knew I would get distracted if I did.

Since 1998, I've scanned about 4,000 family photographs in my free time. Yes, that's a lot of photographs. If you are ever of a mind to do something like that, it really helps not to have a life. Luckily, I have been so blessed.

It also helps to have lots of old family photographs, but especially to have relatives who have even more old family photographs than my family has. I have actually taken several thousand photos myself since the 1970s, but I didn't include them in my gift. My aunt and uncle wouldn't care about most of those.

Hundreds of the family photos with which I have been working date back to about 1905 through the 1920s. Hundreds more date from the 1940s through the 1960s. Those are the ones that will be going to my uncle and aunt.

In the past year and a half, I have scanned almost 2,000 photos from the collections of two aunts and one great aunt, with about that many still remaining to be scanned from the great aunt's collection. Until last week, I had kept them in separate folders, so I wouldn't get confused. In order to put this gift together, I finally put them all in one folder and spent the last week organizing them and sorting them chronologically (the best that I could), using many different methods of detective work. I found and deleted a number of duplicates. That's not as easy to do as it may seem. Many of those duplicates had different dates on them. One aunt might have mistakenly dated a photograph as 1955, while the other dated it as 1952, so they were quite a distance apart in the folder. Or else duplicates were printed a few years later, and the developing studio would put 1928 on the photos, even though they may have been taken in 1921. It took a lot of searching and heavy use of the amazing indexing/searching/"weeding" capabilities of my Mac operating system to locate them.

I just finished this evening, a few hours too late to get the nine CDs in the mail to them before they head out on an anniversary vacation. It is extremely difficult to time a project as big as this one was. Thinking of it at the last second didn't help either. Oh well, there will be over 1,700 photos waiting for them when they return home. My uncle (my dad's brother) is a big history and "family memories" nut, just as I am, and just as my dad was, so I know he will be having a lot of fun for a while. So will my aunt since almost half of the photos were taken after their marriage in 1956.

My uncle has probably never seen most of the photos from before his birth because most of them came from my great aunt's collection (she should have been a famous photographer; she was way ahead of her time, as far as creativity and subject matter go). There are also many photographs from his sisters' collections that show him as a child and young adult, and he may not have seen many of those since the era in which they were taken.

One nice thing: When I was a kid growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, my relatives got together for a lot of holidays and usually always had a wild time. I have tons of cousins about the same age as I am, so we always had a blast too. Many times, all the different families took pictures at these get-togethers. My parents might have taken fewer than anyone else, or they may have taken more than anyone else. It just depended on the situation and our level of income at a given time. As a result, there have been many photographs in my family's collection that were confusing to me. I grew up looking at them and wondering which get-together is shown in them (the same is true of photographs from before I was born). My parents were famous for never writing on the backs of their photos, so I couldn't tell. Luckily, my aunts' collections include photos of these same events, and there are dates on them. In putting them all together in one collection, I have been able to ID many photographs for the first time since I was a kid. There is some satisfaction in that -- at least for oddballs such as myself.

A Smidgen of Validation

In today's local daily newspaper, the local editorial column takes on a very intriguing topic with regard to Nebraskans:

"Rural Pessimism; Poll indicates many of us ambivalent about welcoming newcomers."

Hmmmmm.... Seems I may have mentioned something EXACTLY like that here at "Vivid Surreality" a short while back (and, no, it isn't easy for me to restrain myself at this moment). Let me just say, in all humility: See? I wasn't making it up.

The editorial goes on to say, in part:

...A new Rural Poll reveals ambivalence about newcomers, according to the Associated Press report. Only one out of three Nebraskans believe newcomers to their rural communities improve the quality of life.

Wow, talk about prejudice!

Here, the writer naturally tries to spin things as best he/she can:

"Generally, rural Nebraskans are as friendly as it gets. We attend church with our neighbors [MW asks: Why is that always a default statement, as if church-going is all it takes to make people good, kind and courteous?] and school events with fellow parents. We volunteer for civic organizations [MW interrupts: Yeah right, only the humblest of saints volunteer for these organizations.] and get along with the folks in our neighborhoods, newcomers or not [MW interrupts again: They don't get along with them in this neck of the prairie.].

The writer continues to make excuses for why Nebraskans aren't as welcoming as the common propaganda has always stated. Things like jobs, kids and, "yes, TV" keep Nebraskans preoccupied with their own lives; therefore...

It may be that we just don't have time to pay attention to the newcomers in our lives.

How incredibly humorous. That's worse than any excuse any little kid ever gave for being rude to the children of his/her parents' house guests. I guess people in the old days in other rural states, who worked far more hours than most of us ever will, were able to make friends more easily because... Why?

But the face we present to visitors and newcomers is important if we expect them to come back or stick around.

Ya think?

To give some credit to the writer, he/she does go on to say that Nebraskans had better straighten up their act (that's my interpretation of what he/she says) and start welcoming newcomers because we are losing more and more of our young people -- i.e. customers and taxable citizens -- every year, and we need to be replacing them, post haste, with new permanent customers and taxable citizens; otherwise, Nebraska will be in a world of hurt.

Awwwwwww, how sad.

No offense to Trinamick. She and the people in her neck of the Nebraska prairie are a great credit to this state --- that is, if we can fairly use her as an example of what her neighbors must be like (not counting the Wonky-Eyed Beast, of course ;-).

You'd Think I Like Food, Or Something

Trinamick filled out a "food questionnaire" yesterday. She has invited her readers to fill it out too.

As an added bit of fun, I have decided to reply to some of her responses while I fill in my own responses (they are the items I was going to comment on at her blog anyway, so I'm killing two birds with one stone). It seems that we have a couple similarities here and there.

The Food Meme

How do you like your eggs?

I like them over easy (medium), but I especially like them just ever so slightly past over easy (medium well?), so that the yoke is half runny, half hard. These days, I mostly eat egg sandwiches (two over-hard eggs, thoroughly salted and peppered, on bread). I used to love to put a slice of cheese on my egg sandwiches, but that is just too rich for my tastes these days.

How do you take your coffee/tea?

It is very refreshing to find someone else who has avoided becoming a stereotype. Trinamick's answer is nearly identical to my answer, so I shall copy most of it and add my own thoughts. Her words are in brown text; mine are in brackets:

"I don't drink tea or coffee [ever. Well, I guess I'll drink tea if that's my only option, and only if I'm dying of thirst. My mom has been addicted to tea since she was a kid. She carries a glass of it EVERYWHERE she goes. If I meet someone again after 20 years apart, one of the questions that person will eventually ask me is, "Does you mom still carry a glass of tea everywhere she goes?"] It's not possible to make tea taste decent. [I always say it tastes like dry water, for lack of a better term.] You just hold your nose and hope for the best." [Very well said. I cannot top that.]

Favorite breakfast foods:

I like the usual down-home menu (bacon, eggs, pancakes, sausage, toast). But that is almost never an option, so I eat cereal almost every morning. For me, missing breakfast is like forgetting your notes before you walk on stage to speak in front of a huge audience.

My favorite cereal, which I don't eat very often, is Golden Grahams. There are others too, but I cannot remember them at the moment.

Peanut butter: smooth or crunchy?

Both. It really doesn't matter because I love peanut butter the most when it is in some sort of recipe. I go nuts over peanut-butter cookies. I am also head over heels in love with peanut-butter malts (or shakes). I'm doing a Homer Simpson drool right now just imagining one of those delectable treats.

What kind of dressing on your salad?

Trinamick wrote: "Here in Nebraska, we have an excellent dressing known as Dorothy Lynch."

I didn't know it was only available here in Nebraska. I like it too and usually choose it over most others; however, I actually like to mix certain dressings together. It's not easy to do it just right, but I managed to accomplish it once in 1984 in Lemmon, South Dakota, after I had had a bit to drink (after a really hard day building a swimming pool). Ever since then, I have tried, with varying degrees of success, to make another salad as perfect as that one was.

Coke or Pepsi?

If those are all that's available, I will drink either one of them, but I don't like colas. I like 7-UP, root beer, Dr. Pepper (if that's a cola, then it's the only exception) and creme soda (occasionally).

You're feeling lazy. What do you make?

Trinamick wrote: "Little Juan burrito."

Exactly. I have several of them in the freezer right now. I don't really like them, though. I will also resort to making an egg sandwich, if necessary. Half the time, I will just eat a bowl of cereal.

Trinamick wrote: "...Tuna and cream cheese mixed together and eaten on crackers. Before you vomit, try it. It's good."

Too late, I'm already vomiting. I have eaten tuna and crackers a lot, but with cream cheese mixed in? Oh, my God!

You're feeling really lazy. What kind of pizza do you order?

I think I really shocked Kathleen a while back when I told her that I have never ordered a delivery pizza in my life. Friends and family members have ordered them while I am in their company, but it was never my idea (yes, I contributed to the costs if I was a willing participant in eating them; if I was an unwilling participant, then no, I didn't ;-). I like pizza, but not as much as I did when I was a kid. It was the treat to end all treats in those days. I find them to be a bit too expensive, and it isn't worth all that money to feel "blah" when I'm finally full. I am also a big fan of thin and crispy, whereas the rest of humanity, since about the 1980s, has gone with thick and chewy.

As for eating pizzas in a pizza place, I like almost every type of pizza, but it must have meat on it. I hate cheese-only pizzas and would probably hate vegetarian pizzas. I also don't like pineapples or fish on a pizza. Green peppers on a pizza once made me horribly indigested (to the point of illness) when I as was a kid, so I try to avoid them if at all possible.

You feel like cooking.

I was a cook in a cafe for a few months when I was 23 (and got compliments from the customers, even from ranchers who liked my steaks, believe it or not; I had never cooked a steak in my life before then because I didn't like steaks). But I haven't felt like cooking in a number of years. Why work for a half hour or an hour, just to spend five minutes eating? When I did feel like it, I made hamburgers, homemade burritos, goulash on rare occasions, my own gourmet brand of french fries (more involved than just frying them) and other things that I can no longer remember. One of my poor-person specialties was to fry a bunch of hamburger, boil elbow macaroni, heat up some cream of mushroom soup and mix it all together. It was quite tasty, but you didn't want to eat it as a regular habit. It's been twelve or fifteen years since I last had any of it.

Do any foods bring back good memories?

1.) The shrimp and seafood pasta (or something similarly named) at the Olive Garden is one of my favorite memories.

2.) Everything our guides cooked was fantastic during our four-day rafting trip down the Colorado River in Utah in 1979. I imagine the location and our situation probably helped to make everything taste better than it might have at home, but that cannot be all of it. Those people fixed amazingly good food.

3.) The Breakfast Frisco at Hardees was amazingly good for a fast-food delicacy.

4.) Calamari, which I ate in a very nice restaurant in Coronado, California, in 1995 (while staring across the bay at the San Diego skyline). The "catch of the day" white fish (a plate full), which I ate in a small bar/restaurat on Lake Michigan in Racine, Wisconsin, in 1993 is unforgettable.

5.) My aunt's corn-cob jelly is amazing. It is really made out of corn cobs, but it tastes somewhat like apple jelly.

6.) The Hot Pepper Sandwich (thinly sliced prime rib, cheese, oils, peppers, etc.) which was invented by one of the cooks in the bar/restaurant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where I was a bartender. I would eat one during my lunch break about twice a week (didn't want to get sick of them) and then have some chocolate-marble cheese cake for desert. Sigh... Those were the days...

7.) The chicken noodle soup I made from scratch when I was a cook in that cowboy cafe stands out. I used the Betty Crocker cook book as a starting point, then I improvised like crazy after that. The results were beyond anything I could ever have hoped for. But..., like Woody Boyd on Cheers, who mixed the perfect drink, I didn't write down my improvised recipe. ;-(

8.) Finally, my Iranian girlfriend in college used to make the most amazing sandwich ever devised by woman or man. Every week or three, she would bring one with her to the college library to give to me. No other food in my good food memories compares to it. She gave me the recipe at one point, but I guess it requires the just the right "je ne sais quoi" while making it, because I couldn't come close to matching what she made. The ingredients include: boiled potatoes, boiled eggs, cooked chicken cut into pieces (tuna is a good substitute if out of chicken), salt, pepper, lemon juice and mayonnaise. Mix together in a bowl and serve on toast. Based on what you are reading, I bet you cannot imagine just how delicious that sandwich was and how thoroughly thankful I was whenever she brought one with her. I gave up a long time ago on trying to make it because the results of my efforts were just too depressing. The lemon juice is completely necessary, but if you get too little, the sandwich is dull and lifeless. If you get too much, I'm sure all of you know how to say, "Yuck!" with me. Regrettably, there was almost no room for error. A milligram too much, and it was ruined. A milligram too little, and you had to guess how much more should go in it.

I'm sure there are other foods I could think of for this list, but that's a good sampling.

Trinamick wrote: "...the big family dinners we had when my grandma was alive. A seven course meal would sit before you, you'd eat until you were sick, and then my grandma would say, "You didn't eat hardly anything. You must have snacked before you got here. Have some pie."

That sounds exactly like my relatives in southeastern South Dakota. I truly believe they ate six meals a day, yet they would constantly ask me if I was hungry for a lunch-sized snack in between each of those meals. To me, that was torture.

Do any foods bring back bad memories?

Aside from that green-pepper-laden pizza I ate when I was 15 or 16? Not really.

OK, I take that back. When I was painfully in love with the Iranian woman in college, everything tasted terrible for about the first month after I met her, at least when we were not together. When swallowing anything, it felt as if I was trying to force a balloon underwater.

Do any foods remind you of someone?

Well, I guess I already gave that one away. The Iranian sandwich naturally reminds me of the Iranian.

Is there a food you refuse to eat?

Yes, Trinamick's tuna and cream cheese. ;-) Also, I agree with her on cow's tongues and brains. But I did have escargot once at La Chaumière, a fancy French restaurant near Estes Park, Colorado (in 1980-81, my college French class went on a trip to Estes Park just to eat there; I cannot believe it is still open). I must say that escargot is really very good. I figured if snooty rich people can eat it, then there must be something to it. They are right. It is well worth it. Think about it: If a person can eat clams and oysters in soup (even Rocky Mountain oysters ;-), then they shouldn't consider escargot to be that offensive.

What was your favorite food as a child?

Pizza and French fries.

Is there a food that you hated as a child but now love?

Probably, but I've drawn a blank right at the moment. I never ate broccoli as a child, but I can imagine I would have hated it. I totally love broccoli-and-cheese soup.

Is there a food that you loved as a child but now hate?

I loved Big Macs from McDonald's in high school (I almost never had one prior to high school), but now that special sauce is just too sickeningly sweet.

Favorite fruit:

Strawberries (but only when turned into topping for angel food cake) and mulberries right off of the trees at my relative's old farm in eastern South Dakota. Certain red-gold delicious apples are really good, but I'm not much of an apple eater. In fact, I'm not much of a fruit eater. That may be hard to believe when you consider that, for almost a year during high school, I worked in a giant produce in a huge grocery store here in western Nebraska. All that fruit was lying at my fingertips, yet I almost never ate any of it, unlike the rest of my coworkers.

Favorite vegetable?

Potatoes are about it for me. I absolutely love potatoes and gravy (someone once noticed that about me, which I hadn't realized was so obvious). I would include corn on the cob, but it's such a messy chore to eat it and then to pick half of it out of your teeth that I cannot YET include it in good conscience. It's a really close call, though. I love it far more now than I did when I was a kid (I loved the taste as a kid, just not the messy work). I hated getting food caught between my teeth when I was a kid, and dental floss was an exotic luxury that never crossed the minds of my parents (either that, or I didn't know what it was when I saw it in the bathroom cabinet).

Favorite junk food:

I've got to pick just one? Well, OK. Dakota Style Potato Chips (made in Clark, SD) are, without a doubt, the best potato chips ever made. I didn't even like potato chips until I discovered those in about 1987 (cheap ones used to give me indigestion). Regrettably, they aren't sold this far into Nebraska. Some towns in Nebraska along the South Dakota border are lucky enough to have them in certain stores. I used to stop at stores in South Dakota during my trips home just to buy some to bring home with me. A secretary in the school where I used to work, while visiting her daughter in a certain Nebraska college town, went out of her way a couple of times to buy some and then give them to me as a gift.

Favorite between meal snack:

Whatever is handy at the moment. I have no preferences. It can be sugary; it can be salty. It can be both at the same time.

Do you have any weird food habits:

I hate hard-frozen ice cream, so I will microwave a bowl of it for 8 to 12 seconds, depending on the strength of the microwave. I get it to a perfectly soft (drive-inn) consistency. I don't melt it to liquid form.

You're on a diet. What food(s) do you fill up on?

I don't fill up on anything. I just eat smaller portions of the same old junk food.

You're off your diet. Now what would you like?

Whatever is in the kitchen.

How spicy do you order Indian/Thai?

Trinamick said it all: "Are you kidding? I live in the middle of nowhere. We don't have Indian/Thai restaurants out here. But if I ever get the chance, it'll be spicy."

I don't know what either food is like, so I cannot say if I should order it spicy or not. A few years ago, for about a year, there was a Mongolian restaurant here. I never felt the desire to go there. Obviously, neither did a lot of other people, because they aren't open anymore.

Can I get you a drink?

Yes, a Tom Collins, please (consists of gin -- preferably Bombay Sapphire Gin -- 7-UP and Squirt). I am also very partial to Rumple Minze chilled on ice in a snifter. That is a very high-class, 100-proof German schnapps that tilts the world very pleasantly to one side, in very short order, especially if you've had at least one beer with it. ;-)

When you chill Rumple Minze over ice, it tastes as if it is only about 10 proof. If you drink it at room temperature, it has an extremely strong taste. It's hard to believe it's the same liqueur.

Red wine or white?

Red. White is too bitter. But I'll hold my breath and drink whatever is available. I much prefer champagne over wine, though.

We only have beer:

As a bar tender of three years, I am totally indifferent to beer brands. When I was tending bar in Montana in 1987, I wasn't very fond of Stroh's (I believe that was it), but neither were most of the customers. I had just gotten out of college and was still "smarting" from that old "lost love" story, so I was a bit more receptive to drinking than usual. Nice guy that I am, I decided to do my dad a favor (it was his bar in which I was working). I figured I would reduce his inventory of Stroh's before it got too old. Every day at lunch time (it became a ritual), I would drink three cans of Stroh's, each mixed with just the right amount of tomato juice and tabasco sauce. That covered the crappy flavor of the beer with a concoction that I absolutely love. When I reached my third can of beer, I would cook myself a horribly crappy Deli Express microwave sandwich (or maybe even half a Tombstone pizza). During this daily ritual, I would either read my American literature anthology from college (I had promised a professor I would do so), or I would write. I usually had the place to myself around the lunch hour, so I truly enjoyed myself.

There is one beer, though, that I consider to be my favorite of all time. It is a very hard-to-find Norwegian beer called Ringnes. I think the last time I had any was in the early 1990s. I have only been able to find it in Rapid City, SD (at the Albertson's store) and in Sioux Falls, SD, at Sid's Crown Liquor Store. Regrettably, I couldn't find any at Sids in 2005.

I discovered Ringnes by accident while tending bar in Sioux Falls in 1988-89. The lounge in which I worked had sold it regularly to customers before they remodeled, and the new owners had taken over. For over a year, a single case of Ringnes remained in the beer cooler, but I just ignored it. Finally, I asked the manager if I could buy it for cheap, and he agreed. It was quite strong at first, but by the time I was a third of the way into the bottle, I had decided it was the best beer I had ever tasted. I eventually introduced it to a best friend during a visit here in Nebraska. I warned him not to judge it too hastily. He took a couple of sips and said, "This tastes like B.O." After about ten sips, he said, right on cue, "This is the best beer I've ever had."

Favorite dessert?

Too many, but I'll name a few: 1.) Chocolate-marble cheesecake, 2.) a certain pecan pie made by the restaurant/lounge in Sioux Falls where I tended bar, 3.) tin-roof sundae ice cream, 4.) peanut butter shake, 5.) banana shake, 6.) chocolate-chip shake, 7.) upside-down banana split from Zesto (meaning simply that they serve it in a large paper drink cup). There are many deserts to die for in specialty restaurants in Omaha, NE. My educator colleagues and I would stop at these places religiously every year when we went to the NETA Conference. I had to go with them because we were all in the same van. Everything was too expensive, but I splurged just once.

The perfect nightcap?

Rumpleminze, I suppose, but why waste all that great inebriation on sleep? One needs to drink when there are still a few hours of consciousness remaining! ;-)