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Happy Pi Day. Go eat a pie!

Happy Pie Day, ya’ll.

pipi
An honest to Archimedes Pi pie.

Yessiree, this is the day you should go out and get you a big ol’ pie and share it with someone you love. Or you might share it with someone you lust for, or hell, just eat the whole thing yourself!

Actually, pies are just a manifestation of what is really “Pi Day.” It being March 14 (3.14) which is the number closely related to the arithmetic constant pi, or the symbol π. Now I’m sure you might have encountered pi at some time or other. That is, if you ever had geometry in high school or college, or you are a mathematician. Other than seeing pi on ridiculous, made-up holidays such as this, I can’t recall seeing the symbol, especially if it was used in its real setting as a ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. The common mathematical approximation being 3.14149 which rolls on out to either something akin to infinity or just to a point in which you are tired of another number popping up so you just want to blow it off.

So π has really as much to do with pie as a frank does to being frank or even being a man named Frank. And please, no images of frank pie, a.k.a. Weenie Frank Pie.

MS2 Joshua Derode from Minneapolis, Min., prepares pecan pies for the big Thanksgiving dinner aboard the carrier USS George Washington. U.S. Navy photo by PHAN Rex Nelson.
MS2 Joshua Derode from Minneapolis, Minn., prepares pecan pies for the big Thanksgiving dinner aboard the carrier USS George Washington. U.S. Navy photo by PHAN Rex Nelson.

I’m not much of a pie-eater. A few times a year I might divulge into a slice of something handy and inviting, or vice versa. I like cake better, as a rule, and a candy bar even better but those too are seldom tasted by these lips. I am not much of a sweet-eater of any kind these days, and even when I was, I still didn’t touch much candy, cake or pie. Well, maybe certain types of pie.

My favorite is pecan pie. I think in some parts of the world it is pronounced PEE-can pie. Where I am from it’s Pee-CON pie. Six of one slice, half a dozen of the other. Since I was a big sweet eater when I was a kid, I don’t know why I wasn’t a fan of pecan pie. Goldarn it is sweet, why it’s as rich as six feet up a bull’s a**, as some firemen I worked with would say. I can’t say they knew all that much about a bull’s anatomy. Several of the guys I knew were real cowboys and I remember them talking about jumping up and down on top of a calf to get its heart started after a bovine cardiac arrest.  Well, maybe it has something to do with breeding cattle. Either way, if one might make it up that far inside that orifice, I would just have to say “Good luck, mate!”

l can’t remember for sure if my Mom made pecan pie. I’m sure she did and I bet it was good. It’s just been so long since I remember. A few pecan pies I remember in more recent years. I do recall this female friend in college making one from scratch. I mean she went out in the yard and picked pecans and made them into a pie. Even if it wasn’t the best I’d ever eaten, I certainly had to give the girl a big ol’ Alpha for effort.

The best pecan pie ever was at this popular Galveston restaurant called Gaido’s. This across-from-the-seawall seafood place has been there for years. Texas Monthly  has, for probably the past 30 years, rated it one-star for “extremely good restaurant” with prices averaging $31-50.  It may be one-star but that is one hell of a star as far as I’m concerned. It’s been a year or two since I have been to Galveston. I can’t remember if Gaido’s still has a motel beside it. I stayed there one weekend along some fellow newspaper people for a convention. One of those nights we all ate with one of the tightest bosses I had ever known footing an “eat what you want” bill. Boy howdy did I eat what I wanted, and then more. I was afraid to eat any desert for fears I might explode! But my boss’ daughter, who was my best advertising rep ever, talked me into “just a little piece of pie.”

Lord almighty that was the richest, best pecan pie or any kind of pie I ever had. A bunch of us went to a room and we watched “Barnaby Jones” reruns as we sat there like mummies, wrapped tight in big sweet pie crusts. I don’t know how much we all spent on Alka-Seltzer that night.

 

 

 

 

 

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Mickey Ds new idea that came and went and will probably come back again

One must wonder if the Golden Arches are succumbing to that old age droop? For instance, a very curious story appeared this morning — I don’t subscribe to the source so I will just have to encapsulate it — that says McDonald’s is considering extending its breakfast hours past 10:30 a.m. It makes one ask: Is the company going back to the future or what?

A McD’s franchisee named Herb Peterson co-opted the idea of an eggs Benedict-like sandwich from Jack-in-the-Box in late 1971, according to a historical timeline on the Mickey D Website. Thus was born the Egg McMuffin. Funny little name. Say it: Egg McMuffin.

McDonald’s had several breakfast items by the end of the 1970s such as the Big Breakfast. The fact that McDonald’s would not sell anything but hamburgers and fries after 10:30 a.m. became an article of faith for McDonald’s and was pretty much a punchline until people stopped thinking it was funny and just said “To hell with it. I’ll go to Jack-in-the-Box.”

I understand McDonald’s has been making the late-night drunk crowd happy in some places where it has sold breakfast items late at night. So, now the Mickey D folks have thought about expanding breakfast like, how many, fast food places already do.

One must admit though, as far as fast food places are concerned, McD’s has a pretty fair breakfast food product. They even now feature an egg white Egg McMuffin for all you health nuts out there. I’m not saying McDonald’s or any of the other fast food places make that great a breakfast meal. I actually like the Sausage Cheese and Egg Biscuit although it is definitely not good for me. But it is possible to drive down the freeway, while eating one’s Egg McMuffin, Hash Browns, drinking a cup of coffee, reading the morning news paper, talking on the cell phone while also taking selfies of you and the mannequin you brought along to pass for a fellow traveler riding through the HOV lanes.

McDonald’s probably will make millions off the more Egg McMuffins they sell after 10:30, enough so that some manager will slap himself in the head like the person in the V8 commercial upon being informed by a bean counter that the company made another $100 billion. But really all those mornings in which we were screwed over by some young kid who says, with a sneer, “we ain’t servin’ no breakfast no more to-day” do they count for anything? Well, I suppose not.

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There is no free lunch (at McDonald’s)

Read this story.

If the facts are 100 percent correct as alleged by this McDonald’s worker then it would be enough for me to say: “I’m not ever going to McDonald’s again.”

What the hell. I hardly ever go to McDonald’s anyway.

Basically this girl alleges she was fired from her job at McDonald’s after paying for some firefighters’ meal after they returned from a house fire. Then another group came in and she felt they should get a comp as well. She texted her boss to ask. That was the straw that broke Ronald’s back, allegedly. McDonald’s say there is more to the story of her firing than was stated. Oh, but they can’t say anything because of privacy laws. How freaking convenient.

I guess this rubs me the wrong way in more than one way. The biggest irritant is that the fast food joint doesn’t make cops pay but apparently not other public service types. This has been and, apparently still is, a practice at more than just the golden arches. A bit more than 30 years ago when I was a firefighter that was the widespread practice in the town in which I lived. Not that you work for the perks, but hell, sometimes people do appreciate the job you do. You are risking your life when you roll out of the station.

People seem to have more of an appreciation of public safety people now, more so than they did before 9/11. Still, I guess some of the restaurant people figure they can only give out free food only to so many. Okay, when that grease trap you didn’t ever clean catches fire and puts the place into an inferno, go call your hero coppers to put it out. Sorry.

I do remember some girls bringing cookies to our station one time. It was a couple of days after we helped get them back inside their house after they locked themselves out.

Once, I do recall eating at a McDonald’s after a fire. It was an early Sunday morning, must have been early January because the college still was out and there was zero traffic. I was riding in the open jump seat with someone. Can’t recall who. Mike was driving and Mason was lieutenant. I don’t remember who all was on the other pumper either. I guess I remember those two guys because they are gone after relatively early deaths. I remember it was sleeting or snowing that day. A car with a guy, his wife and kids, passed by and looked at me and my fellow firefighter riding the jump seat like, “These guys must be freezing.”

This was back when I was still young. Really pretty young. I guess I was about 23. Man, I had fun back in those days.

We ate breakfast, a Mickey D’s Big Breakfast as I recall. And I remember Mason paid for it. I don’t recollect if Mason paid for those of us on both trucks but he did pick up Engine 309’s tab. That’s more than I can say for Mickey D.

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The Trans-Louisiana express: Unearthing friendliness in the Pelican State

Wednesday saw me take what might be called a “whirlwind trip” to Louisiana. I had to do safety inspections in Lafayette and Alexandria, then drive back home to Beaumont in the same day. It has been awhile since I covered that much ground. My best guess is that I drove about 300 miles. I’ve not had time to study the odometer readings I had to write down for my work vehicle.

The sun was rising above all the huge petrochemical pipe towers when I neared Lake Charles. A perfectly clear morning. It was even more a spectacular sight when summiting the Interstate 10 bridge over the Calcasieu River.

It was on that same trek to Lafayette that I found myself being serenaded by the fiddles and accordion as well as the soulful sounds of Cajun French lyrics. Although I live in what is called “Cajun Texas” this area I found myself in is the real Boudreaux. The station, KBON 101.1 FM in Eunice, La., is a channel I have listened to many times on the internet and somehow just forgot about it.

The two-step Cajun music, as well as a little Clifton Chenier zydeco thrown in, recalled my younger days when I would drive from my Navy base in Gulfport, Miss., maybe once a month or every couple of months to my Texas hometown near Louisiana border. Rather than from this side of Lafayette, I would pick up a station after traveling through Baton Rouge and the long bridges on I-10 of the Atchafalya Basin. I don’t know if it was the same station or call letters. Back then I only had an AM radio in my car. Not only would I heard the music of Acadien but some of the lesser-known songs of “hippy” music, the kind of B-sides or album cuts you hear when someone puts the record on, but aren’t the more popular tunes. Either way: “Looka!” I done found myself in the land of Ca-juns!

I made my first trip to downtown Alexandria. It was pretty underwhelming from the area in which I saw it. It’s not as bleak as our county neighbor Port Ar-ture (Port Arthur, Texas), but at least from the view presented from I-49 Alexandria definitely lacked curb appeal.

The trip home was a bit confusing to say the least. I intended to take U.S. Hwy. 165, which would bring me back to I-10 in Iowa (La.) and not a long trip from Iowa back to Lake Charles and the Texas line. But I didn’t see any signs, for some reason, for Hwy. 165. I did see ones for U.S. 167, so that was the road I took. I eventually came to this nice-sized eatery and grocery store that had the look of the famous Buc-ee’s with the cleanest restrooms in Texas. Or so they say. I figured, why not stop, especially since the name of the place is “Y-Not Stop.”

This place was more like Buc-ees than I had imagined. It even had clean restrooms and a couple of terminals in the restaurant from which you could place your order, extract a ticket and sit down. They would call your name and you could pay or you could pay and they would still call your name. That’s not to say it was a knock-off of Buc-ee’s. It just had some similarities.

While waiting I looked at the map function on both smart phones I had with me — a Blackberry from work and an iPhone that is my personal cell — for a road to take me home. My preference was finding Hwy. 165. Both phones proved useless, mainly because the hair-trigger screens are a nightmare for a person with tremors in his hand.

I finally resorted to the old-fashioned way of navigation. I asked for directions.

First I asked a guy sitting across from me. He wasn’t from the area but he did his best. By then I had received a catfish sandwich with a fried filet halved and placed on a wheat bun with the dressings I ordered. I knew I shouldn’t but I also ordered their onion rings. Oh my, they were lightly crusted with a light-brown look and it felt like eating, well, a ring of onion, only one with a light crust of corn meal, flour and whatever secret seasoning that was concocted for this delight.

Before finishing, this big ol,’ good ol’ boy came walking undoubtedly on his way out.

“You need directions to Highway 167? I grew up around here.”

I told him I did. He told me to go down “this road take a right, go over the bridge, you’ll cross under I-49 and you’ll come to  167 in Woodworth.”

Woodworth rang a bell. I had asked directions of the people I met in both Alex and Lafayette. They told me about Woodworth and told me to watch my speed because the place was a speed trap.

“And,” said the good ol’ boy, “Watch your speed when you come to Woodworth.”

I was doubtful about the directions because it put me on a narrow, paved road. The road crossed a wood bridge and it snaked around what looked like a river or bayou that mirrors the larger Red River nearby. This was a reddish-clay type water body and that same redness coated leaves lying about the previously flooded areas. It reminded me of the area around Nacogdoches, TX, where I spent many younger and semi-younger days. Eventually, I crossed under I-49 and came to the town of Woodworth. I saw the speed limit of 35 mph, so I set my cruise control to 30. I finally got out on Hwy. 165, still going 30 for quiet a ways. Good thing, because I saw a couple of police cars had someone pulled over. After awhile I came through the casino town of Kinder, home to the Coushatta Indian casino, then knew I had only an hour or so before getting home.

It was quite an interesting day, despite having a continued bout with a bum knee. I have no idea what’s wrong with it. I am waiting to hear from a specialist about an appointment. I thought about how Texas had the motto: “Friendship.” It was apparently from the days the Caddo roamed the then-virgin pine forests of East Texas. I always liked to think Texas had the friendliest people in the country. It might not seem so these days with our opportunistic Gov. Good Hair, folks like the jackass freshman Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and the assortment of nuts that make up the Tea Party arm of the GOP in the Texas and U.S. legislatures.

But I had to say, for today at least, our neighbors to the east can be pretty worthy of that “friendship” motto. Thanks to my Louisiana friends.

 

 

 

 

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Those anger management lessons may just be paying off for Christie

For some reason I found myself singing the old Fats Domino tune this morning, what else, “The Fat Man.” Jeez Louise, that is one great song. It was released in 1950. that was five years before I was born. Then I saw the Fat Man himself about 18 years after I was born. I must have heard him play it there in the Texas Pelican Club in Vinton, La., because Fats played a little of everything that night.

“The Fat Man” was written by Antoine “Fats” Domino and frequent co-writing partner — also like Fats a New Orleans legend — Dave Bartholomew. Songs like that never seem to fall in the irrelevant pile. The music and words — “The girls, they all love me/’Cause I know my way around” — provide more meaning as you get older. It took me almost 40 years to figure out “Like a one-eyed jack peeping in the seafood store,” sad to say. If there is anything askew with Fats’ song is that line: “They call, they call me the fat man, ‘Cause I weigh two-hundred pounds.” Hell, I’d love to weigh 200 pounds. I don’t know if I’ll ever see 200 again, if so, I hope it is because of good dieting and working out. Harrumph!

Maybe the reason the song came to mind was because all I could find on the TV this morning before work was talk about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and “Bridgegate.” How freaking original. Watergate happened back in the early-to-mid 1970s. Can’t editors use a little part of their brain to come up with something much less hackneyed than that? I mean that is just sad.

The Washington political reporting crowd are just like starving alligators in the Southeast Texas bayous. They’re hungry and they’ll take a dead chicken or a live Cajun, “it don’t make no never mind.” The presidential election will eventually start. And you couldn’t have expected The Big Man Christie, just to set him apart from Fats, to fall on his sword. Oh and between Christie and Fats Domino, there is no comparison. Christie knows his way around a doughnut. Okay, I shouldn’t have said that, especially since I too am plump.

Christie fired two aides and apologized to Fort Lee, N.J. for blocking lanes on the George Washington Bridge. At least one woman died after she suffered a heart attack and her ambulance was caught up in the traffic snarl, according to one New Jersey EMS chief. If it can or could be proved Christie was involved in the petty scheme to create a traffic jam, then the potential Republican presidential candidate might just have screwed the pooch.

Some say Christie is a bully. He just says he is to the point. Is he petty enough to cause people to die from emergency services slow-downs? If so, he isn’t just a bully, he’s a freakin’ criminal.

Something tells me Christie wasn’t involved though. He may be a bully. He might just be a big ol’ Jersey loudmouth. Oh, and I don’t think he went off on any reporters, at least on camera this morning during his televised press conference. But I don’t think he’s stupid. That’s just me talking though.