The Complication of Coffee

I used to be able to walk into a convenience store, pour myself a cup of coffee, grab a Danish and the newspaper and then be outta there in no time.  It was why we called them convenience stores in the first place.  Not anymore, oh no.  Now getting a lousy cup of coffee is a process.

Now they have these automated coffee machines.  On a touch-screen you have to select from a variety of beans, which are housed in plastic bins on top (above eye level, which will become relevant later).  Then you have to tell it what size cup you have.  Finally you have to tell it whether to leave room for milk in the cup.  It's a lot of fussy button-pushing.  Holy cow, when did getting a cup of lousy coffee become so time-consuming!  I’ve seen befuddled people, cup in hand, staring at the machines, trying to figure out what they need to do.  

This is not progress.  This is merely overcomplication of a simple task for the convenience of the clerks, so they don’t have to spend their time making sure the coffee pots are full.  Except…at the last Circle-K I went into, the bin up on top labeled “House Blend” was empty, something I didn’t notice until after it started making me a cup of slightly brown hot water.

Convenience stores have gotten kind of silly lately, offering a half-dozen different flavors of coffee.  And I'm, like, who cares?  Just brew a pot of regular and a pot of decaf.  And keep 'em full.  Boom - done.  

Like all curmudgeons, I long for the old days...a simpler time...you know, a week or so ago when you didn’t need to be a computer programmer just to get a cup of regular coffee.  You want some fancy blend?  Go to Starbucks.  Now get outta my way, I'm in a goddamn hurry.

It's Chili!

My parents had six kids.  We were not rich, but neither were we on welfare, which back then (1960's) was thought of as something to be ashamed of, not proud.  Both mom and dad worked full-time, and yet somehow we always had a hot meal to eat every night.  All of us kids would dutifully sit in front of the television, “staying out of the way” while mom prepared supper.  Our grocery bill must have been incredible.  Back then there were virtually no pre-packaged or prepared foods.  Mom made everything from scratch.  Looking back on it, she was quite amazing.

The deal was: she cooked; we cleaned up afterward.  There was no getting around or out of it.  We did not have a dishwasher back then.  Well, that’s not correct, mom had six dishwashers.

Very, very occasionally dad would make supper.  And by that I mean, he’d make chili, which was about the only thing he knew how to make.  In my memory it was fantastic – best chili I ever ate!  In reality it was pretty standard, nothing fancy.  Nevertheless, I grew into adulthood loving chili.  It always reminds me of the nights when dad “cooked.”

Dad’s chili recipe called for it being served over rice.  I later learned that people did not usually do this.  I realized that he was using it as an extender, making the chili go further given their tight food budget.   I serve chili over rice to this day.  And, not to brag, but I make the best chili!

Actually, my friend Matt came up with a really simple recipe that I've adopted.  He starts off with the usual ingredients (easy on the onions though), but he adds a can of Bush’s Country Style baked beans.  The molasses and brown sugar give the chili a sweetness which is not ordinarily there.  It’s wonderful!  But now, all these years later, Matt has a new, more complicated chili recipe and he says he doesn't remember making it the “old” way – the way I still do.

Look, there are a million different ways of making chili.  That’s what I love about it.  And I love all kinds of chili…even Wendy’s!  Everyone will tell you that their particular recipe is the best.  People will tell you that you have to soak and cook raw beans – really starting from scratch.  Nonsense, I say!  I don’t want to spend all day cooking chili.  And while it may sound like heresy to a southerner, I think you can use canned beans and they’re perfectly fine.  We’re not talking gourmet food here – it’s chili!

Okay, here’s how I do it:

1 pound of ground meat (or 1.2 pounds of ground turkey)

1 can of dark red kidney beans, drained

1 can of Bush’s Country Style baked beans, drained

1 can of “no-bean” chili (I use Wolf Brand, but any brand is good)

2 cans of diced tomatoes (not petit diced!), drained

1 can of Rotel tomatoes and chopped green chilis (optional)

1 cup chopped onion

1 bag of Success Rice

First I put the beans, chili, tomatoes and half of the raw onions in a big pot and start them simmering.  Put the rice in a separate saucepan and let it boil while you’re cooking the meat.

Next I brown the meat/turkey.  I start with vegetable oil in the skilled and sauté the rest of the chopped onion until cooked.  Then add the meat, W-sauce, salt and pepper, garlic powder and a generous shower of Tony Chachere’s Cajun seasoning (you almost can’t use too much of it).  Drain and then add it to the big pot. 

Done!

I like to let my chili sit on the stove for a while, but you could serve it right away if you had to.  Quick and easy.  And soooooo good!  It'll feed five or six hungry people.  I guarantee that people will be scarfing it down.  It’s the one dish I make where there are usually no leftovers.

The thing about my recipe is that you can alter it to your particular taste.  Use more or less seasoning…more meat or less meat…sometimes I leave the raw onion out completely although I do like the slight crunch it gives the final product.  You could sauté real garlic along with the onions before you cook the meat.  I don't - garlic powder is fine.  My friend Terry adds a can of corn to his chili.  Corn!  Not me, thanks.

Sometimes I put in the can of Rotel, sometimes not depending on whether the crowd likes spicy food.  Me, I love chili when it’s really spicy but not everyone does.  Sometimes I’ll add a third can of beans – light red kidneys.  I don’t often use beans that are branded as “chili beans” for some reason.  If I want the chili to be “soupy” then I won’t drain the diced tomatoes and beans so thoroughly.  I do like it soupy though, but not quite as much as Wendy’s (which appears to be made from leftover, unsold hamburgers).

I always cook up a batch of white rice to go with the chili.  There’s the requisite shredded cheddar for a topping (I eschew chopped onion), and of course you have to serve chili with Fritos! 

That’s it.  Plain, simple, chili.  Good, crowd-pleasing comfort food.  I’d love to hear how you make chili!  I’m always interested in doing it differently, even if I do default to my tried-and-true, fail-safe recipe most of the time.

I don’t remember exactly how my dad made his chili.  I regret now that I never asked.  I was so oblivious as a...well, I still am.  I only remember that it was great and we loved it.  Whether my way of making chili now is similar to his is not really important.  No matter what the recipe, chili always triggers some wonderful childhood memories.

Getting Your News Fast and First

Remember the gay, Black actor who got attacked on the street in Chicago in the middle of the night by two white men who put a noose around his neck, beat him up and shouted "This is MAGA country!!"

Yeaaahhhhh, I don't remember that either. Because it didn't happen. I thought the mainstream media would be better at sniffing out what we used to call a "publicity stunt."  Apparently not.

Jussie Smollett, the gay, Black actor we're talking about here was not the victim of a racial attack. Apparently it was staged. Jussie's two friends/accomplices were picked up at the airport on their way out of the country. They admitted everything to the cops.  

These days, we are so hell-bent on finding victims and telling their stories that we've lost all objectivity.  In this time of racial strife, Jussie's lurid tale made a good story!  Even if it wasn't...you know...true.  But never mind that.  Really, at the end of the day, when it comes to reporting the news, isn't it more important to get the story out fast and first? 

Mr. Skeptic or Mr. Cynic?

People…especially young people have become so gullible these days.  It used to be said that if you read it in the newspaper then it must be true.  The modern equivalent of that is, ”I saw it online so it must be true."

A recent example of this was a video of a little single-engine airplane that suffers an inflight wing failure.  You’ve probably seen it.  During its aerobatic routine, the plane pulls up and the right wing suddenly snaps clean off!  After momentarily losing control, the skillful pilot manages to somehow land, apparently unscathed.  

It looks so convincingly real that many non-pilots believe that it actually happened. (Spoiler alert: It did not.)  The video is a masterpiece of editing.  The camera is shaky as you would expect it to be, and the image goes in and out of focus the way a lot of camera phones do these days.  But it’s totally fake.  It’s a very stark reminder that images can be manipulated and we must not ever take them at face value until they are proven true.

In the case of this famous airplane video, when you look a little closer, there are glaring inconsistencies between the radio-control model and the real airplane on which it was based.  

After right the wing breaks off, the airplane rolls to the left.  Whaaaaat?  This is a dead-giveaway that it's fake.  Think about the physics.  With only the left wing still attached and producing lift, the airplane would roll to the right.

In fact, the airplane would roll uncontrollably to the right and, unable to sustain controlled flight it would crash unceremoniously (and fatally) into the ground.  There would be no saving it.  But people believe what they want to believe.  Strong is the urge to think that such a thing could happen.  ”Hey, it did happen…I saw the video of it on YouTube!"  

(If you're interested, HERE is a pretty good (and short) analysis video done by an aviation website called Avweb.)

I often have to resist the urge to debunk things like this for impressionable young people.  But I don’t want to always be the spoilsport…the negative, jaded, seen-it-all guy who rolls his eyes with that, ”What are you, stupid?” expression on his face.

And so most of the time I just bite my tongue and let the believers believe.  Sometimes I’ll add a word of caution that things might not always be what they seem, but I usually leave it at that unless the offense is especially egregious.  People need to discover things on their own – you know, find out for themselves what’s real and what’s not.  And they will, I trust.  The world is already chock-full of skeptics and cynics.  I don’t have to add to that mix…as much as I sometimes want to.

The End Of The Line

Like a backsliding smoker, I've quit flying a number of times.

The first time was back in 2001 when I left my job at Petroleum Helicopters Inc. I'd been with the company for thirteen years...had been a professional pilot for twenty (and was involved in aviation full-time for even longer than that). Quitting PHI wasn't perhaps the smartest thing I ever did, but I wanted to see what else there was for me to do in life – other than be a damn pilot for a living.

Well...

Almost immediately I got hired into a management position with a company that was trying to restart the production line of a defunct 1970's-era helicopter. And although the amount of flying I did was reduced, I was still “in it.” That job lead to the flying job down in Honduras...which in turn lead to the job flying for the entrepreneur/rich guy in Alabama that owned a chain of mobile home dealerships among other things.

So nearly ten years after “quitting flying” the first time I quit flying again – told the rich guy I didn't want his job anymore. That time I was really done with it!

...And that was right when my friend Mikey called from Washington and suggested I come up there and dry cherries.

Seems that I'm not very good at quitting.

But now I think I'm done. Really done. As in, “done for good.” (Maybe.)

It's not that I don't like flying; I love to fly! I especially love getting paid to fly. But I'm kind of...you know...over it - at least, over helicopters. Flying is something I do and do well. But it is only one of the things in which I'm interested. And it has dominated my life for forty years. And I want to do something else. Do what? I'm still trying to figure that out.

Although our flying season in Washington is short (basically just two months), there is quite a lot of work that needs to be done both before and after the cherry season. Since it's pretty much just the boss (who's nearly 80) and his adult son, they need help. So they prevail on me to come up early and to stay after the helicopter flying has ended. I like both of the guys, and we have a lot of fun doing what we do, so it's been easy to say yes to staying longer.  I say no to moving up there full-time though.  The winters up there are just too damn cold.

And since I started my little summer gig up in Washington State in 2010, my time up there kept getting extended, until I was basically spending half of my life up there and half down here in Florida. The trouble is, I like Florida, especially in the summertime. Riding my motorcycle is important to me. And our riding season is when the days are long and warm – in other words during Daylight Savings Time.

Our typical winters down here are, like this one has been, dreary, rainy and cold. Well, “cold” for us means having to wear long pants and maybe a jacket. But the days are short and often wet. And I don't like riding when it's cold (below 60 degrees), at night, or when it's wet. By themselves, any of those items are deal-killers. Often, we'll have all three.

My boss in Washington keeps saying, ”Just bring your bike up here!” But that's not really a solution. I've had my motorcycle up there. There just aren't that many opportunities to ride, nor are there many places to go. Brewster, Washington really, truly is out in the middle of nowhere. To get anywhere interesting means a long ride. A dirt bike that could go off the paved roads would be sweet. But as it happens I don't own a dirt bike.

Plus there are the other things I like to do down here: Canoeing/kayaking, hiking and camping with my friends. These are, obviously, summertime activities. I haven't been able to do much of them for the past eight years. And hey, I'm not getting any younger. And so I've decided that I won't be drying cherries this summer – or any more. Which means it's the end of my career as a commercial/professional pilot.

Lately I hadn't really been flying much anyway. Mostly I do new-pilot checkouts. The pilots we hire are all Commercially rated and "current" (i.e. legal to fly for money). Showing them how to do the job is not hard; basically it means sitting there and letting them spend time “getting friendly” with our particular model of helicopter – a type which is not in widespread use anymore. Once they're comfortable, we go out into the orchards and I show them the most efficient speeds and altitudes at which we hover over the trees. It's all pretty basic stuff.

When it rains, it doesn't rain everywhere, so the entire fleet usually doesn't all fly at once. Low-time pilots who need to build time are always looking for any opportunity to grab the controls. And so if a ship goes out, they want to be in it. And me, since I've got all the flight time I'll ever need or want, I'm happy to let others do the stick-wiggling while I watch.

The amount of flying we actually do each year varies. The growing season for cherries is rather short (mid-June through the end of July). If that period of time is rainy we could be pretty busy. If it's dry – as it's been for the last couple of seasons – then we don't fly much. We get paid either way (more if we fly of course) but the boss doesn't mind too much if we don't have to put flight time on the helicopters (and their associated time-limited components) and burn expensive aviation fuel.

This coming season we will have a bunch of returnees – guys who've been with us before. They will require minimal training. And in turn, any of them could train up the new guys, if we even have to hire any. So the company can get by nicely without me – and without me feeling guilty about not being there.

Frankly, one of the reasons I've kept going back these last couple of years has been because actually facing the prospect of not being a pilot anymore is kind of ... I don't know, unsettling.  It's pretty much all I've ever known or done.  We don't like to think about The End, do we?

Oh, I'll still be a pilot – I'll always be a pilot. But getting paid to do it is special; it's what most pilots aspire to do. From now on, if I want to fly I'll have to pay to do it. Yikes!