What's for "Desert"?

I found out today that Marie Antoinette never said, "Let them eat cake." She was only ten years old when Rousseau coined the phrase in his Confessions, although what he actually wrote was, "Let them eat brioche." Brioche is a French pastry that's more of a bread than a cake, but does it matter? Point is, if someone thinks they're doing me a disservice by insisting I eat cake or brioche, who am I to argue? "No, no, whatever you do, please don't force me to eat those vile petits four!" I'd have to do my best to mimic the throes of agony while begging them not to give me a fifth serving along with a glass of cold milk.

As you might have surmised by now, I like dessert. A lot. Probably most people do, but not all, which is fine as it means more for the rest of us.

Although I was twice school spelling champ when I was 11 and 12, I never could get "dessert" right. It wasn't atypical to see this sort of sentence in my essays: "I would like to live in the Mojave Dessert." In that instance, I would get marked off for spelling as well as for wanting to live in the Mojave. I had even more trouble with "desert," as in, "What's for desert?" I don't think people have as much trouble distinguishing the two words spoken as they do written. "Desert" was very likely coined before "dessert," but given that, whose idea was it to add an "s" to a word that already served a perfectly fine purpose? Did the first bakers taste their experimental concoctions and go, "Needs more
water"? We'll never know, I guess.

My favorite desserts are pies, particularly French silk, chocolate cream, and Key lime. I grew up in South Florida and never tasted Key lime until I was much older. A deprived childhood.

I've never eaten a banana split and never will. When my sister was very small, our family pulled up to an ice cream shop and bought a banana split for them to share with Terry and a vanilla cone just for me. For some reason, we were eating them in the car out in the parking lot. The three of them were in the front seat, and after they'd given Terry a few bites of a dessert she'd never eaten before, she promptly threw up all over the dashboard. That was the end of banana splits as far as I was concerned. Bananas belong in cereal, anyway. (Also in soup, but that was my mother's predilection and one I outgrew once I left home.)

My sister also instigated my lifelong boycott of mangos. Mangoes were plentiful in Miami, and when my parents gave her one for the first time, she became deathly ill. (Apparently they hadn't learned anything from the banana split.) I hadn't tried mangoes before then, and I thought it was a good idea to go on not trying them, just in case this reaction was genetic. Many years later -- last year, in fact -- Terry told me that in fact she hadn't tasted the mango at all. She'd touched it and developed a serious allergic reaction. So I could have spent all these years eating mangoes (while someone else held them for me). But I'm so used to not eating them that I think I'll just leave things as they are.

It's amazing how many desserts I've never tried. I had my first cherry cobbler and my first cheesecake only this year. I haven't eaten blueberries or blackberries. No squash. I don't even know from pomegranates. The only fruit pies I've had are apple and maybe peach. I've gone through 61 Thanksgivings without trying cranberry sauce. I've tasted pumpkin pie and don't like it, which always surprises me because it's so pretty to look at, and Yankee Candle makes a great spiced pumpkin scent. (Between my distaste for pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce, Thanksgiving meals have been pretty vanilla.) I like cookies, but don't even come near me with a Fig Newton. I tried a kiwi once, and I liked it a lot, but kiwis are something I just never think of when I'm shopping. Let's see, what else? I've never had an avocado, so I avoided guacamole for years, also because it looks like something that shouldn't even be a food. When I finally tried a friend's recipe, I was amazed that I'd deprived myself all those years.

I haven't included candy in this rundown because I consider dessert something that comes after a meal and not something you eat when you're not supposed to because it's almost mealtime. I doubt many dinners end with the words, "OK, now who wants a fresh Snickers?" It's the same with anything made by a certain pastry company I won't name here because I don't know a whole lot about libel laws, although I think I can name their products. "Is everyone ready for some Ding Dongs?" Frankly, I haven't eaten a Ding Dong or a Ho-Ho since speaking with a friend who once worked in the booming Twinkie industry. She asked me why I thought those little pastries stay so fresh so long. Turns out, she explained, they're baked in their own chemicals. This has been shot down as an urban myth, and I no longer believe it (hear that, libel attorneys? I NO LONGER BELIEVE IT), but I have to wonder why my friend developed a facial tic whenever I mentioned little chocolate donuts. (Little chocolate donuts were a staple of my long car trips, along with Mountain Dews. This might explain why I always showed up an hour or two ahead of schedule.)

So really, I'm not the most qualified person to be writing about desserts. Don't most people, though, latch onto a favorite food without seeing the need to try something else? Is it just me? I have my regular ice cream standbys and would never give a thought to rocky road or cookies and cream. You'll only see certain cakes in my fridge and never a fruitcake or a coconut cake or a fat rascal (British -- you don't even want to know). I think it's significant that fruitcakes are primarily gifts and that I've never actually seen anyone eat them.

If you have a dessert you think I might like, keep it, as I likely won't. But the jury is still out on mint chocolate chip ice cream and double fudge cake, so feel free to send me a sample so that I can be certain.

(That was a joke, by the way. But if you're considering Hostess products, feel free, since I NO LONGER BELIEVE THEY'RE BAKED IN THEIR OWN CHEMICALS! REALLY!)

Chairs

My first chair was a yellow rocker with a lamb painted on it. I must have been two or three. In restaurants, waitresses sat me in booster seats, which made it easier for the food I threw up to land clear across the table. Child safety seats weren't mandatory yet and neither were seat belts (though both existed at the time). So I sat unencumbered in the backseat with my sister, laughing at death every time our father pulled away from the curb.

Student desks in our grade school were big metal affairs with wooden tops that we lifted to store our books, notebooks, and used gum. The wooden tops had two recessed areas for pencils and a hole between them for the inkwell. Inkwells had gone out of fashion by around 1682, so none of us had any idea why our desktops had a hole in them. The desks stood just tall enough on their legs for us to be able to crawl underneath during emergency drills. These emergency drills were known as "duck and cover" exercises and were our best defense against an atomic bomb blast. We were just young enough to believe that this procedure -- and the solid reinforcement of our desks -- would protect us from a 300,000 degree fireball. (We also believed Underdog could fly.)

I mention the desks because we sat behind them in simple wooden chairs that were actually very sophisticated to a six-year-old -- no lambs, no boosting. We sat in the same kinds of chairs used by ten-year-olds, so we felt just a step away from adulthood. My first accident that I can remember happened in one of those chairs. I was an incorrigible kid. I was sent to the principal's office so many times that I ended up moving my desk there; when he'd had enough of me, he would send me to the classroom as punishment. One day in class, I was showing off for the other kids, holding onto the edge of my desk and leaning back on my chair's two back legs. I'd done this before and been reprimanded for it. So when the chair legs finally slid out from under me and the back of my head hit the floor, making a sound not unlike Roger Maris hitting one out of the park, our teacher, E. Braun, instructed the other students to ignore me and concentrate on Chapter 2 of Dick and Jane Survive an Atomic Blast. I ended up with a mild concussion, though unfortunately I was sent back to school two days later, where I was bound and gagged and left out in the hallway to rot.

I've sat in many chairs over the last 62 years, two centuries, and two millennia (concurrently of course, or else I'd be way dead). I can safely say that every friend I've had has sat in at least 10 or 12 of them. Let's take a moment to marvel at this timeless and ubiquitous necessity of everyday life.




OK, let's continue.

Chairs are everywhere, and they span the entire social spectrum. It's the only piece of furniture used by both kings and death row inmates. Curiously, a king's throne is also an informal name for a toilet. What do you suppose a king calls his toilet? Does he say to his court eunuch, "Watch my throne -- I'm going to use the throne"? This must perplex the eunuch no end. No, he likely assigns them ranks, in which case the royal throne would be "Throne #1" and the potty "Throne #2." If he wants to be specific, he might tell his eunuch, "Keep an eye on #1. I'm off to #2 to do #1 and maybe #2." The poor confused eunuch is likely looking for other employment opportunities by now.

Movie theater seats have certainly improved over time. It used to be that theater seats were simply functional: a seat for your seat, a back for your back. All seats were at the same level, so that if you sat behind Shaquille O'Neal or a woman wearing an Easter bonnet from 1890, you might as well just count your Goobers for two hours. (Actually, two hours' worth of Goobers is a pretty good deal.)

Nowadays, I think people go to the movies just to sit in the seats. They're tiered, so you never have to crane your neck to see over or around the person in front of you. They're ergonomically molded with lumbar support and restful cushioning, they rock so you can relax and even lull yourself to sleep if you're ever watching a revival of The English Patient. They come with movable armrests that you can lift for making out loveseat-style, particularly handy if you know the person sitting beside you. They have cup holders built into the armrests, though they're not large enough to hold the uber-mega-ultra-hyper cherry Slurpee you've bought at the concession stand for roughly the price of a 2015 Lamborghini Huracan. Warning: Be careful your date doesn't yank the armrest up while your refreshing beverage is in the cup holder, or the person behind you is apt to dry himself off using your face for a squeegee.

Speaking of movies, one of the all-time great visual effects is that wobbly chair John Cazale sits on in The Godfather Part 2. Fredo is telling Michael (Al Pacino) that he isn't dumb like the rest of the Corleone family thinks he is, that he's smart and deserves respect. But meanwhile the chair is saying, "He's a wimp, don't listen to him." It's such a perfect extension of his character. There should be an Golden Globe category for Best Chair in a Motion Picture (Drama). That's one acceptance speech I'd like to hear.

These days, furniture has taken its rightful place as an essential element in the business world. Only in a company meeting could you hear someone say, "The chair will table that for now." You wouldn't have heard that 50 years ago, before the non-human rights movement demanded that all furniture be treated equal. People began to realize that tables and chairs were more than just four pretty legs and some drawers.

Finally, I'd have to say that my favorite chair these days is the wingback. It's ideal for reading, which consumes roughly 23 hours of my day. Its arms feel as if they're embracing you, and you can rest your head against the high back for extra comfort. Give me a cushy wingback chair and an ottoman and you can keep your world peace. I could also make a compelling argument for chaise longues, but let's table that chair for another time.

Our Traffic Is Worse Than Your Traffic

Last December, Yahoo! posted a list that certainly sounded authoritative enough: "What Every State in the U.S. Is Worst at." I can only vouch for the ones I've lived in, and these days I live in Idaho, whose claim to infamy is its "worst drivers." In Yahoo's! defense, it does say that we don't cause the most accidents, mainly because there aren't very many of us. But it concludes that "Idaho's drivers are just total jerks behind the wheel." You'd think Idahoans would be incensed at such a slur, but my friends here in Boise will be the first to tell you -- we do suck.

The problem with Boise is that its population is growing faster than the infrastructure can support it. This is most obvious during rush hour, when crosstown traffic rushes so slowly that it actually begins moving backwards. This breeds understandable frustration, and yet road rage between Boise drivers is not the epidemic it is in other cities, mainly because our drivers save their rage for bicyclists.

I don't drive here and never have, so I'm not an expert. However, I am an expert pedestrian, and I can state here and now that pedestrianing in Boise can be hazardous to your health.

The problems with negotiating local crosswalks is the same as it is in other parts of the country, I'm sure. But drivers in other parts of the country can't kill me because I don't walk there, whereas I'm a moving target for anyone with an Idaho license plate (or a California one -- no western state is immune to those).

It comes down to one thing: people are treating their cars these days as extensions of their homes. Fixing makeup, reading a book, chatting with the GPS lady, making toast and then looking for the jam jar -- there is little that drivers won't do to avoid focusing on that pesky thing in front of them known as a road. Or a red light. I've stepped off the curb as soon as I see the little green walking guy on the sign across the street, only to stop just in time as the cartoon blur of a car goes whizzing past, the driver preoccupied with clipping his toenails. It's no wonder their dogs are always hanging their faces out the window. They're not enjoying the ride; they're saying, "For the love of God, get me out of here!" Animals are always smarter than people. Even Idaho chickens know they'll never get across the road; they're just suicidal. Farmers all over the state are always finding little farewell notes in their chicken coops.

Personally, I think Boise drivers would do much better if they only had enough roads to accommodate them. In the other places where I've lived, however, I've been less optimistic.

In Miami Beach, for instance -- and I'm speaking now of fifty years ago -- most of the cars were rentals driven by visitors from Up North who were born there during the Paleozoic era. These were cautious and courteous drivers, using their turn signals to let us know they'd be exiting Collins Avenue in about 20 years. Those turning onto Collins Avenue would leave their signals on to proudly remind us how careful they'd been negotiating that tricky turn back when Dade County was a swamp. Honestly, it's a good thing they weren't driving all the way back home, or their families would never see them again.

I'm trying to imagine those same drivers surviving in their natural habitat. The Founding Sadists of New Jersey came up with something called the "jughandle." I think they used it as a form of torture to use on seditious colonists. The idea, as I remember it, is that as you approach a highway full of speeding, homicidal drivers, you circle this very short, curving road doing a full 60 m.p.h. and fling yourself into the maelstrom the way a discus thrower spins and then releases a heavy, unwieldy object without knowing where it will land or whom it might kill.

The New Jersey Department of Transportation classifies three types of jughandles: type "A," your standard jughandle; type "B," a more complicated jughandle; and type "C," which includes a rest stop 30 feet from the highway where you can have your last will and testament notarized and even meet with a priest who will absolve you of all your sins.

Wichita, Kansas, would get a lot of farmers driving in from outlying rural towns. That's the only explanation I have. I don't think the farmers knew it, though. Many Sedgwick County drivers commit what I dubbed the "Kansas turn." Let's say you're at a four-way stoplight with four lanes of two-way traffic on all sides. If you want to make a left, and you're a normal person, you make your turn wide enough to avoid the two nearest lanes of waiting traffic. But often, driving through Wichita, I'd see drivers who apparently weren't aware that there were two nearer lanes of waiting traffic. Their turns were tight enough to brush the left hand curb and alarm pedestrians. Of course, this usually happened when there was no waiting traffic. But every once in a while, you'd see a terror-stricken driver frantically trying to back up as a driver with a ball cap and a Slurpee came right at them. (Note: None of my Kansas friends ever did such a thing. I have to say that in case they see this.)

Seattle drivers only had one problem, and that had to do with their memory. Each winter, with the first infrequent snowfall, traffic would come to a standstill as everyone groped through their glove compartments looking for the instruction manual that would explain how to drive in 1/8th of an inch of snow. To Seattle's credit, many of these drivers had California plates on their beemers. (Actually, "beemer" refers to BMW motorcycles, and the slang term for a BMW car is "bimmer." But I'll start saying "bimmer" when you do.)

It's the same with rain. If Seattle goes two weeks without rain and then it begins to sprinkle, drivers abandon their cars on I-5 to run screaming for the nearest shelter. But again, many of these drivers are abandoning California bimmers. (See? I think it sounds silly, too.)

I lived in Seattle for 14 years, and I can still fondly recall those fifteen minutes in 1998 when the sun appeared. It was quite an event, with people from every walk of life stepping outside to point and marvel at the strange yellow orb over their heads. Mothers wept. New religions were founded. I think this happens every 75 years, like Halley's Comet.

So buck up, Boise. We're not as bad as we think we are. At least we still have our sense of humor, as evidenced by our bumper stickers, my favorite of which says, "My Doberman Can Eat Your Honor Student."

My First Pets

My first pet was named George. George was a moth.

I'd never had a pet before. A lot of South Florida homes come with jalousie windows, which are parallel glass louvers you open and close by turning a small crank at the bottom. Our apartment had at least one set in each room. As with many homes, the lower halves of ours were frosted, and the rest were clear. Security from peeping toms and all that. I know, I know, just wait -- there's a point to this.

So one afternoon in 1960, when I was about to turn seven, my bedroom jalousies were open when a moth flew against the screen and decided to rest there in the shade. I don't have to tell you Miami can get pretty hot. I started talking to the moth, and once you start talking to a bug, you run the risk of anthropomorphizing it and thinking it can talk back. Calling it George only complicates things further. So we had a fine conversation all that afternoon, me telling George about the travails of first grade and George recounting his adventures in the great outdoors and asking if I had any sweaters lying around. I knew we were friends because he didn't want to fly away. Finally it grew dark, and I had grown too attached to him to let him go now. So I closed the jalousies, which gave him just enough room to flit up and down without getting squished. I told him we could talk some more tomorrow before I left for school.

Well, I'm sure you saw this coming. When I woke up the next morning, George was lying upside down on the window sill. I had a bad feeling about it -- I was dumb enough to shut him in overnight but not too dumb to realize he wasn't asleep. When my mother asked why I was crying at the breakfast table, I told her George died. You know about being six -- I just assumed the whole world knew what I was talking about. So I showed her George's inert little body and asked her if we could bury him in the yard, maybe wrap him in a nice cardigan. I don't remember what she actually did -- probably just opened the jalousies and blew through the screen so it would fall outside. But she was evidently touched by this star-crossed friendship, and she did the next best thing to throwing a burial. She promised I could get a real pet.

On Saturday we went to a bright, airy shop filled with ferns and garden implements and small friendly creatures that included fish, gerbils, iguanas, and birds. My mother had never been partial to pets (you never saw pets traipsing around in Better Homes and Gardens), so this would be a sacrifice for her.

Then we saw the turtles. In her mind she must have been thinking, OK, these wouldn't be expensive to maintain, they're not related to rats, they won't shed skin all over the place, and they can't talk back. These were box turtles, a prehistoric creature that lived way back when they could be sold legally before fear of salmonella overcame us all. (I mean way back, even before Justin Bieber's voice broke.) They looked so cute in their 18-inch, clear plastic wading pools. My mother asked me if I'd like one, and I said I'd like two. This time, my pet wasn't going to croak on me in the middle of the night, not with another turtle there to keep an eye on it and vice versa.

So we brought them home and set the wading pool in the kitchen window where there was plenty of light. I named them Jimmy and Johnny. (Funny, I never thought about them when I used to eat at Jimmy John's.) I tapped their tiny food canister over the water promptly every day. I picked them up and put them down again. (Not too much you can do with a turtle.)

Well, maybe you saw this coming, too. Jimmy was faster than Johnny and always got to the food first. Johnny died of starvation, and then Jimmy died of loneliness. At least that's how my parents explained it to me. They probably came up with this story because that way I wouldn't feel responsible. They must have thought I blamed myself for George's demise. The irony there is I didn't blame myself half as much for that as I blamed my mother for blowing him off the window ledge. I mean, who does that to a beloved pet?

Four years later, we owned our own house, and my father came home from work one afternoon with a brand new puppy, a cross between a German shepherd and a husky (a Gerky?). My mother named him Eli. Right away it was, "George and Jimmy and Johnny who?" Mom kept Eli on the porch and in the back yard (she never saw any dogs in Good Housekeeping), so that's where my younger sister and I spent as much of our time as possible. Eli was the best friend we ever had.

Well. If I told you what happened to Eli, there wouldn't be enough Puffs Plus in the world. Suffice it to say the story would make Old Yeller look like A Night at the Opera, and we never had another family pet after that. Oh, except for the bunny Terry brought home from high school one day. I don't remember how she'd gotten it or what she thought she was going to do with it in our mother's house. Mom told her it could stay overnight in the small utility room where she kept the washer and dryer, but in the morning it had to go.

So my sister feeds the bunny in the utility room before going out with friends for the evening. Mom explicitly tells her to be sure the door to the room is closed before she leaves. Apparently Terry didn't hear her. An hour later, our folks are watching TV when my mother looks down and sees the bunny sitting between her couch and my father's recliner, watching TV with them. What makes this story precious (and absolutely true) is that they were watching Wild Kingdom at the time.

I'll tell you what brought these memories to mind. Not long ago, I found a tiny spider web in the space between one side of my window air conditioner and the window frame. The spider in it was almost kind of cute, no larger than a mosquito. However, I guess I inherited my mother's distaste for things growing in her house, so I came back a few minutes later, saw that the spider was gone, and brushed away the web. I figured I was doing the little intruder a favor, since she wasn't going to find any bugs in my kitchen.

About an hour later, I return to the kitchen, and guess what -- same spider, different web. I absolutely marveled at the sheer chutzpah and tenacity of my newfound friend. She certainly showed me who was boss! She had earned the right to stay as long as she liked, and I even wished I had some bugs for her to dine on.

By morning she had moved on, and I kept the web up for the rest of the day in case she missed me. Oh, well. It was a perfectly good web. Maybe I should have placed a roommate ad in Bug Club Magazine.*


*A real publication put out by the Amateur Entomologists' Society (AES).

Dreamland

My grade-school classmates and I used to convene on the playground during recess and have deep philosophical confabs about the nature of the universe. I vividly remember one topic that generated the briefest discourse: "Would you rather fly or be invisible?" Everyone immediately agreed that flying was the neatest superpower. After all, we had Superman as our role model. Who could invisible people look up to -- Claude Rains? Anyway, we couldn't look up to a superhero we couldn't see. No, we all wanted to fly. End of discussion.

I was already having flying dreams by then. Do you have them? The earliest dream I can remember took place right at that same school, Little River Elementary. The building formed a horseshoe around a vast lawn, and I was hovering over the grass near the library. I wasn't literally flying, I guess, but I was suspended in mid-air, which was cool enough.

My flying dreams since then have taken on a general pattern that rarely changes. Someone is chasing me. It's an urban setting, because I'm usually flying vertically to the safety of rooftops. My pursuer or pursuers are always earthbound, but they're good climbers, and I often have to kick them off the edge of the building. When they hit the ground, they just start climbing again, and that's when I soar horizontally to the next rooftop. These are intense dreams, always fraught with an element of panic. You'd think flying dreams would be fun, but they're usually a matter of life and death.

If I thought I'd be flying like Superman when I was a kid, I was wrong. I always have to make a running start, and then when I shove off of the ground, I often drop after a height of just two or three feet and have to try again. This can be unnerving when someone is trying to kill me. Even once I'm airborne, I sometimes have to struggle in midair to reach a safe altitude. Once in a while, the bad guy will jump up and touch my feet, but I shake him off and keep going.

Only one dream motif feels like a blessing. Whenever I'm descending a flight of stairs (usually a stairwell with many levels), I can jump from the top step and gently land on the bottom one, almost in slow motion. I always try to do this when other people are around so they can envy my agility. If there's a stairwell in my dream, I know I can breathe easily -- it means no one is after me. When I awaken after these dreams, I always feel a touch of disappointment that I can't really do that (whereas after a panic dream, I'm understandably relieved).

Many friends I've spoken to over the years have also had flying dreams. There's one aspect of my dreams, though, that not many people I've known share with me: the settings are always the same. If it's a work dream, it's the same position at the same job with the same co-workers. The stores I go to are the same, as are the homes where I live. This would be normal, I suppose, if these places were an extension of my reality, but they're all dream places. Although I really was an editor for a huge law firm, the law firm in my dreams is completely imaginary and yet never varies. In fact, I recently changed dream jobs and now work in a smaller dream office. Even the streets and neighborhoods are the same, and I've never been there. The only things that change are the plots of each dream. Not only do different things happen, but subsequent dreams pick up where the previous dreams left off. My sister calls these my "sitcom dreams." If there were a laugh track, I'd probably wake up screaming.

Do you dream in color? I found out that I did years ago when I noticed someone in my dream wearing a red shirt. Then a long time later, someone was hurt and I saw their red blood. Red is the only color I'm aware of in my dreams; maybe they're monochromatic. (See my May 7 post about red being my ex-favorite color.)

Every once in a while, I'll dream that I'm reading a book that's real but which I've never really read. When I wake up the next day, I have to rush out and buy it. I was a teenager the first time this happened. The book was Myra Breckenridge by Gore Vidal, a bestseller at the time. I went to Waldenbooks in my local mall and began reading it that night. Yikes. It was a good book, but not one I was quite ready for at 16. Sometimes I'll dream I'm seeing a real movie I've never seen. If it's in theaters, I have to go see it, or I have to rent the DVD or get it from the library. It's a good thing I never dream I'm seeing a house fire or I might wake up and have to go start one.

Do you ever dream you're not the main character? I've observed myself at a distance doing something or talking to someone. I have no idea who the "I" who's watching is supposed to be. But I've found that I'm pretty boring to watch, so I don't have too many of those.

I've heard from various sources that you can never actually dream that you're dead or else you'd be dead for real. (But if you're dead for real, how can you be dreaming?) The closest I came was to see myself (again at a distance) get shot, then disappear through a doorway and drop dead where I can't see me. So I was dead once removed and was able to wake up and still be alive (needless to say).

Why is it that people who say they never dream are so defensive about it? If someone tells me they never dream and I tell them that everyone dreams or else they'd go insane, they raise their voice and tell me in certain terms (as opposed to "no uncertain terms," an unnecessary double negative) that THEY DON'Y DREAM. Why is that? Do they dream shameful things? Do they dream they're dead and think that if they told me, it would come true? Do they dream they belong to the Tea Party? It puzzles me.

Finally, I'm reminded of something Freud said in The Interpretation of Dreams that I always found fascinating. In fact, it's the only part of that book I remember. He said that every dream is a wish fulfillment. As a result, I analyze every dream I have, especially the nightmares, to figure out what it is I really want. My dreams are easy:

I want to fly.
I want to wear something red.
I want to read good books and see good movies.
I never want to join the Tea Party.
I never want to be dead.

Now about being invisible. . . .

THU MAY 14: Packing to Move

If my math is correct, I've moved 17 times since leaving my home state of Florida in 1977. Let's see -- that's three times in New Jersey, four times in Kansas, seven times in Washington, twice in Maine, and once here in Idaho. (God, let it be once here in Idaho!) Yep, 17 moves in 38 years. Sort of makes Richard Kimble look like a couch potato, doesn't it?

Of course, I never actually plan on moving once I settle in to a place. Four of those moves were with friends and family, jumping-off points to elsewhere. But the other 13 moves were meant to be permanent. I can't help but remember what Jack Nicholson's character said to his ailing father in Five Easy Pieces: "I move around a lot, not because I'm looking for anything really, but 'cause I'm getting away from things that get bad if I stay." (That has nothing to do with me, of course; it's just one of my favorite movie lines. I love saying it.)

My point here is that after a few moves, you become pretty adept at organizing and packing. After 17 of them, you could offer your services on Craig's List. Packing was mostly trial-and-error for me at first; actually, more error than trial. But I got good enough to where I think I can talk about it like a normal person and maybe even help you in your own next move. Or not. Whatever.

Before I can begin packing, I have to figure out what I'm going to take and what I'm going to leave behind. So I make five piles -- one for keeping, one for donating, one for selling, one for giving away to friends, and one for burning on the pyre I've built in the back yard. (This system is also helpful if you're just organizing but not moving. But if you're moving and not organizing, this won't help you at all.)

For each item I select, I have to ask some pertinent questions: Why am I keeping this? Can I live without it? How much sentimental value does it hold? Can I just blot out Dick Cheney's autograph at the bottom? Answers to the first three questions will determine what stays and what goes. The answer to the fourth question can be found on the pyre in my backyard (which begs the question, "What was I doing with it in the first place?").

For me, the most difficult decisions to make always come down to books. I love my books, and I've always hated to purge them. But sometimes large, heavy collections of anything can become extremely costly and cumbersome to transport. When I lived in New Jersey in the late 1970s, my book collection filled six tall bookcases. By the time I'd moved from New Jersey to Kansas and then to Washington, my collection filled an industrial front-loading washer. Now that I've moved from Washington to Maine and finally to Idaho, I keep my collection inside a bottle of zero-calorie Dr. Pepper. (I'd never have the room if the calories were included.)

Once you've amassed your pile of things to sell, it's time to have a garage sale. Garage sales can be very dangerous. You could get hit by a car while taping your sign to a tree by the side of the highway. You could be knifed by a buyer who takes it personally that you're not haggling. You could also be knifed by a motorist who keeps seeing your sign weeks after the sale is over. (Always remember to take them down. That means you, too, political volunteers! I've been tempted to knife you myself.)

Once the sale is over, you have to go start the whole selection process over again. What shall I do with the remaining items? Donate? Give to friends? Bonfires need love, too. Might as well light everything up. (But save those gallon drums of jet fuel for Goodwill. Jet fuel can be flammable. It can also be inflammable. This can become confusing, especially to English majors. To determine whether your jet fuel is flammable or inflammable, gauge the approximate degree of your flamm.)

Now that you know exactly what you're keeping, it's time to hunt for boxes. I know some manly men here who hunt for deer and elk. Let them try hunting for boxes and you'll find them huddled in a corner of their garage sucking their thumbs in a fetal position. It takes guts and sheer tenacity to find just the right boxes for all your valuables. (If they're not all valuables, go back to paragraphs 4 and 5, print them out, and make some flash cards.) Here are a few places to find boxes ranked from "Yay, boxes!" to "You call those boxes?" (Keep in mind this list isn't comprehensive and is limited by my inability to think straight when I have to move.)

1. Stores that sell paper by the ream because boxes that carry reams of paper are sturdy and have great lids. Places to find them:

Staples
Office Depot
Office Max
Kinko's (oops -- Kinko's went away and now there is only FedEx Kinko's and FedEx Kinko's can't help you)
Dunder Mifflin (oops -- you can't get boxes there anymore because they went off the air)

2. Liquor stores (before I thought of #1). Their boxes are pretty reliable if you can grab them before the store owner flattens them on their way out the back door. One problem with some of these boxes, though, especially wine boxes, is that they have these built-in corrugated cardboard dividers you can't remove, so you can basically pack only vases and straws.

3. Grocery stores (before I thought of #2). I would always ask for empty boxes from the fruit section. Most fruit boxes such as apple boxes are fine, but watch out for the banana boxes. They come with one big hole in the bottom so tarantulas can get air. If you do get these boxes, pack flat things like books and tortillas that won't fall out. They're not good for vases or straws.

4. U-Haul. Before I knew anything about moving, I went to my local U-Haul store and bought put-it-together-yourself boxes. That's right -- not only did I have to pay for them, I had to build them myself. If those other stores are giving boxes away for free, shouldn't U-Haul be paying me for my time and trouble? I think U-Haul customers should form a union and demand a living wage.

So these are just a few helpful hints to help make your moving experience a moving experience. Oh, and one more thing -- before you pull away in your 36-foot rental van from U-Haul (even though you're not speaking to them), don't forget to stamp out that raging inferno in the backyard. It's better that your neighbors hear about your move from you than from Wolf Blitzer.

Yee-haw!

I remember that evening like it was yesterday. February 8, 1989, a Thursday. The night Augustus McCrae died.

I watched all four installments of the CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove that week, which was uncharacteristic of me because I didn't like Westerns movies. I didn't like Western novels, either, but because Larry McMurtry was one of my favorite writers, I'd read his magnum opus four years earlier and been moved almost beyond words. But that didn't mean I was now a Western fan of books or movies, and I was planning to bypass the TV adaptation when I first heard about it. But when casting was announced and I read that Robert Duvall was on board, I knew I had a moral obligation to tune in.

I was already a blubbery mess by the time Gus's leg was amputated by the exhausted doctor in that Miles City hotel. I even knew what was going to happen next, but that didn't matter -- McMurtry's characters had me in their grip once again. By the time McCrae opened his eyes for the last time and said to his old partner Woodrow Call (Tommy Lee Jones), "'I God, Woodrow, it's been quite a party, ain't it?" I was wringing out my third bath towel. As the final credits rolled, I knew I was a changed man at 36. I liked Westerns.

That means that for the last 26 years, I've been taking a crash course in Western movies to make up for decades of lost time. I could sit here and pontificate on the role of the Western in contemporary American culture and other grad school topics, but I have a better idea. Let's get right down to it with some of my favorite movies, lines, and moments. (Warning: a few spoilers ahead.)

Who else to begin reflections of the movie Western with than John Wayne? I didn't like him for a very long time. I thought he was a bad actor (before I even saw much of anything he'd done), he walked funny, and his politics were somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. Well, I got one right, at least. He turns out to be a terrific actor with just the right walk for a man of his mythic stature. My favorites are Red River and Rio Bravo. Red River is a classic in every sense, while Rio Bravo isn't quite. Ricky Nelson's performance might make Glen Campbell in True Grit look like Olivier, but my life is richer for having seen him step out on that porch just as Angie Dickinson sends a vase of flowers crashing through the window. I also like Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and the aforementioned Grit. He was never better than in The Searchers, a movie I want to like as much as the critics and film polls, but when Wayne lifts Natalie Wood up in his arms at the end and says, "Let's go home, Debbie," I want to yell at the screen, "That's not who you are! You haven't earned that!" Finally, I hate to say it because it was such a fitting plot idea for the Duke's final film, but The Shootist really disappointed me. It had the look and feel of a TV show (even Wayne reportedly complained to the director about that), and that final climactic shootout just felt so contrived. Those three bad guys were only there to give Wayne an excuse to go out in a blaze of glory. I never could figure them out. Their stories were woefully underwritten.

Just as Wayne is our finest Western star, I also agree that John Ford is our one great Western director. He is to Monument Valley what Wile E. Coyote is to anvils -- you can never see one without thinking of the other. My pick for the all-time best American Western is Ford's My Darling Clementine. I'd be here all day trying to explain why. Every shot is perfect. Even Ford's characteristic wit, which I usually cringe at, is refreshingly understated. Twice, someone remarks to Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) about the fragrant open air, and each time he reluctantly replies, "That's me. Barber." My favorite exchange is when Henry Fonda says, "Mac, you ever been in love?" and Mac says, "No I've been a bartender all my life." How perfect -- even profound -- is that? Victor Mature, who played Doc Holliday, was too humble when, upon being rejected by a country club years later because he was an actor, he told them, "I'm not an actor -- and I've got sixty-four films to prove it!" He did a great job. The final image of the fence in the foreground (civilization) and the distant Monuments (the untamed West) is one of my favorite closing shots of any movie. (Still, I wonder what Clementine [Cathy Downs] is doing in the middle of nowhere. How's she going to get back to town?)

OK, let's pick up the pace a little:

Ride the High Country -- I think this is a better Peckinpah Western than The Wild Bunch. They're both elegies, but that final shot of Judd (Joel McCrae) sinking slowly down to die as he casts a last look behind him to the mountains he loves is as elegiac and moving as movies get.

Shane -- This is one Western I don't think you have to be a fan of Westerns to enjoy. Alan Ladd makes a great hero, but Jack Palance as Wilson is one villain who should be on everyone's list of cinematic bad guys, yet I rarely see him there. Wilson's killing of Stonewall (Elisha Cook Jr.) in the middle of a muddy street is a triumph of suspense and tragedy. Speaking of elegies, who can forget little Joey (Brandon de Wilde) at the very end, calling out to the wounded Shane as the gunfighter rides away, "Shane! Come back!"

The Westerner -- If you only know Walter Brennan as a crotchety old limping codger (see Rio Bravo for starters or The Real McCoys on TV), you need to see a younger Brennan hold his own with Gary Cooper in this one. He won the first of three Oscars as Judge Roy Bean, and it's just plain scary watching his expression flash from friendly to murderous in about two seconds. That climactic scene in the theater gives me absolute chills whenever I see it. It's amazing that Brennan allows us to feel a measure of sympathy for Bean in his backstage death scene. (For some reason, he always reminds me of Foghorn Leghorn when he sits out in the auditorium wearing his military uniform, waiting for the curtain to rise.)

Clint Eastwood movies: I don't think his acting is up there with the Duke's, except for one movie -- Unforgiven. He was terrific in that. The screenplay has to be one of the best examples of airtight storytelling, from the plot that coils in on itself like a snake to the period vernacular of the dialogue. For my money, Unforgiven includes the single best line Eastwood ever spoke on film: When the Schofield Kid, trying to sound tough after his first killing, says, "Yeah, well, I guess they had it coming," Eastwood gives us a nice long pause before replying, "We all have it coming, kid." His brief speech in the saloon before gunning down just about everyone in sight is the stuff of movie legend. I won't even spoil this one.

More concerning Clint: The Outlaw Josey Wales was recommended to me by a friend, and I'm really glad he did. Another Eastwood movie I enjoy is The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I resisted "spaghetti Westerns" if only because the term sounded so, I don't know, un-American. But Eli Wallach as Tuco gives some of his best work, and the ultimate three-way showdown with Wallach, Eastwood, and Lee Van Cleef is a real nail biter. I also liked Hang 'em High for its original plot. (I once saw a middle-aged woman wearing a T-shirt with two perfectly positioned nooses printed over her chest with the words "Hang 'em High" above them. Let's just say her hangin' days were over and leave it at that.)

Honorable mentions: The Ox-Bow Incident, High Noon (the movie Wayne and Howard Hawks hated so much that they up and made Rio Bravo as a rebuttal), the Coen brothers' remake of True Grit (which, heretical though it may be, I prefer to the original), 3:10 to Yuma (here, too, I like the remake more), and Bad Day at Black Rock (a contemporary Western, but with all the hallmarks of a classic Western thriller).

I know I'm leaving out so much, and I'll kick myself for it later, but I'm not sure how many of you would really want a Part 2. I will say, though, that some Westerns have never felt like real Westerns to me. Dances With Wolves, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Silverado, Doc, Little Big Man -- I enjoyed them all (well, all except Doc, which carried the term "revisionist" to extremes), but something is lacking in them, and I can't pin down what it is (though Little Big Man comes closest to the real thing for me). Oh, and you can add The Outlaw to this list as well. Howard Hughes wasn't half as concerned with the West as he was with making Jane Russell a star. Well, he picked the right genre for her. Russell provided her own Monuments with their own valley. I doubt male filmgoers at the time could have told you who else was in the movie, what it was about, what theater they were sitting in, or what their name was.

Well, pilgrim, we've come to the end of the trail. It only seems fitting to let the immortal John Wayne have the last word on the subject:

"Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!"

My New Favorite Color

Red used to be my favorite color. Now blue is my favorite color. Let's examine this.

The first song I can remember listening to was "Toreador Song" from Carmen; Goofy sang it on a little yellow 78 r.p.m. record. When my mother explained what a toreador was, I asked to see some pictures. The red cape he brandished in front of the bull was the first color I ever really noticed. I thought red must possess some awesome power to be able to lure such a massive creature to its doom. (I didn't know then, of course, that red was merely the traditional color and that the bull would have charged a purple doily.)

Superman also had a red cape that he wore in my DC comic books, where he flew through the air and punched out the bad guys. That was a kind of power, too. (Kryptonite was a greater power, but I didn't know what color it was. I still don't.) I asked my parents for red schoolclothes when it was time to start first grade. (They drew the line at red trousers.) The boys at school who had red hair looked incomplete to me, as though it would eventually grow into black or brown as they got older. However, I discovered that I was drawn to girls with red hair, even though I had no idea what "drawn to" meant. (I still am, even now that blue is my favorite color. Do you hear that, Julianne Moore?)

When I fell in the schoolyard, my scrapes were red. That wasn't such a good thing. If I fell hard enough, I saw that my blood was red, too. I began to have second thoughts about my favorite color.

During the course of my formative years, red became more and more confusing:

Red Skelton was good.
A face red with embarrassment was bad.
Red wagons were good.
A face red with anger was bad.
Red Buttons was good.
Acne was bad.

It seemed that red wasn't good for faces. When my teacher marked my tests in red, that definitely wasn't good. But there were other kinds of red my parents and teachers warned me against: Red menace. Red scare. Red China. "Better dead than Red." Yikes! Was I some sort of Commie for liking red? "Pinko" -- that was red, too!

I refused to back down. Red was beautiful to look at. I liked sunsets and roses and strawberry ice cream and fire engines. (I'm starting to sound like Julie Andrews.) My favorite crayon was brick red. So, for most of my life, red was my color of choice.

But then I discovered blue -- not visually, not right away, but rather in music that I liked: "Rhapsody in Blue," "Blue Velvet," "Blue Suede Shoes," "Blue Moon," "Love is Blue," "Red Roses for a Blue Lady" (blue won that contest), "St. Louis Blues" -- yes, the blues! A whole entire musical genre devoted to blue! Could red say that?

From music, I went on to realize a whole world of beautiful blues: Picasso's blue period, glaciers atop Mt. Baker, bluebirds, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, the Boise State football field -- why, even the endless skies of the Midwest! My whole world was blue and I never knew it!

Sometimes I wonder whether yellow isn't my favorite color, too. Yellow is to the eye what a banjo is to the ear -- you just can't be depressed looking at yellow. There was a small restaurant in Long Beach, Washington, where I used to eat lunch during long weekend getaways. The building and interior were yellow. So were the tablecloths and menus. The theme of the place was sunflowers, and they were everywhere, in vases and painted on the walls. You just couldn't be gloomy eating a chicken salad sandwich there. Every meal was a happy meal.

But then after lunch, I'd pass under the arch proclaiming WORLD'S LONGEST BEACH and walk across the sand to the water's edge. Here was the bluest blue of all -- the ocean! I grew up beside the Atlantic and never really acknowledged the sheer blueness of it. Now here I was at the edge of the Pacific, and the brutal, glorious majesty of it brought tears to my eyes. (No, wait -- that was the salt air.) I knew then and there that blue was the color of my life and always would be.

P.S. Green is no slouch, either. Where would Dr. Seuss be without it?

Cats

(Note: I'm replacing "that" with "who" in this piece because cats are more human than some humans I've known.)

I once had a cat who fetched.

I'd pulled a plastic ring off the top of a milk carton and tossed it across the room for my cat Sophia to play with, then sat down on the couch with a cold glass of 1%. A moment later, she walked up with the ring in her mouth and dropped it onto my right shoe. When I threw it into another room, she reappeared and dropped it in the same spot. This turned into a game that lasted about 15 minutes. It was great, because I'd actually always wanted a dog.

Cats are like people because they each have their own little rituals, some bordering on OCD. I'm currently catsitting Lucy, who belongs to a couple I'm friends with who are taking some out of town trips this year. Lucy is neurotic. She can't have breakfast without someone standing beside her to watch as she eats. If I walk away, she follows me and scratches on the nearest wall until I go back and resume my post. This is interesting enough, but she also has to be stroked while she eats. If I stop, she stands right at my feet and meows until I stroke her some more; then she returns to her bowl and is happy as long as I keep stroking her. I think Lucy is just having her way with me, because two days after my friends returned from their last trip and I came over to visit, the husband said, "What have you done to my cat?" Lucy just smiled serenely from her favorite chair.

Lucy does have another quirk they'd told me about in advance. When she scratches on the sliding glass door leading to the backyard, she doesn't go out when I open it. She has to stand there for about thirty seconds while she decides whether this is actually a good idea. Eventually she goes out and has a grand time doing nothing in the shade of a fence. It's the same when she wants to come back in. This is another major life decision, during which I eventually grow old and die. But I might have nipped this one in the bud. Whether she's coming or going, I only keep the door open for about ten seconds before closing it again. After doing this a couple of times, she takes the hint and marches right out (or in) the first time. We're at the point now where she isn't even waiting. I may have created a breakfast monster, but I've solved the sliding door problem for my friends. I have a way with cats. Maybe Robert Redford could play me in the movie.

I know people who hate all cats. I can understand this, as most of them have never owned a cat and cats have a bad reputation, sort of like pit bulls but without the body count. My argument is the same as a pit bull owner's -- if you love on them enough, they'll learn to love and not hate. I've never known a cat who hated, anyway. The word for a hateful cat is actually "finicky," and that can easily be dealt with through a little time and patience (hence, Lucy).

Like people, cats have their famous counterparts. The comic strip character Krazy Kat was before my time, but I've heard of his perilous exploits, what with Ignatz always throwing bricks at his head. Of course, Krazy was a celebrity, so a stunt double was drawn for the violent scenes. I think that was what prompted the ASPCA to begin monitoring comic strips and cartoons to ensure that "no cats were harmed in the making of this feature." That's why Tom and Jerry and Tweety and Sylvester used a lot of CGI in their work. How else to explain how Tom and Sylvester survived all those bombs, frying pans, and the bulldog next door?

The first cat I heard of as a child was Top Cat, or T.C. to his friends. T.C. was cool, like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. He was a wiseacre whose eyes no one could pull the wool over. He lived in an alley and presided over his gang of humorous cronies (the only name I remember now is Benny the Ball). Top Cat was inspired by the crafty Sergeant Bilko from The Phil Silvers Show. He was voiced by Arnold Stang, whose own persona was anything but cool. But he was a funny actor whose service station was memorably demolished by Jonathan Winters in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. T.C. himself never would've stood for that. Amazingly, Top Cat only ran for a single season in the early '60s. To me it seems he was around for my entire childhood. I guess that's the impact early role models can have on an impressionable youth.

I like just about all breeds of cats, though I prefer the ones that don't leave a shag carpet all over the house. The only breed I have a problem with, though, is the opposite of the shedder -- the hairless. There are actually about six breeds of hairless cats; I'm only familiar with the Sphynx. There's just something so darn freaky about Sphynxes. I have enough trouble looking at them, much less touching them, which mercifully I've never had to do. Their faces remind me of little Yodas, and their bodies, when they're kittens, look like some kind of mutant iguana. I understand they're more affectionate than most cats -- almost like dogs -- but that's probably because they have no choice. They know if their owners ever took a really good look at them, they'd be out back in the alley with T.C.

This time with Lucy has me contemplating a cat of my own, but I know it would never work. My apartment is small. A cat would have to share my bed, because there isn't enough room for her sleep anywhere else. The litter box would have to sit on my kitchen table, and I'd have to keep her food dish in my lap. I'm talking small. But never say never, I always say. I could always get a Sphynx, and she could sleep anywhere she liked, because I'd have moved somewhere else.

Clotheslines

When I sat down to brainstorm ideas for this post, it came down to a toss-up between clotheslines and goat hygiene. I don't know anything about goat hygiene, so clotheslines it is.

I've seen a lot of TV commercials for washing machines and tumble dryers over the years, but I've yet to see an ad for a clothesline or a clothespin. Clotheslines and clothespins used to be as common in American life as iPads and restraining orders are today. What happened? We all know nature is a better and cheaper energy source than electricity. Fresh air smells so much nicer than a fabric softener. Your child can't close the cat inside a clothesline and then press the "on" button.

Chalk it up to progress. Someone thought it would be a good idea to invent a machine that cost about 800 times as much as a clothesline, replace warm summer breezes with a rotating tumbler that drowns out all human communication (especially if you're drying sneakers), and then replace the fresh aromatic smell of the outdoors with an artificially scented dryer sheet that prevents clothes from clinging together, which is fine but would be totally pointless on a clothesline.

I enjoy looking at old sepia photos of New York from the turn of the century (not this turn, but the last one). All those dozens of clotheslines crisscrossing high over alleyways from one tenement to the next-- now that was laundry! Every last inch of line was taken up with petticoats and bloomers and undershirts -- it's a wonder people weren't naked on washdays. When all that clothing was reeled inside after a day in the sun, I'll bet not even Yankee Candle could match such a scent.

My family owned just one house when I was a kid; otherwise, we moved from apartment to apartment. That house had the biggest back yard in Palm Springs North, which was a new development not too far from the Everglades. (We didn't see alligators, but we saw plenty of swamp mosquitoes so big they wore their own gang colors.) Kids would come over to play in our back yard and never be seen again. I'm talking about a big yard. Along with the yard came four lengths of clothesline, our first, and my mother was out there every weekend with her basket of clothes and sheets. I didn't have many chores, but one of the most important was Official Clothespin Pail Carrier. I would stand beside her holding up a pail with a rooster painted on it, and she would take two clothespins from it for each article of clothing (more for sheets). She held one clothespin between her teeth while she fastened the first one on the line, and then she'd take the other one from her mouth and fasten it to the other end of whatever she was hanging. Then we'd take a couple steps and the ritual would repeat itself. Odd, but I can still remember the sound the few remaining wooden clothespins made as they scraped against the bottom of that metal pail.

Automatic dryers don't sound like that. I don't think anything sounds like that. It's a loss, really. Things just don't sound like the things they've replaced. The new sounds are impersonal, not at all tactile. Take personal computers. Click-clacking away on one of those keyboards sounds like rodents doing a two-step. I know whereof I speak -- I'm using one right now and it still makes my teeth ache. But think back -- if you're old enough -- to manual typewriters. Folks, when you hit those keys, that sheet of paper knew you meant business. Not even the YMCA could give you a better workout. Electric typewriters weren't as taxing, but the sound still implied permanence. Remember All the President's Men? Remember that very first shot, a tight, silent closeup of a blank sheet of paper, then the thunderous whump of the key as it hammers home the first enormous letter? Could you imagine opening that movie with a tight closeup of a blank computer screen, the silence suddenly shattered with the sound of -- of what? A gerbil fart?

But I digress. I'm not saying these newfangled contraptions are a setback of some sort. They're a godsend for large families. Women would weep when they won one on Queen for a Day. I've even heard women say that when you sit on one, the vibration is good for -- um, good for drying clothes. But I digress again.

I've often used Laundromats, but I think they could be improved upon. Even if I took along an autographed copy of the New Testament, I couldn't get past the first two paragraphs without thinking, "God, I'm sitting in a Laundromat." Maybe it's those curvy plastic chairs. Maybe it's the magazines with cover stories about Lincoln's assassination. Maybe it's the coin changers that make me flatten my dollar bill about fifty times before it'll suck it in. I don't know what it is. I use one now, but it's full-service, so I can drop my clothes off in the morning and pick them up all clean and folded in the afternoon. I don't mind spending the extra money, since to me it's not just a service but a survival tactic. Each time I leave with my bulky plastic bag in hand, I wave a dollar bill and stick my tongue out at the coin changer.

I'm been cat-sitting for some friends. They have a clothesline in the backyard, some wooden clothespins on a shelf, and they've left instructions on how to use their washer/dryer.

My clothes feel awfully dirty. Guess what I'll be doing later on. (No, not sitting on the dryer.)

Holidays I Didn't Get Around To Last Time

I set out to write my previous post about various holidays, but I ended up having too much to say about Christmas. Let's see if I can stay on track this time.

Birthdays are my second favorite time of year (after Christmas). I know that the older we get, the more miserable we're supposed to be about getting older, but my aging brain hasn't gotten the message yet. Maybe it's because I've always had this problem of living for the moment and never planning ahead. Consequently, on my birthday I'm focused strictly on the day itself and not my impending decrepitude.

When I was working and my birthday fell on a weekday, I always made sure I could take the day off; I didn't need pesky projects and meetings to interfere with my happiness. Of course, the workplace can be fun, especially when your coworkers fill the office with black Mylar balloons. Then, around midafternoon, you might walk into the lunchroom on a break and find everyone gathered around a cake bought just for you. Last time I was surprised like that, just one little candle burned in the center --  I had reached the age when it would be too labor-intensive to put in all the rest. I could sense that not all of my coworkers were happy about this cake, since I've rarely worked anyplace where donuts didn't magically appear in the lunchroom every other day. A cake was just one more reason to keep your hopeless treadmill in the basement.

My mother threw me a birthday party when I turned seven. My mother liked kids if they were hers, but I invited about a dozen and a half schoolmates to this event. So anyway --

Whoops, never mind. I forgot to focus on other holidays, and I don't want to stretch this topic into mid-August.

Labor Day

The best and worst thing about Labor Day: Jerry Lewis. The Muscular Dystrophy Telethon was probably his greatest achievement (well, besides The Nutty Professor), but he refused to change with the times. In the new millennium he was still featuring some of the same guests he'd had on in the 1960s (40 years of Norm Crosby was way more than enough), and his taste in music and beautiful women (they had to be beautiful, it seemed, to be his co-hosts) was growing out of fashion. The older and sicker he got, the more naps he took during the show. I wasn't surprised when he finally disappeared altogether, but I think it was horrid the way MDA unceremoniously dumped him. Then the next year the telethon was only six hours long. They showed a brief tribute to Lewis, which I thought was just hypocritical. By last year, the show was dramatically shorter (I think it aired between two commercials for Coke and Nissan). Not only were the hosts pointedly young, but I suspect the performers were chosen because their fans have no idea who Jerry Lewis is. The telethon got to be a tradition with me through its good times and its bad (sort of like SNL). One year, I even took calls for the full length of the show at MDA's remote hookup in Miami (back before volunteers were split into two shifts to preserve sanity). Nowadays, there's only one way to really recapture the essence of the Jerry Lewis MDA experience: find a copy of Hardly Working. It was the comeback film Lewis made after The Jerk opened; he wanted to remind people who the original jerk was. (I'm serious -- that was the tagline of the movie.) I call it an MDA experience because the film was shamelessly, hilariously filled with product placements from the telethon's most loyal sponsors. Budweiser, Dunkin' Donuts, 7 Up, the U.S. Postal Service -- they're all there, and trust me, you won't miss them if you blink. You won't even miss them if you doze off, which you're likely to do.

Halloween

I'm conflicted about this one. As a kid, I enjoyed going out. I liked everything about it -- the candy, waiting to put on my store-bought costume and mask that came in a box with a cellophane cover, the candy, being allowed to roam the streets after dark, and of course the candy. During the '80s and part of the '90s, I stopped liking the idea of it because it was "sinful." These days, if I had kids, I'd let them go trick or treating, but I'd have to be with them because this isn't the world I grew up in, and I'd prefer they didn't dress up as flesh-eating zombies or tweenie trollops. Kids can't find my door now, but back when I lived in a busier neighborhood, I'd always go somewhere else on Halloween night and come home after 10 p.m. A ringing doorbell can make me jumpy when it happens 20 times in an hour. (I still bought the candy, though. Why waste a perfectly good holiday?)

April Fool's Day

It would have to be a brilliant, and I mean brilliant, prank for me to enjoy it. Also, it would need to happen to someone else.

Fourth of July

I like looking at fireworks, but not listening to them. They frighten animals and can seriously mess with PTSD. Plus, amateurs seldom know what they're doing and have a way of losing digits in the process. I do like what the holiday stands for, though, and I like that so many people, as with Memorial Day, really do remember its meaning.

Indigenous Peoples' Day

Last year, the Seattle City Council decided to rename Columbus Day. I don't even have a punch line for this.

My Most Special Occasion

Can you believe I started this silly little blog 30 days ago? I guess that makes this a special occasion, which brings me to today's topic. . . .

Christmas, my favorite holiday. I've always felt this way, although I have friends for whom Christmastime is the worst time of the year -- the commercialism, the pressure to buy gifts, the same incessant carols. What should be the most special time of the year becomes a nightmare for them. I'm not sure how I've managed to avoid this mindset. Maybe it's because the memory of my first Christmases still have the power to reduce me to an eight-year-old. My little sister would wake up in the dark on Christmas morning and shake me until my eyeballs rattled. Then we'd crack open the bedroom door, and behold -- it looked as if Santa's sleigh had crashed into our living room and left his entire planet's worth of presents scattered all around the tree. Then she'd stand in our parents' doorway and inform them that it was time to get up. If she'd had a military bugle, she couldn't have been more effective.

My sister was a tiny terror come December. One year, my parents had our family doctor phone us on Christmas Eve pretending to be Santa. He didn't time it quite right, as the two of us had already been in our twin beds for about an hour. When our mom walked in and woke us up to say that Santa was on the phone, my sister, whose bed was farther from the door than mine, tore out of the bedroom as fast as she could. She couldn't be bothered with making a detour around my bed; she trampled right over it -- and me -- to reach the phone first. I still have little footprints on my stomach.

Because we lived in Miami in the early 1960s, we had a silver tree like many other families we knew. Silver trees had their advantages -- for one thing, you didn't need to drape tinsel all over them because that was redundant. The best advantage was the color wheel, which was to a silver tree what strings of colored lights are to a real tree. The color wheel used electricity, and when our parents plugged it in, its motor hummed as the wheel slowly revolved, casting red, blue, green, and orange lights onto the branches. The Miami equivalent of a roaring fire was a color wheel illuminating its silver tree in the dark. These days, both the tree and the wheel are considered to be anachronistic kitsch, but they'll always be my anachronistic kitsch.

I think it was 1990 when I first encountered a grownup -- my boss, actually -- who never listened to Christmas music. In fact, he hated it and wouldn't allow me to play it on my office radio. How could anyone not like "Silent Night" or "Silver Bells" or "Greensleeves"? Maybe it was those other songs that had turned him into such a musical Grinch, songs such as "Jingle Bells" (particularly as rendered by barking dogs), "All I Want for Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)," those vermin Frosty and Rudolph (and let's not forget Nestor the Christmas Donkey), and the ultimate offender, "The Twelve Days of Christmas." That's probably what did it. I suspect that when he was younger he got as far as the four calling birds before hurling the record like a discus through the nearest window.

When I was growing up, Andy Williams was considered to be the voice of Christmas cheer, with his holiday specials that always included the Osmond Brothers, who never seemed to appear anywhere else. "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" was Williams' yuletide anthem, and back then it never occurred to me that it might not be the most wonderful time of the year for everyone. That revelation would come later in life. These days, when I think of Christmas music, I think of Amy Grant, whose beautiful collections of songs and carols, not to mention her annual holiday tour, represent for me and many others the real music of the holiday. Her song "Tennessee Christmas" can make me forget I've never been there. Other Christmas songs she's recorded that I enjoy are "Breath of Heaven" (whichh Grant co-wrote) and "My Grownup Christmas List" (which she didn't write).

Besides Amy Grant's music, there are other annual favorites I always pull out, some of which are a traditional part of my present because they were part of my past. These days, my absolute favorite song is "A Baby Changes Everything," originally recorded by Faith Hill. Shivers and chills. My mandatory playlist also includes "The Chipmunk Song" (don't say a word about my Chipmunks), "River" (you really have to hear Robert Downey Jr. sing it on the Ally McBeal Christmas soundtrack -- this was back when he hadn't yet exorcised his demons, and that makes it all the more heartbreaking), Dolly Parton's "Hard Candy Christmas," Brett Williams' "My Christmas" (so hard to find it on CD, though; I was present at Calvary Chapel in Everett, Washington, when he performed it for the first time), and CDs by Ray Conniff (this is the true miracle of Christmas -- me listening to the Ray Conniff Singers), Sarah McLachlin, She and Him, the Roches, and others. (One note about Conniff -- his 1959 album Christmas with Conniff includes the very pretty song "Christmas Bride," which I always loved. Yet I've never heard it performed by any other artist, even though its authorship is "Traditional.")

I agree that the holiday has become way too commercialized. I've seen Christmas commercials as early as September (and next year perhaps on the Fourth of July). Jesus might be "the reason for the season" in other cultures, but here in the U.S. it's the newest Chia Pet. So I'm with Charlie Brown and Linus on this one. I think we're all indoctrinated at an early age (my generation took Santa sliding down a snowy hill on a Norelco shaver for granted), and it's hard to break free of all that initial brainwashing. I've learned to accept Madison Avenue's assault on our traditional values as something to be amused by and then promptly ignore. This takes practice, but it can be done.

However -- however -- there is one new wrinkle in all this commercialization that is absolutely making my blood boil, and I should have seen it coming: Christmas shopping on Thanksgiving night. Why otherwise sane Americans would risk being anywhere near a store on Black Friday itself (it seems Walmart in particular has become the new American Pamplona) beats me. But don't even tell me people are going to leave their homes on a day set aside for food, family, and football to go Christmas shopping while still in the stuporous throes of turkey-induced Tryptophan. (Actually, that's a medical myth; chicken has more Tryptophan than turkey does. What we suffer from on Thanksgiving is called "overeating.") It's bad enough that people are willing to cut short one of the most special days of the year to go shopping, but what about those poor retail employees who have to be there? I'm sure they receive some sort of extra compensation for their sacrifice (at least they'd better), but it shouldn't even have to be an option. That's beyond shameful; it's inhumane.

*** BREAKING NEWS ***

Just as I started wondering how long I could keep cranking these posts out six days a week, a friend yesterday mentioned that she was having trouble keeping up with so many. So that pretty much made my mind up for me. I'm going to cut back to just Mondays and Thursdays; that should keep my brain cells fresh. So see you next week!

Working Out, or The Pleasures of Procrastination

Exercise is a lot like love. You meet, pledge your troth, have a long honeymoon period, and then after a while you start coming home later and later, you forget birthdays and anniversaries, and if things get bad enough you stop speaking altogether. Later on, you look at old photos and sadly remember the way it used to be.

Last June, I stepped into a thrift store fitting room to try on a shirt. I have no full-length mirrors at home, so I hadn't seen my body for a few years. I took off the shirt I was wearing, looked in the mirror, and screamed. Would I make it to the delivery room before my water broke?!

I was always the skinny kid, the one with the pet tapeworm that ate everything anyone set before it. But somewhere along the way the tapeworm moved out and left a vacant stomach behind. So who was this stranger staring back at me in the dressing room? It wasn't me. It was the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

I left the store empty-handed and got off the bus at the downtown YMCA. The front desk staff rushed me into the ICU, where I filled out a membership form before being taken through the facility to see the machines that would save my life.

(I know what you're thinking right now: "Pledge your troth?")

Long story short: in three months I lost the weight. That was the easy part. I maintained the new weight up through October, eating right and working out five or six days a week. But then came . . . The Holidays. I thought I was impervious to setbacks. I said to myself, "What's one potato chip going to do to me? Haven't I earned it? OK, now what are two going to do?" Do you have any idea how difficult it is to regain momentum after 8,628 potato chips? My holidays lasted four months because I started listening to The Little Voice Inside. You might recognize it:

"You're already home. Why go out again just to get all sweaty?"

"You've kept the weight off all this time. Have another Ding Dong."

"That's OK, you'll work out tomorrow. Well, that depends on when the big game will be televised."

I call it procrastination by rationalization. No, it isn't fun. But don't most of us do it? No matter how accomplished I might feel, picking up where I left off feels like the hardest thing in the world because I've allowed myself to stand still. Mercifully, mysteriously, I've managed to keep my weight down, even though only I work out half the time now and can't resist the occasional strawberry shake at my local Fanci Freez. But why isn't it easy anymore? I want to go back to that thrift store mirror and say, "Motivate me!" But because I now look like I'm done giving birth to triplets, there's no more urgency. I have to jump-start the momentum on my own.

Writer's block is another serious impediment to doing what I love. I sit down every day and devote a set amount of time in front of a blank notebook, scribbling down whatever brainstorms drizzle their way into my head. Some days nothing comes. That's OK. Two days? Mere child's play. But when it gets to be a week or two, I suddenly realize this has the potential to become the Berlin Wall of writer's blocks. Pacing won't help. Distracting myself with other tasks won't do it, either. Short of having Ronald Reagan come over and say, "Mr. Corvaia, tear down that wall," I feel just the way I do when I've been away from the gym for a few days -- it's becoming too comfortable not doing what I love. How can I not want to? Sometimes I think the worst word God ever invented is "complacency." How did He even know what it was? If He had been complacent, we might still be waiting around for Him to get on with the eighth day.

But then an amazing thing happens. One day the block disappears, and the next poem I write turns out to be the best poem ever produced in Western civilization. I'm telling you, the angels weep. Of course, this doesn't actually happen, but I feel as if I've climbed another rung up the ladder of creativity; I'm convinced this new poem is slightly better than anything else I've ever done. So what feels like death is really dormancy. This process usually lasts a few weeks at most. My last block, though? It lasted a year. I was almost done traversing the five stages of grief (I'd just gone from depression to acceptance -- I literally thought I would never write again, and that was OK) -- when I sat down to write a grocery list and out popped a first draft. I had to continue it on paper larger than the list sheets that stuck to my refrigerator, but there was no stopping me. I think I even wrote across the tabletop on my way from one sheet to the other because I was afraid even a pause would kill the momentum.

Although the story has two happy endings -- I liked the poem and I eventually got it placed -- my plan to be a lean, mean writing machine proved to be premature. Poems are coming out far and few between lately; each one seems to take more and more effort. Plus, I don't like the new stuff very much. That first poem set the bar high, and, except for rare blessings like that, I'm easily disappointed.

So, while it sounds like I'm shifting topics here, I'm really not. Exercise is a lot like writing. Either we keep going, or we learn to tell the difference between speed bumps and Berlin Walls. In fact, writing is a lot like love, too. (Not really. I was just going for a syllogism.)

Restaurants I Have Known and Loved (a sequel)

Yesterday I wrote about the fast food restaurants of my youth while growing up in Miami. But that was 44 years ago, and I've eaten a few meals since then. Hence, a sequel (and, as sequels like to say, This Time It's Personal).


I'm not quite finished with Miami:

Florida is of course known for its seafood. But my family, which, as I wrote yesterday, moved there from New Jersey when we were all pretty young, never caught on to that. The only seafood I ate at home came from a can. Maybe twice in 15 years, my parents treated visiting relatives from up north to dinner at a seafood restaurant. My sister and I came along, of course, so that our cousins wouldn't be bored stiff. But afterwards, my mother never said to my father, "Hey, remember that lobster we had that time? Why don't you pick up a few on your way home?" It just never became an acquired taste, for any of us. I had my first shrimp when I was 20; it opened a whole new world.

I had my first deep dish pizza at My Pi, which opened during the 1970s in Sunny Isles. I thought it was strange and exotic, but once I moved to New Jersey, I learned that a slice of hot New York pizza is the only way to go.

New Jersey/New York:

As I mentioned yesterday, I got my fill of White Castle burgers during the four years I lived there. But for hot dogs, the place to be was Nathan's Famous. On the streets of Manhattan, you could stop at any Sabrett sidewalk stand for a decent dog, but Nathan's Famous was the filet mignon of wieners, and Nathan's in Times Square was the place to be. Many times I sat in the window watching the flotsam and jetsam of what was midtown New York in the 1970s as I savored a frank and those legendary fries. It was one of those places I never thought would vanish, like the Bleecker Street Cinema and Tower Records, but it turned out that nothing was forever, not even disco. (Well, we were pretty happy about that.)

But that was just one side of the river. It surprised me how many Garden State residents refused to cross over to the Dark Side that was New York City. For them, there was only one place in New Jersey to go for a true, all-American meal. They went to the diner. Any diner, actually. You've probably been to one almost wherever you are, or likely a facsimile of one. The original diners were prefab structures, many of which had a stainless steel exterior. They stayed open late. Their laminated menus did not include sushi. It was the place for almost anything -- lovers' assignations, late-night kibitzing with the gang, reunions, even funeral parties. I once accompanied a large family as they made a beeline for the nearest diner following a relative's burial service. Diners fit any mood and serve any purpose (including eating). Don't be fooled by imitations.

Kansas:

When most people who've never been there think of Kansas, they think of The Wizard of Oz. When I think of Kansas, I think of In Cold Blood. Different strokes, I guess. But where food is involved, most native Kansans probably think the same thing: chicken fried steak. It was difficult to avoid in any town you went to, and who'd want to try? It was great for breakfast with biscuits and gravy, great for dinner with mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. So what if every time you pulled up to a restaurant, your arteries began acting like a dog going to the vet? It was worth the risk. One of the best places for chicken fried steak in Wichita (all my favorite Kansas meals were in Wichita) was the Cowboy, where they cut off your necktie if you walked in wearing one. The Cowboy closed before the 1980s ended, though, probably because the whole country was moving toward healthier eating. I'm sure that's why Grandy's must have gone under. Grandy's was a popular chain best known for its generous country breakfasts. It was fast food, but you sure couldn't eat it fast. People probably stopped going when they realized it was cheaper just to inject Crisco into their veins.

If I should ever find myself on Death Row for some silly reason (still stuck on In Cold Blood, I guess), I know what I want my last meal to be: a chicken salad sandwich from downtown Wichita's Old Mill Tasty Shop. It's just over 80 years old and still has the original lunch counter. The shakes are to die for, but it's the chicken salad that makes me wish I'd never moved away. I once pestered the owner for the recipe, but she handed me a menu instead. My favorite employee was Gale, who was an Old Mill veteran with an eternally sunny disposition and who always wore a button that said, "Why Be Normal?" Getting seated at lunchtime was a challenge; there are plenty of booths and tables, but the place really does need more space. That being said, though, I wouldn't change a thing. (Once, years later, I wrote to ask if they could ship me a chicken salad sandwich. The owner mailed me a menu instead.)

I should mention Spangles, just your basic burger chain that originated in Wichita and expanded to include many locations throughout south central Kansas. I mention it because I lived there when the first store opened, and in the months preceding that grand event, the owners held a citywide contest to see who could come up with the best name for it.  The woman who came up with Spangles won free meals for a year for, I'm not certain anymore, probably at least a year. I remember thinking it should have been for life.

Washington:

I've never had a geoduck (pronounced "gooey-duck"), but apparently people ate them in Western Washington. (Nobody I knew, but certainly someone.) They're clams, but how they fit into the clamshell I haven't a clue. The geoduck looks like -- there's no getting around it -- an elephant schlong. I've never seen an elephant schlong, but I'm willing to bet there's a resemblance. Google some images and see if you don't agree. My friends and I did that at a party recently, and it was all we could do -- all of us trying to be good Christians -- to refrain from saying what we were thinking. Hysterical laughter ensued instead.

If you're looking for a good steak, the Metropolitan in Seattle is pricey but outstanding. I prefer Daniel's Broiler, which is in Seattle but there's also one in downtown Bellevue, on the other side of Lake Washington (the area known as the Eastside). It's pricey but outstanding -- and also the best steak I've ever eaten. I loved that steak. I wanted to marry it and take it on a cruise.

Being on the Pacific Rim, the region has a large Japanese population, and what I liked best about Seattle and the Eastside was the proliferation of teriyaki restaurants. I acquired an insatiable appetite for it and must have ordered teriyaki chicken with white rice (hold the veggies) at least once a week for 14 years. If you're ever on the Eastside, visit Teriyaki Madness in Kirkland. Not only is it delicious, but the portions are so large that I'm still working on a dinner I ordered in 2004.

Maine:

I'm almost 62 and still can't negotiate a lobster. (Yes, after 19 years in Florida, I finally had lobster.) I mean all the pulling and the twisting and trying to use that nutcracker thing. The one time I finally figured it out, the paucity of meat wasn't worth the month I spent in physical therapy. Mainers love them, though, like most seafood aficionados. I took the easy route and ate lobster rolls instead. Lobster rolls are sandwiches filled with lobster meat, soaked -- soaked -- in butter and slathered -- slathered! -- in mayonnaise. When you order one, you might as well just scrape half of it onto your lap, since that's where it's going to end up anyway.

Idaho:

So far, I can only vouch for Idaho cuisine here in Boise, my latest hometown. You have no idea how happy I was to come here from Maine and find Yokozuna Teriyaki after five years of deprivation in the Northeast. It's easily as good as the teriyaki in Washington. Once a month or so, I walk to their downtown location and order my usual -- chicken teriyaki with white rice (hold the veggies) -- then sit in their window overlooking 8th Street and read a book or watch the passersby.

Chandler's is the most expensive steakhouse in Boise and possibly the whole state. In order to eat there, I'd need a couple of friends to cash out their 401(k)'s. That would take care of dessert.

Finally, Black Bear Restaurant specializes in large portions. It's so named because not even a black bear could finish a meal there. You're guaranteed to bring home leftovers, but you'll need two people to haul the takeout box to your car.

Memories of Fast Food

Boise, Idaho, has its innumerable charms, but there's one thing it doesn't have -- a White Castle. Nevertheless, I suppose I'll go on living here if I have to.

Growing up in Miami, I'd never heard of White Castle, but we did have its tropical knockoff, Royal Castle. Both chains were much the same, the chief feature being sliders, those miniature burgers with the pickles, the grilled onions, and the soft, soft buns. I believe, though I'm no longer certain, that each patty had five holes in it, like its northern counterpart, so that it would cook faster and wouldn't have to be flipped over. But Royal Castle had one thing White Castle didn't -- birch beer. The champagne of soda, nectar of the gods. It was like root beer, only it wasn't. I'm amazed that I've never seen it sold anywhere else in the country. If you've seen it, please let me know where and what their shipping address is.

The term "sliders" was originally a derogatory term. So was "belly bombers." The two chains eventually capitulated and made "sliders" part of their business vernacular. ("Belly bombers" never did catch on.) These days, many restaurants offer "sliders" on their menus, but most of the ones I've tried are just your basic ground beef cooked the way any other hamburger would be made. The magic is gone. So are Royal Castles. In fact, only one remains today (or did as of last year), on 79th Street in Miami. It should be declared a historical landmark and birch beer placed on a list of endangered species.

Miami was also the birthplace of "the king on the bun," Burger King. My sister's first job was at a Burger King; I think she might still have her name tag. The jingle went, "It takes two hands to handle a Whopper," and when I was a kid it was certainly true for me, anyway. Burger Kings were everywhere; I don't know when McDonald's first appeared, but I was in high school before I ever saw one. Burger King was the first restaurant down there to encourage patrons to "have it your way." I often did -- I went to Royal Castle.

In the early 1960s, we had a drive-in restaurant at the end of our block called the Majorette. This was a holdover from the previous decade, when carhops wore roller skates and you had to lower your windows halfway so trays could be hooked onto them. When we were in first grade, my best friend Mike and I had never had tasted French fries. So one day we pooled our lunch money and bought one small order of fries from the Majorette on our way home from school. My parents weren't home yet, so we sat on the steps in front of the apartment and savored our first bites. I remember they were a little bit crispy and a whole lot salty. Mike immediately encouraged his mother to buy big bags of crinkly fries to keep in the freezer, and the two of us gorged ourselves on them whenever I spent the night there.

Like many cities nationwide, Miami was blessed with Woolworth's lunch counters. My favorite was downtown on Flagler Street. It was actually called Woolworth's 5&10, as in you could actually buy a few things for five and ten cents. It was more than a drug store and less than a department store, but the lunch counter was its true claim to fame. Their hamburgers were notes for their sublime greasiness. The fries, like the buns, had a nice crispiness to them. The counters were amazingly long, and the tireless waitresses, who worked hard and looked as if 40 were the new 80, must have put in a few miles each day. Unfortunately, the kitchen windows weren't nearly as long as the counters, so the waitresses often had to shout your order for the cook to hear. I imagine pedestrians on Flagler must have wondered what the racket was about.

A local restaurant chain called Lum's was famous for its hot dogs steamed in beer. That might not sound appealing, but you'd be surprised. One of its managers, a man named Hal, opened his own restaurant in North Miami Beach and called it Hal's Mug 'n Munch. He served hot dogs and fries in the same red plastic dishes as Lum's, and I think he had a few other things Lum's did as well. I'm sure he came by them honestly, but I never wanted to ask. (His dogs weren't steamed in beer; Lum's surely must have had a patent on that.) My first job was at the Mug 'n' Munch, working in the kitchen. Hal was, oh, how to put this gently . . . parsimonious? I earned a dollar an hour and, after a year or so, had to pledge my future firstborn child to get a twenty-five cent raise. But he was a great guy, and he never forgot me. Four years after I'd left Miami to join the Navy, I dropped by the Mug 'n Munch when I returned home. He was elated to see me, and he served me a Coke while we stood on either side of the counter and recalled old times. Good old Hal. If he hadn't charged me for the soda, I would have been disappointed.

Because my parents both worked, we had a catering service deliver suppers to our door, which whoever got home first would find on the outside steps. They came in stacked tins, and the food was still hot when my mother opened them on the kitchen counter. It wasn't a bad meal, but the menu got old pretty quickly, and some of the selections were less than stellar. (To this day, my sister won't go near candied yams.) But on those weeknights when we felt like a change, the four of us would eat dinner at Walgreen's, which had a small dining area in those days. I wouldn't exactly call what they served fast food, but, like meals at Woolworth's, you ate quickly because the noisy retail environment discouraged leisurely dining.

In North Miami Beach, we had a Coney Island, part of the Northeast chain of outdoor fast food restaurants. Coney Island sold egg creams, which I had avoided all those years until my friend Rich insisted I have one went I returned for a visit in the mid-1980s. Just the sound of it -- "egg" and "cream" -- conjured up all kinds of unsavory associations. But it turned out to be delicious. It had nothing to do with either eggs or cream; instead, it was milk, soda water, and chocolate syrup whipped together to create a kind of fizzy confection. If it had only been called "chocolate surprise" or something alluring like that, I'd have been drinking them all those years.

Ultimately, though, when my sister and I recall our favorite childhood restaurants, one place stands high above the rest, even Royal Castle. It was Fun Fair, a long since defunct outdoor fast food emporium located along the Biscayne Causeway between Miami Beach and the city. After a day at the ocean, the four of us would stop by there in our bathing suits on the way home. My mother and sister would wait at one of the picnic tables under the large covered patio while my father and I ordered at the counter. I always got a foot-long hot dog. It's funny how some sensations stay with you. I can still taste that hot dog today, the juiciness inside, the slightly overcooked skin outside. When we were finished eating, my sister and I would climb on a few mechanical rides in back. I do believe that sometimes she and I went along to the beach with our parents just so we could stop at Fun Fair at the end of the day.

I began this post by mentioning White Castle. When I moved from Florida to New Jersey in 1977, White Castles became my new go-to place for comfort food. One of them was just half a block from where I was living, and sometimes late on a Saturday night I would walk over for six burgers and a large order of fries, then bring the sack home ("Buy 'em by the sack") and eat while watching Saturday Night Live. It wasn't the same without birch beer, though; even the flavor of the burgers wasn't quite the same as the sliders I grew up on. The employees served you through an opening in wire mesh that protected them from crime, and the parking lots were scavenged by pigeons instead of seagulls. But the stomach aches were still the same, and after eating that late, I had all night long to remember those candied yams and the first French fry I ever tasted.


Tomorrow: Restaurants I Have Known and Loved (a sequel)