Farmers Market

The folks at my grocery store gave me a calendar. It says something about food for all seasons and sure enough there are loads of pictures of scrumptious looking foods. Of course I know the real reason for the largesse on the part of my food vendor. The thing is stuffed full of coupons, dated so I have to visit often to take advantage of the big savings. That’s ok. I would have stopped in anyway. But the calendar is really a work of art. The pictures are somewhat coordinated with the seasons. Back in January it was soup being pictured. February it was a big bowl of chili. I must admit I paged ahead to look at the perfect golden brown turkey on the November page. But right now there is fruit being pictured. In June there were plump juicy looking peaches and July features watermelon. Nothing against my local supermarket. They do a great job and now even have beer for sale, if you can stand the price. And the fact that you can only buy 12 cans at a time. But honestly, one of the true joys of living here during our short span of summer (94 days from June 21st to September 22nd if I counted right) is eating stuff that is pulled out of the ground near where I live. Now I don’t care to get into a discussion with anyone from Pittston about tomatoes. I am sure they are great there but I don’t really know. That’s because I go to the farm stands close to my house in Dallas. I also visit the farmers market that appears this time of year in the parking lot of the Back Mt. library. The tomatoes there are just perfect for me. If there is a better meal than homemade bread, salt and a big ripe local tomato I have yet to find it. In the middle of deep and dark December I dream about baby yellow squash, dark sweet cherries and blueberries bursting with juice. And now it’s here, but it’s like the days are in fast forward mode. Blink and no more good stuff from the dirt. Soon enough it’ll be apples and pumpkins and then it’s back to eating tomatoes that taste like the packing material they came in. I think the local stuff costs a little more. I am not too sure because, well I really don’t care. If I pay a little more to keep my supplier

(read: farmer) in business so he can grow vegetables that taste like they should, then I am fine with that. I saw a bumper sticker that said; don’t curse the farmer with your mouth full. Works for me.

Not with a bang but a fizzle

It was sort of almost anti-American. The very thought of it smacks of the days when missiles were pointed at us from just across the ocean in Cuba, when Khrushchev pounded his shoe on the table at the UN and shouted “we will bury you.” When we lived in fear of the big one and were taught to hug our knees under our desks in the event the Russians put the hammer down. Except in this case we have done it to ourselves. Or more importantly we haven’t done it. But let me explain what has me all lathered up this week. Last year at this time on the Fourth of July a good friend took me and the long suffering wife out to PNC field to see the Yankees of local repute play and lose and then the oh and aw of the fireworks show. We had a great time on a perfect warm summer’s night. Entertainment that wasn’t overly stimulating but still pleasant. Food in quantities sufficient to stuff a Palomino. A feeling that we were part of something that was clean and wholesome and fun. As American as apple pie, hot dogs and baseball. We didn’t go this year. And I am pretty sure we would have, if we could. The day was perfect. Not a cloud in the sky on the fourth of July when the corn was as high as an elephant’s eye. But no one two three strikes and you’re out for us at the old ball game. Mighty PNC field had struck out. It seems that when the Yankees came to town they wanted, no demanded, to play America’s pastime on blades of real grass, not some plastic compound cooked up in a scientists laboratory. And sort of like the homeowner who opts for the new roof over the old shingles they got grass, planted, so I understand, on top of the plastic turf. And this year the athletic cup overflowed and turned the outfield into a swamp but with poorer drainage. Waterfront property on the first base line. And so the long string of great Fourth of July celebrations with baseball and fireworks at the once named Lackawanna County Multi-Purpose Stadium came to end, not with a bang or even a fizzle but with dead silence. And I have to wonder if we will ever see one again. For now that all the cracks and leaks and soggy outfields of the 20 year old facility have come to light, it won’t surprise me if the Yanks, yank out like the Phillies fled before them and leave us with a decaying field of dreams. And not much more. But then again, I could be wrong.

Yard Sales Redux

It’s been a while since I have written about flea markets and yard sales. But it isn’t because I haven’t been visiting them. Far from it. The long suffering wife has the plans mapped out for weekend scrums like a field general. And this year I have noticed more than an uptick in other folks trying to do the same thing. Find something that you need and they don’t for less money than you would normally pay for it. Bargaining comes into play on the paying less for it part. I have perfected the art of picking up an item and looking perplexed. This will bring on a price that will cause me to take in a breath like I am suffering a myocardial infarction and I will put the item down like it was burning. I’ll pretend to walk away and then, Columbo style, turn back at the last moment and say those words that every seller hates to hear. “Would you take less for it?” On a good day I can bring in the deal for at least one third off, more often half. And you find an often bewildering array of stuff, much of it in still sealed brand new condition. Piles and piles of stuff. But as a public service to flea market and yard sale operators everywhere I have a list of things that I always see that are never gonna sell. First and foremost 8 track tapes. I don’t care if they are sealed. I don’t care if it’s 10$ for a box of a hundred. You’ll be keeping them. Along that line-Cassette tapes and VHS tapes. Magnetic tape as a storage medium was an iffy proposition when it was new technology. And it was new technology when Bing Crosby was on the charts. About 60 years if you are counting. Tape deteriorates. It stretches and breaks. And cassettes were hissy. Take them to the landfill. And take the cassette machines and old VCR’s with them. It’s buggy whip technology. Because you have a DVD player do you think I want your old VCR? They make fine boat anchors I am told. And last but not least. Readers Digest Condensed Books. If I had a penny for every teetering stack of those badly edited albatrosses of literary shame I have walked by I would not be searching flea markets for bargains. Oh yes, I almost forgot. Encyclopedias. Folks, there is this new thing out called the internet. As Homer Simpson says, they have it on computers now. I looked at an encyclopedia the other day. No matter what I did it wouldn’t boot up and let me search Google. But then again I could be wrong.

"¡Yo quiero Taco Bell!"

I just never took to her. Oh I mean she was cute and all. But as an endorser for something I was supposed to eat, no it didn’t make sense to me. And don’t get me wrong. I love to eat. In particular I love the type of food that the cute little 15 year old was hawking. It’s just that because she could speak the language didn’t mean she was going to convince me to try her brand. There were those who claimed that she was nothing more than a thinly veiled cultural stereotype. They were in my opinion way off base. And she had, as they say in the ad business, legs. She was able to last almost four years in a field where sometimes a job could last a week. Remember Herb? Sales for Burger King didn't just stagnate during the Herb campaign, sales went down. But Gidget, the real name of The Taco Bell Chihuahua, not only had longevity but her ads coined a few catch phrases which outlive her. "¡Yo quiero Taco Bell!" ("I want Taco Bell!" or "I love Taco Bell!"). "Drop the chalupa!" “Viva Gorditas!," meaning "Long live Gorditas!" and who can forget "Here, lizard lizard lizard...?" Of course the dog was voiced by a voice actor named Carlos Alazraqui who was also Mr. Weed on Family Guy. But as I said before I just have a problem with a dog endorsing something to eat. I have owned a few dogs. Dogs eat, well dog food. They also will eat almost anything. My dog ate, and I am not making this up, a skunk. Dogs also lick themselves in places that just can’t taste good. And they lick other dogs there too after they have a sniff or two. So having a dog suggest what’s for dinner is just not something that I ever bought into. I would even buy into that creepy Burger King guy before letting a dog lead me into a fast food restaurant. Gidget was by all accounts a pretty mellow dog, preferring to sleep. She ended up costing Taco bell 42 million dollars in the end when the fast food purveyor was sued by the alleged originators of the Taco Bell Chihuahua concept and lost. 42 million is a whole lot of burritos, don’t you think? But Gidget lived a long doggy life. 15 years in dog years is 105 human years, right? That’s even older than Manny Gordon, may he rest in piece with his catch phrase intact as well. It’s not a bad legacy to leave I guess. A catch phrase. “Enjoy, enjoy!” "¡Yo quiero Taco Bell!" And “…but then again I could be wrong.”
Here Lizard, Lizard, Lizard

I was kind of sad to read the news about the Chrysler bankruptcy. While I never owned a Chrysler branded car per se I have several Plymouths in my past. Remember Plymouth? They went out of business in 2001. Beat the curve so to speak. I have a long history of making poor choices when buying cars. I inherited this tendency to buy P.O.S. cars. When I was a kid my Dad bought a Corvair.







This is how we learn. My first real big boy car when I got out of college was a Plymouth Fury III. It was approximately the size of a railroad switch engine and came with two men to walk in front of you as you traveled with red lights and loud bells to warn people of your arrival. It had the turning radius of an aircraft carrier.





Later on I became the proud owner of Plymouth Volare’ station wagon with real wood grain decals on the side. Very classy.


















Still not having learned my lesson I bought a Plymouth Trailduster SUV. It was so big it wouldn’t fit in my garage. I think it got 1 mile per gallon. If you turned on the air conditioner you could watch gas gauge move down.











But my crowning achievement in unwise car purchases was a Plymouth Horizon TC3. I bought it new in 1981. They only made three of these cars and two blew up in the factory before they could ship them. I got the third. Even though it was front wheel drive it was so low to the ground that it would get stuck if the forecast called for snow. It was great on gas because it had a top speed of crawl. With a tailwind. I left it parked in front of my workplace while I was on vacation. With the keys in it. Mercifully an alcoholic co-worker borrowed it and totaled it. He called me to break the news and I am sure he thought I would freak out on him. I couldn’t thank him enough.


But back to Chrysler going wheels up. The funniest thing I read was that President Obama said “Chrysler’s warranties would now be backed by the United States government. If you are considering buying a car, I hope it will be an American car… buy a Chrysler, your warranty will be safe.” The leader of the free world is now a car salesman? The second funniest thing I read is that Chrysler will make what has been characterized as “a lifesaving alliance with the Italian automaker Fiat.” Or maybe that was the funniest. Fiat, in case you don’t know is said to stand for “Fix it again Tony.” Ask any Fiat owner.

Welcome to Warmland

We first met some 30 years ago. I was a youngster just getting my feet wet in my chosen profession. Every morning while I headed into work we would spend the drive together. I learned a lot. The things I was taught just by listening lasted me a lifetime. I was a country boy in the wilds of Vermont. This was a big city powerhouse that just reeked of professionalism. This was my first job right out of college. If I recall correctly I was paid the princely sum of $85 a week. I know that I worked far more than 40 hours back then so my hourly rate was probably well under $2. But my new friend made me sure that better times could be at hand. I thought to myself as I listened and learned that someday, maybe someday I would be good enough to be on the air at WARM.
Because, you see, WARM was legendary in those days. Hundreds of miles and several states away I heard the booming signal of 590 in my crappy car as I headed to my crappy low paying on air gig. I am going to use a radio term. WARM came into Springfield Vermont like a “Local.” It was one of those huge flamethrower radio signals that blanketed the country. For various reasons we will never see it’s like again. But more than just a huge coverage area WARM was, for a radio guy, the ultimate in professionalism. Listening in the small farm community in Vermont I learned what big time slick radio sounded like. It seemed that WARM did everything right. The news was crisp and authoritative. The music was spot on. The disc jockeys sounded, well, they sounded warm. Friendly and funny and like you had a friend in your car. It was something to aspire to.
A few years later I moved to this place. I would like to say it was to work at the legend. Instead it was my mission to put the legend out to pasture. The station I put on the air in 1980 knocked WARM out of first place in very short order but truth be told the wheels had already started to come off. FM was eating AM’s lunch. I was just in the right place at the right time. Not that it wasn’t heady stuff at the time. WARM was on life support by the end of the 80’s and if it was a horse it would have been shot by the new millennium. And now it’s gone. Not worth fixing say the fat cat owners who pulled the plug. Another radio term. WARM is now “dark.” Kind of says it all.

Hurry Spring!

There it sits. In a shaded corner of the yard, in a spot where I have to walk by it every time we go out.
It’s a small thing, maybe three feet long and a foot or so wide. And yet it has a power over me that goes way beyond its small stature. I hate looking at it. I want to do it in and yet I am unable to make a move at it. This place that the sun refuses to shine on has the last patch of snow in my yard. It’s decrepit and foul looking snow. A crust of black obscuring the white that once was. It crouches there on the dead grass and mocks me for thinking that winter has finally succumbed to the power of the calendar and we can enjoy the brief season of temperate weather that we get here in NEPA.
I should go out right now and kick it, spread it out so it just melts away like the memories of the long hours on the wrong end of the shovel so recently passed. But I am scared. I fear that if I do it will retaliate with an early spring storm and call its snow buddies back for one more round. It is, after all, just barely April and cruel month that it is here in NEPA it isn’t unknown for us to get clobbered by a huge nor’easter that will eradicate thoughts of crocus and daffodil in a big hurry.. Watching the weather the other day on WNEP-Ch16 I saw that Montage Mountain still has snow on the ski trails. It made me sad. My older brother lives in East Overshoe Vermont. He told me on the phone the other day that close by his house there are still 6 foot snow drifts. And the folks in the Dakotas where it snowed more than half a foot last week can assure the rest of us that while old man winter is bent and bowed he still has his teeth. I am more than ready for April showers that bring the flowers that bloom in May. It’s the season of “taint.” It “taint” winter and yet it ”taint” spring yet either. It’s the limbo of seasons and my little patch of snow just sits there. Biding it’s time. Thinking its snowy thoughts of the glories of storms long ago. The snow shovel is still within easy reach. The storm windows are still down. And I still have that dark feeling that just over the horizon something lurks that will once more call the snow plow to my driveway. And without a doubt I hope I am wrong.