Hotdogs

 Hotdogs

Noel Laflin

9-27-20

I like hotdogs. I always have. They are a go-to comfort food for me, much like Mac and Cheese is for others. In fact, I just pan fried a couple for David and me.

Now, before anyone begins to lecture me with the opening, “Do you know what goes into hotdogs?” let me assure you, I don’t care.

To be honest, however, there were times in my life that I made exceptions to that claim as the hot dogs at summer camp were atrocious, and I avoided them at all costs. Another time occurred when a friend experimented with non-meat hotdogs. They had the texture of sawdust and were a disaster to one’s taste buds.

For years I worked next door to a Der Wienerschnitzel and visited the place all too often. When our company up and moved, the owner of the Wienerschnitzel nearly cried and gave me the last dog for free. He also said that I singlehandedly helped put his oldest child through college. High praise indeed! And as luck would have it, or maybe it's providence, I live within walking distance of another Der Wienerschnitzel out here in Orange.

I also remember a weekend when my daughter was playing in a softball tournament and I consumed ten hotdogs over a two day period. The concessioner offered me an eleventh dog for free, but I had to pass on that one. I mean, I have my limits.

Overall, I like a good dog whether it be hot off a grill, gingerly removed from a metal coat hanger patiently roasted over a beach barbeque pit, wrapped in bacon, wrapped in pop up crescent dough, pan fried, or turning slowly at the local 7-Eleven counter. I just like them. And with plenty of mustard.

But the strangest way that I ever heard of cooking a hotdog was related to me, years ago, by a friend who said his grandfather prepared hotdogs for the family picnic by placing them in the radiator of his Model A Ford. According to my friend, his grandfather would stop the car about a mile or so from their final destination, open the radiator cap, and feed a string of hotdogs into the hot water, replace the cap, and drive on. The dogs were ready by the time they arrived. This was, obviously, before the invention of coolant/antifreeze.

My only question to my friend, upon hearing this story, was whether his grandfather remembered to bring mustard.

Like

Comment

Share

Notable

Notable

Noel Laflin

9-26-20

I had a sociology instructor at college who once told the story of how he, as a teen, would often come home late at night and run his finger down the entire length of his mother’s piano, always stopping short of hitting the very last key.

He would then go to bed and just wait until his mother, a perfectionist, and a bit of a compulsive, would wearily arise from her own bed, creep downstairs, and tap out the final key.

Our instructor said that it was his way of letting her know that he was home. Her hitting the last key was her way of acknowledgement. 

He also added that he was a bit of an ass as a kid.

I am sure his mother agreed.

There’s not much that I remember from college days, but for some reason, that lesson was notable.

Late Night Call

Late Night Call

Noel Laflin

9-20-20

Years ago, my friend Jim got a call from his mom late one night, and all she said was, “Come quick! The cactus is blooming!’  And off went Jim.  I went along for the ride as I had never seen a night blooming cactus before.

And although it’s been forty-plus years, I have never forgotten the excitement in his mother’s voice, nor any resistance in her son’s attitude when it came to dropping what he was doing, hop in his truck, and drive across town to witness such a simple spectacle – that of a magnificent flower opening at night.

Once I saw the massive bloom for myself, well, I understood why the call and why the response.

I can’t be one hundred percent certain, but it dawns on me now that the cereus that has been clinging to our front walkway wall these last several decades, throwing out night blooms every September  - and at this very moment is once again slowly preparing  for this evening’s one night show -  may have been a cutting from Jim’s mom.

The lover of night blooms is long gone from this Earth, and I lost track of her son decades ago too.  But if I knew where he was nowadays, I’d ring him up and simply say, “Come quick! Your mother’s cactus is blooming!” And I bet he’d show up.

Because sometimes, simple spectacles are worth the call as are long overdue reunions.

Off to Margaritaville

Off to Margaritaville

Noel Laflin

9-16-20

I haven’t seen any of the orioles splashing in our birdbath or raiding the hummingbird feeders in over a week now, so am assuming they have headed south already. With the poor air quality being what it is, they probably decided to pack up early and head back to Mexico for the winter. They are most likely slurping mango margaritas in Puerto Vallarta right about now.

A pair showed up in March, right on schedule, fixed up their nest in the neighbor’s tall palm tree, and reestablished squatting rights to our balcony, chasing away squatting warblers and pissing off the resident hummingbirds.

Soon, adult orioles were joined by junior orioles and it was a ruckus crowd of black and yellow flying in every few minutes to bathe as well as drain sugar water all throughout the summer.

But it’s quieter now.

Opportunistic warblers have started to fill the void once more.

Hummingbirds are pissed about that too.

When You Were Just Ten

 When You Were Just Ten

Noel Laflin

8-30-20

When growers began to let the orange grove go wild, since it was just a matter of time before the bulldozers would come and topple the trees anyway – making room for a church and its parking lot to take the place of a perfectly fine playground for all of the neighborhood children – tenacious vines started to take hold, creeping their way up and around many of the old trees.

The vines grew fast and strong in no time at all, allowing ten-year-old boys the opportunity to fashion a fort within a tree – a place to hide from the sun, or enemies, or better yet, hang out with friends, telling one another stupid jokes, and corny ghost tales once shadows lengthened and twilight faded.

But if it was a view one sought, well, the sturdy vines with purple flowers provided perfect ladders to the top of many trees, and could be scaled by skinny kids (frequently mistaken for monkeys) in a matter of seconds, up to their own private crow’s nest.

Weight from those boys would create a gentle bowl - not unlike a real nest - from which one could stand, crouch, or lazily stretch out and comfortably take in the view.

To the south lay the supermarket, and beyond that old Center Street and the elementary school – unless your pal went to parochial school which was in the opposite direction, but still visible from their perch.

To the north lay downtown – to the west were the familiar roof tops of their home street.

But the coolest view of all lay immediately east of them – just spitting distance away actually: the town cemetery, filled with ancient giant trees of its own, spooky old mausoleums, and sad statues.

As evening would begin to close in on long, lazy summer explorations, the crow’s nest was a fine place to be as lights from the town began to glow, church bells from a half a mile away tolled out the hour, and distant train whistles grew closer.

There was a sharpening of all the senses from such a height.

Especially when you were just ten.

Closing Out 1970

Closing out 1970

Noel Laflin

8-28-20

A couple of months ago I lamented about what I could not remember from the first Friday night campfire of 1970 – after all, it’s been half a century, of course.

And here I am at the end of August, 2020, and thinking about the last Friday night campfire that closed out that same 1970 season fifty years ago tonight.

I can’t remember a thing about it either as it was so long ago – but I know it happened.

The next day, the last official day of summer camp 1970, kids would leave and the staff would begin to tear down and store all of the tents, cots, and nasty mattresses from all of the campsites. They would be hauled onto the old camp stake bed truck and driven back to the pool’s changing room and showers, silently waiting for winter. Mice would take up new residence in the lumpy, stained mattresses once again. Water lines and the pool would be winterized, bows, arrows and rifles from another era safely locked away in the old Scoutmaster’s lounge, the trading post inventoried, boxed up and shuttered, staff cabins swept out, the kitchen scrubbed a final time, individual recreational areas like the rifle range, archery range, nature center, and handicraft lodge secured for the next nine months.

What had taken us a week to set up was somehow all undone in a day and a half.

Then the staff said our goodbyes to one another and headed home too, as school was but a week away for most of us.

And so the events of half a century ago are tidied up and stored away once more. Memories are dusty, but some survive. For me, it was the making of another great friend or two, running off to Deep Creek at least twenty times that summer, and knowing that there were Friday night campfires that must have been pretty good – even if the details are sketchy now.

Again, for what it’s worth, whenever I did lead a song, I hope that I was in tune, at least. An unreliable memory tells me that I was, of course – or so I probably lie to myself.

Trade Offs

Trade Offs

Noel Laflin

8-28-20

I attended my very last sales meeting six years ago today.

Having a calculator handy (aren’t mobile phones clever?), I just did a rough estimation and figure that I must have sat through approximately 500 sales meetings during my working days - and that works out to a couple of thousand boring hours cooped up indoors with, for the most part, overbearing sales managers. I was offered the title once, but did not want to become the guy I most disliked.

After that last meeting, I have since spent thousands of hours out of doors watching birds and such, hiking as slowly as I like and getting to know more about nature than I ever imagined possible. And that’s coming from an old Boy Scout. I have a few pictures to prove the point now.

The pay is lousy, but there are no obnoxious managers, or clients, for that matter - just loud hawks and ravens most days - and hummingbirds every day.

Not a bad trade off.

I wish I had retired fifty years ago.