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It’s That Guy

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Had a “it’s that guy” moment on Easter evening when watching Groundhog Day. Ann wanted to see it since she hadn’t before, but had heard of it. Yuriko and I hardly minded seeing it again, third time maybe over the last 25 years, since it’s a movie of such charm.

Fairly early in the movie, Bill Murray’s character has an appointment with a psychiatrist. It’s a small part, since I don’t think the psychiatrist appears again, unlike many of the other townsfolk. As soon as I saw him, I thought — it’s that guy in Lodge 49, an entertaining series I’m watching about once a week (the best way to do it). Only he’s close to 30 years younger.

So it was: David Pasquesi, who plays a lodge member who has an actual interest in alchemy, unlike most of the rest of the members. Like most character actors, his list of credits mostly includes titles I’ve never seen, or even heard of in a lot of cases. Does good work on Lodge 49, though.

Curiously enough, that isn’t the only overlap. Brian Doyle-Murray, who also had a small part in Groundhog Day, is a recurring character on Lodge 49.

Piggly Wiggly Sewing Kit

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Something new on the Weather Underground forecast page for my area this Maundy Thursday morning. A screen shot:

Obviously a day to stay in if you can, for a number of reasons. Back to posting on Easter Monday. A good Easter to all.

There are many oddities around the house. Why have it any other way? Such as a Piggly Wiggly sewing kit, or you could call it a needle kit. Scanned here open, with the back on the left and the front on the right. Or reverse and observe.

Inside the kit. Some needles still in place. A threader, too.My guess is that my grandmother picked it up at a San Antonio Piggly Wiggly in the 1950s, early ’60s at the latest. Most of the time I believe she shopped at the nearby Handy-Andy in Alamo Heights, but she must have occasionally patronized Piggly Wiggly, which existed in South Texas at the time (but no more: HEB is king in that part of the country).

At some point, maybe after grandma died, my mother removed it to her house; and now that’s what I’ve done. I can date it with some certainty to that decade because of a few details. Green Stamps don’t narrow it down that much, since they were around from the 1930s to the ’80s, but I smile at the mention of them anyway.

On the inside it says: Frank Kraus, Los Angeles 36, which puts it before zip codes and during postal zones (1943-63). Since the kit was made in West Germany, that puts it after the war, in fact after the formation of the BRD in 1949. Must have been a product of the postwar recovery, when West German industry was making whatever they could for whomever they could, just as Japanese industry did at the time.

As for Frank Kraus, I’d guess he was the importer. Possibly, but only possibly, this fellow. Or him, though he left California at some point. A little looking around, such as at Esty, reveals that Frank Kraus, whoever he was and wherever he rests now, had his name on other small sewing kits from West Germany.

Hail!

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Yesterday evening, rain was forecast possible and clouds rolled along.

Temps were a pleasant 70 F. or so. I sat on the deck and waited for the rain. Mostly I saw cloud-to-cloud lightning a few miles away to the south, which has a fascination all its own. It was never near enough to drive me inside, and not much rain came either by dark.

Today was a different story. Just before 5 p.m., heavy rain started to fall. With some hail. Luckily not too large, but enough to make a tink! sound when it hit a metal yard ornament in our front yard. Hail, or at least its streaks, is visible against the backdrop of a neighbor’s house.

When I was 11 or 12, golfball-sized hail fell as I watched from our kitchen window. The ice slammed into the yard and bounced every which way. It was over in two minutes. A minute? Not long, but impressive. I collected a few and kept them in the freezer until they merged with the other frost. It was Texas hail. You know, bigger like everything else.

Movies Unlimited, April 2020

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Today = an actual spring day. Even when a little wind blew and the sun was behind clouds, it was still pleasantly warm. Lunch again on the deck. Breakfast, too.

The April 2020 edition of Movies Unlimited came in the mail not long ago. I will assume for now that the dread coronavirus doesn’t last long on paper and handle my mail. (That’s what it should be called, the dread coronavirus. It was good enough for the pirate Roberts.)

Sounds like a magazine, but it’s really a catalog produced by a company of that name in Itasca, Illinois, only a short drive from where I live. I don’t remember the last time I got one. They come now and then, not monthly. But MU seems optimistic that someday, in a freak of geezer inspiration, I’ll order one of its DVDs or Blu-ray discs. Maybe I will.

“The book you’re holding is NOT the complete Movies Unlimited Catalog,” the company proclaims on the inside cover. “This Is!” it says, with an arrow pointing to a picture of a 432-page catalog available for $8.95. Order it now, it says, “and get ready to be movied like you’ve never been movied before!”

Well, no. But the free smaller catalog has its interests. In fact, MU offers a decent selection — old and new, famed and obscure, color and black-and-white, movies and TV shows, domestic and foreign, in a variety of genres. Much of it for an older audience, such as the wide selection of 20th-century TV series, but not entirely geared to geezers, with a sizable selection of 21st-century output.

There are near-full pages devoted to Studio Ghibli, Disney, the Three Stooges, Ray Harryhausen, film noir, John Wayne, Dick Tracy, Hammer, Little House on the Prairie, Audie Murphy and more, and one full page each devoted to Martin & Lewis and Dark Shadows.

That last one struck me as an oddity, but I guess they know their market. Mostly women roughly my age, I think. Maybe more men than I’d expect, those who watched it in secret during its initial run. That didn’t include me. I think I saw an episode and decided that was enough.

Anyway, someone interested in owning the complete original series on DVD will have to pay $479.99 for 131 discs totaling 470 hours, “packaged in a coffin-shaped, collector’s set and including a 100-page booklet.” If that’s too much, 26 separate collections are for sale for $31.99 each, or you can buy Dark Shadows Bloopers & Treasures.

Quieter Spring, But Not Silent

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For the first time this year, since sometime in October probably, I sat out on the deck and ate lunch. Conditions weren’t perfect for it, but good enough at about 12:30 this afternoon under partly cloud skies. When the sun came out from behind occasional clouds and there was no wind, the deck was a pleasant place to be for a few minutes, lunch or not.

Out in the yard, the dog lolled in the greening grass a time or two. Rabbits have been spotted, though not by the dog today. Early hatching insects can be seen here and there, and early flowers are well established. Birds are noisy in their quest for food and to make baby birds. The only thing missing from the usual early spring sounds are those from the playground behind the house.

British Air ’88

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In early April 1988, I visited London for a week, which included laughs in the basement of a pub and time at the British Museum and the Imperial War Museum and a lot more. A good trip.

To make the trip a reality, some time earlier I called a travel agent. The agent who also booked tickets for my company, whose office (I think) was somewhere on Michigan Ave. For me, the ticket buyer, her services cost nothing. Hard to imagine now. I’d call her even for ordinary domestic tickets. The last time was to book passage to Japan in 1990.

I told her where and when I wanted to go, fully expecting to pass through New York to get to London. That’s what you did to get across the Atlantic. Get to New York first, as surely as Lindbergh did.

I reconstruct the conversation:

Agent: We have a flight leaving at x, arriving at Heathrow at y.
Me: Leaving New York?
Agent: No, it’s direct from Chicago.
Me (a touch astonished): Really?
Agent: Oh, yes. So is the return.

A pleasant surprise. I bought a package: RT air tickets, a week’s accommodation at a middling hotel — but very well located near Paddington Station — and a week’s pass on the Underground. Good value.

British Air was the carrier. That too was a first for me. In fact, still the only time I’ve flown that airline. Flew across on a charter in ’83 and on the upstart Virgin in ’94.

A souvenir of the flight. A menu.
BA menu 1988British Air menu 1988I don’t remember what I had, and I’m not going to bellyache about how much better flying was then compared with more recent times. On the whole, that might be true, but I suspect the differences are exaggerated. Jumbo jets have always been pressurized cattle cars. You put up with it, enjoy the view if you can, and get where you’re going in hours. Worth a little discomfort. Now that air travel is mostly gone, maybe it will better appreciated when it comes back.

Mm, Suburban Chinese Food

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The other day I picked up our second pandemic-era takeout food selection, the first being doughnuts: two lunch specials and a serving of chicken wings from a storefront Chinese restaurant. More than enough for three people.

It’s a place we know well. I’ve had better Chinese food, and more authentic Chinese food, in as much as that means anything, but I’m fond of the storefront anyway. (I guess by definition the food I ate in China was more authentic, even if it wasn’t always very good.)

The storefront isn’t expensive, or far away, and it’s consistently good if not great. Everything you need in Chinese food here in suburban North America. We order it about once a month.

The place is mostly takeout and delivery — with only two tables — so I expect it won’t suffer too much from the current crisis. It operates at least one Smart car (soon to be a memory) with the restaurant’s name and colors painted on the side, but I never get delivery. Always takeout. The only difference this time was that I couldn’t go in. I called them from in front of the shop and one of the employees brought out my order, which I’d already paid for over the phone.

Order by phone. Online sites are not to be trusted for that function.

We got what we ordered, enjoyed the meal, and still have leftovers. The order also provided something I’ve never seen before. With each lunch special comes a fortune cookie, a suburban Chinese restaurant touch if there ever was one. The fortunes within show, let’s say, a certain unimaginative consistency.

But this time I noticed that the fortune was printed on slick paper and featured an advertisement on one side. Never in my years of fortune-cookie opening have I seen that. The ad was for tax preparation software.

This article might be behind a paywall, but the readable lead tells me all I need to know: fortune cookie advertising is the work of one company so far. I’m not thrilled about ads invading that obscure space, but I will note that the company has produced something new under the sun, however minor. No mean feat.

My fortune: Chasing your passion will make you happier. Sure it will. Do I even need to list examples of evil passions? Still, it’s a good example of fortune-cookie wisdom.

Mm, Wild Pecan Rice

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Hanging on the wall near our kitchen is an empty burlap bag that once contained 2 lbs. of Konriko Wild Pecan Rice.

I bought the rice during my visit to New Iberia, Louisiana, in the summer of 2009, when I stopped at the Conrad Rice Mill, a local tourist attraction but also a functioning rice mill. I’m glad to say that even now the mill is still in business, producing rice and other products. When I was there, the mill’s centennial was coming up in a few years; now it’s well past.

The rice included no pecans. The bag, and the Conrad Rice Mill web site, are careful to note that. The bag promises a “nutty aroma and a subtle pecan-like flavor.”

The rice is long gone, and we probably enjoyed it, but what I really like is the bag. That’s my kind of souvenir. Other examples kicking around the house include the small can that used to contain some reindeer pate, acquired on the Finnish ferry between Helsinki and Tallinn, and the front panels from some small cereal boxes acquired in Mexico.

Mm, Grits

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There are two kinds of grits in the house. As far as I know, people aren’t hording grits these days, but I haven’t shopped for them since before the pandemic, so who knows.

To the left, the brand I’ve eaten for years. The standard. The go-to. Often the only brand at the grocery store. Easy to make, best eaten after only a few minutes for cooling. Some add butter. I usually add honey, but not always.

To the right, a brand recently acquired. The texture is slightly different, but not enough to put me off of it. Takes longer to make. Naturally, the verbiage on the package tries to make a virtue of that necessity: “You’ll have to hesitate before you eat quick grits again,” it says. Naah.

The standard grits package tube lists the following as ingredients: degerminated white corn grits, plus iron and various vitamins, which are added in the processing. The new grits bag merely lists white corn. Made me wonder if the hull and germ have been removed, which seems essential to grits.

Note this handy definition at Culinary Lore:

Hominy: An endosperm product made from corn, made up of starch, with the hull and germ removed.

Grits: Ground hominy (usually coarse).

I checked the nutrition facts on the new grits package, and indeed it seems that whatever vitamins might have been present in the hull or germ aren’t there, so I assume they aren’t there either.

Anyway, grits and I go way back. As long as I can remember, because my mother made them and I assume her mother did too, though I don’t have any specific memory of grandma’s grits. I learned to make them myself early on.

I also learned that somehow, most restaurants that offer grits serve an inferior version to what you make at home. How is that? Occasionally, though, I find superb grits away from home. For instance, years ago in Mexico Beach, Florida, I had wonderful cheese grits — at a place probably destroyed by Hurricane Michael a year and a half ago.

When I moved to Chicago in the late ’80s, I was glad to find grits in the grocery stores, despite being well north of the Grits Line. I shouldn’t have been surprised, considering how many Southerners, black and white, have migrated to the region over the decades.

Grits aren’t available in Japan. At least they weren’t 30 years ago. We gaijin ordered it by the case from North America, which we then split up. (PopTarts were ordered the same way.) I remember serving them at my apartment in Japan to a Scotsman who also lived in Japan. He liked it well enough.

“Porridge, is it?” he said. I wasn’t sure how to answer. Can porridge be made from corn? Maize, that is. Seems yes, or maybe, since porridge can be any grain, though I think it’s usually associated with oats and not de-germed corn. Porridge isn’t part of my dialect anyway. Growing up I never heard anything outside of children’s stories called porridge, such as what the Three Bears prepared for themselves and Goldilocks pirated.

Yuriko had no notion of grits growing up and still doesn’t care for them. Lilly took to them in a big way, but Ann did not. Different children, different tastes.

Mm, Doughnuts

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Been a while since we’ve gone out to eat, of course, but we haven’t been that keen on takeout lately either. On Sunday morning, I decided to drive to the nearest doughnut shop, an independent, and bring home a dozen. Here they are, a selection of creme-filled delights, since that’s what we prefer.

The siren call of doughnuts is pretty strong, but we only buy them every two or three months. Call this latest box our quarterly ration, then, comfort food for uncomfortable times.

For the first time ever, I bought doughnuts using the drive-through. Not just the first at this shop, the first time anywhere. Not bad, just not my typical method. Given my druthers, and until now I’ve always been given my druthers in the matter of doughnuts, I go into the shop to buy a selection. The rows of cheap pastry, from the alluringly plump creme-filled offerings to the scrawny cake doughnuts, wait behind the counter, available not for self-serve, but upon request of another human being.

Ritual selection, it is. Eye the doughnuts, determine what the shop has that you and your party might want — it’s always good to know the tastes of your immediate family in these matters — order two or three or four of this or that, until your dozen is complete. Does anyone ever say to the clerk, just give me a dozen of your choice? Do such devil-may-care people exist? It’s a large world, so they must. But I’ll never be that person.

I’ve been ordering doughnuts for 50 years, that’s why. In our early years in San Antonio, we would sometimes stop at a doughnut shop on the way home from church on Sunday. By ca. 1970, maybe even a little earlier, I’d be tasked as an eight- or nine-year-old to go get the dozen doughnuts.

It was a Dunkin Donuts. I mention that not as an ad — that brand hasn’t been a preferred choice of mine for many years — but to note that it must have been a new franchise in those days, since the brand exploded out of New England only in the 1960s. I never associated it with New England, at least not then. It was merely a likable doughnut shop. It did not, as it does now, distance itself from its pastry origins.

That shop, on Broadway near the Witte Museum, is long gone. A meat shop is in the building now.

A meat shop associated with the restaurant next door, Smoke Shack, which hasn’t been there long, though some kind of restaurant has been next to the former Dunkin’ Donuts since I can remember.

If you look closely at Meat Market, you can see its doughnut past — the glass wall showing most of the store interior, where people sat to drink their coffee, and the part of the building on the right behind brick, which is where the doughnuts were made.