Celia – Page 21 – Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

Getting To Be a Lot Like Christmas

19. December 2022 · 3 comments · Categories: Domestic

Well, this next weekend, is Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and I think we have just about everything squared away. The last of the gifts that I ordered after doing so very well at New Braunfels’ Heritage Society museum last weekend were delivered on Friday, wrapped and set under the tree, near the tree, hung from the stocking hangers (to escape a pee-blessing from one of the cats establishing possession) or in the Christmas stockings for the designated recipients. The care-packages of Texas foods to my brother and to my sister’s families were mailed on Monday. The tree is up and decorated, my daughter’s Christmas village is laid out … and I have spent the last four days making fudge – the gift that we have been giving to friends, neighbors, establishments that we do business with … it seems that we can afford to give this bounty this year, having stashed away certain essential ingredients. For a good few years, we cut bite-sized bits of fudge and put them into paper cups, packaged in tins from the Dollar Tree, which made a pretty presentation, but that has just turned out to be labor-intensive, messy, wasteful and eventually too expensive. We’ll go with two- or three-inch square chunks wrapped in saran wrap and labeled with what flavor that it is, and stacked in pastry boxes … less messy, that way.

(Note to self – must do a separate nut-free package especially for the partner at Brakeworks, where all the routine work on our cars has been done for at least two decades. Justin is allergic to tree nuts …)

One last batch of fudge, to replace the one batch which has turned out to be less than optimal – there is always that one batch which fails to solidify properly. We did something wrong in following directions, mistakenly didn’t simmer the basic sugar-butter-condensed milk/crème mixture long enough to congeal, added a critical ingredient at the wrong time … or as mostly turns out with one of the most temperamental fudges, the Chocolate Mint Bavarian, didn’t melt the milk chocolate in a microwave

… or over a pot of simmering water. There’s always one batch which has to be thrown out as a flat failure. This we have come to accept.

And Saturday, we checked the last item of the list, driving up to Boerne so that Wee Jamie could have his picture taken with an obliging Santa. It took us a bit of time to have the Santa tracked down to his lair at J-Fork on the Main Street – we had thought to have lunch in Boerne, but all the places which served food which we might have relished were crowded … and eventually, we settled for some pastry at Richter’s, and resolved to pick up something to make supper out of at the meat market in Bergheim on our way home. That enterprise is now in the building which served as the general store, which was dim and cramped and had a bit of everything … but now is open under new management and is bright and airy. Honestly, I hope that they can keep it all going. The ground chuck that we bought for patty melts was fabulous., and Benjy the Dog is still working away at the length of cow leg-bone that we bought there for him.

Christmas, Closer and Closer

12. December 2022 · Comments Off · Categories: Book Event, Domestic

Thanks to a really splendid and profitable Saturday spent at the New Braunfels Heritage Society Museum of Texas Handmade Furniture (thank you, Leslie and Justin and all!) I could do a little impulse gift shopping for my daughter, Wee Jamie the Wonder Grandson and for my distant family in California, which now checks off one more item on my Christmas “to-do” list. We send my youngest brother one of the fruitcakes from Corsicana, which he loves, and my sister and her husband and family, a selection of only-Texas-available rubs, sauces and spices from HEB, to include a big bottle of Whataburger Spicy Ketchup. We think of this as a care package for the sadly deprived California branch of the family. Since we didn’t do Giddings Word Wrangler this year, we couldn’t send the bottle of Harley’s, bottle of which usually among the offerings in the swag bag for authors and which my sisters’ family loves, but what the heck, it’s available now through Amazon anyway.

The big thing – no, the two big things accomplished today were 1) getting everything mailed; this at the central post office on Perrin-Beitel, where for a miracle, every window was opened, so it all went briskly, although the line went out into the lobby. I quite like doing business at the central post office, by the way; sent mail and packages move fast, being that it is the central post office, and the staff are amazingly friendly and helpful. I have no idea of why this should be the exception in San Antonio, when tales of shoddy and abusive service elsewhere are legend – but I have never had a complaint about the post office staff, or that of the local Department of Motor Vehicles, either.

And 2) We got the Christmas tree assembled and decorated, mostly with the decorations that my daughter has begun acquiring for her own eventual Christmas tree – not the massive collection that I had gotten over the years. More importantly, all the assorted boxes and tubs which littered the living room and hall are moved out to the garage. This is a project that we had been putting off for some days, mostly because of the humongous chore that it presented … but it was important that we get it done, because this may be the year that Wee Jamie begins to acquire memories of family Christmas, the tree and decorations and lights and all … and my daughter wants to establish those memories firmly for him.

Christmas is a’Coming

07. December 2022 · 2 comments · Categories: Domestic

… perhaps the goose is getting fat but given how much a frozen goose or even a duck costs at the local grocery (which does stock such exotic fowl in the freezer case) the body mass index of a frozen goose will forever remain a mystery to me. We’ll do Beef Wellington for Christmas dinner, having maxed out our toleration for turkey leftovers after Thanksgiving. I blame this on Mom, whose’ insanely developed sense of thrift led her to prepare a gargantuan turkey for Thanksgiving, and then part it out into a series of leftover meals for most of the following month; Hot turkey sandwiches, cold turkey sandwiches, turkey croquettes, turkey stir-fry, turkey a la king, turkey and noodles, turkey pot pie… ad infinite. Just when we had finished the turkey soup, brewed from the bones and scraps of the carcass, here came Christmas with another month of eternal turkey, strong to save. Still, turkey and the interminable trail of leftovers is more appetizing than the bugs that our international self-selected overlords would want us to eat for supper, because of the allegedly-imperiled environment … ahh, enough of those cynical thoughts.

It’s coming on to Christmas, and although certain commercial establishments have been laying on the Christmas stuff for at least a month or so (looking at you, Hobby Lobby) now that Thanksgiving is done and dusted, in my house we are looking forward to Christmas. We have a lighted tree and a boatload of decorations, and my daughter has collected several lots of ornamental Santas, nutcrackers, angels, lighted candles, and a small city of small ceramic houses. Out go the usual bookshelf and tabletop ornaments, and in come the Christmas things. And we haven’t even gotten around to putting up the Christmas tree and decorating it, yet.

Our Christmas season really begins with Christmas on the Square in Goliad. I looked back in my various archives, and it appears that we did that event for the first time in 2009, and returned every year since then, on the first Saturday in December to participate with my books in Miss Ruby’s Corral of Authors. Sometimes we were in a pavilion, sometimes in a covered porch, or most often, in a small shop front on the Square. This year is the very first time that I went alone, as my daughter had her real estate brokerage Christmas party that very evening. The drive to Goliad is two hours each way; too exhausting a day to then go out and party all evening. So I went by myself, with two tubs of books; the Corral was only mildly busy this year, although we have known worse; the year that it was 20 degrees, with a howling icy wind comes to mind. I was disappointed at only selling five books, but one of the other authors only sold a single book, and she had brought a huge inventory. Wierdly, four of my sales were for sets of Lone Star Sons and Lone Star Glory; my YA collections which re-tell the Lone Ranger, only historically accurate and ditching the mask and the silver bullets and all.

Then, after decorating the inside of the house; the mantle, the bookshelves, the doorway, and the big shelf in the den, and hanging lights along the eaves outside, the next element is the yearly fudge making. We make big batches of fudge to give away to friends, neighbors, trusted businesses, delivery drivers, and a large plate each for the fire stationhouse across the way, and the police substation – all that is a chore which takes up much of a week, what with making, packaging and delivery. We like to do about six or seven varieties; regular chocolate with nuts and cranberries, brown sugar pecan, a white chocolate with coconut, peanut butter with chocolate, and a creamsicle orange or berry, and a couple of other more conventional chocolate fudge varieties. We hit upon this as a seasonal gift for friends and neighbors after a visit some years ago to a candy shop in Fredericksburg, after which my daughter mused, ‘how hard could it be?’ and it was such a hit with the immediate neighbors that we went on doing it. It’s a chore, and an not-inconsiderable expense, although to our relief it looks as if it will be doable this year, anyway. We have a stash of chocolate and other ingredients, and Costco has bulk chocolate on offer. So we’re good for this year. And that’s were our Christmas stands, by fits and starts – what about yours?

A Necessary Sense of Adventure

05. December 2022 · 2 comments · Categories: Domestic, Memoir

My daughter has been following a thread on one of her mom’s groups, to do with the military life; a discussion on what happens when the dependent spouse doesn’t really want to move on to the next assignment with the active military member. That, we agreed, likely spells doom for the relationship, either right away or somewhere down the road. My daughter and I both knew families – well, spouses, mostly, who basically confined themselves to the base, base housing, a tight circle of adjacent friends, and simmered for months or years with resentment over being separated from family and the community which they had come from. I remember a fellow servicewoman in Greenland, who had her mother mail her cake mixes, because she was too apprehensive to go and shop for simple ingredients at the little general store on the Danish side of the base. She was afraid the staff would be laughing at her.

Stationed next in Greece, I ran into many families who were mildly terrified by the rampant anti-Americanism in the local media, and among some local nationals there; they went from their local apartments to the base, to the BX and the club and back again, and never went anywhere else or saw anything interesting, and lived for the day they could pack out and leave Greece behind. Frankly, I never encountered anything of the sort personally, and I diddy-bopped all over Athens and the Attic Peninsula, small blond daughter in tow and driving an obviously foreign car with base license plates. I came back one day from an excursion to several fabric shops in the Plaka – that is, the old town in Athens, centered around the narrow streets at the foot of the Acropolis heights and went to the BX annex to buy matching thread and notions. Another woman there admired the bag full of pretty fabrics and asked where I had bought them, since there was nothing like them in the BX. When I told her how I left my car on base and took a regular Athens city bus downtown to the Zappeion Gardens and walked to the various little shops … holy moly, from her expression of horror and revulsion, you would have thought I went hitchhiking naked down Vouliagmeni and paid for rides with blow-jobs.

Later on, when I transferred from Greece to Spain, I took all the leave that I hadn’t taken during the tour in Greece and drove my own car to Spain. The car ferry from Patras to Brindisi, up the length of Italy, over the Brenner Pass into Austria, across Germany and France and into Spain, guided mostly by the Hallweg Road guide open on the passenger seat next to me. I only ever met one other military family, during that long eccentric journey, although I did meet a handful of other adventurous Americans. Over the six years we spent in Spain, several summers worth of leave were spent in long road trips, staying in the many campgrounds in Spain, to facilitate sight-seeing on the economy plan. I know that other military families did this, but again, I never met any of them in the campgrounds.

Shortly before we departed from Spain, I took the wife of a neighbor in San Lamberto firmly in hand and frog-marched her through the little grocery store on the ground floor of the apartment building that she and her husband and children lived in. I had met her by chance that afternoon, when she lamented that she had missed calling her husband at work to tell him to bring home a packet of frozen peas from the commissary. That’s when I lost it – I told her to collect up the peseta coins and notes that she had in the apartment; I would show here where she could buy a packet of frozen peas! And other stuff: ‘This is where they have the fresh bread, daily – pan, which is white bread, and pan integral, which is whole wheat. In here is the fresh milk – it comes in bladders, but the shelf-stable stuff is in cartons. The chocolate flavor is good and my daughter will drink it, but the regular long-life milk has an off-taste that we don’t like. This is the meat counter – just point to what you like the look of and say, ‘Media, or una kilo, por favor.’ Up there are bags of little lemons – just ask for ‘una bolsa limon.’ The case of frozen stuff is over here – this is ‘guisantes’ or peas. There’s a picture of peas on the front of the package – most grocery items do have a picture on the front! This is sugar – called ‘azucar’ – and ‘harina’, which is flour, and ‘queso’ – which is cheese. Yoghurt is over here. They spell it ‘yogur’ which is enough alike that you should recognize it…” I think she was good with shopping at the little grocery store, after that tour. I just thought it was a pity that she would so limit herself, when most things that she might want were available in the little grocery downstairs.

It purely amazed me how well one could get along with a limited vocabulary of necessary words: ‘Yes, no, please, thank you, excuse me, how much? Numbers from one to twenty Do you accept credit cards/traveler’s checks, half a kilo, please, left, right, stop here, take me to/the American base/railway station/youth hostel/museum,’ and the names for local food items or dishes. I used to know all this in about six languages, and got along very well, considering that I was an absolute dullard at languages otherwise. Needs must, though. And you need a sense of adventure, and a willingness to go out and try things. Otherwise, you’re just sitting in a room, wishing that you were somewhere else, and that’s no way to live a fulfilling life.

The Album Project

28. November 2022 · 4 comments · Categories: Domestic

A good few years ago – in the mid-1980s, as a matter of fact – when I was on home leave with my daughter at my parent’s then-half-built home in the wilds of Northern San Diego County, I had it my mind that my then elementary-school aged offspring should know about her various ancestors, since a number of them had already passed on. So I took a number of pictures of ancestral pictures in the family horde with my trusty Canon camera – this being, Oh, Best Beloved, before the wide availability of printer/scanner/copier/fax machines. Not that my parents would have ever embraced such technology with anything but the deepest suspicion. Although Dad would have been open to internet connection, and the endless possibilities presented to the DIY enthusiasts on YouTube. Mom remained and still remains adamant that such is a temptation to an indecent waste of time, at the very least. So I came home with a round of photographs of photographs, eventually to be developed and printed, and set into an assortment of small frames, for the edification of my daughter. See, my child – these are your ancestors!

Thank the deity for this fortunate impulse, and for the fact that I scanned a number of the resulting pictures in the years since – because my parents’ retirement home burned to the ground in 2003, destroying everything in it, including photo albums and all the original photographs. Gone Mom and Dad’s wedding album, the studio picture of Dad in his Army uniform, of Uncle Jimmy in his … and me in the official picture, taken at Lackland AFB in 1978, in a uniform jacket that wasn’t mine, and very dark lipstick that wasn’t mine, either. Granny Jessie had both of those official pictures displayed in a sacred place in her household, until her dying day. Which is mildly embarrassing, because Uncle Jimmy didn’t like his official picture either. He wrote in his letters home about it – letters that I fortunately transcribed before they were all burned in the 2003 conflagration. Die in a bloody war, and your fate is to be memorialized in a picture that you didn’t like and were only harassed by the family into having taken…

But anyway … the other fortunate thing about having taken pictures of pictures and scanned about all of them … is that I have them all, or at least most of them. And now I have the ability to print them out on photographic paper, having tweaked and corrected them through various photo-editing programs. The various framed versions all got pissed on and ruined by a particularly destructive cat over the last couple of years. Is there any more destructive element in the world than cat pee, other than straight-out nuclear? I don’t think so. All the framed versions and their frames too, are comprehensively ruined, and out into the trash they go. In this iteration, they took up too much space anyway. Now I am going to put them into an album, with everyone’s name and approximate year, for the edification of Wee Jamie, when he begins to wonder where he came from and who his ancestors were.