The Wine Commonsewer™

Decoration Day

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

Today is Memorial Day, Decoration Day, as ordered by General Logan. A day set aside to honor the Civil War dead, a war that killed more Americans than all other wars combined......

The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country and during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.

I've been to Gettysburg, where 51,000 men were killed, maimed, or wounded. In three days. Until that day, I didn't realize the national cemetery where President Nixon's great grandfather lies, contains only Union dead. The Confederate dead were buried in shallow graves around the battlefield, mostly to deal with the stench of death. Some bodies were claimed by families arriving by wagon in the days following the battle, but most were relocated elsewhere in the ensuing few years.

Unfinished Confederate Grave Site Gettysburg appears courtesy of Library of Congress

Our high school US History class taught us about President Lincoln's incredible, two minute speech that recast the war not only as a struggle to maintain the union, but to ensure the survival of larger human ideals. But nobody mentioned that.....

Five days before the start of the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate President Jefferson Davis dispatched Vice President Alexander Hamilton Stephens to negotiate a prisoner of war exchange with Lincoln under a flag of truce. Davis also gave Stephens license to proceed with broader peace negotiations. On July 4, Stephens sat aboard a boat in Chesapeake Bay awaiting permission to sail up the Potomac. Once news of victory at Gettysburg reached Lincoln, however, he denied the Confederate vice president’s request to pass through Union lines to come to Washington, DC, for negotiations.

Could a cessation of hostilities have been brokered? None of us will ever know the answer to that question because the meeting never took place. But we do know what happened after Gettysburg, and it wasn't pretty.

 

Think about this today: Every other country in the civilized world abolished slavery without killing off half a generation in a bloody civil war.

 

As Ever,

Why Men Shouldn't Take Phone Messages

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

Before this blog existed and long before there was FB. There was the world's longest-running, floating website, which was the forerunner of this blog. In the same way that a floating crap game keeps moving, my floating website reached you, Gentle Reader, anywhere you were at, so long as there was a way to download email. Several times a week, the emails went out to hundreds of subscribers. Jokes, tax information, an occasional wine review, and commentary on current events. Many of you reading this today were on that email list and I thank you for your continuing interest after all these years. 

Way back when the Clintonians were president, chicks had big hair (or grunge hair), and we watched The Juice cowering in the back seat of a white Bronco in a slow speed police pursuit, I posted this to my email subscribers. It was fun and got a huge response.

The memory came to me unbidden as I was pouring the House Blond her morning coffee and I thought how fun, nobody has seen this in a long time, I shall post this today. Oddly, though, in memory, this seemed funnier.

Of course it was funnier, because it was relevant. But, culturally, we've moved on. Message taking is pretty much obsolete. At least for the under-fifty non-Luddite crowd. Many of us don't even have land-lines and even if one exists, chances are that the Gyna Colleges is texting your GF directly, cutting out the middle man entirely.

I suppose that I should have saved it for Throwback Thursday.

As Ever,

2012 Sterling Anniversary Red Blend

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

I hadn't had a glass of Sterling in a long time. Quite frankly, I thought the wine was a bit expensive and a bit astringent. IOW, the wines in question, which were mostly Merlots, weren't working well on the TWC Price/Value scale.

Mrs TWC surprised me with a magnum bottle of Sterling's 50th Anniversary blend the other day. Although the Anniversary Blend is a $15.00-$20.00 wine, the magnum only set her back $24.00 at the local Costco. And it's pretty good.

The wine is Merlot based, which is a shout out to the original winemaker, Ric Forman, who was the first California winemaker to vintage date a California Merlot. There is also Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, and Cabernet Sauvignon in the mix. The wine is dry, medium bodied, fruit forward, and complex. Drink now (mine's gone) or cellar it for a few years.

I enjoyed this wine while swapping lies with friends on Facebook and then, later, with an episode of Justified. You, Gentle Reader, might want to serve this with grilled steak or hearty Italian.

As Always

Thirty Years Later

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

Ours was a smallish wedding at a chapel somewhere in Anaheim. It lasted too long, in part because the Most Reverend Joseph L Montoya just kept right on. And on. And on. Worse: the staff left the heater on for a week and it was 95 degrees in the chapel at show time. More than one great aunt caught the vapors and had to be carried out. The grandfathers dragged the bride down the aisle in jig time, which left Mrs TWC staring at the guests through the remaining seven minutes of the studio version of Beginnings. Worth it for James Pankow's one minute trombone solo, though.

 

Lisa was still in school and I was scrambling around trying to figure out how to make payroll about every Friday, so there wasn't a lot of money. We did the whole wedding for about a grand, including the two cases of cheap champagne. Putting that into perspective, that would be about $2,200.00 in modern money.

We are still grateful to the moms and the sisters who put together platters of tasty victuals. I kid you not, it was better fare than many catered weddings I've attended.  My sister, Mo, made an astonishing, three tier cake from scratch. Unlike commercial bakeries today, where it's all about looks and the cake is cardboard and Crisco, it was to-die-for good. So good that my favorite uncle had three pieces. We didn't even get the proverbial piece to put in the freezer for some anniversary down the road.

We hired my brah-in-law to guard the champagne fountain from the kids, but after his fourth glass he was serving all comers, including my then-13 YO SIL, who was as hammered as he was. Good times. That's my good friend Terry Smith, but you can see Uncle Rick lurking on the other side of the fountain.

The down side of doing things on the cheap is that the photographer was worse than awful. Good thing Ma was there with her Instamatic, because nothing that guy shot was worth printing.

At the end of it we were exhausted and famished. We shared a forgettable, overpriced dinner at a long defunct steak house. In the morning we were off to Lost Wages for the honeymoon. We stayed at the Dunes, which was the last of the Mafia casinos and left this mortal earth in 1993. The upscale Bellagio resides on the grave site of the old Dunes Hotel.

As Ever,

Happy Mother's Day, Ma

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

Ma will be 88 years old this August. She has given up dancing on Saturday nights and the circulation in her legs could be better, but she still gets around pretty well.

This is us, in Pop's red Chevy convertible, circa 1958.

As Ever,

Happy Mother's Day

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

Leaning up against the coffee maker this morning was a business size envelope with a note on the outside. For Mom. In keeping with Anna Jarvis' original vision of what Mother's Day should be, inside was a simple, heartfelt message of love from my son to his mother. He included this photo, which was taken on a chilly, rainy afternoon in June 2009 at the Painted Desert.

As Always,
 

Snails Are Cannibals

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

Although May can be windy and cold here in So Cal, rain is seldom on the calendar. Last night's rain wasn't enough to cure the drought, but it washed the dust off, freshened the air, and will help keep the green things alive for a few more days. The morning smells faintly of cottonwood and sycamore, more strongly of sage and anise. The anise aroma is from the natives we called licorice plants when we were vagrant Boy Sprouts.

After the rain, the cool, damp morning brings the snails come out of hiding which gives me the opportunity for genocide. Killing things doesn't generally do much for me, but I do make an exception for laying waste to the snail population. I hate those things with a passion and I take an unseemly, perverse pleasure in crushing the little bastages. I lost track of the death count but I crushed them for fifteen or twenty minutes this morning. That was in between tossing the ball for Beanie Boy to fetch, so there is some time loss there.

I'm sure I killed hundreds of the monsters, all of which are descendants of the snails that hitched a ride home on six-packs of annuals and gallon shrubs purchased at Home Despot and Lowes. No charge. Thankeee. Something that's rarely mentioned is the hitchhiking pests that spread like colds at an elementary school playground. And don't get me started on my infestation of nutsedge. That's a nasty weed that had to be one of the plagues dumped on the Egyptians. You can't kill it and after the nuclear holocaust there will be cockroaches and nutsedge.

Did you know snails are cannibals?

The House Blond Sets A School Record for the 800

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

The House Blond called me around six to tell me the district finals were running way, way ahead of schedule. Since we're like a Dwight Yoakum tune (a thousand miles from nowhere) I hopped in the truck and skedaddled.

And, of course, there's a school play at Centennial HS as well as the track meet finals, so the parking is sparse. I'm about to the gate when I hear the announcer say.....and, Santiago's Katherine Snell......But it doesn't register immediately. Cuz she's not Katherine, she's Katie.

Precious seconds later I'm running for the gate almost as fast as she is running the track. Running and fishing in my pocket for the wad of cash Mrs TWC left on the dresser that I knew I'd need. The big guy taking the money, who looks like he played guard for USC ten years ago, sees me coming and makes me out as a gate crasher. He's half out of his plastic cafeteria chair with thoughts of the glory days running through his head when I throw the five dollar bill at him while shouting that my daughter is running RIGHT NOW. I didn't bother with the senior discount.

I got about five shots of her crossing the finish line through the chain link. Give me a break, how stupid is it to have a six foot tall chain link fence around the perimeter of a football field? WTH kind of nonsense is this?

She ran the 800 meter in 2.22, which is both a personal record and a school record for her high school.

Later, she ran the 4X400, which is a team relay. Each of the four team members runs 400 meters, handing off the baton to the next person.

I wasn't quick enough with the settings to get a good photo of the hand-off in the dying light. And BTW, it was got dang windy and cold for a May evening. It happens in So Cal sometimes.

Bonus:

 

 As Always, 

Cinco de Mayo and the Roots of Taco Bell

Buenos Días Amables Lectores,

When we was vagrant yoots, El Jeronimo de Crow refused to allow anyone to eat taco food in his car. That was a smart move on his part but it meant that when we snaffled up Taco Bell tacos, the chowing down was mostly done while sitting on a faux adobe slumpstone wall outside the fast fooder. 

Unlike modern America, authentic Mexican food was pretty much confined to kitchens and eateries in the barrios of So Cal. We were fine with Taco Bell and suffered under no illusions of authenticity. We were hungry and it was tasty. My theory is that all fast food was considerably better back when. Except maybe Jack in the Box, which was often referred to as Chit in the Box.

In the early 1950's, my pop ran a Goodyear tire store in Berdoo near the original Mickie Dees on E Street where he often ate lunch. That was when the McDonald brothers ground their own meat fresh daily, one reason why fast food was better. Dad also frequented the Mitla Cafe on Route 66 as did another guy named Glen Bell, who was fascinated with the tacos. Bell's original Taco Bell tacos were riffed off of the hard shell tacos that have been served at the Mitla Cafe in Berdoo since 1937.

Though Mitla's serves up platters of authentic Mexican food, I'm not sure if the hard shell tacos could be considered authentic or if they were merely an early incarnation of Cal-Mex food. But they've been serving them for 78 years and that seems pretty authentic to moi. 

Whole story here.

Photo Credits:

Taco Bell building, unknown

Mitla's Cafe circa late 1950's appears courtesy of Mitla Cafe

Happy Cinco de Mayo.

Endless Summer

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

Not the surfers. The drink called Endless Summer, which really takes two people to finish off. I don't know what's in it, but I suspect rum, papaya juice, pineapple juice, guava juice, lime juice, curacao, triple sec, and the tropical kitchen sink. Turns out that I was close but it also contains tequila and peach schnapps.

At the time, I was paying attention when the good waitress brought it to a nearby table at the Rum Fire bar at the Sheraton Waikiki and I was pleased to get the shot of the drink. Then there was also the selfie.

Artist? Or Creeper? We report. You decipher.

Rum Fire seems a bit of an odd name for a drinking establishment. The visual I get is this.....

 

The Thai Tacos were pretty tasty, but I especially enjoyed the Kahuku Shrimp Bao, which is apparently a local specialty that was popularized by the North Shore shrimp trucks. The shrimp is crunchy and served on a soft bun with spicy black bean aioli, onion, and cilantro. The Boy's palate has broadened considerably and he was rewarded with pretty decent seared Ahi.

Aloha,