Six Degrees of My Box Lock

As promised, MC determined to do something about home security, specifically the lock that stubbornly refused to let the Crankies inside, or outside, their own house during a blizzard. With her rogue box lock in hand, she set out to meet Mr. High Security, a highly recommended fixer of creaky old hardware.

One look at Mr. High Security's shop and MC recognized that her lock could be restored to a readiness level of DEFCON 1. Think of all the ways you could illustrate "encyclopedic knowledge," and MC will raise you another one, courtesy of Mr. High Security. Choosing a favorite lock set from among so many beauties would be a struggle, but the sleek barrel key to Hitler's bunker and the over-the-top door handle from the Cadillac Hotel, created during Detroit's glory days, are among her favorites. It turns out that the mechanism from CGF is a respectable Penn product with a two-key "night-lock" arrangement that you don't see every day. MC has now shared all the technical jargon she retained from Mr. HS; henceforth, lock mechanisms will be referred to as "thingies."

MC's chi was particularly strong on this day, and as Mr. HS described an upcoming trip to the Cranky State, she processed his reference to a revered teacher, now deceased, that he called "Dora Cranky." But wait, MC thought. MY name is Cranky. How many "Dora Crankies" could exist that aren't members of the Cranky Family? Turns out, there aren't any at all, since Dora Cranky was the first wife of a Cranky cousin. But wait, there's more: her daughter was previously pictured here: the little girl with the pigtails in the front row. Cranky ex-husband is seventh from the right.

A respectable lock, MC has learned, will provide reliable security and peace of mind for longer than a human lifetime. Pay a little extra, though, and you could get a lock that makes connections in the space-time continuum.
--MC

Weakest Links

Cranky #2 spent a particularly chilly holiday at CGF because of the window pictured here. Single-paned, northern exposure, with a storm window that's not trying very hard. C1 and C2 each received two snuggies for Christmas, and they wore both of them to keep warm in this north bedroom. A tribute to early 20th century style and engineering, this window is impossibly tall and impossibly drafty.
All this elongated draftiness was amplified during by the Great Christmas Eve Blizzard and Door Failure of Ought Nine. On an evening when the wind was up, the mercury was down, and the snow falling at a steady pace, the lock on the entry door went on vacation, and no one in the Cranky household could get it to return our calls. We coaxed, reasoned, and pleaded, but all we got in return was the box-lock answering machine: "Leave a message if you want, but you're hosed. Losers."

MC found the possibility of being house-bound on Christmas Eve kind of charming. The Cranky family huddles around a propane heater and eats microwave popcorn with fake butter flavoring, just like in the olden Cranky days. But the house party voted down cozy romanticism. Instead, Cranky men applied hammers and screwdrivers, and removed the offending door from its hinges. The Cranky men are a hearty bunch; a thermometer reading 19 degrees was in plain sight, yet entrance and egress was their goal. With the door removed, we enjoyed complete access to both house and farm. If the cattle had heard about our open door policy, we're sure they would have stopped by for some hospitality. Our scores for accessibility were perfect, but our energy efficiency suffered.

MC is confident that Teenaged Nephew will grow up to accomplish many good and great things, but to her mind, his greatness was fortold by his heroism during the Great Ought Nine Blizzard and Door Failure. With only a screwdriver and a can of WD-40, Teenaged Nephew repaired the Cranky box lock and brought beauty and body heat back into our holiday. We think there's a MacArthur genius grant in his future.

President Obama has observed that "insulation is sexy stuff"; MC may be impossibly naive, but she doesn't see that claim as a part of a dangerous Marxist environmental initiative to divert our tax dollars to Home Depot. Based on her recent Christmas Eve adventure, she can state from empirical experience that not freezing in a blizzard is, in fact, a turn-on. Having a front door in place when it's snowing outside is practically pornographic. Her task before the next snowfall is to upgrade the leaky window and restore credibility to the unreliable lock. Because higher R-values are the new sexy.
--MC

The Really Good Stuff

Comes now a reality program called Hoarders, designed, apparently, to let the untidy desktop crowd feel superior about the untouchables with living room collections of 30,000 beer cans. MC's favorite bit of television analysis is the revelation that attention deficit disorder prevented one featured subject from tidying up her overstuffed residence.

ADD explains so much about the garage at CG Farm. But more about that later. First, MC would like to take issue with Hoarders' these-people-are-deeply-troubled premise to speak in defense of Those Who Gather. What the untrained eye might see as a weirdo's collection of empty prescription bottles, she would argue, is another person's embarrassment of wealth.



What if the Hoarders gurus brought their de-cluttering techniques this scenario? Well,
they'd lose their chance at ever restoring their Robbins & Meyers H-model ceiling fan. The Fan Man, located in Dallas, apparently
gets inspiration by keeping his inventory within arms' reach. We're saving up for a restoration of a glorious H-model, rescued from the Cranky Hometown Bijou Theatre by UM. Fan Man can be as eccentric as he wants to be as long as he can rewind the coil and find us some replacement blade hardware. When you're looking for 90-year-old hardware, Those Who Gather are savants, not bipolar clutterers who need their Xanax refilled.
(Fan Man shop from UM; Robbs & Myers image from vintagefans.com)

Did MC get the fender part for her '67 Plymouth Belvedere from Ebay? Please. That vital piece of Mopar engineering was collected from a pasture, where it was lovingly conserved with very many of its high-performance friends and watched over by attentive goats that kept weeds at bay. We understand that Cousin Tom's wife had a yard sale a while back, so some of those car bodies may now be lost to history. See what we mean about the dangers of de-cluttering?

MC once scored some terrific glass drawer pulls from the house next door to El Azteca. There were bathtubs out in the yard; it looked like an antique shop. OK, a really low-budget antique shop. So when she asked for cabinet knobs, she had no idea she would be led into the house, through a labyrinth of boxes, to inspect the merchandise. There, hanging on a nail beside a bed, were the perfect drawer pulls. Yea! When a person rolled over, MC realized that she was standing in someone's bedroom. Which just happened to be a hardware showroom. But still. Bathtub/drawer-pull guy was a serious member of the Those Who Gather society.

Back in the day, MC's father expressed his gathering tendencies in his office/garage. When it fell to MC to conserve these treasures, she mentally grouped them into categories: Stuff that Won't Burn and Stuff that Will Burn. The "Won't Burn" category was by far the largest. What do you do with half a dozen broken oil-well drill bits? MC's father picked them up because they were trash in his field, yet now they're 40-pound garage objet d'arts. Each time she found an object that seemed perfect for the scrap pile, members of her tribe would tell her something like: "That's the PTO shaft for the Allis tractor," or "That's the jet rod for the xyz windmill." Useful stuff, lovingly gathered and faithfully conserved, in the middle of the garage bay.

MC has since added a fabulous broken floor lamp to the garage mix. She's sure she can find a craftsman who can display its '30s wonderfulness in an appropriate fashion. It's not like she's on a deadline or anything. It's been gathered, and that's the fun part.
--MC

Not-Spring Break Wrap-Up

The Crankies collected several images during their Not-Spring Break that deserve consideration and analysis. So here they are, with thoughtful, incisive annotations.

Here is our Well Guru, checking out our problematic water well. Please observe the stick in guru's left hand. This is a water witching stick; guru used this stick to find a new source of water on CGF, where we can drill another well when the time comes. That's one powerful stick.

This image would fall in the "adding insult to injury" category. It's a deer product. First the deer eat CGs' trees. Then they defecate beside the trees. A way to autograph your work, if you don't have opposable thumbs.

Cranky #2 likes to arrange and photograph other people's pretties; these fruity coasters are from Gardener Friends' collection. After sharing chicken pot pie with the Cranky family, Gardener Friend let us memorialize the event.






And finally, here's this spring's installment of calf-crop cuteness. Say it loud: I'm black and I'm proud.

--MC

Who Do You Think You Are? Ancient O'Herns Edition

Consider the Irish. They've got that Celtic mysticism thing going on. Joyce and Yeats give them plenty of literary firepower. There are those haunting songs and a certain (albeit disputed) charm that allows the Vice President to say the f-word on national television and not appear to be a lout. Their national holiday gives the world annual license to get knee-walking drunk. What's not to love about them, I wonder? Maybe a few of MC's relatives.

MC thinks that perhaps her great-grandfather took the whole potato famine business too personally. In any event, the lore that has come down to her about P.S. O'Hern has not described him as a harp-playing lad with a sweet tenor voice telling droll stories over a pint. The Patrick Stephen stories tend to be about land acquisition and the complicated division of his assets among his 12 surviving children.


In the bottom left photo, there's a house behind the zeppelin-sized pig. The pig, relative to the house, must be about the size of the the living room, if the house has a living room. P.S. O'Hern and his wife Mary Jane raised 13 children in that house. According to lore, when one of his 10 sons received his acceptance letter to West Point, the son threw down his shovel and declared he was finished, forever, with farm work. P.S. seemed to have had that effect on children.

P.S. O'Hern's last living son died recently at the age of 101, after being profiled by every major news outlet in the state. After you hit 100, folksy geezerdom becomes irresistible, and Charlie acquired a stack of press clippings. His attentive caretaker also shared and archived many of the documents in his house, including the images shown here. In these photos, Uncle Chuck and a horse are standing in the bed of a pickup, a fairly low-security arrangement for the horse, and not so great for Charlie either.

The stories that persist about Uncle C indicate more than a passing resemblance to his father. For example, when one of his nephews served on a submarine, he was asked to fill out a questionnaire and explain, "Why did you join the Navy?" Morris Dale wrote, "Uncle Charlie." When his officers asked for clarification, the nephew said, "If you ever worked for Uncle Charlie, you'd know why I joined the Navy." The people who worked for Uncle Charlie drove pickups without heat, used machinery long after it had completed its depreciation schedule, and received only modest compensation. A pair of them were changing a flat on a dilapidated trailer filled with cattle when Uncle C came upon them and made inquiries. Uncle's hired hands didn't lack for snap. They told him, "You didn't give us enough to do, Charlie, so we're rotating the tires on this trailer."

The axiom about age having its privileges is true in Uncle C's case, particularly since he outlived the folks who could contradict his version of family history. His very presence, in a house that made P.S's look like a McMansion, seemed the essence of his father's ideology about getting money and keeping it. Perhaps the ancient Celtic charm in MC's family was snuffed out by nasty English landlords. Maybe MC's relations were profoundly moved by the rich brother in The Quiet Man. But somehow "Danny Boy" morphed into Gordon Gekko with an 8th grade education.

Cranky #2 met Uncle C when she was about 3; by that time she had considerably more teeth than he had. Herr Cranky made the introductions, saying, "Here's another red-headed O'Hern for you." Uncle C observed: "There's a lot of us." Maybe that's the ultimate prize of these generations of tight-fisted tenacity: we endured.
--MC

Confidence Booster

After kvetching about inclement weather, broken appliances, and a gimpy water system, MC would like to raise up a positive event that transpired during the Cranky Girls' trip to the farm: preparing the garden. In fairness, this chore took place efficiently and productively because MC had very little to do with it. In the picture above, 1)Cousin Tom is driving 2)another neighbor's tractor and pulling 3)Uncle M's cultivator. This neighborhood cooperation looks suspiciously like socialism, which we all know from the health care reform discussions is a dangerous threat to our freedoms. But this particular sharing of community resources must be OK because Cousin Tom has more guns than any self-respecting socialist could own outright. MC will be on the lookout for vegetables with bolshevik tendencies.

Cranky #1 ramrodded the decorative portion of the garden, clearing out roots and weeds to make room for the morning glories and other flowery additions that we will encourage to climb up the new corrals. Cranky #2 was concerned about what these vine-y plants will do when they reach the top of the corral and have no place left to go. MC would deem the effort a success if the flowers--or Cranky #2-- grew taller than the pigweed does this summer.

Burning grass in the yard might seem like a page from the "we must destroy this village to save it" school of horticulture. But MC is following best practices here. She planted a patch of lovegrass the size of a baby wading pool in pile of construction dirt. It grew into tall, plume-y clumps, just like the real deal. Real lovegrass farmers burn off their dead clumps to let the new grass grow in faster. MC is a real farmer, by damn, and she had the lighter in her pocket to prove it.
Lovegrass burning shows a bit of gardening savvy; dirt on the face, however, is the hallmark of quality gardening. Those children that Mrs. Obama invites to work in the White House garden don't look nearly dirty enough when they're done, but maybe their sisters don't throw clods at them. In any event, blowing bubbles reflects the satisfaction of a job well done.
--MC

Baby It's Cold Outside

This portrait of UM's fine Angus girls was taken the day after CGs refugeed back to warmer climes. Fleeing south just a few hours ahead of blizzard like migrating birds on methamphetamines, the CGs missed the high drama of this weather event. But the Angus girls are doing a fine job of color commentary: "Spring? We rather think not."

The CGs heard a great deal of mewling and puking about how this cold snap manifested itself in the People's Republic of Austin. It was miserable! exclaimed the Longhorns baseball fan. Not to diminish the discomfort of those Disch-Falk bleachers, but we think the cows' game was more likely to have been called on account of weather.

Cold at CGF can be a merciless affair, since the wind chill factor amplifies even a modest temperature change. Step outside and get a greater appreciation for Robert Scott and his stiff-upper lip pals at the South Pole. MC's favorite cold weather story involves a frozen water line at Uncle Sid's house. Pipeline was excavated; pipeline broke; pipeline had to be replaced, all in meat-locker conditions. It was a day-long affair. When Uncle Michael limped back to CGF, his concerned mother asked about the everyone's well-being. "It's so cold the snot's frozen on Sid's face," was the reply.

MC is thinking that maybe it was Not-Spring at CGF, what with the snow and all. Upon reflection, the cranky water system added up to a sort of Not-Break. In total, then, the CGs enjoyed a Not-Spring, Not-Break. Whatever. We'd do it again in a heartbeat.
--MC

Beulah Land

Meta Cranky's hometown is the source of a number of guilty pleasures. Sopapilla Cheesecake, as noted previously, is just one example. Without the good example of Herr Cranky, the CGs stay up too late watching movies, practice driving cars and pickups in the deserted driveway, and observe a shoes-optional policy, regardless of the weather.

In some circles, top-of-the-lung Methodist hymn singing is a guilty pleasure. In Cranky Hometown, there are particular summer services where the hometown congregation dusts off its Cokesbury hymnals and cuts loose with the rip-snorting early 20th-century classics that are redolent of brush arbors, IOOF halls, and WPA projects. These hymns may be the Cheese Doodles of music world: musical gourmets may sniff, but if they ever get a taste ("Wonderful Grace of Jesus," anyone?), they'll be licking the fako-food coloring off their fingers and binging in dark closets.

Let's clarify: We're not talking about the three-hanky sob-fests that Drama Queen trenchantly calls "Wurlitzer Schmaltz." I respect your right to adore those Victorian snoozers like "In the Garden," but please understand that because MC has the attention span of a gnat, these classics are wasted on her. MC's guilty pleasures are the ones with the jingly Rudyard-Kiplingesque rhythms and the friendly toggling between a thrumming, repetitious bass line (think come, come, come, come, Come to the Church in the Wildwood!) and soprano riffs that approach Queen-of-the-Night elevations. MC feels rather self-conscious about revealing that she is fascinated by retro Protestant musical arrangements, but she remembers that she saw Joe King Carrasco at Club Foot, Warren Zevon at the Stone Pony, and Lucinda Williams at the Electric Lounge; she doesn't need to prove her hipness cred to anybody.

This week, a beloved hymn-singing member of the Cranky Methodist Church passed away. Aged Alto Friend never learned to read music, but her uncanny ear unerringly found the harmonic thirds, fifths, and sevenths that give depth and feeling to a melody line. Because Alto Friend was all about those retro hymns, the choir offered up a medley of her favorites at her funeral, and MC, on the ground at CGF, got to participate. As the choir loft Magnified the Precious Name of Jesus, MC watched the we-get-it grins form on the faces of her friends and neighbors, the grins that people of a certain age usually produce when they hear ABBA on the grocery store muzak.

In the homestretch, the upper voices stretched out a chord describing the mansions bright and blessed. The men's voices stalwartly answered with with equal horsepower from the back pew. Then as the choir was bringing it in for a landing, MC's spotted Alto Friend's daughter, a school classmate. Alto Daughter was weeping, as daughters will do at their mothers' funerals, but she also was singing along. MC hadn't considered this series of events, and she almost had to sit down to think about it. She hasn't yet figured out why the image of singing grief was so moving, but it has something to do with incongruity. "When We All Get to Heaven" is an irrepressibly happy song about the Big Chill. For MC, it's an adorable, slightly kooky period piece, like a Chambers stove with a ThermoWell. But when it's your mother's favorite, it's kooky and beloved and powerful all at the same time.
--MCG

Bloodlines

MC touched base with her cranky roots today as two delightful cousins came to visit with their charming children and grandchildren. C2 couldn't keep the news to herself and called Herr Cranky to announce how many new friends she had made. C1 met a boy cousin her very own age, and she laughed at a number of age-inappropriate jokes. MC smiled at the way this branch of her tribe tells stories with a particular rhythm and pacing. One story has MC's uncle enlisting a wee small cousin to back a car out of a driveway. When tiny tot backs the colossal '65 Chrysler 300 into an impediment, Uncle reproaches her, saying sadly, "Goddamn, baby, I thought you said you could drive."

Happy Grandmother cousin arrived bearing multiple gifts. One was powerful and dangerous, and right-thinking families wouldn't allow their children around it without supervision. Happy G calls it Sopapilla Cheesecake, and Paula Deen must be weeping hot, bitter tears that she didn't think of it first.


The other gift was a friendship quilt dating from the mid-1930s. The character of individual signatures implies that family members and friends embroidered their names on the blocks, while MC's grandmother, she conjectures, combined them into a small artifact of remembrance. There's hardly a name on the quilt that MC can't associate with a farm, a house, or a face.


The blue "Mrs. Melendy" block with the dramatic green capitals in satin stitch was made by the grandmother of a MC's Best Friend Since We Were Four. "Nevada Duncan" is by the sister of MC's great-grandmother, profiled previously, while "Flossie G" is her grandmother's sister. MC can't help but notice that her own family's blocks are tidy and neat, but without the flourishes of, say, Mrs. Melendy, or Lucy Ellis, whose block has swoopy capitals that would look at home in an illuminated manuscript.

MC's own mother, then a girl, makes an appearance in this quilt, performing respectable work in a block that does not yet connect her cursive-style letters.

*All photos courtesy of Cranky #1

Happy Grandmother cousin's generosity gives MC a small window into the dynamics of a long-ago neighborhood, where flamboyance and personality could be expressed with a needle and thread. MC knows that searchable genealogical databases are invaluable for finding out information such as Obama's Irish heritage or whether you're related to the bastard son of the Duke of Gloucester. However, Nevada Duncan, Flossie G., and Kathleen are warm and snuggly, while Mormon geneology records and the baronetage are not.
--MCG

Just Call Me Sisyphus

Today, Meta Cranky will rationalize undone farm projects by imagining that she's living in a Before Picture, which ultimately will be upgraded to an After Picture. For example, Uncle Sid and Cousin Tom built this shiny corral last spring. It's sturdy, ingeniously designed, and it lets you load your cattle without being kicked or trampled. However, those master welders didn't budget for landscaping. So the CGs spent a sunny afternoon putting in climb-y type seeds that C2 picked out at the Big Box store. We can hope that the After Pictures, taken mid-summer, will feature shiny corrals covered in blue morning glories that set off the our cow friends' brown eyes.

Our Yorkshire friend, whom we'll call John of Beverly, worked his usual alchemy and convinced our front doors to latch properly. In the After Picture, however, these doors not only will close but will have working locks, courtesy of the Highly Recommended Locksmith. Apparently, you've got to service your locks every 90 years or so, or home security will suffer.

All too frequently, MC is presented with a troubleshooting issue that makes her think: Geez, didn't we just fix that? Upon reflection, however, the problematic item was just fixed about 30 years before. In the interim, stuff happens. The map of Europe has changed, but the air compressor and the Toro mower in the garage remain the same.

--MCG

To-Do List

Gardener Friend has a Things To Do notepad that fascinates Cranky #2. At 8 a.m., C2 labored to write her name at the top and, if time had permitted, would have included "Woke Up" and "Ate Breakfast" to mark those accomplishments off in an orderly fashion. C2's approach to lists reminds Meta Cranky of the way her former employer's New York office handled production deadlines. The deadlines for Texas editors were always the ones posted on the schedule. The New Yorkers' deadlines were generally the day they emptied their ashtrays and finally finished their manuscripts.

While there's a great deal of satisfaction in marking off The Things I Do Anyway on one's Things To Do list, the Crankies had to blaze a new path today and buy a washing machine. MC lowered her expectations to the "Hopeless Losers" setting and made for the big box store. There, she found not just her heart's desire, the plainest of top-loaders, but also surprising moments of glad grace.

In MC's experience, finding customer service at a big box store is like looking for the elusive Ivory Billed Woodpecker in the wilds of darkest Arkansas. You can hear it calling from afar, and experts declare its existence, but there haven't been any confirmed sightings in 60 years. Cynics, take note: First, a Guy with Clues located our a wierdo light bulb. Then he observed to C2, pleasantly and confidently, that playing with the broken sample bulb we brought wasn't an option. No hard feelings. She surrendered the broken bulb to MC's new BF, the Guy with Clues.

Now, gentle readers, hold onto your mousepads: there were TWO Guys with Clues in the same big box store. This one not only found our modest appliance, he devised a diversion strategy to keep C2 from playing PBS Kids on his computer. Can you run two aisles over and find the blue washer for me? How about the red washer? Bet you can't lie down in the bath tub. Bet she fell for it like a jive sucka. I heard the angel choirs singing. No eye-rolling while C2 sat on a lawn mower or tried to flush the demo toilets. I light a candle for Guys with Clues at the Customer Service Altar. Simultaneously, I weep for the legions of Big Box customers who are wandering, zombie-like, in warehouses nationwide, unable to drive home until they find an associate to get a toilet flapper thingy from the back for them. America's DIY-ers are doomed to wander around like the Ancient Mariner because I bagged the last Guys with Clues.

On the car ride home, the Crankies orally listed the things they had accomplished in their outing: Swam at the Y. Ate Gardener Friend's oatmeal. Bought a light bulb. Had a tea party with a cousin. Got flower seeds for a garden. Climbed a rock wall. Ate a noteworthy navel orange. But which of those things made their "Best Of" list, Meta Cranky wanted to know. C2 refused to prioritize; every item on her list was her favorite. C1, nursing sore fingers from her rock climbing, was of the same mind. But, with its smell still wafting through the car, the navel orange had the inside track.
--MCG

Things Fall Apart

Before the Cranky Girls reached the farm on this trip, they ate supper with US and AG at the Chinese buffet. Meta Cranky's fortune cookie read: "You will visit exotic lands." I can't make this stuff up.

Re-entry at CG's Farm always involves a shakedown, and this trip is no exception. The water system required tinkering, and happily the service person arrived this afternoon. Until then, the water pressure was iffy enough that Cranky #2 would make excited announcements when water was forthcoming: "The water's coming out in the bathtub AND the sink!" In urban lands, people see faucets and make wild assumptions about the availability of water. CGs know better. Check your filters, your bladder pressures, your resin beds (Yay UM for putting those new points in the well house!), but the gods will laugh if you start assuming you can fill the bathtub while you run the washing machine.

The washer, aging but functional, is another sore point. Judging when to pull the plug on this washer is a bit like diagnosing when to move a beloved aging parent to an Alzheimer's unit. Just when I've concluded that I'll have to bail the water from the tub and drag my sodden laundry out to the clothesline in 39 degree weather, Washer With Dementia remembers how to spin dry. You can hear it mutter, "I don't want to be a burden. I used to have a warranty from Sears." Yes, sweetie, but we think you may be ready for specialized care.

MC's full-blown visit to Appliance Hell was brought on by her misreading of the settings on her otherwise friendly refrigerator. The freezer settings read something like "Colder" and "Warmer." For absolute truth and accuracy, however, the settings should be labeled "your ice cubes will clump together" and "your freezer items will be covered in black mold." Upon arrival, MC discovered the latter. Luckily, she gave up being squeamish for Lent, so leaky chuck roast package affected her only slightly. She predicts that the coyotes will be waddling around holding their bellies after eating the repast of Freezer Thaw that she laid out for them by the creek.

Cranky #1 is the most ticklish part of the shakedown, since we can never predict when her allergies will kick in. The cool, damp weather means that farmers are beginning to burn off their dry winter grasses. Some smoke, somewhere, has Cranky #1's number, and she's been reaching for her inhaler. Not the terrific purple steroid inhaler she scored last spring break. Just the plain Jane inhaler that lets you breathe all you want if you don't get too greedy. One of the wonders of farm life, however, is that resources rarely go to waste, and that includes expensive pharmacuticals. Meta Cranky once got a viewing of a closet holding the meds of a family friend who recently died of cancer. A veritable pharmacy of anti-nausea prescriptions, neatly stored away in case someone might need them. Cranky #1 will get her very own meds tomorrow, but a purple inhaler has been located whose previous owner has joined the Choir Invisible.

MC is confident that her oldest, smartest brother will tell her the whole story on this crumpled Dempster windmill, which she suspects he photographed while trolling for parts. Crumpled windmills may look like they're begging to be be carted off and turned into a Chinese automobile, but do not be deceived. Collect enough rusty windmill parts and eventually you'll have enough to put your windmill back together. MC feels a metaphor coming on, but she suspects that Clever Readers saw it already. Let's just say that, appearances to the contrary, MC is getting in touch with her inner engineer. CG Farm only looks like mere anarchy. We've got it. Really.
--MCG

Don't Hate Us Because We Were More Beautiful than You Are

Tomorrow morning, the Cranky Girls will take off their city-girl hats and put on their farm-girl ones. Changing venues has a time-warp element at times, since the CGs stay in a house furnished by a person who graduated from high school in 1938. We have brought some modern touches, such as wiring without frayed insulation, but we'd like to think that these changes are in keeping with sensibility of Meta Cranky's mother. Kap would have been pleased to serve Norm Abrams a piece of her pie, but, for reasons of economy and aesthetics, she wouldn't have let the This Old House guy touch her knob-and-tube wiring or her '70s Formica kitchen counter.

The Crankies' home place is a venue where, as in Faulkner, the past is not only not dead, it's not even past. In preparation for another exercise in time-travel, Meta Cranky would like to consider some vintage elements of style and engineering that perhaps work better--or at least look better--than their modern-day equivalents.

MC's auntie's piano teacher and her students are pictured above. MC has been to her share of piano recitals over the last few years, and children have become more casual and squirmy than the ones pictured here. Is it the ladies' hats that give this group its air of confidence and savoir faire? The groovy bamboo frame around the picture certainly adds a jaunty touch. You might be able to take this picture with your iPhone and send it to a gazillion of your Facebook friends, but would it be as charming without the bamboo frame? MC thinks not.

Here's another one that kills in the style department. The exposed stairs from the tarmac to the airplane. Would Dad's Cousin Margaret have had a lovely honeymoon if she boarded her United flight on a Jetway? Undoubtedly. But would she have looked as good or made such a dramatic entrance? Not even close.

Extra points for the shawl collar, and for marrying Lan, who did very well for himself in the Southern California car-storage business.

Next: No thinking person would trade a keyboard for a fountain pen. MC has done a few transcriptions of 19th century documents, and the act made her want to impale herself on her British Museum library card. But think of how your handwriting looks on the average sticky note, then look at the back of this photograph:

Readers, are we weeping in shame over our undistinguished penmanship? Hazel had an 8th grade education (OK, there was that incomplete post-grad nurse's training) but her handwriting kicks your doors in.

And finally. MC has always admired this picture of her granddad, which has many stylistic fillips to recommend it.
Students of vintage automobiles, like MC's brothers, would provide the years and models of the vehicle with the googley headlights and the truck with the roundy window. For MC, however, the What-Have-They-Got-That-I-Ain't-Got elements are fenders and running boards. Watch and learn: fenders and running boards turn your vehicle into a conversation pit. True, they don't have cup holders, but could you look this good in a recliner or a lawn chair? Maybe, if you adjust your hat, tie, and cigar just so. On second thought, nah. Are you listening, GM? I'm giving you free advice here: the American public might buy more American cars if the product made drivers look like Grownups with Brains, not like teenagers with 12-packs in the trunk.

Excuse me while I go pack my spectator pumps.
--MC

Eat More Venison

Twenty-four hours after seeing these pictures, Meta Cranky thinks she can write about them in language fit for a family blog. The trees that the Crankies coaxed through a summer-long drought have been abused by Bambi and the rest of his sorry extended family. This one might be the Princeton Elm that Jamie got at the fancy native tree nursery in Clinton:


Uncle M sent more evidence, but I can't post another one. They're like tree snuff pictures.

We screwed up. We trusted them. They're have those big eyes and tails that bounce on their asses when they jump. Their babies are all spotted and Disney-licious, and we really didn't need all those peas they ate on the hill summer before last.

Those days are so over. The Crankies are unleashing Shiva, the God of Death. They will be asking Cousin Tom if he would like to come over to hunt. Here's a tasty idea: Venison Chops with Blackberry Compote. Yum. Can't wait.

When MC thinks about Cousin Tom's love of hunting, she harkens back to Vera Carp, the gun-shop owner in the play Greater Tuna whose motto is, "If we can't kill it, it's immortal." Tom's welding shop serves as a deer check-in station and during hunting season, the place looks like a white-tailed apocalypse. That's the feel MC would like to have at Cranky Girls' Farm this fall: Apocalypse Now for Bambi.

Hmm. This one sounds hearty and satifying: Venison Chili with Snowcap Beans. Just what I'd like to tuck into after bringing down my 10-point buck and his extended family. Au revoir, les enfants! Looking toward the high holidays, would Medallions of Venison with Port and Cranberries be too fussy? We think not.

The deer are in league with another thuggy vandal species: their friends the armadillos. Here, they've comprehensively churned the area around the compost pile:

The phrase "fine armadillo dining" might seem like a contradiction in terms to some, but consider that Anthony Bourdain made a television career out of eating dishes like unwashed warthog rectum in Namibia and sheep testicles in Morocco. Anyone for Cajun Armadillo in Mustard Sauce?

It's not as if the two-legged carnivores should have to be eating all this deer flesh. In the recent past, MC has seen a coyote and a bobcat within shouting distance of the front porch. And then last summer, a Yorkshire visitor sighted a cat-like animal with a very long tail by our bridge. We're thinking mountain lion. These animals are predators, right? So WTF? I'm thinking that maybe, for Mrs. Bobcat, Cranky Girls' Farm is like the buffet at Golden Corral, with its overwhelming display of questionable food choices. The coyotes are trying, but there's only so much venison they can fit on their plates.

So where do I get my membership for the Powder and String Club?
--MCG

Don't Fence Them In

Writer Calvin Trillin describes raising his daughters in Greenwich Village according to his Midwest values and folkways. The family's narrative, he said, was that "despite all evidence to the contrary, you’re being raised in Kansas City.” After Texas secedes from the Union under the encouragement of Gov. Perry, Crankies #1 and #2 can seek dual citizenship in the Republic of Texas and the remaining upper 49 since, despite all evidence, they're really farm girls who just happen to be enrolled in the Austin Independent School District.

Cranky #2 has her bag packed for spring break and is counting on her fingers and toes the number of calves she will see at the farm. These Angus calves obligingly are born in January and February so they will reach peak cuteness just at spring break. Midwinter birthdays mean that some babies are born when the thermometer registers 9 degrees Fahrenheit. This lovely girl, nearly a year old now, was found on a hay pile doing quite nicely despite the arctic conditions. On that cold day, Uncle M didn't have his breed registry book handy to record her official number, so her ear tag is more personal than most: Brr.

Smaller crankies will check on the girls they know: friendly Brr, zaftig Brutus, and alarmingly aggressive Pet, who behaves like a 1500-pound lap dog. The girls will meet the newest babies in the nursery, sit on laps to steer the pickups, and merrily offer alfalfa cubes to cows with slobbery black tongues.

Multicultural crankies #1 and #2 can operate comfortably in both the land of bale stabbers and the land where a choreographer stages a dance for trash trucks. In three more days, we'll pick up our cultural exchange where we left off.
--MCG

The Way We Live Now

The Times reports that baby-boomers are changing the complexion of health clubs. An aging demographic means that exercise facilities are now gearing their offerings toward people who don't want to break hips when they step off the curb, rather than people who take steroids to get disturbingly plump pectorals. Meta Cranky went to the Y after reading this report and what she saw there was chilling. What she did not see in the mid-morning slot were the boring wage-earners who are dutifully socking away money for MC's Social Security account. What she did see in the Y coffee room were geezers sitting beside their electric scooters, reading their Wall Street Journals, and picking out ear wax out with their pinkies, just as MC's dad once did. These are now her people.

It wasn't always so. When MC joined her first health club in Fort Worth, she danced rhythmically next to Miss Texas. She doesn't remember Ms. T's name because this particular beauty queen did not become the Phyllis George of the '80s. Nevertheless, she wore spandex and leg warmers and was adorably anorexic.

While in New Jersey, MC and a pal she'll call Drama Queen were regular customers at Jack LaLanne's health club. The take-away from JL's was that '80s styling products allowed Jersey-girl big hair to defy withering humidity. At this co-ed facility, a dreamy aerobics instructor named Mel packed a studio full of writhing men and women and led them to perform acts that in MC's home town were considered rather personal. After 90 minutes, the studio's glass walls were streaming with condensation, but the hair? Still upright. Only later was Jack LaLanne's revealed to be next to a Super-Fund site.

More recently, MC began to notice that time was taking its toll. A snappish Australian step aerobics instructor seemed to have settled into a mid-life metabolism that discouraged significant weight loss. When MC returned from maternity leave, anxious to step off a few chocolate milkshakes, she found the instructor had taken a short cut; liposuction was faster, certainly, than plodding up and down on a plastic Reebok step. After Cranky #2 was born, MC was happy enough to pedal a bicycle and lift weights at a club that offered children's gymnastics and rehab for adults. Then she discovered that re-habbers require physical therapy accompanied by Fox News. In vain MC changed the channel to CNN, only to watch men wearing black socks and sneakers change it back.

MC swims laps in hopes of convincing her lumbar spine to stay in place for more than 36 hours. Meanwhile, her pal Renaissance Mom finds excitement and celebrity at her neighborhood pools. A Texas Monthly writer! A nationally noted political guru! The mother of an Olympic medalist! MC is so nearsighted that she wouldn't notice Johnny Weismuller in the next lane. The thrill now is bringing organization to her L-5 vertebra.
--MCG

The Household Searchlight

Because of the events of another tumultuous weekend, Meta Cranky's clutter meter sounded this morning as clearly and insistently as the smoke alarm does when she attempts to fry fish. MC began the day with Cranky Family's effluvia waving from every flat surface.

She made incremental progress until she was distracted by The Household Searchlight. This ancient cookbook originated with her maternal grandmother. Cranky's own mother cooked from this book extensively, but because MC herself never developed a need to make Fanwood Chow-Chow or Oatmeal Gruel, this much-admired 1938 edition has served a reference function. What a revelation, then, to read the Foreword and discover the bohemian vibe of the Household Searchlight:

"The Household Searchlight is a service station conducted for the readers of The Household Magazine. In this seven-room house lives a family of specialists whose entire time is spent working out the problems of homemaking common to every woman who finds herself responsible for the management of a home and the care of children."

MC considers this information to be rather a bombshell. The tasteful house featured on the cookbook's cover was apparently the set for a Depression-Era reality show. Who knew that there was communal living going on in Topeka, Kansas? How are we defining "family of specialists" anyway: Was this Jersey Shore with bacon drippings and rendered lard? MC has a new-found respect for the the Kansas avant-garde.

A font of insight, the Household Searchlight (HS) also sheds light on MC's clutter issue. Open up the cover and what do you see?

Stuff. Two 1978 receipts for replacing the brushes in a Sunbeam mixer. The operating instructions for the wall heater. An onion-skin-carbon copy of the recipe for Berta's Fan Fan Rolls (hey, I've been looking for that one!). A cake recipe written on the back of a flier for the 1993 Azalea festival in Muskogee, complete with a tour of the Five Civilized Tribes Museum.

Meta-Cranky's HS is the Grey Gardens of the cookbook world. Clearly, MC's mother had a pressing need for all this data, and MC is grateful that her mother did not feed feral cats. But wait, there's more. Only when the oddments are removed do you see how MC's mother customized her personal copy of HS. Apparently, the Topeka family of specialists didn't provide an acceptable recipe for fudge pie. What's wrong with kids today is that they don't ingest enough Milnot:
There's also a pie crust recipe, because you can never have enough.

All this before you get to the title page. Each of the book's 25 sections is larded with loose papers; endpapers and margins are comprehensively covered with recipes that begin "1 yellow cake mix."

Today, MC's house is The Household Searchlight writ large. Perhaps a scientific scan could identify the clutter gene on her DNA, but she needs look no further than HS to see that she is predisposed to hoard small pieces of paper. She senses a potential research topic for a family of specialists.
--MC

Complacencies of a Sunday Evening

Full disclosure: Meta Cranky has taken an oath with a friend we'll call Renaissance Mom to write something on a regular basis. This semi-solemn vow means that while the rest of the world is watching Christopher Waltz win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, MC is maintaining her credibility. Truth be told, MC is so far removed from popular culture that she wouldn't recognize Christopher Waltz if he sacked her groceries at Wheatsville, and she wonders why Quentin Tarantino gets to misspell both Inglourious and Basterds and apparently be rewarded for it. Wait, she does know a smidge about popular culture: A mom friend who is a faithful Vulcan Video customer reports that Quentin Tarantino's assistant tried to check out a DVD with the Famous Director's card. The clerks at Vulcan, exponentially hipper than Tarantino's assistant, were so unimpressed. Mom friend rented a DVD despite a contested fine; Inglourious Tarantino assistant did not.

MC recognizes that Oscar night is about rewarding cinematic excellence, but it's also about the ritual, elements that have been in place since the time of the flood: red carpet, Harry Winston jewelry, Joan Rivers' surgically enhanced face. She adores the morning-after fashionista comments and wishes she could authoritatively opine like Salon's Cintra Wilson, that Devil Wears Prada-era Anne Hathaway wore "a Valentino gown made of unborn ballerina fur." But when does a self-congratulatory film makers' award program become a ritual that people schedule elective surgeries around? One minute you're hoisting a sidecar with Bob Hope in the Roosevelt Hotel, and the next thing you know you're participating in a full-blown pagan-fertility-Fisher-King-type cult with Meryl Streep.

Late-winter Cranky rituals are conducted without the bling of heavily insured jewelry. Cranky #1 will wince operatically when Cranky #2 does a top-of-the-lung "Jolene" cover. Oldest Cranky consistently will dress for weather 15 degrees warmer than the current temperature, then will scramble to adjust before the 7 a.m. carpool. Youngest Cranky habitually will exit the bath to converse starkers with guests. MC finds comfort and assurance in the regularity of such behaviors. Perhaps this comportment doesn't yet approach the complexity of a pagan winter solstice, but like those other cold-weather observances, these ritual practices give hope that spring, or at least Spring Break, will arrive soon.
--MC

Who Do You Think You Are? An Occasional Series

OK, so Lisa Kudrow apparently has this great new geneaology program on NBC called "Who Do You Think You Are?" I have never seen an episode of Friends, but I respect Lisa Kudrow's integrity if only for this exchange from Romy and Michele's High School Reunion:

Michele: I'm the Mary, and you're the Rhoda.
Romy: YOU'RE the Rhoda, you're the Jewish one.

But I digress. If the people in my family were this program's executive producers, this show would be titled "Who the Hell Are You?" The blessing or curse of growing up in my small town in the 1970s was that if you didn't know who you were, someone would tell you in exquisite, tortured detail. Since the griots of my home town no longer stride the earth, Meta Cranky feels obliged to provide Crankies #1 and #2 with a genealogical primer. Let's begin with granny ladies, shall we?
Hazel was always the Mary, never the Rhoda. Here, she's standing in front of her cellar door in celebration of her flower garden, although b&w pics don't do her zinnias justice. Here are some random factoids for Crankies 1 & 2 to know about their great-grandmother:

She had that braided hair thing going long before Yulia Tymoshenko wowed the Ukrainians with her traditional up-do. I don't know how the prime minister keeps her hair in place, but my granny used armies of hair pins. Here's a bit of Amusing Family Lore that requires you to know: 1) Granny had braids, she was short, and she could talk until the earth was flat and; 2) My cousin Tim was 6 feet tall and change. When my granny began a story that promised to be the length of Paradise Lost, Tim would look down on her braided crown and begin plucking out hairpins. Her fierce concentration allowed her to hold forth until all the pins were gone and the braids hung, unfettered, down her back.
Since her ears weren't pierced, she wore devices she called "ear screws" that probably are banned in Scandinavian countries. She never left the house without them. She always looked really good, which was a testimony to genetic material that gave her The Good Hair and some serious bone structure. She also looked good, though, because she decided it was important, and she went to the trouble to apply lipstick and abuse her ears to make it happen. Not to bore small crankies with tales of economic hardship or anything, but let's just say that Hazel didn't always have a lot to work with.

The photo at the top of this entry was taken when Meta Cranky's dad returned from the war in about 1944, and it's always, for her, been a Dad picture. There's a different story going on, though, when you look at the faces of his nuclear family.

OK, you're loving it that Cranky Girl's dad, granddad, and auntie all have identical dimples in their chins, right? Is that a great trick or what? But now look at Hazel. Her face says pretty much, "they haven't licked us yet."

By the time I knew her, Hazel had settled into a matronly comfort that allowed her to monopolize conversations and confidently tell people how to breathe in and out. She could effortlessly deflate egos with this killer phrase: "pretty is as pretty does." Yet her face in this homecoming picture is all about adversity and endurance: there in those contracted eyebrows you can see her uncertain finances and the worry of a double blue star mother. She was opinionated and prejudiced, utterly competent, and tireless in accomplishing the hard physical labor that kept a poor family from being a trashy family. She cried only on Mondays, wash day, because she could weep while she wrung out laundry alone in a wash house.

She earned the right to be the Mary.
--MCG

Queer Eye for the Seventh Grade Research Paper

Cranky #1's latest English class assignment is to interview people involved in U.S. civil rights issues. So she's reading about the Stonewall riots to prepare for interviews with gay rights activists.

Her choice of topics serves the dual purpose of 1)making me feel ancient and crone-like, and 2)allowing me to reflect on my red-state upbringing, with its wealth of homophobia and sheer ignorance about The Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name.

I was over 30 before I connected the dots about Alex, the navigator on my dad's B-24. Alex, a Republican bachelor, exchanged countless letters with my mother, faithfully sent my granny cards on Mother's Day, and presented thoughtful graduation gifts to my brothers. The salient biographical details for me were that he bought me the most gorgeous Easter dress I will ever own (dropped waist, covered buttons down the front, crinkly skirt, be still my heart), and that my dad always disappeared when he came to visit. Alex and my mother would chatter for hours, Alex would rise to depart, and magically my father would reappear to say farewell. "Where did Charles go?" my mother would ask. Somewhere where his gaydar signal wasn't picking up, I'm guessing.

My Greatest Generation dad had no useful models for how to behave around a person of a different sexual orientation. Alex's presence signified Too Much Information, and in the face of this knotty social and sexual puzzlement, my dad headed for the certainty and security of his pickup.

Virginia Woolf claimed that human nature changed on or about December 10, 1910. I can't put that fine a point on it, but blessedly, humanity found a few clues about gay civil rights somewhere between my Easter dress and Cranky #1's research paper. Cranky #2 may very well fit into my frothy yellow confection this season, and I would be pleased to tell her about its provenance: It came from Alex, a dear family friend who had a queer eye for fashion.
--MCG

Paperback Wing Nuts

Since the Lyndon Johnson administration, Meta Cranky has had a torch burning for Shadow Castle, a 45-cent book that her youngest older brother (YOB) brought home from a Scholastic book fair. Look at the cover and you're smitten: there's princess Gloria's flaxen hair flowing well past her ass, and a dreamy Disney-quality castle in the background. Prince Mika is practically drooling on himself, he's so overcome by her fabulousness. Bluebell, the princess of the Blue Fairies, gets a similar over-the-top treatment inside the covers, except that she's a brunette with a curly do. Elves, goblins, swamp fairies, a vegetarian dragon. It's Middle Earth with better illustrations.

A cursory check at Amazon shows that Meta Cranky is among a legion of wing nuts who are unable to be ironic, or even objective, about Shadow Castle. Amazon reviewers confess to stealing these books from libraries and loathing former friends who borrowed, then lost, their personal copies. The book you discover when you're 9 is apparently the book you carry with you, intact and beloved, into geezerhood. Those of us who drank the SC Kool Aid are not going to get all lit crit-y and describe the revealing contrast of fairy and mortal, or analyze the dangerous goblin/swamp fairy alliance. Instead, like YOB, we'll tell you where we were when we first read it (top of a long-gone mimosa tree) and declare, with fervor and sincerity, "It's just that good."

Because of ridiculous sentimentalists like Meta Cranky and her YOB, used paperback copies of SC sell for $28. Someone who is not a liberal arts major, do the math and figure out where your portfolio would be now if you'd invested in 45-cent paperbacks instead of those lousy 401Ks. Even in these difficult economic times, however, Meta Cranky will tighten her belt to obtain the new EXPANDED edition of SC with previously unpublished material. More fairies! Creepier goblins! Those poor slobs reading the books on the Times best-seller list don't know what they're missing.
--MCG

Post Party

Back in the day, Meta Cranky delighted in Bad Parties. Giving them, attending them, watching people fall in the pool at them. Scott Fitzgerald articulated the essence of the bad party in Tender Is the Night, and my undergraduate journalism pals aspired to host parties that met these standards:

I want to give a really BAD party. I mean it.
I want to give a party where there’s a brawl and seductions and people going home with their feelings hurt and women passed out in the cabinet de toilette. You wait and see.

Truth be told, most Daily Texan parties I attended in the mid-eighties didn't miss this mark by much. I have rosy memory of a full day spent inert on the sofa after a glorious multi-birthday soiree in my condo's party room. Through slit eyes, I watched a dozen post-partiers shuffle through my condo collecting lost shoes and empty pony kegs. Some poor soul hobbled by on a foot that had been impaled by a woman's stiletto. From my mostly horizontal position, I pointed toward missing articles of clothing and equipment, and listened to descriptions of epic, irresponsible binge drinking. I realized at day's end that the Mexican fat dress I was wearing was inside out.

Time and space don't much change the parameters of the Bad Party. We celebrated Grace Five Point Five recently, and I'm pleased to report that while it differed in specifics from the Daily Texan model, it still followed classic Bad Party form. Girls in outrageous outfits? Check. Girls jumping on sofas in the name of self-expression? Natch. Painfully loud music to fuel interpretive dance? You betcha. Then: "Caca de Vaca." Now? "Barbie Girl."

I began post-party cleanup by strategizing about the PlayDoh ground into the carpet. As I studied the wreckage, I begin to identify items left by members of Not My Tribe. Gigi's camera. Helena's sweater. Addie's purse. Ellie's jacket. KK's jacket, plus her headband. And I smiled in recognition.
--MCG