Tag: Grindrod

When it comes to those who favor the return to the very first method of cooking by using some form of open fire in the great outdoors, the grilling season often seems to have no end. Even during our Midwestern winters that have the potential to freeze both our figurative and literal pipes, some refuse to quit that outdoor grill and continue to search for that perfectly prepped cut of meat over a propane, charcoal or wood-pellet fire.

I think it may very well have been when the first wing nut or bolt dropped into the first Dutch Masters cigar box that repurposing really gained momentum, opening new avenues for folks.

The first job for which I saw my name on an actual payroll check was when I worked on a Northrup-King experimental farm in Wapakoneta.

Following some surgery-and-recovery challenges in April, I was really looking forward to an evening with my Lady Jane at The Rose Music Center on May’s first Saturday. You see, not only would I be spending time with that special gal from Montezuma, but I would also be seeing some old friends.

I think most of us know a little something about making lists. For the past two-plus decades, I’ve watched one of the great list makers of our times, my Lady Jane, who not only doesn’t go a day without making at least one but also keeps a calendar with every box filled with her duties. Of course, a kept calendar is simply a list in disguise. I’m a pad-and-pencil list maker, from the ones that read, “Eggs, milk, English muffins …” to lists that include weightier items, often responsibilities, the most urgent of which is at the top.

Nowadays, many place a premium on knowing information immediately. Waiting for the morning print newspaper to slap the concrete of the front porch for so very many would surely be an anachronism if they still digested information thusly. Instead, so many these days rely on social-media platforms to deliver the news they need to know in as little as an hour after there’s a story to tell.

Of course, we all know that the lessons we’re taught don’t always come from those who stand before us in our classrooms. Among the many who have taught us something useful — be they our friends or co-workers or others we briefly pass on our life’s journey — perhaps today is the day when we should pay homage to our mothers, who, indeed were our very best teachers.

Surely each month with which we are blessed has its own unique properties. From the traditional cuisine many people prepare on New Year’s Day — such as pork and sauerkraut, favored by those in the North — to a dish called Hoppin’ John — favored by many in the South, made with rice, black-eyed peas and thick cut bacon — both of which are supposed to bring good luck and on to the Mardi Gras celebrations prior to the season of Lent in February and onto to tapping those sugar maples for syrup in New England in March and onto those first April flowers, each month takes on special significance.

Among those I’ve interviewed over the years, there’s one in particular that continues to resonate with me. His name was, or I surely hope so still is, Dan Doughtery. And I interviewed him in 2018 when the Fairfield, California, retired insurance man was 93 years old.

Over the course of twenty-plus years of writing for publication, which includes a couple of biographical books and features and columns in both magazine and newspaper genres, I’ve done my share of interviewing folks, easily in the hundreds. While many have been local people — the type that country singer Miranda Lambert sang about in her 2007 release, “Famous in a Small Town” — others would be recognizable to a much larger swath of the country, especially to sports fans.