weekend « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

weekend

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2
Jun 12

Surprise!

The Yankee’s parents are celebrating their 40th anniversary this weekend.

The Yankee and family friends conspired to throw them a little surprise party. Here they are walking in the door of a little Italian restaurant they frequent:

Did you hear her say “We say your car?” That was one of their local friends. We parked right next to them and they said “That looks like their car … ” We also parked right next to an out-of-state family member’s car. No one noticed it.

We crammed 28 people into Tutti’s, the delicious little Italian place. Everyone had a great time. My mother-in-law said “These are all of the people we’d want to have dinner with.”

The Yankee and all of the people involved in putting the party together did a great job. The guests of honor had no idea.

One of the brides’ maids produced the dress she wore 40 years ago. Some of their lifelong friends brought out the old photographs.

Here are two snapshots someone showed off, taken just after the young couple had returned from their honeymoon:

Here’s another picture from some time shortly after that:

And these next two pictures were taken on the night they met. This was at a one year reunion for her nursing program. I was sitting tonight next to the lady who set them up, she told me the whole, cute, story.

My mother-in-law is on the far right, decked out in crepe paper. It seemed to be the style of the time. The guy in the awesome jacket was a doctor in that nursing program. (Three of her nursing classmates were at the party tonight.)

Facing the camera in the photograph on the left is the groom-to-be. He’s a bit fuzzy in the original too, but there’s an entire series of pictures where he’s floating in the background, in that posture, in the same place.

She says he tried to pick her up by suggesting they go out to his car and listen to his stereo.

“No way,” she said. But he’d finally win her over. He’d soon tell his friends she was the one. They’d be married a year or so later.

And here they are today, surprised and surrounded by their friends.

Great party.

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27
May 12

Catching up

The weekly post where we slap together a bunch of pictures that didn’t get featured elsewhere among the many treasures of the Internet and show them off with banal commentary for cheap content.

Component kit? Takes the wind out of your sails for deviled eggs a bit, doesn’t it?

I was going to write a lengthy essay about the humble push broom, but decided against it. You’re welcome.

The Fox Theatre marquee in Atlanta. We were there Tuesday to see Jersey Boys. (Great show.)

But does it light up? Why, yes, it does.

Roadside flowers in the heat of a late spring day. I was out wilting, they were thriving. Somewhere around Beauregard, Ala.

I am obliged to put up Allie pictures every so often, or she wakes me up in the middle of the night. We’ve reached an arrangement about this sort of thing.

I hid under this tree for a moment of shade on my bike ride today. It was circled by old cement benches. I bet they don’t get used very often any more, though.

She lived 98 years and, now, I bet almost everyone she knew and loved is gone. Unsurprisingly the Internet knows nothing about her. What is known of the place she’s buried has survived largely based on oral histories, so she might be a complete mystery at this point. But there’s that little lamb, still.

I broke my helmet — thankfully not while I was in it. Guess I need a new one.

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26
May 12

A podge of hodges

I want to tell you that my family is full of good cooks. My mother, when we were young could invent dishes out of random extra things that would make your mouth water. When she has the proper ingredients she’s quite incredible. She may not have a green thumb, but if you grow something and put it in her kitchen she well make you one of the better meals you’ve had in a good long while.

One of my grandmothers is also a good cook. My grandparents raised a large garden that was essentially subsistence farming. Only, when I was young, I got tired of all those vegetables of course. Now I’d love to see that farm back in action for some creamed corn and various other things we pulled out of the ground.

My other grandmother is not a bad cook, either. People disagree on this, but I think she’s a fine cook. But that could be the grandmother, oldest-grandchild thing. (I’m her favorite. Just ask.)

All of this leads me to one of those curious things in life that we never think about until it is forced upon us. What if something you’ve always eaten is not so very good? For instance, God bless the fine cooks in my family, but they will bake a turkey dry as a dusty road at Thanksgiving.

I never knew what turkey was supposed to taste like until The Yankee cooked one the first fall we dated. Sometime after that her father was telling the story of how, as a boy, he didn’t know what a hamburger was supposed to be like. His mother burned them and then cooked them some more. It took eating at a friend’s to learn what he’d been missing.

It is a good tale, and the full version of that story is great, but that seemed silly to me until I considered the turkey example of my own culinary experiences.

Similar to my family’s apparent hatred of delicate turkey meat, there’s also a big bias against pork chops. I’m not sure what it is, maybe my grandmothers thought you needed to cook them at lunch and again at dinner, just to be sure any germs were dead. Perhaps we distracted them too much in the kitchen. Could have been anything, but even as a kid I knew that my lovely, saintly, giving and patient grandmothers respective pork chops didn’t taste good. I think I was in my mid-20s before I had a good one.

All of the above to say, if you’re not grilling your pork chops, friend, your missing out.

Had a too-hot ride yesterday. Last weekend we reversed a route we occasionally take and I found it grueling in the sense that I wanted to do it again. I thought I could easily improve my time on the trip. Only it was much, much warmer and I found myself questioning the wisdom of all of this within about 10 miles.

I struggled through it though, happy to see a gas station about four miles from home. I stopped for a drink, and this must be regular enough now that they don’t even think twice about bikes being walked into the store.

They have a picnic area to one side of the story and a porch swing on the other side. I sat in the swing for a few minutes to have a drink and top off my bottles. I was only four miles from home, but this was the first truly hot riding of the year.

A man walked out of the store and playfully chastised me for stopping. He had the easy, friendly face that makes you think you’ve seen him before. Maybe you’re supposed to know that guy.

“You aren’t supposed to be taking a break,” he said.

“No” I smiled, “but it is warm out here.”

“Yes it is. You’ll fall out!”

The heat index was about 95 at the time. It was not a strain to believe it, either.

So I came home, dropped the last few miles I had in mind because, as I came up the big hill I realized there were no cars behind me. I could move to the center and then duck into the neighborhood without a problem. And that thought made me so happy I leaned on my handlebars and took the 90 degree turn.

It was only 18 miles, but it was hot. But still, I thought, 18 miles.

And then I read this:

Tamae Watanabe, 73, beat her own age record for an Everest climb by a woman set 10 years ago. She also recovered from an accident in 2005 in which she broke her back and feared she would never climb again.

“It was much more difficult for me this time,” Watanabe told reporters Friday after returning to Nepal’s capital, Katmandu, from the mountain. “I felt I was weaker and had less power. This time it was certainly different. I felt that I had gotten old.”

She reached Everest’s summit from the Tibetan side on May 19, at the age of 73 years and 180 days.

That was properly deflating.

Things here are just fine. We’ve finally had to shut the windows and turn the air conditioning on. We’re to the point of the season where you have to start thinking strategically about when you want to do things like, work in the yard, heavy exertion or breathing.

Grilled tonight, watched the second game of the 2010 Auburn football season on DVD. I received the complete championship season as a Christmas gift and they’re becoming regular summer weekend viewing. I hope the Tigers win.

I thought I should take notes to see if and how and when the announcers started trying to talk differently about Cam Newton. So far, after two games against lesser opponents (sorry, State fans) they’ve been properly deferential. The in-game tone may not change, but if you’ll think back the commentary overall got very nasty.

It is great to see this team play though, and as I said tonight, to do so without having to worry about the outcome. There were a few points that season where they were almost defeated. There were moments when you just thought it was all going to come undone because that’s just the way of it. But, knowing they kept it together and defeated everyone, knowing they survived the biggest smear job this side of the classic 1960s Bryant-Butts piece, the feel of it is altogether different.

Watching Cam Newton play in retrospect, I wrote on Twitter, is like knowing the end to the world’s best sonnet.

What I’m saying is that the guy was like poetry. He was pure, violent, graceful poetry. Pure, violent, graceful, championship poetry.

One of the things I have to do this weekend is eat an entire watermelon. We’ll be out of space in the fridge, otherwise. It is ridiculously good, the first of the season and seedless — despite the presence of seeds. I ate a big portion of it last night and the middle of it today.

Still plenty left, if anyone is interested.

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20
May 12

Baseball weirdness

I never played baseball, but no matter what sport you might have been involved in you always heard the coach yelling at you about keeping your head in the game.

Or maybe that was just me.

Anyway, here’s an example of that. This is the penultimate example of poor base running. The situation: Justin Shafer is standing on third base in the fourth inning yesterday as Florida led Auburn 3-2. A ground ball turned into a fielder’s choice when Shafer ran home.

The infielder threw to the catcher and Shafer pulled up short:

The catcher, Caleb Bowen, almost dropped the ball.

The baserunner patiently stood by while Bowen spun, dropped down and leaped to his feet. Shafer looked up:

No doubt someone in the dugout was by now bursting a blood vessel yelling at him.

Bowen tagged him out.

Florida would score a few moments later in the fourth, extending their lead to 4-2. But it should have been 5-2, at least. And this little play helped determine the outcome.

And, oddly, it was only the second-worst thing we’ve seen on the field this year. There’s also the tale of the baserunner who tried to steal second standing up …

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19
May 12

The throw is on target …

Today was Senior Day for Auburn baseball. The last game of the regular season. The Tigers, battling a host of injuries and displaying plenty of talented young players, are the 10th and last seed in next week’s SEC Tournament in Hoover, Ala. They’ve dropped two in a row to second-ranked Florida.

But today the sun was brilliant, the temperatures were warm without being overbearing. Eight young men had their name called as seniors and were given handsomely framed jerseys to commemorate their time playing for Auburn. Two trainers were similarly honored for all of their efforts.

And before the first pitch one of the players proposed to his girlfriend. She said yes. Someone in the crowd yelled “War Damn Wedding!”

So you never know.

Senior Caleb Bowen had just one hit, but as catcher he figured into this game plenty:

Auburn’s ace pitcher, Derek Varnadore was on the mound:

The senior has had a tough year of it. He led the team last year in wins, innings and strikeouts, making him the first Auburn pitcher to collect all three in more than a decade. He turned down a pro contract for his senior year, but things just haven’t worked out as he’d hoped. He found himself in the bullpen recently, but his name was called today. He scattered 10 runs across seven innings, allowing three earned runs and striking out three

Auburn trailed early, 3-0 in the second, and by the fifth inning it was 4-2.

In the seventh inning, still staring at a 4-2 deficit, Auburn collected three singles. The bases were loaded for another senior, Creede Simpson. He pushed in a run on a fielder’s choice. The lead was cut to 4-3. A few moments later, with runners on second and third, designated hitter Justin Bryant dug into the batter’s box:

And the senior created one of your more remarkable plays in baseball:

A ground ball to second that scored two runs? Fans were doing defiant muscle poses in the stands. Take that, Florida. Auburn took a 5-4 lead in the seventh, scoring three runs on four hits.

And then Bryant, as he’s done once or twice this year, went from driving in the potential game-winning RBI to working to collect a save out of the bullpen. He pitched a hitless eighth in relief for Varnadore. He returned for the final frame, which unfolded in high drama.

Florida’s leadoff batter was the first man up in the ninth. He grounded out to second. The next man to the plate singled to right field. There was a double to left. Auburn held a one-run lead in the ninth inning with one out and two runners in scoring position.

Don’t forget the injuries. The left fielder went down two weeks ago with a knee. The right fielder left this game early with a thumb. Auburn’s first baseman was in the dugout because of a oblique muscle injury. The shortstop didn’t start this game. The second baseman is now playing right field.

And so it was that a Gator named Brian Johnson, who has five home runs, 34 RBIs and a .313 batting average licked his lips and lobbed a ball into short right field.

Creede Simpson, who has played second all year but is in right field now because of an injury, made the catch for the second out. Now screaming down the line from third is Florida’s offensive statistical leader, Preston Tucker.

But Tucker forgot this was Senior Day. And Simpson long-hopped a ball to Bowen at the plate.

Auburn won 5-4. Here’s the play, with the Auburn Network’s Rod Bramblett making the call:

Senior Caleb Bowen got the putout. Senior Creede Simpson turned a season-ending double play from right. He also scored the winning run. Senior Justin Bryant got the save and the game-winning RBI. Senior Derek Varnadore got the win.

For those three innings, a struggling team were world beaters. They finished their regular season mobbing each other in right field with a 30-26, 13-17 record.

And now all they have to do is go to Hoover and … face Florida again in the first round of the tournament.

Tomorrow: Pictures of the second strangest thing I’ve seen in baseball all year.