Mandu: Let's make some dumplings!

 In the last 12 years, I could not count how many thousands of dumplings I have made. These are mostly my take on the typical Chinese dumpling. The ones I usually make are famous for, homemade wrappers, home-ground pork butt, an incredible amount of bok choy, Napa cabbage, spinach, and scallion. Seasoned in fresh ginger, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and soy sauce. I also make a homemade dipping sauce that is so many things at once.

I am so down with that method that I have felt like the new kid in those times that I decided to try dumplings a different way. In the process, I learned that even a leftover meal, such as the japchae can be spooned into wrappers, sealed, fried to a crispy bottom, and then steamed to finish. You won't believe how awesome this can be.  The wrapper is that blanket of love that can take something you make into a whole new place.

Mandu is a Korean dumpling. These are more freestyle.  They can consist of many or even anything vegetable or meat-wise. This means one thing to me, refrigerator cleanout time. During lunchtime, I got out the grinder attachment for the KitchenAid and ground up the pork. At dinner time, everything I could find got pulled out: Napa cabbage, onion, scallion, enoki mushrooms, carrot, tofu, spinach, zucchini, and seasonings. 

I did not have time to do homemade wrappers, so I tried three different things. First egg roll wrappers, but those were damaged, wonton wrappers, but those were too tedious for this sport utility style filling, and finally a package of dumpling wrappers that I found at my local Asian market a couple months ago. Then I tried 3 different methods of cooking them.

For me, I would have to say that making Mandu is a wonderful reminder that the sky is the limit. I used 3 different wrappers and 3 different cooking methods, (I had to chisel batch # 2 off of the wok) and I utilized whatever I had in the fridge for the filling. As I enjoyed my bowl of these steamed dumplings with their crispy caramelized bottoms, I remembered the badge of honor and creativity of the Korean people who carried their families through war and famine. Not only did they feed their families, but they did it with a brand of eloquence that is impossible not to be moved by.

The practicality of it all is the best. It shouts out, "I will not surrender to ordering overpriced mediocre takeout tonight! I will not suffer the buyer's remorse that now comes with ordering out food these days." In the wake of these dark days where the ad mongers' propaganda rides high in the collective psyche, we all still have a choice. Let's stop going to assembly line "elevated fast food" telling ourselves that it was good, and get into our own kitchens and make some dumplings!

Japchae happens

 Sometimes a course change can happen on a dime. A reality other than the one we planned on seemingly hangs from a fine thread. The storm that brought it upon us leads us to determine that the thread is made of the strongest of materials. It becomes what we are made of.

Today's star is the amazing Emily Kim, born Kim Kwang-sook, but known affectionately around the world as Maangchi. Described by the New York Times as YouTube's Korean Julia Child, she owns stock in a sizable piece of my Korean culinary education.

Close to a decade after this teacher/family counselor migrated to North America, she took up gaming for a post-divorce pastime. Her avatar, a small girl who fought crime with a large hammer was named Maangchi, which is Korean for hammer. In 2007 she started making videos teaching how to make authentic Korean food and for the lack of a channel name, Maangchi was born.

Maangchi is what I would like to call unsinkable and in that way, the name Hammer seems just right. She sports a quirky sense of humor and when it comes to Korean food, she has universal respect. I am sure if you were to ask her today if she ever thought that this is where she would end up she would tell you, no way.

I have had many junctions like this in my life.  In fact, many people were born due to what I did in a one-hour block on a Saturday night 33 years ago. Such a singular thing brings about incredible change and possibilities. 

Monday night's Japchae, sweet potato starch noodles with vegetables and meat is like that. The noodles have a unique clear look to them that when cooked by themselves in a sauté pan, can look a bit questionable, but they are a wild card. The possibilities they bring to a dish are endless. 

There is a dish called Japchae Hotteok which is everything in this recipe except the meat, but it is then fully wrapped in a ball of homemade dough and deep fried into a savory donut and dipped in blissful sweet, spicy, and/or savory sauces. Yeah, possibilities man, that is what I am talking about.

Sweet potato starch noodles change everything for the better, who knows what they will end up in next?

Jayuk Dubap across time

 I have made a lot of Kimchi over the last decade. Often over five pounds at a time, like a person with a healthy Korean diet would. But I have not made it a regular part of my diet and I have to say, I do not know why. The brunch (sorry Tony Bourdain- he hated that word and the idea of it) that I made earlier had such great promise of what was to come.  It was time to decide what was for dinner.

I had an 8-pound pork shoulder downstairs in the fridge. So I went for a went for a pork recipe in Robin's comic book. Jayuk Dubap (Spicy pork over rice).  So this took care of 1 pound of the pork. Talk about needing to get creative this week!

It is like this in the food problem-solving department. It can be so easy, or it can be inexpensive. Rarely is it both, unless I can invest just a little bit more time. For a 46-mile round trip drive, I can buy thinly sliced pork belly, ready to use, that cost 12 times more than my other option. 

Instead, I utilize an 8-pound brick of pork that when frozen could be launched by an ancient catapult and would put a hole through the side of a wooden ship back in the day. Needless to say, there is some finesse needed before we can start cooking.

I don't mind knife work, there is something therapeutic about it. I need accessories though. I need to be in the zone. I touch up the edge of the knife, don my wife-canceling (Donna's term for them) headphones, and pick what album will carry me through to the other side of Mise en place. Squeeze just finished Another Nail in My Heart when the mise was done. 

As I made this pretty spicy meal, I thought about Robin. I thought about the aroma of 3 meals all wafting through her childhood home in Seoul South Korea as she slept in her growing years. I thought about the tastes of her meals as she moved through her days. That direct connection she had with all the work her mom put into her daily sustenance and yet an absolute line of division in which she was not involved in making it, I suddenly thought, I know what this is like.

In 1988, I started painting houses inside and out for a local landlord. As the months passed, the need for me to do more than painting became evident. I had a connection to propane gas because as a kid we moved a lot, we always lived in old houses that had natural gas space heaters and gas-and-gas stoves. It became 2nd nature to understand their inner workings.

When a two-man team that had been laying floors for my employer got done, I stepped up. My father had professionally laid carpet and linoleum back in the mid-70s. Other than seeing him and his partner install my grandfather's wall-to-wall, I was not there to be taught by him. But there is something to this parental connection that I think is the fortitude to stay the course as you learn a task. I started installing floors and I did it in one house after the other. All along, the experience of my father working as a custom support to my own learning. It was as if he was next to me, guiding me.

 I have now seen my own sons do this and it is always something that they were busy doing something else when I could have been teaching them. Robin states, "I never developed an interest in cooking because it seemed like something I would never be able to do. Besides, I had other things on my mind, like reading and drawing comics." What is beautiful is that Robin was close enough to her mom and her food, that years later it made an impression. Moving to a place where food choices were mediocre and a few simple recipes from her mom, she forged ahead with that support system, just as I had in the late 80s. 

Robin invented a cartoon character named Dengki. Dengki would be the cooking teacher, and Robin the illustrator, it was a perfect match. So tonight, thanks to Dengki, my household enjoys this beautiful Jayuk Dubap, Spicy Pork over Rice. Of course, my cold crunchy kimchi on the side, oh man!

The storm is coming - I will understand it

 I have seen it in my father, late at night on a mission to cook things in ways that we or others may never have thought of before. I have seen it in my sons, the call to create something they can see and taste in their minds that they just have to plate into materialization. I am the bridge of this and man, let me tell you it is really something! I cannot ignore it.

I have often described my desire to cook and create like Eric Clapton's "Have You Ever Loved a Woman". Since 1999, food has been my Patti Boyd. She was the former wife of George Harrison and Eric Clapton, the woman who served as the powerful inspiration for songs like Clapton's "Layla", and "Something" by the Beatles and many more by Eric and George respectively.

I don't pretend to know much about Patti's life, other than her presence seemed to have a runaway train effect on the people mesmerized with her. Whether this was due to qualities within those persons or not, I do not know. Nonetheless, a powerful effect took place.

For me, it is like one lone raindrop falls from the sky, and I can hear it from a thousand miles away. I get up and look up at the sky. I can feel it in the air, I smell it coming in like a distant storm. Something awaits and even now, I am not sure what it will be. I know more at this point what it will not be and that is a powerful thing. Before I know it, it is pouring.

It's not just what happens now. I know that we can learn to cook almost involuntarily. We can move in harmony with cooking synching our lives with the food and having it mean something. Instead of letting it be a chore and a utility function, it can flow with ease and without effort. It can just be.

So inside my head, I am screaming, but I am not making a sound. I know I have something here, but I am still trying to create words that can describe it. 

It is February.  For the last two Februarys, I have done something called taco week. They were a lot of fun, but I am not feeling it this year. Besides, I can do taco week any month of the year that I choose, right? I do have this desire to pull off some sort of thematic event that will edify how food and life can flow together, reducing stress, not creating it.

This is where we lock the door of the barroom, turn and face the advertisers, the propagandists, and the naysayers and tell them they are about to get their butts handed to them. The slaying of people's self-esteem and confidence ends today. Unpack your knives, now.

Eighteen hours passed since I felt the drop of rain and I thought, Korean food is a flow. I needed a friend to spell it out to me though. I found Robin Ha in my bookshelf with her Cook Korean A Comic Book with Recipes cookbook on the shelf.  I have had this wonderful book for years.

Robin told how her Mom was so busy that she would produce breakfast, lunch, and dinner before Robin even got up for school as a child. As a result, she never learned to cook until she was staying with a family in Italy and the mom there showed her that anyone can cook. Robin developed a taste for international cuisine while attending college in Manhattan and then missed it after moving away. She set her focus on cooking Korean food much to the delight of her friends. When they asked her how to make this food, she could not simply do that. Koreans do not measure things and Robin was a cartoonist. So after deciphering measurements in her recipes, she created a wonderful comic book that allowed her to share her food.

It had been some time since I took this book off the shelf.  When going over the four pages of Korean pantry items I was pleased to realize, I have 95% of everything here in my pantry.  She also pointed out that Koreans eat rice and kimchi at all 3 meals and they eat whatever kind of meal they want at any time of day. There it was.

I was up and rinsing rice to put into the rice cooker (thank you Linda M.) Rice has been second nature. It never matters how much you choose to make, it cannot get messed up as long as you do the finger trick, which is placing your index finger on top of the rice, then filling the water until it reaches the first joint on your finger. Perfect every time.

I made kimchi on January 2nd and it is in this perfect place right now. Okay, so there are the two staples of a day in Korea.  Naturally, protein was next. I wanted some fast but creative.  I have studied people teaching how to remove salt and nitrates from Spam. Spam is a staple in Korea, I keep some on hand. 

During the Korean War (1950-1953) Korean families were struggling to feed their families. American soldiers, touting boxes of C-Rations (canned food served as military meals) contained what we know as Spam today. Resourceful Korean mothers and grandmothers gratefully accepted all the GIs were willing to give them. Out of this, traditional Korean recipes were created, most famously, Army Base Stew.

I slowly simmered the spam in a skillet full of water adding mirin and soy sauce towards the end. Then just before the rice was done, I pan-seared the spam and seasoned it with dark soy, rice wine vinegar. If I had not known this was spam, I would not have been able to tell. It was so wonderful. 

During this time, I did up a cold spicy celery bowl. Four very nice components of a simple and delicious brunch were born. This is not hard, but it can make your day. Shouldn't this be what food is about?

It was then I knew, the thematic mission was accepted. All meals were going to be Korean this week. As I looked forward, why couldn't next week's be from Vietnam and the week after Japan? In doing so, I wish to adapt their intelligent and holistic view of food to my existence.

My desire is to take the "what are we going to make for dinner" attitude and punch it in the face, not with aggression, but with diverse creativity.

Stay tuned. Dinner is coming. 

Out of focus

 Mel Robbins has been known to say that if others could hear how we talk to ourselves in our heads, we would be institutionalized. To try to argue that statement would be an act of deception. No matter our age we seem to always virtually beat ourselves over the head with the stick known best as 20/20 hindsight.

Photo by Kenrick Mills on Unsplash

We can be slow to learn. It is the struggle that earns wisdom. I got to peer through the cloudy window into the past the other day and was very surprised at what I found. My 19-year-old self, directionless and inexperienced was struggling during a very uncomfortable and difficult time in my life. As this happened, a good friend looked across the cavern separating us and saw order and intention.

As I looked back over to him, he seemed confident and focused. I learned that he also felt directionless and without purpose. Driven by our individual self-doubt and our perceptions of each other, we launched ourselves into our lives, my friend choosing structure and me choosing something reminiscent of a good old-fashioned English fox hunt, of course, me being the fox.

If two friends could misread the status of a life, its works, and intent (not sure I am saying that of self or the other) then what does this mean when conflict has risen between two powerful opposing leaders? 

In the context of friends, what do we trust? Our perception of a friend? Our perception of the person in the mirror? The most amazing part of all of this is that it only took 40 years to find out.

1985: Chapter 2 - No one said it would be easy

 Winter in South Texas is a breed of its own. The island contracted down to its residents and stayed there for quite a while. There was the "Winter Texan"- the nice term for "snowbird". These were retired folks from Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma who would come to the island to winter in a warmer climate. 

Friday night trips to the Gaff, a favorite bar of ours would be met by the same faces week after week. It was always the same, Dad would walk up to the jukebox and play BB King's The Thrill is Gone and then I would play Betty-Lou's getting out tonight.  A game of darts would begin and it was home.

The Sunday Morning Gentleman's Club was going strong.  We started this Sunday 10:00 AM event because drinking on the beach before noon on Sunday was illegal. The club was a 3-hour series of dart games played at our house.  The core members were Dad, Steve, Glenn, and I. These Sunday mornings go down in the history book of my life as some of the best days I have ever lived.  If you were to grant me a place in the past to spend a day in (other than with my kids being little again) I would ask to be deposited into Avenue J, 1985 the Sunday Morning Gentlemen's' Club without question.

We were getting ready for the visit of Brooke and my Grandmother the next month, so we were trying to make our house a little less like a 1950s mobile home that two guys lived in. This meant trying to do a better job sweeping and keeping up with the dishes.  The dishes were an important thing to keep up with too because if Jeri and his family ever stopped in, and Jeri's stepson Robert was grounded, Jeri would very casually say, "Robert, do Joe's dishes."  Dad would protest, but Jeri always won, so we tried to not have a sink full of dishes if they popped in.  It was 1985, and no one really ever knew if anyone was coming.  Suddenly, there would be people in the front yard walking toward the front door.

Very, and I mean VERY few of us on the island had telephones. They were just not seen as necessary, despite phones being invented 107 years earlier. We found ways to communicate and overall, life was very spontaneous.  So, our preparation for the visit was moving along nicely and in the end, we pretty much had achieved the look and feel of a 1950s mobile home that two guys lived in.

Dad and I had done a great deal of relationship-building over the months of 1984 and we were in a good place.  I needed to fill him in on one more important thing. I have no right to discuss that in type here, but let me say, it was a big deal to sit him down and to make him aware of everything that he had missed since moving to Texas 5 years ago. 

There are some words you can say to someone, that change their entire life. When he heard his words that night, I can only say that he did it with such eloquence. All of the emotion that made him so unique and the power that broke every barrier imaginable suddenly had to be doused with concern for others. This was one of the most painful things I have ever witnessed in my life. I hated myself for not informing him back in June of this news. I hated myself for telling him tonight. I hated myself for showing him why he could not act on his emotional response. I loved him enough to do what had to be done, to respect him enough to honor him with truth. I think he saw it that way too.

Five days a week, my faithful 72 Dodge and I would ride out 18-mile road (Park Road 53) down to South Padre Island, across the causeway into Flour Bluff, Jeri would hop into the car and out SPID (South Padre Island Drive) across the great seaside city of Corpus Christi.  As we were driving out of town heading northwest on I-37, the flames shot up into the sky from the gas crackers that expelled waste gases from the refining process. That great city of steel and explosives that we worked at every day like ants with thousands of others. A benign but acidic mist descended over us all as we worked to turn this oily machine into an oily monster.

Working as an instrument fitter helper was really not bad, but when you are 19 and this is your first construction job it can feel that way. Anyone who has worked any sort of construction job knows what that initiation is like. I fell into the mid-range level of the knowledge hazing graph. I spent my days hanging with people twice my age so I had the benefit of osmotic wisdom and knowledge I suppose. Informational tampering was rampant. For example, when Benny, another fitter, took measurements for a long vertical run of tubing tray that we would need to fabricate up a concrete column, he ordered his helper, Beto to run to the tool trailer to get us some concrete welding rods so we could fasten the steel tray to the concrete. I suspected that much of the morning foot traffic was these poor laborers trekking across the refinery asking for things that did not exist and even worse, being given random items from the tool trailer guy that made no sense, except to amuse the fitter who sent the helper in the first place.

Working with Jeri was an initiation in itself. He challenged me. He did not make things easy on me, he just wanted me to master whatever it was I was doing. I think at 19 I expected him to give me a pass on some things because of his long friendship with my Dad that went all the way back to high school, but that was not Jeri. I did not really understand it back then, and I always found myself either on the defensive side or just saying things to shock him into realizing that I was not your run-of-the-mill 19-year-old. If I could draw disappointment from him, I somehow felt that I was getting even with him for his rigidity.

His technique was working on me though. At first, it did not seem to be. Like a hang glider dropping off a platform and plummeting into a valley, things did not look good. My history was a teenager sitting in my room, listening to music, and working part-time jobs. Real life and construction work needed determination, and that took effort. At first, I did not know how to achieve it, yet at the same time, I knew that the physical world around me was not made simply by showing up and being comfortable. I knew that pain was involved, and when the pain increased anger was needed. The effort required channeling all the frustrations of not knowing how to do something into anger that had a constructive goal. When I did that remarkable things began to take place. That hang glider took lift and I noticed that I could do anything I wanted, and even more importantly, needed to do. The rides across Corpus Christi every day with Jeri talking with me, his refusal to give me preferential treatment was more valuable to me than I would know for a long time.

I still thought about going to Connecticut, but I was not saving for it. Right now, I just wanted to level off. Soon. Soon I would figure out how to put something aside for that and it would fall into place. I was told about the turn-arounds. These were periods of the last weeks of the construction of a refinery before everything went live, all instruments pipes, and tubing were tested, remediated, and re-tested. 12 hours on 12 hours off, often 13 days in a row. I knew that is when I would be able to put something aside.

Driving out to the refinery every day, I began to notice a slight vibration, a little extra clunk in the driveline of the Dodge. I had put a rear universal joint in last summer and now, it appeared the front one was worn.  I was going to buy one when another fitter at the refinery said he had a whole driveshaft with a new joint in it and he would sell it to me for fifteen dollars. I bought the driveshaft and placed it in the trunk. I told myself that I would take care of this soon.

1985: Chapter One - I'm Ready

 After spending December 31st with MTV and myself, 1985 was here. I did not have any plans at this point.  I did know a couple of things though, Brooke and Grandma were flying down for a visit next month, which is why we moved to a bigger place back in September.  I also knew that somehow, I needed to get a job.

At this point in my life, my resume was nearly none existent. I could do dishes, mop floors, clean bathrooms, mount and balance tires of all kinds, and do a little painting. Jeri and the instrument fitting job seemed to be my best opportunity. I had never worked in an oil refinery, but I was willing to learn anything. Jeri was certain that after the holidays had passed, there would be work for us.  I needed that.  I did not like the feeling of being a burden on my Dad, although he did not complain. I could feel it though.

The month began quietly.  I would do things around the house, mostly playing guitar and missing my friends. Recently, I received a letter from my best friend Gary in Connecticut telling me that he had joined the Navy. He explained that he found that the military does everything backward and that he has done things backward all of his life.

Gary and I were different from almost everyone we knew. Our friendship even started uniquely. We always liked to think that we were introduced by John Lennon. On a warm early summer night in 1982, he was blasting tunes from the Beatle's Rubber Soul album. We started talking and before the night was over we were both sitting on the swings in the playground singing Run For Your Life over and over again.  It was nice to find someone who spoke the language. Gary, like me, was a serious non-conformist. 

But here he was, telling me that he was doing something that I only could see as an act of conformity. I felt like he had been compromised by the enemy!  He needed to be rescued! I needed to do something to save him. I decided I needed to return to Connecticut and stop this madness! I could return things to normal!

What, like high school? My naivety at the time knew no limits. Gary made a career decision and instead of backing him up like a best friend does, I sent him a letter that basically said: "YOU DID WHAT???" Back then my mind could not map out the course I decided to take and identify the challenges and realities of the decision. Looking back, there was no thought about how I could "rescue" my friend. Would I just walk into a Navy recruiter's office and tell them that he was not thinking clearly and we were not the military type?  My gosh! What would John Lennon even say?

Of course, I would never "rescue" Gary from the big bad Navy, but this inadvertently did one thing for me that I needed.  I was a person with no guidance system.  I spent all 4 years of high school with only one goal, to remove myself from what I felt was the bombed-out industrial wasteland of Waterbury Connecticut. My self-assigned mission to rescue Gary gave me a purpose for the first 10 weeks of 1985 and made me work towards it.

During the 2nd week of January, Jeri stopped in from Flour Bluff to let me know that we got hired at the refinery, and not a moment too soon, I was broke.  The following Sunday, I went to Jeri's to spend the night in the truck camper that was sitting in his yard with the other 20 vehicles that were always for sale. To save on gas, the first week, I would just stay at Jeri's and cut about 25 miles one way off the trip saving 50 a day.

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

I liked Jeri and his wife. They were always great with me. Staying in the little camper made me a little homesick. I had been living in our house for over 3 months now pretty much staying there day after day, hanging out with Dad after he returned home from work and the weekends. Days we spent on the edge of the Corpus Christi bay, wind whipping off the water. Being an instrument fitter's helper was a humbling experience. Being a laborer on any construction job is the closest thing to indentured servitude there is. People do not treat you nicely and that is how you learn fast.

The refinery was expanding. We were responsible for fabricating the steel trays, brackets, and holders that instruments, tubing, and pipe would run throughout the whole place and up as high as 250 feet off the ground. Everything was new and I had no experience or history to draw from. As I climbed up ice-cold ladders over a hundred feet off the ground, I told myself, I was doing this so that I could save money to return to Connecticut. Somehow this would allow me to rescue Gary, months after he actually leaves and starts his career with the Navy.

New job, everything was unfamiliar, and feeling like I was more out on a limb than ever before, the first four days passed like a month of days. I was perpetually cold, weighed down in tools, a safety harness, and a hard hat. Nothing felt familiar. There was no comfort zone. Well, except for Odette's breakfast tacos, that we would bring with us, setting the foil-wrapped deliciousness on a hot pipe to warm, that was pure heaven.

On Friday, towards the end of the day, Jeri and I broke away from our normal area of operation and went to the more functioning side of the refinery out back. There was a job office trailer belonging to a company he once worked for. He introduced me to the guys in there. By the conversation that took place, I learned that I owed my newfound employment to these guys.  They had put in a stellar recommendation for Jeri and his helper (me) and here we were.

Being able to sit inside a trailer with real heat was nice, and it gave me the feeling, that maybe I would be able to do this after all.  For the last four days, I wanted to get in my car and drive home.  I could not do that to Jeri and I could not do that to Gary. There was a crockpot on the counter with some slow-cooked beans. Jeri's friends offered them to us in small 8-ounce Styrofoam cups. They did not have spoons, but tipping those hot homemade beans into my mouth warmed me in so many ways.  I made it through my first week. In fact, this was my first real job since high school ended. Drinking beer and throwing darts all day with the occasional tire repair last summer at A Auto Supply evidently did not count as a real job.

The day ended, and I was grateful to bring Jeri back to Flour Bluff and head back to the island for the first time in a week. It felt like it had been weeks. 

It was a cold January Friday night. When I opened the door to the trailer, the smell of a turkey stuffing bake hit me. Baking things in Port A was instrumental in warming a home in the winter. Our friend Steve was at the house that Friday night playing darts, and Glenn was there too. Steve asked me in his trademark Texas rasp with formality, "So what have you learned working as an instrument fitter's helper this week?" I told him I learned how to eat hot baked beans from a Styrofoam cup without a spoon. That caught Dad's attention. He asked me to repeat that. I told him. He giggled with pride. This was something he would have said. He loved irreverence. He showed such an amazing magnetism to that one simple answer that this remains one of the most memorable nights of our relationship. 

Dad was playing Foreigners' "I Want To Know What Love Is". It was brand new. He missed me. I could tell. It felt good to be home. We were excited too because we knew that in a couple of weeks, Brooke and Grandma were flying down for a week visit. This was a moment in time I could feel forever.

As we sipped beers throwing darts that night, I knew inside, I could do this.  This could be my life.  I never told anyone else about the Connecticut plan except for that initial ranting letter to Gary. Thankfully, he tolerated my insanity. I was here, in Port Aransas with my people. I was a contributing member of the human race and it felt good. It was what I had been lacking.  Another Monday morning was coming, and I was ready.

Boomtown falls

 It is a revelation to me when I find recreation. It has been eluding me, fading in the months and years of the ride I have been on.  Somewhere along the road in my life, I saw every moment as a chance to prepare for something. Something was coming, and the only way to gain mastery over it was to know, consolidate, plan, and let the art of deception, create a modified perception of the opposer's advantage. Making it appear as if they had the upper hand during the attack allowed them to not only lose but to fall hard. This is the composition I have worked on for decades. Unseen advantages, projecting fabricated weaknesses. I dare say I took pleasure in it.

Poverty raised me to see the opportunity, take it, and fortify it.  The chance to take a little time to enjoy the scene, the fresh air, and the sunrise simply was not allowed.  After all, this is not a game, you fool! 

So where are you, the one whose plan was to steal that wonderful discovery from my experience and replace it with this wartime master? How dare you reach into my life and think you can tamper for so many years, using my history against me. Oh, the knowledge I have. It is this you seriously need to fear.

Here I have found something that is fulfilling and shows me what the world looks like if you are not watching the horizon for invasions. I know they are out there, but the idea of them rushing in at any moment has kept me busy. That in itself has been defeat, and I did not even know it. Now I do know and I hope that I will continue to know.  Boomtown falls, and it is good.

Dear Heather - It's Nineteen Hundred Eighty Five

 I was sitting down at my laptop with a cup of coffee just like I do so many mornings. The bitter February wind breathes hard just outside the kitchen window. I went to sleep last night, listening to songs from the summer of 1985. Being so associative, this is nothing short of a time machine for me. 

Photo by Cole Keister on Unsplash

As the keys clicked on the laptop, I began to tell the story of the late spring of 85 in which I quit my job at the refinery and took a job working for the City of Port Aransas. It was a major turning point in my life. As I wrote, so much depth about my father started pouring out.  I realized that 1985 has one thing so unique that no other year after 1972 can boast. It was the year I lived near my father for the whole year.  Not since I was 7 had that happened, and never would it again. It was then I knew. 1985 needs to be told completely.

That is going to be a very difficult story to tell. In that one year I was forced to grow 20 years.  But I am going to do it. While I still can, I want people to know my father, and in telling these stories, that will happen. Thinking about this, I now know, it is the Dear Heather effect. I want to wring every detail from these times. Fortunately for me, I have so much more context than Leonard Cohen did. But, my great teacher, still speaking to me sweetly from his window in the tower of song leads the way.

I am only beginning to understand that there is much in the most treasured parts of my life that I need to unfold the hidden richness that a younger me took mostly for granted. So many people I wish could know how important they have been to me.

In the past few days I have been knocked off my feet by an explosion that saw a friend's life go from well-established business as usual, to the absolute erasure of him and his family from the face of the earth. Oblivion and tragedy. I can not imagine what this is like for those of his family left behind, it is the end of the world as they know it. My heart cries for them.

It is strange how something like this helps me to understand my own childhood and respect the people who raised me even more. There is a reckoning coming in these days long in hours, that I cannot hide from. In Days of Future Passed I have crossed that terminator from "Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)" over to  "(Evening) Time to Get Away".  Mr Hayward, I held onto Tuesday afternoon until my hands lost their strength. Mr. Lodge was expecting me, this I know. He asks me, "What on earth took you so long?" Denial Mr. Lodge, denial. You penned these beautiful compositions when I was only a baby and somehow, thanks to my parents they have become the soundtrack for my life. I know, it symbolizes all of our lives. Whatever.

So 1985, you will get your place in the ionosphere, it will be highs and so many lows. It is a brutal fistfight that forged who I became, and who I really was deep down inside the whole time. Allons-y!

You haven't done anything

 I saw a typical winter photo of my house 21 years ago. You could only see half of the house because of the deep snow. Although just 3 Decembers ago we saw 46 inches of snowfall in 12 hours, winters producing what used to be the normal amount of snowfall are extremely rare. Ironically, summers and autumns that produce catastrophic levels of rain are replacing them.

In 1977 the great minds were warning us that the earth was entering another ice age. ABC News, In Search Of, with Leonard Nimoy, what were you thinking? 

The contrast between what was and what we now have are so many. It is something I feel all of the time. Maybe I am making it about me, but I believe that my grandparents, even though they too saw great contrast over the decades between earlier and later years, what we see now has become severe contrast, although my Grandmother seeing the first horseless carriage (automobile) drive into town compared to the moon landing may beg to differ!

I was sitting in Ms Magette's typing class in 1982. The lesson content was business course-themed. Those lessons droned on and on for a miserable 378 pages about how automation would change the world I was living in. My life was going to become more leisurely it boasted! My parents' generation went to work in massive factories and worked 40 to 60 hours a week.  I would not have to worry about that.  Machines would work for me while I drove around in convertibles and sipped frosty drinks.

No one ever told us that technology would make us more stupid.  Despite humanity being able to survive thousands of years without documenting every insignificant detail of our existence, we suddenly felt the need to do so.  What is the price for doing that?  We not only dodged the leisure time bullet but also stole the simple life that our parents lived in which despite their busy weeks, somehow allowed us to have more time with each other. We know it started with that hopeless little screen which has evolved into giant screens and more little ones.

Is the remote work experience as rich as the one we used to be present?  We are seeing things fading from existence and it can be easy to blame remote working for the corrosion, but I suspect it has less to do with that than our collective trajectory.

Don't even get me started on TV Dinners. Yes, it's a great song (although maybe acquired taste) from the depths of the 1983 Eliminator album by ZZ Top.  Let's go back to those days when the Swanson TV Dinner came in a foil tray.  It came complete in compartments with 2 pieces of battered chicken, carrots, and a mashed potato sickle in the shape of a triangle, making it perfect for scooping out and throwing into the trash.  If you got the good one, maybe a blueberry pie section too.

I may have a distorted memory of this, but I do not recall those being as ridiculously bad as the frozen dinners of today.  I mean all of them! They do not even register as food for me.  Cause I try, and I try, and I TRY!  NO!  What on earth is in these things?  What happened? Why is everything so facsimile? 

We are not able to stop the deterioration. It is like the "Can't Help Myself by Sun Yuan & Peng Yu" art exhibit where a machine desperately tries to retain its lifeblood the hydraulic oil that allows it to move and live only to fail in the end. The arm slowly stopped then died in 2019. Even more devastating, the arm ran on electricity, not hydraulics. It was programmed to believe it needed the hydraulic fluid to survive. Nothing demonstrates the situation today with nearly everything as this does.

How does cooking become a spectator sport, with more training than ever piped into our homes when all the while, as a people, we eat more food that is processed, packaged in cardboard in which if we were to eat the box, would not taste much different from the contents?

Technology has certainly come so far and there is a beautiful arc of common sense woven into it as well. It would seem that we have traded medical and technological advancement for stress, anxiety, and apathy.

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

Here is the problem, all the while, it is a distraction. That thing that takes you away from what is really important. Pacification is woven deep into the matrix now, how could you ever break free of the time-suck that envelopes all of us in a gelatin-like paralysis?

Give the people what they want, and then you can give them whatever you want so you can get whatever YOU want right? I was there! When the whole world was immersed in its pre-millennium email chains of inane adolescent and condescending humanitarianism, I was there, knowing something was off! It was the culmination of sitting in the desert a decade before and knowing that eventually food, water, and fuel would arrive, but only when they decided it would.

Somewhere along the way, I drew a heavy line in that sand and said, no more. We do this my way. I sure hope that this is the gift I have given my children. No one is coming to the rescue. Not only do we make a difference, we call the shots and that makes us, ungovernable. The only way to play is to smile and act like you are taking the pill. High speed, low drag, that is the way to do it. Drones we are, and as we drive away, the desert floor holds the pills you all thought I took. Salute that.

Core family needs. Those who build a fine man or woman who knows who they are and show the people they love how important they are have not changed. They were this way in 1908, 1914, 1945, 1947, 1965, 1969, 1970, 2003, 2006 and today. Play with all of this other stuff all you want, you have not done anything.

What it is ain't exactly clear

 It's an empty thing. There are so many words and then there are none.  Suddenly there are too many. I am broken and yet I am not. The day begins just like any other, and before I know it, the day catches me up in my own cosmic version of Dusty Springfield's For What It's Worth. 

Some people show unconditionally how important people in their lives are to them. Other people take for granted all of the wonderful things that they have.  Some people do not have good people. I can clearly see that I can feel sad for all three of these.

As the day progresses, problems arise, and we and together to work them out.  They fight, resist, and make it seem like defeat is imminent.  But I know better. I don't like to lose. The problem is this though, when I am weak, the OP4 is launching still yet another assault from the other side. I dig my fingers into the hull and in a low voice declare, that this will still comply.

Another visitor arrives and says things are not what they seem and that there is a sad truth to the news. This stops me. I want to cry and to scream and to get more angry than I have ever known. Anger is my strength, it is what has kept me alive all of this time. But here, although anger is an expected emotion, it cannot do anything. 

In my helplessness, I concede to the label that I am one of those who take it for granted. I am nothing. The twister that is ripping through the day continues its spin, but I tell me, sons, we fall no more today. We win. With defiance I stand again, cold and wet, with absolute certainty we will win.  Through it all we will stick together, working with focus and making this a better day, somehow.

The February void

 There is a strange void that February brings into my life.  It is not one of complacency or boredom. No, there is a great deal of pressure to get things done. It is more of a need for more focus. We did just turn our house upside down for a couple of weeks to remodel two rooms.  On the side of quality time of the year saved, we have undoubtedly done well. Now, instead of losing 70-degree days to indoor projects, we did that stuff in January and February.

For the past 2 years, I have done a thing called Taco Week. The first one was me cooking a different elevated taco every night for 5 nights for my family. In year two, I adopted a family and did the same thing for them and my family. It was a great deal of fun, it was difficult, and really provided a forced focus.

So far this year, I do not feel a Taco Week appearing in the weeks ahead. Maybe it is the project that we just completed and its aftermath, by which I mean there is so much more organization to yet take place. Maybe it is the fact that I feel the need to finally pull forward with the food process and start actually personal cheffing. Something is going to happen. I can feel it.

Photo by Tiago Pedro on Unsplash

In case you have not noticed, there is still much of what I do that has no routine. That is not me. Planning ahead is something I just cannot grasp, although I know that some of that is needed. Everything is more of an instinct. I have found that for much of my life, I thought that method was wrong and then tried to imitate the planners only to miss the mark in a Fail Army sort of fashion.

Signing on with the instinct and owning it, really works.  So as these early days of February progress, I am quietly meditating on all that I know, am, and can be to understand what creative trail is ahead. Right now it is a jumble.  The other night I was just watching television and a song idea popped into my head with such intensity, that I immediately saved to my phone what was there, knowing if I fooled myself into believing that I would remember later I would be very disappointed. Getting to a guitar in our "reorganization" now is hard.

Our automotive projects have not diminished whatsoever over the winter, so there is that. This means that the largest universal antagonist known to mankind, by which I mean my garage, needs to be dealt with!

I also would love to jump right back into processing fallen trees in the woods soon so I am not spending my summer preparing for winter. Over the last two years, I have spent all of the nice weather either moving dirt or processing wood.  I think it is time to mix it up a little.

The acquisition of time

 It is like a cruel joke, that old saying so true and sad that youth is wasted on the young. It is a biting need for time travel, to right all of the wrongs, to kick earlier versions of myself into action, to say I love you to those who really needed to hear it back then. That last one is the most important.

I have learned that I walk a balance beam in which every move I make is studied. In a way, it becomes redemption for the lack of said traveling through time. It is never about me because of this but what is ahead. There is a peace that warms me knowing that today I will do something that will rise to the surface of the hearts of my children years from now after I am no longer here, and it will help them get through a task or a difficult day.  What more could I ever want?

I recall at the beginning of February 1984, in one of my daily writings I made a statement like, "God! It's only February, we have no rights or views!" Back then, it was easy to do, wait for a sunny day, riding with the windows down and the music playing. In the folly of my youth, I did not know that in some ways that is nothing more than wishing the days of my life away. Back then, there were only a hundred million days ahead.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

I am happy to report that 40 years (eww) later, I see the value of today. You heard me. February 6th, Vermont, 18 degrees, I find value in today. I may have a little boost from the fact that I just remodeled two rooms in my house.  Plowing through the pain and defiant demobilization of RA and a life lived like I would be Superman forever, there is no doubt that it is much harder today. Pain is so big, it is the center of everything. But I will not lie down. I will not go quietly.

Suddenly everything reads like a Bob Segar song. 

 I know that. Of course, I know that! Don't you think I know that? 

I think it is merely inevitable. Today it is all about return on investment. Squeezing every bit of everything out of every moment to make things better in the long run. From the sunrises of Mustang Island to the sands of Saudi Arabia, to the frozen slopes of Franklin County Maine, to the purple haze of the Northeast Oklahoma morning. From the barren scapes of Wyoming to the oil-stained parking lots of Jacksonville Florida. From the hot and rough asphalt of the shoulder of I-81 South in Pennsylvania to the cool grass of the Texarkana highway. Hopelessness in Gilmer, desperation in Tivoli, hope in Rockport, elation at Harbor Island, relief at Ruthie Lane.

These are places, moments, and states of mind and heart along my journey.  They all have played an intrinsic part in shaping the person who woke up as me this morning. Reflection abounds. In the many things I have learned, I found there are many more things that I do not want in this world than things wanted.  I think that is good. 

Behind it all I can see it. The clock is spinning and I am holding on tight.

The repurposing cycle

 As I reflect on the journey over the last week I can see the years usually obscured from view. Much of the transitions I recall were taking our little space in the world and molding it into what my children needed, what our creativity inspired us to, and finding that ever-increasing return on space invested.

The big change was always molding our home to the stage our children entered. That is responsible for so many of the biggest changes of all. We would tear into things we always dreamed of changing, and remove things that were once so sentimentally critical to our daily lives to pave the way for accommodating our boys' next phase.  It was exciting for them and for us as well.

This week, we have come full circle, once again sleeping in the same room that we had when we started in this house 22 years ago. In that room, the labor began leading up to the birth of my sons, the nightly routine of getting those newborns ready for bed after a bath. At the time, it felt like those days would last forever.

As the years passed, our space grew smaller and we remodeled a room downstairs.  Meanwhile, on the main floor, the rooms transitioned from one purpose to another. This is the 4th remodel of the master bedroom in 22 years and I have noticed that it is much harder to do now. Thank goodness for experience and muscle memory. Pain is temporary.

There is a pain that I really did not anticipate though. It is the realization that I cannot simply rewrite the purpose of the rooms in my home to accommodate the needs of my sons anymore.  In this part of their lives I have to believe that while I was making the physical changes within our home to allow them to grow at that respective point in time, I was also giving them tools in which they hold inside them to know how to navigate and survive.

To say that I am amazed and impressed with the people my sons have grown into would be an understatement. They never stop showing me how intelligent and discerning they are. It is a joy to watch.