From time to time I check out the online edition of the Cape Cod Times, the old hometown newspaper. I used to trudge around half of the Town of Orleans delivering it when I was in high school and then worked as a general assignment reporter in 1964. It was called the Cape Cod Standard-Times back then.
I happened to look at it Wednesday and there was this video of Leo Cummings, one of my favorite people from the old days. Leo owned the Sunoco gas station in town and also drove the school bus we all used to ride to school on. He’s looking pretty good for 90.
When you spend quite a bit of your time alone a person has to do something to pass the time. I don’t know how others spend their alone time but me, I think about strange things, most of which never make it past my cranial cavity.
One thing I’ve wondered about for years is who in hell figured out coffee? Coffee isn’t simple. In their basics certain things are simple and it’s fairly easy to figure out how they came to be. Tea is simple. Take some leaves from a plant, put them in some hot water and voilá, a tasty beverage. Wine? Somebody was really thirsty and didn’t care that the grape juice had bubbles all over the surface. They gulped it down and WHOA! Altered state of consciousness. Even the beginnings of cheese is fairly simple in its origins. Some hungry camel herder carrying milk in saddlebags made from animal skins, and possibly made from the stomach, which contains the coagulating enzyme known as rennin. Or, fermentation of the milk sugars would cause the milk to curdle. The galloping motion of the horse or camel, acting as churning, would effectively separate the milk into curds. The result, curds and whey, provided a refreshing whey drink as well as curds, which would be drained through perforated earthenware bowls or woven reed baskets, and lightly salted to provide a tasty and nourishing meal. All accidental discoveries that were later expanded on.
But coffee isn’t simple. It’s complicated if you think about it a bit. I don’t buy that story of some Ethiopian herder saw his goats getting frisky after eating the fruits off some bushes and suddenly we had coffee. It’s a multi-step process. First you have to pick the fruit, known as “cherries.” Then the pulp has to be removed and the bean inside has to be left out in the sun to dry. After that the husks of the beans have to be removed. Then the beans must be cooked (roasted), ground up and infused with boiling water. That’s a bunch of work. Who in hell figured that all out, anyway?
To John’s amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn’t ring.
He’d sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one. John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges.
The result was the judges not only awarded old Butch the No Bell Piece Prize but they also awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well. Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making. Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren’t paying attention.
If I knew where Kenneth Graham was buried I’d go there, dig him up and piss in his mouth for having written “There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
Every idiot in the world who has ever stepped foot into something that floats and has then gone on to write about it uses that quote. When I’m in charge of everything in the world anyone who even utters that quote will be sentenced to life at hard labor and if they actually put it into print they will be executed on the spot.
The second most despised quote is: “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away.” People who repeat it verbally will be whipped. Those who wear it on a tee shirt will be flayed in the public square and those who actually write it down for others to read will be sentenced to having head phones strapped to their ears and forced to listen to “Duke of Earl” for the rest of their lives.
Another thing that will change when I’m in charge concerns drivers who weave in and out of traffic and end up one car ahead of you at the stop light. You will be permitted to get out of your car and go up and slap the crap out of those people, breaking their windows if necessary to gain access for the slapping. There will be severe penalties and imprisonment if they try and retaliate. If, somewhere down the road, those people are involved in an accident in which they are injured you will be allowed to approach them and jab at their cuts and bruises with a sharp stick.
A lot of things will change when I’m in charge of everything, so pay attention and don’t screw around with people!
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One of the pieces of gear that I really loved on my Nancy Dawson was the gimbaled Sea Swing stove.
It was great for cooking while bouncing around underway. I always cooked things in my small pressure cooker without the weight. With the cover locked on even if dinner got flung across the cabin you weren’t cleaning up the food all over the bunks and cabin sole. I also used it at anchor and in port when I needed a third burner to supplement my usual stove top.
They go for about a hundred bucks a pop at West Marine.
I recently subscribed to a Yahoo Group called LowCostVoyaging and someone calling themselves Ken V came up with this home made version which is really clever. His post read, “I have a non-gimballed stove in my galley, and needed a stove that would work on passage. I put together a low cost gimballed stove out
of a propane camping stove and a galvanized steel pail. To make the stove, take apart the camp stove and find a way to fit it through a hole in the bottom of the pail, then hang the pail where it can swing. I had no spillage even close hauled into 6 ft breakers.”
There are few people as resourceful as cruisers on a budget.
Until now I have avoided injecting politics into this blog, but I just can’t help it anymore.
Let me be absolutely clear. I DETEST conservatives! The first three letters of the word says it all…CON=AGAINST! And conservatives are AGAINST anything that is helpful and useful to the common good.
My family didn’t come over on the Mayflower but they literally knew people who did! The paternal side of my family were among the first settlers of Watertown, Massachusetts back in 1630 and the maternal side joined them shortly after in the same rough village. (How’s that for coincidence?)
It has been legend in my family that one of my paternal grandmother’s ancestors actually took an active part in the original Boston Tea Party, and both sides of my family fought on the winning side in the Revolution. Conservative Republicans who love to wrap themselves in the mantle of patriotism need to be reminded, nearly on a daily basis, that the conservatives of those days were known as TORIES and if they’d had their way we’d still be singing God Save The Queen.
I grew up in a staunch Republican family and, in fact, cast my first Presidential vote for Barry Goldwater. (I knew back then that all Texas politicians were lying sacks of shit which proved to be true both time Texans became Presidents.) To my great shame I have to admit that I even voted for Richard Nixon against Hubert Humphrey.
But as I grew up I began to develop a social conscience and stopped voting for Republicans. I didn’t always vote for Democrats, either. For a long time I voted for the Libertarian candidates. Not so much because I believed all the crap they spewed out, either, except that it isn’t any of the government’s business what mind-altering substance adults decide to ingest. I voted for the Libertarians as a way of saying to BOTH the parties that have a death-grip on the wind pipe of the American electorate, I don’t like the clown either one of you are trying to shove down our throats….I’d rather have THIS clown over here. I never voted for him but there’s one thing I completely agree with George Wallace about and that’s when he said “between the Republicans and the Democrats there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference.”
When I would tell people I was going to vote for the Libertarian candidate they’d always say, “you’re just wasting your vote.” WRONG?! The only wasted vote is the one not cast. I vote in every election, especially local elections which most people don’t bother to d0. That’s when your vote can really make a difference.
All that being said, what is happening now with the “debate” about health care I find absolutely disgusting. The lies and distortions put out by the conservatives makes me want to vomit and fills me with a sense of both rage and despair. That’s why I’m glad I ran across the following video.
Here’s an interesting blog about dead malls…all kinds of information to browse through…
Lists of malls in every state that have withered and died. Moved away from your old homestead and wondered whatever happened to that place you loved to go hang out at when you were a kid? Is it still there? You can find out here.
One More Good Adventure 