Keep the Coffee Comimg

Last night it poured, and the clouds are still hanging around though the sun did break through a couple of times. It will be warm, in the low 70’s. I will be cleaning. Later I will also go to the dump, and I need a few groceries.

My muse seems to have taken a vacation. I keep writing then I delete what I wrote. Coffee has been around for close to twenty years. It started on Blogger, got kicked off then moved here to WordPress. Some of my videos do get taken down, but there no threats of WordPress kicking me to the curb. I’m going to get more coffee, the liquid sort, and hope for inspiration.

When I was a kid, my father had a savage index finger. When he reprimanded any of us, he’d use it for emphasis by pointing at us and sometimes jabbing us in the chest. Walking backwards didn’t help. He just followed. We learned the response was just to nod and agree. My sister tells the story of one summer night. Both my sisters and our cousin, who stayed with us over the summer, sneaked out to swim in the pond near our house. They got caught. My sisters went up the stairs to their bedroom first with my cousin last. My father walked behind her and jabbed her on the back with that lethal finger all the way up the stairs while reprimanding them the whole while. My sisters laughed quietly. They had planned perfectly. They knew what my father would do.

When I was a kid, I’d eat what was served because my mother never cooked foods she knew we wouldn’t eat. Beans were on the cusp. The first weird food I ate was spaghetti with clam sauce. That was at my aunt’s house. She lived in East Boston right across from the tunnel entrance. Her apartment was over my uncle’s fish market. I remember thinking the spaghetti smelled weird, and it had no red sauce or gravy as my aunt called it. Her husband was Italian, my Uncle Lorrie, and that’s what his family called it. She urged me so I tried it. It was, to my surprise, tasty. From then on, I was willing to give strange foods a taste.

Let’s see. I have eaten eel, not so strange, octopus, also not so strange, goat, a bit bony, bush meat, a rodent I learned latter was grass cutter, snake, just weird, Guinea pig, good but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was eating someone’s pet, chocolate covered grasshoppers, eaten on a dare, and a variety of odd foods in Ghana. When I travel, I eat the food of the countries I am visiting. Many times I don’t ask questions. I just eat.

The morning is dark, breezy and chilly. Rain is predicted. The dogs aren’t anxious to be out in the yard. One is upstairs on the bed, and the other is asleep on the couch. The label of dumb animals doesn’t apply here.

When I was a kid, I thought my world was huge. I could wander all over, anywhere I wanted. I had favorite places in town. I used to stop at the horse barn behind the town hall. Around the corner was the ragman’s house. Its porch was tilting from the weight of all the papers stored on it. The tracks weren’t far from there. I always thought of them as a shortcut. When I walked the tracks, I’d sometimes walk on the rail. I’d use my arms to help my balance. They didn’t help much. Usually, I wandered alone. My neighborhood friends and I walked to school together, but they weren’t roamers. I wanted to see everything.

My mother was a master at ground beef. My favorite was always her meatloaf. I also liked her ground beef in gravy over mashed potatoes. We didn’t have it often, but I liked her Chinese dinner. It was Chinese because it had water chestnuts and bean sprouts with the ground beef. She’d make it in her electric frying pan on the counter. It was topped with chow mein noodles. All we needed were chop sticks.

On cold days, my mother sometimes gave us soup in our thermoses for lunch. Mostly it was chicken noodle, the universal soup for kids. She’d include Saltines, and she always remembered to add the spoon. The rest of lunch was a half sandwich and dessert. I remember there was a skill in pouring the soup into the thermos top, into the cup. A plop of the meat meant a splash landing on the desk or sometimes on my blouse.

Today I have a concert, the second one of the week. Right now I am watching Attack of the Crab Monsters from 1957. I love these old black and white science fiction movies. In this, the navy is checking to see if radioactive dust did anything to the plants and animals. They have a surprise coming.