Nov. 13, 2002 - 20:54 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Heaven's Soup

Been a rather stressful time for a week or two and my reaction toward the end was rather crotchety.

I had been looking forward to today because we were going to visit our No. 1 daughter (by the calendar). Heather and I always enjoy the times that the grand daughter's kids are in school, there is no crowded party, just us talking and enjoying. Especially nice for me, as in that environment I can hear what everyone says.

Heather banana waffled me for breakfast, oooh one of my favorites, she really knows how to spoil a guy. Coffee, Waffles and the Web, my kind of thing, so I laid back and did the web bit for a while and then got ready. Had too much sense to read the paper. Heather mentioned that Webster quit Pitt had already quit -- briefly wondered what kind of yo-yo Bush would try to put in this time.

No complications or frustrations this time, unusual to say the least. We left on time and went speed limit or less and arrived on time.

We spent three and a half hours visiting with daughter and her daughter (our oldest grand daughter). Personal family history from the time Heather and I were little kids up to the present day. We teased our daughter a bit and of course gave grand daughter some ammunition to tease her Mom about. But we made up for it, told some things on her, so now her Mom can tease her too.

It was a Laff-In for us. In the course of the conversation Heather and I were uncovered too. Grand daughter had not heard of the time that Heather was getting dressed and telling and retelling Son 1 that she was tired of telling him to get the trunk of the car cleaned out she was tired of all his junk in there and figured he might as well do a job of the whole thing.

Then finally being dressed and combed and all that stuff women do, she grabbed her purse, zipped out to the car and went to town. We milled around, all of us did our tasks and were enjoying the fine weather outside, relaxing and talking. Later on Heather came back from town, pulled in the driveway, got out and said to son, "I thought I told you to clean out the trunk !" What did he say ? "But Mom, but Mom," and then was at a loss for words. She finally figured out the fallacy of her words and a rather edged peace ensued.

I have always been crotchety to door-to-door salesmen who won't take a polite no for an answer. TV was just coming in to the Tampa area and I was almost to the point of driving the door-to-door jockeys away with a ball bat. Appeared on our porch a nice polite man who wanted to talk to us about buying a TV, being the diplomat I was he was politely told that there was a friend of mine coming down from New York and would be bringing a TV for us with him. He was quite agreeable and asked where the "X'es" lived and I pointed out their house to him, he said, "Thanks, I am going to see them about putting in a demonstration TV." I asked him, "Oh, do you do that ?" He said, "Yes, we do." The next inning followed, I said something to the order of, "If I asked, would your store put one in our house, antenna and all ?" The answer being affirmative, the request was made. He quirked an eyebrow and asked, "You said your friend was bringing one down from New York, didn't you ?" I told him, "Yeah, I lie about as much as those pesky salesmen who want us to come into their store and try to get approved to buy one," then laughed.

To make a long story longer -- when I got home from work the next evening there was a TV in and running. So, Inspector General Bastion went out hopped on the hood of the car to the car's roof and from there to porch roof the car was beside. From there I went to the roof and checked out the antenna there. Approved the installation as an ignorant man does.

Then came the procedure of getting to ground again. At work the Babcock and Wilcox Boiler Company had an engineer on the premises of the power plant where I worked. A Cuban who had become a citizen and schooled in the US. He had just returned from visiting family in Cuba and after work he and a couple of us were sampling the bottles of rum he had brought back with him. I think we were somewhat on the tipsy side when we left and I thought driving 15 miles home with the window open would put me in pretty good shape. I felt in good shape when I got up on the roof and on my return I stood on the porch roof and realized I wasn't as steady as I thought and my state of the art gauge in my head said, "Huh, no way are you going to go that route with out falling on your pratt." So I didn't go down that way. No fool I. I walked the ridge of the roof back to the other end of the house, leaned out, grabbed the pine tree growing there and proceeded to do the fireman bit. Didn't fall either. Then Heather spent some time cleaning up my shin bone on the leg where my pants slid up and allowed the pine tree to chew on me some. Cleaned up, alcoholed, ointment applied and gauze bandage applied I was released to sit on the couch and watch my first TV wrestling match.

Grand daughter thought that was funny and I couldn't help but laugh at the memory. A thirty year old Superman making it to the roof rapidly and then going - duh - when it came time to go down. How low the mighty Bastion fell.

Memories, I get lost in them. The treat of the day was lunch for Heather and I. Daughter had made potato soup, a whole pot of it, the way her mother taught her. Potato soup to my taste and delight. And another treat to me was corn bread that didn't fall into a handful of crumbs. I could slice it, butter the pieces and eat it bit by bite and it didn't fall apart. Now I love the taste of Marie Callender's corn bread but more of it falls on the plate or table cloth than goes down my gullet. So lunch was a double treat time and I happily slurped Heaven's Soup . . . . . . . . .

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