Suzanne took this photo at CHERYL’S ON 12TH.This is the place, for good breakfast eats.Just taking a seat for breakfast in Portland. Suzanne snapped this photo, too.Doesn’t Suzanne have the most serene face?! She calms my sometimes too-wild mind with her Lasso o’ Being Serene.The decor at CHERYL’S was funky and welcoming at the same time.You can look up a mannequin’s skirt on your way in and/or out the door at CHERYL’S.My old face is getting soft. My skin is resting more and more of the day and night now. It’s been very busy all of my life. I don’t mind it one bit.
Bow Tie o’ the Day was hungry. This short jaunt to Portland was not turning out to be the easy, relaxing trip we had planned. There were no dangerous or sketchy or unconquerable things happening, but it seemed like no matter what we set out to do or see, there was a clear impediment. We still had a ball. We just had to go to Plan B every single time we tried to execute our Plan A’s. I shall forever refer to this trip to Portland as “Vacation Heck, By A Thousand Small Snags.” Our trip’s constant need for finagling and maneuvering did not quite fall far enough to reach the level of Vacation Hell, but still…it merits its own name.
CHERYL’S is a restaurant our hotel people recommended, and they were right to do so. It was a local diner-type place, just a few blocks from the hotel. It would have been a pleasant walk to get there, just minutes away—except for the biting wind which hung around after the bigly snowstorm which left ice everywhere. The wind, of course, was not at our backs as we made our journey to food. Brushing the windblown ice crystals out of my eyebrows as we walked into CHERYL’S, I told Suzanne I did not care if wherever we were going next was only a block away—we were going to go there in a cab. I recall saying at some point, “I am too old to be cold if I don’t absolutely have to, even if it’s for less than a minute.” Of course, after we had eaten a full meal in a warm place, and had lingered and laughed at our cozy table for a while, I didn’t mention my newly declared MUST. TAKE. TAXI. EVERYWHERE. ON VACATION. WHEN. IT’S. CHILLY. OUTSIDE. rule. We just buttoned up our coats and acted like the brave LDS pioneer children who are our cultural ancestors and we sang as we walked, and walked, and walked, and walked, and walked—through the wretched, freakish Portland cold—wherever we went that day. And a good time was had by all.🤠
BTW I must disclose that CHERYL’S served dreamy beignets that were lighter than helium and yet chock full o’ sweetness. Eat there once, if only to eat one of their beignets.
After our flight from SLC, we found ourselves at the Portland airport for much longer than we had anticipated. We were surprised at how chilly it was as we patiently waited in the line for a taxi to our hotel. Now, remember we were already nearly 4 hours late getting to Portland because our flight had been delayed a number of times in SLC. We were only sixth in the taxi line, but almost forty-five windy, freezing minutes later, we were still still standing there and still sixth in the line. Where the bleep were the taxis? My butt was frozen and my dentures chattered. Eventually, we finally scored a taxi without pulling any dirty tricks. It was early evening and we simply wanted to get to our room and vegetate for a bit, then go out to eat.
What we did not know at that point is that the Portland area was experiencing an unusual snow and ice storm, especially for this time of year. Honestly, it didn’t seem nearly as gnarly as most of the freakish Utah storms I’ve driven in. But for Portland, this storm was a bigly deal. Once we were on the road to the city, it was a ride of inches. We were going nowhere slowly. On the bright side , we were warm. It took us probably an hour to drive maybe 2 miles. We were at a 4-way intersection at the foot of a hill and we were undeniably stuck. Cars were stuck all around us. Our taxi driver tried valiantly to dig us out of the predicament, but he was also part of the problem because he didn’t seem to know any of the tricks for getting unstuck in snow. He didn’t understand the art of rocking the car as you lightly give it gas. And, yup, he was a desperate pedal-to-the-metal wheel-spinner. The snow was flying high and wildly from our taxi tires. Because of insurance concerns, we couldn’t offer to try to drive us out of snow and ice. We waited. We didn’t move for at least another hour. You can see the taxi fare meter at $100.06 in one of these photos: we went nowhere, and the fare kept adding up. But we were warm. This is the place in the story where I must admit I had to strategically get the lower half of my body far enough out of the stuck taxi at one point to relieve myself in the darkness. Our driver had called his friend to bring another taxi with bulkier winter-driving muscles to come rescue Suzanne and me. We waited some more, and the second taxi dude eventually showed up—unstuck and warm—a ways down the block. (FYI When we switched into the second taxi, the first taxi driver said we owed him nothing. But he had worked so hard for so long to get us unstuck that we couldn’t not give him a robust tip.) We transferred ourselves and our bags to the heavy-duty taxi, hoping our hotel hadn’t given our room away already because we were long past our check-in time. Suzanne had called the hotel earlier to let them know we would be very late. Even so, messages don’t always get to the right people, so you don’t know for sure until you show up. The second taxi delivered us to our hotel safely and without problem. For exactly $100.
At the Hotel Lucia, our room was waiting for us exactly as reserved. We knew our hotel did not have its own restaurant, so as we checked in, we asked if any restaurants nearby were still open. We needed to grab some dinner. They were not. Everything had closed down earlier than usual because of the storm—in order for workers to get home before the weather situation got worse. Our hotel clerk told us the Hotel Lucia had agreed to give rooms for the night to some restaurant workers who couldn’t get home in the storm. In return, the restaurant manager sent trays of the day’s leftovers to the Hotel Lucia. Our hotel clerk told us we were welcome to some of the gourmet food the hotel had been given. We jumped at the generosity, and a clerk brought up two overflowing trays of a variety of yummy foods right to our room. Everything was lukewarm, but we did not complain. In fact, I ate at least four slices of some of the best prime rib I have ever tasted. All in all, we had a rather bumpy day getting from SLC to our destination, but it ended with a prime rib cherry of generosity on top.🍒
We hadn’t flown anywhere for three years, and then I had the brilliant idea to buy Bruce Springsteen tickets for his concert in Portland, OR, which was scheduled for February 25th. Since Bruce wasn’t coming to SLC, the closest places we could catch him were Denver or Portland. We talked about it and realized the safer “weather” choice for flying in late February was Portland. Statistically, that’s true. Unfortunately for us, we were flying in a plane, and not in a statistic. To be fair, during the week of our flight, it wouldn’t have mattered what city we had chosen for our destination: most of the country was pelted with freakish snowy weather. When I woke up on the day we were scheduled to fly and checked the status of the flight we would be taking later that morning, I saw we had a slight delay of thirty minutes. So far, so good. Bow Tie o’ the Day was ready to go.
At the SLC airport, we sat down in the boarding area at our gate with plenty of time to spare, and then we began our normal airport routine. We people-watch, which is the best free entertainment there is, because people are, well, so peopley. Then we take turns wandering through the airport shops while one of us stays planted with our bags at our seats. I buy us a bunch of airport-priced Diet Cokes and snacks to see us through our waiting and our flight. To be completely honest, I bought a couple of “just in case” of books, which is also a traditional part of our waiting-in-an-airport routine. And finally, we take turns making one last pit stop in the ladies room before boarding. We were ready to board the plane when we we were hit with another flight delay, and another, and another. That’s right: 4 delays. It was a long day in the belly of SLC International Airport. I must admit there was music to entertain us—since we were sitting close to a newly minted sister missionary who just happened to be nervously humming LDS hymns for hours on end. Bless her little heart. Yay for her. Hours later, as we at finally boarded the plane for our journey, I kept my eye out for the humming young missionary—saying my own little prayer that our seats were nowhere within earshot of her anxious humming. We lucked out on that wish. The flight to Portland—to see Bruce—was on.
According to one Xmas present Suzanne gave me, my behavior last year got me onto Santa’s “naughty” list. I tried so hard to be good, but I won’t argue about the results. I trust Suzanne’s judgment. I didn’t just get a regular lump o’ coal for Christmas, I received a “Big Ass” lump o’ coal—in the form of an oversized bar o’ soap. I know the lump o’ coal soap is a sign I was bad, but the soap smells so heavenly I might want to earn a spot on the naughty list again this year, so I can be gifted another mellifluous “big ass” bar o’ charcoal soap for the sole purpose of washing all of my bad away.
It might surprise y’all to know that Mom has surpassed me in being naughty every year, for decades. She’s better than me, even at being bad. Every Christmas, she got an entire mountain of coal as a present from Dad. Visions of toasty fires, 24/7, in our living room fireplace danced in her head. I kid you not: Mom started a fire in the fireplace upon the occasion of late September’s first chill, and that fire kept going until at least April. She took great pleasure in feeding the fireplace one lump o’ her naughty coal after another, through winter and far into spring if the temperatures were still wintry. Yup, around the holiday season, Dutson’s would deliver at least a half-ton of coal chunks behind our house. The taller the coal pile, the happier Mom was with it. Mom thought it was the best gift every year. She tended to the fire in the fireplace as if it were one of her grandkids learning to swim. She kept her eye on the fire’s progress, and fulfilled its every need. Mom’s fire always gave off perfect warmth and was maximum gorgeous. She loved her lumps of coal, and she loved telling people that a pile o’ coal was the Christmas gift Dad thought she deserved. 🔥
I chose a pine-cone-and-berry Bow Tie o’ the Day, and coupled it with my dogs-and-cats-in-Santa-hats Shirt o’ the Day. Don’t miss the peppermint stick stripes of the Pocket Square o’ the Day. And note the glittery, gold reindeer antlers head band I was able to set atop my Hat o’ the Day: my beloved fedora I’ve had since 1984, just before I graduated from WSU. That makes the hat 38 years old. The fedora is still in astoundingly dapper shape both for being that old, and for having been dragged across the country to live with me in Virginia, then Maryland, and then back to Utah again—where I and my fedora have lived now for 22 consecutive years.
Time does fly. I feel it fly more quickly now that I can see the end of my mortality coming closer. My death used to be statistically so far ahead of me that I rarely considered it. I think about it a little bit more often these days. In fact, I must admit the topic comes into my mind in some way or another almost daily now—especially since my Cranky Hanky Panky has had to have two major surgeries within 3 years. I don’t obsess over what I hope is my far-in-the-future passing, but there are legal and financial things that need to be put into place, so somebody else doesn’t have to figure out what I would have wanted done. And you know all the material things we spend decades of our lives accumulating? A great deal of that has got to go. I don’t want to leave all that stuff for anybody else to have to deal with when I die, so I am—for the most part—done accumulating. And while I am still walking the earth, I’m now working on passing on things I’ve acquired. It’ll probably take me years to accomplish this feat, but I intend to gift my eclectic and eccentric collections to various people who I think will be most likely to take care of my beloved objects with tenderness, just like I have done while I’ve owned them. I have always tried my best to be mindful of my various and sundry stewardships—stewardships of material stuff, of people and animals in my life, of the rights I have as a citizen of the USA, and of all that I’ve learned and know to be true. I have tried to tend to my beliefs and love my neighbors, always. I’m in a good place in my soul, and death, whenever it comes, is nothing I fear at all. 🎀 🎄
Yup, we went to BAMBARA again this year for our Feast o’ Thanks. It was chilly enough outside that I brought out my Suzanne-made wintry cape for Thanksgiving 2022. I went with a Tie o’ the Day festooned with a prominent pumpkin pie. I am including a picture of the menu, so you can see how yummified our eats were. And everything brought to our table was superior. I was partial to the dessert, of course. Suzanne and I were both pleasantly surprised by the tart green beans. Suzanne chose what turned out to be, according to her face, a do-over bottle of a Riesling wine. She granted me permission to smell her filled glass, and even from merely sniffing, I could tell the wine would have a splendid taste. For my part, I drank four Diet Cokes throughout dinner. I swear I felt a bit tipsy.
As we were finishing up and getting ready to leave, Suzanne gave me a look, and I gave her a look. We had been thinking the same thing at exactly the same time. She whispered it first: “I want us to buy that guy’s Thanksgiving dinner.” I told her I was just going to propose the same thing to her. There was a guy sitting a few tables from us, eating all alone. He looked really, really alone. And so we paid for his meal and left before he was informed someone already paid his check. We hope it perked him up.
Tie o’ the Day comes to you from the pages of my 1980 Delta High School yearbook—interestingly enough, called The Triangle. Suzanne went off to see a play without me last night, and I must have been feeling lonely (not) and nostalgic (not) because I found myself leafing through old yearbooks. I’m so glad that’s what I did, because I found bigly treasure. It’s a yearbook message from my English teacher, Bill Ronnow, a non-Deltan who taught at DHS for only my Sophomore year before he gathered up his family and headed off to law school. Although he taught at DHS for only a short time, he made a bigly impression on me. You know how sometimes—and I mean very rarely—you meet someone and you just know that they “get” you? Mr. Ronnow and I simply understood each other from the get-go. He was of the hippie variety—always a plus for me. Our mutual respect for the infinite fun and complexity of sentences and the literature they created was a key element in both of our lives. I lived for words and ideas, as did he. And I liked his clothing choices, the snazziness of which this photo doesn’t really convey. He often wore dapper button-down sweater vests, and I began to follow in his sweater-vest footsteps as soon as I could arrange a trip to the University Mall in Orem. 👔 📖
The yearbook note he jotted to me is a fine example of how we bantered with each other daily. “You’re a gentleman and a scholar.” is a quote right out of the book, Catcher in the Rye, which we must have gabbed about together. The order to “Sling that mud, Ms. Hoddie.” is a reference to the times he had seen me hod-carrying “mud” and bricks on construction projects with my brother, Ron. The note makes me laugh for so many reasons, one of which is that if a current teacher wrote some of what it says to a student, that teacher likely would be canceled. 📚🗒
I went sorta matchy with Bow Tie o’ the Day and Vest o’ the Day this afternoon. Matchy, blendy clothes make me seasick, so I try not to look at myself when I’m being matchy and/or blendy. Aside from trying to keep the seasickness at bay, I’m feeling both excited and apprehensive about something wondrous I get to do tomorrow: I get to spend some time with a Weber State University pal I’ve had no communication with for nearly 40 years. Our conversations were some of the highlights of my college days. Oh, I can’t wait for our meet-‘n’-gab, but we’ve probably changed bigly since the early 80’s. For one thing, we’re both 40 years older, and 40 years of living can change a broad. What if we don’t like the person each other has become? What if we find each other boring or politically haywire? What if a profane word falls out of my mouth and it’s not appreciated? (I didn’t swear back in my college days, but now I’m old enough to know that the goings-on of this world occasionally require an appropriate swear word.) What if we find we have absolutely nothing to say to each other about books, which were a bigly topic for us back then?
And what precisely is the right thing for me to wear to visit someone I haven’t seen or talked to in almost 4 decades anyway? I know you won’t believe it, but my attire can be a bit shocking to the system of someone who isn’t used to seeing me regularly in-person. Maybe I should consider toning down my clothing choices a notch for the visit. I wouldn’t want to end up having to find a defibrillator for my pal just seconds after she opens the door to let me in. “Hi, nice to see you again. Let me call an ambulance to jump-start your heart!” I know I’m getting ahead of myself here, but that’s kind of what I do—thank you, Bigly Bipolar Head o’ Mine. But I shall ponder important choices. To cape, or not to cape?
I don’t know what you’d wear to your birthday dinner, but I wore my own birthday balloons Bow Tie o’ the Day. I also wore my birthday cake Cufflinks o’ the Day and my 3-D glasses Lapel Pin o’ the Day. Suzanne took me to dinner at STANZA in downtown SLC, which we have not been to since the pandemic began. It’s one of my fave places to dine. Suzanne had the spinach artichoke cannelloni and I had the pan-seared halibut. We also had dessert: Suzanne had cheesecake and I had a butterscotch concoction of some sort. It was a complete yumfest. The last photo herein is what I found on my chair when I got up to leave. It is that little end of paper they leave on your straw to keep it sanitary. Somehow it made it’s way to my chair, and my butt appears to have twisted it into the shape of a bow tie as I sat and ate. And now I am back on the Lent wagon, until beyond bitter end.
I gave myself a pre-birthday present last night. I dragged Suzanne to a concert at the Eccles Theater in SLC. She knew next to nothing about the band we went to see: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. Shawn Colvin opened for them, which was great because she played solo—just Shawn and her voice and her guitar. She somehow made her guitar sound like an entire band. Yup, she plays that well. She is one of my all-time fave songwriters and has been for the last 30 years. Jason Isbell, on the other hand, is a recent discovery of mine. He plays a wild guitar, but I am most enamored of his songwriting skills. I have wide and eclectic taste in music, but there is one thing the artists I love to listen to have in common. They are generally superior songwriters. As a working poet, that makes complete sense to me. Words are music, too.
I often wear my wood guitar Bow Tie o’ the Day when I’m headed to a concert, and last night was not an exception. Excuse my uncouth Mask o’ the Evening, but my inner mode is sarcastic. I also wore my cassette tape “GOOD VIBES” lapel pin to the event.
All the usual concert types were there. You know, the group of women who didn’t open their mouths before the show, but as soon as the concert started, they immediately began talking too loudly—especially during the softer tunes. And, of course, there was the couple who just had to stand up and dance right in front of us, while holding their beers—which sloshed around and sprinkled the rest of us as they danced, kissed, and played air guitar. Remember lighters at concerts? Well, that was me last night: I wore my Bic lighter Cufflinks o’ the Evening in homage to concerts-back-in-the-olden-days.
We had a swell night out, despite the fact that Suzanne does not particularly like twang in her music. She told me more than once that she enjoyed the concert. And I almost believe her.
BTW I will be presenting some bigly news regarding TIE O’ THE DAY in tomorrow’s A.M. post. Don’t miss it, y’all.
