Leaving Helene in the lurch



My brother and SIL just visited, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  Sitting around the kitchen table we got to reminiscing and laughing our fool heads off about the Salem days.

Bruce got a dog, named Pud, from somebody or other at the State Penitentiary.  Pud was fully grown when we got him, his name was short for Puddles for obvious puppyhood reasons, which was completely incongruous as the adult dog was big, strong, and fierce.  He was brown and black in color with a curled tail; we suspected some Norwegian Elkhound lineage. He was fiercely protective.  In sort of a “Take Back the Night” move, I’d leash him up and we’d go walking around town.  With his ominous growl and flashing bared white fangs, we never had a lick of trouble.

He hated men in general, but particularly men in uniform.  One day hearing a commotion, I went outside and there was the mailman fending off the attacking dog with a (fortuitously) large package.  I was able to drag Pud to the fenced backyard.  We were not popular with the postal service.

Bruce and his buddies were out on the street playing basketball, Pud hanging out with them, when a motorcycle cop drove past.  Pud loved motorcycles and would go tearing around after Bruce on his dirt bike.  But that uniform thing…  Pud went chasing after the cop, growling and snapping until he got a grip on the man’s pant leg.  The cop was kicking at the dog but couldn’t get loose, until he ran the motorcycle into a utility pole.   

The cop yelled, “Whose dog is this?” right as Helene tootled up in her gold Ford XL and pulled into the driveway.  The boys pointed at her, then melted away.  Welcome home, ha!


Then there was the time I ran out of gas on the corner of 17th and Center, driving a huge old Bonneville, creating a bottleneck on the narrow streets.  I ran to the closest store, (a head shop tarted up with painted peace signs and marijuana leaves) and used the phone to call Mom for assistance.  She made it there quickly, armed with a gas can and a piece of aluminum foil to shape into a funnel (Mom came up with so many creative uses for aluminum foil, a product she diligently washed and saved for who knew what occasion.)  But it was 3 p.m. and by now the special needs schools were emptying, kids walking home past stranded (and mortified) me, a diversion to the normal routine.  So a horde of kids were offering assistance and advice.  There was one most persistent guy who was older and probably from some other program.  (Missing most of his teeth and appearing somewhat maniacal, he looked right out of “Deliverance” central casting.)   Mom accepted all the advice while doing exactly what she intended:  funneling gas into the tank then putting a little on the carburetor, finally saying “Now try the key” which I did.  The engine turned over.  I drove off.  Looking in the rear view mirror, there was Mom and her gas can and her following including the Deliverance man still talking, out in the street, I laughed all the way to the gas station. 

Good thing that woman had a sense of humor.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tastes like Chicken

Image
  Jim visited brother Dan in Palau mid 70s and came back with some wild stories of these gloriously beautiful tropical islands.  The ones that stuck with me are pretty much food related, go figure.  There was an open-air movie theatre in Peleliu filled with wooden benches for seating.  Rats were bold enough to scavenge food whenever, so movie viewers kept their feet up on the forward bench.   Hamburgers were served with a cabbage leaf for greenery, there being no iceberg lettuce on the island.  He met our friend Virginia there, she was maybe 13.  That girl took down fruit bats with a sling shot, a treat for her grandmother. They are a large bat species with a two-foot wingspan. She’d spot a roosting fruit bat hanging upside down from a tree branch, pop a small rock into the slingshot, eyeball the angle and let loose.  She had incredible aim.  She’d  nonchalantly balance in a squat to  husk a coconut wit...
Read more

Ethel strikes back

Image
  Grandma was a teacher and she drove the 18 miles from Powers to Myrtle Point every school day.  It’s a pretty drive on a narrow road that hugs the hillside high above the snaking south fork of the Coquille River, past high pastures and a few scattered houses. One day there went Ethel on her morning commute when she noticed “Howard Post” boldly painted on a large rock embedded in the hillside.  She kept going and there was another one.  Then another one. For a stretch of several miles young master Howard took it into his adolescent brain to spray paint his name on many, many exposed boulders in the hillside.   My grandmother’s solution to this embarrassment was to buy her own can of spray paint and on the way home that day, wearing a dress, (she wore only dresses then,) she stopped the car and over-painted every “Howard Post” she could reach.   It took many years for that paint to fade.  
Read more

Pasta ala Norcina from America's Test Kitchen

Image
I’m a fan of America’s Test Kitchen on PBS.   Any recipe from their site that I’ve cooked has turned out beautifully.   The great thing is they do all the testing and tweaking so all I have to do is follow the recipe.   At least the first time. A recipe for sausage and pasta recently aired.   I limit pasta in my diet these days, but every once in a while I’ll indulge.   And this recipe looked so good I made a mental note to cook if for Terry, being certain he’d love it. Then a friend who’d suffered a serious illness was released from the hospital, and here was my opportunity to give this a try.    I doubled the recipe, filled a large casserole for my friend, then one for Terry, and had enough left just for me, me, me.   And it is superb! Four fork review from all who were treated to this dish. It's not real pretty but the rosemary spiced sausage makes me forget that. Serves 6 White mushrooms may be substituted f...
Read more