Stuff......When is it time to reverse the flow

One of the unique distinctions of the "Baby Boomer" generation (for reference that's usually considered as people born between 1946 - 1964, but I am extending it even further to anyone born before 1946 who are at least on Facebook) and that distinction is our ability to gather "stuff".

It really didn't strike me as a generation thing until recently as Pattye has been charged with the responsibility of saving, disposing, delegating everything that belonged to her late aunt, Audrey. And now with the passing of her father, Clark Williams,  she along with her family members with be charged with sorting, saving, cataloging and trying to find a way to be sure everything is passed on or saved as well.

And then I started thinking, when is it time to start reversing the flow. When do I quit stopping at garage sales or "eyeballing" someone's trash laid out on the street for pickup. When do I quit accumulating and start divesting? Is it me, is it my generation or is it just wanting to collect "stuff" or probably more precisely junk. Yeah, right.. so much for the axiom "One man's treasure is another man's junk".

On my side of the balance sheet, I have years and years of stuff that I just couldn't pass up. Little storage cabinets that I found in an estate sale full of nuts and bolts left over from another man's junk. Rope, tools, cable, power tools, buckets, boards, coffee cans full of washers and more nuts and bolts. Poles, rods, funnels, motors, string, old paint, more paint, sandpaper etc., etc., etc. The list goes on and on.We are only able to pull one car into the garage because of all of the accumulated "stuff". And if I could, I would probably fill up the other side if I was left unharnessed to gather even more.

Our house is full, almost bursting at the seams and yet we have moved several times and have gone through "down-sizing".

Years ago, Pattye became interested in collecting all kinds of decorative chickens and roosters, which perhaps, she recalled,  came mostly from visits to her grandmothers home. Later she started a retail outlet selling chicken-themed "stuff" and now she tells me she has over 100 chicken things in just the kitchen alone!. See, it's not just me.

Well......the bell has sounded. It's time to reverse the flow.

Instead of "stuff" coming in, it's stuff going out. So be prepared. Except first I do want to check out this garage sale down the street because I did see a sign that said, "Tools".

Is it generational?. Was it because we were raised by parents who were born during the Depression and treasured "stuff" and taught us to place value in even the smallest of things? I just don't know.

I'm tired from even thinking about the upcoming Spring Cleaning that we have promised ourselves to do. I will be heartbroken to dispose of that mason jar full of nuts and bolts that I bought for just pennies. And that broken saw that I really needed to have or that box full of tape or all of those washers and nuts and bolts. Oh and the fence slats that I was going to make picture frames from. Oh, and those pieces of garden hose that...um, well, I was going to do something with them.

I need a nap.

Eggs made to order....

Cooking the perfect egg is perhaps the easiest yet hardest thing to do.....I guess it just depends on whether you are cooking it for yourself or cooking it for someone else and of course how picky you are if you are cooking it for yourself.


Did you know the US egg consumption is 256 per capita per year. With a population of 310 million people...that is 79,360,000,000 per year or 217,424,000 per day. That's a lotta eggs!

My preference for how I like my eggs has changed over the years. When I was a young Skeeter boy growing up, I have to admit I was slightly on the spoiled side and back then my favorite type of cooked egg was a soft boiled egg. My Mom, or should I say my Mommy, would place it upright in a little holder and then crack the upper part of the shell and cautiously remove it. God forbid if a piece of the shell fell into the egg itself.

Later I moved on to a simple fried egg, usually sunny side up, and perfect for dipping my toast into the yummy soft yolk often times leaving behind the fried white portion of the egg. And then later going with the more popular "over easy".

I'm reminded of how eggs were cooked and served in Basic Training when I was in the U.S. Air Force many years ago. As you moved through the chow line keeping your mouth shut and not speaking to anyone in front of or behind you, you were allowed to say only one of two words as you shouted out how you wanted your eggs cooked. It was either "fried" or "scrambled". If your choice was "fried", the cook would simply scoop up your egg on a wide spatula regardless of how long it had been on the grill, even if it was still runny. If you asked for the latter, "scrambled", the cook simply made two quick chops with his spatula and there they were, scrambled made to order.

As I matured in age, so did my epicurean skills. My ability to cook the perfect omelet filled with mushrooms and cheese and other delectable items and of course I needed the curved-edged omelet frying pan as well.

Later moving to the Southwest for the last 50 years, my tastes buds then began calling for the simple but delicious taquito, the fresh flour tortilla filled with scrambled eggs, fried ground sausage and covered with hot sauce, sour cream and grated cheese.

These days I've regressed back to the days of when I stood in line waiting for my scrambled egg. I usually wait until all of the other items we are having for breakfast, whether it be French toast and or maybe bacon with fried potatoes or possibly grits. I'll crack a couple of eggs, one handed I might add, and just quickly throw in some grated cheese, stir them a few times with a wooden spoon and I'm good to go.

As I said in the opening sentence, cooking eggs perfectly can either be simple or difficult, and I guess that's the same thing about life, it just depends how you want to approach it.

Remembering Christmases past.....

I'm sure many of you, like myself, often use events in your life to try to remember where you were living or what you were doing or where your family was or just plain trying to think of days gone by with using Christmas as the baseline.

This morning, Pattye and I, were thinking of those past Christmases and after about an hour into it, I pretty much had clogged head-brain trying to connect so many dots together. Let's face it, after almost 70 years of events, that's a lot of brain matter to try and organize.

My early days growing up in Dayton, Ohio first come to mind as I turn the clock back to so many years ago.

As far back as I can remember we pretty much celebrated Christmas, at least the opening of presents, always on Christmas Eve followed by my brothers and I heading to Midnight Mass at Our Lady of Mercy Church.. I'm not sure how that particular tradition began, but I'm guessing it had something to do with having two older brothers who had found out about the "secret" of Santa and were anxious to dig into the treasures early.

I do know one year, I'm guessing I was around 7 or 8 years old, and Dad had arranged, or heck who knows, maybe it was the real guy himself, showed up at the door at around 7:30 in the evening on Christmas Eve and he scared the bejeebers out of me. I was just at that age when I started to have some doubts and Holy Crap...there he was.

Another neat Christmas was the year Dad had found someway to get a train set up in the basement. Although I wasn't allowed to use the controls I can remember the wonderful excitement of watching the Lionel train engine pull its cars past the little depot with the plastic man standing outside holding a lantern.

Another year, Dad used the basement for the "special" surprise and he had somehow arranged to get a pool table down there and yet even another year a ping-pong table.

As the years went by the settings changed. The locations changed. The family members changed. But the one thing that remained the same and still remains ...are the memories. The smiles on the children's faces, the smiles on everyone's faces. And always the glistening in the older folks eyes as they too remember Christmases past.

Merry Christmas

A special someone who influenced my life...

The other morning a friend of mine from the "hood" reminded me of someone who had a major impact in my young life while growing up in Dayton, Ohio. A  person who taught me that different races of people were in fact treated differently, if not disparagingly, during the 50s, 60s and on. But she did it silently and with examples of just being a good, if not great person.

A special person, who long after I had left Dayton to conquer the world elsewhere in the Southwest, would continue to send me a birthday card well into my late thirties. A person, who was my protector, and yet I never knew her more than just someone who was always at our house.

The other morning when  Denny, the older brother of one of my best friends while growing up in Dayton, made the comment, "Tom, with all of your writings over the years, you've never mentioned Ethel, your Nanny."

Whoa, whoa, whoa.....yes, he was absolutely correct, I had never written about the person who helped teach me right from wrong but she was NEVER my Nanny. Hey, people I grew up in a small, white clapboard house with two older brothers and one bathroom. Well, two bathrooms if you considered peeing outside behind the garage or downstairs in one of the stationary tubs, when you had to really go.

But, a Nanny?......Never. Or did I have a Nanny?

I always thought of Ethel M. Lewis was just someone who was in the house everyday to help my Mom out before Mom headed off to work for my Dad at his small machine shop on the West Side.

And even though I rode the yellow, electric public transport at an early age to get downtown either for trouble or pleasure, it never dawned on me, that Ethel rode it every morning and every afternoon to and from our house, just so she could be there as our arbitrator among us arguing boys, someone who made sure we never went hungry at lunch, someone who made sure we had clean sheets and clothes but I never once thought of her as a Nanny.

Heck, I didn't even know the term Nanny at that age.

But better than all of those things that she did for our family, and I guess a Nanny as well. She was my friend.

I didn't see her as black. I didn't see her as a maid. I didn't see her as a housekeeper. I simply saw her as Ethel.

Anyone who ever came by our home in my early years, all of them knew Ethel. She was always there. Always my protector. Always my friend.

It's been probably 50 years since I have thought of her, and I am so thankful that Denny, reminded me of my friend. And yes, even though I grew up far from being a silver-spooned child I guess in fact she was my Nanny.

Webster defines a Nanny as a  woman who is paid to care for a young child usually in the child's home.

Yep, I guess she was. But she was a friend first.

Sometimes it's just the smallest of things......

Call me crazy, call me odd or just call me nuts, so to speak, but yesterday I found something that continues to bring me the broadest of smiles.

I've lived in Texas for over 40 years and I've never seen before this curiously-designed, almost-personified happy little item, just laying on the ground. We were at the Dallas Arboretum and there it sat with all of its many little brothers and sisters either waiting to be swept away by workmen with their leaf blowers or taken back up once again high in the trees from which it first grew by a resourceful squirrel making ready his winter cache'.

I give you the Bur Oak Nut.

I'm very familiar with most of the native trees of this Great State starting with, of course, the pecan, the state tree. Texas has over 250 natives trees, including over 50 oak trees alone. One reason I am so familiar with all of the different trees is that for the last 30 years I've had to dig and scoop thousands of pounds of wet leaves out of swimming pools with the Swimming Pool  company we started in 1989. Despite counseling and cautioning pool owners about the importance of landscaping around their pool, they ignore our advice and make the wrong decisions, they will often  add the wrong trees.

And sadly, I guess that's why I've missed seeing the Bur Oak.  From a swimming pool perspective, you really don't want these relatively huge projectiles falling into your pool, let alone hitting you in the noggin.

Bur Oak trees are extremely drought tolerate due to their long taproot which is why they are the dominant tree of north central Texas. Bur Oak trees produce the largest acorn of any oak species that are 1 1/2 inches long and are almost completely covered with a furry cap.

And it is that furry little cap that I tell you looks like a little animated character waiting to have eyes painted on him, a little dot nose and a smile that will cause anyone who takes a moment to appreciate all that we have in the world that God has surrounded us with even if it is simply a nut on the ground.

Okay, maybe it's just a nut some animal will digest or maybe just be swept away. But for me, it's my little friend that I found while spending the day at Dallas's beautiful Arboretum. I'm gonna put a face on him and keep him in my truck. I think I'll call him, Skeeter.