Cheese Whiz & Oyster Crackers
By Don BaroneDateline: Little Eagles RV Campground Joint
In times of trouble, I seek solace in Cheese Whiz.
And oyster crackers.
No matter how difficult the time, I find peace in a lunch of oyster crackers and Sharp Cheddar Cheese Whiz.
One oyster cracker at a time, one dollop of Cheese Whiz PER cracker.
It's an easy spread Zen thing. No-refrigeration-needed comfort food.
Two handfuls is what I need to calm down (but don't let this discourage you I have been using Cheese Whiz for stress since about 1978 and have probably built up some sort of cheese spread immunity by now).
Two handfuls is exactly 47 whole oyster crackers (I pick out the cracked or split ones). By the 22nd dollop I'm starting to relax, at 37 I'm a dollop on oyster cracker machine, and at 47 I've reached the highest level of cheese snack state.
This past week, I've been doing a lot of Cheese Whiz and oyster crackers.
R.I.P. Art
We were DVR'ing. My wife and I, sitting on the couch watching all the TV shows she DVR'ed for me while I was on the road. Midway through The Real Housewives of somewhere I'm glad I don't live near, the phone rang, caller I.D. announced it to be from the 716 area code. Home. Buffalo, N.Y.
"He's passed," was all she said, all she needed to say.
And in that moment I knew that Barb's father, my father-in-law for 35 years, Arthur Sullivan had died.
It was the day before Memorial Day. A day of parades, flags held high, flags painted on the cheeks of young children, military bands, hot dogs and swimming pools.
And quietly in a nursing home in Grand Island N.Y., a veteran of both WWII and the Korean War passed away gently holding the hands of two of his daughters.
And another American hero was gone.
No fanfare, no flags, no buglers. Just tears.
Art, or as I used to call him, "Big Guy," spent his life helping people. Thirty some years as a Buffalo firefighter, a union guy in a union town, father of six, husband of Pat for over 60 years, this upcoming Friday would have been another anniversary.
Art's wake was in a funeral home three blocks from where I grew up, on the street where the Memorial Day parade takes place. Except for the Sullivan family, the place was empty, and I just started to walk around.
In a room, left of the side door, I saw a table, and on it a photo album, and as I flipped through the pages I saw picture after picture of young men, most not barely out of their teens.
I came across graduation photos of former classmates, friends, guys down the street, around the next block, the soda fountain kid, the Courier Express delivery boy, the pizza delivery guy.
And they were all dead.
As I turned to the cover of the book I saw that someone had hand lettered what the book was called, "Western New Yorkers Killed In Vietnam."
It was filled with the press clippings of other American Heros, sometimes three or four clippings to a page, both front and back.
And there were 299 PAGES in all.
Godspeed "Big Guy," please know I hated this Memorial Day.
Why the caged dog howls
I know of a tiny dog in a big city.
Loved not and lost.
Life in a cage.
Matted hair, a body full of sores.
Afraid of humans, afraid of dogs, afraid of beyond his nose.
Never petted, never walked, never given a treat.
A throw-away soul named Rudy.
A 12-year-old, puppy-mill-rescued Shih Tzu now under foster care in NYC.
Soon after getting back from Buffalo I got this email about Rudy:
"He had never experienced social interaction before, canine or human. Poor thing was a mess! . He was so scared of people I had to do laps around the kitchen table just to get his leash on."
Lately, two things have changed my life, writing about and being in the outside, and a small dog named, Riley. My wife's Shih Tzu.
I voted against getting the dog, luckily I was outvoted in the family. Riley is my four-legged Cheese Whiz and oyster crackers.
All Riley does is give (and maybe takes a few socks). To come home to a loved pet is like no other greeting in the world.
If humans had tails we might not be so mean to each other. The universal sign for love should be a tail wagging.
Through Riley I've come to appreciate all the things outside the home (except for spiders and whatever crawfish are), and how special it is that we get to share it with them.
Which is why I felt ashamed after reading the email about Rudy, because looking at his photo I knew Why The Caged Dog Howls.
It's because of us.
Not a good week.
Recalculating
Jill isn't talking to me.
She just sits there, silent.
We've broken up.
And I'm lost without her.
Jill provided direction in my life. Led the way through innumerable screw-ups. And even though she told me many times where to go, I still needed her.
Life without my Jill has just been one wrong turn after another.
I'm heartbroken. My wife, is not, "Just go get another Jill, enough already."
And no, she's not advocating an open marriage, Barb IS advocating GPS.
Jill is the lady inside my GPS.
The one who DOESN'T say, "Ah hey, weren't you supposed to turn back there?," or "Do you want me to drive?"
At most Jill would only politely say, "There is a better way," but even more politely never actually point it out.
And then my GPS got laryngitis. Speechless in the Sienna.
It's been years since I have not been able to fold a map back up let alone remember how to read one. Jill made highway exit signs extinct ... I actually in my gut now know exactly just how long "point 4 miles," is without looking a the speedometer, which I can't see anyway without my reading glasses.
I can't imagine going anywhere without knowing which way is NORTH, even though I never seem to go that way.
GPS has rendered me Geographically Impaired.
So into my life comes ... Samantha.
My dyslexic GPS.
Samantha, it seems is right and left, north and south, challenged.
"At the exit ramp, turn left and arrive at the Sleep Inn."
I can see the hotel from the stop sign. It's about 500 feet away, to my right.
"Take entrance ramp and head north to Charleston."
Charleston is actually SOUTH of both me and Samantha.
"Arriving at destination, Donut World, on right."
On RIGHT, is a swamp.
So, being the mechanical genius I am I try to fix this problem seeing that I really don't want to drive a few hundred miles to my left, when Sam "meant" to say, "Turn Left for point 2 miles."
I first tried this: Since she talks, I don't actually need to see her so I turned her upside down and put her back in the GPS cradle figuring at the very least that would handle the North, South, confusion.
Save yourself the leaning over trying to hear your Samantha, all I got was the wrong directions, just muffled.
Even though my mother always told my father (a truly non-GPS which-way-to-go challenged guy if there ever was one) she was always right, that didn't turn out to be the case when I strapped Samantha into the back seat of the mini-van hoping for some back-seat-driving magic, "Turn left to arrive at Bassmaster weigh-in"
Left would have put me IN Kentucky Lake, pretty much under the release boat.
Now here's the bad part: Sam is only challenged, part time. Most times, she gets it right, maybe 90 percent of the time.
It's that other 10 percent that makes for a very bad week.
Time Out
Some would say, mainly my editors, that I'm pretty much permanently in Time Out.
Time Out would be the password for my life.
Growing up as a kid, my bedroom door had a lock ON BOTH SIDES. Every accessible corner in the house had my initials scrawled on it somewhere.
I was in the assistant principal's office so much that three years after my graduation he invited me to his daughter's wedding as part of the family, if that is, "You're not in NYS custody yet."
And I find myself back in Time Out once again. But this time I rented it.
When I found out that the cabin I would be staying at during the Bassmaster Tennessee Triumph was named, "Time Out," I took that as a sign from the universe, one bad week was about to stretch into two.
I was wrong.
I arrived in town to a motel so bad that if I wrote anything about it what's left of my 401K would be long gone before my Professional Time Out in Libel Prison was close to being over.
As I explained this to K2 (Kerry Short, Elite Pro K-Pinks wife), who may or may not have secretly recorded it to use against me if I ever take a bad photo of her again, she takes me over to the guy who runs the RV Park joint, explains my Bates Motel position (not the real name but pretty much in the same venue except the Bates place probably had a cleaner shower than the motel I fled) and he says "no problem, db can stay right there in that cabin," at which I turn around and see the cabin's name, Time Out, and utter ... "perfect."
And it was. Turned out I forgot what a family it is that I'm covering, these Bassmaster folks.
I toss a bag or two into the cabin and head out for the Bass registration, where Pro meets Marshal, and about an hour or so come back to the cabin, and a crowd. Inside it.
Steve and Kerry are in the kitchen making Elk and Mahi Tacos (I passed but did eat some fruit, and quite possibly, a vegetable). The talk was of kids, dogs, RVs, and past and future Bass.
And under a stormy Tennessee night, with the song of the wind in the tall pines, the music of rain on a tin roof, guided by the glow coming from inside the 5th wheels, Class A's and truck campers, I walked outside to the Hula Girl Minivan and packed back up the Cheese Whiz and oyster crackers.
This week, I knew, would be better.
— db
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