MR. MAGOO DINES AT CAFE MILANO BUT IS BANNED AT HOME DEPOT
Home Depot (7 Corners) bans dogs! Mr. Magoo tried to shop there and was denied entry. When he was snubbed he experienced all of the emotions any of us would have. At first he was just astonished and confused. He had always been welcomed in the best places. Café Milano and Billy Martin’s Tavern welcome him with fresh bowls of water. The best stores in Georgetown greet him as a long lost friend. He did his Christmas shopping at Streets of Georgetown and Tumi Luggage -- and they have hardwood floors and sell expensive leather goods and clothing – not dusty cement floors stacked with lumber and bricks. After the initial shock, Mr. Magoo felt hurt and depressed. The extent of the psychological damage is yet to be measured. I've talked with other people who live with dogs and learned many of them also suffered the snub. When asked how the ban made him feel, Bones, the Labrador retriever, said it saddened him so much it that even having the owner of his favorite … [Read More...]
Mr. Magoo Welcomed at Best Stores and Restaurants
After Mr. Magoo’shurtful experience at Home Depot, his many fans rushed to support him.The face they turned away He shopped at Tumi. The owner of Old Pearson’s Wine and Spirits comforted by with treats. He got love from the staff at Ace Hardware, and felt a little better. He has made a commitment to support only those businesses that support dogs and encourages other dogs to do the same. … [Read More...]
Old Fashioned Beet Balls In Sweet And Sour Sauce
Sometimes I'm not quick. My friend, Dot, who owns Silverbrook Farm near Leesburg, VA, gave me some recipes from the 1940’s that she found in an old trunk. The first one was for beet balls in sweet and sour sauce. I read the name again. Beet balls. Like meatballs, I wondered? I pictured myself grinding up beets to make balls. What would hold them together? I couldn’t imagine why I'd even want to. It wasn’t till the next morning that it hit me. Beets ARE balls! Here’s the recipe – I love the differences in words. I never hear people say cupfuls or tablespoonfuls these days. Start by cooking the beets -- she doesn't say how, but that's why we have Google. 3 cupfuls of cooked beet balls Make a sauce by mixing together ¼ cup cupful of sugar, 1 Tablespoonful of cornstarch, ½ cupful of vinegar, ½ cupful of water. Cook till slightly thickened, add the beet balls and simmer five minutes then add two tablespoonfuls of … [Read More...]
MR. MAGOO AND THE CHRISTMAS MOOSE
Bones, the golden Lab, gave Mr. Magoo a toy moose for Christmas. The moose was dead by nightfall! Perhaps his rubber chicken put him up to it -- jealous, I suspect. No moose could replace him! Whatever his reason, the moose didnt stand a chance. Bones has not destroyed his Christmas toy -- but it looks as though he might be trying to smother him. … [Read More...]
TOO MUCH TURKEY & DRESSING IS ENOUGH
Christmas was perfect with all of my family home once again -- and once again I cooked too much food – too much turkey and way too much dressing. Too much turkey because of my Daddy’s blue-collar pride. “We may not have much, but nobody in my house ever goes hungry.” I took that lesson to the grocery store where I asked the man at the poultry counter how big a turkey I'd need to feed nine people. He told me. I bought one a little over twice that. Nobody at my house was going to go hungry. I made too much dressing because I never cook anything the same way twice. It's my heritage. I come from a long line of women who eschewed recipes in favor of the taste & feel method. You mix it, then taste it – however raw. If it doesn’t taste right, add stuff, and taste again, and again till it's right. Then you cook it. So I started by gathering the ingredients: 2 5 x 5” squares of store-bought cornbread, a bag of cornbread stuffing … [Read More...]
I Have A Crush On Dick Cavett
I have a crush on Dick Cavett. I was smitten the first time I saw him on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. His voice! His accent -- I really like his accent. His vocabulary! The words he uses and the way he uses them are beautiful and interesting -- even when I don’t know what they mean. More than any other writer, even Thomas Wolfe, Dick Cavett sends me to my Webster’s to look up words that don’t have a hint of ostentation because they fit so comfortably into his clear and rhythmic language. In his book, Talk Show, he wonders if absorption with magic might, “have spared the world [Dick Cheney’s] predations.” I looked it up. It means the act of pillaging and victimizing for gain; act of a predator. I used to think it was going to Yale that made him so smart (I called him an intellectual until I read what he said about people who call him an intellectual – that they don’t know the meaning of the word). But lots of people went to Yale, and they came out … [Read More...]
REAL GRITS DON’T HAVE CHEESE
I'm a little ashamed of this posting. It's a confession. I ate grits that had cheese in them -- and I loved them. It's so wrong. Real grits don’t have cheese! I know that. I grew up with grits -- not quick grits but grits you simmer forever and with no thyme, sun-dried tomatoes, or cheese -- just salt and butter. Then I had my three boys and I raised them in the north (Washington, D.C. is north to people from south Alabama) but I raised them right. That means I raised them on crab gumbo, fried chicken, and grits. Several years ago, I took my youngest son to NYC. We went to one of my favorite restaurants, Sarabeth’s Kitchen on Madison Avenue. Grits were on the menu. He ordered them. He stared at them. They weren’t grits. They were some concoction with cheese. He wished he’d ordered the pancakes. I explained the rules of grits to him. Never order grits in the north – they’ll be dry and undercooked or they’ll have cheese -- and real grits don’t have … [Read More...]
WORLD TOILET DAY & THE 3-SEATER OUTDOOR TOILET
November 19th was World Toilet Day. That gave me something to think about. I imagined the announcement: “RuthiPostowStaffing will be closed Saturday, November 19, 2011 in honor of World Toilet Day." I went to the web and discovered World Toilet Day was set up for what seemed to be a good reason – to support better sanitation in third world countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Toilet_Organization. A Googledippity led me to discover there is also a World Toilet Paper Day in August. We the people surely do seem to be caught up in the subject. Toilets for everybody! But I found myself wondering if people the world over feel about toilets as we do. Is the number one priority for people in the third world is toilets (does anyone ever write about the first two worlds?). I talked to a Marine who had been part of a detail that built modern latrines in Iraq. Did the people there appreciate or want them? I don’t know for sure. But toilet seats were torn off … [Read More...]
DECENT JOBS – DECENT PEOPLE
A little over a year ago on October 13, 2010, a DC sanitation worker, Larry Hutchins, was going to get onto his truck so he could come pick up our garbage – yours and mine – when he was shot and killed at the public works site. Last week I saw the first news about him in a year, and it was because the dead man’s widow is suing the city. It's the first news I've seen about him since the day after it happened. When I first heard about it, I searched the news and the web for information about the shooting, about the men, maybe about a collection being taken for his family. There was little and then, nothing. I Googled and searched. Nothing. That couldn’t be, I thought. When a worker in a Starbucks was shot, it was all over the news. Why was there so little attention paid to Mr. Hutchins? Was it because we care less about a man who picks up our garbage? This is Washington, D.C. where we just dedicated the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. Dr. King was about equality of … [Read More...]
I’M THANKFUL
In this time of Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for so many things I'm thankful for Mr. Magoo And dogs in general And beautiful sons Who swear I love the dog more than them And more beautiful daughter-in-law And extended families that can't be divorced And I'm thankful for the women who came before me and made me strong And for a wonderful career in an exciting city And for all the people my career brought into my life And all their stories that made my career interesting And for my business partner who completes me and makes it happen And the success that let us support causes we care about And for my heroes, the people who work for people who can't defend … [Read More...]
EDUCATION, A PRIVILEGE TO BE PRIZED
My company announced today the awarding of the fifth annual RuthiPostowStaffing Scholarship. This year it goes to The National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth. I'm proud of our scholarship. Education is special to me. There was a time when education was a privilege, and in that time people prized it. For homeless children that is still true. It is not assured and they prize it. My Daddy was 12 years old when he finished the sixth grade and his last year of school. He was the oldest of four children of Willie and Mandy Simmons, my Grandmama and Papa. They lived near Brewton, Alabama where Papa worked with logging crews. If you’ve ever driven through the region, maybe you noticed it's all pine, the legacy of my Papa’s crews that cut down the hundreds of years old hardwood trees and loaded them onto trucks that took them to the ships in Apalachicola. Then as now, a hard life created people with limited horizons. My family was lucky enough to be … [Read More...]
TOWN & COUNTRY MAGAZINE – MISSONI – BICYCLE – TARGET: THE CONUNDRUM
Last week, while waiting for the dentist I picked up the September edition of Town & Country Magazine where I found an item that mystified me. I've never been one to dwell upon the meaning of life or the universe’s other mysteries. I'm more of an in-the-here-and-now kind of person. Let other people ponder what happens when stars collide or when matter and anti-matter come into contact -- or was that just something on Star Trek? Those problems are too big and far away for me. But in a two-inch article on the bottom of page 54, I came upon a collision of entities that, if not cosmic, is still keeping me awake and pondering. It said Missoni, the designer who fills the windows of Saks with stripes and zigzags of color, has created a bicycle for Target. I read it again, finished the magazine and put it aside, but I came back to reread it, looking for the hidden message. At first I just wondered if it could be saying something to me about my business, but that wasn’t it. It … [Read More...]
ME WEAR A HALLOWEEN COSTUME? HUMILIATING!
DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT SHARING MY BLANKET! I'm in the dog house with Mr. Magoo. You know the old joke about the rancher who was bringing his new mail-order bride home in the buckboard? The horse balked and refused to move. The rancher when to face the animal and said, “Strike one.” A few miles down the road, the horse stumbled. The rancher said, “Strike two.” A few miles further and the horse reared up when a deer shot past. The farmer said, “Strike three,” and shot the horse in the head. The new wife got hysterical, crying and screaming. The old rancher looked at her and said, “Strike one.” Well, I'm up to strike three. My first blunder was failing to have the furnace turned on when the cold snapped last week. I hadn't because I'd decided if I didn’t have my furnace turned on, it wouldn’t get cold. I was wrong. Freezing temps, snow, frost, and I had one space heater, a fireplace, and oven. Mr. Magoo was uncharacteristically blaming. Strike … [Read More...]
CHRISTMAS TREES, RECYCLING, PATRIOTISM & MY AUNT PAULINE
Halloween is nearly here. Can Christmas be far behind? As I walked Mr. Magoo last week everywhere I turned there were ghosts, witches and Frankenstein monsters amidst bales of hay. As a country we are into decorating, but most of our opportunities to decorate are lumped into just three months of the year. For the first three quarters our occasions are scant. We’ve got bunnies and eggs at Easter, and little flags sprout here and there around the summer holidays, but it's just not enough to satisfy our ornamental yearnings. So come fall we’re in hog (or decorating) heaven. October first begins a month long pageant which now includes orange lights on trees dripping with fluorescent spider webs. Then, even before Thanksgiving, turkeys and pumpkins are all but pushed aside by the tinsel, snowflakes and Santa Clauses getting a jump on Christmas. Back on Petain Street we saved up all of our decorating efforts for Christmas time. Lights were strung in Prichard and in … [Read More...]
THE ROMANCE OF GRANDMAMA AND PAPA
I must have been 11 or so when I discovered romance. Elvis had just made the movie GI Blues. Mama liked Elvis, so even though she believe in going to movies, she bought the album for me. I played it over and over on the little record player I'd had since I was six and fell in love with love. I longed for love stories, and there weren’t many on Petain Street as far as I could tell. Mrs. Gates and most of the other ladies were too old. Mrs. Stokley was a widow and a saint who I was certain would never have sex. Mama and Daddy had their own bedrooms and I never saw them kiss on the mouth (There’s a story here but I wouldn’t know it for a few more years). I asked Grandmama to tell me about her courtship with Papa. “Tell me about how you met Papa.” “Well, let me think. It was at a picnic at the church – homecoming I think. Anyway I went with Mama and Daddy. I made a pie. Papa wasn’t from around there, but he came with a friend. He liked my pie and … [Read More...]
![One of the shotgun houses still standing on Petain St. [2011]](http://www.threeoclockinthemorning.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/SHOTGUN-HOUSE-PETAIN-ST-150x150.jpg "SHOTGUN HOUSE PETAIN ST")
I WAS 10 OR 11 THE FIRST TIME I SAW A FIRE
When I passed the Georgetown library yesterday, I remembered the awful night when it burned. Fire glows red and orange and looks beautiful till it's over. Then it leaves a sad, broken-toothed, skull with awful, empty eye sockets where windows should be. My house in Potomac was partially destroyed by a fire 20 years ago. Even after it was repaired and was, “as good as new,” I couldn’t forget the smell, the feeling of vulnerability. I sold it soon after. I was 10 or 11 the first time I saw a fire. Mr. Cunningham’s shotgun house burned down. It was the one just across the ditch from Delilah’s house. As I saw the them, the houses on our street fit into two categorizes, poor houses and not-so-poor houses. The main difference was grass. Poor houses had no grass on the yards, not even a weed or dandelion -- just gray, dusty dirt. Most of the poor houses were on the other side of the ditch, which was really a shallow run-off from a creek that ran from … [Read More...]
Mr. Magoo, Sheep Herding Dog
Mr. Magoo is a soft-coated Wheaten Terrier. Wheatens came from Ireland where they were bred to be farm dogs and herders. Now that he's three I decided it was time he learned to do what he was born to do, so we went to sheep-herding school with Susan Rhoades at Keepstone Farms in Virginia. This was the most fun Mr. Magoo ever had! Let off of the leash in the pen, he was joyous. He took off into the middle of his small herd, separating them and chasing them through the mud (thus I learned why all the other dog-owners had their dogs in crates rather than riding on the seat of the car). I was afraid he was going to be expelledwhen he ran one poor sheep, smack, into the fence, but it seems Susan has seen this before. He just got a time-out. She explained the herding instinct is really a predatory instinct (My baby a predator? No way!). It’s true. Herding dogs start with the instinct to chase and catch the sheep – although I'm sure Mr. Magoo would have no … [Read More...]
MY MAMA DOESN’T WANT ME TO BE A BROWNIE
I'm not a joiner because joining things means you have to go to meetings. I hate meetings. I was in the third grade when I learned that about myself. One of my friends (I can't remember her name -- I'll call her Suzie) invited me to her Brownie meeting. I thought it would be fun. I liked her brown uniform and hat. I called Mama at work for permission to go with her and off we went. Let me say here that what I'm about to write is not meant to criticize the Brownies which I'm sure is a fine and rewarding organization for many girls. My sister had been a prize winning Brownie. Actually what I'm writing is not about the Brownies at all, but about me. I don’t know what I expected. But what happened was a meeting. It was in the troop mother’s living room with 12 or so girls I didn’t know. The troop mother started the meeting with, “We have a new girl visiting today. Suzie, stand up and introduce your friend.” She stood up, all excited to have her own visitor. I had to stand … [Read More...]
Wall To Wall Carpets – One Of Life’s Ponderables
My Aunt Pauline was something! She had red hair and a red head’s personality – flair and joie de vivre (she’d have loved that description) - everything a red-head should have. She greeted her world and every experience with relish, and she had a way of speaking that made me feel whatever she said was new, different, and exciting. She could make taking Grandmama to visit Papa’s grave sound exciting. I loved going to her house which was right around the corner, so I was able to go on my own to visit her from the time I was seven or so. She had things nobody else had – she had a waffle iron!! Aunt Pauline was all about what was pretty, what was stylish, what was new, and what nobody else ever talked about. There wasn’t anybody else on Petain Street like her. Of course she didn’t actually live on Petain Street but around the corner on Craft Highway which was pretty much the same except it was paved with cement instead of red clay. Christmas time, when I was … [Read More...]
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO BECOME A HERO? 27 SECONDS IS MY GUESS
I just read that Glen Campbell has Alzheimer’s disease. I'm sad about that because Glen Campbell is one of my heroes and has been since I was 19 years old. What heroic thing did he do? It was such a little thing and it seemed such a natural act for him that I’m certain it was not his intention to impress me and he no idea of his impact. But his was the act that defined heroic for me. Since my encounter with Mr. Campbell, I've been on the alert for other heroes and I've learned some things about them. This is one thing I’ve learned — the transformation from human to hero takes 27 seconds (I made that up but it sounds right) and probably uses up no more than 20-30 calories. Glen Campbell's transformation from entertainer to hero happened in Athens, Georgia when he appeared with Bobbie Gentry at a university concert. I got to go backstage and meet such stars as Glen Campbell, Bobbie Gentry, Johnny Rivers andJerry Butler (The IceMan) because I was dating a disc jockey … [Read More...]
