Blog #178

Do you have something named after you?  I have a cake.  My grandkids call me Poppy and the eponymous cake is called a Poppy Cake.  No, eponymous, our Weekly Word, does not mean yummy; it means named after someone.  Simple as that.  The cake is alternating layers of chocolate wafer cookies and Cool Whip Lite.  My mother used to make it and it was a favorite for me and my three daughters.  Back then it was called an ice-box cake and used real whipped cream, but times have changed.

 The first thing that changed was the whipped cream.  It has too much fat and too much cholesterol and too much cream and too much whip and is banned from my family tree and all its branches.  So now, instead of wholesome natural cream, we use an industrial paste mixed with air bubbles and sugar.  It’s delicious!  And we use the Lite variety to convince ourselves that chocolate cookies surrounded by some Noxzema-looking slime is good for your diet.  And the Cool Whip people can’t even spell lite rite.

 The next thing that changed was the name.  You can’t serve something called Ice-Box Cake to a generation who thinks that Ice-Box is a form of Norwegian martial arts.  No, the ice-box is a thing of the past, as dead as the rotary phone, the typewriter and Regis Philbin.  My grandchildren love this cake and, since Carol always makes it for my birthday, they call it Poppy Cake and ask for it on their birthdays as well.  I know for a certainty that sixty years from now, my grandchildren will be making Poppy Cake for their grandchildren and telling them who Poppy was, and each time they do, I will smile.  I have never asked for anything in return for giving everything.  All I want is not to be forgotten.  So go ahead, go from anonymous to eponymous.  Name something after yourself – Grandma’s Cookies, Uncle George’s Secret Handshake, Sally’s Covid Mask.  But not the chocolate cookie and Cool Whip cake.  That one’s mine.

The quote about not wanting to be forgotten is from Kapka Kassabova.  I know that sounds like a new disease, but is, in fact, a young Bulgarian woman who writes wonderful books.  Only me, right?  I do my best not to be forgotten.  I save on paper everything I have ever written – poems, stories, letters, blogs, grocery lists, songs – so that when I’m gone, they’ll either have a lot of things to remember me by or the biggest bonfire since Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and staying safe.  We are on Bald Head Island, a glorious little island off the coast of North Carolina that has no cars, three beaches, one grocery store and a pickle-ball court.  We got here on Friday and went to the beach.  The wind was so strong, the grains of sand stung as they hit you, and the waves were very dangerous.  Hurricane Isaias is blowing up a storm, as they say.  I can’t even pronounce that name – Isaias – but I think it’s a boy’s name.  That should make it a Him-icane, shouldn’t it?  On the island, we have the storm and sunburn and jellyfish and Covid.  Plus, it’s shark season!  But who cares?

The hurricane might blow right through us

Or a shark could just grab us and chew us

And drowning’s a thing

Or a jellyfish sting

But it’s still safer here than St. Louis.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Every cloud engenders not a storm (Henry VI, Part 3).

The trouble with weather forecasting is that it’s right too often for you to ignore it and wrong too often for you to trust it.  I don’t care about the weather because I never go outside, but I hope that hurricane blows them home.  I miss my Pops.  The cat-sitter comes every day and gives me food.  I just hide under the bed.  When are they coming home?

 

We drove here and had WAZE guiding us from my phone.  We stopped at a gas station so everybody could use the bathrooms.  WAZE was a bit ticked-off and started chattering from the phone in my pocket about changing the route, but she gave up after a couple of minutes.  I went to the Men’s Room and was using the urinal when, from my pocket, came a female voice that said, “Make a U-Turn.”  The guy behind me was not happy.

As I said, my Mother made wonderful Ice-Box Cake, but she didn’t make fools.  At least that’s how the saying goes.  My Mama didn’t raise no fools.  Did you ever use that phrase?  Even though the grammar is terrible, I bet most of you have said it.  I’ve used it a few times, and each time, Carol looks me in the eye and says, Your mother raised three complete fools!  She is right, of course.  Fool #1 was my older sister, who was nuts.  She thought she was smarter than everyone else, including doctors and never went to one.  She died at the age of 63 from a curable disease.  Fool #2 was my older brother, a lovable and outrageous eccentric.  He never went to a doctor because that would be admitting that he might, someday, get sick.  He died at the age of 61 from a different, but curable, disease.  Fool #3, of course, is me.  My wife says the only smart thing I ever did was marry her.  Her humility overwhelms me.

Well, the hurricane hit us Monday night and a tornado as well.  No power, no internet, the grocery is closed and the paths are blocked by fallen trees.  

Now it’s Tuesday, and I know this is going to sound like the Hello Muddah – Hello Faddah song, but the power just came back on and the weather is perfect and the grocery is open and everybody is happy.  

I apologize for making fun of Regis Philbin’s death. That was mean.  He was a good man, and I’m ashamed, so I’m sending myself to my room.  But I’ll be out by next week to send you more nonsense.  Be there.  And tell Shakespeare we'll be home Friday.

 Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com