…and then came home again…
Last day, but this one’s going to hurt.
Booking flights via little airports means the occasional bad connection day like this one: five hours sitting in the airport in Memphis. If I’m lucky, there will be free broadband and you and me can catch up and shoot the shit and stuff. I don’t feel lucky. Boston Logan charges for wifi; I have to assume it’s a trend.
Between the layover and the change in times zone, it’s going to be late-late-late when I get home.
Memphis. Feh. I once got kicked out of boarding school in Memphis, you may recall.
I’m not even getting fed on this flight. Nothing at all at stage one, and something called a $5 snack on stage two. According to the (surprisingly interesting) website airlinemeals.net, this is an example of the $5 snack.
You know what, though? I totally don’t mind buying food, if it means a major reduction in ticket price. I’ve often wondered how much it costs to provide those absurd and unpleasant hot meals, what with the ovens and the carts and the logistics and everything. On the upside, though, I suppose it gives the flight attendants an excuse to walk up and down checking on us, in case somebody goes all loop-de-loo at 35,000 feet.
See you in the morning, Insha’Allah.
July 11, 2007 — 1:26 am
Comments: 40
The Gathering o’ the Mustelids
So, why does Clan Weasel gather here every year? This is why: the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games, the largest Scottish games outside Scotland. It started in 1956, about the same time my father and grandfather built the original hunting cabin on the side of the mountain. My dad hasn’t missed the games since.
He hasn’t been to the actual games in years (and neither have I, for that matter). But he wears the tartan hat with the ribbons and deedly-ball on, and stumps around rolling his R’s and saying “wha hae!” and drinking whiskey.
The joke is, as far as anyone knows, there’s not a drop of Scots blood in my dad. He descends from a line of pasty English people who were deported to Virginia in the 18th Century for either religious nutcasery or poaching, depending on who you ask.
My mother’s family traces its origins to a Scot, however. Clan MacStoat will be there. I think our clan motto is “another wee dram won’t kill me.”
When I were a puppy, some damn fool bought me the whole suit, with the jacket and the knee socks and everything. I loved that thing. I swaggered around in it long after I’d outgrown it. By the end, I bobbled out of the seams like some obscene tartan sausage.
There will be ALL KINDS of merchandise on offer up the mountain. If you’re bored some day, pick a Scots surname and Google for the original version of the family coat of arms, and compare it to the Americanized version. The American version always has twice as much shit on it, with extra tinsel and sparklies and unicorns and orcs. Like it came out of the Society for Creative Anachronism’s prom decoration committee.
And that’s what we’re not doing Tuesday.
July 10, 2007 — 1:18 am
Comments: 49
Escaped!
Hello! I am not here! I was here when I wrote this, but now you’re reading it, so I must be gone! Yes, through the miracle of deferred posting, I can communicate with you, my minions, even though I’m four days in the past and/or nowhere near a wifi access point!
“Nowhere near a wifi access point!?” you exclaim, wetting yourself with terror and confusion. “Wherever can that be in this modern age of instantaneous digital communication?”
I am at the family cabin, way, way back in the hills. If I visit the folks while they’re here, I can wear nothing but jeans and t-shirts and they don’t make that “L is for Loser” sign at me.
So four days from now, which will be yesterday by today, I flew into the Tri-Cities airport and met my cousin, who drove up from Alabama. We do this every year, so I can tell you exactly how it went (will go) down.
We drove into the tanktown where I was born to visit my grandparents’ house. We agreed that it looked quite small compared to our memories of it, but that the current owners are taking good care of it. Only, they really shouldn’t have cut that tree down.
Then we went and stood on my grave and I said, “ha ha! Get me! I’m standing on my own grave!” My grandfather sold the old family farm to a cemetary and got a family plot and first dibs on the location as part of the deal. He chose a hillside he used to plow when he was a teenager. He and my grandmother and assorted Weasels are there, but somehow their headstones are jammed up against the headstones of the neighbors, so it looks like they were buried standing up. I hope they don’t bury me standing up; I suspect I’ll be awfully tired.
Finally, we head up into the mountains. Along the way, we stop and buy liquor. It’s not that there won’t be liquor at the cabin. There will be a very great deal of liquor at the cabin. But if you bring your own, nobody can tell how much you drink. Plus, I can get Jack Daniel’s Green Label here, and I can’t back home. I like it. It hurts.
My folks won’t get here until tomorrow, which is today now. I’ll tell you about that in a minute, four days ago, which will be tomorrow by then.
July 9, 2007 — 1:11 am
Comments: 38
Sousapalooza
I called my dad on Father’s Day and he said, “I finally broke down and did it.” Now, when a member of my family says something along these lines, the ingrained response is, “would you like to tell me about it, or shall I just turn on CNN?”
He says, “I bought a bass horn.”
“A…what?” This was unexpected.
“It’s like a tuba, but smaller.”
Huh. My father was all-state cornet champion in 1941, until he tragically blew out an eardrum hitting a high note. He was master, so he says, of a technique called “triple tonguing.”
No. Forget I said that. Certain concepts should not be paired in sentences: “father” and “tonguing” as an example.
Anyhow, he well and truly blew out an eardrum. He’d had ear infections all his life, which they treated in those pre-antibiotic days by poking little drainage holes in same. Horrible procedure, but if they didn’t, the infection could break through in the other direction, brainwards, and then you were fucked. It happened to a friend of his and he died.
Another friend of his died of rabies. He died, and they went into his room, and he had the encyclopedia open to the “rabies” page. Wooo. That’s completely off topic, but I always thought it was cool.
Twenty five years later, they made my dad a new eardrum out of a piece of vein from his arm, scraped thin. I remember visiting him in the hospital. His head was wrapped up in these huge bandages. He looked like Roger Ramjet. It didn’t turn out all that well.
Long story short, the old bugger is very deaf. He practices what you might call Xtreme music. Bagpipes. Banjos. In the bathroom. He likes the acoustics, which he defines as “hey, I can hear this!”
I’ve been thinking of my stepmother, stuck waiting on a deaf, drunken old cripple with a tuba. And I canNOT stop smiling.
June 18, 2007 — 7:51 am
Comments: 18