Monday
Went to bed last night at ten and got up at 430 this morning, feeling pretty good. Mostly because I have dreamed a dream . . . of shrimp pizza! With anchovies, mushrooms, scallions, and black olives. I made it as soon as I had my 4 different pills this morning, and it is baking merrily in the oven right now. Since I blanketed it with Italian seasoning, it smells heavenly. Having something in the oven makes me happy. Food is one way that I unabashedly show love -- to myself and to others. I am happiest when I am cooking for others, preferably family -- which doesn’t happen very often. Not as often as I could wish.
I daydream sometimes of sitting down at the head of a table groaning with roast turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, fluffy white dinner rolls, lots of pickles and relishes and a big green bean casserole (which Sarah dearly loves) with all my kids and grandkids -- feasting together, toasting each other with glasses of milk -- and saving room at the end for apple cobbler or raisin sour cream pie (Amy’s specialty -- which she always made for her dad because he would eat half of it in one sitting.)
We used to have those kinds of feasts when the kids were growing up, at our house on Como Avenue in Minneapolis. We bought a huge old mahogany table with eight chairs at the Salvation Army, (Stephen got his head stuck in the ornate scrollwork of the back of one of those chairs; I had to lubricate his ears with butter to pull him back out!) One of my many ward callings was to coordinate dinners for the missionaries; it really surprised me how many ward members refused to feed our pair of missionaries because, they claimed, they were so low on food themselves. So I had them over to our house for an early dinner at least once a week. And we never stinted on feeding them. Plus they often brought an investigator or two along. Once they brought along a whole family -- a single mother with three kids. I just added another can of cream of mushroom soup to the green bean casserole and Amy got out another loaf of her artisan whole wheat bread. We managed to fill everyone up.
One of my specialities for those occasions was ‘tricky spaghetti.’ I’d fry up a small piece of sliced flank steak with a huge amount of sliced beef liver, add lots of onions, and then drown the whole thing in cheap tomato sauce and serve it over a heaping pile of pasta. No one ever caught on to how much liver was in it -- I garnered many a compliment from hungry Elders after they stuffed themselves with it. But I let the cat out of the bag one Sunday when I had to give a Sacrament Meeting talk and mentioned the recipe. After that, the Elders always seemed to be too busy to come over for dinner at our place -- until a new set of innocent missionaries transferred in. But since the kids had also heard the talk they had wised up and forever after refused to touch my ‘tricky spaghetti’ -- we had to have hotdogs on hand for ‘em.
We never lacked enough to feed ourselves and as many others as we wanted back in those halcyon days, even though our budget was miniscule. I worked at Fingerhut Telemarketing, first as a telemarketer, and then as an assistant supervisor. Not much money in it, but at least we got health insurance. I believe the reason we never wanted for food was because I paid a full tithing and generous fast offering. And I recommend doing that to all my kids and friends whenever they complain of financial difficulties -- which is probably why they never tell me about their finances at all. Ever. Or ask for my advice. Ever.
Well, the pizza is cooling on the kitchen counter. So I’ll adjourn this gabfest for the moment to partake of the fruits of my own culinary labors . . .
Deeeeee-licous! As Teddy Roosevelt might say. Now that I’ve had a wonderful breakfast, I am going to have a wonderful day. Bruce Young should drive up to my patio door in just a minute for our trip to the Rec Center for aerobic aquatics with instructor Lorraine. Then a long soak in the hot tub.
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No mail today. I occasionally get postcards from Nathan Draper, as he travels around the world on Church business. They are a pleasant reminder of how much fun it was to receive and to send mail when I was but a gilded youth. In fact, I remember a time when mail was delivered twice each day -- once in the morning and once in the late afternoon. I wrote dozens of letters to my circus friends during the off season -- some of my most faithful correspondents included Dick Monday, Steve Smith, Ted Freedman, and Chico Severinni. And after the divorce I wrote hundreds of letters to the kids. And they often wrote me back. I still have a sack full of those letters -- at one time I papered my entire apartment with them.
I’m just remembering a most distasteful incident when I went into the Park City courtroom to answer Amy’s divorce summons -- her lawyer had a bag full of letters I’d written to the kids during the past several weeks of separation and she arrogantly spilled them out onto a polished brown table in front of the judge to prove that I was ‘harassing’ Amy and the children.
By God, I hated that lawyer at that moment with a murderous passion -- and I still hate her today. I hope she fries in New Jersey.
And people sent telegrams back then, too -- for urgent bizness or a frantic crisis. When I was a First of May with Ringling back in 1972 I was feeling my oats one day and sent a gag telegram to a friend from high school -- Randy Mickelsen. It read: “CAN’T THINK OF ANYTHING FUNNY TO WRITE, SO AM SENDING THIS COLLECT. YOURS, TORK.”
It cost him $1.40 and he didn’t think it was very funny.
Well, it’s nearly four and the day is winding down to a close for me. As usual.
I’m boiling some spuds to make mashed potatoes for dinner; I have some leftover chicken ala Tork to pour over the patooties. After dinner I’m going to try once again to finish watching the rest of Deep Space Nine. Although once I finish . . . what will I do to fill up the long long evenings? Now that the weather is getting nicer and the sun stays out longer maybe I should go downtown and sit on a bench in the evenings, watch people go by while I display a vacant face and drool a bit. I bet if I bring along an old hat people will put money in it.
Ah, but before I sink slowly into the west I have to write that Bruce Young traded me a sparkly blue hollow plastic blue Easter egg this morning for a bar of cranberry scented soap I got from Sarah. Bruce is taking the Church’s self-reliance class and he is doing the ‘paperclip challenge’ this week. Each class member starts out with one paper clip and sees how far he or she can trade up with it. So far Bruce has traded the paperclip for a pencil and the pencil for the sparkly blue Easter egg, which I took off his hands to put in my goodie jar.
I found the jar a few years ago in a non-Church thrift store (which has since gone out of bizness -- you can’t compete with DI in Happy Valley.) I remember I paid 16 dollars for it because it’s an exact copy of the cookie jar my mom had perched on top of our refrigerator at home when I was growing up. It’s a homely piece of standard crockery; I fill it full of cheap candy and small gewgaws I find at DI and let the grandkids take something out whenever they visit. I just asked my pal Nathan in Thailand to bring back some of the small bronze coins they still use over there, when he visits next month. They’re a big hit with Lance and Ohen.
That is all.
