Boba

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Postscript on the tent. I returned it today, and the clerk said I hadn’t been the only one who brought it back for leakage. So I suppose my return is now another data point that the retailer is gathering about the tent. With enough data like that, it might vanish from its shelves sometime, maybe in favor of the brand it used to sell — namely Coleman.

The camping gear is now off display there anyway, as far as I could see, as a seasonal matter. The place is very much attuned to seasonable buying patterns, as any major retailer is going to be. Tents are for spring, as people think about camping.

At least no Christmas stuff yet. That I noticed.

I did notice these boxes.

And these.

Just an indication of the further march of bubble tea (boba) into the awareness and buying habits of the American consumer, and the businesses out to meet that demand. If you can find it in this warehouse store, that puts it firmly in the U.S. mainstream. I haven’t taken to it myself, but my daughters have, enough to spend time at the boba tea houses that have opened up locally over the last decade or so.

Joyba happens to be headquartered in Walnut Creek, California, though the bubble tea itself is a product of Mexico. Nearshoring in action, I reckon.

Boba’s distinctive ingredient is the tapioca pearl, and the drinks come with straws large enough to pull the pearls through. Bet tapioca makers – cassava growers – are happy about the new worldwide popularity of boba.

“Bubble tea is said to have originated in the eighties in the city of Taichung [Taiwan]. Several tea companies claim to be the creator, so it’s unclear which is the true founder of the popular drink,” reported the South China Morning Post.

“A decade later, the addictively tasty drink reached most parts of East and Southeast Asia with bubble tea shops popping up in every mall and street corner. Since then, it has spread across the globe, including the US, Australia, Europe and South Africa.”

Tent Failure

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Did a lot of things today, some involving more effort, other things less. None had a higher aggravation factor than trying to put a tent back in the package that it came in. Normally, I wouldn’t consider such a thing, in favor of keeping the various parts of the tent in more-or-less the same place, whether that’s the garage or in the back of a car.

Earlier this year, I bought a new tent from a large physical retailer, a non-brand I didn’t know, with the idea that there will be a revival of tent camping in this household. Been what – 10 years? The old tent is pushing 20 years, and while it was in good enough shape the last time I set it up a few years ago, it has been leaking since its third summer. As much as a few inches of water inside the tent, that one time in Wisconsin.

New tents, on the other hand, even those that claim only to be “weather resistant,” should not leak the first time they are set up, and only the second time they are rained on. The rain was fairly heavy over the weekend, but not as heavy as it can be, and I expected it to stay dry inside. No. The water wasn’t near the door, either, in case it was a matter of leaving it unzipped a bit, but on the other side from the door. A matter of a lousy seam, it seems.

As I was pondering taking it back to the retailer, I noticed (this morning) that two of the four guylines had broken. Just because of the stress of being anchored to the ground, since there was little wind last night. That settled it. Back in the box and back to the store, never mind the aggravation, and good luck getting me to buy that non-brand again.

Fireworks

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July kicked off much like June this year, warmth and sometimes heat alternating with rain, which cools down things for a while. The threat of cicadas so noisy you can’t hear yourself think has not, at least in my little corner of the suburbs, come to much so far. We’re now getting about as much cicada noise as we do every year, focused around dusk, though perhaps beginning a little earlier in the summer than usual; early July instead of mid- or late July.

July 4 was warm and dry. And on a Thursday, which makes a de facto four-day weekend. Just the time to set off fireworks here in Illinois, where all but the most innocuous ‘works are banned. I didn’t set any off myself, but after dark took to the deck to listen to the explosions.

Somewhere not too far away, someone was setting off M-80s or some noisy equivalent every few minutes, it seemed – a little too much of a good thing, I thought, so I moved to the garage, and listened to the bangs and pops and whizzes from there, with the door open and the lights off and the cars parked outside. The surrounding structure dampened the loudest of the fiery hubbub but still allowed me to hear it all.

There was also much less chance of being hit by a shell, in case some wanker out there somewhere was shooting actual firearms. I know that happens in some places here in the USA. I’ll admit that the odds of that seem pretty slim in our suburb, even at the noisiest moments on Independence Day, but even so probably greater than they would have been only a few years ago.

Vietnamese Postcard & Malaysian Aerogram 1994

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On July 6, 1994, I mailed this card from Malaysia. It was a leftover from Vietnam, from which I’d sent some cards in late June.

I don’t remember seeing the upmarket Rex Hotel in Saigon, though perhaps we walked by it. The hotel is still around.

Mainly, the card was about how we weren’t in Vietnam anymore. I wrote: We’re in Georgetown, Penang Island. I didn’t come here two years ago. It has a quiet, pleasant feel so far.

Three days later, I wrote a letter about our time in Vietnam, using a Malaysian aerogram. Do such things even exist any more? I’d rather not find out.Malaysian aerogram 1994 Malaysian aerogram 1994

A bit of an education, these aerograms. I didn’t know — and I didn’t remember until I looked at it today — that the hibiscus was the national flower of Malaysia. Specifically, the Hibiscus rosa-sinensis. As for the Rafflesia, also known as the stinking corpse lily, it is one bizarre flower.

Fifty Malaysian cents was a deal, though = U.S. 20 cents at the time. That was the same price as a postcard stamp.

In my recollection, Saigon was the opposite of quiet. In the letter I called it a “busy, energetic city.”

One of the things to do there is sit and watch the streets from the sidewalk cafes. You can see whole families balanced on motorcycles, and fewer riders (but not always solo) on bicycles, tricycles, rickshaws, and other motorized thingamabobs, numerous vendors and hawkers, kids kicking balls, idlers, beggars, dogs, cats, and roosters.

High Summer Thursday

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Fireflies have been spotted in the yard. Actually I saw a few a week or more ago, early ones, but now they’re out consistently. They’re denizens of high summer, at least around here.

So time for a summer break, in honor of the upcoming Independence Day and Canada Day and the idea of summer indolence. When the living is easy. Alas, there are no destinations ahead for us, at least not for the moment. Back posting around July 7. It will still be high summer, unless something funny happens to the Earth’s tilt on its axis.

The living is easy if you’ve got an AC and the means to furnish it with electricity. Got my latest electric bill today, a steep one, with ComEd helpfully informing me that we used an average of 151% more kWh each day in June 2024 (May 24-June 24, that is) than the same period a year earlier, which is certainly a business way to look at things. This June’s been pretty hot, but also rainy. Practically subtropical this year.

I will say this about the utility: only one power loss in recent memory, which was a few months ago, and lasted only about 10 seconds. Before that, the most recent blackout I remember was on MLK Day, maybe 10 years ago, about a hour long. It wasn’t that cold, so we weren’t at risk from the chill. It was daytime, so we weren’t in the dark either, and I think we played a board game.

The view from my temporary bed the other day.

Not long before I’d woken up from a screening colonoscopy, and had enough energy to put on my pants. The end result was good: the doc found no lurking neoplasms. The worst part of the procedure is over by the time you get to the clinic anyway. Namely, downing the vile liquid beforehand.

My last round of gulping was from 3 to 5 a.m., so to make the time pass – when I wasn’t rushing to the bathroom – I watched a couple of episodes of Northern Exposure, which recently appeared on one of the streaming services I pay for. Now I’m working my way through the series. I saw some, but not all of the episodes when it was new, including a few that a friend had sent me on videotape when I lived in Japan.

Those were the first I’d ever seen, watched on the VHS player that fed into my little Korean TV (the first TV I ever bought, for about ¥25,000 on one of Osaka’s electronic retail streets). The very first one impressed me as amusing. I watched another episode and thought, amusing. And interesting.

Then I watched a third one – which happened to be the late first-season episode “Aurora Borealis: A Fairy Tale for Big People,” originally aired August 30, 1990. My reaction: what is this? How can this be on network television? It’s too wonderfully odd.

One of the plot threads of that particular episode involves Bernard, a long-lost half-brother of Chris, showing up in town for reasons he can’t explain. (That episode also happened to be the one in which Joel meets misanthrope Adam, a character played with remarkable comic focus by Adam Arkin, who later became recurring and somewhat more domesticated.)

Early on, before they know they are related, Bernard and Chris are in the Brick, and have this discussion.

Shelly: What were you talking about this morning? Jung and — what was that other stuff?

Chris: The collective unconscious.

Shelly: Do they tour, or do they just cut records?

[That would, in fact, be a great name for a band.]

Chris: Well, I’ll be reading excerpts from Jung and his study Man and His Symbols all week. So — you can catch up.

Bernard: That was you on the radio?

Chris: Yeah.

Bernard: Interesting. Very interesting.

Chris: Have you read any Jung?

Bernard: No. But I’ve had some strange dreams lately. Very strange.

Shelly: Me too.

Chris: Well, everybody does. I mean, Jung says that dreams are the woofer and tweeter of the total sound system.

Bernard forms an unusually tight bond with Chris, again for reasons they can’t explain, since they still don’t realize they are related. Tired after spending time working on a large metal sculpture Chris is building outside his trailer, they bunk down and promptly share a dream. Or rather you, the viewer, slowly realize that is happening, as dreamtime Chris and dreamtime Bernard talk things over in the cab of a truck neither of them is driving; someone off camera is. In the background is the Chordettes’ recording of “Sandman.”

They talk about their father, who was a long-haul truck driver, and are on the verge of realizing he had two families when they wonder who, in fact, is driving.

“Who are you?” they ask the driver at the same time.

“Hello, boys,” says the balding, gray-bearded driver with an eye patch (?) and a brown suit, in a mildly Germanic accent. “I am Carl Jung. And while I know much about the collective unconscious, I don’t know how to drive!”

They all scream as the truck heads out of control. Naturally, that’s when they wake up.

That scene makes me laugh, just thinking about it. It’s inspired. At the moment I saw it, I realized I needed to watch more of the show. And so I did for a while, but not consistently, and then not often for the next 30 years or so.

Fast forward to last month, when a handful of episodes (including “Aurora Borealis”) were available to watch on the trans-Atlantic flights on Aer Lingus. So I watched a few, including “Aurora Borealis,” and later discovered the show is now streaming for the first time ever. About time, I’d say.

Bashful Bob

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I didn’t imagine it: Bashful Bob’s Motel in Page, Arizona, was a real place, which I called “a real, honest-to-God tourist court” more than a quarter-century ago. I still have a card I picked up when we stayed there in 1997.Bashful Bob's MotelWhen we returned to Page two years ago, the renovated place was the pleasant but less interestingly named, and more expensive, Lake Powell Motel. Bob Wombacher was nowhere to be found. Not a surprise, since he died in 2011.

I suspect, but don’t actually remember, that we met Bob briefly in May ’97, when we checked in. Running an honest-to-God tourist court is (was) usually hands-on work for the proprietor. In our time, someone with a name like Wombacher, if he left any trace at all, can be found on the Internet.

Turns out Bob was more than a tourist court operator. He left a legacy of obscure humorous poetry, according to a curious site called Porkopolis, the “arts, literature, philosophy and other considerations of the pig.” (Which has a page devoted to Arnold Ziffle, I’m glad to say.)

Bob wrote a poem about pigs, or at least referencing pigs. A collection of Bob’s – Rhyme Time – can be found here. It includes such verse as (picked at random for their brevity):

“Just Following Orders”

I step inside my fav’rite store
And spy a cone inside the door.
“Wet floor,” it states, and so I do
Exactly what it tells me to.
Then, rather wishing I had not,
I’m banished to the parking lot.

“All Set”

I’ve saved enough money
To last me for life.
The children are grown;
I don’t have a wife.
I’ve got enough money.
Yes, plenty and then some.
To last me forever.
(At least ’til I spend some.)

“Half-Pint”

It isn’t that I’m little.
I’m just not very tall.
Until I grow,
I’m last to know
When rain begins to fall.

I also wondered: Bashful Bob? I always considered that a just bit of alliterative whimsy on the part of Bob, but I now know there was a song of that name recorded by Bobby Vee. Mainly because I just found out.

Maybe the song title was an inspiration for him. If so, it was still a bit of Bob’s whimsy. Mr. Wombacher seems like the kind of guy to name his business after a teen-idol pop song of an earlier time, just for fun.

Pardon Me Boy, Is That The Des Plaines Choo-Choo?

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I’m glad to report that The Choo-Choo, a novelty restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, still seems to be open and serving burgers and fries by way of a model train.

I’m not sure the exact year I picked up its card, which isn’t shaped like a conventional business card but is square. I do remember taking Ann there when she was old enough to appreciate the place, but probably not old enough to remember it. So sometime in the mid- to late 2000s.

“The Choo Choo opened its doors nearly 70 years ago, with diners looking for creative ways of creating different dine-in experiences,” according to Classic Chicago Magazine.

“In 1951 original owner James Ballowe and his wife Marilyn wanted to open a business that would be an enjoyable experience for all ages. Ballowe had hoped that The Choo Choo would quickly become popular for both kids and adults.”

Apparently it did. They ran the place until 2000. The current owner is the third, taking over in 2022 after a period of pandemic closure. His name is Dale Eisenberg, who with partner Mike Ventre, runs a similar restaurant – one featuring model train delivery – in Bartlett, Illinois, the 2Toots Train Whistle Grill.

That restaurant was once in Downers Grove, and we took Ann there as well, and probably Lilly, sometime around 2010. I don’t think I have a card from it, which is too bad. These are not, of course, the only such joints anywhere, as this Reddit page illustrates.

He May Ride Forever ‘neath the Streets of Boston

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Something I never thought of until today: you can buy booklets to hold fortune cookie fortunes. One at Amazon promises 10 pages that hold 40 fortunes, for $12.99. That came to mind, or rather set me looking, when I happened across another fortune I saved:

Magic time is creale when an unconventional person comes to stay.

I supposed “created” was meant, but in any case that sounds like the pitch for a sitcom episode.

I’m not buying a fortune holder. Those little slips will be tucked away with my business card accumulation: five holders so far, holding some hundred number of cards. Many are restaurant cards, some dating back to the ’80s. Others include a sampling of hotels, museums, shops, even a few churches.

Also, transit cards. I got a kick out of this one.

I used it during my most recent visit to Boston in 2018. Previously the system used metal tokens, but of course those are gone. CharlieTickets and CharlieCards were introduced in 2006.

Charlie was the sad-sack (and poor) protagonist of the song “M.T.A.,” which I know well. That is, the Kingston Trio’s 1959 recording, but not so much about its background. So naturally I had to look into it.

“The text of the song was written in 1949 by Jacqueline Steiner and Bess Lomax Hawes,” writes Jonathan Reed, once a student at MIT. “It was one of seven songs written for [Walter] O’Brien’s campaign, each one emphasized a key point of his platform. [He was running for mayor of Boston that year.]

“One recording was made of each song, and they were broadcast from a sound truck that drove around the streets of Boston. This earned O’Brien a $10 fine for disturbing the peace.”

The Kingston Trio got ahold of it a decade later and it sounds like they had fun with it. Clearly the song endures locally, enough to receive a sort of official recognition by the modern MBTA.

June 23, 1991

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Saturday afternoon’s weather was perfect for those of us who like our good weather a little less placid. It was a warm and windy day, but not the sort of heat that is oppressive nor the sort of wind that threatens to blow anything down, just puffs that put leaves and branches in constant motion and mostly keeps mosquitoes away.

Heavy rain had fallen in the wee hours of Saturday, but few puddles survived in the daylight hours. Before midnight, more rain fell, but again on Sunday there was little to show for it. Temps moderated somewhat on Sunday, making for a warm day without much wind. Chamber of commerce weather.

I checked the reverse of this image — where I had make notes — and found to my surprise that it was taken 33 years ago today, at Jay’s house in Dallas.

Left to right, top row, described from my point of view, since I’m the one doing the describing: my uncle Ken, aunt Sue, Kim, my cousin Ralph (Kim was his first wife), my brother Jim, my nephew Robert, my brother Jay, sister-in-law Deb, her mother Eleanore. Left to right, bottom row, not counting the dogs: me, my mother Jo Ann, and nephews Dees and Sam. The dogs are Aloysius, Jay and Deb’s, and Katie, my mother’s, in her lap.

I had just turned 30 and was visiting the U.S. from Japan for the first time since my move, and we all gathered in Dallas. Pretty much the only good reason to visit Dallas in the summer is to see family or friends. Other stops on that trip included Chicago and from there a round-trip drive to Massachusetts for the Fourth of July, to visit friends, by way of Toronto and Niagara Falls.

Five family members in the image have passed away in the interim, seven counting the dogs. I’m not sure about Kim; she and Ralph divorced later. Four people in the photo went on to have (so far) a total of eight children, nine counting a stepchild. That would be me, Ralph, Sam and Dees. Also, the house we were standing in has been torn down and the site redeveloped.

What to say but tempus fugit? One question, though. Who took the picture? I don’t remember anyone else being there.

Hot Summer Thursday Celosia

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Hot morning followed by light rain this afternoon, with a push of cool air by the evening. That’s a Northern summer for you – not willing to follow through all those hot days with near-hot nights, not at least for more than a few days at a time. Windows will be cracked open this evening.

I opened a fortune cookie the other day, as one does, and it had no fortune in it. That was a first, maybe. Obviously it means no future for me. Ah, well.

Some years ago, I opened a fortune cookie and it said this: “You are about to become $8.95 poorer ($6.95 if you had the buffet).” That was so funny I kept it, and to this day it’s tucked in with my collection of restaurant cards, though not with any particular restaurant, since I don’t remember where I got it.

I’d like to say that I captured these images of such colorful flowers in the wild, or at least in an elegant garden somewhere, but no.celosia

These celosia and other plants were for sale at the garden section of a major multinational retailer.

I didn’t know anything about celosia (cockscomb), so I looked into it when I got home. Lost Crops of Africa notes that it is edible.

“Despite its African origin (a claim that is not without dispute), celosia is known as a foodstuff in Indonesia and India. Moreover, in the future it might become more widely eaten, especially in the hot and malnourished regions of the equatorial zone. It has already been hailed as the often-wished-for vegetable that ‘grows like a weed without demanding all the tender loving care that other vegetables seem to need.’ ”

Gardenia says of celosia: “Leaves, tender stems, and young flower spikes can be eaten boiled or cooked in sauce or stew with other ingredients. The leaves are a nutritious addition to the vegetable garden. They contain high levels of beta-carotene and folic acid.”

It looks like it is making its way onto overpriced menus as food hipsters discover it.