In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don’t ever shine; I would shiver the whole night through.
Seven inches of snow at 7 a.m. with seven days until the election.
I call that an omen. Of what sort, I’m not certain. But it has to be better than 6, 6, and 6, don’t you think?
Sweet dreams, old pal.
As the snow piled up last night I dreamed of Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment).
He was all sprawled out, occupying a considerable portion of territory, as was his practice, and seemed very much at peace. So I woke with a smile. It was good to see my old comrade again.
I did not dream of Covid the Barbarian, because it was not yet Halloween, which this year comes with a rare full moon, the first to brighten All Hallow’s Eve in (wait for it) many moons. There won’t be another until 2039.
And it’s a blue moon. Another omen?
Here’s hoping it lights our way toward kicking the Not-So-Great Pumpkin off the White House porch a few days later.
We were on something of a weather carousel here this morning, a slowly revolving lazy Susan serving up blue sky, clouds, rain, sleet, and snow. Don’t like what’s set before you? Patience. Another option will be coming around directly.
Eventually, ol’ Suze coasted to a stop … on snow.
Oh, well. It was bound to happen eventually. It’s October, f’chrissakes. Cyclocross season in an ordinary year, which this is not, with the Giro just wrapped and the Vuelta ongoing.
I got my cyclocross in yesterday before the weather went all to shitaree, rolling south on the foothills trails past Copper and back again.
No running, thanks all the same. Not even a hike-a-bike. The weather was cool, but the ground was dry, alarmingly so, and there wasn’t anything I couldn’t ride on my trusty Steelman Eurocross.
Alas, as Thomas McGuane has written, “sometimes a man needs to be afoot to keep from going broke, get down and go to his tasks, instead of posing on the horse. …”
So today, no horsing around. I pulled on some long pants, grabbed the push broom, and herded some snow off my driveway. Yippee-ki-yay, etc.
A one-pound mini-loaf from our new-used Toastmaster Bread Box.
We missed the Big Breadmaking Boom of the Apocalypse.
By the time we thought, “Hmm, might be nice to start making our own bread,” all the ingredients had become as rare as plague-free toadies among Adolf Twitler’s Brown Noses.
Anyway, I am not a baker. Too much math, too hands-on, too much finicky attention required by too many niggling little details, especially at altitude. It’s classical, and while I appreciate the art form, I’m more of a jazz kind of guy, prone to improbable improvisations. Faced with a binary choice — right way vs. wrong way — I’ll say, “No way,” and walk away.
Herself makes the occasional pan of cornbread, but it’s tough to stuff a wedge of cornbread in the toaster.
The device at work.
We had an automatic breadmaker once, a gift from my sister. It was a Toastmaster Bread Box and cranked out serviceable loaves of whole-wheat goodness when we lived up near Weirdcliffe and acquiring proper groceries involved a 110-mile road trip at minimum.
Once we moved back to what passed for civilization the breadmaker went away in some unremarkable fashion, there being a Whole Paycheck, a Wild Oats, and other fine establishments doing the baking so we didn’t have to, even with machinery. You could get a loaf from the hippies at Mountain Mama that made you feel like a beaver gnawing a tree.
But here in the Year of Living Antiseptically our favorite English muffins abruptly vanished without warning, not unlike democracy, science, and common sense. And as I noted earlier, by the time we started weighing our options there were none, and nothing to weigh them with, either.
Herself made a few pans of cornbread, which was fine, unless we wanted toast. Locally made tortillas we have aplenty. But goddamnit all anyway, sometimes a fella just wants a slice of something toasted with butter and jam while he enjoys his morning coffee and tsk-tsks at the news.
I priced modern breadmakers and after recovering from the coronary remembered that there was no yeast to be had anyway.
Something is coming to call, and I don’t think it’s bringing bread.
And then, a miracle occurred.
After an unauthorized stop at a neighborhood garage sale Herself came home bearing — wait for it — a Toastmaster Bread Box.
A lightly used Model 1172X, it looks exactly like our old one save for the kneading blade, which seems larger.
The cost: $20. Even a senior citizen on a fixed income can bear that fiscal burden.
With yeast suddenly available again, we were in the breadmaking bidness. The inaugural loaf was kind of meh due to a poor choice of recipes (molasses, barf). But the next two, plucked straight from the owner’s manual, were perfect.
Now it’s all toasty around here in the morning. And just in time, too. Winter is coming.
“L.A. Freeway” wasn’t one of his songs. That was a Guy Clark number, like “Desperados Waiting for a Train.” Likewise, a lot of the songs I remember him for came from other musicians. “London Homesick Blues” (Gary P. Nunn). “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother” (Ray Wylie Hubbard). “Jaded Lover” (Chuck Pyle). “Night Rider’s Lament” (Michael Burton). And “Railroad Lady” (co-written with Jimmy Buffett). Etc.
“Mr. Bojangles” was the first actual Jerry Jeff tune I heard, by far his most famous, and I heard it from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
I got to say howdy to Jerry Jeff, briefly, at the Dirt Band’s 20th anniversary bash at Denver’s McNichols Arena, the same show where I met John Prine. Jerry Jeff was off the sauce then, or so we heard, and not at all the same fella who was so hammered he nearly fell off the stage during a concert years earlier in Greeley, when I was still pretending to go to college.
Not long ago Jerry Jeff telephoned my home in Massachusetts to report that he would be appearing in nearby Hartford the next weekend. My wife and I were out; our friend Rose took the message. “Where exactly in Hartford are you going to be?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Jerry Jeff. “Where exactly am I now?”
You get the picture. Religions have been founded on less. And Jerry Jeff was certainly one of our “high” priests Back in the Day®, with the live album “¡Viva Terlingua!” (recorded with The Lost Gonzo Band) containing most of the hymns. “Ridin’ High” was a close second.
Throat cancer nearly did for him a couple years ago. He managed to churn out another album (“It’s About Time”), but recently his voice went, and soon Jerry Jeff followed it, wherever it went. Peace to him, his family and friends, and his fans. Let’s sing him out with “Mr. Bojangles,” from the Dirt Band’s 50th anniversary show.
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