Month: March 2017
Boylan Bottling
When I come off trail, nothing kicks the dust out of my throat like an icy cold refreshing root beer. Not high fructose sugar water hawked by corporate America. The real thing. Boylan’s root beer has it all – flavor and kick.
A rich sassafras flavor derived from cinnamon, sweet birch, vanilla, and wintergreen oil. – Boylan
As Saba’s Jerry Hill famously taught us, hand-crafted is nearly as good as it gets. Boylan’s, with cane sugar and natural flavors, handcrafted since 1891, is the pinnacle of our highly competitive American soda market.
After knocking back a bottle or two, I had to know their secret. Was it ginger? Where did the tang come from? Boylan Bottling was characteristically silent. I tried multiple departments, running through all the extensions of their telephone system. No one would share their secrets.
“The ingredients are on the label”, Samantha sweetly explained. Yeah, I could be as nice with an unlimited supply of Boylans for private consumption. Rumors abound. Unconfirmed reports mention the addition of anise and that master spice, black pepper …
Barkeep, get me a Sarsaparilla!
alcoholics anonymous
SINCE ANCIENT TIMES grain and fruit have been allowed to ferment into alcohol. Fermentation is the process in which yeast breaks down sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Whether your pleasure is okolehao, scotch, or makgeolli, every culture has a drink to cure ills, relax nerves, mark occasions, and calm stomachs.
When things get a little too calm, alcohol works the other way. So it seems. Then there’s the “Thank God it’s Friday” excuse to consume mass quantities.
After all commercial exaltation is exhausted and peer pressure ignored, an acceptable vintage port by a crackling fire with a nice book is probably good for the mind, body, and soul. But when this (almost) all-natural beverage becomes a destructive force? Who do you call?
Since the 1930s Americans have turned to Alcoholics Anonymous. An approach to manage an addiction through abstinence. Now an international fellowship, membership is one of America’s more constructive exports.
Surrounded by creative types all day, every day, we see eight sides of the issue. In the end, one phrase sounds more true than all the others. Sobriety brings clarity.
Nelson Wood Shims
In today’s iPhone age most forget simple tools which make our lives comfortable. Lever, wheel and axle, pulley, inclined plane, wedge, screw. Archimedes got it. A few millennium before him with these simple tools Pyramids were build. Two+ million years ago stone scraping tools, precursor to the wedge, were made and used before humans were around to criticize its design.
Banging pipes within a wall had me turn to this tool invented before humans roamed the land. With a wedge of wood I cured a sick installation, relieving stress and worry from countless users of this plumbing system. A simple shim of wood inserted between pipe and metal stud eliminated an issue which existed for decades. I made sure to “reconfigure pipe within wall” when no one was looking. Can’t share all my trade secrets.
When it was time to shim, I turned to Clyde. He in turn points me to the rear of his store, where both loafer and curmudgeon gather around a re-screening table for coffee and lies. Just past these antiquarians lies a trove of shimming choices. Six flavors of Nelson Wood Shims. Today, a thin package will satisfy my needs. Plus a few extra for the toolbox.
A Slant of Light • jeffrey lent
Aisle L. Always a joy. Two years have passed. People browsed, flirted, exchanged glances. Plans made, advances ignored. There is always love in Aisle L of our local library. Requited, engaged, spurned, savored.
Since my last visit Jeffery Lent has published another book. Mr Lent is a time traveler. He closes his eyes, fiddles with levers and dials in his imagination, arrives at his destination and time, then opens his senses to new surroundings. And writes. Beautifully. We see, smell, and hear small town America a century ago. Before automobiles, electricity, or telephone.
The Lenten tornado of imagination plucks me from my routine and drops me within his world. Late 1860s in rural New York. Small town courthouse. Country lanes. Hard farm work. Simple murder, anything but simple. You are not reading. You’re an observer, tagging along, wondering what will happen over yonder hill?
American Toolbox 