COOKING

 I have been reminiscing about my cooking.  The very first thing I remember making was a pumpkin pie. I was about 14 or 15. For some reason, I was staying with Grandma Horn.  She was gone visiting with Aunt Wilma and had taken the train to Denver.  

While she was gone, I was being supervised by Uncle Paul and Aunt Ollie.  They worked the farm, getting up early to milk the cows and other farming tasks.  

I was left on my own.  Heh, heh. heh.  I was hungry for pumpkin pie.  I had at hand a nice sized pumpkin.  I cut it up, scooped out the seeds and boiled it until tender.  I then mashed it up into pulp. 

I had two pumpkin pie recipes; Grandma Horn's and one other. For some demented reason I decided to combine the spices of both recipes.  I do not remember what I used for crust but it sure wasn't Grandma Horn's very tender lard and flour version.  

I combined the ingredients and baked it at 350 degrees for one hour.  I let it cool before tasting.  It was very strong.  I knew I could not waste it no matter how bad it tasted.  So I ate a piece each night until it was gone.  

I did not make another pumpkin pie until I was grown and married.

Mom always commanded the kitchen, she fed us and input to preparation of food was limited to sorting pinto beans on the table to pick out rocks in preparation for chili

The only other time any of us were drafted into the kitchen was to hold down the breadboard to which was clamped the meat grinder.  This was used to grind up cranberries for the black cherry jello, cranberrie, celery, walnut relish.  I love this stuff!

Our job was also to hold the jar to hold the dripping from the crushed cranberries.  This was accomplished with much exhortation to hold still! Keep the jar under the drip! 

My next major attempt at the culinary arts was an attempt to make Saurbraten.  That is a tasty German dish made by marinating meat in vinegar.   

It just so happened that I had on hand some venison.  I followed the recipe, I marinated the cut up venison in vinegar for three days.  When it was completed it had turned gray and looked like bad tuna fish.  I tried cooking it but had no takers.  It got tossed.  

I also had a recipe for pie crust that called for a tablespoon of vinegar.  Any mention of vinegar to the family caused much hilarity.  Even though that pie crust recipe is pretty good.

I have eaten my share of venison and do not care to have any again.  It is best when fried in bacon grease, or ground up with pork and buckwheat flour for hamburger patties.  The absolute best venison liver I have ever tasted was a young buck shot in season at Grandma LaVann's ranch.  We had fresh back strap and liver quickly fried in bacon grease.  It was fabulous.  But then, working hard in all that fresh air gives one an appetite that is easily appeased.

I discovered year later that I am genetically a non-taster.  That means I do not taste bitter very well.  I learned that when I was attending biology at BSU. The professor handed out litmus paper.  He told us to chew on it.  If we were non-tasters we would not taste anything but paper. Tasters would taste the bitterness of the litmus paper.

However, Mom used to occasionally cook liver and onions everytime we had a steer butchered. Fortunately that was only once a year because the cow only had one, thank God, liver.   

She would brown the onions, fry the liver then bake it until it was the consistency of leather.  We ate it because that was the only way to get dessert.  The onions were delicious. The liver was gritty, gray, tough and took much chewing and drinks of milk to get it down.  But get it down, we did. Dessert was waiting.

Another unpleasant beef byproduct was tongue.  One day I cam home from school and there was a large gray cow tongue on a plate.  I asked what it was and Mom said tongue.  I was disgusted but went on about with homework and reading etc. 

About a week later a new sandwich spread appeared for sandwiches.  It was the beef tongue. She had boiled it, peeled it, ground it up in the meat grinder.  Surprisingly enough, I was not the one chosen to perch on the breadboard.  

She ground it up, added onions, dill pickles, salt, pepper and mixed it with mayonnaise.  It was delicious.  

I used venison to make mincemeat one year. It was quite a production.  I canned the mincemeat and forced...uh gave it away as Christmas gifts that year.  Got rid of some venison and did not make any mincemeat pies.

I have a wonderful recipe for Fruit cake.  It have always disliked fruit cake and discovered quite by accident that I did not like citron.  So Letha Fashouer's recipe calls for a basic batter of lots of egg, some flour, vanilla, salt.  To that add chopped dates, green and red marischino cherries and the pinapple sold the same time as the cherries.  Also lots of walnuts.  When baked cool and soak in brandy.  I used to make several loaves each year.

This year I decided to adapt the recipe and it bears no resemblance what so ever other than the batter.  I did a trial batch using a mix of cranraisens, almonds and cashews.  I soaked some with Limocello and some with Lemon jello.  I actually prefer the lemon jello version.  Next batch I will zest a couple lemons for more flavor.

I also have an ancient recipe for chocolate mayonnaise cake.  I brought it home from the Brownies way back when mom was being suburban housewife.

A couple weeks ago I decided to make one.  The only substitution I made was to use Splenda instead of granulated sugar.  It turned out okay but I wasn't happy with it.  It was not nice and moist on top.  I have determined that I will use granulated sugar next time, give it to my neighbors across the street along with the rest of the sugar.  You eat it!

One of our favorite cakes as kids was raisen spice bar with powdered sugar frosting.  Mom came to have this recipe from when we lived in one of the trailer parks on the Hell's Canyon project.  A neighbor lady made one and Mom got the recipe. This same neighbor lady taught me how to make button holes.  Handy thing to know.

When ever she made this we knew we were going someone.  It was usually to a dance in Ola.  This was a family affair. The wives made dishes for a potluck supper. They passed the hat to pay the musicians and the midnight supper was held.  I learned many things at those dances; for instant never get in between two men determined to punch each other in the face.  This cake made many appearances at the Berglund dinner table.  We always had dessert. As a result of all those desserts, I have quite a collection of jello recipes.  

One of my favorite condiments is green tomato pickles.  My Grandma Horn made them and I was introduced to them as garnish on a hamburger.  Yummy!  I have made and hoarded several batches over the years.  

I have always loved cooking a turkey for either thanksgiving or Christmas.  We always got a free turkey at work and I loved to pick the carcass and boil it in a large stock pot and strain that for use in future dressings.

My favorite Christmas dish is to get a bone in ham to cook overnight in the oven at low temp. At the same time I like to take frozen Rhodes rolls, put in a pan, sprinkle with butterscotch pudding (NOT INSTANT) on top of the rolls. When the ham comes out in the morning, the rolls will have risen, don't forget lots of butter on top. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes for perfect sticky buns.

A while back I decided to purchase three boxes of butterscotch pudding from Amazon.  I received three large boxes containing three packages of six boxes each.  I possessed a total of fifty four butterscotch puddings!  I managed to get it  down to one box by schlepping some to Davita and some to my neighbors. Oy! I have sticky buns in my future!!

I have a recipe for tamale pie from Barrow days.  I got the recipe out of the Sunday Anchorage paper.  It called for using breakfast steak, which is thin sliced steak.  Yellow, green and red bell peppers roasted.  Ricotta cheese. Onion. Garlic.  Red pepper flakes. Salt. Pepper.  Corn meal. Topped with frozen onions.  I took it to a potluck once in Barrow, the nurse eating it exclaimed, "I want to bury my face in this!" It is a favorite of husband.

Dammit now I'm hungry! Must go walkies.

FRIDAY WAS INTERESTING

 This past Friday was interesting.  I had a three o'clock appointment with my Ophthalmologist, Dr. Grilo.  Google says Grilo is Portuguese.  

He told me about what he could do for me vision wise.  Did I want to wear glasses? Uh, yeah, I have worn them so long that I would feel naked.  And there is no need whatsoever of inflicting the face upon the public.

Apparently the lenses that get inserted after the cataract removal can be fashioned to give you a very good degree of acuity.  My left eye is now 20/400 which is legally blind.  My right eye corrected to about 20/40.  

He said he would leave vision so that I could read at arm length.

I then asked him when he graduated from medical school.  He said 2008.  So I gave him a little history.

Way back in the mid 70's when I was a displaced housewife.  I took the standard put peg in hole test at the local employment office.  The lady Social worker informed me that I tested out to be compatible with OSHA inspector, Nuclear laboratory technician and Medical Records.  

At that time people were shooting at OSHA inspectors in Idaho.  I didn't want to live in Twin Falls in order to work at the nuclear labs.  Um, what is Medical records?

So I enrolled at Boise State University in the two year Associate of Science degree for the Medical Records program.

While pulling a full load, I also worked full time at St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center.  One day a woman came in for a cornea transplant.  Everything went very well.

A few weeks later, she came in with an advanced case of Rabies.  They could no do anything for other than palliative care.  She died.  The doctors was dumbfounded.  The woman had not been exposed to any of the animal vectors.

They decided to take a look at the donor of her corneas.  It was a man who had worked in eastern Oregon, a park ranger, I think.  He had died of rabies.

It was that moment that the medical profession recognized that the rabies virus could be transmitted in the corneas.  Now all corneas are tested for a variety of diseases as well as Covid 19.

Dr. Grilo told me some recent history.  A patient received cornea transplants.  In a few months the patient had developed malignant melanoma.  As a routine check the donor of the corneas was traced to a person who had died of malignant melanoma.  It was at that moment the medical community discovered that cancer cells could be transmitted in the cornea.  

Be careful out there.

YOUNG, DUMB AND DANGEROUS

 My first roommate was named Ella Sue sumpin' sumpin'.  She went by Sue.  She was from Napa.  We rented a house in Novato.  It was a three bedroom two bath place.   The front of the house had two bedrooms. a fireplace, hardwood floors. a dining room with French doors that lead out to a side yard.  The kitchen was fairly decent size.  The back of the house was a very large bedroom with bath.  That was where Sue lived.  She organized her belongings by piling them in sections of the floor.

We had to wash clothes at a laundromat.  We were absolute slobs.  We had some sort of party where people come to look at goods a perhaps purchase them, I think it was  jewelry.  After the party on of our co-workers named Pam started washing dishes.  She stopped at the halfway mark and said we could finish. 

Pam was very interesting, she had married a man in the Air Force who was stationed in England.  I was amazed and exclaimed, "You have a perfect accent!"  She explained that she had a very heavy Cockney accent.  I asked how she got rid of it.  She replied that she began with a Southern accent that morphed into unaccented American English.  She did admit that when she was mad that the Cockney really came back.

While we lived there we both took flying lessons from Uncle Carl in Petaluma.  One Saturday we left to take lessons.  I had put a pot of water with eggs on to boil and forgot to turn it off. By the time we got home the eggs had boiled dry, burned and burst.  We walked into the house to a smell that I cannot describe. The smoke was thick, and we quickly aired out the house.

Sue was hard on cars.  Her father vetted the used cars but inevitably something would go wrong.  One day we were going to work.  As Sue pulled onto highway 101, flames leapt up from under the hood.  We had both seen plenty of films where a car catches on fire and the passengers bail out before the car explodes.  We both dived out to cower beside the car.  Nothing happened.  A car stopped and a guy got out and started throwing dirt on the fire.  We called in sick.  Sue went car shopping the next day.  

At one point I decided to adopt a puppy.  She was a small white mutt who I called Precious.  One day I was coming home from shopping and Sue met me at the door to say that she had accidentally backed over Precious.  End of owning dogs.

I purchased a 1957 Volkswagen from Pam's husband, who was a Sargent on Hamilton Air Force base.  He repaired cars and sold them.  I bought the Volkswagen for  about $250.00 if I remember correctly.  

A few weeks later something broke.  I couldn't get the car started, Sue kept yelling "Pop the clutch!" I had no idea how to do that.  I got the car towed to a foreign car repair shop.  I gave him the pink slip to hold until I paid for the repairs.  

Pam's husband very nicely forgave what I owed him but Pam was pissed at him.  I think the Cockney came out.

The Volkswagen did not have a gas gauge but it did have a foot lever to flip to the extra gas tank.  I drove it home a couple of times.  Going up the grade before the highway dropped into Truckee was slow going.  I just got in the slow lane, crossed my feet on the gas peddle and tootled across the mountains.  Once on the other side I could get up to as much as 70 mph.  Woot!  It also had no radio, so I had to entertain myself by humming. 

I was in the habit of stopping at Bergies after I got off the Graveyard shift at Fairchild.  To get the attendants to come out, you had to turn on the headlights.  They would come out, get the order and deliver it to you.  I went home, went to sleep and my battery was dead when I got up to go to work. Oy! That was the last time I ever let that happen. 

One summer, I drove the bug home.  I had gotten off work, started driving north immediately. By the time I got to the Idaho border, I was pretty tired.  As I was driving down Marsing hill I saw something, it like lights flying low over a barn that was lighted.  As I got closer, I pulled over and stopped the car.  I got out a flashlight.  There was a light hovering over the barn.  I flashed my light at it.  The light shot straight up and zipped out of sight.  I think I either hallucinated or I saw a real UFO.  I was very tired.  Probably hallucinated.  If I every hallucinate in future. I intent to enjoy it what ever it is.  

I was one of Sue's attendants at her wedding.  I wore a peach satin sheath, matching heels and a sunhat.  She married a young man named Chester Wong.  He worked for Xerox.  

They met when she decided to drive about the country for vaca.  She called her parents each evening.  She stopped at Grand Canyon and hiked to the bottom and back up. She met Chester while at the Grand Canyon. 

Sue was an even bigger slob than I was.  When Chester came to visit her in her apartment. By that time we had moved into matchy matchy apartments in Novato.  She put all her dirty dishes away in the cupboards rather than wash them.  

I went to visit them once in Napa, they had a small apartment there.  Still pretty messy. Later on they moved into a larger house.  I was invited to dinner one evening.  Sue had miraculously discovered that when she had enough space, she could be an immaculate housewife.  I started to gather up the dishes after dinner and she asked that I not stack them as she did not wash the bottoms.  Huh?

One year, I was invited to Chester's folks house in San Francisco for Chinese New Year's dinner.  It was fabulous.  His mom cooked for days to prepare. My favorite dish was chicken gizzards cooked until tender in some sort of wine sauce.  It was delicious! The only thing I have had since was Chicken gizzards boiled in Coke then coated in crumbs and fried.  Wow!  

Sue liked to take Pam's girls out on adventures. Because the oldest girl was confined to a wheelchair, we were always admitted first.  

We went to the  Planetarium in the museum located in Golden Gate Park.  We were let in and found places to sit. It was cool and dark and I may have nodded off.  

I loved going to Gold Gate park. It was fabulous. I loved the museum, the planetarium, the Japanese Gardens and the wonderful moon gate and the art museum always had wonderful things to go see.  I would love to return to visit someday.  Bon Voyage!

BLACK LIVES MATTER

The following narrative is the sum total of my experience with black lives.

I was born in Idaho a ridiculously red and white state.  The only nonwhite person I ever saw growing up in Emmett was a Japanese classmate whose parents were interned during WWII and settled in Emmett.  There is a larger settlement of Japanese in Ontario, Oregon and there used to be an annual festival.  

My first acquaintance with a black person was in highschool.  We had an exchange student from Kenya named Ellen Ogada.  I got to know her and bugged her about Swahili.  I can still say "Three small potatoes." Which is Kiazi Kizuri Kizulu.  If I remember correctly.  I will never starve in Kenya.

My grandma Horn never swore or used the N word.  One time when I was home I asked her to tell us the story about when the school house burned down.  She blinked and asked, "Do you mean when they burned the N-word?"  I was astounded, she buttoned her lip and wouldn't say another word.  This would have happened about 1910 somewhere in (shudder) Missouri.

There was a very small neighborhood near the river in Boise where the black population lived.  We would drive through there going to Idaho Power Company office for Dad to pick up his check.  

One time we were driving through that neighborhood and dad exclaimed, "Look at the red headed n-word!"  That is the one and only time I ever heard him use that word.

When I moved to Petaluma, California to live with my cousin and his wife I first worked at Fairchild Semiconductor.  There were a lot of black girls who commuted across the Contra Costa bridge from Richmond.  

Fairchild actually had a policy that a black person could not work there unless they lived in Marin County.  I only knew of two women who lived nearby.  One was Doris Bell whom I adored and the other lady was Eula Thibideoux. Doris lived on Rincon Way past the Marin County Courthouse, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.  That was a fun building.  It looked like an Art Deco alien spaceship nestled between two small hills.  First husband and I had to go there once to bail his brother, Pat, out of jail for drunkenness.  We got on the elevator and when it stopped the door did not open.  Instead the door opened on the other end of the elevator.  Cool!

Back to Fairchild, the black ladies who came from Richmond just cheerfully gave addresses in Marin County.  HR department was not going to look too closely at that as they desperately needed bodies to fill the positions for all three shifts, six days a week.

There was only one black man who worked there, His name was Roy.  He worked in maintenance.  Every once in a while one of the ladies would tease him, "Roy! Gimme some sugar!".

The first time I ever heard a black girl use the term Soul  Sister, I was charmed. I asked what was that and she explained that her friend was especially close and they were in the same church.

This was also the first time I ever heard about a rent party.   Somewhere would need to come up with the rent and would through a party.  This involved the host having a potluck party with an admission fee.  I thought this was very clever. 

It was also the first time I ever heard about hot water corn bread.  I realized years later that this was polenta.

I moved back to Emmett as a displaced housewife in the mid 70's.  I fortuitously enrolled at BSU in the medical records program.  One of the professors gave a speech on how to deal with difficult situations in particular doctors who are upset about something or other.  He was very tall, very commanding and to add to his stature he wore very sturdy clogs that added a couple of inches to his height.

When I lived and worked in Barrow, one of the pharmacists was a lovely black woman named Vivian.  Her hobby was that sport where one pushed a 30 pound granite rock on ice.  There was not a place to pursue that in Barrow strangely enough.

After that, one time when husband and i were waiting to catch the plane from Seattle.  The jet finally landed and said to husband, "Lets look and see if anyone famous gets off!".  Sure enough the first person off the jet was Rosie Greer!  He noticed us looking and he came over and looked at the cat carrier and asked, "Is that a dog?"

After Barrow I worked at the Coquille Valley Hospital for 12 years.  One of the people hired to be public relations was a lovely black lady who eventually went to work at the Coos County College.

Coquille did have a black sheriff.  He retired a few years later.  

Then I worked in Dillingham, Alaska for a year.  One of the billers was a black lady whose last name was Greer and actually was related to Rosie Greer. She wound up with my van that I left behind.  I wonder where it wound up.  By the time I left there the gas tank had developed a leak.  Someone ran out of gas I'm sure.

About a month ago, husband and I were returning home from Coos Bay and there were Black Lives Matter demonstrators waving as we went by, we waved back.

Most recently, one of the patients at Davita is a black man named Bradley.  We have chatted and gotten a bit acquainted.  Very pleasant person.

The point is, that I should not have to use any descriptor such as black, brown or yellow, I certainly don't use the term my white friend.  So we have a long way to go to achieve unthinking equality.  May it be so very soon.

Bazaars, fairs etc.

 I love going to places where I can buy stuff, this usually involves Christmas Fairs, bazarrs, sales held in houses and in on instance a lovely little boutique was going out of business in downtown Boise in the mid 1970's.  They had an extensive collection of angels.  I purchased a teen angel, a cook angel and my vast collection of angels began.

When I lived in Barrow, there was always a Christmas Fair held in the gymnasium of one of the schools.

The Filipinos cooked and sold pansit, odobo and fried rice.  Yum!  Jessie (Phoonsri Charunsonfonsak, made Thai food.  I never purchased any because I am not fond of peanut in my food and I knew the heat would knock my head off.

Good available were mukluks (about a thousand dollars), Parkas which were about two thousand dollars were gorgeous.

I purchased a lovely little bracelet made of baleen and carved walrus tusk ivory with figures of fox, polar bear, walrus, seal and bowhead whale.  I still have it and wear it occasionally.  They also sold little masks made of reindeer hide with a rabbit fur hood surrounding the face.  I purchased a sled made of reindeer jaw.

I purchased a charming little soap stone bear. I also bought a beautiful red fox fur hat with the tail on the back.  I think I paid $250.00 for it and sold it to a taxi driver for fifty bucks when I moved to Coquille.

The only angel I ever purchased was a darling pin made of beads it was gorgeous.  I lost it one day and have rather grieved its loss.  I had a fascinating chat with the security guard when I went to Social Security to see about getting some thing done.  A lady sitting near me admired the pin and I said that I had gotten it in Barrow.  The guard perked up and said he had lived there for years.  One time he was driving a snowmobile along the frozen Yukon river.  His machine stalled right before he would have jumped a bank of snow.  On the other side of the snow was a open spot of water.  He would have likely died from that but for a cranky snow machine.

I also purchased a lovel little birch box made by someone from the Russian island of one of Diomedes.  It is large enough to hold a few bits ad bobs.  

Samuel Simmonds was the first Inupiat to study for his Doctorate of Divinity.  He was the pastor of the local Presbyterian church for years.  His hobby was carving ivory figures.  The heads of his pieces were always a little square.  One piece that I have admired it that of a father dressed to go hunting. He is holding a spear.  His small son is pleading to go with him.  The father tells his son that he is too small this year.  He will have to wait until next year.  I always get a little chocked up telling this story.  Mr. Simmonds had a story to go with each piece.

Baleen bowls are very charming.  They a woven from strips of baleen.  The base is a small round wooden disk.  The lids usually have a small ivory carving on them.  They cost about one hundred dollars per inch.  

When Judy retired from her job as Medical Records manager, we chipped in and purchased a two inch baleen basket.  I had a lot of very colorful shopping bags and I put the bowl in my smallest bag and went on up.  Judy kept opening and opening and the native ladies apparently had never seen this trick and thought it was very funny.

I went with Judy to visit one of the teachers.  She had carved a lot of small animal figures. Judy chose about twenty five of them and had the lady make them into a necklace.  I think the lady was carving them illegally as the carving was reserved for the natives. Federal law, protected mammals. The necklace was gorgeous.  I cannot imagine what the value of that piece is now a ways.

My first Christmas in Barrow was a little sparse in decorations.  I had taken quite a few angels.  Unfortunately the Christmas trees cost about one hundred dollars.  So I used a couple hangars and suspended the angels from fishing line.   It was very pretty until it started to look like a mass hanging.

Then when we moved to Coquille we acquired cats who would have attacked any tree with bright dangly things.  So decorations were limited to the mantel. 

DREAM SCAPE

 I woke from an odd little dream this morning.  I drove into the underground garage of a building that was undergoing some remodeling.  I parked and walked inside.

I saw a doctor who admitted me. (Hmm, must have been a hospital) I was taken to a room, given a gown and put to bed.  The next day the doctor released me and asked if there was anything he could do for me before he left.  I shook my head no. 

I went into the bathroom to change into my clothes which were oddly enough a pair of pants and a simple blue blouse.

When I came out the bed had been made and there was a small pill cup with two cherry lozenges.  Sweet!

I walked toward the outside door and I noticed that it was nearly sundown.

A to Z says to dream of a hospital says that one needs to improve physical or mental health.   Um, not a problem for me.  The alternative definition of Hospital means losing control of your body.  Well, that is certainly true.  

Other medical folk have custody of my body from 10 am to 2 pm on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.  But I rather enjoy chatting with the nurses and the tech.  

I have gotten to know a few of the other patients and generally have a fairly benevolent time in the chair.  Which is cushy leather, small TV swings forward.  I use a small pair of ear phone things to plug into the TV or my Kindle.  I have a neck pillow and a blankie to keep me warm.

This week has been especially good and the tech was able to use both sides of the fistula for the dialysis.  The carotid cannula has rested this week.  Perhaps in a month or two, Dr. Caiman will remove the device.

Since the fistula has matured at long last (it took a year) I have decided that Miss Gale is taking back two pink five pound dumbbells.   Poor girlie girl.

MY FRIEND, PATRICK

 Since I have been reminiscing about Barrow, I feel that I should mention my friend, Patrick Pendleton.  

He came to Barrow shortly some time before the 1995 dot.com bubble burst.  His motivation was to move from Ohio to somewhere that he could sit out that recession.  

He was from Willoughby, Ohio.  It may sound familiar being the name of a village in a Twilight Zone story.  His first job in Barrow was working for Mark Air as a baggage handler.  That job also included a lot of cargo as well.  

The Mark Air building, which contained a smallish hamburger joint upstairs, was next to the two very long landing strip.  The landing strips were long enough for jets to take off and land.  They were paved but took a beating.   

North Slope Borough Search and Rescue was situated next to Mark Air.  They had a Lear jet and a large helicopter. 

Like a lot of people, Patrick submitted his application for various jobs in Barrow.  One of them was for the medical record department.  Judy interviewed him and he was hired.  No experience but very willing to learn.  

He fit in well.  He was very tall, blond hair and he had Marfan's Syndrome which means he had long bones and connective tissue disorder.  

The desks were a bit short for him, so I looked at the situation and wondered if the maintenance guys could build a wooden cradle of 2x4's for the table legs. They did, it raised the desk about three inches which helped tremendously.  There were four desks in the coding room, peopled by Patrick and three other ladies.  The ladies were all Filipino which meant they were very hardworking but took very long vacations because they went to P.I and their absences were usually two or three months.  So essentially one of the desks was pushed against a wall.  

Patrick had a terrific sense of humor.  One day the bunch of us were eating lunch in the very small lunchroom, it held four tables.  He was chatting away and mentioned that he enjoyed his Aunt's recipe for hamburger dildo. Heads whipped around.  He dabbed his lips and explained that his Aunt, almost nun-like had a recipe for Hamburger Dill Roll.   You take a largish dill pickle, roll it in hamburger and fry it.  I asked him what the side dish was and he twinkled, "Why white pearl onions with white sauce!"  Everyone roared with laughter. 

About three months or so later, Patrick complained of a nagging pain low in his abdomen.  One of the docs in ER diagnosed a dissecting aorta.  He was shipped to Anchorage where it was confirmed that his descending aorta was bulging.  

He elected to fly home to Ohio then to Mayo Clinic.  He had a resection.  Early in his stay a day after surgery, he called wanting to speak to the hospital administrator.  John was off slope so I chatted with Patrick for a while.  Soon, it became clear that his mentation was not at all clear.  He kept trying to tell me that the aliens were invading.  Then he hung up.  I called back and spoke to a nurse who was aware of Patrick's postop condition.  

In a few weeks he returned.  His normally high pitched voice was now a whisper due to damage to his vocal cords while intubated.  The surgery was successful except that he some nerve damage from the low pelvic surgery and his gait was weak.  He needed to use one of the carts that carried charts to help his navigation.  I got him a bicycle bell for the cart so he would warn people that he was coming.  

After about a year he decided he would study for Coder Certification.  The annual test was held in Anchorage so he flew down to take the test.  Unfortunately he rental developed a flat tire and by the time that was taken care of the Poctor's had closed the test site.  So he came back to try again later.

The next year it all went well.  If I remember correctly the two of us flew down together.  I was attending the State Medical Record annual meeting and he took the test. But it wasn't all grimness.  We and a lot of medical record people went to a local club where Mr. White's Review was playing.  It was hilarious.  I have never laughed so hard.  

Anyone who flied to Anchorage knows to take an extra piece of luggage folded in amongst the regular suitcases and such.  This allows one to go shopping at Carr's for goodies, food stuffs not found in Barrow, or Nordstroms for clothing.  I once saw an ad for boots and called to ask them to mail me a pair of boots which they did.  They were sold because there was a fault with the boots.  I looked for the longest time before I realized the fur was slightly shorter on one side as compared to the other.  We also went to Staples to pick up some computer supplies.  Those extra bags to come in handy.  

A few months later, Patrick had a check up x-ray of the low abdomen and the aorta from the heart was dissecting.  He flew to Mayo Clinic for surgery.  I took vacation at the same time.  

When I returned to Barrow, Monica called me to say that Patrick had the surgery but it was not successful.  He died.  

His funeral was held in Willoughby.  His mother, Marge Pendleton called to tell me about the ceremony.  

I decided to have a memorial for Patrick.  I spread the word that there would be potluck and a memorial in the commons room.  About twenty people showed up and told funny stories.  I started off with the Hamburger Dildo.  

One of the ladies told a story that she had invited a bunch of people for Thanksgiving dinner.  Patrick was one of her frequent guests.   

He was a terrific cook.  He brought a wonderful dried noodle salad to a potluck once, recipe taken from a book entitled "100 Casserole Recipes".  I asked what he wanted for his birthday one year and said something to do with cooking.  So I got him a set of graduated glass measuring cups starting at four cups on down.  

Anyway the party commenced.  It took forever to cook the turkey because she was following a Martha Stewart recipe that called for the bird to be covered with thin cloth and basted regularly every 15 minutes.  The party started at noon and dinner was not served until 10 pm because it took that long to cook the turkey.

I called Marge Pendleton later to tell her how the memorial went.  I told her that I was disappointed that a beautiful blond with two small children crying for their daddy had not crashed the memorial.

Marge took the rest of the money from his life insurance to purchase a B&B that had something to do with ducks.  

I miss that young man.