Morning Minutia

Make a pot of tea. Check email, respond to email. Check the weather forecast, rain and snow are coming. Put up the kitchen shades and look at the sky. Tea has steeped, pour a cup. Check election results and thank goodness for four more years of intelligent leadership. Take butter out of refrigerator to soften. No email from Amazon that the order has shipped. Check status. Status is “Shipping Soon.” Soon is a relative term. Give the cat a rub. Give R a kiss and a squeeze and wish her a good day. And drive carefully. Pour another cup of tea, make toast. Put rest of shades up while eating toast. Drink a glass of milk, eat an apple. Take a shower. Floss teeth. Brush teeth. Take multivitamin. Get dressed. Do dishes. Start a load of laundry. Step into garage and wish car and motorcycle a good morning (in German). Remove cat hair and other detritus from black fleece with sticky roller. Whoever invented the sticky roller was thinking. Look at list of things to do. Three interviews. Check out the lineup of Kindles. Look at them all! Too many choices lead to confusion so I’ll stick with books. Make note to drive a Nissan Leaf. To write about. Check local dealer inventory. No Leafs. Or Leaves? Take laundry from washer. Put shirts in the dryer for a few minutes. Spread the rest out on the drying rack. Pull shirts from dryer and put on hangers. Make another cup of tea. Email arrives from Amazon, order has shipped and should be here Friday. Good. Give the cat another rub. Stare at blinking cursor.

All the while the notion the next Great American Novel is in me, gnaws at me. Oh yeah, greatness. But I have no idea what the heck to say, so I occupy / distract myself with the minutia. And hope the words come. Another morning is going by. This is how it is being a writer. How all the great books got written is a mystery to me. It is one weird line of work.

Gordon Bunker

Applesauce

With summer behind us and the coming of fall, trees and gardens overflow with fruits and vegetables. Whenever someone offers produce, even if I have no idea what to do with it, I take them up on it. So after lunch at Sallie’s on Saturday when she offers apples from her trees, I say yes and in less than a half hour we pick a couple bags full. Most of the apples have been pecked by birds and some augered by worms, but with a little trimming, they will be fine for cooking. Driving home, images of pies and crisps and sauces fill my imagination while the car fills with the fruit’s sweet winey perfume. Once home I leave the bags downstairs to keep cool.

.   .   .

Next door, a crew of maintenance guys are fully into their weed whackers and leaf blowers. The noise breaks my concentration enough that I’m unable to get any fiction writing done - that level of creativity requires peace and quiet. These guys show up twice or three times a year so the disturbance is small potatoes. Nothing compared to where I used to live, where the people next door had a crew for a full day every week and actually had workers vacuum individual leaves of the shrubbery. No kidding! One of those days, after hours of listening to the duet of shrieking shop vacs I called the home owner to inquire how much longer this might go on. She immediately launched into a riot act, screaming at me, “… it’s our damn yard and we can have it the way we want!” and so on ad nausea projectum. Needless to say, I’m happy to have moved away from that scene. Please note I did not call it a neighborhood.

Now as the guys work next door I decide to leave the keyboard and make applesauce.

The upside to the pecks and worms in the apples from Sallie’s is that they have not been sprayed with any pesticides. I rinse them in the sink and start coring and cutting them up and tossing the pieces into my 8 quart stock pot. Getting into the process I am reminded of when as a kid, helping my mother do the same. Every fall she would buy bushels of drops and for at least a full day the two of us would make applesauce. Gallons of it, most of which would go in the freezer. In particular, I remember operating the Foley food mill, a hand cranked device which forced the chunks of cooked apples and skins through a sieve; cranking on that thing until my arm hurt, then I’d switch to the other arm and on and on. But of course home made applesauce whenever you wanted it over the following winter made it all worthwhile.

When I flew the nest, my mom gave me a Foley food mill which I dutifully lugged with me all over the country until a few years ago, having never used it, gave it to good will. Picking apples on Saturday, I thought, well, that wasn’t a very smart thing to do and wondered out loud to Sallie how I might deal with the skins - they don’t cook out and would remain tough and chewy. Sallie suggested using a blender, something I do have.

I bought the blender this past summer for one purpose - make frozen watermelon margaritas. When I noticed this particular machine had a “Frozen Drink” button, well, that’s all I needed to know. To good effect, microprocessors have found their way into blenders, just load the pitcher with required ingredients, hold onto your hat (and the blender) and hit that button. It launches into a song and dance; clockwise, counterclockwise, slow, fast, slow, fast, faster and blazingly faster and then without further adieu, shuts itself off. On a mid-July afternoon, as the hot desert sun bears down without mercy, simply pour and enjoy. Ahhh…

One bag of apples cored and chopped fills the stock pot and I set a low flame under it. Slowly it begins to steam and the first time I open the lid to poke at the apples, oh, the sweet smell! Interesting how our sense of smell is linked to our memory and at this moment images of all that work in the kitchen with my mom, the long hours at the stove and how we were a team comes so very close to being reality.

I get the blender set up on the countertop and prepare to move on to the “Food Chop” button. Hit this one and the blender slowly goes one way and then the other and so on until it decides to stop. I make a few experimental runs and eventually learn it’s happiest with no more than two big ladles full of steaming apples in the pitcher. Even then, given the gooiness of the cooked apple glop, air pockets form around the blade defeating the purpose. I get a wooden spoon to push the mess down in blatant and reckless defiance of IMPORTANT SAFEGUARD # 5: “Keep hands and utensils out of jar while blending to reduce the risk of Severe personal injury.” Now really, is there anyone out there dumb enough to put their hands in a running blender? I mean, c’mon. Even I am smart enough to use a spoon, and in a rare flash of common sense strike upon the notion a wooden one would be preferable to metal. So, like a cat going after a goldfish I madly dab at the swirling applesauce with the spoon and after two “Food Chop” cycles have an acceptably smooth puree. Smooth enough for me, but then I like crunchy peanut butter on rye crisp, so we’ll see what everyone else thinks of it. Speaking of rye crisp, I did hit the rotating blade with the spoon now and then which kinda did a number on said spoon (sorry R), and there’ll be some splinters in the sauce. But like rye crisp, this sauce will keep you regular.

The process which started at 11:00 AM pretty much comes to a close at 5:00 PM, and I am whopped. The yard guys next door are picking up their tools and loading their trucks and getting out of here. I am divvying the hot applesauce into containers and lining them up on the counter. They need to cool before going into the freezer. R and I go out for a bite at Counter Culture - I’ve had enough cooking for one day. When we get home I fill a shelf in the freezer with the containers of sauce. And there’s a bowl full I put in the fridge.

This morning I decide to have oatmeal and along with some milk, warm a half cup or so of the applesauce in the microwave. At the right moment it all comes together, I put the blob of steamy sauce in a little well I make in the oatmeal and pour on the milk and sprinkle some walnut pieces on top. Mmm… those flavors, earthy, simple and good, a great breakfast on this cool October morning.

Gordon Bunker

The Healey

Like a lot of guys who spent time in England during World War II, and then were lucky enough to make it home alive, my dad was a British sports car enthusiast.

Sometime right around when I was born (and my sister was five) he bought a used MG TD. I don’t have any memory of this car, but from pictures, know it was black with a red interior. And it had style. I do remember dad telling the story of going out with my sister in it one summer evening to get ice cream cones, and bring one home for mom. On the trip back he decided to hold the cone in his left hand outside the car so not to drip ice cream all over the interior. He knew how to steer with his knees, a handy skill. But of course the ice cream started to melt, and run down his hand, and run down his arm until by the time they got home there wasn’t much of anything left to it. There was also the time, to be cool, he had his arm out the window until a wasp got blown down his shirt sleeve and stung him in the armpit…

The Healey I do remember, and mom not being too pleased when dad rolled in the driveway in it. The TD was worn out and rusted out - this was in Concord, New Hampshire - and it was time for another car. Apparently she figured my dad, recognizing the needs of his family, would buy something practical. A car with four doors and maybe even a roof. Somehow he failed to see things this way and when an Austin-Healey 3000 appeared on his horizon, well, it was meant to be. After all, this car, despite already being hard used and rusted was a big step up, with six cylinder engine and overdrive gearbox. Where the TD was buggy and fun, the Healey was a hot rod. And look! It has a back seat for the kiddies! Sort of.

The weak-kneed excuse of a back seat did little to appease mom. She was indeed pissed, but also smart and knew an opportunity when she saw one. And she knew what she wanted. “Well,” she said, standing there with arms akimbo, “if you can have a sports car, I can have a piano!” So right then and there, in the middle of a downpour we all clamored into the Healey and went to the big city, Manchester, to the piano store. My sister and I sat in the back, um, “seat” and ate M&M’s, so what could be better? We had a great time.

Mom marched into the store, the rest of us in tow, took one look around and said, “I want that one,” pointing to a lovely upright of some sort. The salesman was happy to oblige, a check was written, a delivery order was filled out and voila! The piano would be in our living room in a matter of days.

Somehow, there’s more that’s memorable about the Healey than the piano, certainly about the sounds it made, the throaty exhaust note for example. And the way we’d fly around corners in it, the way the heater would practically melt your shoes off while the rest of you froze. The sublime experience of fresh air and wind and sounds and smells with the top down. I remember dad taking my sister and me to school in it.

But of course the Healey went the way of all cars and one day it was history. This had to be a sad day for my dad. To further frost the cake, he surrendered some part of his free spirit and came home in a Peugeot 403. Complete with four doors and a roof and thank goodness, a sunroof. Having it open of course, bore almost no resemblance to a top down experience but the Peugeot had one huge redeeming quality. Mom was happy with it.

Important lesson learned: When Momma ain’t happy, ain’t Nobody happy.

Years later, as a Christmas present for dad I dug through the family photo archive and found slides he had taken of the MG and the Healey, and had enlargements made and matted and framed them. Christmas morning, boy did those ever stop his clock. The guy sat there in his bath robe and cried. For a moment I thought I’d made a mistake but when he looked at me it was clear this was not the case. The pictures were on the wall in the living room before the end of the day, and that night, admiring them, my dad sniffed and said to mom, “You got the better end of the deal.”

Mom looked at him. “Oh really?”

“Yeah. I don’t have my Healey anymore, but you still have your piano!” he said. It wasn’t often my mother didn’t have some clever retort. This time she didn’t.

Fast forward another six or eight years and I was working at Harvard Forden’s boat shop in Lakeport. That was a great job and Harv was a great guy. Any boss who wouldn’t fire you on the spot for showing up on your first day hung over is a great guy. I shoveled a couple tons of crushed stone that day.

There were big storage sheds behind the shop, and Harv would occasionally tuck in a car or two over the winter for customers. One of these was a mint Austin-Healey 3000. Oh, I drooled over that car, and must have told Harv stories about my dad’s. The following spring the Healey needed to go to the upholstery shop across town and Harv asked if I’d like to drive it.

Pinch me! Ok, I felt that. He actually asked me if I’d like to drive the Healey.

“Yes!” I said. “When?”

“Now,” said Harv and he handed me the keys.

Getting in that car was not so much a step back in time, but a chance to appreciate it from a (more) grown-up perspective. There were the beautiful clocks, Smiths I think, and other details, the shape and rich chrome plating of the door levers, the long look over the hood. The in-line six fired right up and with some fiddling with the choke, settled into a fast idle and a few moments later with the choke off was ready to go.

Puttering out of the neighborhood there was the feeling of the car, solid and light, the engine smooth and very torquey. Yeah baby, torque is where it’s at. Onto the main road I got into the throttle, relishing the sounds. Charging up to an intersection where I’d take a right, the light turned yellow and then took on a distinct orange cast. There was no way I was going to stop for a red before the turn, so I did what any decent fellow driving an Austin-Healey 3000 would do. I downshifted to second and gassed the thing. And WHAAAA! into the corner, flyin’, laughin’… and this is when I looked over and saw the cop, sitting there, legally stopped for his red light which was about to turn green.

The word which crossed my mind at that moment is not suitable for a G rated blog post so I’ll skip it. I looked at him and he looked at me, and I smiled at him and he smiled at me, and I stayed on the gas. And when his light turned green he went along on his way as though nothing had happened.

Proof, there are some decent cops in this world. More than a few, I can assure you.

Gordon Bunker

Photo credit: Bull.Doser

Remembering Franz Jahoda, 1930 - 2012

“We know how the sky is blue, but we don’t know why,” Franz said while marveling the glowing blanket of atmosphere above us. With a career in theoretical physics, specializing in light and optics behind him, the statement not only had profound dimensions in and of itself, but was telling about the man who made it.

Franz and his wife Pat and I were having lunch, perched on the rim of a canyon in the backcountry of Bandelier National Monument. It was a beautiful fall day in northern New Mexico, the air and light so clear if it could make a sound it would ring like a bell.

Franz possessed the rare brilliance of an open mind and humble nature, able to embrace and find inspiration in the fact we do not and likely will never have all the answers. And so, it was always a delight to be in his company. We shared many lively, wondering conversations, many high summits, and other slices of life including the trials, as friends do.

For all his humility, Franz once revealed a flashy side. Curious about his lifelong passion for downhill skiing - after all, you get yourself hauled up a hill to simply slide down over and over again - I asked him what was it about the sport which held him. Without hesitation he exclaimed, “I can show off!”

Many of us now feel the hard ache of missing Franz Jahoda. I do. Fortunately he has left us with uncountable fine memories, and a big blue sky above to look at and wonder about.

Gordon Bunker

Toast

This past Saturday morning R wanted toast. When she pushed the lever down on the toaster to get things started, it broke. I put up a silent cheer. Finally, the cursed thing quit. It was a yard sale purchase of R’s and had been the bane of my every morning. No matter how much fiddling with the controls, it would offer up either warm bread or burned bread, but never toast. And first thing in the day I don’t need anything to make me a grouch, or rather, grouch-ier. Just ask R.

For some time I’d been dreaming of a proper slice of toast, crispy on the outside and still a bit chewy on the inside… slathered with butter and jam, without drama or trauma, a balm for my grumbling soul and a giant leap toward starting out on the right foot. So with the toaster’s demise I hesitated not one minute, yanked the cord from the socket, grabbed the unit and marched it out to the trash. Before slamming the lid shut on its tomb I gave it a squinty-eyed glance and uttered the last rites, “There, you miserable son of a …” never to be seen or heard from again, “good… Bye!”

We set priorities according to our hierarchy of needs, so what would it be for rest of the day? Clean the garage or find a new toaster? Without a second thought a toaster, one which actually worked, shot to the top of my list. I was determined to do everything I could to ensure a future of happy toasting and was quickly hot on the trail of a “Lift & Look Touch,” by the Australian company Breville. The Aussies apparently are big on toast; they must be to come up with this juggernaut.

Bakeries here in Santa Fe are into “artisan” breads. They can call them whatever they like, I call them delicious. But the loaves, round domes baked without pans, produce big oval slices in the middle and tiny ones from the ends. The star feature with the Lift & Look is its “extra long” slots, promising to toast anything I can throw at it in one gulp. And then its straightforwardness; this toaster has buttons labeled, “Lift & Look,” and “A Bit More.” I get it, no secret decoder ring required. In this world so enamored with icons, the meanings of which not always readily apparent, there’s something quaint, even charming about the use of simple English.

As an aside, for the swashbuckling guy like me, getting excited about a countertop appliance may appear a sad commentary on what life has come to, but climbing the highest peaks or plunging the depths of the ocean look like just too much effort. Left to my memoirs perhaps are tales of high adventure, but as I slip into older doghood, the lack of pressure in getting a kick out of a toaster comes as a relief.

Now we get down to the proof which is in the pudding, or toast as it were, and so far so good. Having got the gist of the browning control, the Lift & Look shines. Let there be toast, light, dark, any way you like it, and after years of violent spring loaded toast launchings the gentle motorized lowering and raising of the slices, while a bit superfluous, is a nice Zen touch. We have yet to try the “Bagel” setting wherein the unit toasts the inside cut faces more than the outside surfaces. When you’ve come this far toward toasting perfection you wouldn’t want to overdo your poppy seeds or bits of onion and garlic now would you? Bagels are on my grocery list.

Gordon Bunker

With Wings It Would Fly

A few days ago D and I make tentative plans to have lunch. When he calls and says, “today will work, how about The Mineshaft?” I hesitate. The Mineshaft is a dive tavern in Madrid, about 25 miles south of town. I like the place, but driving way out there, having lunch and then driving back will take a big chunk of time from the day, and there are comparable burgers to be found closer to home.

When he adds, “we’ll take the 911,” I do not hesitate. To heck with everything else. I’ve only seen a 911-ish shape looming under a cover in the corner of D’s garage, and there is without question something very seductive about a veil, and then… lifting it. The opportunity to ride in a Porsche 911 Turbo Carrera 4 is not to be missed.

I get to D’s at the appointed hour, just as he is rolling the car out of the garage. Oh my, what a beautiful car and what beautiful sounds. There is nothing like a 911. And so I park the GTI, eagerly hop out and get into the Porsche. Correction: you don’t so much get into a Porsche as you put it on. Contrary to the minds eye - envisioning the greatness of the 911 and thus the car must be big - the car is diminutive and so is the fit.

The day is beautiful, clear as a bell, not too hot and there’s only a light breeze. Playing hooky with a friend and experiencing one of the greatest cars of all time, well, it just don’t get better than this. We drive at a moderate pace until the engine is fully warmed and the flat spots in the tires have a chance to work themselves out. Even with things toned down, I know this piece of machinery has goods not to be taken lightly. The Porsche is tight and quick. It all takes a while to get used to, especially all those wonderful mechanical sounds coming from the engine bay in the back of the car.

And then D puts his foot in it and Holy Mother of The Gods Of Internal Combustion! My torso and head crush into the seatback, my peripheral vision blurs and I can see D has his work cut out for him just keeping his shifts up with the engine bouncing off the rev limiter. I have never felt acceleration as intensely as this in a car, and this is only the prelude to what happens in the twisties.

Between Cerrillos and Madrid among hills and canyons the road becomes a snake and the pavement is in good condition. The Traffic Gods smile upon us and clear the way, and it is play time with all wheel drive and a horsepower to weight ratio of 1:8. Oh, and the brakes, which redefine how fast and deep you go into corners before thinking about applying them. Until I get accustomed to this, with every corner coming up real fast, I think I’m going to die. And into the corners I discover a flaw in the Porsche: the fully bolstered seat does not keep me in place given the lateral forces we experience. Small potatoes, it’s more a testament to how well this car sticks to the road. Things go by mind-blowingly quick and during a second’s reprieve afforded by a short straight, D says, “You’ll drive us back. That is, if you want to.”

My mind stumbles, I take a deep breath and consider the responsibilities to life and limb and machine and as we plunge into the next corner I grin a silly grin and say, “Sure!”

Lunch? Oh yeah. We have lunch. And we talk about - can you guess? - cars and other important guy stuff, and then D hands me the keys. So with some trepidation I put on the Porsche and manage to back it out of the parking space without crunching into anything and then get underway without stalling it. So far, so good. As we putter through the village I comment (with no disrespect to all the Grandmothers of the world), “I’ll probably drive like an Old Grannie.”

“Don’t worry about it… go for it,” replies D.

And so as we make our way back through aforementioned hills and canyons I ease into the car and sample (a fraction of) what it has to offer.

With windows open and the wail of the engine, we now need to raise our voices to be heard. Shouting, D reaffirms, “you’re doing fine… go for it.”

And I smile and in-between expletives undeleted, with hands firmly grasping the steering wheel which is giving me tons of feedback on what’s going on up front, I shout back, “Thanks, but… I can tell with this car… it would be easy to get in way above my head, and way too fast and… it’s decidedly uncool to wad up your friend’s car.” From the corner of my eye I see D swallow and nod.

“Thanks for that,” he says. The landscape and corners flash by and we get behind a slowpoke and when I pull out to pass, into the spirit of things D says, and this is a direct quote, “floor it.” My right foot follows his directive and the car leaps forward as the turbos come on with their insane hit of power, and momentarily stunned, I back off; the car calms a bit and D says, “you got him…” and I get back into the gas and we positively rip. The slowpoke fades into a time zone of history and we are gonesville.  Back in our lane I say something along the lines of, “holy shit.”

D says, “I may chip the car… there’s amazing potential in these engines.”

And I reply, “yeah, it feels a bit down on power.” Uh-huh, and we laugh and fly into three big sweepers and up and over a hill and… I decide to take a break and collect my thoughts and back off before the next curvy section. For a few moments we lope along and I give D my impressions.

Aside from the flat six and all the power it makes and all the music, oh, the music, I am most taken by the precise throttle and how easy it is to work in concert with the gearbox and shifter and clutch. Again the road tightens, and coming into the corners, downshifting, blipping the throttle and getting on the gas… the Porsche simply responds and puts me in a flow and it is addictive and I want to feel that rush. So I feed it and go faster, and faster…

It’s a great privilege to drive such a car. Many thanks, D.

Gordon Bunker

Redemption In Pi

The problem started in first grade with 0. For me it was the beginning of the end in proficiency with math. If 1 represents the presence of something and -1 represents the absence of something, why have this thing in the middle called zero? Something either exists or it doesn’t, there’s no in-between. Public education however made little room to accommodate pondering and so as I considered this mysterious integer the program moved on. Not paying attention to the new mysteries presented to class, pretty quickly I was lost.

The real slap in the face came when I realized creative problem solving or being close enough were not worthy of credit. Along about fifth grade I was struggling with a test in geometry. It was all about the theorems we were supposed to memorize. To this day I dislike the word theorem. Just the way it rolls around in my mouth, I want to spit it out. So the problem was, “Using the theorem show how many degrees are within the triangle.” Not remembering the foolish thing I got out a piece of tracing paper, put it over the triangle on the test sheet, got my ruler and traced one of the angles. I moved the paper around and lined the it up with the next angle in the triangle, traced it and then the next until I had three angles together which I measured with my protractor to be 178 degrees.

When the test results came back, I learned this answer and quite a few others was wrong. Close apparently, only counted in horse shoes and hand grenades, but c’mon, I worked hard for those 178 degrees! I took a look at all the dreaded red X’s and thought, “to hell with it. This is dumb,” (public education that is, not math) and started my career as an artist by doodling my way through math class and most every other. Note to parents: Whether mathematicians are smarter than artists is up for grabs but they have been smart enough to convince society they should be paid for what they do.

The speed at which Earth orbits the Sun recently got my curiosity. It had to be a big number, but just how big? The formula to find the circumference of a circle is 2 π r. Hey look! My calculator has a π key on it, I can do this. In this case, r, or the distance between our planet and star is 93,000,000 miles. One orbit takes 8,760 hours and my calculations told me we’re traveling at approximately 66,671 mph. Which is bookin’ it. This gives a whole new perspective to the concept of “sitting still.” Good thing space is mostly vacuum, otherwise the leading surface of our little planet would have one heck of a wind blowing straight down on it.

But what about this ‘approximate’ business? Well, it has to do with π. For most purposes we think of it as 3.14, but in fact it is a number which in decimal form goes on and on forever and never repeats itself. Thus we do not and can not know what the value of π is - what we use is close enough. Even though the answer to any calculation involving π and a few other constants like it is more an opinion, it is worth some, perhaps even full, credit.

Huh. Close, in math, does count.

Gordon Bunker