1. I spent the better part of the day on the phone making appointments: gutter work, furnace tune-up, attorney, dentist, eye exam, bank, and on and on and then entered them all in my online calendar so I'll get reminders and notifications. My sisters and I have a claim to make on a small life insurance policy Mom took out many many years ago and I gathered documents for that and will call the company Wednesday morning to make sure I have everything they need to process our claim. Our family owns a grave plot in Spokane and I gathered the paperwork necessary to send it in so we can transfer ownership of it, by donation, to Hospice of North Idaho. Slowly, steadily I'm getting things either done or underway in the effort to both settle Mom's estate and get established in Kellogg.
2. I needed brown sugar to make our dinner tonight and I wanted to replenish our milk and half and half supply. I put on my backpack and strolled down West Cameron Avenue to Stein's. Every time I walk into Stein's, it's all I can do to stop myself from going to the back room and putting on a red apron and going to work stocking shelves, bagging and carrying out groceries, cleaning up breakage, incinerating boxes, or reorganizing the stock room. I walk in and still, forty-eight years later, expect to see Sally or Beryl or Vi or Olivia or Susan or Bernice or Donna or other checkers working the cash registers; I still expect to see Chuck over at the Customer Service counter or Gus butchering away in the meat department; I think of the great guys I stocked shelves with: Meryl, Dickie, Dale, Jim, Rob, Terry, Tim, and many others and I swear, as I picked up a pack of brown sugar from the baking aisle, that I could hear the voice of Sally coming over the store's sound system: "All boxboys up front please!"
Today Loverboy was playing as I shopped, a stark contrast to when we worked to an endless loop of Muzak that repeated -- what? on the hour? every two hours? Back then, when I got off shift I had to do something to get the Muzak out of my head. Sometimes I piled with Tim O'Reilly into his Datsun and he drove us through town once or twice and we listened to Neil Diamond or I'd go home and find a way to play some Blood, Sweat & Tears, Chicago, Led Zeppelin or Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.
Walking by the beer case reminded me of the time a customer walked up to me and asked me where the suds were.
I escorted him to the Tide/Cheer/Wisk aisle.
He got a little indignant and said, laughing at me, "Beer. Where's the beer?"
My face reddened.
That stung.
Still does.
When I shop at Stein's.
3. I needed the brown sugar because finally, after too many months of not doing it, I cooked up some Thai green curry. Last week I bought tofu, fish sauce, green curry paste, and coconut milk at Pilgrim's Market in Coeur d'Alene.
I loved finally making Thai curry again. I cubed the tofu and wrapped the cubes in paper towels to drain. I looked up in past blog posts for a reminder of the ratio I like of curry paste to coconut milk and, oh yeah!, we like our curry on the mild side and one teaspoon of paste for each can of milk suffices. Well, I tasted this and it seemed a bit too coconutty to me, so I added about a half a teaspoon of paste and seemed to hit the mark.
I heated up oil in the cast iron pan and poured in chopped onion and some fresh ginger. Soon I added the tofu. I boiled some cut up baby red potatoes and, once I could poke a fork in them, I added them to the pan along with a handful of frozen green beans. Meanwhile, the jasmine rice was cooking and I added a tablespoon of fish sauce and brown sugar to the coconut milk and curry paste and let it simmer until the green beans thawed.
I poured the curry sauce over the stir fired ingredients and sat down at the kitchen table with a tiny cheese spread jar that held a single ice cube and a some George Dickel Tennessee Sour Mash Whisky and listened to Simon and Garfunkel sing "America" and I thought about how the last three years living in Maryland, driving the New Jersey Turnpike to New York (but not countin' cars), hanging out in the Village and Lower East Side with Scott, talking about her social justice work with Mary at Fraunces Tavern in Lower Manhattan, seeing two plays with the Deke on Broadway, drinking Jameson's with bottles of Dirt Wolf with Mike and Ed at O'Hara's after going to the top of the One World Trade Center, touring Philadelphia, walking the National Mall, shopping at the Beltsville Costco, eating and drinking and listening to stories with employees of the Prince George's County School District, frequently spending Sunday afternoons at DC Brau, driving to Cooperstown and, much later, the back roads of Pennsylvania to officiate Julie and Curtis' wedding in Huntingdon, motoring along the Maryland Eastern Shore, along with the many other things I did, added up to this: I was looking for America. I looked along the Chicago River, in the emptied out pre-apocalyptic mall in Elyria, OH, in the faces of cheerful patrons at the Laughing Sun Brewing Co. in Bismark, in the music of The Babes with Axes, and, back in Kellogg, I now look for America in the stories I hear at the Inland Lounge, the cast iron pots and pans at Sunnyside Drug, and in family dinners on Sunday.
The curry turned out beautifully and the Deke and I were both happy that we have found the right products here in North Idaho to fix curry we like. We look forward to more.
I concluded as Simon and Garfunkel closed out their performance of "America" at Central Park that, for me, the best way to look for America is to let all of its variety and languages and landscapes tell me, teach me what America is. I haven't gone looking to confirm a predetermined idea of America. The America I look for is not an idea. It's what's there.
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