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50 Years of Funk

Published by wideeyedfunk

It is a little complicated and I heard different versions of the tale floating around over the weekend. One way or another, my WideEyedParents fled south to North Carolina and got married in 1963. They married with little consideration for the impact of a July wedding date on their forthcoming 50^th wedding anniversary party.

It was warm.

Fifty one parents, kids, aunts, uncles, cousins, first cousins once removed, twice removed in all directions, second cousins, fictive kin cousins, grandparents, in-laws, and yet to be born WideEyedFamilyMembers sweltered in the humid July afternoon of rural-ish Virginia over the weekend. We feasted on Jinx’s masterful barbeque from the Pit Stop in Charlottesville. (Just in case Jinx is reading this, we promise, no one put the cole slaw on the pulled pork Memphis style. They were kept strictly separate.) We drank a rootbeer keg dry and made poor showing on the wine and beer. Evidently the kids were thirsty and the adults are too old to properly attend to a keg.

We talked and feasted and toasted into the evening, and as the twilight grew dim enough to illuminate the lanterns under the canopy, the neighbor’s bootleg fireworks lit the sky. I tried to look poised and smug as though I had planned that final surprise.

Fifty years of Funk. May there be many more.

50 years of Funk commemorative baseball hat. Only 50 made. Rare.

Hamish the Corgi Achieves Master Craftsdog Status

Published by wideeyedfunk

Press Release:

With the intuitive senses of a nascent master of his craft, Hamish eyed the 107^th Annual Strawberry festival at the Church of the Good Shepherd at the corner of Jewett and Summit Avenues. A cluster of younger people with their kids and older folks sat in the shade trees sharing strawberry desserts, music, and good fellowship. I could see that he thought it looked promising and he was considering a performance for the Festival attendees.

He didn’t commit to it and we walked on. How fortuitous that we did so. Although perhaps it wasn’t luck but a deeper sensitivity in Hamish’s newly proved mastery.

Diagonally across the intersection, the Darwin Martin house was having a red-carpet affair: valet parking, bejeweled and well-dressed middle agers climbing from luxury autos, and hors d’oeuvres and cocktails inside what is itself an architectural master piece.

Hamish walked to the groomed corner lawn of the Martin House Complex and stopped. He cast his glance uphill to the Strawberry Festival, clearly within sight and scent. His ears swiveled backward, and he turned to eye eyed the glitterati atmosphere of the Martin House event. Two large huskies live in the corner house directly across the street, his nose tilted in their direction. Three small beagles inhabit the yard on the fourth and final corner of intersection of Jewett and Summit and while they gave a final sense of completion to his pending performance, they were clearly supporting, rather than critical elements.

Positioning carefully, Hamish turned his hind quarters in profile to the Festival and the Red-Carpet Affair, he faced the Husky House and put what is really the least interesting view to the beagles.

In an act of pure artistry, simple in appearance yet complexly composed and powerfully nuanced, Hamish achieved his Mastery of Display Defecation. Please join us in our congratulations for this new Master Craftsdog.

The snow shovel taunts me.

Published by wideeyedfunk

The solstice was just a few days ago and I spent most of it among a pinkening crowd on the beach in Ocean City, New Jersey. Yesterday, back in humid and hot Buffalo, the sun gleamed high and bright and long as I mulched the front garden and putzed in the back.

I slumped over my grilled cheese and salad dinner last night all sun roasted and dehydrated. My chair position gives me a command view of the back yard and vegetable garden and I like to gaze out there in the evening light, especially after a day of garden toil. Everything looks so promising at this time of year.

SnowShovel1 I glanced at the garage doors and my eyes snagged on something shining yellow and glowing through the window. It was the snow shovel. It is dangling from a hook in the back of the garage and should be invisible for the summer. It isn’t your turn, I thought at it. I can wait, it told me.

A vexing loss in the spousal competition.

Published by wideeyedfunk

I’m not saying that the WideEyedSpouse and I compete against each other. That would be a gross exaggeration. However, it is nice to get a win every now and again, to be better at something, like say, concocting the best dill pickle or power shifting in the powerful Mach 5 (the demon on wheels, my Mini Cooper S). Of course the decision as to who is better at any given event is subject to in-house debate. Data proofs and examples are required during the win-lose negotiations. We may query the dogs for their perspective. The judges, Spouse and I, are not impartial. It has happened that I determined myself the winner regardless of the Spouse’s contrary findings. It’s all in good fun. Mostly.

Yesterday an external judge gave the Spouse a win that will haunt me for decades.

This is from before we had our own gear. Even then there were hints that I was going to not win.

We have had exactly the same number of Olympic recurve-style archery lessons. Six. At them, we stand side by side at the range and are coached as we shoot. We have almost exactly the same gear, except for our differences in size and strength.

Until yesterday I believed that neither of us was winning at the archery skills affinity contest yet. This took a certain amount of self-delusion because I could clearly see that the Spouse’s arrows were more often in the bullseye. Mine are little wider ranging. But still, belief is powerful.

Evidently after you loose an arrow you are supposed to maintain your posture while allowing the bow fall as it will. I was told it is like following through in golf or bowling, neither of which is in my skillset. It seems that after I loose the arrow and I immediately collapse my arms and back, entirely ruining the shot. Coach corrected me several times, using a variety of phases: “Keep that arm up. Where’s that arrow? Watch that bow. Stay in position. Follow it through.” Then she uttered the words that, to be fair, I may have deserved.

“Watch your Spouse,” she said, “he’ll show you how it’s done.” Silence fell across the range. The Spouse, poised to shoot, froze. His eyes wandered over to me and I could his see him trying to stop the spread of him smarmy smirk. I glared at the side of his head. I tried to bore a hole into it, far enough to give him a tiny memory lobotomy with my laser eyes.

I failed.

For years I will hear “watch me, I’ll show you how it’s done,” irritating in its own right, and an eternally vexing reminder of my failure to win on that day. Can you hear my teeth grinding?

Saturday morning along some Buffalo roadways.

Published by wideeyedfunk

HamishGrill Hamish the Corgi supervised the assembly of the new Weber Smokey Mountain Smoker last night. Miss Tibbit broke the packing material down into pieces small enough to fit into the recycling bin. They waited at home today while their WideEyedHumans drove out to Adventures in Heat in the suburbs for hardwood charcoal and some black cherry and apple wood chunks.

The world between the house and the shop teemed with life. Two security guards in Buffalo Central Library lamented the arrest of a regular patron. He was caught with 20 grains or grams of something. That’ll get him 20 years in prison, one guard said.

A Princess (her license plate told us so) in an elderly Nissan Altima hocked a wad of gum into the shrubs in the Tim Horton’s Coffee drive through. Across the street jets lifted off at the airport, taking people somewhere else. For once, on this rainy Saturday morning, I didn’t feel the wanderlust.

A few miles down the road, a Dad opened the rear door of a limousine and helped his daughter bride into a tiny white church. We rolled passed the intersection where an 18 year old on a motorcycle blasted himself to a 100 mile an hour oblivion on the front of a BMW last Wednesday. I expected it to look different there now, but it didn’t.

A senior citizen hauling her groceries in a rolling bin stopped for a smoke break in an empty bank parking lot. Brindled and shaking, a tiny dog stared at me from the next car over when we arrived at the bbq shop.

On the way home we stopped at Fairy Cakes Cupcakery for a couple of treats: orange-chocolate and oatmeal cookie cupcakes. The WideEyedSpouse has a birthday tomorrow. Two delicately oversized giraffes living at the Buffalo Zoo peered over their oversized wrought iron fence at passing events. I saw their long eyelashes blinking at the world and wondered what they thought about. Did they want a cupcake?

Just now I stood in the garden, contemplating on mulching even though the maple hasn’t released its helicoptering seed pods yet. It is raining a bit and Miss Tibbit and Hamish asked if we might instead nap in front of public television. Sure, I told them, let’s go in.

The world will have to get by without me watching it for a little while. I hope I don’t miss anything.

This situation is intolerable.

Published by wideeyedfunk

I could fix it in ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Or at least improve on it. Make it less distressing.

A classic, careworn Mercedes 380SL convertible moved onto my street last month. The rear driver’s window panel is out on the driver’s side and has been during the whole of my acquaintance with the car. The owner’s cleverly expedient fix, a pink and orange beach towel shoved in the gap, pains me. This morning there were three beach towels shoved in the hole and draped over the entire area. Evidently one towel was insufficient to combat the near inch of rain we had in the night.

As the lightening crackled and the downpour thundered on the roof of my house, I worried about the Mercedes. I fretted for it as it crouched under a tree in the street.

Every time it rains, even a little, that Mercedes ages faster. Yes, it is already over the hill and running on fumes as any good old Mercedes will do for decades. But I am overcome with wonderment that a person who has the wherewithal and bravery to operate such a car as a daily driver is callous enough to speed its dying. Poor Mercedes. Poor me for having to witness this slow death.

Mercedes1

I can’t watch this play out over the coming days, weeks, – or if the Mercedes is remarkably resilient – months. I have hatched a plan. I have scissors, some good quality black duct tape, and a small sheet of high ml plastic sheeting ready. In the wee hours of the night, by the dim glow of the antique street light, I am going to fix it. Or at least improve on this intolerable situation a little bit.

10 Reasons Miss Tibbit The Useless Little Black Dog May Not Lick My Face

Published by wideeyedfunk

10. Miss Tibbit is a dog and has aromatic dog mouth.

9. She licks the floor.

8. She licks the sidewalk. Oh, why? Because it has on it flavorful substances like gum, bird crap, spit.

7. Miss Tibbit bathes herself and her pal Hamish the Corgi with her tongue. I don’t want that on me.

6. Miss Tibbit enjoys cat litter snackies. She eats the crumbs from the basement floor. You know how it works: the cat jumps out with litter stuck to his feet. The litter scatters. Tibbit cleans that up. Two strikes – basement floor and cat litter.

5. Two days ago I yanked a rotting baby bird carcass out of her mouth by its little feet. It was mostly down her throat already so I had to have a good, strong grip on those curled up bird toes.

4. Miss Tibbit has sticky spit.

3. She sniffs the cat’s butt, and I can’t be sure she does it from a sanitary distance.

2. She licks her own wet nose.

And finally, the hard limit, the final unarguable reason:

1. I just now saw Miss Tibbit eat cat crap that some city cat left in my garden. Yes, I am glad it is gone. No, I am not happy Miss Tibbit ate it.

Miss Tibbit is a sweet, lovey useless little black dog who likes nothing better than to greet people with kisses. Just saying, think about it.

The garden is poised for action.

Published by wideeyedfunk

Cherry, cosmonaut, and garden peach tomatoes. Hot peppers. Sweet peppers. Leeks. Easter egg radishes and French breakfast radishes. The WideEyedHousehold is doubtful about a breakfast of radishes. Lettuces. Carrots. Borage. Grapes. Sunflowers and two pear trees. And oh, blue coco pole beans, whatever they are, time will tell.

Too many socks.

Published by wideeyedfunk

It was a problem. Gym socks. Knee socks. Hiking socks. Fuzzy winter socks. Socks more normally called stockings. Blue, pink, white, black, nude, brown, and striped socks. Hand knit. Silk. Cotton. Socks.

Simply. Too. Many. Socks. The bureau drawer was a stew of tangled toes.

Then, one cold spring day in the not too distant past, a miracle. A solution. We trolled through the estate sale remnants of a family’s life in Tonawanda, New York. The memories of nearly a century were laid on tables, stacked on shelves, piled in heaps for eager crowds to paw through. For a WideEyed person it is an overwhelming experience to witness a lifetime of personal items. Sad. Interesting. Somehow the stuff was too infused by another’s life for me to form a connection.

The WideEyedSpouse and I fought the crowds and made it from the attics and into the basement. And there it was: abandoned among basement junk, shoved against a brick wall, hung around with faux fur vests for sale. It squatted on its turned legs with the remnants of an old, tired dignity. The chifferobe. Sock-home.

We wrestled the Starr Furniture Company c. 1920 mahogany veneer and cedar chifferobe through a basement door no wider, no taller than the chifferobe itself. Daylight did it no favors. It was dull and awful. Decades of mildew, basement filth, and the recent scars from faux vest hangers befouled it. It stank of basement. From its open doors wafted stale perfume from another generation. It fit in the mighty Pathfinder as though it had been constructed specifically so that I could get it home.

We bathed it in a 10% vinegar solution. We rubbed crusted gunk and wax away with Life O’Wood. Old English healed the hanger scars. Minwax Paste Finishing Wax fed the wood and made it glow, just a little.

Chifferobe. Sock-home. Welcome to the WideEyedHousehold.

Chifferobe

I would pick you to be on my zombie apocalypse team.

Published by wideeyedfunk

In 1976, I went to full time school for the first time. I know this because I counted back on my fingers, there’s no memory of it. 1976 recollections are solely and exclusively about being on the Junior Every Women’s Club float in the Bicentennial Parade. There was a cooler filled with soda tucked behind a prop on the float. And I had unrestricted access.

From 1976 to 1988, I was subjected to team oriented sports games: dodgeball, kickball, softball, basketball, tag, kick the can, volleyball, baseball, an occasional wretched tag-football, maybe a soccer, badminton, or tennis here and there.

During the ritualized team picking, I watched the sky, heard the birds, found interesting rocks, wondered why some kids’ shoes got grass-stained and some did not, felt the texture of the weedy athletic fields under my legs as I patiently sat, observed the knobby knees of the other kids clustered in the pick-me corral, and now that I think about, made a start on the WideEyedLife.

Friends, I was last picked every time, and least played in the games. It was wonderful. Protected from the game by my team mates, I had time to pursue my own concerns in the outfield, on the bench, along the sidelines. I was responsible to no one, rarely sweaty, and free. Just, free.

Two days ago I lost my freedom.

“I’m thinking of getting a job in the corporate world,” I told two of the graduate students, we were talking about the passion of research versus practical income. “Being research faculty is great, but I really need to think about a secure retirement plan.” So young and still immortal they looked at me, all wide eyed, “What will you do?” one asked, clearly making contingency plans of her own.

“It is going to have to be writing or project management,” I told them, “It isn’t easy to translate a specialization in theories about prehistoric maritime Arctic foragers into jobs in the Outside.” There was a small silence as well all took a moment to feel sorry for folks on the Outside.

“Yeah,” one young woman nodded, “But I would pick you to be on my zombie apocalypse team.”

I reeled backwayd, stunned.

Friends, I had nearly four decades of freedom. I could not have predicted this threat. I would never have suspected that my years of field research in remote wilderness areas, decades of studying how people get by on the land and sea, and self-inculcation of small group dynamics theory would make me a tactically sound team pick for anything.

I guess the zombie apocalypse changes everything.