O’Steen’s

 

 A mix of locals and tourists have been queueing up, sitting under the awning on that long wooden bench outside, for more than 50 years. Not the same people for that long mind you, but sometimes when Carla insists that we wait, it feels that way to me.

Not equipped with a “let's get in line and wait” gene, I always want to go eat somewhere else when the line is too long. John Wayne and Elvis could come back to earth, happy to autograph 8 x10 glossies for the crowd. I wouldn’t wait in line.  For Carla though, there’s that antique/junk store next door so we wait.

Well, I wait while she goes inside and touches absolutely everything in the place, especially the stuff with the “Do Not Touch” signs.

She makes me stay, unswayed by my petulance, as she dances joyfully off to bond with all the same kind of old and interesting (junk) that is already stuffed into every corner of our house.

Sooner than expected, the hostess calls out our name over the speaker system. It’s even wired into the antique store. Smart. Diners browse, maybe buy something, waiting to hear their names called out. Win-win.

On our first visit some 40 years ago, I balked. No booths. No beer. Cash only. Spotting another diner under the age of 40 is rare. Sometimes it seems like an oxygen tank and three-headed cane may be part of the required dress code.

There’s a good reason for that though. The older crowd no longer care about the trappings, the “cool” factor has no relevance. What does?

Great food at a great price. Good service with a smile.

The best “home cooking” in town. Want some crunchy perfect fried chicken? Maybe a big slice of meatloaf with gravy? Try the daily specials. The big draw for all these years though has been the lightly fried local shrimp. Butterflied, hot, awesome. You want 9 or 12? Some pink sauce with a dash of Datil heat?

Carla and I split the 24 platter, the best deal.

It's simple, really. I’m 74 now and no longer care much about the beer, booth, music, or the cool factor nearly as much as I care about reliably outstanding Southern style food, at a fair price.

Oh, and Osteen’s has always had the best staff as well. Long time waitresses we’ve seen dozens of times. Been there forever. (Must be a good place to work.)

Ready with cash, we carry our Styrofoam treasure up to the cashier. Eternally cheerful, concerned to know that everything was up to par. It is.  She beams. Actually, always more than up to par.

We walk out, “God blessed” by the cashier.

No longer pouting, happily stuffed with some of the best fried shrimp…anywhere. I leave the Styrofoam out on the kitchen counter, looking forward to more of the same later in the day.

My wife is wonderful. She makes me do stuff I never want to, stuff that I insist I won’t do. Then I’m always happy that I did. How does she know?

Carla hugs the sunny cashier when we leave. Funny that something so totally out of character for me and so natural for her, makes me smile inexplicably like the Cheshire cat every time I remember it. 

If you haven’t been to the fort, walked St George Street, and eaten at O’Steen’s… you’ve never been to St Augustine.

Dawn on Moultrie Creek

 

Dawn on Moultrie Creek

Spoonbills shuffle like old men staring at their feet,

swaying side-to-side, bent in concentration.

First sunlight cuts sharply across brackish water,

illuminating the small flock,

like so many pieces of rose quartz mounted on cane

poles.

Customer Service

 

For the last twenty years, before retirement, I worked for one homebuilder or another. A Realtor, my job was to meet and greet customers who came into our model homes. Answer questions, provide information, give a tour, build credibility…all that stuff.

Although I’ve always prided myself on being able to engage with people from many backgrounds making the experience all about them, not everyone wanted to hear it, or anything else.

As with any kind of customer service position, certain behaviors stand out. Some people seemed to think it was cute for their kids to run around screaming, using the beds as trampolines.

I used restraint in handling it.

Some ladies apparently thought the extra toilet paper they found in our bathroom cabinets was free for them to take home for their own bathrooms.

Again, I used restraint when I would see it sticking out of a handbag as they exited.

A family of very large people with six big kids who came in right after an AUCE breakfast at Shoney’s, lumbering through the house like a swarm of locust. They used every bathroom, brushing aside the “Do Not Use” signs I carefully placed on the top of each toilet seat. Only one bathroom is set up with tissue, soap and towels for public use.

I showed restraint.

A bath towel I found weeks later, still folded neatly over the tub rim, held large chunks of excrement on the inside. Nice.

One guy was checking out our refrigerator, a brand we showcased. But when I walked into the kitchen, he was standing inside the fridge, browsing the shelves, with both doors flanking him as he slowly chewed on one half of my tuna sub.

Much as I wanted to use the bowl of fake fruit sitting there next to the sink to make the back of his head look like a watermelon dropped in the driveway, I didn’t.

I used restraint and politely told him that it was my lunch and that we, as a builder, do not stock the refrigerators in our model homes with food for customers. Nor does my company buy lunch for any of us. I bought that sub myself at Publix on my way into work. Told him he was welcome to one of the 50 bottles of cold water though. They were the ones with a sign that said, “Help Yourself”, unlike my sub which had been hidden in the back of the produce drawer.

Frequently over the years, I’ve shown great restraint. Generally, customers were polite, and we all had a good time.

After so many years of pent-up restraint, a cathartic visit happened on one of my last days working in a model home, before Covid made retirement a necessity.

An older couple came in to browse. In their sixties, they lived up North and their 20-year-old daughter had recently moved out of the house. They speculated that maybe they would downsize and move to Florida.

The lady's attitude problem was instantly apparent. She had a face like she smelled poop in every room we toured. Nothing was good enough. She was used to much greater, finer things. Although I pointed out the wide variety of customized options to give her what she wanted, her bottom line was that our offerings simply wouldn’t do. Everything was distasteful, beneath her high standards.

They would have to sell their home up North; they weren’t able to afford two houses. She knew it probably wouldn’t sell for what they wanted though, because “people don’t appreciate quality”.

I finally got to the point of suggesting “perhaps we aren’t the builder for you.” as I did when there was no pleasing the customer. That “take-away” often got customers to back up and show real interest if there was any there in the first place.

Not with her.

After about an hour of her negativity I chimed in with: “Well, you say you never see your daughter but if you moved to Florida, she would probably be knocking on your door before you even got unpacked! Young people love the beaches, surfing, all that stuff!”

With that, the woman insisted that their daughter was an ingrate, didn’t care about them at all, and doubted that she would ever visit.

Her sour face permanently frozen into a sneer, she looked at me for a sign of agreement that her daughter was way off base, one of the younger generation who don’t respect and value their parents, as all kids should.

I knew ten minutes in that these people weren’t buyers anyway and that there was nothing in this world that would or could please that sour prune of a lady, not one of our houses, not her long-suffering husband and certainly not her estranged daughter.

Still staring at me for confirmation that her daughter must be a bad one, she again asked “Why wouldn’t any decent daughter come visit her mother?”

I couldn’t help myself in replying: “Perhaps it’s because you are such an abysmally unpleasant and negative person to be around?”

I didn’t add: Unsmiling, judgmental, and demeaning. You carry a cloud of negativity, and the look of smelling poop is permanently frozen into your face. You act like nothing is good enough for your millionaire ways, but dress in Walmart bargain specials and drive a car crushed on one side. If I were your daughter, I would have left long ago.

I used restraint. No need to overdo it.

The woman was stunned silent, her husband working hard to repress a smile, causing him to turn away so she wouldn’t see it.

I doubt that lady is smiling today, wherever she is, she is unhappy…but the memory of that particular day, makes me grin like the Cheshire cat.

 

Spoonbill Shuffle

 

Spoonbills shuffle like old men staring at their feet,

swaying side-to-side, bent with concentration.

First sunlight cuts sharply across brackish water,

illuminating the small flock,

like so many pieces of rose quartz mounted on cane

poles.

 

Ry Cooder

 

Fifty years ago, a massive, turn-of-the -century brick and wood building on the main drag in Georgetown, DC, was home to the hippest record store on the planet.

I was just passing by, minding my own business, when suddenly mugged, dragged helplessly inside by the sounds of Ry Cooder’s self-named first album,  playing on four huge speakers tucked into high corners overhead. It was back when quadraphonic sound was a thing. That cavernous shop, its rows of waist-high wooden bins packed tightly, overflowing with vinyl possibilities, reverberated and quivered Ry’s masterful guitar work, putting me inside of his guitar itself…mesmerized.

“Boomer’s Story”, “Paradise and Lunch”, “Chicken Skin Music”, “Borderline”, “Little Sister” …all of it spawns colorful memories of where, when, and who I was, and who I was with. I still listen, frequently. Even as I get old, Ry’s music doesn’t.

Very early yesterday morning, I walked into the kitchen for coffee, telling Alexa to play some of his “Buena Vista Social Club” stuff, reminiscent of the afternoon street sounds in Medellin while visiting with my daughter some years ago.

I’m hard pressed to think of anything better than sipping a scalding cup of jet-fuel Columbian coffee while listening to Ry Cooder, tucked comfortably into my nest of mismatched pillows out in the weathered Adirondack chair, as dawn’s first sun begins to play peek-a-boo from behind a tree line on the other side of the lake.  

A peak moment, now 50 years since Ry first ambushed me on that street in Georgetown, pulled me once again into his world of musical genius, while simultaneously running a filmstrip featuring much of my adult life.

His music was always there, and so was I.

New Wheels!

 

Oh, I have an entertaining story or two, but all in all? Mine has been a forgettable life. No big claim to fame. I mean, I had a great run, well, am having a great run, but no big deal in the scheme of things.

I mostly followed the rules and expectations. Flew under the radar. Good husband, father employee, boss…

Boring…

But now, as I enjoy my retirement dog walks, cooking projects, house and garden chores, a squashy couch and huge TV with 27,000 channels, I’m kind of bored.

Well, WAS kind of bored. Until I saw this.

The absolute coolest vehicle anywhere. I immediately thought “WTF, I’m getting one!”. Something I’ve always wanted but never could justify the expense. Plus, no farm, no acreage, no use for heavy equipment at all, really. Blah, blah, blah.

Never driven anything other than a car, but this thing? Bet I could rearrange a parking lot! Switch cars in neighbor’s driveways. Transplant palms. Remove public statues and reinstall them in fun and unexpected places.

Since I’ve never liked the through traffic on our street, I’m closing off the far end, turning it into a cul-de-sac.  

I’d be happy to just drive it on the walking paths throughout our development. Everyone will assume I’m working with the HOA. That’s how I’ll identify myself when I roll up in front of some guy working in his yard.

“HOA, Sir! Please stand back. HOA!”

Then I’d tell him we have a sewer problem, dig up the swale in front of his house, dump a used hot water heater in the hole, and bolt.

Impractical shit old guys buy?  I’m joining the club.

Know anyone with an expensive boat that just sits around somewhere, unused?

Got a swimming pool in the back yard you only pay attention to during the monthly cleaning?

That pricy pool table in the great room is no more than a storage place for stuff you plan to move elsewhere but haven’t gotten around to doing so in months.  

What about the expensive exercise equipment that now doubles as laundry hook?

Even the entire formal room of your house goes unused... to keep it nice for the company that you never have.

My point is that my plan to get the dream vehicle of my life is not so crazy. People often spend their money on wants, not needs.

Do I need it? No, of course not. But I look at that tractor the same way an old guy looks at his expensive new convertible…with the lust that used to be reserved for a beautiful woman with curves even more seductive than that sportscar…or my tractor, if that is even possible.

I just want that John Deere. With a second mortgage, I can afford it. I’m old and have rarely done anything out of the box that is only for me. Today, that’s changing.

Oh, I’m happy to give Carla a ride in the air-conditioned cab, show her the cutting-edge GPS and all. We’ll take the walking path the back way down to Publix yelling at walkers: “HOA! HOA!”

I’m selling the Jeep to help pay for this thing. It fits perfectly in our two-car driveway when Carla moves her car and parks on the swale in front. I’ve read the covenants. No RV’s, campers or work trucks allowed, but never any mention of farm equipment.

Attachments to die for. Scoops, shovels, hay bailers, rakes…I especially love the giant screw that drills holes for telephone poles.

Now that thing is cool. Don’t start yapping at me about having no need. Look in the mirror at your triple diamond earrings before you step out of your start lecturing.

A word of warning. If you live in town and need help with a super heavy job, don’t call me. I’m mostly keeping this thing in my driveway, pristine.

(OK, you can call me if you want to do fun stuff though…turn over neighbors’ cars maybe put one in their swimming pool. For that, we can talk.)

 

 

Forsythia Sanctuary

 

1956

When I was 8 years old, Roxie was my first serious girlfriend. Although she had a nice indoor/outdoor enclosure off the house, on most summer days she sat at the top of the driveway, with me, both of us huddled under a huge Forsythia bush, its canopy a bonfire of yellow flowers.  With my arm draped around my her, I distinctly remember thinking that things couldn’t get much better than that, sitting there in the shade of my hiding place, with Roxie, safe under that screaming Forsythia.  I knew it was a peak moment. Both of us peeking out from our cool sanctuary watching heat snakes slither up off the blistering macadam driveway, reaching for the sky, as if from electrified waters.  

Pantheism...

 

               Pantheism claims that everything is connected, everything 

                                                                 is Divine…

Although I don't like the labels that encourage us to isolate and categorize, "Everything is Connected, everything is Divine" makes so much sense to me that it seems rather obvious.

A given.

But we want answers, to the big questions about our place in the scheme of things. All the religions, superstitions, myth and conjecture about who, what, where, why, and how, are often no more than mental masturbation combined with struggles for power and control .

The fact is, I don’t know, and you don’t know either.

As metaphor though, the stories can help us understand things which cannot be understood. I think walking on water, because you believe you can, is about as cool as it gets. Doesn’t happen, but it’s a great metaphor for the power of belief.

Too often the metaphor is lost and “my way or the highway” becomes the norm with each group. The insistence that everyone else out there, look like us, be like us.

Oddly, each group is the only one to have all the answers. Just them.

Very divisionary, given the fact that we’re all more alike than different.

Democrats and Republicans lead the way with that stuff, insisting that it must be one or the other. No middle ground.

For any thinking person, that’s absurd.

Almost everything has middle ground and shows up in shades of grey.

Almost everything.

The one absolute and unchanging power that controls it all, everything, everywhere, are the “Laws of Nature”. One “H” combined with two “O” under the same conditions anyplace in the universe, yields the same wet results. Another miracle… as are we all.

“OK, then who put the Laws of Nature in place? It must be God.” No, that’s simply a personification our ego is unable to step away from. We want to create the story, rather than the other way around.  The story created us, bit players at best.

We can’t grasp the idea of something that just is, without a beginning, an end, or a creator.

Call that creator God if you wish. But know that the rules apply evenly across the board. It’s level. There are no such things as miracles, no god sitting comfortably in his observation office who may decide to suspend the laws of Nature if we pray hard enough for Aunt Minnie to not be dead in the recliner over there. She may look dead, but she either is or isn’t, there is no appeal process to push it in the direction of your own private wishes.

No little miracles, no anomalies outside of “The Laws”.  The miracle is all of it, everything that ever was, is, or will be.

The first sunlight peeking over the distant tree line? Now that’s a fucking miracle! Pick up a freshly fallen leaf and look at it under a microscope. Another miracle. A drop of lake water? Ciliated hairs drive protozoan bumper cars through chaotic traffic. Worlds within worlds.

No big deal. Just another miracle.

Our ego is so great that we question the possibility of life on other planets. “Could anything as wonderful as us exist elsewhere?” In the not-too-distant future I believe we will know the answer. Yes! Of course. Life is everywhere, but we’re in our infancy and the universe is rather…vast, so it takes time to discover.

But it’s out there… because the meaning of life…(drumroll…)  is life itself.

Life pops up like a weed between cracks in city sidewalks. It has the potential to exist in any environment… and does. “Alien” life probably won’t look like the undernourished human child with a head the size of a beer keg that we may envision.

As with ourselves, it all depends on the environment. Life grows, tailored along the way to fit its environment perfectly. Fish in water, birds in air, lots of creatures walking about encased in bodies made for their specific gravity.   

I wonder if we are up to the challenge of trying to communicate with a life form similar to a lichen? What of common ground? Could an alien be turned on by a bevy of deep-sea tubeworms 5,000 feet down in our oceans, all belly dancing seductively around a fissure? Perhaps one of those frisky snipe eels that hang out at the same club hoping to get lucky, would do.  Alien life may well look like another protozoa, swimming through the drop of pond water that is space, its own solar system simply another atom in a giant’s world.

No matter the lens we choose to view it through, life just is. Our own value judgements “good” and “bad” don’t apply other than when we ask: “Good or bad for whom?”. 

When that young Impala grazing on the savannah, a vision of beauty and vibrant new life, has its throat torn out by a Cheetah hiding in the grass…is that good or bad?

That’s life, a full spectrum. We’re part of it, connected by the elements that we all share, the stuff of life, stardust.

Everything is Connected, everything is Divine…

Trigger Fish Bucks $$$$

 

On gym mornings, my regular routine puts me on a treadmill at 6:50am. I appreciate the attached TV on those machines and usually catch the tail end of The Joyce Meyers Ministries show before “Parking Wars” starts at 7:00.

But for the ten minutes before I get to look in on the creative but illogical flood of reasons people believe that they shouldn’t be ticketed, I get Joyce.

If you don’t know her, Joyce Meyer is an American Charismatic Christian author, speaker, and president of Joyce Meyer Ministries. Worth around nine million, she and hubby own multiple homes and fly around in their private jet.

TV preaching can pay very well.

Certainly it pays more than enough that if you are unhappy with the face that god gave you, you can get a new one. So apparently Joyce brought a picture of a triggerfish in to her plastic surgeon and said “I want this face,”

I guess that god favors triggerfish.

It’s all good. Not my path but there are many paths and just because I’m not on the same path as you are, doesn’t mean I’m lost. Right?

Wrong! Joyce says I am lost. In spite of the fact that humans worship over 5,000 different “gods” in this world, Joyce knows that only hers is right.

OK, fine. It’s important to believe in whatever club or cult you join if you want the epiphany offered by that club experience, be it Moose or Mason, Baptist or Shinto, Boy Scout or Shaker, go for it!

Live and let live.

But this morning Joyce threw one out there, rather casually, that I couldn’t ignore. She said: “It must be horrible for people who don’t know Jesus, to have no hope. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live without hope. I don’t think I could even get out of bed in the morning!”

I’m not a Christian, but when I got up this morning, I distinctly remember hoping that the iPhone store opens at 9:30. That it will be sunny all day. That the dogs will like the boiled organ meat and rice I’m fixing for them. That Carla will come home early from work this afternoon. That Putin and Biden don’t start a war. That the last fruit on my Blood Orange tree is ready to pick.

The list is endless. The same is true for every human who ever lived. We all thrive on hope in one form or another. It usually has nothing to do with Jesus.

So I’m thinking that either Joyce is phenomenally stupid, which I don’t believe is the case, or she thinks her listeners who send her money for jet fuel, multiple houses and Trigger fish plastic surgeons, are.

Which could it be?

Hitchhikers...

 

When my friend said that she used to hitchhike as a teenager, my first thought was…I can't believe that you were out there hitchhiking at age 14!  But then I remembered picking up two 15-year-old hippie girls who were out hitchhiking years ago when I was a bachelor.

My house was a huge four-story place with three other guys back then. We each had our own floor. Party central.

The girls had been thumbing rides all over the Northeast for weeks and planned to keep going. Both were wrapped up in identical frocks, brightly flowered and flowing in tandem with their long blond hair in that summer breeze. They looked like an ad for Sun-In hair lightener standing on the side of that road, thumbs outstretched, pleading for adventure. Both stunk of BO and dirty laundry. I brought them home and let them take long showers, turning my bathroom into a sauna. The three of us lay around on my bed that afternoon, looking up at the undulating orange parachute that was the ceiling of my room, smoking a joint and listening to a new Ry Cooder album I had gotten my hands on the day before. Quadraphonic sound and an open balcony door full of blinding sunlight.

The girls wanted to stay with me, for the three of us to live together that summer, maybe even forever, and I wanted to keep them.

Those were the days of “love the one you’re with” but I knew my girlfriend who lived nearby wouldn't allow it.

Being ten years older than those two girls, I really didn't like the idea of going to jail either, so after an innocent afternoon of jabber and freedom, I gave them some cash, drove them to their next destination, and dropped them off. Wishing them well, everyone was full of smiles, good cheer, and reluctance to move on.

This time, they smelled of Ivory soap and sunshine. I knew they would get another ride in a heartbeat.

I've always regretted kicking out those two beautiful hippie girls, turning down a once-in-a- lifetime opportunity to create stories for my old age, but I’m forever glad and relieved that I did. That was an entire Pandora’s Box full of trouble that I did not need to open.

Dropping them off on the side of the highway, I worried about who they may run into next time.

R.I.P?

 

We’re insatiable. Gnashing our increasingly worn teeth with each devastating loss. Oh my god…Betty White. (Yea, but she was just minutes away from her 100th birthday. We should all be so lucky.) Dobie Gillis…ancient. Sidney Poitier…ditto.

I can barely see the iPhone screen through my tears after hearing the devastating news about Bob Saget… as I frantically search Google, trying to remember who the hell he was.

We, as a society, are phenomenally bored, in constant need of ever more shocking and higher-profile deaths to mourn. Anything to break the monotony.

Wonder what Jack Nicholson is up to?

Hey, calm down, don’t give yourself an aneurism worrying about it. We all eat, sleep, poop, scurry around quite a bit, and die. Everything, everywhere, dies. It’s just part of the package.

But dying isn’t the problem, that’s just life. It’s the walking dead that we need to worry about. All of us that are still breathing.

 I watched the 1990 Robin Williams movie, “Awakenings” on Netflix recently. It  tells the story of a doctor who  discovered the beneficial effects of an experimental drug when administered  to catatonic patients. The main patient (played by Robert deNiro) and the rest of the patients, are awakened after being in comas for decades and have to deal with a new life in a new time.

It's an interesting and fun premise, and wacky hilarity ensues…but that’s not the point.

Now fully awake for the first time after spending 30 years in a coma, Robert DeNiro takes a long look around. With his new-found appreciation for life itself, DeNiro realized that most people sleep-walk through their lives and are rarely appreciative of just how wonderful it is to be present, breathing life in and out. We spend too much time in a different form of coma, worrying about things that may or may not happen in the future, and almost no time being in the now, being present.

Robert DeNiro had to awaken from a thirty-year coma to really see it. Many of us never do.

 Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon, aka country comedian Minnie Pearl, would race out onto center stage at the Grand Ol Opry and crow: "How-w-w-DEE-E-E-E! I'm jest so proud to be here!" Her familiar greeting never failed to elicit a huge audience response of recognition…and agreement. Yes, Minnie was happy to be on stage to entertain the nice people, but she was also stating what should be obvious to all of us…life is short, revel in it, celebrate the moments, be present. We should all be “jest so proud to be here!”

That’s our responsibility, our challenge from Bob Saget and…oh my God!…now Louis Anderson too! (Google, Google) (And from anyone else near or far who has already transitioned.) I believe they would tell us the same thing if they could…enjoy the ride right here and now. This is heaven, this is hell. Stop worrying about the next thing, be present, be ecstatic that you are simply alive. Be like Minnie “Just so proud to be here!” That’s our obligation to Dwayne Hickman, Meat Loaf, all of those who are no longer on life’s stage.

I take it all to heart, being conscious to maintain an “attitude of gratitude”. That said, I  often have to agree with Clarence Darrow when he said, "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." 

So there’s that too.