Word of the Day: Heinous

Word of the Day: Heinous (hay'-nus): Adjective: Evil

As a rule, I don't expect to encounter anything too disturbing while perusing Facebook over my morning coffee, but last week someone forwarded a photo of a little dog that was the victim of an act so horrific, so stunningly cruel that I'm having a hard time finding adjectives forceful enough to even describe it.

Someone taped or tied a dog's mouth shut around a firecracker and lit it.

If you can't imagine the results, or haven't seen the picture - which I can't even bring myself to post - I can tell you that the poor creature's muzzle was blown off. Even more chilling - it was still alive. Its eyes gazed out of the photo in a haze of bewilderment and pain over the shattered mess that had been the lower half of its face. Equally heartbreaking, if you could look past the acute trauma, was the harsh coat stretched over its skinny body. Obviously this poor neglected creature never had a chance.

It just sort of took my breath away, and I slid to the kitchen floor, exhaling in a shuddering gasp that caused the resident canines to leap up and jockey for position in the circle of my outstretched arms. "Oh, YOU GUYS, " I sobbed, "I need a hug!"

The Magnificent Seven were happy to oblige. The big dogs snogged my neck and cheeks; the dachshund and the yorkie mix crowded into my lap, and the two Jack Russells wedged their solid little bodies into the remaining available nooks and crannies. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, " I cried, apologizing as they licked my tears.

I wanted to be angry. Really. I tried hard to stir up a boiling pot of butt-kicking, red-eyed, foaming-at-the-mouth rage. All I could muster was a mix of profound helplessness, sadness and dismay. I simply could not comprehend the rottenness of soul that someone claiming to be of my species could possess in order to perform this evil act.

I wondered how I could manage to shake that image and slog through the day when in reality all I wanted to do was hold my dogs and bawl my eyes out. I felt myself teetering on the precipice of a debilitating depression and the truth is, it SCARED me. Nonetheless, I had to pull myself together and head off to work.

Fast forward to my first patient of the day - a young Golden Retriever named Mocha. He hopped willingly onto my exam table, eyes fixed firmly on his 10 year old owner. He clearly adored her and the feeling was obviously mutual. An allotment of fifteen minutes for most routine appointments doesn't allow me a big chunk of time to interact with owners, but on that particular morning something moved me to do it anyway. I spent some extra time allowing the little girl to look into Mocha's eyes and ears. I watched her eyes light up behind her glasses as she listened to his big gently beating heart with my stethoscope and began to feel the moment soothing my earlier sadness.

Several days later - as I was writing the first draft of this essay, sitting in a Greaters' Ice Cream shop in downtown Cincinnati - I happened to overhear two people (yes, I was shamelessly eavesdropping) who'd obviously entered as strangers get into a conversation about, believe it or not, their dogs. A lady at one table spoke about how she'd lost her Maltese of 17 years and still cried every day, but was happy to have recently welcomed a new puppy into their home; the gentleman at another told how his 160-lb English Mastiff had helped him endure - there's no other word for it - losing his son. Of course it was impossible for me to keep my mouth shut and I finally apologized for listening in on their conversation but said that I was a veterinarian who was trying to write about this terrible abuse case and couldn't help but overhear them talking about their dogs. Within minutes we were sharing anecdotes and by the time we left we were friends.

I must admit in retrospect that I couldn't ever bring myself to read the full story about that little Facebook dog and the heinous demons who perpetrated that dreadful act; I'll see that horrible photo in my head for a long time to come. I hope the victim was humanely euthanized and somewhere an angel was waiting to welcome that poor creature to a better place.

Mulling things over, I realized later that the angels had some time to spare for me, too, even though I didn't see their wings and halos. They were dressed like a passel of disreputable dogs, two strangers in an ice cream shop, and a brown haired, bespectacled little girl who reminded me that there is ALWAYS something one can do to help, even if it's as simple as taking a few minutes out of your day to educate and share with one more person the joy of loving dogs.

This Christmas...

My Dad passed away in January of 1990 after a long battle with cancer; we knew –so, I think, did he - that Christmas 1989 would be his last. Despite our best efforts, it was a dreary one. Christmas last year was fine – we had no inkling at all that Mom would not be with us for the holidays this year.

I always thought I’d have some warning that her time on earth was drawing to a close – an illness, some loss of faculties – but the God she so faithfully believed in took her mercifully between one breath and the next, without suffering, on a lovely Sunday evening last April, shortly after she enjoyed a serving of her favorite seasonal dessert, strawberry short cake. What a way to go.

The front door of Mom’s cottage is barely five feet from my own back door; the proximity that we enjoyed over the years now keeps her memory as fresh as if she were still sitting in the living room in her big easy chair watching FOX news, or curled cozily in her bed listening to late night radio. It seems like I still ought to be able to slip next door and kiss her good night, and it hurts all over again when I realize those sweet moments are gone forever.

Author Susan Howatch wrote one of my favorite quotes about grief in her epic novel The Wheel of Fortune:

“There is no timetable for grief. Grief isn’t a train you catch at the station. Grief has its own time, and grief’s time is beyond time…time is a circle… one day you’ll look across the circle, and hear her echo in time. “

And yes, as the year passes, I am indeed hearing my mother’s echo in time.
Faced with a surfeit of tomatoes from the summer garden, I remembered a little plastic kitchen gadget Mom had bought from a television advertisement - a simple hinged chopping device with interchangeable blades. At the time I’d teased her about buying “TV junk” and she gave me her “wait and see” look, peeking over the tops of her glasses with raised eyebrows and a grin. In desperation I pondered the piles of tomatoes and decided I’d give it a try – and now dozens of bags of neatly diced Romas sit in our freezer waiting for some good Italian winter cooking projects. As we were chopping away I looked heavenward and said “ OK, you were right. Thanks, Mom.”

The week before my birthday, the old, tattered Chex Party Mix recipe that I thought I’d lost fell out from between two cook books. This is the real deal, that first made its appearance back in the 1950’s, and is not for the faint-hearted. It is redolent with garlic and reminds me of my parents’ holiday parties when, as a kid, I’d eat it till my lips shriveled up from the salt. Yum. Mom always made several batches of this treat starting around my November birthday, and took care to include a big bag of it in my finals-week care packages when I was a college student. As the recipe fluttered down onto the counter I shook my head – she hadn’t let me down. Thanks, Mom.

Most recently, after a long healthy spell, an evil respiratory crud attempted to do me in. I am not a person who does “sick” well, and the day had finally come when I could no longer look to Mom for a serving of warm milk toast and sympathy. I woke up hot and pitiful and slouched dejectedly around the house, trailed by the dragging tail of my bathrobe and several worried dogs. Worst of all, when I could no longer postpone the moments of contact between my fevered bum and the icy toilet seat – why is it always colder when you’re sick, anyway? - the temperature differential resulted in a shock that shot up my spine without stopping till it reached the neighborhood of my ears. I perched miserably and prayed for a respite.

At that point an image appeared in my brain: a fluffy knit item that had arrived in the mail last year, another purchase that I’d teased Mom about. I tottered over to the now-quiet cottage. Sure enough – there it was in all its pink splendor, laundered and waiting – Mom’s toilet seat cover. It may not have been exactly the comforting touch of her hand on my cheek…but then again, maybe it was.

This Christmas, Mom will have a ringside seat at the celebrations in Heaven; as for me and mine, we’ll have tomatoes for the spaghetti sauce on Christmas Eve, Chex Party Mix – the real deal –to munch on, and maybe not a ringside seat exactly – but a comfy warm pink one, anyway. Thanks, Mom.

All In a Day's Work...not..

Being closed in a small exam room with at least one other person and one or more pets many times each day allows ample opportunity for embarassment in the course of any given day at the clinic. Stomachs growl, gas is passed - and I'm talking owners, not patients - you get the idea. You laugh it off and carry on. (For the record let me just say I have yet to emit anything more audible than a stomach growl in front of an owner, in case you're wondering - although not without considerable effort on occasion...). However once in a while something happens that there's just no good way to ignore.

Last night I was speaking with a couple about their dog's allergy problems when I happened to glance down and noticed...my underwear lying on the floor. The following train of thought thundered through my head at lightspeed : "Oh, here's the dog's toy, no wait, it's a cleaning rag, no wait this looks familiar it's got a Victoria Secret logo on the wasteband omigod it's my UNDERWEAR, WHAT THE----!!!"

Well, now what to do? Do I kick it into a corner and pretend no one has seen it? Nope, too late as I'm already picking it up and alllllmost handing it to the owner while thinking it was some item the dog brought in. Then I stopped, mentally shook myself, looked them squarely in the eye and said "ok, I'm going to explain this because I can't think of any other way to handle it."

What had happened was this: I dressed as usual in the morning - when it was fairly warm out - and went on to work. When I came home for lunch, the temperature had dropped about 20 degrees and I had to go out to the barn, so I shucked off the layers on my lower half and threw on some long underwear and sweats. When I hurriedly changed clothes to go back to work, I decided to leave the long underwear on, so I slipped the chinos on over them and off I went.

Little did I know the morning's uns were still lurking in one of the legs of the work pants.

We all had a good laugh about it - they'll sure remember me! - but in retrospect what ticked me off was my choice of apparel. I had been wearing the one pair in my drawer that most closely resembled "granny panties" - plain, off-white. Why the heck couldn't it have been the leopard spots? Or would that have been worse?

Hacking Away at the Family Tree

Sunny days at the back end of winter generally find me heading out to the woods laden with chainsaw, gasoline and bar oil, looking for fallen trees, broken branches and other dry timber to augment our dwindling woodpile.

This winter’s bad weather pastimes, however, included scrounging around for an altogether different sort of deadwood; in the wake of the recent television series Who Do You Think You Are, my husband and I have been researching our family trees.

In case you’ve been hibernating, or perhaps vacationing in someplace completely lacking technology (and where exactly is that, in this day and age? Even the nomads of outer Mongolia have satellite dishes), each episode of Who Do You Think You Are - which is essentially a glorified infomercial for the genealogy website Ancestry.com –researches the family of a famous person, the kind of celebrity you might run across in the pages of People magazine; so far we have learned that actress Sarah Jessica Parker is descended from a woman who survived the Salem witch trials; country singer Tim McGraw’s colonial ancestors rubbed elbows with George Washington and - in a delightful coincidence - the ancestors of Elvis Presley; and comedian/talk show host Rosie O’Donnell’s family immigrated from a Kildare workhouse after surviving one of the worst plagues in history, the Irish potato famine of the mid 1800’s.

Pretty thought-provoking stuff. Who are we? We took the bait and signed onto the Ancestry.com website for our two week free trial. Keith wanted to learn anything he could about his family; however, being a consummate Anglophile, I had a definite goal in mind: I hoped to find at least one link to Britain.

So to our respective computers we retired on a recent cold and windy Saturday. On the website’s blank family tree, I typed in all the ancestors I knew – the Sicilian grandfather on my dad’s side, the German great-grandparents on my Mom’s side.

Grandpa Ippolito – who changed his name to Burk when he came to America in the late 1800’s - never listed his parents so that line was a dead end for the present. Family legend has it that he may have come to America to escape something or someone. Do I really want to go there?

In any case, the rechristened Frank Burk became a grocer in 1920’s Middletown. He owned Burk’s Grocery on the corner of Broad Street and Girard Avenue, and married a gal of German descent whose maiden name was Buerkle. I followed the Buerkle line as far back as Switzerland in the 1600’s. That was interesting, and probably explains my penchant for chocolate (now at least I have an excuse).

Mom’s mother, who grew up in Rockport Indiana, was German through and through. Great-great grandfather Balthazar Wetzel came to this country in the mid-1800’s from Baden-Baden, I learned, on a ship called the Duetschland. Baden-Baden is located on the edge of the famous Black Forest, and I’m entertained by the thought of being a daughter of that primeval woodland. Bonus: I actually have a relative named Balthazar. I just like how it sounds.

Balthazar’s son Jacob was a pastry chef who studied the art in St. Louis before coming back to Rockport. As seems appropriate for a baker, he was a rather robust individual, and after his funeral – which was held in the old family home in Rockport – the pallbearers, coffin and contents all went crashing through the porch when the wooden floorboards, literally in this case, gave up the ghost under the strain. This is stuff you don’t find on Ancestry.com, but it was another family legend I remembered when I ran across Jacob’s name in the records.

What did all these people have in common? To my chagrin – not one of them was English. That left Mom’s father, whose last name was Cape.

Sidney Newton Cape was a papermaker who was born in Lincoln Nebraska and raised in Coffeyville Kansas; he came east and met Rose Wetzel, my grandmother (who worked in the family bakery in Rockport as a kid, and could wrangle a big pan of yeasty dough into a mean loaf of bread well into her 80’s). In their old age, when they lived next door, Granny would wheel Gramps out to the patio in his wheelchair where he would smoke his daily cigar allotment -two, on a good day- and reminisce. He remembered seeing the notorious Dalton Gang “layed out on the street” after they attempted to rob a bank in Coffeyville and met with a crew of outraged citizens who collectively uttered the 1890’s equivalent of “oh no you didn’t, ” ambushed the Dalton boys outside the bank and blew them away (if you google Coffeyville and go to the town website, you can learn all about the Dalton Defenders museum).

Sidney’s parents were Charles Edward Cape Sr. and Jennie Hinch Cape and..that…is..where…it…stopped. There I was – floundering around in the mid-1800’s with nary a Brit in sight. The little green “hint” leaves beside the names on the Ancestry.com family trees waved mockingly at me. I was Germanic, I was Sicilian…but not a Celt. I had no link to Shakespeare, Robin Hood, William Wallace, Sir Walter Raleigh, William B. Yeats, either Queen Elizabeth, Lily Langtry or Jack the Ripper, for that matter. Rats.

I tore myself away from Kansas and wandered over to Keith’s corner of cyberspace. He swung his computer around to face me, and I beheld a veritable forest of family trees. To make matters worse, they were all…ALL! British!

Honestly, the guy is so WASP-y it’s a wonder he doesn’t buzz when he walks.

Not only that – the branches of his tree were loaded with some really succulent fruit – great names like William Tell Lewis and Truthful Lewis; a family member who began as a missionary and ended up a pirate and even a famous ghost, Ocean Born Mary (yes, you can google her, too).

I retired to the living room couch in defeat. Eventually Keith joined me, not defeated. We watched television, and I stewed. Ghosts. Hmpf. I replayed his oh-so-british family names in my head. He’d gotten back as far as Cary or Carey in the 1500’s, and I knew that name from somewhere. Then it hit me. Anne Boleyn, the unlucky second wife of Henry the Eighth – and the first one beheaded –had an older sister named Mary, who had been Henry’s mistress before he fell in love with Anne. Mary was married to – wait for it – one William Carey. And if contemporary reports can be believed, neither of their two children resembled Mr. Carey.

I sat up in dismay, staring over at Keith as he sprawled dozing on the couch. Could it possibly be that my lanky, easygoing WASP-y husband was related to the evil, megalomaniacal Henry, my least favorite English monarch? I was intrigued and horrified at the same time, and spent the rest of the weekend addressing him as “your Majesty.” He took it well.

As of this writing, I’m still in 1800’s Kansas; a real, not virtual, trip to Coffeyville is probably in my future if I’m going to figure out my past. In the meantime, around my husband at least, I’m going to watch my neck.

Summer 2010 - In Search of the Perfect Cream Soda

Despite my best intentions to write this piece over Labor Day weekend, summer ended and autumn arrived, and circumstances abysmally failed to provide me with either the opportunity or the inclination to put it all together. We turned back the clocks , and sailed the river of time past the chronological twin pillars of Halloween and Election Day; then the merciless, inescapable current plunged us, ready or not, into the Holiday season….which of course then diligently sucked up all available free time faster than a new Sham-wow soaking up accidents at puppy training class. Eventually the holiday vortex spewed us out into the lazy eddies of January Sunday afternoons, and so, caught in the throes of a rare moment of ENTIRELY FREE TIME, as the sunset burns orange through the bare tree branches and the woodstove answers with a like-minded glow, I find myself thinking of SUMMER. Again. (Incidentally I’m considering entering this paragraph in some Bulwar-Litton competition, in the Most Bloated Opening for an Essay Category…Hmmmm. I could delete it entirely but I think I’ll leave it exactly because it’s so ridiculous.)

Some months ago, when the weather was heating up, I experienced a hankering for a good ol’ cream soda and shortly thereafter, during a weekly trip to the supermarket, I grabbed a bottle labeled Jones’ Cream Soda. What started it all , in fact, was that I liked Jones Cola labels, and the cream soda suddenly sounded good. If you have seen Jones’ Colas, you will know what I mean: those black-and-white “candid” photos of things like cows in a pasture sniffing a camera lens, dogs in cardboard boxes, kids playing – “feel-good” photos. So. The taste was interesting but – to borrow a phrase from the late great author Douglas Adams, “almost but not entirely unlike” cream soda. And then, in a flash of inspiration, the enquiring mind wanted to know: just what IS “Cream Soda” – the teeth-curling sweet “redpop” of my childhood, the pale brown carbonated beverage my upstate New York friends claimed to be the real deal, this strangely labeled liquid I was tasting at the moment, an eclectic drink on a gourmet market shelf, or a battered bottle from the cooler of some out of the way diner, whose owners last took inventory around 1954?

My first impression of Jones’ Cream Soda, as I typed hastily onto a Facebook status line, was “like liquid cotton candy.” I swear. It made me remember a day at the Great American Ballpark a few years ago when I foolishly decided I wanted a taste of my childhood and ordered a big pink cloud of cotton candy. Ten minutes later I was acting like a kid, too: “Hey, let’s run up the steps to the topllevelandwhenwegetherelet’slookoverattheconstructionandoohlookattheriverdoesitlookanydifferentoverhereandheyyoucangeticecreamuponthislevelllllllllllllllllllllllllll…………………….” and on in that vein for the better part of an hour until the sugar high wore off and I slumped back exhausted in my seat, munching on salty peanuts in an attempt to incapacitate the rush and beat it to death. So…Jones Cream Soda, while interesting - and almost as exciting - as real cotton candy, and definitely displaying one of the cooler labels, did not finish first on my list by a long shot.

I next tried Stewart’s Cream Soda, also available at the local supermarket. The embryo of a systematic method for comparison was developing , because I wrote on Facebook: “color: light amber. Taste: Sweet, with a little sparkle and a little spark. A bit more sophisticated than Jones' Cream Soda….” (I was obviously well on my way to becoming quite the cream soda sommelier. ) As it rolled and fizzed across my palate I discovered that this soda was closest to the one my upstate NY friends had introduced me to thirty years ago, and it evoked a memory of walking across a dry grassy field with friends at a tiny village’s “Fireman’s Club Field Days;” playing that delicious mental game in which you wonder if one of these people you’re with is going to make some gesture indicating that he wants to be more than just a friend, and what is it going to be, and what are you going to DO about it, and yet not really sweating it because you are happy in the moment (for the pruriently curious among you, he did, I did, we did. Hey, I was young and it was summer!).

******brief interlude while I think about summers long past******

Ahem, yes. Well. Where was I? Oh yes. Following Stewarts : Faygo Cream Soda. It was time for another installment in the “In Search Of” commentary, so on the fly and looking for anything to write about, I nabbed a couple of bottles at the IGA in Germantown. Obviously I was really working on the methodology by this time because I wrote “Color: Clear. Calories/serving: 110 (the lowest of the three so far). Taste: crisp but a bit too sweet and faintly chemically. Will try it again when it's a bit colder.” (I’m not sure if I meant the soda or the weather, but it wasn’t enough to motivate a second try.) However, although the whole it wasn’t too bad, I found its clear colorlessness disconcerting. Some “oopmf” was missing. Hmmm. Bland. Gelded cream soda, that’s what it seemed like.

Next on the list : IBC Cream Soda. I wrote: “ Wow! Color: Deep gold. Flavor - seriously but not overpoweringly vanilla- light! Tingly but without eliciting that choking, bubbles-up-the-nose sensation. 180 calories/serving.... HF Corn Syrup is the sweetener.” The comparison system was essentially in place at this point, because not only was I scrutinizing the appearance and describing the taste – I was also evaluating the contents. And noting in particular, this cream soda is some pretty high calorie stuff. In retrospect, I should have consulted a professional sommelier’s notes first – then I’d have been able to address other elusive issues such as “nose” and “body” – but hey, what did I know? I started out just interested in slamming back a cold cream soda. Little did I suspect that this whole tasting episode would evolve.

At this point some friends were getting in on the game; a friend/former employee brought me the next entry: Wegmans, from upstate New York: - a "grocery store brand" that was quite surprising! - calories 110; color, dark gold. Not as tingly as some of the others, and I expected it to be like Faygo ("why shouldn't this be red") - instead, it was like "Jones CS" lite! Very nice!

(One of my horseback riding buddies also brought me some “maple seltzer” from New England which, while interesting, didn’t quite fit the criteria for cream soda. Pretty good though, and certainly rather unique.)

In mid-July we made our annual pilgrimage to Cape May New Jersey, where I found sample number 6: Olde Philadelphia Rittenhouse Square Cream Soda - Light gold, 190 cal/serving, "high f. corn syrup and/or cane sugar". Pleasant, not too sweet but not much sparkle either. Pretty smooooooth, overall not bad. And yes, made in Philadelphia. BUT…how do you have syrup “and/or” cane sugar? This from the city that was definitive enough to produce a Declaration of Independence – so NOW you can’t make up your mind? “Corn syrup and/OR cane sugar?” Huh??

Taste tested next: Sprecher Fire Brewed Cream Soda. Calories 125. HF Corn syrup. Light amber, made with HONEY and vanilla, has a creamy head on it like old fashioned A & W Root Beer. A tad less sparkly than IBC, not as sweet as Jones - unique, different, and very nice. This one was made in Wisconsin and purchased and Dorothy Lane Market, as was :

#8: Frostie BLUE Cream Soda. Calories 190. HF Corn Syrup. Clear Blue. (Ingredients include "artificial flavor" - DUH - and "Blue 1.") It was sweet, bubbly...and well, pretty. No distinctive taste. Definitely at the bottom of the list. But hey...it was blue – thanks to “Blue 1.” Was this an old Star Trek prop, or perhaps the official refreshment endorsed by Smurfs? Or worse yet, was it liquefied Smurf? (Perhaps that was what the label meant by “artificial sweetener.”)

#9 - A & W. Calories 190. HF Corn Syrup. Light Golden. This was a nice surprise - light and sparkly, nice taste but not too overpowering. My favorite of the "big" commercial entries.

Almost last tasted..and least liked - #10, Faygo Redpop. 120 Calories, HF Corn Syrup and yeah, it's RED. Memories jogged by this confection did not even vaguely resemble those elicited by Stewarts - unfortunately! - but it did send me time traveling again; I flashed back to moments in my childhood when I was being chased out of my sickbed by a well-meaning parent trying to con me into swallowing some vile cough syrup that was passed off as “cherry flavored.” Bleah.

And #11, the final one: BIG RED! Calories 100 - in a 8 oz can! HF Corn syrup. Color: RED! Taste - liquid Bubble Yum. The thing is, I LIKE Bubble Yum. It’s my go-to vice when I’m stressed out and want to…well, grind away on SOMETHING, if not some body. Even now. Fifty three years old and on occasion I may still be seen blasting down the road in my grey truck blowing BIG bubbles. As an aside, I do NOT advocate blowing bubbles while on horseback; some of them take exception to the snapping sound (guess how I know this). So while Big Red is, shall I say, blatently jazzy and perhaps suggestive of, if it were possible, chewing on a vintage Saturday Morning cartoon, I have to admit I liked it.

Summing things up in an embarrassingly untimely attempt to finally fling this exposition to the winds of cyberspace….where do they all stand, these bottles of liquid recollection?

Well, I’ll tell you. It wasn’t as easy as it first seemed, summing them all up. And no doubt there are more out there waiting to be sampled, so in all likelihood there will be a continuance THIS year, particularly if my travels or those of friends yield some formerly undiscovered possibilities. Watch Facebook with baited breath for updates. In the meantime, here’s my list.

In 11th place, Faygo Redpop, if only because the only medicine I was fooled into believing was “tasty “ as a child - labels notwithstanding - was Cheracol cough syrup, and Faygo decidedly lacked the richness (and maybe the mental side effects!) of THAT concoction. Unfortunately.

In 10th place, Frostie Blue Cream soda. Blue. It just ain’t right.

In 9th place Faygo Cream Soda. Clear, colorless cream soda ain’t right either.

8th place: Jones’ Cream Soda. Just too sweet. If I want a cotton candy rush, I’ll order cotton candy. Besides, if you’re drinking liquid cotton candy, you deprive yourself of the true sport inherent in eating the real thing, which is avoiding either wearing it yourself or getting it in the hair or on the person of the unsuspecting ball park fan sitting in front of you. (Then again, maybe not.)

7th place: Wegman’s. A little more spark would have placed this one higher up on the list.

6th place: Rittenhouse. I have to admit I like the idea of drinking cream soda made in such a historic place, but you’d think that having been formulated in that hotbed of revolution it would have had a little more definitive taste.

5th place: A & W – just not too shabby for a “commercial” blend.

4th Big Red. Because, admit it, sometimes you WANT a little jazz!

3rd Sprecher Fire-Brewed – just an interesting and intriguing mixture, what with that honey and all. Worth the trip to DLM to find. And you can treat yourself to some pastry or “farmhouse bread” while you’re there. And the honeycrisp apples…oh, and the cheese counter..and…uh…well, plan to take all afternoon, anyway…….

And last – I have to say it’s a tie for first and second place, between IBC and Stewart’s. They are both oh, so close to that elusive Upstate New York blend that I enjoyed. The brand, I believe, was Adirondak Cream Soda and I have yet to find it locally, so if you run across some, pick up a can for me. My friends supplied me with “the real deal” by the caseload through vet school, so I have to admit some good memories of THAT time in my life resurfaced when sampling any of the gold or “brown” cream sodas. Studying histology and falling asleep, waking up to find a big highlighter splot on my notes where I dozed off holding the marker; trying to get everything done before 8 p.m. on a Thursday night to watch the iconic, never-yet-beaten lineup of TV shows: Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, Night Court and St. Elsewhere. Giggling about “sniglets” (words that ought to be in the dictionary but aren’t) with friends when I should have been looking at Pathophysiology of Disease slides (Singlet example: Blibula – BLIB-yoo-la: the place on a dog which, when scratched, makes him rhythmically flap his hind leg). The weight-lifted –off-your-shoulders feel of finishing finals and heading home to Middletown late on a December afternoon.

I really didn’t anticipate a walk down memory lane when I started this taste test research back last June – but it has been an interesting little jaunt and it makes me wonder where it’ll take me THIS year. I’ll get back to you in June.

Ralph's Mom's Ginger Snaps - The Best!

(Just another cold morning at Strawberry Hill Farm. Happiness is a stock tank heater that works!)

Ralph's Mom's Ginger Snaps (this recipe probably came from England although measurements are now in "U.S." lingo...)

1 1/2 cups. shortening (hint USE REAL BUTTER!!)
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup dark molasses
2 eggs

4 teaspoons baking soda
4 and 1/2 cups flour (or a little more)
1 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
2 teaspoons ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Hint: not for the faint hearted - if you like them with a real kick use somewhat more spices than "level" spoonfuls.

Demirara or other sugar crystals

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Cream together shortening and sugar, then add molasses and eggs.

Mix in one bowl flour, soda, salt, and spices, then add gradually to the butter/cream/molasses/eggs mixture till well blended. Dough should not be tooooo sticky - add more flour till it is a little stiff and easy to handle.

Chill (or not!) and drop by rounded teaspoon fulls or blobs or chunks into the crystallized sugar, then place on a cookie sheet or cooking stone. I cover either one with bakers' parchment paper. Cook 10-15 minutes - watch for the tops to crack a little. Cookies are done when they darken a bit, crack on top and aren't "jiggly" when you touch or move the cookie sheet You will have to experiment a little - shorter cooking makes chewy cookies, longer makes them crisp. They will spread so leave about 1 1/2 inch between cookies. Easier to get off the cookie sheet if you let cool a couple minutes after removing them from the oven. Even simpler if you use parchment paper.

These freeze really well, as does the dough, so you can make them up now, wrap the dough or the baked cookies well and toss in the freezer till some cold January night, if you have too many sweets right now...
Best eaten with COLD milk!

The Barn Coat

I have discovered that while we horse owners converse or write at length about our favorite ponies, our trailers, our tack, our show clothes, even our long-suffering spouses, we have blatently ignored that most important item each and every one of us owns...the item completely taken for granted that nonetheless completes every equine enthusiast's wardrobe: The Barn Coat.

It comes in a variety of weights and colors (depending upon local weather conditions, owner preferences, and whatever was cheapest, free or inherited from someone else), and it may or may not be the coat we actually ride in, but it is de rigeur apparel for stall cleaning, grooming, feeding and visits by the vet or farrier.

My theory that Barn Coats are - like dogs - genetically identical despite variations in their outward appearance evolved several years ago while I was visiting a friend after work. For whatever reason (or perhaps none at all) we decided to mosey out to her barn, so she loaned me HER Barn Coat. I put it on, automatically shoved my hands in the pockets (which were right where they needed to be, of course), and discovered that The Coat felt and smelled (!) exactly like mine. While I didn't take inventory, I'd bet a sizeable portion of my income that her Barn Coat Pockets contained, as we say in southwest Ohio, the "exact same" items as mine. In short, her coat felt just like home.

My current Barn Coat (see photo,taken just this morning. The coat is accessorized with fleece hat (Lands' End c. 2005), fleece HeadSox c. 1995 and which, if it ever disappears or falls apart, will necessitate my immediately moving to the equator! - Muck boots, canine action figures and the unofficial uniform of SW Ohio country people, Carhartt Coveralls) , belonged to my father, whose passing in 1990 elevated it to the status of holy relic. Mom gave it to him for Christmas around 1972, so by my reckoning it is at least 35 years old . It's a three-quarter length, fleece - lined Levi's denim model, still held together by its original stitching and whatever nameless goo has been ground into it over the years.

I wash it once a year whether it needs it or not (it usually does), but at its advanced age I view its annual bath with some trepidation; I'm never sure whether it's going to come out of the washer in one piece or dozens. In deference to its geriatric state I use the gentle cycle; this of course is no match for smears of hoof dressing, spots of betadyne, molecules of manure, horse hair, dog hair and particles of hay dust...a biochemical mixture which probably turns into a sort of glue when agitated in warm water. In fact, I suspect this is actually what preserves the aging cloth, and have considered peddling this formula - once I nail it down - to art conservators who deal with antique tapestries.

Whatever the reason, The Coat seems to be made of iron, and I think there is every likelihood it will outlast several washers. Not washes. Washers.

I have to wash it at home, of course. Any self-respecting laundromat manager seeing and smelling the thing would meet The Coat and me at the door and send us both packing.

The laundry soap commercials would impress me a lot more if, instead of demonstrating their soaps' effectiveness on mud-and-fruit-punch stained kids, they attempted to tackle Barn Coat stains.

However, as any horse owner knows, the Barn Coat is much more than a garment designed for warmth and protection from the elements. Because...it has pockets.

About ten years ago, before I got into the habit of giving it a yearly bath, I decided to take a formal inventory of my Barn Coat pockets (Ok, so it was one of those icy January days in which I had entirely too much free time on my hands). The items I discovered and listed filled an entire notebook page - both sides. I was amazed at how much easier my walk to the barn became after I had divested my Coat of approximately 20 pounds of "stuff" though in subsequent weeks about 15 pounds of "really necessary stuff" found its way back into the pockets.

As I viewed the list and the pile, I began to truly appreciate the many functions of the miraculous Barn Coat:

It is a portable tool box (wire cutters, two screwdrivers, and a pocket knife; a pantry (if you crave last year's candy canes, six month old chewing gum, or a worn-around-the-edges Milk Bone); a linen closet (assorted rags); a first aid kit (two Band-Aids, - one used - and a wrinkled tube of eye ointment), a bank, and an occasional cat bed. And oh yes, a repository for Lost Items (my best suture scissors). If the truth be told, the Holy Grail is probably in somebody's Barn Coat (Barn Cloak?), somewhere.

I found surgical instruments that had disappeared years previously. Rolls of Vet Wrap mashed to the density of granite (and speaking of granite, several "neat rocks" picked up on the path to the barn). Fencing material sufficient to repair a five acre pasture. A "chestnut" (for you non-equestrians, this is a part of horse anatomy of callous-like consistency located on a horse's legs) peeled off my gelding's leg and stashed away to keep the dog from eating it now and upchucking it later in the living room in front of New Years' Eve party guests. Enough Kleenex (only slightly dirty) to mop up a classroom of first graders during cold and flu season (and hey, is that lint -covered thing a cough drop?). Gently cushioning it all, having worked its way past $18.73 in loose change - presumably to pay for a parking space at the barn? - to the very bottom of each pocket, was approximately half a bale of prime mixed alfalfa-orchard grass hay. And - wait for it - a hoof pick.

On any given day, my personal Barn Coat will also contain a broken dog leash and a half-full tube of horse wormer. My friend Yolonda added that hers was not complete without a "gross, slimy" tube of Chapstick, and also noted that matching buttons - or even a complete set of buttons - were NOT a a requirement for a good Barn Coat. After all, you can always hold the thing together with baling twine - which of course is in one of these pockets, somewhere...

Despite its frayed sleeves and a permanent crust of what I fervently hope is just dirt, but from which several useful vaccines and a cure for the common cold just might be developed, my Barn Coat looks to be around a while longer. Amazingly, the coat has not yet exhibited even that first symptom of Terminal Barn Coat Disease: ever-widening holes in the pockets that allow their contents to hemorrhage into that hinterland between the lining and the outer shell, never to see the light of day again.

I had occasion several years ago to treat a young relative of our pastor's to a midwinter horseback ride. Of course, in my concern that everything was safe and comfortable, I forgot to change from my Barn Coat to my Official Riding Coat (which might one day become a Barn Coat in its turn, although right now it is still much too clean). The pastor took one look at my Coat and offered to perform an exorcism on the spot (I declined, cackling evilly with my head spinning on its axis...).

Remember that scene in an old Bugs Bunny cartoon, where Bugs spots a Scottish Elmer Fudd playing the bagpipes? Mistaking the bagpipes for an attacking monster, Bugs tries to wrestle the instrument to the ground. If my Barn Coat should ever make a noise, I think that will be all the excuse my dogs need to do the same thing in my defense. And it won't be pretty.

Regardless of the shock value of its appearance, I think I'll keep my old friend going a while longer. However, as time goes by I can't help but give some thought to what actions would be appropriate when my Barn Coat has outlived its usefulness. I am wavering between cremation and a decent burial, but I'm not kidding myself; there's every possibility, at this rate, that my Barn Coat will outlive me.


I recently settled onto the living room couch to watch (for the umpteeth time) the finale of the Lord of the Rings movies. I sincerely believe that if Frodo had concealed the One Ring in the pocket of a Barn Coat, the story could have been told in three chapters, instead of three volumes. Of course, the Fellowship would probably have been trailed anyway by the horses of the Dark Riders, irresistably drawn to the scent of hay, peppermints and old cookies also residing in the pockets!

I'm thinking I should notify the Levi Strauss company. I'm available for endoresments, and so is the Coat, but it insists on signing its own contract.
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