As a side note, we once lived in a wonderful old house. It was built in 1910 and in the front it had had a round balcony open to the air but covered from the rain. It was no longer there when we moved in. What we saw was a 1960s replacement that was square and functional. It kept off the rain but it was not elegant.
Much later I saw a photo from 1910 or 1920. There were young girls posing on the round balcony, possibly for a birthday party. Around them on the wooden frame of their photo setting were the thick vines of wisteria. Hanging from the vines were the flowers that smell so good. Being pulled down by the vines was the balcony. In time the dead wood gave in to the living wood and the balcony was no more.
We had the nice square balcony, with no wisteria.
But it sure smells so good, and it was so cool when we went into the tunnel that Steve with the Cadillac had made. A picnic table was in the middle with plenty of room to get on and off the bench seats.
Cool and fragrant. Wow.
Years later I wanted to show my wife but I couldn’t remember where it was. I wanted to show many others, at least the Cadillac, but the same. Where the heck did I see it? Ever lose your keys? I lost a Cadillac.
The story I’d done had no location other than Kitsilano. How dumb can anyone get?
The years passed. It’s here, somewhere. Or there. Or the next street. But I couldn’t find it.
Then, fifteen years later, I was wandering around the area with Murray the Camera Guy, that would be Murray Titus, as you read earlier. He was driving west on Broadway.
“Nothing here,” I said. Broadway is boring. Around the Cambie area are big buildings and if you don’t have a tag hanging around your neck with the right bar code on it you can’t get past the front doors.
Farther west are the small shops. The folks in those work seven days a week. They are good and nice and kind but they don’t have time to tell a visitor about the birthday party for their goldfish, if they had a goldfish.
Murray turns right, going to the beach. That’s nice, so nice that I have done hundreds of stories on the beach at Kitsilano, so if you get bored, go there. You will find something neat.
“Can’t go there,” I said. “Been there too many times.”
Then I added, just from a flickering thought in the left-hand corner of my mind, “Would you drive along 6th Avenue? I once saw a Cadillac buried in a front yard.”
Murray is the same guy who often hears on his phone, “Would you go to (a location). There’s a dead guy in the street.”
Murray drives and I have no hope, and then—you know what I’m going to say—and then there it is. “Hey, that’s a Cadillac buried in a front yard,” he said.
I’m glad he saw it first. There is nothing like discovering something for yourself. Socrates knew that. If you don’t know who I am talking about, look up Socrates. He was the best teacher who ever lived. He never taught anything. He only asked questions of his students and they discovered the answers. In short, they taught themselves.
Plato was one of his students. Look up his name while you’re at it.
“That’s really a Cadillac in the front yard,” Murray repeated, because for really good things you have to say them twice.
“Please be home.” That was me praying.
The back of a Cadillac sticking out of the ground in a front yard is no good if no one is there to tell you about it. If you are just passing by and take a picture it doesn’t matter but can you imagine what the lack of a person would be like on television?
“Here is the back of a Cadillac,” would say the news anchor. “It is sticking out of the ground.” You see the picture. “And now the weather.”
“Please be home.”
I knock and a young fellow opens the door. The young fellow was a five-year-old when I last saw him. He doesn’t remember me. Duh.
“My father is still sleeping. I’ll get him.”
No kidding. And thank you.
Steve comes out, slim, wiry, pouring out energy and putting a cowboy hat over his hippie long hair.
He hasn’t changed. None of us ever do unless we want to.
He is happy to see me. I am happier to see him.
The same story, he loved the car and kept it. But what to do with it? Same story. Stick it in the front yard.
“Look at the licence plate,” Steve says.
I don’t remember this from the first visit.
cme 007. When he buried the car everyone knew what 007 meant. But Steve was pointing to the letters “Those are my son’s initials. Colin Morgan Edmundson.”
“Growing up here was strange,” said Colin Morgan Edmundson. He didn’t have to explain.
The motorcycle and cool tunnel were gone, he said. That proves I was wrong about wisteria. It can take down steel. And once that was gone there was no heaven for the hog to shoot for. So it was gone too.
Then Steve said he tells kids in the neighbourhood that his car fell from the sky. Most believe him. I do too.
When we left, Murray the Camera Guy said he wanted his sweetheart to see it. So for his sake I will remind him it is at 6th Avenue and Balaclava Street.
Of course I know he would never forget.
If you get a chance, go by too, and tell your kids there is only one way it could have gotten there, just like Steve said.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
There is nothing better. Period.
When I was young we had Chips Ahoy. They were the best. When my kids were young they had Chips Ahoy. They were still the best.
Then I started fooling around in the kitchen. Lord! What you can do with no experience, no training and no one telling you that you need experience and training, as well as a recipe. You can do better than Chips Ahoy, at least in my humble opinion.
I had no recipe. I just figured I know what’s in cookies. I have read the ingredients on cookie packages and if you leave out the chemicals it is fairly simple.
This will be short because there isn’t much to it, except the wow factor.
A large hunk of butter, more or less. Never margarine, because butter tastes better. That’s all. If you read everything on the internet on what’s good about butter or what’s good about margarine you will go blind.
I grew up with margarine and according to contemporary medical advice I am surprised I am still alive. Everyone ate margarine because there was a war and butter was going for the fighting men. After being in uniform myself I bet it went for the officers.
We had margarine that came with packets of yellow colouring. Can you just imagine what was in those? The margarine was white but to pretend it was butter you mixed in the chemical concoction. This was the age when a major industrial producer’s slogan was, “Better Living Through Chemistry.” Sounds good.
And, by the way, margarine came to you white because the dairy farmers of America didn’t want the competition so they lobbied the law makers to have it look like lard, which does not look good.
The margarine makers added the packets of yellow dye, which the housewife—sorry to say that but the word came from an age in early human evolution—tipped into the margarine and then stirred. Some of the margarine came out deep yellow, some light, some white and some striped. Bon appétit!
We put margarine on everything. Margarine used to contain trans fat. I have read about it but I don’t know what it is. We are told it causes heart disease, hard arteries and bad dreams. We used it every day. I think this proves that contemporary medical advice is valuable to those who sell it.
Now I use butter, so put in half a pound. What is half a pound? Buy a hunk of butter at the supermarket and cut it in half. That’s good enough, and that’s the only measurement.
Then pour some sugar over it. How much? Good question. Answer? A lot. Just cover the hunk of butter until you can’t see it and that’s about right.
Then stick in yo
ur hands. This is the best part. Grab that butter and sugar and squeeze. Then squeeze it again.
Someone will say, “You should use an electric all-purpose blender.”
Tell them to go away. This is caveman cookie-making.
If you want the cookies to look dark use brown sugar. If you don’t care and don’t want to spend the extra for brown sugar use white. It’s all sweet.
Did you know that basically half the trade in human lives that was called the slave trade was because of sugar? In the early days the only sweetener in Europe was honey. Then someone said this granulated stuff that looks like sand and comes from tall, thick grasses that grow mostly in the Caribbean tastes unbelievably good.
Bang. Capture and import millions of poor souls from Africa and ship them in chains to the West Indies to cut sugar cane. That was a larger and more brutal slavery than anything in the us.
First, burn the cane fields to get rid of the leaves off the stalks. Then send the slaves out to cut and carry. Life expectancy was two years. During the first two days they wished they would die, but Europe got its white sugar and rotten teeth.
Back to the cookies. Amazing how unbearably bitter information mixes with an irresistibly sweet conclusion. Such is the human condition. No slaves now, but please, brush your teeth after a cookie.
Squeeze and kneed the butter and sugar until the sugar is gone. This is a trick of nature, fat hides sweetness but it becomes fatter. That is a lesson you see every day.
Then put in a capful of vanilla. I don’t know why but my mother used it so I do.
And then an egg. The mixture will now be sticky and gunky on your hands. Such is life. Stick with it. It will turn out warm and good.
Then some salt. How much? Too much is terrible. Too little is tasteless. Face it, salt is what sells kfc and fries and potato chips. We aren’t talking healthy, we are talking tasty. Put in a little extra, but not too much. If you worry about your blood pressure, walk around the block. That’s better than worrying about a quarter teaspoon of anything.
Then oatmeal. Oatmeal is the best thing in the world. I’ve had few days in my adult life pass without oatmeal. It doesn’t matter if it is slow cooking or instant, oatmeal is good for you.
By the way, did you know that someone judged those words, “. . . is good for you,” as the best advertising slogan ever in the English-speaking western world. Except it was Guinness’s beer that used it. Guinness Is Good for You. Actually, Guinness is good for you, like all beer and wine, if you drink only a little.
Small chance of that happening.
In case you are interested, the second-best advertising slogan ever written was Drink Coca-Cola. In two words it told you what to do, when to do it and what to do it with. The only problem with Coke is that it isn’t good for you, although their early promotions said it cured every ailment you could dream of.
It’s a bit like the modern advertisements for drugs on television. “Take X drug and it will cure your erectile dysfunction, your hair loss and your bad breath.”
And while you are watching the commercial with lovely young people with full heads of hair and obviously good breath and are so close you know they have no problem with ed, you hear, or barely hear, that this drug may also cause heart attacks, strokes, liver disease, thoughts of suicide, bad chequebook balancing and early death. You are watching the couple getting closer together, smiling, cooing, smiling some more, cooing some more and you know what is going to happen if they don’t have liver disease or commit suicide before it happens.
So you buy the drug.
The same with Coke. On the commercials you see smiling young people tilting back the ice-cold bottles. I would smile too if only I had one of those.
Back to oatmeal. It is good for you, so pour in a bunch. Then some more. You can’t go wrong. Horses like it.
With your fingers squeeze the oatmeal into the butter and sugar. This is another trick of nature. Fat makes even good stuff disappear but it doesn’t work the other way round. If you want to get rid of fat you have to get rid of fat. You can’t add more stuff to it and hope it goes away.
Anyway, when the oatmeal has disappeared into the butter, put in some flour. Not too much. You have to also squeeze that into the goop of butter and sugar and oatmeal and salt and egg. So squeeze some more. Pretend you are in a glue factory. There’s no way around it, it is sticky.
Then add baking powder. Baking soda is different. Everyone uses baking soda for almost everything and it is good for almost everything. You can wash just about anything from your body to your car tires with it. It is the duct tape of cleaning.
But don’t use it for cookies because it tastes like salt and you already have real salt in the cookies.
So I put some baking powder in my hand. About that much. Too much isn’t bad—your cookies will be fatter. Too little is okay, too. The cookies will be thinner, unlike you and me after eating them.
And then the chocolate chips. Lots of them. Doesn’t matter what brand. Pay a lot or a little. They are like wine—after the first mouthful the cheaper ones taste fine. Squeeze them in.
And you can figure out the rest. Make little cookies, bake them at 350F or 180C for ten minutes and, presto, in less time than it took you to read all this—cookies!
Or buy Chips Ahoy and you’ll still have a happy crowd.
The Lady and the Cookies
She is old. She will be ninety-seven when you are reading this. Much of the world has changed since she started out.
My wife and I take her out for coffee and cookies every week. We started out by driving her to a park where she walked around and watched the kiddies play. She could watch them for a long time, smiling all the while.
Now she is in a wheelchair. We push her to a coffee shop when the weather is nice. Last week I made some of the cookies that you’ve just read about. She likes them.
Outside in the sunshine she ate and drank and then along came a girl with orange socks that went up to her shorts.
The sweet little old lady poked me to make sure I didn’t miss this. She smiled and shook her head, which means, “Why?”
“There are new styles now,” I said.
Then along came a girl with green hair.
“Look,” said the sweet little old lady.
“Don’t point,” said my wife. “It’s not polite.”
“But look,” said the sweet little old lady. “Why did she do that?”
“It’s the way kids do things now,” I said.
One time, when we could take her on longer trips, we were pushing her past a resort hotel and there was a wedding in progress on the front lawn.
There were two women standing side by side.
“Where’s the mister?” asked the sweet little old lady.
“There is none,” we told her. “Sometimes women marry women and men marry men.”
“Why?”
“Well, that’s the way things are now,” I said.
We kept walking and pushing and her head kept turning back like an owl, a wise old owl who still had things to learn.
But last week was the best. We were sitting outside a coffee shop in a small shopping plaza and she was eating my cookies. She nodded when she took the first bite, which means they were okay, the same as they have always been. They are a constant in her life.
Then a Winnebago pulled into the parking lot.
“That’s a nice bus,” she said.
“That’s a private bus,” we said. “Someone is going travelling.”
Out of the bus came a bride, with full wedding dress, and following her were two bridesmaids with full bridesmaid’s dresses.
“Is there a church here?” she asked.
They went into the coffee shop. Meanwhile one of my cookies had made it halfway to her mouth. It stayed there while she stared at the door of the coffee shop.
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sp; Then the door opened and the bride came out carrying two takeout containers followed by the bridesmaids, each carrying a container. One of the bridesmaids picked up the train of the white wedding dress and held it while they crossed the parking lot.
“Why are they doing that?” asked the sweet lady.
“They are probably celebrating with lattes,” I said.
“What’s a latte?”
“A very expensive way to get coffee with milk.”
The wedding party with the takeouts went back to the bus and climbed in.
The little old lady took a bite of the cookie that was still in her hand.
She chewed for a minute and then said, “I like your cookies.”
When we went back to the nursing home I gave her the last cookie I had. She took it and wrapped it in a napkin.
As the world changes and goes crazy, and it is always doing that, it is recommended by cookie-makers everywhere that you hold onto something sweet from the past. One bite and you understand.
Another Fish Story
They were looking over the metal railing around False Creek. There were two small boys, two parents and two grandparents. The boys and the parents were from Alberta, visiting the grandparents who were here.
“There’s a fish,” said one of boys. He was six.
I looked over the railing. I didn’t want to intrude so I was several steps away, but I could hear them and I could look. What I saw were some bottles and a square piece of metal on the sand and gravel under the water.
“It’s a square fish,” the boy said.
I interrupted and asked the parents if we could talk to the boys. The grandparents said they only get to see their grandkids twice a year and this was a wonderful day.
The parents said yes, we could talk, and the boy began:
“I saw a square fish. Really I did. We have bigger fish in Alberta, but this is the first square fish I’ve seen.”
His bigger brother, who was nine, pushed his little brother and said, “There’s no such thing as a square fish. That’s a piece of junk down there.”
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