A custard story

I dropped my daughter-in-law and grandkids off at the airport this morning. They have been visiting all week and were supposed to fly home yesterday but JetBlue canceled their flight, giving us an extra day to enjoy our extremely energetic grandsons, 8 and 6. 

Yesterday we took them to our local Culver’s, the Wisconsin-based fast food chain, known for hamburgers served on buttered buns, deep-fried cheese curds (one of my least favorite words), and frozen custard. As we were sitting in our booth,  a message flashed on the closed-circuit TV screen Culver’s uses to promote its menu: “Share your custard story.”

I have a custard story but it's a story Culver’s will never share on its Facebook page or anywhere else. My mother used to tell this story, and it involves one of my four sets of great-grandparents, who were married in the 1870s. I’m not going to identify which set. They’ve been gone more than 100 years, and I don’t want to speak ill of the dead though I’m not above sharing this uber-embarrassing tale if I omit their names. 

My mother heard the story from her mother, who lived in Mineola, a tiny Missouri town where everybody knew everything about everyone. Grandma shouldn’t even have known the details but they were told to her by a gossipy friend, the wife of the town’s only doctor. It wasn’t ethical for the doctor’s wife to reveal intimate details about an unfortunate incident her husband shouldn’t have told her about in the first place but that’s how small towns work.

Culver's patrons may think of custard as a frozen dessert that comes out of a machine and is served in a cone or cup, but that’s not the only way custard is made. My custard story is about an altogether different type of custard, a liquid concoction America’s pioneers, including my great-grandparents’ parents, made for special occasions like their daughter’s wedding. It is made with heavy cream, egg yolks and sugar that is boiled together and served warm, in cups, on cold days. It is thick, meant to be sipped slowly, and tastes a bit like egg nog, but it’s richer, creamier and there’s no nutmeg. Mom always made a pot or two every winter and buried the pressure cooker in which she made it in a snowbank, to keep it fresh so she could warm it up and enjoy it a few cups at a time. I didn’t like mom’s custard as a boy and, once I heard this story, never touched the stuff again. 

At my great-grandparents’ wedding reception that wintry night long ago, guests enjoyed fiddling, dancing, cake and punchbowls filled with warm custard. The reception was, without doubt, one of the highlights of that year’s Mineola social calendar.  

The groom, who was having a particularly good time, downed cup after cup of custard before he and his bride left for the new house he had built on his farm a few miles south of town.

In the middle of the night the doctor and his wife were awakened by a pounding on the door. It was the bride who had fled the farm on horseback and was terribly upset. “Doctor, come quick. My husband is dying.”

When the doctor arrived, he discovered — there’s no delicate way to say it so if you’re eating as you read this, you might want to spit it out now — that the groom, who was so ill he couldn’t raise his head, had lost control of his bowels and squirted custard all over himself and the bed. Whether the marriage had been consummated at this point I have no clue, but it’s a safe bet to say that if it hadn’t been, the groom couldn't have talked his new wife into it even if he felt like getting it on, which he surely didn’t. 

 

The best part of the story was the punchline my mother delivered which, no matter how many times they had heard it, invariably sent her listeners into uncontrollable laughter. Mom delivered the line in complete seriousness, intent on giving the impression she was concerned, but you just knew she was having trouble not bursting out into a raucous laugh herself: “Grandma always said that her mother (the bride) was depressed her entire life.”

If your spouse had done diarrhea all over the bed on your wedding night, you’d be depressed too.

Luckily for me and their other descendants, the bride wasn’t so grossed out that she refused to allow her husband into their marriage bed ever again, because, over the next 10 years, and despite her melancholia, they had four children. 

——————————————————————————

When we returned from Culver’s, I called my sister and told her the restaurant chain was inviting customers to share their custard stories. “Do you think I should share our family’s?”

“Uh, I don’t think they’d publish it,” she said. 

“Grandma always said  …“ I said slowly, the way mom used to draw it out for effect. She finished the sentence: “The bride was depressed all her life!” We laughed and laughed until we couldn’t laugh any more although it really wasn't funny that our great-grandmother went through life under a melancholic cloud. 

"What a shitty way to start your married life," my sister said. We laughed some more, and agreed that nobody — nobody — could tell a story better than our mother. 

So that’s my custard story, which I’d like to end with a word of warning. If, by chance you decide to make custard — included below is a link to a recipe that basically replicates mom’s — for God’s sake, pace yourself.  

https://www.greedygourmet.com/recipes-by-course/desserts/boiled-custard/

To the woman who told me to "Turn Away"

 

You don’t know me, but our paths crossed — sort of — yesterday. Let me tell you a bit about myself. 

Like you, I have tried to do what the experts have advised us to do during the COVID pandemic. 

Until a month after my second vaccination, I wore a mask whenever I ventured out to the supermarket or an appointment. At first, the experts said that cloth masks offered the most protection so I wore one. Now they tell us cloth masks aren’t nearly as effective as paper masks so that’s what I wear. 

For 18 months, I didn’t go to the gym because experts said the virus lived on surfaces. Now that we’ve been informed it doesn’t, I’ve returned but am careful to stay at least six feet away from others.

For the first months of the pandemic, experts told us avoid restaurants. My wife and I continued to patronize our favorites, but ordered carry-out that was delivered to the car by waitstaff wearing masks and rubber gloves. Now that it’s okay to go to restaurants, we have resumed meeting friends for dinner and if they insist on sitting outside, we’ll gladly do so if it makes them feel better. 

In March of last year, the day after we received our second vaccinations and feeling hopeful things would soon be returning to normal, we booked a cruise to celebrate our 70th birthdays. It was scheduled to depart in November, 2021, but in August, after the news that fully vaccinated people were getting COVID anyway, we canceled it. From what I’ve since learned, we were right to cancel. Cruise lines were allowed to resume operating in the fall but it turns out their ships are petri dishes for COVID and experts are now advising they be avoided. 

In October, we received booster shots we were told would extend the protection our first two shots had given us. For a week or two we felt confident, until we read that people with three vaccinations were coming down with COVID anyway. This morning I read that the CDC will be recommending yet another round of booster shots. 

Twenty-two months into this pandemic, I remain cautious and try to follow the latest advice, but no longer have much confidence in the guidance issued by the so-called experts.  

The only routine I’ve refused to change over the last 22 months is my daily walk with our Jack Russell terrier. Those walks are the highlight of Russell’s day and mine. He and I were taking our walk when we met you.

Every morning we walk two or three miles along the sidewalks that run through this beautiful community we are fortunate enough to live in. Come to think of it, perhaps you don’t live here and are a visitor -- Florida is getting lots of visitors these days. Whatever, most residents, like me, are retired and many of them take long walks, too. Not only does it give us a good reason to leave the house, it’s good exercise. I tend to encounter the same walkers day after day and, occasionally, meet one wearing a mask. It seems extreme to wear a mask outside but hey, whatever makes the wearer comfortable is fine by me.  

A COVID protocol has developed among those of us who walk.  When walkers approach each other from the opposite direction, one of them either walks out into the street or steps aside onto a driveway to avoid passing within a few feet of each other on the sidewalk. I haven’t heard of COVID being transmitted by people walking past each other for a split second in the open air — and can’t imagine how people in crowded cities in New York can avoid sharing the same sidewalks  — but everyone in this community gives wide berth to their fellow walkers so I do, too. 

I always acknowledge my fellow walkers by saying “Good morning” or “Howya doing?” or some variation. In recent months I’ve noticed that some no longer acknowledge me back or even look at me as we pass. To be fair, many of them are, as I usually am, listening to music or an audiobook or talking on the phone. I try not to be annoyed by those who don’t return my greeting. Realistically, there’s no reason to say hello to someone you saw the day before and the day before that. And there’s no rule of etiquette that says you should say “hi” to someone you don’t know but I can’t help myself: I grew up in a tiny town where everyone says hello to everyone else whether they know them or not so I continue to say hi or at least smile at my fellow walkers. Many even beat me to it, commenting on Russell, who always struts proudly down the sidewalk like he owns it.  His walk -- his butt sashays from side-to-side as his tail wags furiously -- is the doggie equivalent of Tony Manero’s, John Travolta’s character in Saturday Night Fever. It’s hilarious and makes most people at least smile if not laugh out loud.

Yesterday Russell and I were strolling down the sidewalk when I realized someone was coming up behind us, approaching quickly. I stepped into the next driveway and turned and smiled at you. “I’ll let you pass, you’re faster than we are.” I told you.

“Turn away,” you hissed. A split second later, you added, “Please.” 

You passed us by in a heartbeat. I didn't have time to turn away, you were gone. 

If you had been a man, I would have told you to do something anatomically impossible. But you weren’t. You were a woman about my age, wearing shorts, a t-shirt and sneakers. An old lady. Let me take that back. You are old. I’m not so sure you were ever a lady. 

I was speechless.

As you continued down the sidewalk, I went over the ways I could have — should have — responded. 

I could have replied, “If you’re so afraid you’ll catch COVID walking outdoors, why don’t you get a treadmill and exercise at home?”

Or, “Why didn’t you step out in the street so you could have overtaken us while leaving the social distance you obviously feel is so important?” 

Or,  “Have you ever heard of COVID being transmitted by people ten feet apart in the open air?”

Or, “If you were that afraid you’d catch something from me, why didn’t you turn around and reverse your course?"

Or,  “Would it have been too much trouble to at least nod your head to acknowledge that I was thoughtful enough to step aside for you?”

But no, you walked past and ordered me, who was there first, to turn away. Please.

Are you really that scared you’ll get COVID? 

Did you, by chance, know you have an active case of COVID and told me to turn away because you wanted to protect me? 

Or are you simply an entitled asshole? 

I didn’t acknowledge anyone who didn’t acknowledge me first for the rest of my walk and came home in a bad mood. My wife said she couldn’t believe someone could be that rude.

This morning, after thinking it over, I no longer feel angry or insulted. I’ve decided I pity you. 

I have no idea whether you’re vaccinated or an anti-vaxxer, or whether you have had COVID or not. Whatever your status, unless this disease is miraculously eradicated from the face of the earth — and it’s not going to be any more than the flu is going to disappear forever —  you are going to go through the rest of your life fearing and avoiding contact with strangers, and, let’s face it, there are billions of us.

Those of us you order to turn away (please) may find ourselves in bad moods temporarily but you are likely to be in a bad mood until you die. I imagine you’ve been in a bad mood since the day you were born but somehow managed to conceal that from most people. And you are not alone. This God-awful COVID pandemic has revealed a second, equally noxious pandemic that was lurking below the surface all along, a pandemic of self-absorbed people who lack common sense, courtesy, empathy and basic civility. 

No mask will prevent that pandemic, there’s no vaccination for it, and if there were, it wouldn’t work on people like you anyway.

Holiday songs rewritten for today

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Have yourself a merry Festive Season,

Let your heart be light.

From now on

Our troubles will be out of sight 

because CNN, the New York Times, WaPo, MSNBC and the rest of the MSM refuse to report anything negative about this inept administration.

The first Noel

Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel,

Born is the king of racist, genocidal Israel.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

In the meadow we can build a snowman,

And pretend that he’s that Fauci clown. 

He’ll ask, “Are you vaxxed?”

And we’ll say "Sure Thing!

We got our jabs at CVS downtown.”

Grandma got run over by a reindeer

Grandma got run over by a registered sex offender 

who had just gotten out of jail on a thousand-dollar bond for trying to 

kill his girlfriend 

and now she’s dead.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots

Is the wish of Janice and Jen.

Barbies that talk and will go for a walk

Is the hope of Barney and Ben.

And mom and dad can hardly wait

For school to start again

But it looks like there’s a new variant

So they’ll probably resume remote learning.

The Christmas song

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,

Jack Frost nipping at your bits.

Yuletide carols being sung by the fire,

And folks dressed up like Inuits.

I saw three ships

I saw three ships come sailing in

On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day,

I saw three ships come sailing in

On Christmas Day in the morning.

And what was in those ships all three,

On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day?

I have no clue, there weren’t enough union dockworkers to unload them or truckers to drive their contents to their final destination because they can’t afford the gas now that Sleepy Joe killed the pipeline and we’re once again dependent on OPEC.

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer

Then one foggy Christmas Eve, 

Santa came to say,

Rudolph with your nose so bright,

Won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?

But Rudolph said no because Santa wouldn’t provide him with a helmet or allow him to work from home. 

You’d  better watch out (for Alexa)

She hears you when you’re sleeping

She knows when you go poo.

She knows if you’ve been bad or good

Tracking everything you do 

which is why you’re being bombarded with ads for Sleep Number beds and $10,000 Toto toilets. 

Happy Festive Season, everyone (unless, of course, you don't celebrate in which case I hope you'll take no offense).

My conversation with Brandon

 

We’re getting ready for a top-to-bottom kitchen renovation. 

In March, the contractor promised work would start between Christmas and New Year’s. In mid-August he moved the date to February 1. Last week he said he and his team will be arriving the second week of March. Whatever.

Early on we were cautioned we need to order appliances at least three months in advance due to a global shortage of microchips.  

The contractor recommended we work with a salesman at a local appliance retailer who would, he said, give us a discount. In early October we went to the showroom and met with our salesman, Brandon. 

Almost every day since then, we’ve been going back and forth with Brandon. Should we order all the appliances from one brand, or appliances from different manufacturers Consumer Reports rates highest?  (After much debate we decided to get all but one from the same manufacturer.) Should our cooktop be induction or downdraft and why can't we get both in one model? (Nobody makes a combo induction/downdraft cooktop so we ordered an induction model which then meant we needed a hood.) Can a hood 35 3/4 inches wide be installed between two upper cabinets spaced exactly 36 inches apart or do we have to order a smaller model to be sure it will fit? (We learned it's possible it might fit but it probably won't so we are going with the smaller hood because it would be a shame if, after waiting all that time, the contractor was unable to install the larger model and we had to wait even longer to get this damn project finished.)

Communicating via text and email, we finally got all our questions answered, decided on the exact models we wanted, and, last night, reviewed Brandon’s latest quote. 

This morning I called and told him, “Let’s go Brandon.”

Brandon said OK, everything should be in his warehouse by January 15. 

You have nobody but yourself to blame for reading this far. 

The hearing test

Receptionist: Thank you for calling Hearing Aids Are Us, how can I help you?

T.D.: I’d like to schedule an appointment.

Receptionist: Are you a new patient?

T.D.: Yes. 

Receptionist: What’s your first name?

T.D.: Thomas.

Receptionist: And your last name?

T.D.: Dryden. That’s D-R-Y-D-E-N.

Receptionist: You said Bryban, right?

T.D.: No, not bry, dry. As in, “The desert is dry.” D as in Delta, R as in Roy and Y as in Yellow. 

Receptionist: OK, got it. Dryban.

T.D.: No! Not ban, den. A place where lions live. That’s D as in Delta, E as in Edward and N as in Nancy.

Receptionist: OK Mr. Den.  Got it. 

T.D.: No, no, no, my last name is Dry-den, D-R-Y-D-E-N. Ever heard of the Canadian hockey goalie Ken Dryden? 

Receptionist: No.

T.D.: How about the English poet, John Dryden?

Receptionist:  I’m not familiar with him either but I got it — Thomas D-R-Y-D-E-N. Let me check to see when I can get you in. 

T.D.: No rush, I haven’t been able to hear anything for years. I can wait.

Receptionist: There’s an appointment available July eighth at 1 at our Bonita office. Would that be convenient?

T.D.: Wow, yes. That’s fast service! Thank you.

Receptionist: OK, let me get some more information while I have you on the phone. What’s your date of birth?

T.D.: November 17, 1951.

Receptionist: September did you say?

T.D.: I said November. 

Receptionist:  You don’t have to raise your voice. 

T.D.: I’m sorry but this is frustrating. I'll admit I can’t hear squat  — that’s why I’m calling — but there’s nothing wrong with my speech. Do you wear the hearing aids your company sells? If so, maybe I should go elsewhere. 

Receptionist: No, my hearing is fine. What day and year did you say?

T.D.: November 17, 1951. 

Receptionist (talking to herself as she is typing into her computer): November seventh, nineteen fifty-one. 

T.D.:  Not the seventh, November seven-teenth! Is Alan Funt filming this conversation? Is this some sort of joke? If so, it’s a cruel one, making fun of deaf people.

Receptionist: Who’s Alan Funt?

T.D.: Never mind. 

Receptionist:  OK Thomas, we’ll see you tomorrow, July eighth at 1 pm. 

T.D.: Uh, wait a minute, I’m looking at my calendar and today’s the sixth. Tomorrow is the seventh, not the eighth. Is my appointment on Wednesday the seventh or Thursday the eighth?

Receptionist: The eighth. 

T.D.: Thanks for clarifying that. 

Receptionist: That’s what I just said. 

T.D.: Yes, but you said Wednesday and the eighth is Thursday. 

Receptionist: OK, we’ll see you in our Bonita office tomorrow July (unintelligible) at 1 pm. Thanks for calling.

My brother's birthday

Christmas 1958. 

From left: My sister Judy, mom and me, Jerry 

with his six-month old daughter, Ellen, and dad 

 

Today, for the first time in my adult life, I won’t be calling my brother Jerry on his birthday. 

One year ago today I hung up the phone after my annual birthday call to him and wept. He sounded awful. I told my wife, when she tried to console me, that I had lost my brother. Jerry somehow managed to hang on until January 20th. 

Ours was not a conventional brotherly relationship. Jerry was 16 years older. Conventional brothers serve as best man or groomsman at each other’s weddings. I was the ring bearer at his. 

We were opposite in just about every way two people who share the same DNA can possibly be. Jerry intuitively knew how to repair or build almost anything. For example, he installed a skylight in his house. I can’t drive a nail. Jerry was athletic. I’m a klutz. Jerry was a Master Gardener. I breathe on a plant and it dies. Jerry spent 20 years as an Army officer, then 20 more working in a tech job for a defense contractor. I went into advertising and promotion. Jerry was Viking blond. My hair is was dark brown. He had boundless energy and was always laser-focused on a project or two or three. I’d rather read a book. 

And our personalities couldn’t have been more different. Jerry was a glass-half-full kinda guy; I'm a glass-half-empty. Jerry was invariably positive, upbeat, and never complained, even when he lost the ability to do the things he loved, like attending his beloved Cincinnati Reds home games and working in his yard. 

His wife, Nancy, wrote in Jerry’s obituary that he had a “sunny disposition.” Can you imagine living with  someone for 63 years, and being able to say that and mean it? 

I asked my wife if she could ever write that I had a sunny disposition. “God, no,” she replied firmly.

  

Jerry had a lightening-fast wit. Years ago he and Nancy were dining at a restaurant that featured colonial food and waitstaff dressed in revolutionary-era clothes. When the waitress asked “Are you ready for your aspic?", he replied, “No, a regular toothpick will do.” 

When Jerry, Nancy, my sister and I were going through our mother’s things after her death, I found a sheet of paper folded between the pages of her Bible. It was a poem about a mother with three children who repeatedly asked them to help her with tasks around the house — sweeping, cleaning, shoveling snow, etc. Two of the children always came up with excuses but one always said yes. “Reminds me of Jerry,” mom had written. My sister and I didn’t take offense because we knew she was right. 

Jerry always came through for mom, especially after our father died young. He was the steadiest, most sensible of her children, the one she turned to when she needed advice. When, in her eighties, she was told she needed open heart surgery, she refused to listen to my sister and me when we begged her to have it. She said she had lived a long life and would rather die than subject herself to the pain and commit to the rehabilitation that would be required. But when Jerry insisted, she changed her mind. Once she was released from the hospital, he moved into her house for six weeks and, like the soldier he was, made her do her physical therapy. She complained bitterly but lived another 15 years. 

As adults, my brother and I lived hundreds of miles — sometimes oceans — apart. We only talked on our birthdays and occasionally at Christmas or Thanksgiving. We also saw each other at family get-togethers in Missouri, and my youngest son attended college in Ohio near his home, and my wife and I would stay with Jerry and Nancy when we went to visit him. I wish I had told him how much I admired and respected him and how proud I was of his service to our country and to our family. Men have trouble talking openly about their feelings lest we appear weak, which Jerry most definitely wasn't and I never wanted him to think I was, either. I should have told him that he, more than anyone in our family, influenced me by his example, and that I always wished I was more like him. But I never did.  

My first memory is of Jerry. One hot summer night when he was home from college — I must have been two or three — there was a thunderstorm and I woke up terrified. Our parents’ bedroom was downstairs. His and mine were on the second floor. I ran down the hall, climbed into his bed, and felt comforted, knowing he was there and would keep me safe. 

I have never lost that feeling and never will.