Three Beautiful Things 10/28/15: Dad Would Be 85, Soup Kitchen, Extra Mile at the Pharmacy

1.  I thought a lot about my dad today.  Were he alive, he would have turned 85 years old, having been born on October 28, 1930. He died on June 1, 1996. I often think about the impressions Dad left on me and I think I know what the strongest one is. I experience it every time I go back to Kellogg and see friends or if the subject of my dad comes up on Facebook.

He was a great guy.

Every time Dad comes up in conversation and every time friends and I get to telling stories about Dad, it always ends the same way:  "Jesus, Pert was a great guy."

And he was.  He enjoyed people, liked to pick on them and they liked him picking on them; he loved stories, laughs, shootin' the shit, and, most of all, he loved his wife, kids, and Kellogg friends.

Here's a picture of Dad at Dick and Floyd's,  his favorite watering hole and social club.

Maybe you can see what I mean.

He was a great guy.

2.  Just because I think it would be fun, I decided that when we have our family get together on over the weekend at Molly and Hiram's, it would be fun, on Friday, to have a soup bar and I made three of the soups today, with one more to go.  I made a chicken soup/stew, a ground beef vegetable soup, and, because I want two vegan options, I made a sweet potato,  roasted cauliflower soup and I'll make a green curry vegan soup on Thursday.  In case we all eat together after the grandkids go out on Halloween, I'll be making two stroganoffs:  one beef and the other a vegan tofu stroganoff.  If you saw me making all this food in our apartment home's tiny kitchen with the limited cooking utensils we have, you'd get a kick out of it, maybe shake your head, but I enjoy it and it takes me back to when I lived in a tiny basement apartment on West Broadway and in a tiny duplex on W. 29th Place in Eugene, both with very small kitchens, and I used to cook a lot of food in those tiny spaces with few utensils to work with. Sometimes I imagine, and this is a stretch, that I am Kenny Shopsin in his tiny kitchen at his restaurant in NYC, as featured in the documentary movie, I Like Killing Flies.

3. This kind of stuff really matters to me: at the Greenbelt Co-op Parmacy, I asked if I could get my refill of Lisinopril a month early because I'm going away for the month of November and would run out while away without an early refill. The pharmacist did it, making my life a lot easier. For her, I'm sure, it meant doing extra paperwork with the insurance company, a headache, but one she suffered to help me out.