I’ll admit that it was a bit of a guy thing in its inception. If there is one Canadian holiday that demands adherence to tradition, it is our Thanksgiving with its turkey-and-all-the-trimmings menu. How many times have I waddled away from an October table in a tryptophan-induced daze looking for a soft chair in a quiet corner? Tryptophan is an amino acid in turkey that your brain converts to neurotransmitter serotonin which makes you sleepy. I looked it up and liked the idea of blaming the after effects of over-eating on science. But this year, suffering from the buttoned-down boredom of the pandemic, I craved a change. A seventeen pound beef brisket purchased on a whim at a local grocery store was just what my cabin-fevered imagination called for.

I started dropping hints about smoking this bad boy for Thanksgiving in August and by October my wife, Jenine, and daughter, Alison, had graciously decided to humor me and allow me to have at it. My son in law, Colin, was the key. He had a smoker and some useful culinary experience.

I’d never smoked a brisket before, so I first had to watch several dozen YouTube videos on how to trim and prepare this gargantuan hunk of meat for smoking. After listening to a lot of very large, southern-drawling, bearded men in camouflage baseball hats hold forth on the bidness of briskets, I was ready. The research paid off as I cut boldly into our Thanksgiving entrée to remove the unnecessary fat and separate the point from the flat (BBQ lingo for the smaller, fattier portion and the larger, leaner portion of this cut – which comes from the lower front of the chest of a beef animal, by the way – you know, the dangly, flappy part above and between the critter’s front legs).

I was up early for the trim and the rub (a seasoning of mixed spices prepared according to a secret recipe Colin uses for many grilled meats) and the brisket went into the smoker before 10AM.

We live fifteen minutes from Colin and Alison so I was unable to watch the smoking in progress, though I snuck back twice to peek through the glass door of the smoker. I soon realized that I’d left this seventy-five dollar hunk of classically cut meat in good hands. By suppertime it looked to be ready. But how would it taste? What if it was undercooked or overcooked or tough or, God forbid, the grandkids, Paityn and Samson, didn’t like it?

My worries were all for naught. The brisket was done to a turn, tender, juicy, and thoroughly delicious.

It was a case of “mission accomplished” as we sat down to enjoy our meal and give thanks, not just for the usual things we feel thankful for on this occasion, but for not having screwed up the meal. The grandkids liked it and the girls graciously applauded our efforts and added a wonderful everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-salad, grilled asparagus, stuffed mushrooms and a dessert Jenine calls “Sex In A Pan” which tastes as good as it sounds.

I was still waddling and yawning when it was all over, so maybe it wasn’t the tryptophan after all.

September 15, 2020

Most years we spend six weeks camping in our RV, half of that in June and half in September to avoid the crowds. This year June was a bust due to the uncertainties of the pandemic, but we managed three weeks this fall in Duck Mountain Park. It was cold and it rained most of the time, but we had a half-dozen good days and the wildlife was co-operative. Despite the ugly weather I had a stack of good books at hand so I was a reasonably happy camper. I also came back with a 20,000 word jump on a new novel which will be a good base to build on through the coming winter.

https://www.discovermoosejaw.com/chab/a-gift-of-scars

Normally we’re not technophiles. We have laptops but we have no cell phones, no microwave, no “smart” devices of any kind. But I bought Jenine a robot vacuum cleaner for Christmas. Despite the fact that it was a decidedly less than romantic gift, she loves it. She calls it Sparky. That ‘s the good news. The bad news is it’s creeping me out.

Sparky’s micro-chipped innards send it buzzing around the house on a hunt for dirt and dog hair from our two mutts, literally mapping the floorplan in its quest to boldly go where no vacuum (at least no self-propelled vacuum) has gone before. The dogs view him (note pronoun used – a case of technomorphizing) with suspicion and stay well out of his path, not an easy task as he scurries around the house, often seemingly at random, trying to cope with Jenine’s penchant for rearranging the furniture.

He seeks to enter every nook and cranny and to devour every dust bunny under the furniture. He is so insistently meticulous about baseboards that I expect to start finding the odd one missing, carried off to Sparky’s secret lair somewhere. Sometimes the little bugger sneaks up on me when I’m reading and nudges my foot. “Excuse me, I need to get by.” I have to sit and read while Sparky works, if only to stop myself from following him around and talking to him. “Don’t go in there, stupid, you’ll get stuck.”

It’s always a relief when he returns to his docking station and plugs himself in to recharge. At least I don’t have to feed and water him, though it would be nice if I could let him outside to empty himself discreetly in a far corner of the yard.

I hate to say it, but Sparky is one of the family now.

Jenine told me the other day, while we sat on the deck watching a hummingbird at the feeder, that when she was a young girl growing up in Walla Walla, Warshington (that’s how people from there say it), her babysitter dated Kurt Russell, a handsome lad who went on to become a Mouseketeer, a major Hollywood star, and the long time paramour of Goldie Hawn.

After I gently accused her of name dropping, my competitive spirit raised its ugly head and I dropped a name of my own. I told her the story, true in every particular, of how I met an American icon whose star has always burned bright in the hearts of countless millions across the continent. A man who will be remembered long after Kurt Russell is forgotten. Indeed, a man whose legend has already survived intact for many decades since his passing.

In the early 1970’s I was hurrying through the lobby of a new hotel in Grande Prairie, Alberta, late for a service club luncheon in one of its meeting rooms. A diminutive man dressed in white occupied a comfortable chair by a large window. As I turned to look and then to realize who he was, I did a physical double-take worthy of Curly of the Three Stooges. This caused the little man to chuckle. He waved me over, rose from his chair and extended his hand. I shook it. I shook the hand of Colonel Harlan Saunders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame.

“Yes,” he said in a soft southern drawl. “It’s really me,” and he waved me into another chair beside him where we chatted for an all too brief moment before a young man in sunglasses appeared and hustled him outside into a waiting car.

The Colonel, as the world knows him, was a true gentleman of the first water. I remember him, his immaculate dress, his snow-white garb, goatee and hair interrupted only by black framed glasses, a neatly tied black string tie and black shoes polished to a mirror shine. I remember that he spoke softly and with a smile and that he avoided too much eye contact as if he was shy or feared giving offense. I knew that he had sold his business to a Kentucky politician. He told me he was under a personal services contract to appear at grand openings of new KFC franchises across North America (including the one then recently opened in Grande Prairie) and he confided that in his opinion the gravy wasn’t as good as it used to be.

KFC, the thinned-down name of what used to be, much more accurately, Kentucky Fried Chicken, remains one of my guilty pleasures. I indulge myself every other month or so and when I do I always think fondly of the man whose image graced the side of the bucket.

Colonel Harlan Saunders is the biggest celebrity I’ve ever met – but perhaps I’ve lived a sheltered life.

Then she told me she has also met Robert Conrad (The Wild Wild West) and that Adam West (TV’s Batman) was from Walla Walla and she was snarky about it. I pointed out to her that these lesser luminaries were not in the same league as the Colonel. Not even close.

In Act II, Scene II of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Juliet asks Romeo, “What’s in a name?” In the case of those star-crossed lovers the answer was murder and mayhem as their feuding families had at each other in an Italian version of the Hatfields and McCoys. In my case, the answer is that it’s just plain annoying.

My full name is John Gregg Norman; John after my father, so I was compelled to go by my second name to avoid being called Junior. Oddly, my mother and sister were similarly afflicted and were also called by their second names. Perhaps there is a family curse that I don’t know about.

To compound the problem with my name, John, Gregg, and Norman can all be used as both Christian names and surnames. I get called Norman Gregg a lot and I’m still called John by people in positions of authority and telephone solicitors. We won’t get into what I call them.

I had always been given to understand that I was named Gregg from the title of a typing and shorthand manual my mother studied as a young woman, though when she was in her 90’s she let slip that when she was a girl there was a hot young British pilot training at an airbase near the family farm who had that name. I know what you’re thinking, but no, I was born several years after the flyboy was long gone and my mother, whose parents had immigrated from England, was far too proper for anything beyond a wistful look over the fence in any event.

While I was growing up at home, I was called Buster by my dad for reasons which remain a mystery. Buster sounds kind of rough and ready, but I was a bookish little bugger. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking on Dad’s part. My friends back home called me Norm. Happily, that was long before George Wendt so brilliantly portrayed Norm, the chubby barfly on the hit TV series, Cheers. My mother, my sister, and my teachers were the only ones who called me Gregg and then only when they were mad at me. To everyone else in town I was known as Johnny Norman’s boy. Nowadays, on my rare trips back to my home town, I’m referred to simply as Rae’s brother (Rae is my sister).

My name is spelled with a double g on the tail end. That’s how it appeared on the cover of the typing manual. But that wasn’t enough to avoid the confusion and embarrassment of sharing both my Christian name and surname with Australian golf star, Greg (one g) Norman who was popular during the later part of the last century. I played golf too, but there came a day when I played in a Pro-Am tournament and was getting ready to tee off to start the first round. Each golfer was announced by name over the public address system. There were titters and guffaws from the gallery as I stepped onto the tee box, but that was nothing compared to what followed when I promptly shanked my drive into the trees. My foray into the world of golf was short-lived.

During a good portion of my adult life, thinking to avoid confusion, I dubbed myself J. Gregg Norman, with business cards and letterhead to match, only to find out many years later after I’d gone back to using plain old Gregg that my family thought it was pretentious as hell.  

If all of that wasn’t bad enough, I inadvertently created my Facebook page in the name of Gregg Norman Author which has caused at least one wag to ask if Author was my surname.

So, you can call me John or Gregg or Norman or any combination thereof and I will answer promptly, if not happily.

Johnny Cash lamented in a hit song about being a boy named Sue. He didn’t know how lucky he was.

I’ve now been a Facebooker for a couple of months, a certified page-pushing member of a social medium I once decried as a totally bogus alternate reality for people with nothing else to do.

And now, well… mea culpa. I humbly apologize, especially to the scores of people who have friended me in very short order and who have made me feel like a complete heel for doubting the value of their forum.

Having lived in relative isolation for the last decade, I am not unhappy having so many people to listen to or speak to (when I feel like it, of course) without having to buy drinks for any of them. I leap out of bed each morning, and while the coffee brews and I organize my pens and notebooks for the day’s writing effort, I scroll down to see what’s up with the old and new friends to whom I’ve connected. It’s a pleasant piece of my day.

But with a platform on Facebook come some awful responsibilities – like realizing that declining a friend request or having one of my requests declined or ignored can be hurtful, or like learning (from my wife, who is a Facebook veteran and who is all-knowing about such things) how to wield the power of unfollowing or snoozing otherwise well-meaning folks who insist on showing me every single dog and cat up for adoption in rural Alabama, or folks who fancy themselves as political pundits when we already have far too many of them.

Perhaps the best thing about my Facebook experience has been the discovery that so many people still have a great sense of humor. Every day there is a joke, a photo or a video that makes me smile, sometimes laugh out loud. It’s a welcome relief from the news of the main stream media, a brightness in what otherwise might be a darker day.

One of the first people I connected with, a writer/environmentalist I hadn’t had contact with in many years, welcomed me to the Facebook fold and said he hoped that I would be able to manage my presence there better than he did. After two months of reading all of his posts, I think he manages his Facebook page with enviable style and compassion.

As for me, I suppose I manage and I do enjoy it, though I cringe when my good wife gives me one of those ‘I told you so’ looks from the other side of the breakfast table.

I still haven’t decided whether I am evolving or devolving, but I’m having fun with it. Maybe an old dog can’t learn new tricks – but he can learn to roll over. 

July 15, 2019

Decades ago, in another life, I got cornered at a cocktail party by a yuppie stockbroker who was working the room. I gathered, after ten minutes during which he talked and I listened, that his life consisted of work at his brokerage house, jogging, and virtually nothing else to hear him tell it. Finally, when he seemed to run out of steam and was scanning the room for his next victim, he said absently, “So, what do you do?”

What I did back then and what I do now, and all the many and varied things I’ve done in the years in between since I retired twenty-five years ago, have led many to think that I’m not playing with a full deck, that my elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top, that I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer… you get the picture.

Maybe I’m not the brightest bulb on the tree (okay, enough with the stupid analogies). The point I would argue is that a life well-lived is a life rich in experiences and memories. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a stockbroker and/or a jogger, but if that is all, if that is the sum total of what you are, you are drastically short changing yourself.

Stretching your spirit to embrace all the stuff you’ve had on your bucket list for too many years is a good thing. It will pay valuable dividends when you are too old to do much more than relive your memories.

Crazy? Possibly. Hell, probably. But I’m okay with that.