Joe

Hail fellow well met.

Let’s talk about something important. Joe.

Oh yes. Coffee Joe. Java, jamoke, kaffa, kahveh, sludge, silt, bilge, mud and a shot-in-the-arm. Mud in your eye. Hojo, qahwah, latte, moche, just gimme that coffea whatever you call it.
Look, I’m not fooling here. Listen to me. Coffee is not a beverage. Coffee is the eighth sacrament. Gimme Gimme Gimme.

Ray Charles knew:

In the morning when the sun comes up
She brings me coffee in my favorite cup
That’s how I know, how I know, Hallelujah I just love her so.

A blind man could see it. Howsa ’bout a cup?

Let’s lay down some rules. First and foremost, we lay a pistol on the table for anyone that approaches with anything decaffeinated. You pod people that drink that dyspeptic dishwater stay clear, I’m warning you. I need that jolt, and I don’t mean soda.

Second, there was a period of time in this world when the idea of instant coffee made a certain amount of sense, I guess. People watched two guys named Neil walk on the moon, and were inspired to drink Tang and so forth, and the idea of Nescafe didn’t seem all that strange. At the time, you’d have to go to a disreputable diner to get a cup of ready made coffee, and it was probably fresh during the Truman administration, and been warming since, or you’d have to get out a real percolator, grind some beans, and make your own.

They are now opening up Starbuck franchises in the Men’s Rooms of Dunkin Donuts. You can drive up to every other window in any city and get coffee thrust out at you. Men named Neil do not trod the moon any longer. Outlaw instant coffee. Bring back the death penalty for serving it. Perhaps an amendment to the Constitution is in order. They want to amend the Constitution to prohibit flag burning. I say, give an exception if the burning flag is used to heat water for joe.
I prefer Dunkin Donuts to Starbucks. I go in, I say: Give me coffee. They say: Give me money. It happens. I leave. We are both content.

Go into Starbucks. You are disoriented. The signs tell you you can get a pineapple chutney lotus blossom chive and dill brisket rhododenron flavored latte grown at a “fair trade” plantation where the inmates eat gruel twice a day, instead of once like everywhere else, I guess. I didn’t know I wanted that. I thought I wanted coffee. But if you go up to the counter, the girl with the jewelry in her nose snorts at you if you order coffee. I’m not sure I’m supposed to order coffee from her anyway. Her name tag says she’s a “barista,” and I assume that’s Spanish for lawyer, because she seems put out by my request for coffee. I look for people behind the counter with aprons and coffee urns, but they are scarcer than non-relatives at the barista’s indie band shows.

Hie thee to Dunkin Donuts. Approach the counter. Hold out five quarters. I guarantee you will walk out with a cup of joe without saying a word.

Some lady spilled coffee on her lap once, and sued McDonald’s. She won a pile in the misery lottery. She said the coffee was too hot. Now, I drink my coffee cooler than most. I prefer the european method of brewing, with water well below boiling to make the coffee, and it’s about ready to drink when it finishes its journey through the glorious beans.

McDonald’s makes American coffee. Bubbling hot. God bless’em. Some people like real hot coffee, and some people add milk, or cream, and so forth, which cools the coffee. Coffee to go is often transported to remote locations before being enjoyed, and it’s really not possible to serve it too hot, as if you prefer it cool, as I do, you can just wait a little. But if you like it hot, it’s gotta start hot.

McDonald’s doesn’t serve superheated nuclear power plant reactor coolant with a lump of lava in it. It’s not even boiling water, which means it’s less than 212 degrees. If you stab yourself with a spork is that McDonald’s fault? If you eat the fish sandwich with the wrapper on it, and get indigestion, is that McD’s fault? I say no.

There may be a circle in hell for people that sue over the mundane, if it’s not already full of lawyers. But hell in the afterlife is not good enough for her, the old lady with the hot lap. She needs punishment now. And I decree: NO MORE COFFEE FOR YOU. That’ll learn you. Your money won’t buy you happiness if it won’t buy you coffee.

When I was a wee laddie, shopping was a rough go for my mother. She had four kids, and we ate like we were in a contest throughout most of our waking hours. Pre-made food was expensive, and rare, and mom bought raw materials, food ore that needed smelting, not frozen pizzas. She’s take us on her shopping expeditions, and had to make many stops to get all she needed. I remember one to this day. The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. That’s the A & P to you young folks. The place looked vaguely Victorian, and there were flies buzzing around mounds of lettuce and so forth. But you’d buy coffee beans there, raw, and as you were checking out, there was a grinder right in the checkout aisle.

I imagine that when I’m a million years old, and I’ve forgotten who I am, and everyone I know, and every other thing that ever happened to me, and everything that happened to everyone else, I’ll still remember that glorious aroma, and be content.

Then I’ll eat the puzzle in the Nursing Home community room.

Mr Pom Pom

Hello.

As I told you, we were at Lake Winnepesaukee last weekend. The was more than just frolic, however. There was meaning too. I learned a little about hope, courtesy of Mr. Pom Pom.

Main Entry: [2]hope Function: nounDate: before 12th century1 : archaic : TRUST, RELIANCE 2 a : desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment

Bah. Now that I look at it, “hope” won’t do. Because the desire we all shared for Mr. Pom Pom had no expectation of or belief in fulfillment. It really seemed hopeless, for a time. Let’s try something else:

Main Entry: [1]faith Pronunciation: ‘fAthFunction: nounInflected Form(s): plural faiths /’fAths, sometimes ‘fAthz/ Etymology: Middle English feith, from Old French feid, foi, from Latin fides; akin to Latin fidere to trust —more at BIDE Date: 13th century1 a : allegiance to duty or a person : LOYALTY b (1) : fidelity to one’s promises (2) : sincerity of intentions 2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust

There, that’s better. Lots of people had faith in Mr. Pom Pom, but they had faith in something else too, and went through the motions of “hoping” when the “expectation of fulfillment” of their wishes seemed very remote indeed. And Mr. Pom Pom taught us all a lesson: Sometimes you do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, and goodness is its own reward and all that; and because sometimes unlikely things happen and it’s best not to take your eye off the prize just because you’re likely to be disappointed.

Now, who is Mr Pom Pom, and what did he do, exactly? The first question is easy. Mr. Pom Pom’s dad is my good friend Steve. Steve is the most productive person I’ve ever met, and more fun than Mardi Gras, and a good father to Mr Pom Pom, and his big brother Flapdoodle too.

Mr. Pom Pom used to be Mr. Po Po, and I’ll always think of him as that. Mr. Po Po is one of those silly names you call your kid, or he calls himself that seems to stick for a while. One day, Mr Po Po had gotten mildly older, and decided that the sobriquet “Mr. Po Po” wasn’t very dignified, and announced that he no longer wished to be called “Mr. Po Po.”

Call me Mr. Pom Pom.

Much more dignified. They say every man has the right to decide what he is called, but no man chooses his nickname. Mr. Pom Pom did both, which is rare indeed.

O.K., but what did he do? Mr. PoPo, um, I mean, Mr Pom Pom?

He played the drums badly on Saturday night.

You see, Steve was playing music in a band with his friends for the assembled throng of his New Hampshire neighbors on that Winnepesaukee beach Saturday night, and his sunny disposition shined right on through those songs, and entertained us all. Steve’s been playing in some permutation of that band for most of his life, but now the fires of celebrity are banked low in his furnace of music, and they perform only with a lot of begging and pleading. But he’s lost nothing off his fastball. He still “does the show.”

I first met Mr. Pom Pom back when he was still little Mr. Po Po, and I was hanging around with Steve as he was practicing for a show. Mr. Po Po, who couldn’t have been more than three, came into the empty nightclub with his brother and mother, listened to his father play for a minute, and announced: “It’s too loud in my ears,” and left. Kids are smart. Mr Po Po was no exception.

But Mr. Po Po, um, er, I mean Pom Pom, is exceptional, I guess. He’s a big old teenager now, and a year ago or so, he wrecked his car. Really wrecked it. And he wrecked himself in the process. Really wrecked himself.

When Steve told me about it, I could offer nothing, no words of encouragement, nothing I can remember saying that was any use to the guy. Mr. Pom Pom might not live. If a miracle happened and he did, he probably wouldn’t be more animated than the furniture he was placed in. What could you possibly say to help a person deal with that?

Well, we all said lots of things. Mr. Pom Pom and his family are loved and respected by all and sundry and the outpouring of concern and grief and help, such as you could give, was outstanding. Still, there’s nothing but faith, and when no one’s looking, hope too.

Prayer is a kind of hope. When you ask an unseen, unknowable thing to help you, and you hurl your little troubles into the maw of a universe of hurt, all the while knowing in your heart that prayer’s not a lever you pull and out comes the candy. You are making your peace with the idea of what might happen, with the faith that it all meshes into something worthwhile somehow, and you’re simply saying: This is not up to me. Help that boy.

So you hope, even though no one’s peddling hope anywhere near the kid. And he lays there, mute, bruised, bleeding, gone from sight; and his parents, his family, his friends- they wait.

I don’t remember when the encouragement and love you saved for his parents was transferred over to Mr Pom Pom himself; maybe it was when you saw him in a picture, still a mess, but eating ice cream in the hospital cafeteria. It was a long slog, but not so long as it might have been, and where would we go? We had hope, you see. Or Faith or something.

And so Mr Pom Pom got up on stage with his brother, in front of his beaming father and the assembled throng that knew him, and where he had been, and how he had returned, and he played a few songs, just like he’d done before any of this hope was necessary. The scar was still bright on his forehead, and he walks ever so slightly stiffly, and sometimes there’s a little hitch in his speech, but not so’s you’d notice. This too shall pass, it’s only been a year.

And they call their makeshift combo: “Those Amazing Vegetables.” Steve used that as a joke band name after he saw it on a nutrition poster in a Doctor’s office many years ago. It must sound wry and tasteless, and a little like whistling past the graveyard if you didn’t know it predated Mr Pom Pom’s accident by many years.

He was almost a vegetable. Now he’s just amazing.

My Girl

G’Day

We traveled to New Hampshire this weekend, to Lake Winnepesaukee. Or as my son calls it, Lake Hockeypesockey. It’s a long haul from Marion, Mass, but a new wonder has appeared on our horizon. In a fit of benevolence, generosity, and good sense, The Big One’s Nonni (Grandmother for all you non-Italians) gave a portable DVD player to him for his birthday present, and to celebrate his scholarship this last term. She has re-discovered fire, or a close approximation of it. Because one run through The Spongebob Movie and The Rutles, and we were already at the Lake before the kids even knew we had left home.

Alexander, Caesar, Magellan, Columbus, Newton, McCormick, Edison, Einstein- pfffft. All pikers compared to Nonni, and whoever got up one morning, drove to work, and said to the people in the cubicles outside their office: “Let’s make a DVD player you can take in the car. Have it on my desk by close of business Friday.”

The lake’s a whole different animal from the ocean. It’s really enormous, so the scale of it doesn’t suffer, but it’s a “power boat” place. Sailboat types don’t care for power boats, and vice versa, but you “get” the whole power boat thing at Winnepesaukee. Walk to the end of the path, walk to the end of the dock, step on board, and blast out to the middle of the lake. We did just that, in the middle of our first night, with only the full moon for our illumination, and were safe and content, and owned that lake from end to end, or so it seemed. There’s really no sound more pleasant on a hot summer night than shutting off the motor on a boat, and drifting across the moonlit water, the gentle windblown waves lapping the side of the skiff, and the sound from countless lakeside homes drifting out across the lakes, soft and indistinct, but recognizable as the sound of laughter and conviviality, and, well, fun.

During the day, swimming, and jet skis, and waterskiing, and the dumb fun of being dragged on an inner tube. The Wee One sits in the water to his waist, and splashes, and giggles, while the Big One practices his backstroke swimming lessons ten feet further out: Eagle, Soldier, Monkey, Eagle Soldier, Monkey… The Queen watches both easily, as the beach is filled with people just like us, and everybody is everybody else’s friend instantly, and the children drift easily into hijinks with their numerous new compatriots. No one is really a stranger, if they have children and a mortgage. The rest is details.

At night, there was a party, right there on the sand, and a band played everybody else’s favorite song, and wasted no time with anything obscure and nothing angry sounding. Music that sounds fun is rarer than it should be these days. The music industry has become a competition to see who can express deep emotional scars and trumpet dissonant lifestyles to go with the dissonant chords, wrapped in chainsaw sounds and screaming, and forgetting that life’s really not all that bad. I’ve noticed that among people who’s lives truly aren’t easy, they never listen to depressing music. Life’s too short to have misery for entertainment too. Teenagers like nasty sounding stuff, but I suspect that people with four square meals a day, a summer house, and a jet ski have little to complain about, and must enjoy snarling pop music mostly as a change of pace from their easy life. I suspect that ghetto music has become nastier as life has improved there as well. Forty years ago, it was no picnic to live in a Detroit slum, and they listened to Motown. Now rappers spit out venom, and live like pashas. Such is life.

The Motown still sounds, fine, if you’re interested. We heard some, on Saturday, and it still encapsulates our shared experience, and the pleasure of a simple melody, well sung:

I’ve got sunshine, on a cloudy day
When it’s cold outside- I’ve got the Month of May
I’d guess you’d say- What can make me feel this way
My Girl

Perhaps as you get older, and the number of funerals you attend begin to outnumber the weddings, and you’ve tried to catch the curve balls that life throws everyone, rich or poor, and dropped a few, you begin to value the person that can distill a smile, or better still, a pat on the back or a hopeful dream, and can sugar-frost that mental medicine with music and recharge your batteries.

I don’t need no money- Fortune or fame
I’ve got all the riches baby- One man can claim
I’d guess you’d say- What can make me feel this way?
My Girl

How did those men from Detroit know all about my wife, and sing about her, four months before she was born? It’s a mystery.

Sign Me Up

Hola amigos

I’m rereading a book about houses in 18th Century Williamsburg. Strangely enough, it’s called “The Eighteenth-Century Houses of Williamsburg.” by Marcus Whiffen. If it was published today, it would have a cover that said something like: