Sheila and I invited the pack over for dinner Saturday night. I took the afternoon off Friday to clean the deck up a bit and install a new misting system to combat the expected heat. Who could have known that the Good Lord would provide a misting system for us and that the evening would wind up being almost perfect for a cookout without any of our puny gadgets or intervention.
The menu was grilled brats (bratwurst, not annoying neighborhood kids) Mexican corn, coleslaw provided by the Harmons, tea, Roger's excellent homemade beer and a blackberry cobbler with ice cream for dessert. I would have liked to have gotten some better food pictures but the food started disappearing nearly as fast as I got it onto the table.
Mexican street corn ("Elote" if you want to get foody about it) is one of my grilling favorites. You roast the ears on the grill and then slather them with a mixture of mayonnaise, sour cream and parmesan mixed with liberal amounts of chili powder, hot sauce and cilantro. Not only is it delicious but it also provides great fun around the table watching each other get it all over their faces.
Roger brought a six pack of his homemade beer. He really got a good scald on it this week. It was smooth and substantial but still not heavy. If he keeps going this way, the Pack may have to all dip into our social security checks and finance a microbrewery for him. He is becoming quite the brewmeister. I would rather have his stuff than anything commercial I have ever drank.
Sheila did her legendary blackberry cobbler. I would love to say that it is an old family recipe but it isn't ... yet at least. Years ago, we bought a strange little publication called "The White Trash Cookbook." It would seem that an enterprising young
southern writer spent several years traveling around the trailer parks, church socials and fish fries of the South collecting traditional southern recipes. The result was an offbeat classic of Southern culture. I don't know who Oleeta Brown is but this is her pie crust/cobbler recipe and everyone who eats it swears it is the best they have ever had.
After dinner, we chatted a while and settled into a spirited game of dominoes. Amazingly, Maddy had never learned how to play dominoes, so Mike and Jodi sat out and Jodi coached Maddy. Roger cleaned our clocks. I suspect he is a ringer .... a hustler of sorts. We already know better than to shoot pool with him and I think I may have discovered what he does in those pool rooms when he can't get anybody to take him on. Maddy pronounced that sitting around playing dominoes on a Saturday night was a sure sign that we were all practicing for the senior center.
Soon, the stray cats and arguably stray cats began appearing around the edge of the deck. As is my habit, I walked into the house for my airsoft pistol. A 300 fps ball to the hindquarters usually sends them packing for several hours and provides me with great practice at moving targets. But, this evening, I was greeted with a chorus of "Please don't shoot the little kitties" from the ladies. I then asked the ladies to take a few home with them but there were no takers.
As darkness crept over the deck and the solar lights began offering their gentle glow, there were soon as many yawns as conversation. Another good evening was ending. And yes, a good time was had by all.
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As I read over this blog post, it occurred to me that we sat there and ate, played games and mostly talked for three and a half hours and had a great time. What did we talk about? For some of the time, we talked about the same things people of our generation always talk about, our families, our ailments, the food, our hobbies, etc. But, some surprising topics came up as well.
I was amazed to learn that one of the ladies found Russian Premier Vladimir Putin "sexy" and that everybody at the table had more respect for him than the imposter in the White House. We are all old fashioned conservatives, not Commie lovin liberals. One person put it pretty well. Compare the pics of ex-Spetsnatz, ex-KGB agent Putin at the firing range expertly handling a high tech, military/police issue pistol, and the embarrassment in chief of the U.S. trying to fool his followers into thinking he knew how to handle a generic civilian shotgun. There was agreement around the table that one is a warrior and one is a wimp.
A funny tale about driving up on a guy naked in his home prompted a
discussion of the ethics and practice or lack thereof of private (or
maybe not so private in this case) household nudity.
Our resident medical person not only did an impromptu right there at the dinner table consultation concerning one of my more embarrassing ailments much to Sheila's chagrin but also gave us a brief run down on the state of the art in pancreas transplants.
There was a round of conversation about practical solar energy, everything from the solar lights on the deck to the all solar cabin we had recently stayed in to some vague plans to install a light duty solar heating unit at the farm.
Amazingly, somebody remarked that they had watched a movie adaptation of Hemingway's last, great,
unfinished work, The Garden of Eden. It is a controversial erotic novel set in the jazz age whose primary theme is moral and then physical self destruction through sexual perversion. Another person had seen both the "authorized" movie version and the cloned version, "Summer Lovers." (Not the one with Darryl Hannah of that title but the foreign made one.) I said I had to stop watching the latter in the middle of the movie because it was mostly porn as well as being a rip off of the first. It wasn't necessary to say that both movies abandoned whatever literary value the Hemingway novel might have had in favor of a series of titillating lesbian love scenes and plodding plot movement toward an inevitable menage a trois .... and all of the moral and romantic complications that would entail.
Overall, it was an interesting and surprising mix of discussion topics for a bunch of old geezers sitting over a patio table covered with dominoes.
