Destination: The Urban Family Cincinnati

The GPL reopened Monday after being closed since May 3 because of a terribly leaky roof. A great deal has happened in the past two weeks, most importantly, the birth of our wee Fleegan friend, Cash Dean Catoe. Cash was born in a rather theatrical way, after what seemed to be a pretty typical pregnancy, and the theatrics have only just now begun to subside. He’s a pretty little guy, with red lips and a massive head of hair, and when you hold him, he scrunches down on you like he’s trying to burrow into you. It like he’s not quite ready to be out of the oven, and he’s trying to get back in…

So, while the Catoes were in Birmingham celebrating the birth of 2.0, Slim and I were headed to Cincinnati, the city where I was born. The reason for the trip was to see some of my old Ithaca Urban Family, the famed Brian & Olga Davies. It had been about 9 or 10 years since I had last seen B&O. They had two children during that time, two children whom I had never met, Diego and Marco.

Heading out on a road trip is always fun; heading out on a road trip with someone who is as equally excitable and eager to gawk at (and photograph) roadside curiosities (like the big Brown Squirrel selling furniture in Knoxville, and the road sign for Big Bone Lick, and further down the road, the sign for TMI) as oneself is even more fun. It was a trip of unanswered banana phone calls to friends, and split second decisions to stop at a liquor emporium in KY in the hopes of finding the elusive Original Barrel Bourbon that I just cannot find any longer (freaking Brigadoon of bourbon). By the time we tooled into the Natty, it was after 6PM, and the temperature was blessedly in the upper 70s. We slipped along the lovely Ohio River, and turned into the historic O’Bryonville neighborhood.

The Davies home is located on the corner of a very quiet street that intersects with a very busy thoroughfare. The property is almost triangular, with a tall hedge of camellias cushioning the sounds from the busy side street, and a fenced in back yard where the boys play (while we were there, the boys rarely played in the back yard…they preferred the front yard, or the home of the neighbor, strolling off in their pajamas under the pretext of looking for lizards, and ending up in the neighbor’s house long enough for Olga to have to phone over to have them sent home…they were like the smallest neighborhood ambassadors, spreading their sunny cheer, reminding me of myself and my sister when we were little). The lovely two-story stuccoed house is over a hundred years old, boasts hardwood floors, tall ceilings, and nooks & crannies throughout. The kitchen is magnificent in its amenities. I stood slack-jawed at the marble cabinet tops, double ovens, a stove hood of sleek German line (name promptly forgotten), butler’s sink, and an espresso maker. A Breville espresso maker. An espresso maker that, in the hands of master espresso maker Brian Davies, produced the gateway cup of espresso that knocked me completely off the strict one-cup-of-coffee-a-day wagon. This espresso was soft, like a blanket, and rich in aroma and taste, like a bar of dark chocolate; not too acidic, not too caffeinated…just right. I wanted to lie down in that espresso, and roll in it…

When we arrived just after 6 that evening, Olga was preparing to host a new mom’s PTA meeting for Diego’s school. She was dressed to kill in a white fitted suit, black three-inch heels and a black t-shirt with hot pink lettering that read “Party Girls.” She looked like the third partner of Crocket and Tubbs, and if I had not seen her without her jacket, I would’ve thought she was strapped and packing heat. The PTA plan was to have a mixer featuring heavy hours devours and drinks for the moms…sounded like a PTA group I could get behind. Olga promised to return from PTA in time to have late drinks with us before we toddled off to bed. In the four hours that Olga was gone, Slim, Brian, Diego, Marco and myself walked hand-in-hand up to O’Bryon’s Irish Pub for grub, and then, under the direct request of the imploring Marco, toured Owl’s Nest Park. As we made our way into the dark park, heading towards the swings & slides, Diego made some remark about the bad people who stay in the park at night. Now, Slim and I recognize a parent’s scare tactic when we see one (the best scare tactic to use on Marco is to tell him that whatever bad thing it is that he is doing will result in him getting hurt, and will make him bleed…because evidently, a bleeding Marco is the worst thing in the world that Marco can imagine…and rightly so. A bleeding Carol is not very appealing to me), and wanting to continue into the park without causing great distress to the youngsters, we (including Brian) replied that as long as WE adults were there with them, THEY would be safe. It is only when little children venture into a park alone at night are they in such danger from bad people. The park was donated to the city in 1905, and was a part of a former estate. It is a well-maintained wide-open green space, with a very nice playground. The boys love it. It is a loveable place.

True to her word, after several hours of catching up with Brian, and getting to know the confident Diego and the painfully expressive Marco, Olga returned. We finished the evening off with home-brined olives, glasses of Luis Philip Edwards, and lots of stories. We fell into bed at around 2AM, an hour that has long known my absence.

Morning broke with temperatures in the upper 50s. Olga & Brian slept in while Slim and I followed Diego outside for some fresh air. As Diego searched for lizards, we sat on the front porch waking up. I began to shiver, so I got up to go get my hoodie and discovered the front door was locked. Marco stood on the other side of the glass, looking at me trying to get in, smiling. I smiled back at him, pointed at the lock and asked him to unlock the door. He reached and reached for the dead bolt, but it was not within grasp. With one of his many million dollar expressions, he became frantic at my being locked out and his not being able to assist me, and finally, he dissolved into tears. I told him through the glass that it was okay, to please not cry, but he took off up the stairs for help (I imagined the scene: him running into Olga and Brian’s bedroom, crying and ineffectively trying to tell them that Slim, Diego and I were locked out of the house. Olga & Brian would be caught in a Lassie-like moment when Brian would shout “It’s Timmy! He’s down the well!”). While Marco was upstairs trying to get help, the ever good natured and very cool Diego showed up from his lizard hunt and strong-armed his way into the side porch door, which, unbeknownst to us, had been unlocked that morning when the boys had exited it earlier. I confirmed with Brian later over the breakfast of “leftovers” Olga laid out for us (toast, lox & vodka cream cheese, caviar, and blueberries) that yes, when Marco came into their bedroom, it was like a Lassie episode…and they never could coax the plot out of Marco.

We spent the afternoon at Findlay Market, where Slim and I bought some Hungarian Red garlic and a sad excuse of a black & white cookie. The market was terrific, with locally grown produce, locally raised & butchered meats, cheeses & sweets, as well as soaps, lotions, salts and various other market wares. We worked up a very hefty appetite while we were there, which proved a good thing, for our evening meal (our last supper with the Davies before leaving the next day) was to be a traditional Puerto Rican dinner of beans, rice, pork and tostones. Now, Olga’s cooking is legendary; I learned a great deal from her when I lived below the Davies in NY. And I had spoken on a number of occasions to Slim about the cooking prowess of Olga as well. We thought we were properly prepared for the meal…but no one can EVER be properly prepared for the awesomeness of one of Olga’s meals. She had taken two racks of pork chops (unsliced) the day before, had rubbed them with olive oil & Sazon and left them to marinate. She also pressure-cooked a pot of red beans on the same day. Then, about four hours before we were to eat, she roasted the pork in the oven and reheated the beans on the stove. A pot of rice was made, and plantains were cut and soaked in Adobo water for the tostones. The cooking of the tostones was a thrill to watch; I had forgotten Olga’s methods for making the perfect product. Olga took the Adobo-bathed plantain slices and placed them into a pan of hot oil and cooked them until they were golden. Then she removed them to drain and cool, and flattened them with the bottom of a bowl. Later, right before we ate, she tossed them back into the hot oil to finish cooking; the end result was a crisp, flat tasty chip that the eater could dunk into an olive oil, mashed garlic and Adobo mixture. Dinner consisted of a heavenly chop cut off of the pork rack, a scoop of rice, a scoop of beans, some tostones…and some wine. This meal was (as always with Olgita) perfecto! I don’t think we were able to stay awake for too long after eating…we all drifted off into dreams of sailing down olive oil rivers on rafts made of tostones…

We took our leave very leisurely the next day. Intending to get on the road by 9AM, we finally pulled away from the curb at around Noon. Leaving was made less difficult with a promise from the Davies to come soon to Alabama for a visit. And Slim and I promised that we would not wait too terribly long to return to Ohio…one mention of my Aunt Marilyn’s farm across the river in Covington, a farm that also had a pool, perked the ears of Diego and Marco. Yes, I think Natty is moving into heavy rotation with Chatty these days…

Post Script: After much searching on the internet, I finally found Original Barrel Brand Bourbon Whiskey from Heaven Hill Distilleries in Bardstown, KY, availability in the US: Unknown. It looks like they don’t make it anymore…can you hear the tears streaming down my cheeks as I type this?

Tag Team Wildlife

I apologize for the long delay in blogging. School and work are getting in the way of my blogging time, and I regret that I have not finished my latest friends-giving-birth & fabulous vacation/travel blog entry. I promise that I will finish that entry soon, hopefully sometime this weekend. In the meantime, my sister recently shared some old emails I wrote to her and mom back when I lived in Denver. Evidently she thought them funny enough or informative enough to save for posterity (or maybe she knew I would be so terribly forgetful one day). I have to say that when I re-read this email, I had to laugh at what happened back in September 2002…September 7 of 2002, to be exact…and to marvel over the long-forgotten eight-mile hike that I took with friends that day in Estes Park. This email was entitled: Tag Team Wildlife

We got on the road on time, and headed up to Estes Park which is where the Stanley Hotel is located (think Steven King’s The Shining). Didn’t see the hotel, but we did see a bunch of Highlanders in their kilts since the park was hosting their Scotch-Irish festival.

After parking in the lot and suiting up, we waited for the bus to come and pick us up to take us to the glacier trail head. The first part of the trail was really smooth and easy to hike and took us up onto a switch-back course where you could look out over the valley and see the mountains covered with Aspen trees just beginning to turn for Fall. The Aspens made a yellow stripe through the evergreen pines and it was so very pretty. The color of yellow the Aspens sported was the color of a squash, and the leaves on the ground looked like slices of squash, ready to be eaten.

After about a half mile, the trail became rugged, taking us around the top of the mountain. From that point on, the hike became alternately easy, then moderate until we got to the first lake, The Locke.

The Locke was (at its entrance) somewhat small, and opened out into the space between the mountains, becoming bigger and bigger in the middle, then at the other end becoming smaller and smaller until it disappeared into the waterfall region of the mountains where we were headed. We decided to eat lunch on a big rock overlooking the Locke. While I sat on my rock, Friend #1 went down to the waterside to eat his sandwich, where a beautiful Grey Jay flew down on a limb above his head to watch him eat. Then another Grey Jay flew in on the same limb to also watch him eat. I heard a scurrying up behind me and turned to see a chipmunk staring at my sandwich. I turned back around and thought about the warnings of “Do Not Feed The Animals.” Just then, I saw Friend #1 throw a piece of bread down on the ground for the jays to eat and thought, “Maybe we shouldn’t feed these birds because THEY, in fact, are animals...” About that time one of the jays bombed Friend #1’s hand, knocking the rest of his sandwich to the ground and in a flurry, snatched it up and took off. Meanwhile, the chipmunk was alternately running at me from different directions in what I now believe to be an attempt at making me think he was not one, but many chipmunks, and that I would become scared and give up my food to the army of chipmunks who were waging a war at me. Then, all of a sudden, a duck flew out of the trees and began to go after Friend #2. And when Friend #2 got up and moved away, the duck came after me! I was laughing almost too hard to move or defend myself. We decided to get the hell out of our peaceful spot of respite, and on our way out, we stopped to warn the hikers spreading out their lunch on a poolside rock to beware of the animals. We could hear their surprised cries and laughs as we got down the trail and knew that they had not seriously heeded our warnings.

We headed along the trail until we got up to a point of incline where the hiking was about to turn into rock scrambling and climbing, and decided to rest. We began talking to this lone hiker from Iowa who was a former art teacher and outdoors enthusiast who was now retired. And because his wife had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and couldn’t hike anymore, he hiked alone. Iowa would catch up with us periodically and pass, and then we would pass him, back and forth, throughout the remainder of the hike. While walking beside me, he described the glacier lakes at the top and said he would see us there. And then he took off.

The climb to the lakes was at times tricky, but we went slowly and made it to the first lake called Lake of Glass. Clouds had moved into the area at that point and we had to put on our hooded jackets to stay warm. As he promised, we met up with Iowa again and he encouraged us to keep going up to the next lake, the last lake, called Sky Lake. He said it was most beautiful, and that you could see the glaciers really well there. We all took off, including Iowa, and hiked into the top lake. Oh, what a site it was! The clouds moved out just as we were coming into the clearing, so the lake reflected half blue sky and half grey. The color of the water was a teal/emerald. There were rock pyres on one side resembling the Eiffel Tower, while on the other side were remnants of the glaciers. The glaciers looked like smooth grey glass. They were a lot smaller than I had hoped them to be (one dreams of enormous glaciers) but the drought had decreased their size considerably the last couple of years.

We enjoyed the sight and rested there at Sky Lake for about an hour, testing the water temperature (very cold) and eating a snack for return hiking energy and then began our descent. We lost Iowa for awhile as he took an alternate route down the mountain, but we caught up with him again and hiked together till we got back to the Locke. That is where I sat down with him for awhile as he talked about how much he missed hiking with his wife. This time, when we parted, it was for the last time. I’m sure when he got back to his wife at campsite that evening, he had a lot to say about those crazy kids from Alabama he met up with on the trail.

The rest of our trip was just getting home and finding real food. We had buffalo burgers and beer at the Wyncoop Brewery and then went home. I was in bed by eight.

I hope you enjoyed this tale, and I encourage you to share it with my lovely sister as I will not be typing this damn story again for her benefit regardless of how much love I have for her. I love and miss you all! c

And so ends the story of Tag Team Wildlife...

A place where pork meat leaps from the bone onto your tortilla…

Before: You asked for what!?!
I can’t even recall when the seed was planted as my heart’s desire birthday gift, but I’m sure that the original soil would have been that fertile field which is the Catoe Parsonage’s back deck. And I’m quite sure that the seed would’ve been blessed by Mr. Catoe as it began to take root in all of our minds. Then, we would’ve watered that seed well with Pinot Grigio or Riesling or Slim’s home brew beer, or a combination of all three, and called it a night. Who would’ve thought that an honest answer to an honestly asked question would evolve from the seedling of an idea to the Sequoyah of reality? What do you want for your birthday, Carol? A pig roast. A Cuban pig roast…

I may have awakened the next morning after that conversation not even remembering hitting the lever of the wheel I had set in motion. I probably had forgotten the talk of Chef Wood procuring a pig, and Kris offering his back yard for the pit, because there had to be a pit, because I must have dreamily recalled my friend Olga talking about the pit pig roasts of her Puerto Rican childhood. And I probably dreamily recalled standing at her kitchen counter in NY, exactly one floor below my kitchen counter of our apartment building, listening to Spanish music, drinking sangria and helping her peel and mash hundreds of cloves of garlic to rub, with Adobo, into the pig she would be serving at her rehearsal dinner. Pit roasted pigs are not something you see every day, especially in Gadsden, AL. Pit roasted pigs are the stuff of legend (and I would later find out, the cautionary warnings to fictitious offspring of the ornery kind…”If you don’t quit hittin’ your sister with that two by four, the headless pig will get you tonight,” or “Ya’ll keep disobeyin’ me, an I’ll let that headless pig come and take u’uns away…”

So, I went for days, possibly weeks without thinking about a pig roast again. Then, one night while having drinks with the Catoes on their back deck, Mr. Catoe says “Well, the Woods think their house will be done in time for the pig roast, so we’re going to have your birthday party over there.” I sat there for a moment or two, contemplating the size and cost of a pig, size of hole for roasting, number of hungry people, where one can find a pig pusher from which to purchase a pig to roast…things like that. Slowly, I began muttering something like, “Um, what if we just buy some pork shoulders to roast? We can get a bunch of those at the Dixie, and not have to worry about finding a pig and digging a pit in the Wood’s yard.” Mr. Catoe, without hesitating, “Oh, but Chef is already on it. He thinks he has a line on a pig, and the yard won’t be landscaped yet anyway, so you can’t mess up what isn’t fixed. And Chef is really excited about this! He’s never pit roasted an entire pig before.” I glanced over at Slim, he sitting there beside me, looking at me as if I was, by suggesting we cook something smaller and easier than a pig, actually suggesting something so disdainful, I may as well have been suggesting we go out and buy the ten for ten dollars Swanson’s Chicken Pot Pies from Johnson’s Giant Food. Any further protestations died on my lips. My friends had taken up the gauntlet I had inadvertently thrown down. The pig roast was as good as done.

I will never know what took place behind Fleegan communication lines to make that pig roast happen, but I do know that Chef and Slim did some research unbeknownst to me. I also know that a very savvy looking invitation was created and sent out by Dame Catoe. And I do know that by the late afternoon of Friday, May 11th of 2009, Liz and I were helping Chef transport from the SUV to the tub of the Wood’s unfinished bathroom an 80lb. half a pig that Chef had just brought from Weaver to Southside. The pig was wrapped in white plastic trash bags, placed by Chef on black plastic to prevent fluid seepage into the back of his truck. Upon opening the back of the truck, the plastic-wrapped pig looked like the body of some unfortunate deceased hitchhiker, stowed away from prying eyes by the person or persons who had done him in. Liz and I marveled out loud to Chef over the eerie dead-body-like-ness of the pig, to which he responded, with a nervous laugh, “Yeah, the guy who sold it to me said that if I got stopped by the cops on the way back, to not look nervous…”

During: To dig, to set fire to, to rub, and then to cook...
The sun was just beginning to go down that Friday evening when we began digging by hand at the scar on the ground that Chef had begun earlier with some large earthmover.
On this old rock pile, with a ball and chain, they call me by a number, not a name! Oh, lord! Gotta do my time. Gotta do my time. With an aching heart. And a worried mind.
Slim, Les, and I dug through the clay farther and farther down, sometimes passing the shovel off to one another so that we could take a break; the Dame and Cookie Magoo observed from a careful distance. The freshly arrived Mr. Catoe, one week away from surgery, and keeping an eye out for the concerned, and possibly disapproving eyes of Dame Catoe, attacked the hole like a hungry man eating a steak. He took some off the sides, plunged into the middle and made short work of everything in between. I think that we all enjoy doing this kind of work. I know I sometimes miss doing it for a living. But my, oh my, it is hard work.

With the hole dug, and the obligatory mock crime scene photos of me laying in the hole taken, heating the hole up was the next order of business. Slim and Chef laid large flagstone rocks in the bottom of the pit, and then stacked pallets in on top. Various kindling was added, and the proper accelerant was drizzled on top. After backing away from the pit at least three times while Chef tried to light the pile (we feared the entire thing would blast itself out of the ground in a big ball of pallet-fire), it finally caught. What a blaze we had! Very prehistoric and terribly effective for the work at hand.

We then fetched the pig (named either Wilbur or Dinner, depending upon who you ask) from the tub, and laid her out to be prepped on an eight-foot table. I cannot describe the conflicting visions of both gruesomeness and mouthwatering tastiness as Chef, Slim and Liz injected marinade into the muscle of the pig. With marinade seeping from multiple puncture wounds, Adobo was rubbed into the skin, and the pig was covered with aluminum foil, wet burlap and then cradled in a bassinette of metal lathe. She was then slung into the hole, topped with sheets of plywood, and covered with a thin layer of dirt. As we walked away from the pit that night to go, tuckered out, to our respective beds, you could hardly tell that anything lay below the mound of disturbed clay in the Wood’s back yard…

Saturday, May 12 2009

When Slim and I arrived the next day to assist with additional party prep, Cookie was already hard at work, transforming the garage from house-building-storage-area to a Cuban cigar bar. Liz and Chef seemed to be everywhere at once, vacuuming in one area, moving things to another area…and the pig was cooking away in its pit in the back yard, filling the air with the most delicious smell. Chef walked out with us to look at the fissures that had formed around one edge of the pit. It was like a big Glade Air Freshener, except the name of this air freshener would’ve been Adobo Rubbed, Pit-Roasted Pig, instead of Pomegranate Spring. Chef commented on how the smell was so rich because, if you thought about it, all of the cuts of pork were cooking at once in that pit…the shoulder, the bacon, the butt…

By party time, we were almost in a frenzy, so excited to see the results of Fleegan ingenuity. It took the same three people who cast the pig into the pit the night before to pull the pig back out. Slim, Chef and Liz hoisted the steaming body from the pit onto a plywood stretcher and carried it up to the table. As birthday girl, I was given the honor of unwrapping the gift, which was now sitting in a rapidly forming pool of tasty juices. As I pulled away layers of foil, glistening meat began falling away from rib bones, leaping towards imaginary tortillas, imaginary pots of black beans. Wilbur/Dinner was cooked to perfection. That WAS some pig…

I found myself (as I’m sure many other folks did that night), hours later, belly full of pig meat, black bean salsa, guacamole, cheese puffs, rice, pie, fruit, and sangria, sitting at a round table in the Cuban Cigar bar area of the party, puffing away on a cigar. I was in my favorite place to be: that place of food, drink and conversation where you can take communion with friends. It was the best birthday ever.

Post Script: It took me awhile to get around to writing this post because, for days after the party, I felt that no matter what I wrote, I wouldn’t be able to properly do justice to what went down. But once I started writing, it wrote itself. I want to thank everyone who was a part of my Cubano Pig Roast Birthday Party. My heart is filled with great happiness for you all being a part of my life.

To Craig

I thought maybe if I read Shells again, and Eric read it with me, then it would turn out that nothing happened to Craig. I thought perhaps if we listened to Jeff Buckley enough times and drank lots of wine, Craig would somehow be magically okay from these efforts. I even thought that maybe if I avoided writing the words that Craig was gone, then maybe it wouldn't be so.  Eric and I (as I’m sure so many others) tried to wish him into safety and continued life, even as Craig was, unbeknownst to all of us, already days gone.

Craig's partner Rebecca posted on Facebook that evening that the search team found evidence that Craig suffered a leg injury, and very soon after that, fell over a precipice. It was a fall he could not have survived. They would continue to search for Craig, but there was no hope of finding him alive. He was gone. Rebecca went on to address her love for Craig, love that was unconditional and lasting. The following morning, Rebecca's post was gone from public view, but was quoted by Ben Fulton of the Salt Lake Tribune in his article Poet fell to death from cliff.

I have seen on the Find Craig Arnold Facebook site that people have begun sharing their personal stories about Craig, people whose names I recognize from another time, another place. Most of the recollections are funny, many of them kind, some of them mischievous. That’s the way I remember Craig, funny, kind and mischievous. He was quite a remarkable fellow. I mourn the loss of Craig, his life and his poetry.

So, when I close my eyes and think of Craig, how do I remember him best? Craig is the “come on” inscriptions he wrote in everyone’s copy of Shells that evening at his rock-concert-like reading and book signing in the Denver of 2001. Craig is a pitcher of mojitos at Cuba Cuba (and another pitcher to for good measure). Craig is the warm pavement of my Capital Hill streets. Craig is the spiciest jungle curry on the menu of Tommy’s Thai. Craig is the intoxicating anise flavor of absinthe. Craig is Jeff Buckley singing Lilac Wine with a voice so sad & sweet, he’ll make you cry.

Craig Arnold

I have copied a letter that I have emailed to Aderholt, Sessions, and Shelby. If anyone else out there can do the same, I would greatly appreciate it. Please help if you can...

I am writing to you on behalf of a friend of mine who, two days ago, was reported missing in Japan. His name is Craig Arnold and he is a Yale Younger Poet, as well as a professor of English at the University of Wyoming. He went missing while hiking a volcano on a small Japanese island. We are afraid that the Japanese authorities are going to call off the search for him before he is found. There is a distinct possibility that Craig is still alive, as he has experience in hiking volcanoes. I don't know if there is anything that you can do on his behalf (contacting someone at the American embassy in Japan, contacting someone you may know in the Japanese government)...but, if there is, I beg you to do it for Craig’s sake. For additional information, you may visit the following blog site that has been set up to keep us updated on the search:
http://findcraigarnold.blogspot.com/

I appreciate all that you do, and all that you can do...

Regards,
Carol

If the log rolls over, we’re all going to die!

While cleaning out my work email, I discovered this blog entry that I meant to post back from June of 08. Better late than never, right?

6.25.08
So, Jolly Green and I were talking at work yesterday about the negative energy that some of our coworkers exude, and how, as Jolly Green said, it was very much like a swirling whirlpool of fear and threat that sucks you down. I snickered and said, “Yeah, it’s like ‘If the log rolls over, we’ll all drown.’” As I said it, I realized that she might not get the joke, so I waited a second for the sound of crickets when instead, JG busted out laughing and exclaimed, “God, I’ve not heard that joke in years!”

I was so glad that someone other than myself remembered such a stupid joke that I went and googled it to find the original full-text to share with everyone. I believe that the chap I stole this from is British. You will see why...

Voices In the Dunny
A man had been traveling in the night and it was getting quite late so he stopped at a motel for the evening. When he arrived at the motel, he asked if they had any spare rooms left. The receptionist replied, "Yes, but we only have room 13 left and the bathroom is believed to have ghost voices heard in it." Since the man was so tired, he took the room anyway. Later that night when the man was sitting on the toilet doing his business he heard voices calling out "When the log rolls over we will all be dead!" He left straight away and never returned. The next day a woman needed a room for the night and the same thing happened to her as the man the night before. A few days later an exorcist arrived at the hotel. He too got room 13, and that night when he was on the toilet doing his business he heard the voices as well. The exorcist immediately jumped up and ran around the room yelling "the power of Christ compells you!" He listened carefully and when he heard the voices again, they lead him back to the toilet. He slowly looked into the loo to see 3 ants sitting on a crap singing "when the log rolls over we will all be dead!!!!!."

Choke

The light was red. We were coming back from a 5K that Slim had just run in Oxford, and were stopped behind a big, white extended-cab Dooley that had every seat in it occupied. From the looks of things, the back seats were filled with children, the front seats with adults. The driver had what appeared to be a wand of mascara in her right hand, and was applying a fresh layer of lacquer while sitting at the light. I looked over at Slim and said, “She’s puttin’ on mascara…” The driver’s right hand quickly disappeared for a moment and then reappeared with a hair pick. The light still held. She began to pick at her straight-as-a-board hair. “I’ve witnessed women doing one thing or another while driving before, but I’ve never seen one actually going through the full beautification process…” Her right hand rapidly disappeared again, this time to reappear with a can of hairspray. There was a fog of hairspray ‘round and ‘round her head. The boy child seated directly behind her began a pantomime of choking and waving until the driver opened up the truck door and fanned out the fumes. At the same time, Slim and I were choking on our own incredulous laughter at the traffic light histrionics before our eyes. We would’ve given them a standing ovation, but the light turned green.