This morning, I got out of bed, walked down the hall to where our smart thermostat is mounted on the wall and looked at the settings. The function indicator was set to ‘cool’ where it had been since late May of this year. The desired temperature setting was 76, as it had also been since that time.
The inside temperature read 66 degrees Fahrenheit as I stood there shivering in my skivvies (sorry, I’m not a pajama kind of guy). God forgive me, I was so cold I could not wait any longer so I did it. I took a deep breath, pushed the button switching the heat pump system from cool to heat and the furnace kicked on immediately.
I wasn’t going to do it; I was hoping to hold out until November 1 but the gloomy skies, cold rain, the 50° temperature outside and the 66 inside was just too much for my pansy-ass, arthritic bones.
As I stood there already feeling the warmth from the registers, I thought back to my childhood days when there were no smart thermostats or even dumb ones; the days when my mom had yet to put the money aside for a load of coal to feed our pot-bellied stove, I was ashamed of what I had just done.
Back then, I would have just pulled my aviator cap farther down over my ears and toughened it out. 66 degrees was not going to bother me. It would have to be at least November before my mom would have the money to order that coal.
I prayed that none of my forebears would glance down from their heavenly reward and see just exactly what I had done; see the namby-pamby that I had become in my old age. Oh my god, what would the Donner party members think of this?
There’s no hiding what I have done; In a week or so, my thermostat will send me an email report on the system’s usage, including the fact that the heat came on that morning of October 24th. Now, any one of the idiotic, seemingly endless email hackers hiding in their mother’s basement will know the truth about how weak-willed I have become.
I have no idea what they would do with this information but should it spread it to my friends and neighbors, I will just blame it all on Susie. Her feet are always cold; so cold in fact, that when the day comes, her feet should be donated to science for study.
That’s it, it’s all Susie’s fault. Of course it is, I wouldn’t have turned on the heat were it not for concern over Susie’s comfort. I wouldn’t have. A man’s man such as myself would just put on a sweater and have a piece of cold jerky for breakfast.
Last week I wrote the last of my newspaper columns. It was sort of Apropos that the editor chose to stick the obituaries in the middle of my column. I’m not dead but my public writing days are over. I have now had two weeks where I did not have to face a deadline for coming up with something print worthy to submit to the papers and I have to confess it has been pleasant to wake up on Monday and not have to worry about it. Here is what the column looked like on the page. I clipped the continuation paragraphs off of page 5 and laid the piece over the obituaries. Don’t want to break any privacy laws and all that.
Roman Catholic feast days were a big deal when I was attending Saint John High School, the big deal being something that Susie, as a Catholic, and I share in common. I found this out on the Feast of the Assumption some years back. I wrote a column about it maybe 10 years ago and when August 15 rolled around this year, I decided to republish it. Here it is,
Susie bonked her head
The other day, my wife, Susie and I were on or way to the bank to get a free sucker and put a little money in our account as well. She was filling out the deposit slip and turned to me to ask “What’s the date?”
“August 15th , I said smugly, still proud of myself for knowing what day of the week it is.
“you know, when I was a kid, my picture was in the paper on this date.”
“How do you remember that?”
“It was the Feast day of the Assumption and I went to Mass. (Note 1)
“So why was your picture in the paper?”
“I was in the hospital.”
“In the hospital? Why?”
“I fell out of a tree after church.”
“Fell? Did you land on your head?”
“I don’t remember. It knocked me out.”
“That sounds like you landed on your head.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Okay. What were you doing in a tree?”
“My sister, Jo and I were playing on a swing.”
“At your house?
“No. No. I was babysitting Tommy Sylvester. It was at their house.”
“Babysitting? Why were you climbing a tree? Where was Tommy??”
“I don’t remember.”
“That’s not surprising since you probably landed on your head.”
“I told you I don’t remember what I landed on. Are you implying something about my head?”
“No. Why would I do that?”
“Because I know you, Buster.”
“Who took you to the hospital? Did you get to ride in an ambulance?”
“Good Lord, it was over 50 years ago. I don’t remember that either.”
Well, that’s because you probably fell on your h…..”
“Watch it, Buster.”
“Well, if I would have gotten to ride in an ambulance, I would never forget it.” I told her.
“I do remember that Jo ran all the way home and got my mom.” She replied.
“How far was it?”
“Let’s see. 1 , 2….. six blocks. The Sylvesters lived over by the Orphanage on Pleasant Run Parkway.” She said. “My mom was getting ready for work and she didn’t have her skirt on yet. She ran all the way in just her slip and her blouse.”
“Where’d she work?”
“J C Penny; The one on the circle. She worked in purses.”
“Good Lord.” I said. “That’s where I rode my first escalator.”
“Really?” she said, not a bit impressed.
“It was 1952 and my family took the bus to Ohio from Loogootee to visit relatives. We had a layover in Indianapolis. Do you realize I may have had my first escalator ride with your mother?”
“No. That had never occurred to me.” she said, a bit too dryly.
My first reaction to Susie’s story was that either she was dreaming – she had fallen on her head – or else it must have been a slow news day, Then again, It was a much more innocent time. Folks used to be interested in stuff like that. President Eisenhower only made the news when he was playing golf. There were no meth labs to find and murder was not an everyday occurrence. Gangs, such that they were, had not yet progressed to shooting up the downtown area of the city.
I decided I’d find out if it really happened so Susie and I went to the Indiana State Library in downtown Indianapolis where there are all kinds of things for History buffs like myself, including microfilm copies of every edition of practically every newspaper in the state dating back to the 1800’s.
We were directed to the cabinets where the films of the 3 Indianapolis daily newspapers, the Star, News and Times, were stored. “Let’s see.” I said to her. “What year did this happen?”
“I don’t remem… I think I was 12 or 13.”
“Okay. You would have been 13 in 1955. Let’s try that first.” That turned out to be a good guess.
On August 16th of 1955 on page 2 of the Indianapolis News was a 2 paragraph story but no picture. The headline was ‘Girl hurt in fall from tree house’.
“Where’s your picture?” I asked her.
“I don’t know. A reporter came to the house with his camera. I thought he took my picture.”
“Which paper was it?” I asked, thinking maybe the story was in 2 newspapers.
“I’m not sure. I think it was the Kokomo paper.”
“Kokomo?”
“No dummy. Indianapolis. Where you’d think it was?”
“I didn’t know. Maybe a neighborhood newspaper….?”
“Oh Right. This was the city. We had real newspapers.” She said, a not so veiled reference to my small hometown paper.
“You know your smart aleck demeanor doesn’t become you.” I said to her. “Makes you look like you fell on your head or something.”
“I told you….. Never mind.”
We went back to the story.
“Susie Speck, 13, 1818 Cottage Ave, probably will confine her playground activities to the ground in the future. Yesterday she was in a tree house and slipped when climbing down a makeshift rope ladder. She was treated for an injured back at St. Francis hospital and released.”
“A tree house?” Susie said. “There wasn’t any tree house. It was just a rope swing. I don’t remember any tree house but it wasn’t because I fell on my head, smart ass. It says right there that my back was injured.”
“Yep, you’re right. I knew it couldn’t have been your head.”
Wink, wink.
G2 notes:
1: For my non Catholic friends, the 15th of August marks the celebration of the Catholic belief that the Virgin Mary was bodily assumed into heaven.
Note from Susie: Me and my big mouth; I don’t know why I ever mentioned falling out of that tree to him. He never lets anything alone.
A couple of weeks ago, I received an internet message from Greg Bateman of Loogootee, Indiana who, among other things, does a podcast called ‘meet you Indiana neighbor’. His primary focus for guests on this show are residents or former residents of Loogootee. Even though I now live in Indianapolis, I still fit that description and I believe that he contacted me because of my being a former columnist for the Loogootee Tribune.
I accepted his request and arranged to meet at the library in Loogootee on April 5th. The next couple of weeks were spent thinking of my life in Loogootee and the things about that time that might be interesting. By the time I finished that, I had a long list of experiences and as it turned out, too long.
Tuesday of this week, we packed up and made the 100 mile, two day trip from our home in central Indiana to Loogootee in southwestern Indiana. When I was young and courting Susie, I made that round trip in a day and a couple of times, I even made it twice but not any more. I can’t just jump in the car and go; a trip like that takes a lot of preparation and I don’t move as fast as I used to.
I was pretty nervous about doing that interview; I also wanted to talk to some of my high school classmates to firm up some things about life in the mid 20th century that I found hard to believe occurred back then. Chief among them was the fact that, for all intents and purposes, we went barefoot in the summer. Even though I still find it hard to believe, a dinner with classmates that still live in the area proved that this was the truth.
Greg proved to be a great host. He made me feel very comfortable and the nervousness soon disappeared. We talked for about an hour and a half; I enjoyed it immensely and it was only later on our way home that I realized I never talked about some of the things on my list. Most of that stuff is contained in my books anyway so it’s documented somewhere for my children, grandchildren and whoever else might be interested in learning about.
Later in the day, while making our way north through a driving rainstorm, it occurred to me that I really missed communicating to people -it just seems like there isn’t time anymore -, and I resolved to use this medium to try and do a little more of letting our friend and relatives how we’re doing in this stage of our lives. I used to visit this this site frequently but the last several years, I have neglected to do that, finding it easier it easier to just use Facebook when I had something to say.
I vowed to post something I find interesting on a regular basis here. Let’s see how that plan works out.
This post was originally intended for a Grindstaff genealogy group on Facebook. However, that platform has said that his post violates their community standards so I am putting it here for now so that my relatives can see it. In the meantime, I will try to figure out somewhere to permanently put this information.
Joshua Davis Martin County farm
The grandchildren (my generation) of Noble and Edna Grindstaff, had 4 great grandparents; they are Noble’s parents, Daniel Grindstaff, Sarah Fields Grindstaff and Edna’s parents, Elisha Alexander Kennedy and Olive Davis Kennedy. I have hopes, as time permits, to provide some of the genealogical background of these 4 folks.
The first of the four I want to look at is Olive Davis Kennedy, Edna’s mother. I became intrigued by her story while researching Noble and Edna; it quickly became apparent that Olive played a big part in holding things together during some of my grandparents very trying years.
But before I get to Olive, I want to preface her story with what I have learned about her (and our) Davis ancestry.
Davis is the eighth most common surname In the United States (1) with almost one and a half million prospective cousins scattered throughout the United States. The surname ‘Davis’ is a patronymic surname meaning “son of David,” David being a given name that means “beloved.” (2)
‘Davis’ has with Welsh origins, a Celtic ethnic group native to Wales, a part of the United Kingdom.
II have gone down several rabbit holes looking at Davis ancestors and emerged from a couple of them with enough information to say that our Davis family is likely traceable to one of several Davises who emigrated from the United Kingdom’s Wales sometime in the early to mid-1600’s, sailing to the United States. (3) Nope, Our ancestor wasn’t on the Mayflower. I checked. No Davis families on the passenger list.
It is also possible that this English ancestor was a member of the Quaker faith, as were many Welshmen, and his journey was undertaken to escape the religious persecution by the King of England. (4)
Most likely, he landed in New York or Baltimore and I think, made his way to Rhode Island because of that colony’s belief in religious freedom.
Along with information garnered by working backwards from information on our great-grandmother Olive, I can make an educated guess and say that 7 or perhaps 8 generations of our Davis family were born in this country going back to the mid-1600’s. They began their almost 200 year journey from Rhode Island (probably) and slowly worked their way westward, stopping for years at a time in New York , Pennsylvania and Ohio before reaching their promised land in Martin County, Indiana’s town of Dover Hill.
They left some clues of their comings and goings but not near enough to be certain about the ‘facts’ so in this piece, we will go with what ‘facts’ we are certain are true and leave the rest to speculation.
We begin with our great-great grandfather, Joshua Davis, who was Born Oct 10, 1809 in Northampton County, Pennsylvania near the town of Bethlehem, an area populated by members of both the Quaker and the Moravian religions. I am maybe 80 percent sure his parents were Joshua Samuel Davis (10-24-1769 – 3-26-1846 and Hannah Walton Davis (9-29-1772 – 8-2-1859). The two of them had 8 children, one of whom was a boy named Joshua.
There are a ton of Joshua Davis’s in the mid-18th century census records. I tried to find a connection between the Quakers and the Biblical name ‘Joshua’ in the Bible but was unable to find anything. (Sorry, Father Doyle. I expect you figured that I would know my Bible a little more by now). Suffice it to say that in the early 1800’s, there were too many Pennsylvania men named Joshua Davis to make a definite connection. If I were writing a history book, I might have tried a little harder but I’m not so for now, great-great-grandfather Joshua’s parentage will remain a mystery.
What I can say for sure is that Joshua (and likely his parents) were a part of the large migration of Pennsylvania Quakers (as well as Mormons, Catholics, Protestants, medicine men and a passel of assorted heathens) to Eastern and Southern Ohio that took place in the first half of the 19th century.
This became apparent when I started with the 1820 census when I looked for Joshua Samuel. That turned up a couple of hundred Joshua Davis records all over the eastern third of the country including a half dozen from the general area in Pennsylvania where our great-great-grandfather was born.
There were no names other than the head of household listed in that census, only counts of males, females and slaves sub categorized by a range of ages (males under 10, females over 45 and so on). None of the Pennsylvania Joshua Davis records corresponded with the number of family members Joshua Samuel and Hannah would have had in 1820.
I finally found one in Tuscarawas county, Ohio, about 90 miles west of Pittsburgh, PA.. The number and ages of the family pretty much matched what I had learned about our potential third great-grandparents, Joshua Samuel and Hannah.
Ohio was where our Great-great grandfather made his first appearance in Ancestry.Com records when Joshua, at the age of 24 , married 18 year old Aletha Wilcoxen on January 22,1833 in Tuscarawas County, Ohio.
Six years later, the 1840 census records Joshua as working in agriculture in Tuscarawas County and the two of them having 4 children, 3 girls and a boy.
By the time the 1850 Federal Census was taken, Joshua and Aletha (Leathy) had 5 living children and 3 children who had died in infancy. They also owned a farm in Tuscarawas County. This was not a surprise; Farming was not an unusual occupation since according to the census, 64 percent of the United States working population of 7.7 million folks were farmers in the mid-1800’s.
The village of Gnadenhutton, Tuscarawas County, where Joshua and his family picked up their mail, is one of Ohio’s oldest settlements founded in 1772 by German-Americans and Lenape Indians affiliated with the Moravian Church, one of the world’s oldest Protestant religions. Were Joshua and his family members of this church? Possibly but I couldn’t say one way or another. (5)
Our Great-Grandmother, Olive Davis, arrived on this earth on January 4 of 1854 in Gnadenhutton, Ohio, the 10th of Joshua and Aletha’s 11 children. The 11th child, Harriet was born 3 years later in Gallia County, Ohio, some 150 miles south of Olive’s birthplace.
I don’t know what to make of that difference in geography other than to guess that Joshua and his family were on the move. Here’s a wild guess; Gallia County is on the Ohio River. Perhaps they went there to travel west by boat because Joshua Davis shows up in Perry Township of Martin County, Indiana in the Federal census of 1860 with a Dover Hill, Indiana address.
Regardless of how they got there, that question of why they would move to Dover Hill, Indiana bothered me enough that I went looking for an answer. Joshua’s father left him 800 dollars; he may have used that money. Maybe the Moravian or Quaker religions had something to do with it; their beliefs were very conservative and could have troubled Joshua. However, that is only conjecture on my part.
As for why Dover Hill as a place to settle, the village was established by folks of English Ancestry sometime before 1846; that was the year that a Post office was established there. Perhaps friends or relatives enticed Joshua Davis to move there.
The only thing that is an educated guess as to why Dover Hill, Indiana was their choice is that land in Indiana, a comparatively new State at 40 years old, was comparatively cheap at that time.
Regardless of why, the Joshua Davis family found themselves farming in or around Dover Hill, Indiana in the late 1850’s where they prospered and remained for the rest of their lives.
As would be expected, with the exception of the 3 children who died in infancy, the children of Joshua and Aletha, all of whom would be my generation’s great-great Aunts and Uncles, left the family. Joshua died in 1891 and is buried in the old Trinity Springs, Indiana Cemetery. He left behind a 320 farm to be split amongst his heirs. His widow, Aletha, lived on one 40 acre plot until she died in 1900 and is also buried beside her husband in Trinity Springs. Their 11 children were as follows:
1: Louisa (1834 – 1919) married Michael E Sponsler in 1868 and bore 8 children before her death in 1891. She is buried in Indian Springs, Indiana.
2: Lettice (1836 – 1930). was wed to James N Yarnell in 1860 and went on to have nine children before her death in 1930.
3: Hannah (1838 – 1860)) married James D Seibert in Ohio in 1857 and died 3 years later in Martin County, Indiana, leaving behind 1 infant daughter, Lenora Ellen.
4: Infant son born/died 1840 or 1841.
5: Lewis (1844 -1915) had 8 children with his wife Carrie Cogswell Davis .
6: Emily (1845 – 1929) married Albert McBride in 1868, had 4 children, is buried in Missouri.
7: Nancy (1848 – 1848)
8: Marion (1849 – 1849)
9: Emmett (1851 – 1935) married Josephine Douglas. Two daughters were born but there is little information on them.
10: Olive (1854 – 1931) married Elisha Alexander Kenady (1859 – 1894)
11: Harriet (1857 – 1886) Married Edward Hewitt in 1885. She had one child who died in infancy in 1886, the same year that Harriet died. There is no known death certificate but I’m guessing childbirth was the cause.
The offspring of these children have undoubtedly produced hundreds, if not thousands, of distant cousins. I receive almost daily notifications from Ancestry.com that another of these cousins has had their DNA analyzed and this analysis reveals that I have been linked to one more 3rd, 4th or 5th cousin. I suppose I could use some of that data to back up my belief that Joshua Samuel is in fact, our great-great-great- grandfather Davis but I’m already 82 years old and I don’t want to take the time…..
Also, a bit of gossip. Interestingly enough, in the 1880 census, Joshua and Aletha also had a son listed named Leslie born in 1877. At his birth, his mother, Aletha, would have been 62 years old; not possible then. I suspected Leslie was actually Joshua and Aletha’s grandson and they were listed as his parents on the birth certificate because Leslie was most likely born out of wedlock to someone in the family.
Initially, I suspected one of the two unmarried Davis girls, Harriet or Olive, my future great-grandmother. Uh-oh. This was not good. Of course, it could also have been a philandering son in the family. However, after further research,
I came to the conclusion that Lenora Ellen Siebert was the mother of Leslie. Hannah, Aletha’s third child and Lenora’s mother, died in 1860 shortly after delivering her daughter. Lenora was subsequently raised by Joshua and Aletha; later census records identified her as the mother of Leslie. Who was the father? No idea but you know those jokes about traveling salesmen and farmer’s daughters. Soap Opera stuff,.
So how did Olive Davis end up being my great-grandmother? On the last day of 1879, Olive, age 25, married Elisha Alexander Kenady (1859 – 1894) age 20.
And with that, I’m going to stop here because this story is already confusing enough without adding yet another generation.
Besides, I have lots of questions about Olive, most of which will never be answered, but as time permits, I want to take that time to answer as many of them as I can.
Gordon
G2 Notes:
1: The top seven are Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, Garcia and Miller.
2: From Dictionary.com: “patronymic is a name derived from that of a father or paternal ancestor, usually by the addition of a suffix or prefix meaning “son.” Thus the Scottish name MacDonald originally meant “son of Donald.” Usually the “son” affix is attached to a baptismal name, but it is also possible to attach it to the father’s occupation.” In other words, during the latter part of the Middle Ages, at least in the UK, the last name of a family changed with each generation. I can only imagine the confusion that might have caused (and actually, still causes today).
3: I found a couple of possible candidates but could not definitely tie them down. I’m sure some Davis researcher somewhere has figured it all out and if I had more time, I would look into that but for now, this will have to do.
4: From the Wales history website: when England’s King Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660, he instigated a wave of religious intolerance which threatened the rights of several groups to worship in the way that they chose. Significant numbers of people – in some cases, whole communities – began to leave Wales. It is only speculation on my part that our ancestor was one of these folks. There are also some records that point to our ancestor leaving England some years before Charles II became king. One further note: I have no idea why Charles II was ‘restored to the English throne’ or even why he was removed in the first place. I should have paid more attention in World History class, I guess. So many kings, so little time.
5: I only mention the Moravians because I am left wondering if my Great-great grandfather Davis, who was born in Pennsylvania, was a member of this church. It is also quite possible that his wife , Alethea (Letha), having been born in Gnadenhutton, may have been a member of thee faith.
A few years back, we visited the southern headquarters of the Moravians in Winston-Salem while visiting with friends in the area. After this visit and after reading the Wikipedia article about the Moravians, in my limited exposure to their beliefs, the group strikes me as similar to the Quakers with a smidgeon of the Shakers thrown in for good measure.
One of the tasks involved in retirement, especially after 20 years of everyday being a Saturday, is to pay attention to the luxury items that you hung on to when your income acquired the title of ‘fixed’. As time goes on and you realize that living into your late eighties or even longer is possible and while that is a gift that many of my friends did not see, you pay even more attention to those luxuries because that savings you accumulated over 45 years of employment, the money that was going to help in maintaining a decent lifestyle through to the end, may not last, especially if that end comes near the age of ninety.
Over the past 20 years, the chances of having to drastically change our lifestyle has not been a big concern; we live quite comfortably although I wouldn’t consider it ‘high on the hog’ comfortable.
But we like it that way; we drive an eight year old car, live in a 1100 square foot home home and have not stepped foot in a Macy’s department store since I can’t remember when.
We brag about the dollar fifty Costco hot dog, have given up visits to the five star Steakhouses and turned down or up, depending on the season, the thermostat; a little cooler in the winter, a little warmer in the summer.
We no longer look at Alaskan Cruise brochures, even though I still get E-mails of special deals. (I expect I will continue to receive them as long as I’m on the right side of the dirt and maybe even after, all because I once requested some information on a cruise through the internet.)
And now, watching your luxury spending has become even more important since the rise of the back door tax on fixed incomes; that being the seven percent (or more) inflation; especially when your savings might as well be hidden under the mattress because your ‘conservative’ investment plan is only earning two or three percent.
But that’s enough of that. I didn’t set out to make this some sort of gloom and doom post; we’re still okay; we don’t have to eat foods containing high fructose corn syrup nor will there be any giving up our Saturday night Steak and Salmon dinners at O’Charley’s.
Still, I am aware of being caught up In the midst of all this financial volatility and I’m being pro-active in getting ahead of it if possible. The experts are all recommending that seniors start by reducing expenses where possible.so that’s what I’m doing. When the deli cuts got too expensive, I looked for something else.
It was only after our children were raised that we started buying cold cuts from the deli. Prior to that, we ate pre-packaged things like bologna and hot dogs.We were never desperate enough, however, to eat pimento loaf. Remembering those days, I thought it might be time to return to that display case.
That’s where the silver lining to this story appeared. I had forgotten how good a bologna sandwich with lettuce, mayo, a slice of sweet onion and a juicy slice of tomato all on two pieces of soft Rye bread can taste. One man’s bologna is another man’s luxury, I suppose.
Prior to the Covid Pandemic of 2020, various renditions of the Taco salad were a mainstay in my diet and had been for several years. How many years? I don’t know. Back when I had a lot of time on my hands, I spent many an hour trying to discover when and where I first enjoyed a taco salad. (1) According to the Internet, the taco salad has been around since the 1960’s (2) but having been raised on meat and potatoes and refusing to eat anything else, it would have been at least the 1970’s before I would have tried any kind of what I perceived to be foreigner food.
One day soon, I hope to delve into this question but in today’s drivel, I just want to make note of the passing of a restaurant that served a favorite version of the dish.
During the early stages of the pandemic and prior to the introduction of the vaccine, Susie and I spent many months rarely venturing outside and only then, in search of food. Thank the Kroger Company for introducing the pick-up grocery order.
During that time, we went without eating any prepared foods, including my taco salads. Only after we were vaccinated did we dare to try restaurant food and even then, we only ordered carryout. An internet search for taco salads led me to a restaurant called Leonardo’s not far from home, 1.2 miles to be exact. Their version of the taco salad contained the ingredients I wanted; shredded beef, refried beans, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese and sour cream. Even though the restaurant had inside seating, they were only offering carryout dishes picked up at their drive thru window. I liked that window; I did not have to leave the car and risk infection by going inside. Because of that, I forgave the sometimes long wait when they only had two people working (I also never saw the same people) I also went along with their occasional substituting ground beef when they had no shredded beef; I did, however, briefly look for another taco salad supplier when they forgot an integral part of a good taco salad, the refired beans and then denied it when I called. But the other places I found did not put refried beans in their version of the salad. So I returned to Leonardo’s.
Then, in mid-August of this year, I called to place an order and the phone had been disconnected. Hoping that there might be a glitch in the phone system but dreading the obvious truth, I drove to the pickup window and found this hastily scribbled sign taped to the glass.
It read ‘Dear Customers, we are writing today to inform you that Leonardo’s Mexican Food (Southport location) will be closing doors on August 1, 2021 due to our lease expiring this month. We appreciate everyone’s support and thank you for your feedback over the past 5 years of operation. It was a pleasure…..
At that point, the marker they were using must have ran out of ink and I could not decipher the rest of the note. Was it really the lease or could it have the lack of help or not enough business.? The answer made no difference, they were gone, vamoosed into thin air and I was going to have to find a new place to get my taco salads. I peered into the darkened interior where nothing looked out of place. It appeared as if they had just turned out the lights, locked the door and walked away, not even stopping to remove their Tip container, an object that had surely been a coffee can in a former life.
I had never put money in there before, always just adding a tip to my credit card payment. I would, on occasion, speculate what brand of coffee it might have been, Folger’s perhaps or maybe Maxwell house. It might have even been something more trendy, Starbucks or Green Mountain although, on second thought, I don’t think the fashionable brands come in cans. It was a futile gesture on my part but I wanted to do something to note their closing. I grabbed a nickel out of our car’s console and threw it in the tips can. It was a futile gesture on my part but I wanted to do something to note their closing. Que Sera Sera, I suppose.
As to a new source for my taco salads – I’m still interviewing.
During our recent stay in Seattle, we had several ethnic meals, including Indian, Italian, Mexican, Thai and Japanese. I learned several things about food in different cultures, one of which is that the word Curry can mean different things, depending upon culture. It can be a powdery spice, a past, a sauce or a main dish. I have a lot more to learn in that area because I found that the sauce was delicious and I’m ready for more experimentation as soon as possible.
It helps that Susie is slightly adventurous when it comes to trying new dishes but we have run into a snag when it comes to one party in our twosome eating oysters. We had Kumamoto oysters on the half shell at dinner one evening. Susie hates oysters regardless of preparation, presentation or species but I convinced her that Japanese oysters are not as slimy as their North American cousins so she gamely tried one. She managed to keep it down mumbling something about “still slimy, still slimy.” I offered to put a couple on the grill and cook them but to no avail. She also balked at much of the Sushi on our Japanese outing, refusing to try anything with seaweed wrapped around it.
That is why I was surprised at a dish she fixed after we returned to Indianapolis. It became the subject for my weekly newspaper column so rather than getting into it here, I will just cut and paste the column here for any of you folks who don’t have access to any of the newspapers that publish my weekly drivel.
Toubali and Pimento Loaf Gastronomically speaking, It’s been a bad week around the Grindstaff ranch. It started with my sitting at the kitchen table staring at a bowl full of tabbouleh.
(I didn’t know it was tabbouleh and apparently, neither does Microsoft. As I sit here at my keyboard typing, Mr. Gates’ software insists that I’m spelling the word wrong but I’m not. Both Google and Webster tell me I’m right.)
“What is this?” I said, eyeing the lump of whiteish-gray stuff with multi-colored flecks of…, of…., of….. something.
“Tabouli.” My wife, Susie answered, pronouncing it in what I suppose is an Americanized version of the product’s name.
“I don’t believe I want any of this.” I said, trying to be polite. In truth, there was no way I Hell I was putting any of that in my mouth.
“Why not?”
“I don’t like the looks of it. What’s in the recipe?”
“Bulgur, onion, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, pars….”
“Wait a minute.” I interrupted. “Bulgur? What is Bulgur?”
“It’s a Middle Eastern grain, sort of like rice. You have to boil it.”
“Middle East???” You won’t eat American oysters but you’ll eat that stuff from some far off place?” Susie hates Oysters .
“Tabouli’s not slimy, Oysters are. Besides that, did you happen to remember that we just got home from Seattle? We haven’t been to the grocery yet. That’s all I could find.”
I had no idea why we had Bulgur in the first place but I wasn’t going to argue. “Then let’s go the grocery store. We can eat that stuff later.” I said, not feeling a bit guilty about this lie. That stuff was never crossing my lips.
I headed straight for the deli counter when we arrived. Our tomato plants were bearing almost ripened fruit and I could see myself having a big roast beef sandwich on Rye bread smeared with Mayo and topped with some fresh lettuce and a thick slice of red, juicy homegrown tomato.
I scanned the meat case looking for Roast Beef. There it was, Boar’s Head – 10.99 a pound. ‘10.99? It’s been a while since I bought Roast Beef.’ I thought. ‘Maybe turkey pastrami sounds better.’
Susie walked up as I was looking over the lunch meat selections for prices that I was more comfortable with. There’s one. 4.99 for Pimento Loaf. From somewhere deep in my memory bank, an unpleasant recollection of Pimento loaf struggled to get to the forefront of memories retained from my childhood but I couldn’t get it. I turned to Susie. “Do you like Pimento Loaf?” I said, putting the emphasis on the ‘PIE’.
“No. I won’t touch the stuff.”
“I don’t think I like it either.” Still, it was only 4.99 a pound.
“Look at this pie-mento loaf.” I told her. “Is it supposed to be that color? It looks a little bit too gray for me.”
“Who cares? We’re not going to buy it. Why in the world would you even think about it? You don’t like it and I already told you I won’t eat it, regardless of its color.” She paused to take a deep breath. “And another thing, it’s not PIE-mento loaf.”
“It’s not? What is it?”
“It’s PA-mento loaf. Pa. Pa. with a short ‘A’. Pa-mento loaf.”
“We always called it Pie-mento Loaf in Loogootee, Indiana.”
“Well, you’re in the big city now. Around here we call it Pa-mento Loaf.”
“Okay. Pa-mento it is.” I said, once again lying through my teeth, knowing full well that after 52 years of marriage, I had found yet another button I could push when the opportunity arose.
As is my custom, I like to learn all I can about the topic of my weekly drivel so I turned to the Internet to research the real skinny on Pimento Loaf. The search revealed that Pimento Loaf is also called Pickle and Pimento Loaf or just plain ‘P and P’ Loaf. This leads me to believe that the red and green things in the product are pickles and Pimentos.
Susie and I are not alone in not liking Pimento Loaf. The Google search also listed a website called ‘Holytaco.com’ that had an entry called ’25 incredibly nasty lunch meat products’ with Pimento Loaf being at the top of the list. There were others as well; potted meat food product, Olive Loaf, Liver spread, Liver cheese, Head Cheese and Old Fashion Loaf. Remember that one? It contains the most vile sounding ingredient I have ever come across in my years of traveling around the United States – mechanically separated chicken parts. What in God’s name are they doing to these poor chickens, anyway?
There were also two others on the HolyTaco list that made Susie recoil in horror when I showed her the pictures, ‘Pork brains with milk gravy’ was one. The can contained a grossly unappetizing picture of what I supposed were Pork Brains. The other was a can chock full of ‘Tongues’ made by a fellow named Tom Piper. There was no indication as to what kind of tongues they were although it doesn’t really matter. Just like PIE-mento Loaf, Susie would never allow something like that to cross our threshold.
No, it’s not maggots. It’s Tabouli
I tried the Tabouli and did not care for it. The above picture is of the 2 week old leftovers. By the time you read this, the contents of the container will have been sent to the compost pile, the container will be washed and put away. I am now working on getting up the nerve to try canned Pork Brains with milk gravy. They say it’s quite good on scrambled eggs.
Start your day with a 6 A.M. cup of strong Seattle coffee. One of my favorite parts about being here with my body still being on Indiana time. It’s no problem getting up at 5:30 and walking the 2 blocks to sip some hot coffee, read the paper and look out of the big plate glass windows to watch the world go by. It’s also good for the soul.
Try the Taco truck for breakfast and share a burrito as big as your head with your spouse.
Please – no more pictures
You haven’t seen the real Seattle until you’ve visited the Troll under the highway 99 bridge.
An afternoon trip to Fremont to see the Vladimir Lenin statue is always fun. On this day, he had blood (fake) on his hands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Lenin,_Seattle
If we ever decide to move to Seattle, the Fremont area is where I want to live.
This piece started life as a blog post but as usual, when it came time to submit my weekly gibberish to the newspapers, I wasn’t ready with what I was working on and was not in the mood to finish it. I grabbed what I had written for part 3 of my weblog series, cleaned it up and removed some stuff about farts and scratching myself. If you read on, You will probably figure out where I did that.
There is so much more to say about train travel but I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to putting it on here. It’s not all fun; long periods of staring out the window wishing I had something to munch on. I also missed talking to strangers about their lives, something I always did on previous train trips. Now everyone, including myself, have their noses stuck in a cell phone, tablet or laptop watching a movie or paging through endless and mostly mindless Facebook posts. I’m afraid we are being turned into a nation of Mark Zuckerbergs and it bothers me, not for myself so much but for our grandchildren.
My wife, Susie and I along with my daughter and granddaughter recently undertook a train trip from Chicago to Seattle to see our newest granddaughter, Audrey Rose. That means that this week’s drivel is coming to you from my son’s backyard in Washington State’s Emerald City. Traveling cross country by train on one of AMTRAK’s western routes is no longer a common experience so in keeping with this column’s spirit of public service, I thought it would be nice to touch briefly on the subject for those of you who will not be taking to the tracks anytime soon.
If you do decide to try cross country train travel -and I highly recommend it – your first decision after choosing a destination is to decide whether to purchase a coach seat ticket or pay the extra cost of a sleeper berth. The latter will provide you with free meals as well as a seat and a bed in a private compartment while the former forces you to pay for your meals in the dining car or bring your own food, something that requires a fair amount of logistical planning.
Choosing a coach seat also means spending one or two nights in a chair in a very public train car. During the day, the seat is very comfortable with lots of legroom and big windows that allow you to watch the world go by. It can also be reconfigured to provide a bit of comfort for sleeping; there are built in leg rests and a footrest. The seat also reclines but in the end, it’s still a chair and not a bed. The coach car is also not private and it seems like someone is always moving up and down the aisles and the pneumatically operated doors between the cars make a lot of noise.
On the other hand, the beds in the sleeping cars, while also serving as seats during the days, are enclosed in tiny compartments, providing enough privacy to get your pajamas on. That is why, if you can afford it at all, I recommend reserving a sleeper berth when you are putting together a cross country train trip.
Having traveled by train before, I knew that when we made the reservations for our just completed trip from Chicago to Seattle but I still went with a Coach seat because of the cost. I justified the decision because we were splitting our trip into 2 segments, breaking up the 3 day, 2 night trip by getting off the train for 3 days a little over half way into the trip at Glacier National Park. I figured anyone could handle sleeping one night while sitting up. I wasn’t totally wrong but I wasn’t totally right either.
We tried to prepare for getting a good night’s rest in our seat, bringing blanket-like afghans and pillows. That was one small step for mankind but there was nothing we could do about the fact that it would also help immensely to be small in stature, supple and arthritis-free when trying to curl up in a reclining seat. Neither Susie nor I fit the bill in any of these categories.
An added difficulty is trying to get comfortable in a seat while another person is trying to do the same thing in the seat right next to you. Luckily, that person was my soulmate; thus eliminating the worry of accidentally touching a complete stranger in some inappropriate manner in the middle of the night. I can’t imagine what I would do if I had to sleep next to a stranger. The best solution, although still not ideal, is having an empty seat next to you. This is not as difficult as it might seem. Individual seats are not reserved and a surprising number of people use the train to get from town to town so folks are always getting on or off at one of the numerous stops along the way, freeing up their seat or seats. A large group traveling from Chicago got off the train late in the evening in St. Paul, Minnesota freeing up several rows of seats. Seizing the moment, as it were, I left Susie in her seat and staked a claim to an empty row.
A few people got on the train at the same time and that’s when I spread out on the row, laying a magazine and a box of Cheezits on the empty seat beside me. I also assumed an unsocial look, hoping to discourage the folks walking down the aisle looking for a seat. Being the suave and debonair person that I am, I couldn’t bring myself to go so far as to pass gas or pick my nose as I suspected some other savvy travelers in the car were doing.
When the train left the St. Paul station, I began to go through the contortionist act of assuming the fetal position; wedging myself between the two armrests. I also had to negotiate the hidden steel bar between the two seats that requires constant adjustments in order to lessen the resulting hip pain.
When I awoke early, I was unable to walk without limping but I was consoled by the fact that I had saved a fair amount of money.
Not that I’m a skinflint or anything.
Good times and bad 