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London, Paris, Las Vegas…Johnson City?

Mar8

QuiltI’m not admitting I’ve sold out to aging, but Bryan and I had an unusually fun weekend recently doing something I never thought I’d do. For my birthday, we drove to Johnson City to attend a fundraiser for their library.

I became aware of this function the weekend before when I attended a writers’ workshop at the library. There I met Leslie, one of the library ladies when she’s not selling ice to Eskimos. We talked while I waited for my folk to arrive, and she pointed out a gorgeous hand-made quilt they were raffling, several cellophane-wrapped baskets of goodies to be auctioned, and she mentioned the spaghetti dinner, Bingo, and silent auction the  following weekend. I bought some raffle tickets, because I really wanted that quilt, and went on to my workshop.

Bryan did the driving that morning, and we arrived early enough to eat breakfast at the Hill Country Cupboard, a Johnson City must. They advertise their chicken fried steaks – Nearly 3 Dozen Sold – but their breakfasts are really excellent, not the artery-clogging fare we expected. He dropped me off at the library before backtracking to Pedernales State Park to do some hiking.

Showing back up at the appointed time, he entertained himself looking at all the things I had checked out earlier. Leslie asked if he was Janet’s husband. I’m not sure why, since the whole class consisted of women about my age, and he said yes and introduced himself. She proceeded to tell him everything we had discussed earlier, filling him in on the fundraiser, and he was paying for two tickets to the spaghetti dinner when I met up with him.

Fast forward to the next weekend. We drove to Johnson City, found the Methodist Church where they were holding the fundraiser, and were welcomed by some really nice church ladies that looked exactly like the church ladies we both remembered from our childhoods. Dinner was tasty and organized as only church ladies and drill sergeants can.

Soon it was time for Bingo. The last time I played that game we covered the numbers with pinto beans. These cards, with their little sliding number covers, were strictly uptown. Bryan won a Bingo game and received a gift certificate for a local, highly-recommended barbecue joint, so we’ll be going back to Johnson City again real soon. I won nothing, including the quilt, but that was a close one. I had a moment of excitement when they drew and announced the winner was another Janet from Austin, but not me. Bryan also put in the winning bid on a watch at the silent auction, one of the few he didn’t already own. He couldn’t have been happier if he were twins! As he says, you can never have too many watches.

While driving back on Hill Country backroads as dark as the inside of a black cow, we talked about how much fun we’d had. We visited with some really nice people, ate good food, gambled, and played Bingo, all without having to set foot out of our home range. We also didn’t have to set foot in Vegas, something I try to avoid. I may be getting older, but I wouldn’t trade our Hill Country odyssey for a chi-chi dinner in a Houston uber-restaurant, which we used to enjoy so much in our younger days. We wore comfortable clothes, sensible shoes, and garnered many a story to pass on over the next few weeks–AND–it was for a wonderful cause, helping the Johnson City Library pay on their beautiful new building.

So if you get tired of Green Pastures, the Driskill Hotel, or even Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, consider spending your time and money in Johnson City, Texas. It’s definitely a place worth writing (home) about.

Channeling George Gobel

Jan14
Lonesome George Gobel

Lonesome George Gobel

Did you ever have one of those weeks when the last thing you wanted to do was write something funny? Well, actually that was the next-to-last thing. The last was being pregnant. Possibilities and impossibilities aside, I’ve just waded through a very unfunny week and come out the other side.

Author Karleen Koen asked our Writers Retreat class to describe what our writing muse would look like if we had one. George Gobel immediately leapt into my mind and wouldn’t leave. If I had a writer’s muse, he would definitely look like Lonesome George.

For those of you only recently able to drink legally, Gobel was a television comedian during the Golden Age of that medium. His show ran from 1954 to 1960, and after that he was a regular on Hollywood Squares, a game show for quick-witted celebrities. Easy-going to the point of semi-coma, George was short, ordinary-looking, and sported a brush-cut flat-top, out of style even then. His beatific countenance concealed a dry, wicked, and thoroughly skewed sense of humor.

One of his comedic foils was his wife, the never-seen “Spooky Old Alice.” They were married over fifty years, and they died the same year. He liked to pretend he was a hen-pecked husband, but it was clear he was just in love.

Some of his famous quotes are: “If it weren’t for electricity, we’d all be watching television by candlelight.” “If you build a better mousetrap, you will catch better mice.” “I’ve never been drunk, but often I’ve been overserved.” And the classic, “Did you ever get the feeling that the world is a tuxedo and you’re a pair of brown shoes?” George Gobel taught me an appreciation for things that bring a smile to your face fifty years after you hear them the first time. He also taught me ordinary is funny. The harder you have to work to make something funny, the less funny it is.

So Lonesome George and I are out here on this deserted island together. I tell him about my most recent knee surgery, #3. I tell him #4 may be in the near future. He says, “You know, I’m as much of a fan of bi-lateral symmetry as anyone, but it seems to me if you have to have two knees, there should be some way to sync them, like electronics. You get one knee operated on, knock it against the other one, and hey-presto, they’re exactly the same.”

I say, “But then wouldn’t my surgeon be forced to drive a Mercedes with only two wheels?”

“No problem,” he counters. “He just tells his friends it’s a Segway.”

Some women might want to be marooned on a desert island with Hugh Grant or Daniel Craig. I’ll take Lonesome George every time. He’s a-Musing.

 

High Resolutions

Dec29

Christmas is over and it’s time for me to deal with my annual will power outage. We still have to get through New Year’s, but except for blackeyed peas, it’s a non-fattening holiday. It’s no wonder most of my resolutions for the new year pertain to eating, or rather not eating, and losing weight accrued between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I have learned, however, to be realistic in making these resolutions, lest I stack up a pile of failures before the year even gets off the ground. Take it slow, take it easy, open one eye, a tentative toe in the water. Small victories are still posted in the win column. Here is my annual list of resolutions I think I can handle.

I will…

  1. …not buy bigger clothes, especially underwear. Being uncomfortable is great motivation to lose weight.
  2. …not wear baggy clothes, even if the tight ones make me look like the Michelin Man’s girlfriend.
  3. …reacquaint myself with the wonders of kale. Temporarily banished from my kitchen for the holidays, Big K  is back in town.
  4. …show people at least as much patience as I show my dogs.
  5. …call at least one friend per week to catch up, and not just monitor their lives voyeuristically on FaceBook.
  6. …dust something every day.
  7. …work to become a better writer by writing more and better.
  8. …remember to take my reusable bags into the grocery store with me every time.
  9. …check the care label in clothes before I buy them, and put back anything “dry clean only” or “hand wash, dry flat.”
  10. …stop rationalizing why I need to buy a new outfit, eat a doughnut, or watch one more episode of an NCIS marathon.

Some people may think I’ve lowered the bar a bit too much, but I say, “Baby steps, people!” If these resolutions work out this year, I’ll consider upping the ante next year, and the next, and the next. With any luck at all, I’ll pass on before I have to  do anything too strenuous, like climbing Mt. Everest or walking the entire Houston Galleria.

Feel free to use my resolutions or come up with your own. Be realistic, circumspect, and flexible. And by all means, let me know if you come up with some I can use next year.

Time Machine Tune-Up

Oct29

On September 23, I wrote about plans to attend my 45th high school reunion. I had doubts I’d made the right decision, but my husband and I went this past weekend. I’ll be stopping by Sonic tonight for an order of crow with a side of fries.

Bryan and I decided to play tourist in San Antonio, my home until 1980. We checked into the Country Inn, a very nice mo/ho/tel a stone’s throw from the site of Saturday’s soiree. Then we went for dinner at Adelante, a surprisingly Austinesque, healthy(er) Tex-Mex restaurant near my old high school. Their lard-free policy helps lighten the cuisine, and the menu offers vegetarian and vegan delights, as well as real-deal-just-lighter favorites.  After vegetarian enchiladas and tamales, we went back to the hotel feeling self-righteous and light on our feet.

I grew up in San Antonio, but for once I was grateful for the GPS’s whiney instructions. It’s been a long time since I could navigate the city on autopilot. We headed downtown, bound for El Mercado to shop Mexico without going there. It took some effort to figure out where to park, but after a few false starts we found a place. Enjoying one of  San Antonio’s annual Five Days of Perfect Weather, we walked the couple of blocks to the market. We shopped for treasures unfindable just 90 miles to the north and ate lunch at Mi Tierra. Undoing all the benefits of the previous night’s supper, we pigged out on the delicious-but-deadly version of Tex-Mex.

Fast forward a few hours, after a little rest and a lot of primping, and it was time for my reunion. Checking in and getting a nametag with my full name, Janet Wheeler Kilgore, complete with a black-and-white senior photo of a girl with pretty eyes and an improbable bubble of very dark hair, I was unsure of myself, making mental notes of all the exits. Taking a deep breath, I stepped into a lovely room full of old people. Not that I expected to see the place full of teenagers, but when time-travelling into your past, shouldn’t people at least look familiar? Obviously, my time machine needs a tune-up. The nametags helped tremendously, but even with glasses, by the time I got close enough to read them, I felt obligated to say something, like, “Nice tie!” or “You really need to get that heart murmur looked at!”

People seemed genuinely glad to see me, and I really enjoyed seeing them and catching up. I’d thought of most of them over the years, wondering what became of them. Somewhere between our teens and dotage, I guess we’ve all learned a thing or two. I spent the evening saying, “Hi, I’m Janet Wheeler,” a sentence I hadn’t uttered since my first marriage and name-change in 1971. Questions from our younger days (“Are you going to Prom?” “Is the punch spiked?”) were replaced by, “Do you have grandchildren?” and, of course, “Do you know where the restrooms are?”

I stopped in my tracks at the list of 45 classmates who have passed on. That was definitely the epiphany of the evening for me. My husband was terrific, mingling with ease in a room full of total strangers. He said he enjoyed hearing stories about a time in my life he hadn’t shared, and recalling names and faces was all on me, another plus.

So, I was wrong about my reunion. My memories of high school now have a different quality—lighter, softer, sweeter. I’m so glad I went, and assuming the Mayans were wrong, I’m even looking forward to the next one—the 50th. Groan.

Grammar Crimes and Misdemeanors

Oct21

All right, class. It’s time to rant against grammar atrocities. I may only write about them once a year or so, but anyone who spends much time with me hears about them frequently. This could account for my Native American name, “Sits Alone Grumbling.”

Several years ago I published a monthly newsletter, “Janet Grammarseed’s Advice to the Wordlorn,” grammar wisdom directed at middle schoolers. If I started it up again, the target audience would be much larger. Just as Booth Tarkington’s classic, Seventeen, today would be retitled Eleven, Maybe Twelve, my little newsletter would be renamed, “Watch Your Damn Language!”

Whereas Janet Grammarseed skipped across the Heartland, gently correcting grammar and spreading good syntax wherever she went, today’s approach would require a much tougher avatar. Enter the Gramminator, roughing up anyone who fails to reach agreement between subjects and verbs, amputating dangling participles, and kicking ands and buts.

When our children were young, if they made a grammar mistake, say, at the dinner table, my husband and I would grab our throats, pretend to choke, fall on the floor, and feign unconsciousness. Perhaps that was a bit extreme, but our son sends grammatically correct, perfectly punctuated texts. Our daughter is poised for a career in journalism—the last bastion of complete sentences.

I admit I’ve mellowed. I’ve given up trying to explain the subjunctive (If I were, if it were…) When confronted with most grammar atrocities, I close my eyes and peacefully chant, Om-m-m-m. Now I focus on only one grammarcide. I’ve drawn a line in the sand of my Zen garden regarding that particular pockmark on the face of my Mother Tongue, and  I refuse to budge.

I am dedicated to bringing The Word about the past tense of sneak…one small step for grammar, one giant leap for grammarkind. The faux pas that has me digging in my heels is so legitimized by use, it actually appears in some dictionaries, obviously those toadying to teenagers and the news media.

The past tense of sneak is sneaked—not snuck.

Snuck is the sound one makes when trying to rid oneself of nasal congestion. It is the result of phlegm, not stealth. Be honest. Does snuck sound like the language of Shakespeare and Churchill? I think not.

I’m not asking for much. Please, teach your children and yourselves along with them: a word that sounds like a goose with post nasal drip has no place in the Land of the Well-spoken and the Home of the Grammatically Correct.

If I could just eradicate that one atrocity, the use of snuck, I might earn a mention in Wikipedia as the Eradicator of Snuck. Move over Jonas Salk. Perhaps then I could hang up my grammar spurs and live out my Golden Years in peace.

Or not.

Moon, June, Tune

Sep8

I’ve been writing a long time. I used to type up original scripts for “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” on my portable Royal typewriter. There are a number of giveaways in the previous sentence showing how long ago that was. Over the intervening years, I’ve written business letters, software user documentation, newspaper and magazine articles, short stories, and even a paean to Benbrook, Texas, that came close to qualifying as fiction. The one genre I’ve studiously avoided is poetry.

I am not a poet. (Picture Richard Nixon striking his pose before boarding the Marine One helicopter to oblivion.) It’s true. Whenever I’ve tried, forced by optimistic English teachers who until they ran into me thought there was a poet in everyone, I failed dismally. No Robert Frost nor Paul Simon am I, nor even the guy who composed the roadside Burma Shave ditties . My poetry most closely resembles limericks and the graffiti in the ladies’ restroom at the House of Pizza in Ft. Worth.

I always had a hard time understanding and interpreting poetry, too. It never said to me what it was supposed to say. A poem, supposedly a statement on the condition of humankind, to me was a commentary on fishing out of season in Bexar County. I dreaded each year when my teacher’s fancy turned to poetry. The poetry test always screwed up my average.

Therefore, it was with resignation I approached last week’s meeting of the San Gabriel Writers League. Our speaker, a poet. I had to be there to take the minutes, so I couldn’t plead a 24-hour case of bubonic plague. I went, determined to make the most of it and just wait for the bell to ring—er, I mean, wait for the meeting to be over.

Instead, I was blown away by Thom Woodruff, aka Spirit Thom, aka Thom World Poet, a somewhat less-than-sane Aussie who proceeded to tear down all my preconceptions about poetry and replace them with a new admiration for those who can put words together in that special way. Before I could hide behind my dignity, I was mimicking his gestures and repeating after him like a Moonie at a revival. It was fun, and more than that, I understood most of his poetry. It is cogent, clever, thought-provoking, and liberating.

Thom performs his poetry. In another time, he would be the storyteller, relating tales worth remembering by firelight, holding his audience in the palm of his hand. The lucky attendees at our meeting were just as rapt, sitting with eyes wide, mouths slightly agape, laughing, gasping, and applauding.  No wonder he’s also known as Thom the Circus.

This wasn’t exactly my first literary rodeo. Yet I was blown away, totally, by this one man’s poetry. If you get a chance to see and hear him, drop everything, put the hamburger meat back in the fridge, and get there as fast as your little feet will go. He’s a must-see, can’t-miss fandango.

http://thomworldpoet.blogspot.com/

 

 

Granny Vigilante

Aug27

As men age, they tend to mellow out, becoming less aggressive. As muscles turn to mush, anger turns to grouch, until they rarely get “all het up” about much of anything. Women, on the other hand, tend to become more aggressive, drawn to violent sports and true crime shows, especially if they contain an element of comeuppance.

If I looked at the demographics for smack-down wrestling and the Murder Channel, my husband’s generic name for the cable channels I often watch, I’d find them chock-full of peri- and post-menopausal women. This is no new phenomenon.

My grandmother and I used to watch wrestling, “live from the Wrestlethon in San Antonio, Texas,” rooting for her favorites and booing the villain of the week. She really got off on the violence. Of course there was little if any real damage done to the wrestlers, and she knew it was all for show. I was only in kindergarten, and we hadn’t studied psychology yet, or I would have pondered her deep-seated anger and explored what caused it. Now I kind of understand.

I only watch true crime shows in which the miscreant is caught and punished. I can’t watch “America’s Most Wanted” for a couple of reasons.  First, I’m left very unsatisfied knowing the criminal is still out there somewhere having fun. Second, everyone I see at the grocery store reminds me of someone featured on the show.

As men chill out, women develop a taste for payback. If you want to hunt down a deadbeat dad, a bank robber, or a war criminal, put an old lady on the trail. Being a bounty hunter, vigilante, or crime-fighting superhero weren’t career choices I remember having when I was young. As a matter of fact, my mother believed there were only two proper occupations for a woman: being a teacher or a nurse. She vetoed nursing for me before I even considered it, because I would come in contact with naked people. She was convinced that if a woman worked at it, she could go her whole life without ever seeing a naked person. I still wonder about that.

Sometimes I think I should start a second (or third or tenth) career as an outside-the-box crime fighter. I like the idea of tracking down despicables, giving them a fair trial followed by a first-class hanging. I can see making “Granny Vigilante” a valid occupation, worthy of its own number for the IRS 1099 form’s occupation box.

First I’d go after the Nazis still living in South America. They aren’t getting any younger, and I think I could catch them in a fair chase. Then I’d go after terrorists and traitors and make them confess. I’d have no need for waterboarding; I’d just schedule a colonoscopy and they’d sing. Finally, I’d hunt down the sadist that brought back pointy-toed shoes. The possibilities are endless.

So move over “CSI” and “NCIS”, and even “Law and Order,” in all its incarnations. There’s a new sheriff in town: Mad Maxine, Granny Vigilante.