CarlHoliday

As often occurs, the Germans refer to this great sea battle as Skagerrakschlacht, the Battle of the Skagerrak (the strait between Denmark, Norway and Sweden that connects the North Sea to the Kattegat sea). Since the British and Allies won WW I, we refer this sea battle to its English name, which is a shame, because Skagerrakschlacht is such a beautiful word in a purely typographical sense.

I don’t know how many mallards are living in the ponds at the 9-hole golf course in Mallard, Iowa, but if you’re thirsty when you visit, you can stop by the Duck Stop Inn (bar) for a brew. I don’t know if they have the Mallard band’s cd of their two LPs, Mallard (1975) and In a Different Climate (1976).

It’s one thing to have an espresso, but there are other things you can do with it. Café Americano, literally a Spanish term for American coffee, is weak or diluted espresso. Comes from a disparaging 1950s Central American phrase for what was believed to be coffee the way Americans liked it. Cappuccino is espresso with steamed milk foam. From the brown color that is said to resemble the brown hoods of the Friars Minor Capuchins. Latte, short for caffè latte, Italian for milk coffee. Or, for the sophisticated crowd, café au lait, French for coffee with milk.

Etymologically speaking, there are two interesting facts about mead. In Middle English, mede was the word for the honey-based beverage and meadow, where any logically thinking person would keep his beehives. The other interesting item is that as far back in time you want to go, the initial letter, or equivalent symbol, in every word for mead is "m".

As a teenager, I was almost a skier. Mediocre was the height of my ability. I never attempted any steep slope with moguls because I never learned how to do the turn necessary to weave through those tightly packed mounds of snow.

In the U.S., pretzels have been long associated with German immigrants in Pennsylvania where the first pretzel bakery began in 1861. Pretzels also became associated with the men-only saloon culture where beer brewed by Germans was sold in sole-brewery establishments. Beer and pretzels became unpopular with the anti-German sentiments during WW I in 1917-1918 and may have helped Prohibition ratification in 1919. My dad was a beer and pretzels kind of guy. A friend of the family we visited on occasion did not have pretzels to be eaten with beer. In fact, she didn't have pretzels with anything. Her distaste for pretzels went back to her parents' time, but she carried it into her own. The funny thing about it was her husband was a beer and pretzels guy and would have them at other people's homes much to the frustration of his wife.

Palomino is a Spanish word for juvenile pigeon (the diminutive of paloma, pigeon), and its equine usage refers to the color of such birds. (Thank you Wikipedia for your excellent assistance.) The website Online Etymology Dictionary has so much information on palomino only the super curious would appreciate it. And, yes, in Sanskrit it's palitah "gray."

When my son cooks his bacon, he leaves some of the bacon bits and grease to fry his eggs. When the frying pan cools, he scrapes out the congealed bits and grease and puts it in a container he keeps in the refrigerator for those times when he doesn't have bacon with his eggs. Not the healthiest diet, but he's already lived a life on the edge of normalcy. Besides, you can't fault a man who bakes his own bread.

A friend of my dad was a hunter of game birds and had a Weimaraner bird dog. She was a good at flushing pheasants and quail and retrieving ducks and geese. Unfortunately, as sometime occurs during a hunt, the intended victim of a shot isn't a bird. He was out early one day in Eastern Washington hunting pheasants when he unfortunately shot his dog. He never replaced the dog. In fact, he never hunted birds or talked about hunting birds again.

Yeah, sliced liverwurst and cheddar on Wonder Bread was the standard lunch when I was a little kid. At some point in time liverwurst disappeared from the lunch menu. It was always peanut butter and some berry jam, honey, or mayonnaise from then on.

The Four Preps 1958 hit song 26 Miles (Santa Catalina) has a line, "Santa Catalina, the island of romance." Until today, I've always thought that line was, "Santa Catalina, the isle of romance." Certainly sounds more romantic. It's an excellent example of the auditory self-editing feature in my brain. It comes under the heading "hard of hearing." Hearing aids offer zero improvement. Sometimes people will talk to me and I can't understand a word they're saying. Asked a doctor about it. She confirmed my suspicions. It goes along with my visual migraines, which are sparkly rainbows in my field of vision. Totally in the brain, as it doesn't occur in either eye.

Pustules are a major part of any victim of acne vulgaris. Mine began at age 11 when Mother would get out the bobby pin after dinner and go to work on the blackheads on and around my nose. What she didn't know, of course, was that she was only contributing to the problem. Father threatened to shave my head, as occurred to his younger brother, when the first whitehead appeared. At 74, I still have a pimple show up in the usual places. It's the ingrown hairs that leave the largest scars and tend to return at the most inopportune moments.

I like cats. I've nursed kittens whose mother rejected them, as cat mothers tend to do. I've paid for a cat to have chemotherapy. I've had same cat put down because the chemotherapy eventually destroyed his kidneys. I've have had his cat brother's leg amputated due to cancer. I've seen same cat die from an embolus from said surgery. I like cats. In many ways, cats are like people. They get cancer and die. I'm living with a dog person. We don't have cats.

After retiring from Qwest Communications, I started driving long haul semitruck. My first job was with a trucking company that primarily hauled refrigerated or temperature-controlled products. My trailers were filled with frozen waffles, French fries, and McDonald's breakfast items; chilled potatoes for French fries and potato chips; specific temperature photographic film, rubber for tires, cacoa beans (to the Nestle chocolate plant in Burlington, Michigan), Hershey candies (chocolate bars from Hershey, Pennsylvania, Twizzlers from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Reese's from Stuarts Draft, Virginia, all going to the Hershey warehouse in Southern California), fresh fruit (tons of apples to Walmart distribution warehouses); vegetables (Salinas, California, for lettuce and Bakersfield, California, for carrots); various meat products (fresh beef (from Dodge City and Liberal, Kansas), pork (every time I was in Ottumwa, Iowa, there was a pervasive smell of fresh pork chops), and Hebrew National and Nathan's hot dogs (seemingly always having to wait for the rabbi to deem the meat kosher); and fresh flowers and shrubs from the Skagit River flats in Washington state. Beverages included beer (there was the time I had to take the semi tractor into downtown Annapolis, Maryland, and find a parking space big enough to parallel park, so I could get a permit to haul beer in Maryland); Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink from the old plant in Opelousas, Louisiana to a warehouse in Secaucus, New Jersey; and fruit juices (apple, grape, and orange). A semitrailer being a big empty box, there was the load of 4 x 8 sheets of specialty veneer plywood, various dry goods grocery products, and that load of tricalcium phosphate for Kraft American cheese. There were good customers (I always got a chocolate bar when hauling Hershey products) and bad customers (the grocery warehouse in Louisiana that refused delivery at midnight and then complained they had to stay late at noon for my delivery).

Sounds like a company that hired a new MBA with big ideas on how to run a company into the ground.

Retrench brings to mind the Southern prison camp movie Cool Hand Luke where the prisoner Luke refuses to submit to the authority of the system. That is until one of the guards have Luke dig a trench belonging to one guard, and then have him fill the trench because the dirt from the trench is on another guard's ground. Then he has to remove the dirt from the trench because he was told to dig the trench in the first place. The digging and filling goes on until an exhausted Luke "seems" to submit to the authority of the guards.

A synonym of this noun sense of flounce is furbelow, a word that carries more danger in use than many words in nonuse. As in, her furbelow was much more attractive than other girls' flounces.

Counting on a sometimes-brisk tourist trade, jewelry stores in Hot Springs, Arkansas, offer many items of quartz crystals cut to resemble diamonds. Rings with stones mimicking diamonds worth thousands of dollars can be had for a few hundred dollars.

Harlon definitely wasn't a Theroux or a Heat-Moon, and definitely ignored the principles of pre-planning to hitchhike across America in this day and age. And, what to do about "The Rest of the Story?" It always comes down to whether to write a brick-and-mortar story, or one with a couple nails, three dried out slats, and a handful of hay. But, yes, there should be more to this storyline. At the very least, a pile of adobe bricks reinforced with straw would be best this time around.

Thank you for your comment on my story. A little more pre-planning might have made Harlon's 'adventure' more realistic, but probably not a good story.

Well, that's another vote for a continuation of this storyline. Since I've got a bladder resection (Come on, how about three cheers for a T1 high grade invasive papillary urothelial carcinoma!) coming up next Friday, I should have lots of lounging time (not!) to help Harlon find his father, and at least one additional brother. At the very least, it might help me focus on something other than my suddenly crappy health.

Thank you for the comment on my story. Yeah, dementia, the tales that could told. My mother's dementia might have been caused by an overzealous cancer surgeon wielding a gamma knife to zap every metastasized tumor in her brain. She went in sane, and came out without a lucid thought. Totally bonkers. Then we had to deal with her body's refusal to die. Maybe that's the reason I chose to end Harlon's tale on an Adirondack chair in the middle of nowhere.

Thank you for commenting on my story. Ah, yes, the wolves. In reality, there are wolves less than fifty miles away from the fictional town of Black Dog.

Thank you for commenting on my story. I believe Harlon was more bewildered than simply frustrated. The possibility of a brother probably weighs heavily on his mind.

Harlon stood at the beginning of the on-ramp to the interstate watching cars, pickups and 18-wheelers pass by his extended thumb. It was early in the morning and most of the trucks belonged to big trucking companies that had rules against picking up hitchhikers. He hoped this was going to be his last ride. It had been a long trip from his home back in Cambridge. He didn’t even know if his old man was going to be in the town his mother had told him about during a short phone call over a week ago.