Tag: Ohio

The Perfect Santa

Cruising through Facebook on the last day of November, I ran across a woman’s plea to find a Santa. She did not want any old Santa, but a particular Santa, who, for at least three years, had captivated her daughters’ hearts. As far as that woman was concerned, she had found the perfect Santa. No one else would do.

Many of us want to believe in the “Jolly Old Elf” residing at the North Pole, even knowing that Santa is a myth. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands people out there willing to put on a red suit and a fake beard to keep the myth alive.

I quit believing in Santa when I was quite young. A combination of being growled at by one of a legion of imitation Clauses in the Men’s room of the Brookpark (Ohio) Civic Center at the end of a party, and discovering my Dad stuffing my stocking by my bedside in the middle of the night. After telling my parents of my discoveries, I kept my disbelief to myself as a courtesy to my younger siblings.

I began to believe again twenty-five or so years later when I owned and operated a combination balloon delivery business and costume shop in Chillicothe Ohio.

It was mid-November when I met Tim. The previous owner of the shop had used him to play Santa for the previous two Holiday seasons. We talked, I liked him. We came to an arrangement where I would arrange dates and he would show up, collect the fee, and cut me in for 10% just for making those arrangements.

I didn’t realize that Tim had a following until just after Thanksgiving. The phone in the shop was ringing almost constantly by people more than willing to put cash on the barrelhead for his services.

Tim Lived in Circleville, working at the box plant driving a loader all day. He wasn’t a burley man – to look at him he was probably the last person one would believe as being Santa. But he worked around his physical self, creating an illusion that he was the real deal. Even adults believed the illusion he created.

Tim and I were quite pleased with our take that first Christmas Season and agreed to do it again the following year.

That second year went on as well as the first. Unfortunately, Tim as Santa was one of only three bright spots in my first year in business. I ended up throwing in the towel the following Summer, barely able to pay my outstanding debts and feeling sorry for myself.

Six years after losing the business (and losing touch with Tim), I ran into another “Real Santa” working in the Santa House in Central Center.

The Gentleman in question, Jim, was the proprietor of the Dairy Queen over in Bainbridge Ohio. His store was closed for the season and he decided to buy a Santa suit so he could play the “Jolly Old Elf” at his leisure. Jim had more of the Santa build, but he also had the magic.

We chatted one afternoon about a problem I had with my then pre-school daughter, Sarah. Sarah was dead set against any sort of costumed character, especially Santa Claus.

I ended up taking Sarah on a shopping trip one evening, suggesting we go visit Santa before going into the store. Somehow I managed to coax her into the Santa House. She was immediately impressed that Santa knew who I was, and just as impressed that Santa knew who she was!

Magic Managed.

My daughter believed.

I believed.

Thirty years down the road – Both of my Santas are gone. But they live on, at least in the mind of a woman in Southern Illinois who is looking for that one person to re-create that magic for her family at least one more time.

I hope she finds him.

Be Seeing You!

An April Fool Prank +50 years

An April Fool Prank +50 years

I came to the realization earlier today that 50 years ago, I was on the radio and needed to pull off a prank. With the help of a young woman, I was able to accomplish my mission. Here’s the scoop…

On a cool and rainy night fifty years ago, I teamed with an OU-C classmate to promote a “Streak In” at the OU-C parking lot on WBEX. A small group of people came to the station just before the April Fool was announced – one of them, a young woman, exposed her breasts, much to the amusement of the group she was with, the classmate helping me in the ruse, and me.

I stayed after the station signed off and filed a modified version of the story to the Associated Press. The Chillicothe Gazette took notice and I was on the front page the next afternoon, to the amusement of my co-workers and the young woman helping me with the ruse.

The VP mentioned was in her late seventies at the time and was the only person at the station not amused by the antics from the previous evening.

Be Seeing You!

Fast Food

Fast Food

I’ve had an interesting week – one bookended by a couple of fast food tales. On one end, there was a question about Cincinnati Chili, on the other, I was doing drugs in a Whataburger drive-through line.

It’s not quite as bad as it sounds. Allow me to explain.

Monday morning, my alarm clock rang at the gawdawful hour of 4:19 to allow me enough time to walk the dog, shower, get dressed, and headed to the hospital for a bit of surgery. Had to be there at 6:00 to be put under at 7:30.

I met the surgeon three weeks earlier. We discussed what he intended to do to me (remove a small, suspicious growth from my liver), how he was going to do it (laparoscopic surgery), and where we would be doing it (at the hospital ten miles from my little corner of the DFW Metromess). Before I met the man, I noted from the CV he provided on the internet that he had spent time in Cincinnati.

I wanted to ask him Gold Star, or Skyline.

As a point of information for the uninitiated, Gold Star and Skyline are a couple of chain chili parlors doing business mostly in Cincinnati and Hamilton County Ohio selling “Cincinnati-Style” chili to the masses. (For more information about Cincinnati Chili, look here.

Well, I didn’t get to ask the good doctor about his favorite Cincinnati Chili on my initial visit, so, I determined to ask when I saw him just prior to surgery.

Well, here I was getting prepped for surgery and the nurse asked if I had any questions. She answered most of them already, so I told her that since the doctor spent time in Cincinnati, I was wondering…

“Which do you prefer? Gold Star or Skyline?” The nurse came out of left field to ask the question I was about to ask. She told me that she was from Northern Kentucky and her preference was Skyline! Her interruption broke a bit of ice and put me in a better mood.

And yes, when the doctor came in for his last visit with me before I went under, I asked the question. “Skyline!” We talked a moment or two about the Queen City before he left and I was given some happy medicine to put me under the knife.

I woke up about 3 hours later (or was it four?) not a bit hungry despite having been fasting since nine the previous evening.

Pain? There was plenty. Tylenol, some other pill I had no idea what it was was fed to me over the next 24 hours while I was itching to get back home.

When I was discharged just after lunchtime Tuesday, the doctor prescribed a nausea medicine to go along with something called Oxycodone for me to pick up at the local CVS. Well, not me, but my wife. There was no way I was going to drive for at least a week… even if a doctor had put no restrictions on me. Married to a nurse, I know exactly what I didn’t need to be doing.

After getting home and getting settled, my wife drove to the CVS here in our little burg since my phone told me that the prescriptions were ready to be picked up.

One little hiccup.

The message sent by CVS said that the nausea medicine was ready, but that the Oxycodone was “On Special Order”, meaning they didn’t have it. When my wife returned, she explained the situation. I thought it wise to go ahead and wait. After all, I wasn’t too anxious to be taking a narcotic, despite the pain.

That was Tuesday.

I managed to control my pain with double doses of Tylenol interspersed with double doses of Ibuprofen.

It worked, despite the fact that I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV.

My only problem was a cough, caused in part by difficulty in getting fluids out of my chest. For a few days, I was chugging down cough drops almost as quickly as I could unwrap the things. Tired of that, I decided that the best thing I could do would be to go to Wally World, to get a bottle of cough syrup.

Since it was Saturday, and since I was feeling good, I convinced my wife to drive me to Wally-World to get cough syrup, suggesting getting sandwiches at Whataburger on the way back to the house. I went into WW, came out with the cough syrup, and struggled to open the bottle while my wife drove us to Whataburger for our sandwiches.

I finally got the bottle opened after we placed our order – dosing myself while we waited to get to the drive-up window. It was then that I observed that I was doing drugs in the Whataburger drive-through lane!

See? It wasn’t all that bad, now was it?

Our order arrived.

While I was securing our sandwiches for the ride home, my phone buzzed with the news from CVS that my Oxycodone had arrived.

Four days later.

I have other thoughts about CVS, but I’m not here to gripe, I’m here to exude happy thoughts.

Be Seeing You!

A Fishy Little Tail

A Fishy Little Tail

I ran across an interesting little piece of trivia a few whiles back regarding Woodstock, Captain D’s Seafood restaurants, and Long John Silver’s restaurants. It seems that the first Captain D’s opened on August 15, 1969… the same day as the start of the famous Woodstock Music Festival held in upstate New York. The Festival’s last day was on August 18, 1969… the same day that the first Long John Silver’s launched.

I posted that little piece of trivia on my Facebook page the other day with some interesting responses, including from a woman claiming to be from Dayton Ohio who wanted me to add her to my friends list. She persisted, even though I indirectly accused her of “Catfishing.” Long story short, she is blocked from seeing what I do on Facebook.

Anyhoo, I had my first encounter with Captain D’s while on my way to Savannah this past June. To that point, I had been a semi-regular of Long John Silver’s for quite some time. For the most part, I liked what they offered, but one can do only so much with fish and chips, battered and deep-fried. In the absence of Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips, and the ever more elusive Alfie’s Fish and Chips (There’s only one, now, in Lompoc California), LJS was pretty much a safe bet… and they were pretty much everywhere. The better half and I stopped at Captain D’s in Fort Valley Georgia. I appreciated the fact that they offered different kinds of fish served in ways other than being battered and deep-fried. Besides, the staff was friendly. If I lived there, I would likely be a regular and know at least one of the staff by name.

(As an aside, I was a regular at Alfie’s Fish and Chips in Chillicothe Ohio and one of the staff was a classmate of mine – Sue Costoff. I’m mentioning this because Sue passed recently. She was an interesting person in her own right and she will be missed by many.)

Back to the tale.

Something I noticed on the trip to Georgia was the numerous Catfish Farms going through Alabama. They were almost as prolific as the Solar Farms on the same stretch of road. While a lot of people love farm-bred catfish, I’m not so fond of it. While I was working offshore, I could count on there being catfish on the menu every Friday for at least one of the meals. One of the summers I worked on the rigs, the rig I was on was towed up to New England, off Nantucket. I looked forward to there perhaps being some variety on the Friday night menu, but I ended up being disappointed. The catering crew would go to the trouble of having farm-fed catfish every Friday. The southern boys I worked with had a latent distrust of us “Yankees” and our fancy New England seafood. I deliberately delayed a flight back to Houston so I could revel in real seafood at a real seafood restaurant in Boston.

I don’t limit my seafood preferences to ocean creatures. The better half has, on more than one occasion, told of living in Colorado. Her parents would go trout fishing in the early morning to catch trout for breakfast. I love trout when I can get it. When the better half recounts those stories, I find my mouth watering at the prospect of going somewhere for some broiled trout.

There was a “Farmer’s Market” held at the Tractor Supply parking lot this morning and one of the vendors was selling fishing gear. I spoke with him because of his hat, indicating that he was a fan of West Virginia University. The gear he had on display was purchased in West Virginia on what he called an annual trip back east. He would clean up and restore the gear before selling it at various flea markets in my little corner of the DFW Metromess. No doubt that he makes back the money spent on the trip and a little more to boot. Nice to have some extra money to spend here and there.

Enough fish.

There is one other piece of trivia I’ve encountered, having to do with excess money. A gentleman by the name of Godfrey Hounsfield had an idea on how to take multiple X-Ray photographs of the human body as a diagnostic tool. He took his idea to a British company that had a surplus of money thanks to a successful deal with a “Guitar Band” of note. Hounsfield’s invention, the CAT scan, was introduced to the world in 1972 thanks to the people at EMI labs. Their surplus of money came from deals they had with The Beatles!

The woman usually at the reception desk at Texas Oncology (where I go to have CAT scans) is a Beatlemaniac. Somehow I think she is secretly pleased.

Enough rambling on a Saturday Afternoon.

Be Seeing You!

I have this Uncle…

I have this Uncle…

While poking and prodding around social media, I’ve been followed by the occasional Crypto pusher. They’re somewhat easy to spot – usually a young (under 40) female following a ton of people, yet, only a few followers. If one becomes a follower, there is a small period where there is a mundane conversation, followed by a suggestion to move to another platform (Telegraph and/or WhatsApp) where eventually the conversation winds around to how the young female is living the good life by trading in Cryptocurrency.

“It’s fun! It’s easy! It allows me to lead a life of luxury!”

Uh huh. So, what do you know about how to make money in the Cryptocurrency (racket) market?

“Well, I have this Uncle…”

Uncles reportedly know everything there is to know about life, the universe, and trading Crypto.

I have two uncles.

One worked practically all his life for an electrical utility, the other worked for an oil company and invested in electrical utilities. One of those Ying and Yang deals. Neither of them met the other but they both benefited from the other’s enterprise.

Now, I’m an uncle myself with four nieces and four nephews (I need a moment or two to count. Bear with me… yeah, I’m correct. Four of each). Not one of them has asked me for financial advice. I honestly don’t think I’d ask for financial advice from me either.

I’ve been known as an “Uncle” for a few people in Southern Ohio who listened to me on the radio back in the day. Some people still remember me – including a woman I met while I was working in a retail store in Texas. She remembered listening to me back when I was “Uncle Bruco” (think Harpo, Chico, and Groucho) between sporting events.

And no, she didn’t ask me for financial advice. That’s why we’re still friends.

There were other “Uncles” in my life – Like Uncle Donald and Uncle Jimmy. Both Godfathers. One of them worked for an electrical utility, the other, a dermatologist.

Great Uncles included a car dealer, an uncle who I believe was under the care of a psychiatrist, and Mosby. I never met Mosby, but my father told stories about Mosby. I’ve been known to use Mosby every once in a while when a story I’m telling needs a character to cover for another character.

I am not going to use Mosby as a source for financial advice. Besides, he’s been on the other side of the grass for many years.

I’m not going to use this (probably fictional) uncle quoted by the sirens trying to get me into investing in Crypto.

I have better sense than to do so.

My uncle told me.

Be Seeing You!

Fish

Fish

When last we heard from this intrepid author wanna-be, a blog about micromanagement would be the topic of his next blog. Instead, a word (or several hundred) about fish.

A friend of mine mentioned going to a restaurant the other day and enjoying catfish – while her husband enjoyed cod. His remark about catfish (according to his wife) is that catfish tastes like mud.

I agree. With one exception. I’ll get to that momentarily.

My friend defended catfish by saying that catfish is best prepared by dipping it in buttermilk prior to breading and cooking it. That may be how that one exception was prepared. The only catfish I’ve ever really liked was at a small strip restaurant just around the corner from where I lived in Allen, run by the son of one of the Tuskegee Airmen. It was delicious.

Perhaps my aversion to catfish came about some forty years ago when I was working on an offshore oil rig. I was the northerner on a steel island inhabited mostly by southerners – some of them raised Catholic, meaning that the tradition was that they would eat fish on Fridays. Being southern, the preferred piscatorial delight was catfish. Deep fried catfish in a cornmeal batter. It was… okay, I recall, but there was a mud-flavored overtone which didn’t really appeal to me.

I ate it, in hopes that someday, something better would come along.

The promise that something better would come along came around in the summer of ’82 when the rig I was on was towed from the Gulf of Mexico to a point in the Atlantic Ocean about a hundred miles off Martha’s Vinyard. It was reportedly a prime fishing area, home to a large variety of fish in large numbers – surely enough to supply a drilling rig with something other than southern catfish for a change. That promise was broken. The quartermaster ordered massive amounts of farm-bred catfish to be sent to Massachusetts for the consumption by the mostly southern crew for Friday dinners.

I did manage to treat myself at a decent restaurant in Boston before getting on an airplane to go back home to Houston.

Houston, and by extension, Galveston, was a great place to get decent fish other than catfish. I became particularly fond of Gaido’s in Galveston for the many ways they managed to prepare shrimp. Another favorite was just around the corner from my Aunt and Uncle’s home on the west side of Houston. It was there that I sampled and came to like escargot and Spanish paella.

After moving back to Ohio for a few years, the first wife and I became enamored of a couple of places to indulge in seafood – Mauger’s in Lancaster Ohio, and the Friday night seafood buffet at the Holiday Inn in Parkersburg West Virginia. On the first trip to the Holiday Inn, the first wife declared ahead of time that she would absolutely not eat snail. Period. End of discussion, until she had two or three pastries which she just loved. I told her the truth about the pastries when asked. Yes, they contained snail!

I have to go the next town over from my little corner of the DFW Metromess to get decent seafood (we have nearly two dozen places to purchase tacos here, making purchasing tacos from the outside somewhat illegal in my reckoning). Yes, catfish is still available, but never considered, at least by me, to be a viable alternative to almost any other seafood.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to prepare cod and chips for this afternoon’s lunch.

Be Seeing You!