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WHAT’S COOKIN BRUCE?

 I don’t know what’s gotten into me today. Here’s the thing; I’ve been anchored to my hovel today, because I had to be home for a big delivery from Lowe’s (it just came a few minutes ago… I’m FREE!)

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So knowing I’d be housebound all day, I decided to do domestic stuff. I dusted off my still and fermentation vessel, crushed the bejezuz out of 8 pounds of Granny Smith apples, which are now merrily fermenting away. In a few weeks, I’ll distill the hard cider into my own interpretation of Calvados. Okay, that was fun. Now what?

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I watched The Many Saints of Newark on HBO Max. That killed two hours. Now what?

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Laundry. I did five loads of laundry. Bedding, towels, everything. But that’s not being “creative.” That’s just chores. I haven’t listened to any music today. I haven’t been on Facebook much, or turned on the television or a shortwave radio. I’ve been in cooking mode! But I used up all the spicy veggies yesterday on that big batch of Smoky Lindnerslop. And it’s too cold to fire up the smoker. Damn! 😫

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So I made some fig preserves, a big batch of potato salad, and lastly, WEIRDLY, I baked five dozen oatmeal cookies from scratch.

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There are two important points here: 1) I don’t much care for sweets, and 2) I can’t bake worth diddly-squat. Oh, I can cook, but hell, anyone can cook. Baking takes patience. Attention to timing. Measuring stuff out (WTF’s that all about?) Actual skills. So I’m out.

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But I reeeeally felt like cooking something, so I made these oatmeal cookies. And even though there’s no Bhut Jolokia or Carolina Reaper chilies in them, it satisfied my kitchen urges. For now.

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But I’m worried about myself. It’s very unlike me to be so… so… so civilized. Maybe someone should check in on Martha Stewart today. If she’s cooking up spicy concoctions from Mauritania whilst listening to Radio Dutchy of Grand Fenwick on shortwave radio, we’re both gonna have to step through whatever portal messed up the space-culinary continuum. ‘Cuz this just ain’t right.  🤨

LINDNER’S DATING GAME

 Google is an amazing thing. As the years go by, I often wonder what became of a particular neighbor, an old girlfriend, a coworker, or a past regular customer. Back in my junior year in high school, 1969, I dated a freshman girl from the school across town. She was a little spitfire. Smart, funny, and maybe all of 4’10” of attitude and sass.

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The last time I saw her was October of 1970. Fifty-one years ago. I was riding my motorcycle through town, I got behind a school bus where she happened to be seated in the back of the bus. I glanced up and saw her holding up a piece of paper with the words CALL ME scribbled on it. I never did. I left for a year in Europe two days later.

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Through Facebook and Google, I’ve been able to reconnect with just about everyone from my youth—except for her. No, I’m not a stalker, but I’ve always been curious about whatever became of her. So every so often, I’d try again. Unless they’re dead, and even then, Google can find anyone. Alas, in my case, I had no luck.

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But that day came yesterday. I finally located her. It turns out I’ve been spelling her last name incorrectly all this time (she has both an unusual first and last name). It lists her first name, her family name, her married name… her OTHER married names, her present age, her date of birth, and the city she lives in today. Yep, that’s gotta’ be her.

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I’ve wondered about her and her family a million times over the years, thinking about all the crazy times we had together. Like the time some guy in a Cadillac in the next lane over craned his neck so hard to check her out, he rear-ended the guy in front of him. Or the week we spent up at her parent’s cabin at Lake Tahoe. Or all those Friday nights at the Fillmore in San Francisco, especially the night Janis Joplin came out unannounced and jammed with the Grateful Dead.

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Google also uncovered her current address and phone number, so guess what? I’m’a gonna call her today, just to get caught up. I’ll apologize for not responding to her note from the school bus back in 1970, but you know; at least this way, we’ll both have more to talk about. 😎

A LINDNER MORNING

 My morning thus far: 

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Get up at 3:00 am. Make coffee. ☕️  Quesadilla for breakfast.

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Drop reading glasses in the kitchen sink. One lens pops out. 👓❌

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Grab spare pair. Retreat to radio room with coffee and breakfast. Turn on shortwave. 📻 

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Sit down in rolling desk chair. Tune to favorite early morning station; Radio New Zealand.

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Put on favorite headphones. 🎧 

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Headphones slip backwards off my head. I roll the chair back to pick them up; crush the headphones.

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I love the smell of epoxy in the morning.

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👉🏼 Everything I touch, falls apart.

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#AfraidToUseTheBathroom

LINDNER HAS GONE TO THE BIRDS

For as far back as I can remember, my dad has always been a naturalist. Bird-watching in particular, but not exclusively. And I know that he and my mom always kept several hummingbird feeders topped off around the patio and a suet feeder hanging from one tree, but things have gotten… well, my dad and his caregiver Ana have entered the realm of extreme bird feeding.

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I happened to notice a chair half-hidden behind the curtains in the dining room, and on this chair were two large bags of wild bird seed. Upon pulling back the curtain, I discovered three more large bags tucked behind the chair. I asked my dad; “What the hell is this? Are you planning on shooting a sequel to Hitchcock’s classic?”

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Ana said “Oh, thank you for reminding me! It’s time to feed our friends.” So she loaded up two 1 quart cups with grapes and seeds, and tossed them out on the patio. The local critters were waiting for her. The squirrels go right for the grapes and peanuts, the jays and crows go for the raisins and apple slices, the nuthatches, finches go for the wild bird seed, and the ring-necked morning doves go for whatever’s left. But they ALL feed together, with nary a skirmish between them—except for an occasional macho standoff between the larger squirrels and the crows.

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I just did a quick inventory of their stash:

 

40 pounds wild bird seed (two 20 pound bags)

 

5 pounds sunflower seeds

 

40 pounds millet/corn/nyjer seeds (two 20 pound bags)

 

30 pounds raw peanuts

 

+ whatever grapes, raisins, apple slices they happen to have on hand.

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If bird feeding was an Olympic event, Ana and my dad would be gold medalists. 🥇

BRUCE’S DAD IS GOING TO BE 102 .. THIS IS HOW ITS DONE

 Okay, I’ve finally figured out the secret of my dad’s longevity. It’s his breakfast. The same EXACT breakfast for as long as I’ve been sentient. Cereal (Wheaties or Cheerios) with sliced fruit, tea, and what I suspect is the *holy grail* to life past the century mark: half a grapefruit every stinkin’ morning.

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We did some calculations last night. The odds of living to 100 years old is around 1 in 6,500. But the odds of living to 102, which he will reach next month, is probably around 1 in 18,000-20,000. So eat more grapefruit if you want to outlive your MAGA neighbors!

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That’s his caregiver Ana, who we are beyond blessed to have found. She cooks like a chef, sees to his needs, and truly cares about him as a person. 💙

HOLY YOGURT FROM LINDNER

 Other than the aforementioned grapefruit and cereal, my dad is a big yogurt fan. Not the kind most Americans buy with all the sugar, the added flavors and gelatin mixed in, but just plain, traditional, old world yogurt. So when I saw him spoon up some yogurt from a Trader Joe’s plastic container today, I asked him if he’s ever tried White Mountain yogurt from Austin, Texas.

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“No, I’ve never heard of it. Is it any good?”

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Is it any good? White Mountain is to Yogurt what Pony Espresso is to coffee! Hell yes, it’s good! Spendy, but the best I’ve ever had.

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So went online to see if I could find some at a nearby store. Yikes.

 

Safeway? Nope.

 

Trader Joe’s? Nope.

 

Lunardi’s? Nope.

 

Andronico’s? Nope.

 

Whole Foods? Nope.

 

Walmart? YES! But you have to order it by the case (6 quart jars for $98.80 and it’s only available for curbside pickup).

 

Well, sheeeeeit. So I tried a Hail Mary pass. I called Draegers’s out in Blackhawk, about 7 miles out of town. “Yes sir we do. We have five quarts on hand at $10.95 per bottle.”

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Damn. Blackhawk. 🤦🏻‍♂️ For those of you unfamiliar with this region, Blackhawk is to the Bay Area what Beverly Hills is to LA. Maybe even more so. So I pushed the big round button on the dash of my trusty Prius and headed out to Blackhawk. I think I can suppress my gag reflexes long enough to find what I’m looking for and get out. I parked the Prius between a Bentley GT and a Porsche 911 Speedster. 🤮

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The inventory at Draeger’s is a foodie’s wet dream (sorry, bad visual 🙄). They don’t just have a dedicated caviar section, they have 25-30 brands of caviar. And their whisky selection? I had to bind myself to my shopping cart to keep from crashing into it. Those beautiful Scottish sirens were wailing my name! Bruuuuce! Bruuuuce! You want me! You NEED me! But I was on a mission for my dad, so I managed to resist their temptations.

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I made my way to the back of the store to the dairy case, and lo and behold, there they were: five quart bottles of White Mountain Bulgarian style yogurt. I grabbed two, a cucumber and some cilantro for Ana’s ceviche for today’s lunch, and headed for the checkout.

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The lady at the checkout was Hispanic, maybe my daughter’s age. I said “This stuff is very hard to find! You guys are the only ones in the county that carry it.” I ran my credit card, then the card reader beeped. “Oh, sir, it says you’re from out of state. You’ll have to type in your zip code too.”

 

So as I typed it in, I said; “It’s funny. My dad taught me how to drive right where this shopping center is.”

 

“Really? When was that?”

 

“Around 1965-1966. This all used to be farmland. Before they put the 680 freeway in, it was orange and walnut orchards from one end of the valley to the other.”

 

“So you don’t live here anymore?”

 

“Me? God, no. I live in Portland. I’m just visiting for a couple of days.”

 

“I don’t live here either. I live on the other side.” (Which I presume means Hayward, Oakland, etc.)

 

I said; “Of course not. You’re not a white millionaire.”

 

She looked up, and even with her mask on, I could see she was smiling. She took 3 steps around the lucite divider between her work station and the keypad, and held out her elbow to offer me a little “bump.” I reciprocated, and she looked back once more, still smiling.

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Yep. I’m *FROM* here. But I’m as much a part of this uppity Danville bullshit as I am a ballet dancer. 

BRUCE’S DAD .......He will be 102 next month. 

LINDNER HAS WOOD!!!!

 My neighbors had three big firs removed from their backyard today ($10k for the job 💸). They blocked off the street at 6:00 am, brought in this MASSIVE crane, wrapped cables around each tree near the top before cutting them at the base, then the crane lifted the trees one by one up and over their house—and partially over mine. 😰

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It was a spectacle at first, but I got very, VERY nervous when they started cutting up one of the trees in front of my Javamobile, a log rotated, brushing a few branches dangerously close to my beloved.

 

I motioned to the guy; ✋🏽😧🤚🏽.

 

He motioned back; 😏👌🏾 ~ translation: chill out boomer. We’ve got this.

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Sure enough, they got the job done without so much as a drop of pitch on my truck. So I went out and thanked them for exercising caution, as I have a history of bad things happening to coffee trucks in my driveway. I told the foreman “Man, you guys are good! I was worried there for a minute.” He said “We’re the best in the business.”

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And to his point, after the logs were stacked up alongside my fence to be picked up tomorrow by a logging outfit, he carved a goodbye message to me in one of them with his chainsaw.

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Yeah, I said you were good. If you’re THAT good, let me see you walk on water. 🤨

LINDNERS TUNES

 Other than playing the dozens of old 78s my friends Mike & Janet gave me last week, another reason I bought that little turntable was to *finally* get to play the stash of 78s my dad gave me last year. And oh baby, are there ever some historic recordings in said stash.

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This is one of an album of 12 records. Each record has only ONE composition on it—the flip side is blank. But take a close look at this label:

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The “Victor Talking Machine Co.,” as it was then known (much later to become RCA). The patents on this disk are 1903 and 1908. I can’t date the record with absolute accuracy, but they phased out these 12” single-sided records around 1920. So it’s at least 100 years old.

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And look who the featured tenor is: Enrico Caruso. I’m by no means an opera aficionado, but I know a bit about Caruso. He’s regarded as one of, if not THE GREATEST male opera singers of all time. Some people say it’s Pavarotti, others insist it’s Caruso by a nose.

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And here’s some interesting timing: Caruso died 100 years ago this month. August 2nd, 1921, from a lung infection. From what I’ve researched, he recorded this “Dreams of Long Ago” in 1912… 109 years ago, at age 39.

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Other then this record in the album, there's also Caruso featured in Rigoletto, and Il Travatore. 

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But there’s a good news/bad news element to all this. These recordings are so old, they weren’t recorded like the later, 1930s-1940s popular music recordings were that Mike & Janet gifted me. They didn’t use amplification, or even a microphone. Just singing directly into a cone, the sound waves then ultimately transcribed into shellac.

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The good news is, these records are in almost brand new condition. The bad news, is that due to that low-tech, the audio is comparatively poor. The frequency response is narrow (maybe 300-2,000 kHz), and the noise level is high. The sound quality is not unlike talking long distance to grandma on those old Bell Telephone wall phones. “Hi Fidelity” wasn't even a concept yet. In fact, this was state of the art 109 years ago. The price is marked on some of these disks. The Rigoletto recording was $4.00, which would be $110.00 in today’s dollars.

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So, audio nerd that I proudly profess to be, this is goddamn-near magical for me. I’ve been sitting here in my living room, spinning *original*, 100+ year old, pristine recordings of Enrico Caruso. History unfolding, acoustically, for my ears only. 😋

WORLD ACCORDING TO LINDNER

 Espresso (for 1) early in the morning before making espresso (for 400) later in the morning. A little sourdough with a chunk of Stilton on the side, and I’m rarin’ to go.

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Fun fact: Coffee cravings go ⬆️ on hot days, not ⬇️. Trust me on this, I’ve got 27 years of data to back it up. And it’s gonna be 99° later today. But I’ll be packing 80 pounds of ice for you chillers.

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Fortunately, I’ve discovered the perfect method for keeping cool in the Javamobile on hot days: I just drop trou and enjoy the breezes and the occasional runaway ice cube. No one can see below the counter anyway, so why not? (Attention County Health Department: That’s a JOKE).

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Looks like we’ll be returning to masks and such. And I’ll be putting out the pylons again to keep my customers from crowding each other: ⬅️6 feet➡️. I’ll probably go back to bleaching and toasting cash again today.

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None of this would have been necessary, but for the superstitious, the ignorant and the fearful amongst us who’ve set us back months, and killed thousands of our friends, neighbors and loved ones. Thanks a helluva lot for that, antivaxxers and freedumb fighters. 👌🏼 (I’m looking at you, DeSantis & Abbott).

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Stay safe, folks. We slew the diabolical dragon last November, we can slay this too.

 

ON THE LOT WITH LINDNER

 Two interesting updates to a previous story:

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Several days ago, I posted a piece about my nostalgic visit to a Ford dealership where I once worked nearly 50 years ago. The owner was one of two embattled brothers who owned car dealerships along 122nd Avenue in Portland at that time.

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Update I: My friend Dave, a well-known Portland businessman who has his finger on the pulse of Portland history like no one I know, told me the Tonkin brothers were the inspiration for the movie “Used Cars,” with Kurt Russell and Jack Warden. I had no idea!! If you’ve never seen Used Cars, I highly recommend it. It’s hilarious, albeit a bit raunchy, as I recall.

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Update II:

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So yesterday, that essay spawned another “small world” moment. Someone on Facebook, not a FB friend or even a follower, read it with nostalgic amusement. Just someone who happened to see it float past in his feed at his home in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—so he contacted me yesterday. (He gave me permission to write this up, contingent on my not mentioning his name. I gave him my word that I wouldn’t).

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He asked me: “You sold cars for Marv Tonkin in ‘72?”

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“That’s right.”

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“And you drove a Corvair?”

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“Yes I did.”

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“Was it a kind of root beer brown color?”

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😳 “Yeah. Who are you?”

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“I was the team leader for one of the other sales teams. I’m the guy who gave you the nickname ‘A-rab.’”*

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“Oh my god! I remember you now! And they called you Lennon, because you wore round John Lennon glasses.”

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“That’s me.”

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I was 20 at that time, and he had to be in his mid-thirties. So he’s around 84-85 years old now. For whatever reason, he says he left Oregon in the late ‘70s, moved around a bit, then finally retired near Lake Superior. But he read my post, saw mention of my Corvair, looked at my profile picture and pieced it all together.

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*The back story to being called ‘Ā-rab.’ First, my apologies to folks of Arab descent. I realize that’s a slur. This was a group of street-hardened, largely uneducated young men who insisted on tagging each other with ethnic monikers. Mine wasn’t as offensive as some of the others. I looked/look sorta’ Middle Eastern (particularly back then), so I became known as A-rab.

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Bruce the Jewish-atheist-Arab who parked his Chevy at the most hardcore Ford dealership in the Northwest every morning, and couldn’t sell enough cars to afford a hamburger at the nearby 2-for-$1 burger joint. 🥴  Yup. I’m that guy.

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But I just LOVE it when Facebook ties these little bows! 🎀  ‘Tis a small, small world indeed. I’m’a gonna watch Used Cars today. 🤩