1. Do you believe in love at first sight?
Yes, Suzanne and I Zinged the moment we laid eyes on each other. Only I was too danged stupid to know this. It took the Holy Spirit unleashing the Statesmen on me for me to realize this.
2. Your first car?
I talked about this in detail back during Suzanne’s September 19- Somethin’ Challenge. My first car was a red 1972 Plymouth Duster. My friends and I named it the Swamp Buggy because it always had about an inch or two of water in the floorboard. Fortunately, the car had vinyl instead of carpet.
We owned a Western Auto Store that had a garage. One day, the car would not crank when I was trying to leave school to come home. I called my father and asked for him to send one of our mechanics to help me. He came himself. Kids were still at school and they knew him, so they were heckling him about owning a garage but could not keep his son’s car running. That is just before fire jumped out of the carburetor and rose about 20 feet.
The next day, I drove my mother’s car to school and she got a new one.
3. Who taught you to ride a bike? How did it go?
My father, Papa Bruce, taught me. Our driveway had a hill to it. He held the seat and walked beside me. He got fed up with me being scared, so he just sort of launched me, kind of like Dracula does to Denisovich in the movie HotelTransylvania 2.
It was either crash or ride the bike. I chose to ride.
Interestingly enough, my very first bike, which was bought long before my father thought about owning a store, was a Western Flyer. Western Flyer was the store brand for Western Auto. It was also the most popular bicycle brand at the time. When I was growing up, your bike was a Western Flyer, or you were a nerd.
4. Ugly and rich or beautiful and poor?
Well. I am an ugly, poor redneck. However, my child-bride Suzanne is beautiful and poor. Interestingly enough, I have known many true millionaires in my life, but I did not know they were millionaires for a long time.
Back when we worked at the convenience stores, we had a customer who looked just like any other farmer. As it turns out, he was the largest landowner in this part of the state. He owned more in this part of the state than King Ranch, which is the largest landowner in the world. Our farmer was a very nice fellow. He passed away not too long ago.
5. What was the first dish you could cook?
I am a guy. The first dish I learned to cook was steak in aluminum foil cooked in the coals of a campfire. I was a Boy Scout and Girl Scout.
To make this, you take a piece of aluminum foil and spread it out on the counter. Place a piece of round steak on the aluminum foil. Cut up potato, onion, carrot, and whatever else you want to have with your steak. Put a pat or two of margarine or a squirt of vegetable oil on top.
Roll the edges of the aluminum foil to form a sealed pouch. Double wrap with aluminum foil.
Place this pouch in the coals of your campfire and leave it alone for about an hour and a half or so, depending on how hot your fire is and how done you want your steak. Open your pouch and dump the contents into the frying pan of your mess kit. You want the frying pan and not the plate because the handle gives you something a little cooler to hold while you eat it.
When I was off living in Spartanburg and going to college, I would cook simple, basic dishes. I called my Granny-for-Short to ask her how to make biscuits. She started out by saying, “David, you don’t mean to tell me you don’t know how to bake biscuits!” I told her that I did not know how.
She told me how to make them. I experimented with her recipe, which was add a little this and some of that. I came up with a recipe I liked, but others called grease bombs.
I learned how to make cake from scratch because I wanted a cake and none of the females in the house could do it at the time. Grace was not working that day. It turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself.
I still can’t make gravy. Our youngest daughter taught herself how to make gravy. She does a great job.
And, I can scramble up a mean batch of eggs, cook a ham, fry some bacon, throw together some spaghetti, etc. All the basics.
If you want something fancy, then you will have to ask Suzanne. She can make some pretty great things. She used to make great hors d'oevres just of the sake of having them.
I would come home from work and Suzanne would have make cheese straws, spinach balls, and some great sausage balls. She also made a steak salad that makes me drool just thinking about it.
Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?
Well, we made it through another stroke-free week. Our baby daughter fell down a flight of stairs and right into the arms of the voice actor who talks for the cartoon character Doug Funny. She works convention security for a group that runs the different comic conventions in our area.
Her boyfriend works as a director for the group. They met at a comic convention. She is a highly requested character handler. She is highly requested by the characters because she does not “fan girl” over the celebrities like many other handlers do.
One of the most popular celebrities wanted to know why she did not “fan girl’ over him when she told him she knew who he was and was a fan. She said, “My job is to keep you safe from point A to point B. As long as I am on the job, I am going to do my job. Whether you want to go from point A to point B or not, you will be at point B at the scheduled time, not a minute early or late. I can fan girl after the convention.” He has asked that she always be his security and/or handler at each convention.
I am thankful that our Marine was able to call again. He says that pretty much all of the ocean looks the same no matter where he is. He is looking forward to getting back to the home base and chowing down on some curry.
He said that at his favorite curry place, they start with a rating of mild, and then it starts 1, 2, 3, all the way up to 10. If you order anything 7 or above, you have to have a member of the staff watch you eat it to make sure you don’t die. He said it actually says that on their signs. He said the most he can handle is a 3. He said his sister, our youngest, would eat the ten and ask why they did not give her the hot stuff and then ask for the hot sauce. This is probably true.
Next Tuesday ,17 November, I am going to kick off a new series, like a meme but not exactly called Tuesdays with Gindy. Each Tuesday, I will post one of my Gindy’s Stories. Visitors are encouraged to comment and leave links to any story they want to tell, even if it has been posted for a while. They can leave the link in their comment.
Well, that is all, folks. See you again next time. Same bat time, same bat channel.
https://angloswiss-chronicles.
I am glad you finally realized Suzanne was the one :)
ReplyDeleteIt took an actual conversation with the Holy Spirit to make me recognize it. It was good that He spoke to me like that.
DeleteThanks for sharing this week.
ReplyDeleteThank you for stopping by and commenting.
DeleteHow wonderful you met "the one"! I always like a good love story :) The steak idea sounds good!
ReplyDeleteIt has been one interesting adventure. The steak salad is great.
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