So I want to find out if I can get my teeth cleaned by a particular dentist whose office is one block away from my house. So I check the big list of eligible dentists, which says to call this particular toll-free number to find out if he's still participating in the health plan. So I try the number and it's busy. So I try sporadically over the next hour, and it's still busy. Miraculously, I get through, but right around quitting time for me. So I've been on hold for at least twenty minutes, and I figure that this is as good a time as any to write an e-letter.
Well, things are settling down after our stay with mom in NY. We were in NY for about two weeks, and now we've been home for almost two weeks. The outpouring of support for mom has been remarkable; she's gotten over a hundred sympathy cards, and friends are still calling and stopping by all the time. Since we spent two weeks with family, we naturally accumulated a whole lot of family stories, some of which I will share with you now.
I have known for years that my stepsister Debbie has a great sense of humor. I found out during this trip that when she was in college, she used to celebrate her friends' birthdays by hitting them in the face with a pie. Just like in the cartoons. Apparently, she very quickly became notorious for this, and sometimes had to go to great lengths to make sure that the person got hit in the face with a pie, like hiding in a dorm room, etc. While reminiscing fondly about one particular encounter, she remarked, "They had to take up the carpet." I laughed.
I found out that my grandfather used to breed pugs. (For those of you that are as inorganic as I am, Margaret tells me that pugs are dogs. Ugly little smelly dogs.) I hate dogs. Up until recently, I thought I was following very closely in my grandfather's footsteps. Well, apparently not any more.
I got a bunch of great stories about my brother Kenny, most of which are directly from Kenny himself. I distinctly remember him yelling "Somebody get me out of this stupid crib!" at a very early age, and I think I taught him that.
Kenny loves to eat (even more than I do), and nearly all of his stories involve (1) food or (2) his car, a 1983 Chevy Celebrity, which is known for breaking down in the worst possible places and for being nearly filled with old food. I could recall the incident in which the mice living off the old food in his car escaped through the garage and infested the house, but I'll do that some other time.
A few summers ago, Kenny and some friends were driving to New Orleans, and had stopped at Taco Bell somewhere in Mississippi. Somehow, there were some leftover tacos and the guys just left them in the car. After they had ripened in the car in the hot summer sun for two full days, Kenny decided to eat them. As he put it, he got a little case of "The Botch", and was plenty sick.
Then there was the time that he and five or six other guys decided to go to Taco Bell and order one of everything on the menu. Kenny wanted to be the one to actually place the order at the drive-thru, naturally using his car. The guys pulled up to the drive-thru at about the same time as another car. Kenny waved the other car ahead of them, knowing that they were about to place a fairly substantial order. The other car insisted that Kenny go first. Well, OK. Kenny pulled up to the little speaker and began to go down the menu item by item. "I'd like one taco." "Soft or hard shell?" "One of each. I'd like one chicken burrito." "Regular or deluxe?" "One of each." The woman at the other end of the speaker figured out pretty quickly what they were doing and naturally got very upset. Kenny reassured her that this was all legitimate, and that they did indeed want all this food. They held up handfuls of money for the little camera to see. Well, Kenny worked his way down the entire menu, including cinnamon twists, hot chocolate, and one of every soft drink. The bill came to about $51, and it was a fairly large effort to get all the food from the little window into the car. The woman gave Kenny an entire box of hot sauce packets. It took quite a few hours for the six or seven of them to eat all the food, but they did it. The worst was the sour cream that was on some of the items; apparently sour cream isn't too good after it's been at room temperature for a few hours. Kenny tells the story with a twinkle in his eye, especially when he recalls how when the car behind him pulled up to the window, the woman told them that they were closed for the next fifteen minutes. Those guys were pissed.
I think the best story was from Phil's days in the navy. He was in the navy in the early '50s, and only told us one story about his navy days during the entire time we knew him. He was brand new to the navy, on a ship at sea somewhere, and was in charge of being the timekeeper guy. (I'm sure there's a better term for that job, but I forget what it is.) Every hour on the hour, Phil was supposed to ring a bell to let the crew know what time it is. He'd ring it once, then twice the next hour, three times the hour after that, and so on. What Phil didn't know is that when you get to eight bells, the next hour resets to one bell. Well, Phil was a picture of enthusiasm. He rang his one bell, then his two bells, then three. He was proud of his job, and he rang the bells loudly and clearly. Then six, then seven, then eight. Then, on the ninth bell, he "wound up and gave it such a ZETZ!" (a wonderful Yiddish word meaning OY! I hit it so HARD!) The captain looked up, then walked over to Phil. "Sailor, how long have you been in the navy?" "Six months, sir." "Well, I have been in the navy twenty-five years, and in all my years as captain, I have NEVER heard NINE BELLS!" I still laugh when I think of nine bells...
Ron "thank you for holding" G
P.S. I got taken off hold halfway through the Taco Bell Menu story.
