The Tractor

A family tradition.  Upper left, me on Uncle Hugo’s Farmall B in the fifties.  Upper center and right, the whole family on the same Farmall in 1983.  Bottom, me on the Farmall in 2010.

- Poppa

Golden Memories

Went to my 40th High School reunion last weekend and got access to my old high school building to take some pictures.  The building was unchanged, at least in the hallways; there were computers in the classrooms.

Ours was the last high school class to graduate from this building.  It’s been the Middle School for the last 40 years.  Now Algona is building a new middle school and the fate of the old building is uncertain.

The picture of the old AHS central hall was modified using Photomatix.

- Poppa

The Central Stacks

Wednesday I made what may be my last pilgrimage to the Central Stacks before they are refurbished into mundanity.  I was able to get some photos for the memory banks.

- Poppa

Old Rock Stars

Laugh-out-loud funny.   Thanks to Diane (AKA, the Blue Ridge Gal), another Wandering Iowegian.  She’s added a new nostalgia blog, Dragging Main, about life in Algona Iowa in the sixties and seventies.

- Poppa

For Those of Us Who Miss The Cold War. . . .

The Ridiculous: The Crazy Old Man and Psycho-Bitch Wineries

We usually take at least one Missouri winery tour each year with friends and family in remembrance of Tom, Mary Jo’s husband, who enjoyed touring the wine country.  This year we started on Saturday with the Yellow Farmhouse Vineyard and Winery in Defiance, MO.  It was a beautiful day and a great setting.  Mary Jo came prepared with sausage, cheese, cherries, peppers, hummus, and sunglasses. 

There was nothing ridiculous about the setting or the company, but Doug (AKA Jake) introduced us to bottles from The Crazy Old Man and Psycho-Bitch Wineries.  They are sub-micro wineries that exist only in Doug’s (AKA Crazy Old Man’s) fevered imagination.

The alcohol content of the Psycho-Bitch wine is “Who gives a shit?”  It’s enough to make you laugh ’til the wine comes out your nose.

On Sunday we paid our first visit to the Olivette Diner, a local landmark almost as old as we are.  I ordered a Slinger, and was thrilled to get the classic version, hash browns, hamburger patties, and eggs any way, all covered by chili garnished with cheese and raw onions.  I now consider the Olivette Diner Slinger to be my current favorite in the St. Louis area.  There’s nothing ridiculous about a good diner, either, but it’s a long way from The Stone Soup Cottage.  I do love both extremes.

- Poppa

How We Came to Eat Fresh Sweet Corn Last Weekend

Disclaimer: I did not create the amusing corn-eating-cat graphic.

Ideally, the way to eat sweet corn is to bring the water to a boil, AND THEN go pick the corn from your garden, shuck it as you cross the back yard, and drop it right in the pot to cook.  I’ve only done that once in my life, back in the ‘70s on Kim and Jim’s farm, and it was a life-changing corn experience.  But if you can’t do that, at least try to find ears that were still on the plant when the sun came up on the day you’re going to eat them.

It’s been years since we’ve had sweet corn fresh from the fields.  I know we haven’t had any this millennium since we’ve never found a roadside stand around St. Louis and we don’t know anybody here who grows it.   Grocery store corn is better than no sweet corn, and the farmer’s market corn we’ve had hasn’t been much better than grocery store corn.  It’s a little chewy, a little starchy, but still good and that’s what we’ve settled for.

But enough about that for now.  This is supposed to be about eating fresh sweet corn last weekend.

Around the time Nan and I were born, Nan’s parents bought themselves a nice floor lamp, very modern for its day.  For over 50 years, the lamp sat in the Moore home, minding its own business, not causing any trouble.  Then Nan’s mother moved and we brought the lamp back to our place to grace the floor next to my TV-watchin’, lap-top-usin’, book-readin’ chair.

We dressed it up a little, replacing the brittle old shade with a new one and adding a filial made from a beautiful blue purie shooter.  For the first time in many years, the lamp was expected to perform on a nightly basis and its old circuitry just wasn’t up to it anymore.  It had a three-level bulb, and, level by level, it stopped working unless you jiggled the lamp.  One night, no amount of jiggling would persuade it to work.  It was time to change the switch, and, since the cord itself was old and brittle, time to change the cord.

Easier said than done.  It wasn’t as simple as snaking the cord through a tube; there were four right angle turns required because the lamp had a double-jointed swivel at the top.  I finally figured out how to disassemble the whole thing down to its component pieces by unscrewing the heavy metal disk that served as ballast in the base plate.  After much muttering and grumbling, Nan and I succeeded in getting the cord through all of the bends only to discover I’d gotten a loop of the cord trapped between the metal disk and the base plate and I stripped the cord and broke the wire while pulling it out.  Naturally, we didn’t have what we needed to fix the cord in the house, so the lamp sat in a corner until we got a round tuit.

Last weekend there were thousands of baseball fans swarming around Downtown because of the introductory events leading up to the All-Star Game on Tuesday when Obama and his sharpshooters will no doubt completely shut the city down (except for pedestrian traffic) when he comes to throw something at Busch Stadium.  As much as I enjoy seeing people spend money in my neighborhood, I hate trying to get around Downtown in a car when something like this is going on; streets are closed or jammed, and every now and then some yahoo blocks the entrance to our garage, leaving us trapped in or blocked out, depending on which side of the door we’re on when it happens.

We had every intention of barricading ourselves in our Fortress of Solitude all weekend.  But I said I thought the recycling was getting full and we could probably make a quick dash to the bins, and Nan suggested going an extra few miles to Home Despot [sic] for the hardware we needed for the lamp and reward ourselves with a nice lunch somewhere.  By the time we’d finished our shopping at the Big Orange Box, we were starving.  OK, we weren’t actually starving, but we were both one of the 1 in 8 people in America who were hungry at that point in time.

I lobbied hard for Gioia’s Deli, one of my all-time favorites, but when we got there, we found they were on vacation (it’s a small operation).  Nan remembered reading in Sauce Magazine that The Royale has a burger that got good marks in a recent He Said/She Said article.  We’ve known of The Royale for several years; it was opened by a Friend of a Friend.  But the menu always looked a little too New Age for me, so we’d never tried it.  However, a highly regarded He Said/She Said burger is not to be dismissed lightly.  We were in the neighborhood, and we went.

It was an altogether positive experience.  The burger was called the Royale, a half-pound of Australian-raised Wagyu Kobe beef on a perfectly sized slightly sweet bun reminiscent of a brioche.  If you wanted cheese on it, you can get a little extra frisson when you order a “Royale with Cheese.”  Nan had a fish taco that was outstanding.  The place has a cool hipster vibe, the specialty drinks look interesting, and there’s no smoking inside.  I’m pretty sure we’ll be back.

 

Royale with Cheese

Fish Taco

And now for the dénouement.  When we walked in the door of The Royale, we saw a copy of the Sauce Magazine that led us here.  We didn’t own a copy, so we picked one up, perused it, and noticed an article about a place to buy fresh sweet corn, Keller Farms.  They sell fresh sweet corn from four different stands just across the river in Illinois.  Sold the same day it was picked.  We went.  It was good.  We’ll go back.  The kernels popped between your teeth like caviar.

And all because fifty years ago, Nan’s parents bought a lamp.

- Poppa

Returning to the Scene of the Marriage

Several months ago, Nan bought tickets to a Gipsy Kings (yes, that’s how they spell their name) concert at Powell Symphony Hall.  She bought them for the evening of June 5th, our 33rd wedding anniversary.  The date was purely a coincidence; June 5th was the only night they were in St. Louis.  Nan is a Gipsy Kings fan.  I’m not, particularly.  I don’t dislike them, I find their music enjoyable, but I don’t feel about them the way I feel about Led Zeppelin, Dread Zeppelin, or John Prine. 

We had planned to have a pre-concert dinner at Vito’s, a good restaurant convenient to Powell Hall, but bad planning on my part and scarcity of parking caused us to seek dinner someplace closer to the venue.  We walked down Grand Avenue, looking for alternatives, and settled on a place called Wm. Shakespeare’s Gastropub.  Since we like both gastronomy and pubs, we decided to give it a try.  I had a snort of Jameson’s and excellent fish and chips, and Nan had a serviceable curry.  It wasn’t until we paid our bill and walked across the street that we realized we’d been dining in the Old University Club building.  We were married in this building, 33 years ago to the day.

We were married at Seminex, the Concordia Seminary in Exile.  In 1976, Seminex occupied the top floors of the Old University Club building on Grand Avenue.  Our officiant was Father John Damm, the founding academic dean of Seminex and an old friend of Nan’s family.  Nan grew up calling him ”Uncle John.”  We were married on the 10th floor and had our reception on the top floor.  We were amused that we were oblivious to where we were having supper.  We never fail to point the building out when we’re with friends.

We finished our walk to Powell Hall and found our seats, third row center.  The King’s percussion gear was extensive.

The Gipsy Kings are an amalgam of two families backed by two drummers, a keyboardist and a bass player.  They were introduced as some of France’s most popular musicians.  I had no idea they originated in France, I assumed they were Spanish or Latin-American.  Turns out, they were born in France, but their parents were Catalonian.  They’re credited with introducing Rumba Catalana to a worldwide audience.

The introduction of the Kings was the last English we heard from the stage that night.  Being monolingual, Nan and I couldn’t understand a word the Kings were singing.  It could have been, “Spam-Spam-Spam-Spam-Spam-Baked-Beans-and-Spam” for all we knew.  The sound system wasn’t doing a very good job of projecting the vocals, but it didn’t seem to matter, those who understood the words were singing along from memory.  During the last couple of numbers, fans poured down the aisles to gyrate in front of the stage.

The Gipsy Kings put on one hell of a show.  I may not be a fan of their recordings, but I loved seeing their performance.

- Poppa

The Inflatable Television

The Downtown St. Louis Partnership is always looking for ways to entertain and engage the downtown St. Louis residents.  One of the latest projects is the showing of movies at the Old Post Office Plaza, downtown’s latest public space.  We went to the first movie Thursday evening, a showing of Jaws.

When we arrived at the Plaza, we were met by the sight of a twenty-foot tall inflatable TV.  The “inflatable” aspect applied to the frame, the image was displayed on a standard projection screen with the projector working from behind the screen.  Before the movie started, the organizers passed out ballots to determine what the next film would be.   After Jaws was over, they announced that the next movie would be Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I’ve probably seen Jaws a dozen times, but it was still fun to see it again.  That movie freaked me (and everybody else) out when it was released in 1975.  I had nightmares for months about seeing Ben Gardner’s head.

The Plaza event was fun.  There was a hot dog vendor there and he was doing a brisk business; he sold out of dogs and sausages before the movie was over, though he’d been there since 10 AM, so he didn’t sell them all at the movie.  The weather was great, cool and low humidity, low for St. Louis, anyway, and our folding chairs were comfortable.  We’ll probably go back to see the next movie unless it’s too hot and sticky.

- Poppa

Pork Steaks, Beans, Bacon, Peanut Butter, and Corn. And Little Nan. And Cats.

You know it’s Spring in St Louis when the Pork Steaks can be seen in back yards around the city.  They’re usually be found where Cole Slaw, Pea Salad, and Baked Beans are also emerging into the sunlight.  This one was captured at the home of Joe and Marie last weekend.

For several years, we’ve been trying to replicate the  Unwritten Corn-on-the-Cob Recipe of H. Earle Moore.  Earle was the Moore Family Patriarch and the Maternal Grandfather of Leah and Erin.  At one memorable back yard barbecue in the mid-seventies, he grilled corn-on-the cob using a method I’ve never heard of before or since.

 He smeared peanut butter on a raw ear of sweet corn. . . .

. . . .wrapped it with raw bacon, rolled it in aluminium foil, and cooked it on the grill for X amount of minutes.  When he judged it to be done, the bacon was cooked, the peanut butter was melty and delicious, and the corn was perfect.  We haven’t quite recreated it yet.  We may be using too much peanut butter, or maybe we need to blend it with regular butter.  But we’ll keep trying. 

The post-Pork Steak entertainment was sorting through boxes of old 3-D slides from the Moore 1950s and 1960s.  We only got through about 5% of the total.  They were divvied up based on who was striking the cutest or most embarrassing pose.  This is Nan in the foreground, stealing the scene at Mary-Jo’s 4th birthday party.  Our flatbed scanner doesn’t do the slides justice.  We’ll either need to get a new scanner, one equipped with a back-light to handle slides, or have them digitized professionally.

It’s been a while since I posted a Cute Cat © picture.  Here’s Rufus, looking very sly and devil-may-care, like a real bon vivant.  He’s actually just so blissed out he’s about to drool on me.

And last, proof of McGregor’s full recovery from his spinal injury.  Rufus is cuddling him again.  While he was still sick, Rufus wouldn’t have anything to do with him, probably because McGregor smelled like a cat box.

- Poppa