Pizza

Pizza is something I did not immediately like when first exposed to it.  I was not exposed to it until my ex-wife and I started dating.  She loved pizza but could not eat a whole one so when we went out to  little place just outside Louisa, Ky she would order and eat as much as she could and I'd finish the rest of it.  That is how I came to love pizza.

After we were married we moved to Paintsville, Ky and I was attending Mayo Vocational and Technical School (as it was known then).  Across the street from the school was a little pizza place called Giovanni's.  It was owned by a man named Hobart (and I don't recall the last name) whom my older sister had once worked for at his downtown restaurant.  At lunch I'd go there and get a 10" pepperoni pizza.  It was great.  Thin crust, lots of cheese and pepperoni and none of the modern health concerns.  There was pepperoni grease in large puddles on top of the cheese.  It was wonderful.

They also made the best baked spaghetti, but this is about pizza. 

That is my baseline pizza.  Every pizza I have in this world is going to be compared to Giovanni's pepperoni pizza from the early 70's.  And none of them measure up.  Where I live now we have every chain pizza known to man and none of them are nearly as flavorful. 

The closest I've been able to come to that pizza was Hobert's Pizza in Prestonburg, Ky and that was a good many years ago.  It still had the right flavor but it had been subverted by the health nuts.  Why can't I just get a totally unhealthy pizza like I grew up with?

They put so many odd things on pizza now.  Nothing is pure and simple like it used to be.  And, nobody loves their pizza the way I do anyhow.  Now for convenience its Papa Johns.  Go on-line and put on all the tasteless toppings you want then go pick it up.  I used to get it delivered until they wanted to know my complete family history with every order.  So I go (all of three minutes away) no and pick it up myself.  No ridiculous questions, not driver tips, just my pizza, hot and ready.

My wife likes ground beef and onions.  I get pepperoni, onions, mushrooms and olives.  It is just so-so pizza but it fills the empty spots.  And, if we go out for pizza we go to Pizza Hut where I get a veggie personal pan pizza and she gets the wings. 

Things have sure changed over the years.  And, I'd love to have a good, old-fashioned, unhealthy, pepperoni pizza with lots of pepperoni grease puddled on top.

Tyrus Lloyd Young

On Friday 08/24/2012 Tyrus Lloyd Young came into this world.  He is the first son of my youngest daughter and makes me three grandsons.  That adds even more to my disbelief that I'm a grandfather.  It just does not seem possible.  My tiny girl children are having babies.  Where was I when they got that old?  Where was I when I got that old?

My family has been blessed with healthy babies.  This time, little Tyrus, had some issues though.  He was a little early though he was still a healthy 7 lb 5 oz.  But he was not breathing completely normally and his heart showed some "abnormalities".  I visited the hospital twice and my wife once and we barely got to see the little man because they had him in the nursery so much of the time to run tests.   But from our short time together as well as his photos on Facebook I can tell he is a handsome young'un. 

He has some problems, some of which should correct themselves shortly, one which may require surgery but even so I'm thankful as so many parents and grandparents have so many tougher things to deal with.  At least Mr T.L.s problems are correctable.

Makes me think back to my own children and how thankful I am for them and that they were healthy and intelligent and grew up to be such amazing women.  I tell them I love them often but I don't think they understand that until they look at their own children sleeping.  A quiet time when one realizes, despite the troubles of the day, just how much love a parent has for his/her child.

When my two girls look at their own children they might come close to understanding how much I love them.  They might come close to understanding how much I love my grand-children.  Though I am not the best ever was at expressing emotion. 

Even more I'm happy each of them has married a man who appears to me to be a good man, a good husband and a good father.  I know I don't have to worry about my children and my grandchildren as they have a good husband and father to do the worrying for me.

A lot of people want a lot of things in life and I guess I'm the same.  But, when I stop and look at it I realize how much I've been blessed and how undeserved those blessings are.  I would not trade my daughters, my sons-in-law, my grandchildren for anything.

Pee, pee, pee

Pee, pee, pee is the way my grandfather would "call" his birds.

My grandparents lived in a small house on Nat's Creek in Lawrence County Kentucky.  They had electricity but little else of what we, now, would consider "normal".   They had a "dug" well for water and an outhouse up the branch for a toilet.  It was a "two-holer" as I recall.

Heat in the home was a pot-bellied stove in the living room/bedroom and cooking was done on a wood/coal stove in the kitchen.  I'm still amazed at the quantity and quality of food my grandmother produced from this stove.  She made huge meals and the best gingerbread I've ever had on that old stove.

There was a front porch with concrete steps down to the ground around the house.  The porch did not quite fill the length (or width, whichever) of the house but it was an important part of the house.  There was a porch swing, my grandfather's old rocking chair, a big trunk where I'd put enough coal to last them a week and, between the porch posts, there was a couple of boxes, like flower boxes, where my grandfather would spread bread left over from breakfast or supper for his birds.

I can still see him coming out the front door with bread in his hands calling, "Pee, Pee, Pee" and spreading the crumbled bread in those two boxes and the birds would come from all around to partake of his largess.  There were birds of every type and color that were native to the area.  They never seemed to mind him as they would flock all around to get their share of the bread crumbs.

That may have been the foundation of my fascination with birds of all kinds.  I love watching birds and enjoy having lots of them around.  I don't have a bird feeder or anything but I think I'd enjoy having one (or more) where I could put seeds and stale bread then sit and watch the birds come from all around to take sustenance.  I'll like to have flowers that attract butterflies and humming birds as well as a humming bird feeder.

When I lived in Kentucky birds seemed to be everywhere all the time.  Here in South Carolina I don't see nearly as many birds as I'd like.  That might be due to living in a "community" instead of out in the wilds of the country.  Sometimes I miss those wilds.  Actually, most of the time I miss those wilds and would love to be able to live out in the country away from everything.  Everything except for such things as paved roads, electricity, indoor plumbing, satellite TV...  I'm afraid I've been irretrievably spoiled by civilization.

Spoiled though I am, I still remember those simple days and the simple pleasures to be found in calling birds around to feed on our left overs. 

Squirrel Hunting in Kentucky

I've talked before about eating squirrel for breakfast and supper.  Now, as an aside to anyone not familiar with the country and the time, there were three meals of a day.  Breakfast, then as now, was the first meal and quite large.  The noon time meal was dinner and was quite large.  The evening meal was supper and was minimal.

There is a good reason for this.  People needed a big breakfast to fuel them through the hard work of the morning and people needed a large meal for dinner to fuel them through the afternoon.  And the work day was, as they used to say, "From can see to can't see".  Now that was for the men.  The women had to wake up early enough to cook all this before the men got out of bed and stay up late enough to do the dishes  before they could get in bed.

I'm not sure where or when "dinner" became the name of the evening meal but it is a "city" think I guess.  I know my wife has told me she missed a lot of good meals because someone would invite her to dinner and she would show up in the evening.  There is a reason it is called a "dinner bucket".

But back to the subject at hand.  Squirrel hunting was a big part of my childhood in Kentucky and a big part of the life of all the adults in my life.  There are a lot of people today who find the idea of eating a squirrel to be repugnant.  They just don't know what they are missing or they just have never been really hungry.  Or, they have never had a chance to eat my mother's squirrel, squirrel gravy and homemade biscuits. 

Country squirrels and city squirrels have some very distinct differences.  City squirrels have gotten used to people not shooting them and have gotten quite lazy.  Sometimes coming from work to my truck I can barely get them to move out of my way on the sidewalk,  Country squirrels are always vigilant knowing inattention leads to an appointment with the cook pot.

This leads to another area of difference between my wife and I.  She calls a container in which you cook things and it has high sides is a 'pot'.  To me it is a 'kettle'.  And a frying pan to her is a 'pan' while to me it is a skillet.   Squirrel is really good cooked in a kettle or fried in a skillet.  Or a pot and pan as one prefers.

Another difference between city and country squirrels is you are liable to see a city squirrel roaming around any time of day where country squirrels are up before dawn and finished roaming by ten AM.  Then they will come back out for an hour or two in the late afternoon.  In between the hours of ten in the morning and around five in the afternoon you're only out in the woods because you just like it or you were never taught much about squirrel hunting.

Squirrel season comes in in mid August (though when I was growing up hunting season was a foreign concept)  and the days were still quite warm.  But, the mornings were wonderful.  Daybreak was around seven AM so one would need to get up around four AM to get dressed and head out to where he was going to be hunting.  You'd need to be there and have time to move up the hill through the darkness to where you wanted to start your hunt before the sun came up.

My favorite place was the hill between where I grew up on Nat's creek and Burgess Branch on the Chestnut side.  I'd park my truck beside the road and move up the hill, past the graveyard and slip through the fence until I came to a fairly large rock in the path.  I'd sit there very still and just listen.

At that time of year the leaves would be dew covered and, in the stillness, the swishing of squirrels jumping from limb to limb could be well heard.

Now, moving up there in the dark had it's problems as you really could not see and big, old spiders loved to weave webs across the path which you'd run into if you were not careful.  I always lead off with the barrel of my shotgun clearing the path for me.  But once we got to where we (mostly me by myself) was going to begin the hunt we just sat, waited, listened and enjoyed the morning coolness and the anticipation of a good squirrel supper.

Then there'd come the swish of a squirrel moving around and one would perk up and make out the direction from which the noise came.  Move slowly, as noiseless as possible, in that direction until one could see the leafy, limbs moving.  Wait hardly breathing until one could see the squirrel then take aim and ... miss or have one for the kettle.

Most of the time squirrels were old enough to need to be stewed but if you hunted "out of season" which we all did, you could get young squirrels that were great fried.  Same with young rabbits.  In fact if you fried them in the same skillet you could not really tell the difference.   And, no, neither tasted like chicken.

When it grew to be around ten o'clock it was time to make one's way back to the road and drive home (or just walk home if you lived that close) and clean your kill, cut it up and put in in the refrigerator in salt water for some hours or days before cooking.



I can't explain that feeling really.  It is very calm and peaceful and at the same time one is tense with anticipation, ears straining for that faint sound which will set one off on the stalk.

It has been a good number of years since I've had a squirrel to eat.  I'd give a lot for some fresh squirrel, squirrel gravy and home made biscuits for breakfast now.  *sigh*

Teenagers Should Rule the World

That is because teenagers already know everything.  For some we're pretty dumb before we make it to our teens then all of a sudden we know every thing.  Then we spend the rest of our lives realizing how little we know.  Schooling does not seem to matter.  After age fifteen we all get dumber and dumber as the years go past.

I was just as guilty as anyone in this.  At fifteen nobody could tell me anything.  I already knew it.  This brings to mind one particular day, summer vacation as I recall, a salesman came to our house and I got a chance to show just how smart I was.  LOL

We lived way out in the country.  From the dirt road you came down a small hill and crossed a little creek then came up a little path past the barn and up to the house.  Only problem was that little path past the barn became a quagmire (look it up) after a rain.

As it goes the salesman's car got stuck trying to come up from the creek, past the barn before going up the hill to the house.  My dad and the salesman were trying to pus it forward and having little success.  I meandered down from the house and sat on the edge of the bank and watched for a few minute.  I finally asked why they did not just put the car in revers and back down the hill.

I was informed the car had no reverse gear that worked.  So I asked if the car had a 'neutral' that worked and the salesman indicated it did.  So I asked them why they did not just put the car in neutral and get in front of it and push it down the hill until it hit the creek?  Then the salesman could jump in and turn the wheels when it was in the creek then drive it forward up the other side (which was dry). 

They looked at each other and tried it.  It worked splendidly and I never lifted a hand to help them.  I felt quite smug about it all.  Knowing my daddy as I do it is a miracle he did not beat the crap out of me after the stranger left.  But, we fifteen-year-olds know everything so it would not have mattered one iota.

I find it amusing at just how dumb I've become in the intervening forty three years.

Hot and Cold

I grew up in a lot of places which had zero A/C and limited heat.  Let me tell you I appreciate some wamth  on a cold day and come cool on a hot day.  If you've read any of this blog you should realize I grew up in Eastern Kentucky during the fifties and sixties,  a little bit of the seventies.  I grew up without indoor pluming for the most part and never any air conditioning and mostly without even an electric fan.  That was summer though.  In winter heat varied from a wood/coal fireplace to a gas heater the heated most of the house to one that heated about five feet around it.

In summer, in most times, I bathed in the creek and used sand for soap.  In winter I'd heat a wash pan full of hot water and take a "Whore Bath".  It was not the shortness of time between customers that drove me as it was the doggone cold and trying to wash all the "stinky places" before the water got cold. 

We lived at the 'big' house in West Van Lear for about three or four years and that was the only time I can recall having a real bathroom and enough heat in the house to spend enough time naked to take a good bath.

Then going to sleep at night was another adventure.  In the summer I'd have all my windows open with no sheets on me just waiting until it got late enough for the night to cool down to where I could sleep.  In the winter it was a rush from the living room where the small amount of heat was upstairs to my bed, stripping clothes in a hurry and jumping into bed under the electric blanket.  Thank goodness for an electric blanket in the winter.

Now a winter trip to the bathroom (outhouse) was also a "treat".  :-)  From my bed, down stairs to that bedroom, though the living room and kitchen, out the door and across the porch for a fifty foot run to get there and then a shivering stay with the trip reversed.  Want to know how good an electric blanket feels after that adventure?

Heat, though, was pretty much a "just deal with it" kind of proposition.  No changing it, no ameliorating it except for a dip in the "swimming hole".  The swimming hole was not really deep enough for swimming though.  It was just deep enough to submerge one's whole body under the water and it took one heck of a walk to get there. 

I recall working for hours and hours in the hot, summer sun loading bailed hay and stacking it in the barn just so my two cousins could go to the "Hack Hole" with me to cool off.  That was a day I'll never forget.  I can recall bending over and grabbing a bale of hay by the bindings and lifting it up to the truck bed and my vision would go completely blank with the effort.  But, let me say, that dunking in the creek was a wonderful thing.

Being outside in the cold was not so much of an issue as we had to wear coats and "long johns" inside as well.  Outside we, at least, had exercise to help warm us.  I stayed outside a lot in cold weather for that and other reasons.    In the summer I'd just lie on the porch swing and read.  I hated the heat then more than the cold.

Think of it.  In the heat you can only take of so many pieces of clothing but in the cold you can put on innumerable items to help keep warm. 

Still I hate the very hot days of summer and the very cold days of winter but mostly for different reasons.  I'm blessed now with a good heat pump for hot and cold weather but I have to walk a long way from the parking lot to the building where I work and both the heat and cold make me sick so I'm trying not to throw up until I get into the heat or A/C of the building.  Not a lot of fun but sure is better than when I was going to school when I don't think we even had A/C.

Baloney (bologna)

Too many years ago when I was around the age of fifteen I took the job of mowing down horse weeds (Ok, I don't know what they are really.  When they were green they were horse weeds and when they died and dried out they were stick weeds.) from around her born.

She was not like a next door neighbor, 30 second hike of neighbor.  She lived in the head of the branch of Nat's Creek known as "The Julie Fork".  Places tended to be named for people who lived there.  The ones this was named for was Burns and Julie Ratliff.  Burns had passed away some years earlier but Julie still lived up in the head of that hollow (holler).

I got up bright and early and took a borrowed mowing scythe and headed up the hollow to her house.  Goodness, I have so many memories surrounding that hollow.  Half the time one was wading the creek because that is where the road was at the time.

I'm not sure how far it was to her place or how long it took me to make the walk but I did and began mowing down all the horse weeds.  Now remember I had not had any breakfast either.  By noon I was starving and she called me in for lunch.  I still get queasy thinking about it.

She had one cast iron skillet on the stove that had old grease in it.  When she got the grease hot she sliced of some bologna from a large roll she had.  One edge was paper-thin while the other edge would have choked a hog.

She fried that thing up until the thin edge was coal black and charred yet the thick edge was still cold.  This is what she served me for lunch.  I was starved so I ate it with gratitude and went back to cutting down horse weeds.

As I recall she paid me $5.00 for that day's work (along with my lunch, of course).  I can't really remember when the day's lunch became irrelevant but I know I did not keep it down all the way home.

I can never even hear the word bologna since then without thinking of that event.

During the day it was not very much fun at all but, in hindsight, it was one of those "good old days" moments.