Eight Feet Deep

Visualize swirled red beans. Or maybe not.

Among the fond memories I have of 2 1/2 years stationed in Gulfport, Miss., is red beans and rice.

Even though I grew up practically in Cajun country I never really came to appreciate wonderfully spicy red beans and rice until my Navy days in Gulfport during the middle 1970s. I remember Sundays you could go to many of the bars in town and could partake of free red beans and rice to accompany your beer. Not among those bars was Jim’s Lounge and Postman’s, down the street from Jim’s, where most of my Seabee friends and I hung out. I don’t know why they didn’t have free red beans and rice. Maybe because Jim, who owned both bars, was too cheap. Nonetheless, my friend Betti tended bar at Jim’s and she would invite us over to her place for what I believed was the best red beans ever.

Years after leaving Gulfport I tried to approximate the red beans I had back in my days on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I always fell short. That is, until today. I don’t know what I did right. Maybe it was the Cajun seasoning. Perhaps the ham hock or the garlic or maybe I just had good kitchen karma today. But these beans will make you slap your granny, for sure.

I did some doctoring on the photo because my beans don’t photograph well. Or maybe I don’t photograph them well. But take my word for it, after I cook some rice I will be entering culinary nirvana for awhile. I won’t say these beans are as good as Betti’s but they are the best ever that I’ve cooked. Ahhhh. Food is good.

Looks like we’re going to have to get another blue tarp from FEMA!
Right now it is still warm enough to wear shorts outside here in Beaumont, Texas, at least theoretically. But the 61 degrees is predicted to give way to a cold rain with a low in the morning of around 40 and it won’t warm up much all day. So says the weather service. These are the same folks who said Hurricane Rita would hit Corpus Christi. No wait, it’s going to hit Freeport. No wait, it’s going to hit Galveston. No wait, it’s going to hit Crystal Beach. And of course, it made landfall between Cameron, La. and Sabine Pass, Texas, then proceded to personally take aim at me.

I am just ribbing the National Weather Service for comic effect though. It’s hard to predict where a hurricane will land. It is also difficult to forecast winter weather in Texas, like getting kittens to march, if you will. It likewise is a big crapshoot guessing if we’re going to get any wintry precipitation here. I think it snowed here last year at Christmas. I was living in Waco, several hours to the northwest, at the time and it didn’t do squat.

After predominantly warm and hot weather since, I don’t know, maybe March or April, I look forward to a little blast of cold weather every once in awhile. I certainly don’t like anything protracted or crippling such as the ice storm we had here in 1997. No electricity for a week. After the hurricane I just as soon have electric power, thank you very much.

But it normally doesn’t get very cold here on the Texas coast. I like that. That is why I choose to live here rather than say, Madison, Wisconsin, or Minnesota.

Forecasters predict Friday morning will be the coldest weather here so far this fall with a low around 30. If you’re from the frozen north lands that’s not much, I know. A chance of rain exists through Sunday so it may be cold and rainy. Too much of it and I will fast become sick of it. But a little cold will be okay.

Oh, as for the photo caption. I am referring to the blue tarps that are so prominent throughout the Gulf coast, covering hurricane damage on roofs. A snow like that one and you would definitely need another blue tarp, perhaps even a new residence.

Ready to eat vegetarian penne pasta and Red Hots courtesy of the Texas Army National Guard.

To eat the Red Hots or not to eat the Red Hots: that is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
A snackless afternoon of outrageous misfortune
Or to take the red cinnamon flavored candies
And by opposing them? To go hungry …

Somehow I feel Shakespeare never had such a conflict insofar as Red Hots are concerned. But I may be mistaken for these Red Hots I found in an MRE may have come from Billy’s time.

Red Hots seem an odd snack to have in an MRE packet. Lovely soothing snack for Fallujah in the dead of summer, don’t you think?

Sucrose, corn syrup, corn starch, corn fectioner, corn de ment, something very, very red. Yep, those are Red Hots.

When I evacuated for Hurricane Rita — or should I say when I decided to get smacked around somewhere else from the storm –I got a case of Meals Ready to Eat. The National Guard was handing cases of MREs and bags of ice out on that hot September day at the old football field in my old hometown.

I think that, to date, I may have eaten one MRE meal from the case of MREs. I can’t remember what it was. I don’t think it was too good. My friend Sarah, who remarkably stayed in town during the storm and ate no MREs, came by my place for lunch one day after I got back from my brief evacuation. She wanted an MRE for lunch since she had not tried one. The vegetarian penne pasta was what she chose and she said it was pretty good.

Now I must say I have probably eaten all the snacks from that case — peanut butter, wheat toast, crackers, pound cake, M & Ms, everything but the Red Hots. So while in the kitchen this afternoon I thought: Why not?

So I have eaten about half the bag or about two servings, according to the “Nutrition Facts” on that bag. Carbohydrates and sugars seem to be the candy’s sole nutritional payoff. I suppose you could call carbohydrates and sugars nutrition although that is not how I normally think of the word. But after half the bag, I say “enough.” A little bit of Red Hots go a long way.

Something seemed so appealing about Red Hots when I was a kid. Maybe it was how it turned your tongue red. Or perhaps it was the little heat zing I like so much after I long since graduated to jalapeno or habanero peppers. Damned if I know. I probably will eat Red Hots again sometimes. Maybe in 100 years or when Hell freezes over — whichever comes first.

In between looking for writing gigs and waiting for Microsoft updates to install, I’ve been thinking about Christmas gifts today. Only 19 shopping days until Christmas unless you are shopping for Christmas 2006. Only 17 shopping days left until Festivus and I’ve yet to put up my metal pole! Here are some thoughts on some items you might consider for holiday gifts.

An F-16 fighter! Wow, how would you like to wake up with one of THESE babies under your tree? You’d need a pretty big tree, one with at least 17 feet worth of clearance under which this speedy fellow could sit. But you’d probably get some attention that night from your significant other for delivering to him or her this machine that will fly above 50,000 feet at a speed of some 1,500 mph. Oh and you can’t forget its accessories — the M-61A1 20mm multibarrel cannon with 500 rounds; external stations can carry up to six air-to-air missiles, conventional air-to-air and air-to-surface munitions and electronic countermeasure pods. No rush-hour drivers will flip you off again. Ever!

Can’t figure out what to get kitty cat? How about the World’s Largest Ball of Twine?
Go pick it up when no one is looking in Cawker City, Kansas. Fluffy and Socks will be entertained the rest of their feline days with a ball of twine that is almost 9 tons, 40 feet in circumference and unwrapped is about 1,325 miles long. Mee-yow!

Did you spend one too many of your old military days either dodging bombs or getting drunk? And you say you don’t have any good pictures of you in uniform from those days? Well, just borrow a picture from everyone’s favorite couple from the U.S. to Iraq — Charles Graner and Lynndie England. Show everyone how dashing you look in uniform and that you really could get a guy or a girl. Sure, you might appear a little desperate. Well, you might appear very desperate, but it beats a picture on the wall of dogs playing poker. Doesn’t it? At least a little bit?

Finally, if you are totally stumped for a gift, get your loved one The Village People! Have them sing and dance in the privacy of your own bedroom. Throw a party. Spell out YMCA with your arms or whatever else you might have handy. Have a gay old time this Christmas!

Fuzzy images from 1970s era Navy boot camp courtesy of the Way Back Machine. (Blame Sherman) I am not in this picture by the way.

As I was shaving my head this morning, I looked in the mirror and wondered what it was all about. Hair. As in: “Gimme a head with hair, long beautiful hair/Shining, gleaming, steaming, flaxen, waxen … “

Hair was once an important factor in my life. It defined me for awhile. It made a statement. And now — bald. Bald like the tires on a Juarez taxi.

My hair fell just below my scapulae when I went to boot camp in 1974. It was never that long again. And it kept getting shorter and shorter. And grayer and grayer. Until finally I started practicing relatively maintenance free hair grooming. Wash it. Shampoo it. Shave it every couple of days. It’s like eating air, there’s nothing to it.

I wasn’t a hippie although you wouldn’t know that from hearing people in my hometown talk. I even had a guy openly pray for me in church. “Dee-liver him and his har from eeee-vill!” I was nonetheless one of the few guys in my school at the time with long hair. It seemed to bother a lot of people. Not among those people were my parents, God love ’em. To them it was a phase. They’d seen DAs and turned-up collars on my older brothers who tried to look like an Elvis-Dean-Brando cross. And to a certain extent my parents were right.

Hair meant something — to me at least — for a brief while. It meant rebellion. It meant a counter-culture. It meant stick it to the man! Power to the people! Far out man. Groovy. It means much less if only a memory today. I think I looked better with it than without it. But on the other hand, I looked better at 25 than at 50. Not much I can do about that short of surgical intervention. Then it’s still no sure bet.

What was it all about? It was about youth. If you find me a fountain of youth I might drink from it. But maybe not. There is always some catch. So suspicious, cynical fellow that I am, will probably remain the aging version. I was always so keen on change as a younger man. Now I don’t think change is always for the best.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to get eight feet deep on you.