Sing, Sing, Sing

My fondness for music goes back to my earliest days. I recall riding along in the car as a child, listening transfixed to Piano Man by Billy Joel. I also remember my father grading papers with the radio tuned to NPR, listening to classical music in all of its thunderous glory. I drank deeply of contemporary Christian music throughout high school. Steve Taylor, Phil Keaggy, Rich Mullins, as well as Amy Grant, Randy Stonehill, and Michael Card played the soundtrack of my life. Hip Hop and Country were two genres I could never embrace, even rappers and cowboys filtered through the Christian subculture which targeted sanitized versions of their music towards me and my friends.

I’m unsure when the change happened, sometime around my early twenties. I think one motivating force was a new movie. When Harry Met Sally was a tremendous film of course, but the music that gave the movie life introduced me to a whole new world that I have never successfully escaped. Big Band and swing music have been a part of my life ever since.

Glen Miller, Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Connick, Frank Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong have all made a substantial impression on me. The sheer joy and fun that these musicians are able to convey through their music has always downloaded directly into my soul. One of my absolute favorite songs is Sing, Sing, Sing. When done well, it is an instrumental performance that dares you to sit still while you experience it.

In this version by Benny Goodman’s band, watch the sheer exuberance of the drummer, the great Gene Krupa. Such music is, simply, inspired. I suspect that when we get to heaven, there will be as many songs performed from the Cotton Club as there are from the Baptist Hymnal.

From the Archives

I came across some old poems and writings the other day. On Nostalgia Tuesdays , I'll post a few of the least embarrassing ones. (And yes, you'd be amazed at the poor quality of what I'm not posting!). As you'll be pleased to note, I've been remarkably pretentious for around three decades now.

2-27-90
"It's nine o'clock on a Saturday,
The regular crowd shuffles in,,
'There's an old man sittin' next to me
Makin’ love to his tonic and gin"

I turned off Billy Joel in mid-verse as I pulled my truck into the school's back lot, and for a few minutes I just sat there in silence, examining the playground. Here I was, sitting in the back of Nell Burks Elementary school after "graduating" over ten years before. As I climbed out of the suburban, I noticed the bicycle tracks in the winter grass, and smiled faintly recalling how my own bike's tracks used to criss-cross the grass as well. In 1980 my family moved from McKinney, Texas to a different town so that my father could start his new job. This visit was my first time to return to the school-yard of my youth.

As I walked across the playground it became obvious that many things had changed. There was now a chain-linked fence that wound its way around the perimeter of the schoolyard. New equipment replaced the (OSHA mocking) aging jungle-gyms and slides that I remembered so fondly. Despite these changes, though, the playground still felt the same.

In the center of the area, I noticed a familiar spot of dark earth whose grasslessness attested to its popularity as the center of recreational activity during recess. Walking on, I kicked an empty crayon box forgotten and flattened by careless students. The box and I shared the lonely Saturday schoolyard of my youth and I lamented the passage of time and the ending of schooldays.

I went over to the slide that I had played upon as a youngster. It didn't look as tall, or as foreboding as I remembered. Looking quickly around and vereifying my solitude, I reached out for the two hand rails. Climbing the ladder, I noticed two worn spots on each step and tried to imagine the thousands of little feet that had scampered up in excited expectation of the trip down. As I reached the top, I could survey the entire schoolyard.

For a second. . .for a second, the yard was again filled with children and I could see the
playground monitor motioning for me to slide down, so that others could go.

Then I slid down, closing my eyes as the wind rushed around me, thrilling in the exhilaration of the moment until the short ride with the impact of my feet on the dirt at the bottom of the slide. At first I blinked in the brightness of sunlight. I sat still for a moment, savoring the thoughts of
another time and another place. A place too far away for me ever to return to.

As I got in the truck to leave, I thought of Heraclitus who said: “The same man cannot walk through the river twice, for the next time he does, both the man and the river will have changed."

Heraclitus was wrong. I turned on the tape recorder as I slowly drove out of the playground.

"He said 'Son can you play me a memory,
I'm not really sure how it goes,
But it’s sad and its sweet I knew it complete,
When I wore a younger man’s clothes.'"

Nostalgia Animals

After taking Squealer to the doctor last week and forced to sit through an entire viewing of Milo and Otis in the waiting room, I was reminded of how many animal shows I watched as a kid. Here are the intorductions to the two I enjoyed the most.

Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
(Note Marlin Perkins sniffing the wind like a prairie dog).




Daktari





It wasn't an animal show of course, but no one did animals better than Johnny

Leningrad

I've been to St. Petersburg, Russia twice, once in college and once while in Seminary. In fact the first time I went (1991) it was Leningrad, the second time in 1994, the city had been renamed St. Petersburg. (I've mentioned my trip previously here). One of my most cherished possesions is the passport that I have stamped with the ominous CCCP of the Soviet Union (in red ink of course!).





Leningrad was the site of one of the most monstrous of battles during WWII. Nazi troops laid seige to Leningrad for close to 900 days before the seige was broken. I came across a series of pictures contrasting modern St. Petersburg with WWII Leningrad. Haunting.

Look here for more.

Tuesdays are for Nostalgia

Somtimes looking back can be a good guide to the future. With the injunction of Ecclesiastes in mind, on Tuesdays I'll take a look back.

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is
done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."
Ecclesiastes 1:9

One of the worst parts of parenting a thirteen year old is seeing the recycled teen culture that you thought you'd sucessfully escaped the first time around. This dawned on me again recently when Scooter showed me her new heartthrobs: the band called the Jonas Brothers. They are the most recent Disney singing group. Here's a fair representation of their work: Lovebug.







It bugged (sorry) me how familiar they were, but somehow I couldn't quite place them. Until finally it came to me. Yes, I distantly recall in the far recesses of my mind another long haired trio of brothers who took the teen demographic by storm. Regrettably, their video cannot be embedded (it has been disabled at their request, the punk kids). Perhaps they were embarassed by it.

As I told Scooter, enjoy the Jonas brothers, but don't blink or you'll miss them.

Looking Back

January is named of course, for the Roman god Janus, who had two faces , always gazing in two directions. So maybe January is a good time to look back and look ahead.


Looking Back


My grandmother died the Sunday after Christmas. She was 93 and led a full and generous life. I was asked to share a eulogy, which follows:

Today is a hard day, but today is a good day.


Today is a hard day, but today is a good day.

I thank you for coming today as we share some memories of Sylvia McGeorge, or as I knew her, Grandmother.

Some of the happiest summers of my childhood were spent in her house. I think what made those summers so happy is that they were so distinct and separate from the rest of my life. Her house was a place where the normal childhood rules didn’t apply.

Visiting grandmother was like visiting a different place, a better place.

For example, bedtimes evaporated as soon as my parents left the driveway. My brother and I could stay up as late as we wished, with no consequences to our actions.

Medicine was very different. Whenever I acquired a sore throat, grandmother’s remedy of choice was brought a combination of brandy and honey, a far cry from my teetotaling home. “Well, what do you think is in cough syrup?” she would say when pressed. (Of course, the result was an increase in sore throats whenever I spent some time with her.)

Next to her home, a magnolia tree grew that was as high as any sequoia. Kid limbs scrambled over tree limbs as we raced each other to the sky.


One of her “jobs” was to prepare for Wednesday night meals at First Baptist Church. In a move that OSHA would no doubt denounce, she let me open the huge cans of tomatoes with a table mounted can opener. I still remember as a six year old, lifting it as high as I could and then slamming it down on top of the cans and then turning it slowly around.


Visiting grandmother was like visiting a different place, a better place.


She had a couple of rocking chairs with a swing on the front porch of the house. For the only times in my life, I would spend summer evenings just rocking and swinging.

She was the first person I knew who owned a large freezer, which she kept well stocked with Popsicles. We could go get one whenever we wanted, and didn’t even have to ask. She also had an old fashioned coke machine with coke bottles. It was too big for me to slide the bottles down and then pull them through the top, to get them out. But she never tired of helping me to retrieve an icy cold beverage, not matter how close it was to bed time.

Grandmother also loved music. 45 Records were in abundance. Lawrence Welk and big band music of days gone by always accompanied me as I walked from room to room at grandmother’s house. There was no Time-Life record offer she could resist.



Mornings followed a predictable pattern. Captain Kangaroo was on in the morning, followed by the PBS duo of Sesame Street and the Electric Company. Then we transitioned to adult fare as Bob Barker always showed us that the Price is Right. But then there was a large gap in the day. Grandmother would always say, "Now its time for my stories”by which she meant The Guiding Light and As the World Turns (Or, as one of my cousins called it, "As the stomach turns"). During the soaps, we would go out and play, knowing that grandmother wouldn’t come looking for us until late afternoon. By then, more interesting things would be on as we resumed control of the TV at 3:00 when Gilligan’s Island came on.

Grandmother loved dominoes. I was too young to follow the complicated math involved in adding up to five, but from my earliest age, I was mesmerized by her ability to shuffle them on the special domino table she owned. No dealer in Vegas could match her manual dexterity. Their rhythmic clicking together is a sound I still recall to this day. She could turn and talk to me while she shuffled them without even looking at the table. When she felt like showing off, she would point and send me on an errand while she continued to shuffle the dominoes with her other hand.
Visiting grandmother was like going to a different place, a better place.

It was a place without room for corporal punishment. Although she did threaten to “blister our bottoms” (whatever that meant) I don’t ever recall being spanked by her. Her punishment of choice was to make us hug and kiss when we couldn’t get along with one another.

Perhaps best of all, grandmother’s home was a place where you got to see your own father get scolded from time to time by his mother. What kid wouldn’t want to see that?!

Visiting grandmother was like going to a different place, a better place.

Although she lived on East Avenue, some wag added an “F” to the the street sign so it read "Feast Avenue." But that was still appropriate, as Grandmother's house was a place where food was abundant. By the time I came along, she had been a caterer for decades.

She was an artist, and cake was her most savory medium. As she prepared her wedding cakes, she would have to level them (for proper stacking I suppose). After they came out of the oven, she would take a bread knife, turn it sideways, and shave off the top, ever so gently. Cake slices, a big around and as thin as plates. I would gather in the kitchen as she would stack these perfectly formed, slivers of heaven. With eyes the size of saucers I awaited them and then I did eat them. And lo, they were good. Very good.

She had a long table with multiple folding chairs. I recall receptions that seemed to seat hundreds (but probably more like 40 or 50). The aroma of food, the clinking of glass, and the hurried elegance of the wait staff as they did her bidding are etched into my earliest consciousness.

She fashioned tiny roses made out of white icing that she pressed into molds and stuck on wedding cakes. She would make sheets of these on wax paper, hundreds of them, and put them in the freezer until she needed them. I could fit about five of these into each of my hot little hands and pop them into my mouth to consume them in a few bites. The ensuing sugar rush would be sufficient to get me through even the slowest of summer days.

Visiting grandmother was like visiting another place, a better place.

Today is a hard day, but today is a good day.

The Bible shares about a very special grandmother. Timothy had a grandmother who was so remarkable that Paul mentioned her in one of his letters.

"When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also."

Paul succinctly identified the defining characteristic of good grandmothers: their influence on the generations to come. And like Lois, my grandmother passed on a legacy of faith to her children and her grandchildren.

Visiting grandmother was like visiting another place, a better place.

She didn’t have an easy life. She raised my father and aunt as a single mom during decades when that still carried with it the odor of scandal. But she picked through the difficult times and discussed them only when pressed.

My fondest memory of her is also one of the oldest. Grandmother purchased for me a sticker book, full of outdoor scenes. All the stickers were in the back and I had to search them out, lick the gluey side, and then stick them to their appropriate place in the book. I worked on it with all the focus a six year old could muster. On this particular day, grandmother was vacuuming the room while I busied myself.

One of the stickers was a bee. After carefully tearing it out from the back of the book, I accidentally dropped it on the shag carpet below. Having the attention span of a tsetse fly myself, I quickly went on to the next sticker. Several minutes later, my grandmother’s vacuum noisily inhaled my bee sticker while I continued to work. It was only a few minutes later that I realized what happened and I began to cry.

Really cry. In fact, I was in six year old, full liquid meltdown as I wept over my lost bee. Seeing my sorrow, she turned off the vacuum and then quickly learned the cause of my sadness. She assured me that it would be ok. Grandmother left the room and returned with the morning newspaper. She carefully spread out the pages, opened up the vacuum canister, and then dumped the contents of the vacuum onto the paper.

I can still see, with my six year old eyes, grandmother carefully working through the dust, dirt, and the hair as she sought the paper bee. After several minutes, she triumphantly held aloft the paper bee and returned it to me. Like the woman who searched for the lost coin, my grandmother's eyes twinkled as I stopped crying and joyously held my bee that had been lost.

And in this way, memory becomes metaphor.

Grandmother was always wading through the difficulties and the filth of this life to help and care for those she loved. I will miss her.

And now it’s her turn.

Now she is the one who has gone on to a different place, a better place.

Those of us who love her are impoverished by her absence, but were made far richer by her presence.

Today is a hard day, but today is a good day.

Several years ago she shared a poem that she wanted read at her funeral. It follows.

After Glow

I’d like the memory of me to be a happy one.
I’d like to leave an afterglow of smiles when life is done.
I’d like to leave an echo whispering softly down the ways,
of happy times and bright and sunny days.
I’d like the tears of those who grieve, to dry before the sun
of happy memories that I leave when my life is done.


I will miss you, Grandmother.






(Grandmother and Squealer, August 2003)

Deep Waters Ahead

Over the last few weeks, I’ve shared some special moments with my kids. With the small perspective that being a parent for 13 years provides, I know that these moments are fleeting. The brevity of childhood hit me years ago, the first afternoon I arrived home from work and Scooter didn’t meet me at the door with a shrieking “Daddy’s Home!!!!”

What I’ve long known in the abstract I’ve now witnessed in the concrete: kids grow up. Even worse, my kids grow up. So over the course of the last month, I’ve had three experiences that I know won’t last much longer. I feel like I’m walking from the shallow end of my kid’s childhood to the deep end of the pool where teen years and adulthood lie in wait. My toes can still touch the bottom, but not for much longer.

We’ve recently wrapped up soccer for the second season and the kids all loved it. But unlike last year, Squealer seemed to finally get the point of the game this year. He scored his first goal in his first game. A writhing, amazing shot as he fell down under a heap of defenders. As he scored the goal, simultaneously falling face first to the ground, he laid on his stomach with one fist raised victoriously in the air. His eyes met mine and he scrambled up and sprinted toward me on the sideline and gave me an enormous hug. Thus it started a trend. Whenever he scored a goal this season (a not uncommon occurrence, given his mother’s athletic abilities) he sprinted toward the sidelines and hugged me. It made me hope for high scoring games.

Skeeter recently, out of the blue, asked me a question I hadn’t heard in years “Daddy, can you rock me tonight?” And so, for the first time in a good two or three years, she crawled up into my lap (much smaller now than it used to be) and we rocked, although her feet were practically touching the ground. He face was in the crook of my arm as we sang and talked and pretty soon I felt moisture on my arm. Realizing she was crying, I asked her what was wrong. She said “I don’t want to go away to college. I want to stay here with you and Mom.” So of course, not only was my arm wet, but soon her hair as well. I don’t know how many more times I’ll get to rock her, but such moments too are disappearing. And of course, when the day comes for her to leave for college, I’ll be the one wishing she could stay while she’ll be the one looking forward to new adventures.

Scooter is the biggest and the oldest, neither hugging Dad in public nor rocking with him in private. But she still gets happy when I’m able to stop by her school for lunch. She likes it when I sit with her and her friends at the lunch table and they explain to me again all of the intricacies of early teen life. She rolls her eyes at my corny jokes and turns beet red in front of her friends when I display my attempts at cool lingo “Between us, let’s keep it on the ‘LD” or “That new group is really on the chain!” But her face lights up whenever I get the chance to come by and she gives me a quick peck on the cheek goodbye when her friends are safely around the corner.

But I can see changes coming. Squealer will one day celebrate goals with high fives instead of hugs and Skeeter will ask me for gas money instead of time in the rocking chair. Scooter will beg me to take her off campus to lunch instead of eating around her friends. But I’ll treasure these moments and I’ll miss them at the same time.

My feet can still touch the bottom, but not for much longer.

"It's Not a Competition"

Longtime readers may recall that one of my favorite theologians is N. T. Wright. I mentioned hearing him address the annual SBL meeting in San Diego last November.

Oddly enough, he turned up a few nights ago on the Colbert Report. The thought of Steve Colbert interviewing Bishop N.T. Wright seems about as likely as Woody Allen interviewing Billy Graham!! But it made for a interesting conversation nonetheless. Although you do have to wade through a heavy layer of Colbertian snark, it’s still worth it. The topic is heaven and the New Heavens and the New Earth.

Enjoy!





(What?! You mean you didn’t know that Woody Allen DID interview Billy Graham?)

Larry Norman, Requiem in Pacem

Larry Norman, the dean of Contemporary Christian music passed away last week. Although never a huge Norman fan, I appreciate his ground breaking work. His influence would be hard to overestimate. You can draw a line of apostolic succession from Norman to the contemporary singers and songwriters whose artistic works fill our churches on most Sundays.

(I also learned from Norman that Christians don't always get along. He and Randy Stonehill had a tumultuous relationship. That fact is reflected in Stonehill's own eulogy for Norman here.)

There was a time in high school when I believed that his duet with Steve Camp “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music” represented the zenith on Christian rock. (And the zenith of Big Hair).

But for now, I’ll pass along two You Tubes. First, his haunting “I wish We’d All Been Ready” performed by DC Talk






Second, his acoustic version of WSTDHATGM





HT: Dave Samples

The Chairman of the Board and the King

A very cool duet here

Late Night

Two entertainers have influenced my view of New York far more than any other: David Letterman and Woody Allen. I’ll save my view of the controversial Allen for another time, but Letterman is particularly worth noting.

Letterman has charted my own sense of humor ever since I started watching him on NBC back in high school. For a complete career summary (his, not mine) see here.

Leno rules the Neilson’s, but Letterman has made an impact on culture, helping to define the New Yorker attitude and using cynicism to puncture pretension and unctuousness wherever he may find it. Who else has equally offended both Madonna and Bill O’Reilly? These two polar opposites share nothing in common other than arrogant condescension. (Letterman’s interviews with them both are available on Youtube, but Madonna’s is filled with far too much bleeping for this family blog). Letterman wields his scalpel with tremendous skill.

He can also be thought provoking and downright appropriate when the situation calls for it. For example, he had a powerful interview with Dan Rather a week after 9/11. On one occasion he was graciously disarming to a Christian artist who appeared on his show.

He also had the best commercial at the SuperBowl last month.

The hallmark of Letterman’s humor is its self-effacing nature. Humor at your own expense is one of the best (and safest) forms. As one example, shortly after Letterman had a quadruple bypass surgery in 2000, he retuned to the show a few months later and said: “My career flashed before my eyes. I'm telling you something. It was mostly awkward silences.”


Tomorrow, the long awaited (by both of you still reading this blog) final installation of the NYC trip…including a trip to the Late Show with David Letterman.

My Home Town

I am going on a big trip in a few days.

It is a trip to my home town, where I’ve been raised from my earliest memories. I’ve grown up in this town, watching the kids play on the sidewalks and seeing the hustle and bustle of everyday life. The town looks very similar now as it did to me when I was growing up.

It’s a really busy town and I’m always amazed at the mass of humanity in my home town. I remember walking in the park, gazing at the river, all the while being engulfed in the canyon of tall buildings. I’ve tried not to let nostalgia glamorize my memory, but it is a beautiful place. I’ve seen its mean streets too. I’ve seen its crime. Believe it or not, I’ve seen people viciously beaten on the streets of my home town in front of my very eyes!!

I should also mention that I’ve never been to this town, this town in which I was raised.

The town is New York City.

I’m preparing for my first trip to the Big Apple and I’m excited. I’ve begun to reflect on the amount of time I’ve “spent” in New York and it is pretty impressive. As a toddler I was raised over on Sesame Street, which was geographically and culturally a few thousand miles away from 329 Northwood drive in the north Dallas suburbs. I recall being fascinated by the idea that people lived in apartment buildings instead of homes; that there were stores located on the same streets as these apartments—and that people spent afternoons playing jump rope and hopscotch instead of football and baseball.

Music and television have also affected my views of New York. People like Paul Simon and Billy Joel, Elaine and Kramer, Edith and Archie, Lucy and Ricky, even Horseshack and Vinny all have affected my view of New York. (I’ve even viewed its repeated destruction!)

I’m going up to New York next week to interview candidates for an open position on our faculty. Our hotel is right near Broadway, Time’s Square, Central Park and Ground zero.

I can’t wait to see what my home-town is like!!!!

(I do however expect to get mugged at some point).

Social Studies Exam

Scooter and I were studying for her social studies exam on Egypt. We studied about Akhenaten (no, not that one) Ra, and Nefertiti. But Scooter couldn't quite get the importance of King Tutankhamen (no, not that one), who had a fairly uneventful reign.


Of course, I had to explain that King Tut was actually born in Arizonia before he moved to Babylonia. She was puzzled until, thanks to the wonders of YouTube...





After we watched it she was silent for a second and then said "Isn't that the guy from Cheaper by the Dozen 2?"

Part of the Emphemera Still Floating Around in my Brain.....

Thirty years later, I still cannot get these images out of my mind...







And the One that started them all: The Yip Yip Martians meet the Telephone...






The Sleestacks still frighten me. And I still, bitterly hold Sidd and Marty Krofft personally responsible for so much that went wrong in the 1970's....

Two Little Monkeys, Jumping on a Bed...

Flashback: The year is Spring of 2000 and we are preparing to move from Waco to our new home.

We had a rule in our house that jumping on the bed was not permitted. The kids knew that jumping on the bed was akin to the laws of the Medes and the Persians that could never be altered. It was strictly forbidden. One afternoon, Scooter came downstairs with Skeeter in tow. (Scooter would often be the spokesperson while Skeeter stood there as silent and curly headed as Harpo).

Scooter: "Father, may we jump on the bed?"

Taran: "No daughter, you know that it is a rule of the house that you must not jump on the bed."

Scooter: "But Father, jumping on the bed is fun." (Skeeter nods emphatically).

Taran: "It is true daughter, that jumping on the bed is fun. But jumping on the bed is not good for the bed. Because of how badly it hurts the bed, you may not jump on it."

Scooter: "But father, isn't it true that we are buying a new bed for our new apartment?"

Taran: "Yes daughter, we will be getting you and your sister a new bed after we move."

Scooter: "So can't we jump on the bed since we will be getting a new one?"

Taran: (silence...thinking...thinking...silence)

Scooter: PLEASE!!!!!! (Skeeter makes a very pleading face)

Taran: "Yes daughters, you may jump on the bed."

The girls chirped their thanks and bounded up the stairs. I soon hear the little bed squeaking and groaning under their collective weight. Their giggles bring a smile to my face.

Then I ignored them and turn on the Texas Rangers game.

Time passes (minutes, hours?) and the front door unlocks and opens. Kadie has arrived at home.

Before I get in a greeting she freezes and says (like Samuel to Saul) "What's that sound that I hear?"

(squeak, giggle, squeak, giggle)

Taran: "Oh, that's the girls, they're jumping on the bed."

Kadie: (silence...silence...)

Taran: (sensing trouble, speaking quickly) "Well, as Scooter pointed out to me, we are going to be getting a new bed, and jumping on the bed is fun, so I told them..."

Kadie sliced off my explanation with "Taran!" (which sounded like an expletive). It then dawned on me that she was wearing her scrubs. I remembered that she was a nurse. I remembered then that she was at that moment a practicing pediatric nurse. I remembered then that she was a pediatric nurse who often worked with children who have experienced blunt head trauma injuries.

"Taran" she said, and held up her hand to stop my stuttering 'explanation'.

Kadie then took on a tone of voice that she had previously reserved for talking to three-eyar olds. "Taran, the danger is that they might fall from the bed onto the hardwood floors that are, you know, hard wood."

She continued "I am not concerned about the bed, but rather head injuries. Don't you even sing a song to them about it?"

Taran: "Ummm....I thought that was just a song."

Chili's Life Lessons

During the four years I attended Southewestern Baptist Theological Seminary in the ewarly Nineties, I worked at Chili's restaurant on Hulen drive in Fort Worth. I had a great expereince there and even toyed with the idea of getting into mangagement for awhile (until God calmly reinforced my calling to the ministry). Recently, Wes Kennedy commented positively on the importance of tipping in Greensboro and got me thinking about those days again.

Things I learned at Chili's:

As noted on Wes' blog, the stereotrype that Christians are really lousy tippers is justified.

Any Spanish that you learn from the kitchen cooks, contains profanity.

When you are cutting onions and the tears well up, if you go into the walk-in freezer your tear ducts will close and you will stop crying. (This works at home too, just stick your head in the freezer). Note: do not try this with your small children.

Food service managers work longer hours for less pay than most anyone I know.

A lot of people break up their relationships at restaurants.

Working a double shift in the smoking section affects your body.

I now know what a triple sec is.

When a patron asks for another straw, don’t carry it out in your bare hand, wrap it in a napkin.

It is possible to carry a two dinner double fajitas orders (plus their set ups) on one hand (with the tray stand in the other).

Drunks are not particularly amusing.

At Chili’s, we had to sweep and mop down the floors and tables every night. It is one clean restaurant.

Sometimes guys tip to try to impress their dates. On one single occasion, I received a $100.00 tip from a guy trying to impress his date.

Top shelf margaritas are REALLY expensive.

If you have a really caked on, burned in stain in the microwave, get a wet washcloth, lay it over the stain and microwave it for 1:30 on high.

You really shouldn’t eat an Awesome Blossom by yourself (It has enough fat grams to last you for 3 days!!!)

If you take a glass mug straight out of the hot dishwasher and fill it with ice and a cold coke, the glass will break and the bottom will drop out of it.

The bartenders have the most interesting stories in the store.


Favorite seminary/Chili’s story:

After working the lunch shift, my manager was trying to get me to work a night shift that evening. He was a muscle builder and had the constitution of an ox. His physically imposing presence made him difficult to turn down. I explained to him that I couldn’t work the night shift because I had to study for a Hebrew test (with Dr. F. B. Huey) early the next morning. He said to me “Dude, don’t you know that the Catholics already translated the Bible a long time ago?”

Worst Mission Meal??

My new word for the day is hippophagy. (I am pleased that MS Word has a red underline next to it). It means, roughly, the eating of something (not hippos). I encountered this word in a recent book review. It got me thinking, what is the strangest “delicacy” you have ever ingested? I think of three offhand, each of them I "enjoyed" while in foreign missions:

1) I did summer missions work in Moscow and we ate cow tongue, suspended in jellied beef fat. I could simply not finish it. It was the fat, not the tongue. You know when you put roast beef in the refrigerator over night and then you look at it the next morning and it has little jellied fat around it? That is exactly what surrounded the tongue.

2)Also in Russia, this time in St. Petersburg. The church where we worked had become convinced that Spam was an American delicacy. We ate spam soup, spamwiches, and spam borscht. I literally have not had spam in the 17 years since that trip and the next time I have it will be too soon for me. (Perhaps we should’ve been working for the church of Spam?)

3)But the worst was a combination of sardines and scrambled eggs. I encountered this delicacy in southern Brazil on a mission trip. I am proud to say (obviously I am proud, I am a blogger after all;) that I ate every bite. The pastor who prepared it watched us while we ate and we were afraid that we might offend him. The best part was that our team discussed how awful it tasted while smiling and trying to look spiritual. The pastor spoke no English and could not tell that our conversation was more culinary than cross-cultural.

What is the worst you have eaten on a trip, mission or otherwise? (not counting college food, like the 3 "pizzas" for a dollar you could get at Albertsons in the 1980s).

Film Memories

The year was 1975.

I was six years old and remember it vividly. I was excited because I was going to the movies. For some reason, my mother and my uncle foolishly agreed to take me to the show. Dad was home with my infant brother.

Going out with my uncle was always a treat, I so much enjoyed being around him. He was a unique individual. He was my mother’s oldest brother and what I most remember about him was his laugh. He was always either telling a joke or laughing at one. He had a wicked sense of humor that I didn’t always understand, but made my mother laugh uproariously. She tells me to this day that my sense of humor reminds her of his.

Mom says that she and her brother used to stay up late into the night watching Johnny Carson. Humor defined my uncle and played an important part of first their, and then later our, relationship. I remember confiding in my uncle about how I felt slower than my friend Chip who lived down the street. My Uncle told me that he was sure I could beat Chip in a race if I just kept working at it. (He was absolutely wrong on that point, Chip always toasted me).

One other thing about my uncle. He was a quadriplegic. He was struck with polio in his late teens as he finished up high school. Before the disease he was tall and athletic and according to family tradition, had a full baseball scholarship to the University of Texas. I never saw his hands strong enough to swing a bat or grip a ball. In my mind’s eye they are always locked in an odd angle, incapable of movement.

So going to the movies was a special treat. Mom got out his wheelchair and picked him up and placed him in it, as she had thousands of times before. We wheeled him in and bought our tickets. The theater marquee had a huge caricature of Jerry Lewis next to the listing of all the films. Inside, where you waited in line for popcorn and a coke, was a mural of a crowd of the Hollywood greats. So you stood there waiting for your Milk Duds alongside the Duke, Groucho, and Marilyn.
We sat in the back of the theater (this was a fifteen years before the Americans with Disabilities Act) with my uncle in the aisle. My mother sat next to my uncle and I sat next to her. I’m sure we talked a bit before the film began, but that is not what I remember most.

The film was the Return of the Pink Panther, starring Peter Sellers as Jacques Clouseau. And I can recall the precise moment, the nanomemory where my love affair with film began. Clouseau was trying to get into the (Notorious) Litton’s home and disguised himself as a telephone repairman. He borrowed a telephone repair van and drove down a hill. The brakes went out and (as I recall) the stick shift came off in his hand. His garbled French and English combined in fright as he hurtled off the street and through a row of bushes. The van then took flight and crashed into a swimming pool where it sank like a cartoon anvil.

It was at that moment that I turned to look at my mom and my uncle and saw that they were each laughing. I laughed too. That image of the three of us laughing is locked in my mind.

Two years later my uncle finally succumbed to polio. I still remember the phone call when my mother told me he died. In recent years I sometimes stop in Emory to visit his grave. I regret that he didn’t get to know my beautiful wife (with a wicked sense of humor herself) or his great nieces. He also missed getting to know the great nephew who would one day bear his name.

But Clouseau is still chasing the Pink Panther diamond. And now I can put the DVD in and watch it with my kids and laugh at the same scene.

I bet that it still makes my uncle laugh too.

Signposts

Two events occurred yesterday, each of them significant and each of them passing by all too quickly. The first event occurred early in the morning as I bade Scooter (10) and Skeeter (7) goodbye. They rode their bikes to school for the first time. School is just under a mile away (too close for a bus ride), but that mile crosses two busy intersections and a major highway. So despite their increased skill at bike riding, Kadie and I were loathe to allow them to travel without adult supervision.

After asking constantly for the last month (like the guy in the Bible knocking on his neighbor's door) we let them go this morning. I waited a good 15 minutes or so before I slowly drove up to the school to check on their progress. When I arrived I immediately checked their bike rack to see that there bikes were there. I couldn’t see anything from the car, so I parked and walked up to the rack where their bikes were safely chained to one another and to the rack, just as I’d showed the girls. When they safely biked home in the afternoon I quizzed them incessantly (but with feigned nonchalance) about their rides to and from school. Their rides were blessedly uneventful.

The second event was even more insubstantial, but no less significant. I removed all the child locks from the cabinets in the kitchen. Squealer is 3 ½ now and is not quite so destructive (or at least, his destruction is more likely to be controlled, at least when cheese is not involved). Child locks are a pain, and we had been looking forward to getting rid of them. So I quickly removed them all. Later this evening I found myself, out of habit, reaching for the lock as I opened a cabinet door. It wasn’t there of course and I immediately felt a twinge of sadness. I miss it already. Squealer is (Lord willing) our last child, and I can now put away these locks for good.

I don’t want to get too maudlin or anything. In fact, with each of the kiddos I have consistently enjoyed them more and more each year. As they get older, you can relate to them mroe and more as miniature adults, little people instead of infants. While I miss some of the earlier days, I wouldn’t turn back the clock if I could. I love them more as they are than as they were.

But I also don’t want to let these little events pass by unnoticed. I would like to hammer down a little signpost here and there on this blog to note their passing. And maybe to speculate on what may be coming ahead. After all, don't signposts point to where you're going as well as where you've been?