I call him B

He makes kites and French toast better than anyone you will ever meet. He is not frivolous nor extravagant, save in generosity and affection. His mother and father christened him Marion Edison in '24, but they and his siblings always called him Eddie, as did most of the acquaintances of his youth. And if you've anything to say about a boy named Marion, I'll remind you that that was John Wayne's monicker. His wife since '48, Mama (mammaw,  phonetically, to rhyme with papa) called him Marion, though typically in a very accusatory tone, if she had to call him down by name. My dad and uncle call him pop, my aunt daddy, their cousins Uncle Ed, and mine simply Poppa. He was my 'Papa B' originally, but I'd dropped that southern formality by the time my memory functioned, so I can shed no light whatever on my original reasoning.

 I call him B, as does nearly everyone who knows him through me. He is most of my early memories, though I can't order them chronologically. When I'd just turned three or four, he and Mama took me on a roadtrip in his 1983 Ford F250 diesel, pulling a massive 5th wheel camper, to the gulf coast. I've loved campers ever since. My dream is still to live in one. The first time in my life I ever had mint chocolate ice cream was on that trip, sitting with mama at the banquette in the camper in some quiet, four o'clock sunshined  state park. It was wonderful. It was nearly thirty years before I could bring myself to eat it again lest I taint or supersede the memory the second instance was six months ago, and with some fairly special people). We stayed somewhere on that trip that had a big pool with a slide. I remember the slide, nothing else. B took me to the pool to get us both out from underfoot while Mama made dinner. We were out of sight from the camper, but Mama says by the time we'd been in the water 15 minutes, she could hear at least half a dozen kids' voices hollering 'me next, B!' Presumably, he'd been tossing me up in the air and everybody else wanted a go as well. He was 61 or 62 that summer, and he spent that evening being surrogate grandfather-and-monkey-bars to seven 8- to 10- year olds we never knew and don't remember. Even kids know you're more likely to get what you're asking when you ask by name. Mama was understandably caught off guard by all the commotion and familiar addresses- prior to that moment, he'd been B to no one else.

I've only ever introduced him as B, because that's who he is. I've never converted my cousins, though. To them he continues to be Poppa, and as a grandfather he's undeniably irreplaceable, though he has been so much more than that easily familiar title to me. I've never really felt like I was given someone to just simply call grandpa. I got B.

When Jay, the other man I could theoretically have called something-derived-from-grandfather, passed away, I was amazed to discover how many people knew him, without knowing him. They certainly didn't remember him anything at all like I did. It'd never before occurred to me how many different faces, subriquettes, or reputations one soul could carry. The two men who begat my parents were very nearly larger than life by the time I knew them, and for 30 years I've only been increasingly dazzled by them, and continually honored to ride their coat tails.

But at 3 years old, none of that had even begun to occur to me. What I did know was that mom had left me at preschool as per usual, that I'd immediately been challenged to a toy truck race by the class bully, that in turn three my truck suffered a dubious mechanical malfunction, causing me to vault it arse over apex and put multiple teeth through my lower lip on regaining terra firma, and that, less than 20 minutes later here was I, seated in B's massive armchair in front of the TV, watching Tom & Jerry or Mr. Rogers, with my very own previously unopened bag of Oreos and a steaming cup of coffee that must've been half milk and sugar.

THAT is my first memory of B and I knew from then on I was going to love him very much. What he didn't know about child psychology, nutrition, or entertaining toddlers he made up for in intuition. I still prefer my coffee to that original recipe. Jay never let me have coffee, nor did my folks, for that matter, but B made it, routinely, exactly how I liked it. I collected marbles as a kid, and though I've given most away, there's still a few with specific sentimental value. B gave me one the exact color of coffee done our way. It's my coffee marble. It and the china marbles and my bumble bee marble and the other  twenty or so I've retained reside in a drawstring bag from the old First National Bank. B gave me that as well.

In Viking tradition, manhood is achieved only once you've built a boat, fathered a son, and written a book. B's done the first two already, though in reverse order, so if I'm able, I intend to write his saga to show my gratitude for him having started mine.

He is the reason I have glaucoma, phenomenal allergy-sinus issues, and an inability to throw away glass jars or string. I hope to goodness I inherit his shockingly white hair to make up for the sore joints as well. He instilled in me my love of Volkswagens, secondhand bluejeans, and storage capabilities. He is practical inventory personified. I've met no one more pragmatic nor practical, save Jay. It's my greatest ambition to exemplify these and as many other of the marvelous assets I grew up witnessing in those two men as I possibly can.

There are a growing number of myths accumulating about the personas and legends in and around Core Brewing and Distilling, of Springdale, Arkansas. No doubt, the falsities will be debunked in their own good time, but meanwhile, I felt the need to begin laying down with certainty such claims and lore as can be substantiated.

First, let me tell you about my friend Derek.

The Salmon from which Derek's grandsires claim their paternal lineage was a wild north Atlantic prehistoric ichthys that drove forever further into the headwaters of a Scandinavian fjord, and eventually, in drier seasons, became trapped in a slowly evaporating pool. Sensing his mortal Time approaching he waited for a hungry she-otter to make a pass at him, fin-slapped her across the face and copulated with her. The resultant hairy amphibian moved directly up the evolutionary ladder and took a human wife, breeding generation by generation the more Norse god-like specimens that would have the courage to brave a north-Atlantic crossing, see the Native Americans and Canadian First Nation peoples, not as a culture to fear, but to embrace as the Salmonson clan sought ever to develop a super race. Their expansion and lust led them eventually to the bison-lands of modern-day North Dakota, where the newly-bearded native cross-breeds finally found meat that left them full and unhungry. Here they settled, finally at peace with their surroundings-- a habitat made mostly of sky and fresh air. But even Heaven grows weary-- after too few generations, a new scion was reared from the Salmonson fold: Derek, called Thor, who found that his impeccable constitution was unaffected by human dosages of alcohol. Heartbroken at his own betterness, he left his beloved Badlands in search of a mythical land of verdant hills and rippling streams, where alone grew trees of such a wood that a bow made from it could fire an arrow that would fell a bison at two miles, an orca-- underwater-- at forty feet, where monastic dachsunds had developed an inconceivably brilliant method for brewing the most superior beers on earth. Trials beset him: the Platte River was at flood stage and Young Thor had to fashion a rope of prairie grass and lasso the beltloop of the great ethereal hunter to trapeze his way across; nearing the Missouri/Oklahoma border, he was swept up by a tornado. Never blanching, he merely stuck out his jaw in defiance of the wind, which cowed and sought shelter from his ire in the waves of his beard. He kept the swirling prairie wind there, and when he finally found the monastery he sought, stored the wind in a fourth, here-to-fore unused tank in the Lowhounds' brewing system, thereby giving them the first whirlpool tank in the glorious state we all know as Arkansas, perched atop those emerald Ozark hills. Here, Derek found his home, sired his own brood of immortals-to-be, and with his own two calloused hands, set about building the wherewithal for that elusive brew that had been the core of all his desires for so long, to be readily available to all who felt that self-same torrential pull that originally led one saltwater giant inland, and a bearded plainsman overland. This, dear friends, could be no ordinary brew. Take Pride!

Projection Sensification

I have a shamefully introverted imagination. I can't always guess what someone else feels or thinks; I have trouble defining my own emotions and swings.  This makes fictive authorial attempts particularly difficult, for every character I create is merely a projection of one of my selves-- I can't think someone else's vocabulary or dialogue. For that reason, I make it a point to define intangibilities with the immediately accessible.

If your stomach rumbles, you know you're hungry.  But quite often, you can delve further than this. You've routinely said "I could really go for a pizza/curry/beer tonite."  I can tell you which of my headaches will only be run off by a can of coke, and which require 12 hours sleep.  We understand ourselves physically, we are intimately comfortable with our five principal senses.

But what about our ethereal needs? How do you explain the psychological requirements you feel in terms that will still make sense once they're out of your mouth? I've no idea. I can't think like you. I thought I'd covered this. While you mull it over, though, here's a few things from my short list that I think ought to be readily grasped by anyone who already thinks I've lost it:

I've known no feeling of peace greater than ending a harmful relationship seated upon the metal solidity of a farm implement in the westering sunlight of an August evening with a slight, warm zephyr pragmatically drying my tears and whisking my hair out of my face.

If I ever find myself in a relationship again, I want it to be with someone who brings me as much comfort as clean sheets, the reassurance of new socks.

There is no day so trying, ill-spent, or bodily exhausting that cannot be balanced by the olfactory bliss to be found in the bouquet of a snifter of Lagavulin 16 year old Scotch.

"So fill to me the Parting Glass and drink a health whate'er befall.
I gently rise and softly call 'Goodnight! And Joy be to You all.'"

P.S.- This is wordy, even for me. I'm sorry. See it through anyways, huh?*

P.P.P.S.- If you're in a hurry, feel free to skip the first two thirds, and cut in at 'Plvs Vltra'.

I'm scrambling to write this now, and not tomorrow, though I'm already far too delayed and late, lest this be seen as my grand rallying cry for 2013, or a sendoff to 2012.

It's neither.

I made two New Year's Resolutions for 2012 though, as a rule, I don't do New Year's resolutions. They strike me as pretentious, over-zealous, and consequently, ill-fated.  I have made one other in my life-- for 1993. I kept it up through that entire year, and solidly for nearly a decade afterward. But that's otherwise.

The first was derived from some of the problems I felt in my life that came home with me from the UK-- primarily, the loss and declension of viable, worthwhile relationships due to modern society.  So I opted to give up texting for one year. Because I am tired of relationships at arms' length. I had enough of that while overseas-- every relationship I was involved in (other than the one I should actually have been investing in and nurturing) was conducted electronically.  So, because I wanted to maintain healthier relationships, I vowed to use my phone only as a phone. Because I feel people are worth that. If it's too big a hassle for me to call someone that I desired a conference with, then they were not getting the most of my attention and respect. By the same token, I felt that if anyone wanted me to be a part of their life badly enough, they'd call.  As a rule, they didn't.  I discovered, quickly, that texting is simply how we communicate now. Veering off this course proved highly inconvenient and bothersome to the relationships I most wanted to enhance, ultimately irritating those around me.  So, I resumed texting. And, eventually, rejoined Facebook. I really hate that I'm a sellout.

The second, again, was a direct result of the previous year and the upheaval it contained. I decided to be a better person. Simple. Do what I said I'd do, be where I said I'd be. Stop lying unnecessarily or otherwise.  Show respect and deference to those I came in contact with, value those around me. Pour myself out for the betterment of others. I feel this has been a hit-and-miss.  Those that I most desired to see my new self-awareness and social concern didn't, or weren't directly benefited by what feeble gestures I could offer them. I only came up short, I was only a letdown.  The people who might've noticed simply by routine contact with me already thought I was a pretty good guy. So they weren't impressed either. On the upside, if I ever did let them down, I probably did it less recently.

I will not be making a resolution this year. But I am hurrying to the heart of this matter lest merely by temporal association, you think that is my objective.

Carlos V, son of Ferdinand and Isabella, had his motto interwoven repeatedly into the repetitious patterns of the ceiling of his throne room in the Alhambra palace in Granada, Spain. The angular Latin text fits magnificently into the Moorish tiles and endless tessellations, and I stood transfixed when I walked into the room.

Plvs Vltra.

In English, our nearest translation is 'further on', though a direct translation might be something akin to 'better added' or 'the best to come'; in Spanish it's more like 'there is more'. And these, particularly the first, have been my rallying cry for the last 7 years. Or, should have been. I've lately, or all my life, been guilty of just letting life happen to me. It's the down side of being easy going. So, along with 'more better things will be added Further On', I append the following:

One step in the right direction, every day.

That conveniently doesn't take into account the missteps I'm likely to take while our little terrasphere swings me to a routinely sufficient solar viewpoint, but let's not be pedantic. There is an endpoint toward which I am striving and I intend to address the getting there every time I crawl out of my bed/hammock/large pile of blankets. Life ought not to just happen; once in awhile it needs to be achieved. The best roads aren't necessarily straight, but they go somewhere.

*P.P.S.- 'P.S.' means 'post-script', if you were unaware (and thereby, 'P.P.S.' means post-post-script), indicating that the note was added after the main body of the letter. Locating a postscript at the bottom of a letter seems a bit redundant, I think, because it's Obviously added afterwards. But that's just semantics. I therefore added my postscript Prior to the main body of the text because After re-reading this mental oatmeal, it occurred to me that you might need a push to carry on through. In the event You feel the need to institute a New Year's Resolution, why not take up locating all of your postscripts into the top margin of any notes or letters you send? Think about that the next time you sit down to your typewriter, eh?

This Day in History

In light of the upheaval or lack thereof in our lives over the last 24 hours, this, that I wrote a few years back in Scotland:

Today in history:
   chances were taken
      fortunes were lost,
         hands were given,
            salads were tossed.
People who would never hear one another's names
Died, and were born.
Souls that might've been mates
missed one another
in the infinitesimal eternity of milliseconds that separates
       a train being late
and a train being on time.

Great Things were done and applauded,
Normality prevailed unheeded.
Carpets were sold,
   transmissions rebuilt,
      test tubes examined,
         calamities claimed lives,
            and coffee was served.

The Mighty exalted,
The Lowly oppressed,
Joy in the Morning,
Contentment at Rest.

            But as for myself on This Day,
I lived long enough to see the clouds that blew in
            blow on out again
      just like millions of others
and other than that,
unless I write it here,
the minutiae of this momentous microcosm
                                 might not ever get writ.

Remember me?

Ostensibly, I started a blog to record the more profound of my inner musings, those most worth sharing. That was 7 years ago this month, I believe, or very nearly so.  I could look at back posts to ascertain for certain, but not without saving this incredibly deep delving entry where it stands, backing out, and starting over.  Tedium.

Any rate, if you muse through all I've had to say here-- and nothing in over 2 years at that-- you'll see that my high calling has plummeted and that what I have here is a vehicle via which I may moan over all that is not right with the world.  I suppose the rest of you have friends or facebook or both to commit this necessary outpouring to.  As I hate facebook and am trying to retain the few friends I've whittled myself down to, I do my complaining to the wider, emotionally uninvolved world.

So, for today's lighthearted pedantry:

I'm on gmail.  If you're not, or are simply using a different version than I, you may not know that gmail has a feature whereby it google does a random word search through my email text, and provides an information bar above your listed mail informing you of websites or recipes that you might also be interested in, due to its prowess with content association.  Today's bit of random brilliance read:

Recycling.  Film canisters can be used to hold nails, thumb tacks, and other small bric-a-brac.

Film canisters?

Inner Geek Less than Gruntled by Amazon

So, if you hadn't heard or otherwise ascertained, my own little pet obsession lies in the vein of vintage farm tractors. I have over 100 1/16 scale die cast models, and a whole smattering of 1/32, 1/43, and 1/64, just to round out the collection. Every 2 weeks I receive a magazine on farming history that comes with a 1/43 (figure, 3" long) replica of the model concerned within the covers.

Agrogeek is the term I have penned.

And I have accepted this. I inherited the disease from my mother's father, who, like me, would have a different vintage tractor to drive for every day of the year, if funds allowed. That not being the case for either of us, we collect die cast replicas. I haven't seen him in about a year and a half, having been overseas, but on one of the last occasions that we shared a Mountain Dew (which, dadblastit, ain't for sale in the UK) on the front porch, we jointly lamented the amount of literature available to such agrogeeks as ourselves. (Though, at the time, the term didn't exist)

The problem, as he put it, was finding a book on tractors that didn't know less than ourselves. To clarify: I had recently purchased a book entitled "The Complete History of Farm Tractors" by Merco de Cet. By the time I gave up reading it, not even halfway through, I had managed to fill every inch of blank space inside both covers with information he'd left out: models, brands, dates, facts, et cetera. I was incensed. While the casual, less acquainted non-agrogeek can be placated with any of the coffee table offerings for sale at your local international literary retail chain, goofballs like me need encyclopaedias of facts, libraries at our finger tips, enough photographs to wallpaper a barn.

So, imagine my joy when I learned that there was a book published in '04 (pronounced ot-four, just for the fun of it) entitled "The BIG Book of Massey Tractors: The Complete History of Massey-Harris and Massey-Ferguson Tractors... Plus Collectibles, Sales Memorabilia, and Brochures"!!

Incidentally, I DO know that this is my most boring blog ever. Bear with me, the rant begins shortly.

Now, aforementioned book only had one printing run, and as such is hard to come by. On Amazon, it tends to run over $130. So, when I saw a used hardback copy for about 40 bucks, I bought it. Here, for those who haven't navigated elsewhere, is what I expected to see when I opened the package that duly arrived 3 weeks later from (ostensibly) the Atlanta Book Company:

Imagine, then, if you naively think that you possibly can, the inner turmoil and betrayal I felt when I opened a package from Auburn Books of Auburn, Washington to find this paperback:

Now, as it happens, I used to be quite the Coca-Cola enthusiast. Somewhere, in some barn or shed in Northwest Arkansas, are stacks of boxes full of my Coca-Cola collection. I will read the book, but EGAD! Surely you can see the lack of similarities between the 2 books. I can see three words in common: the, history, and collectibles. And, as my purchase went thru on Amazon.co.uk, using the name 'Atlanta' on one's international shop front rather convinces the party of the second part that your company is located in Georgia. How in the world some company in Washington cottoned on to the idea of sending me a paperback on Coca-Cola in lieu of the hardback on Massey Harris that I expected to arrive from Georgia is enough to make me blog in a blind fury.

Welcome to my world.