A Walk on the New Road

Franckle Found!

After finding the note from my long ago student and posting about it Thursday, several folks here and on Facebook encouraged me to have a look for him to make sure he saw the blog post.

So with the help of Mr. Google, I did look. And found several possible addresses -- some in Florida and one right here in Marshall. Nah, I said, couldn't be.  There were no email addys nor were there telephone numbers.  So I tried Facebook.

A Robert Franckle who looked like the guy I remembered had an account -- obviously inactive. So I looked on FB for a woman who Google listed as a connection. Bingo! I had found Robert's ex-wife. She kindly told me that her and Robert's daughter was also on FB and gave me her name.

Said daughter told me that Robert did, indeed, live in Marshall but was at his hunting camp in South Carolina at the moment. She also gave me a phone number.

I called and left a message and yesterday morning early got a  call from Robert who was on his way back to NC. Neither of us could quite believe that we lived so near to one another. Arrangements were made and last night, my long lost student -- who has been living about a half an hour away for several years now -- came to dinner!

 Robert is just as sweet as I remembered. It was a delightful evening of 'do you remember?' and 'did you know?' during which we also discovered that one of John's crazy friends from University of South Florida was later a friend of Robert's. 

It still seems vaguely unreal that a note, written almost fifty years ago and rediscovered on Wednesday could so quickly have led to the author of the note sitting at our dinner table on Friday night.

Thanks to those of you that encouraged me to search! Who could have foreseen such an outcome! 

Great Spangled Fritillary is Ready for her Closeup

At the end of the season, she's a tad faded but still beautiful.

She posed most obligingly, side and front. 

Wings lowered, wings raised . . .

And then she was gone.

It Fluttered to the Floor . . .

I'm still going through drawers and boxes and files in the great purge of my workroom and at some point, this folded bit of paper did, indeed, flutter to the floor.

Dear Mrs. Skemp, it said  ( my married name, remember, and the one I was known by when I taught English at Berkeley Prep in Tampa many long years ago.)

Someday when this flutters to the floor and you pick it up to read it, remember me and return it to the book to flutter down again to be reminded again.

I want you to know you were an inspiring and delightful teacher.

        May 1968,

       Robert Franckle 

     A Romantic and Adventurer

I'd forgotten this note but not Robert -- a member of my senior English class -- who, as I recall, loved to go fishing in Tampa Bay more than anything.  Really, one of the sweetest guys you could imagine.

That was my last year at Berkeley. John and I left to go to Iowa where John entered grad school A year later we ran into Franckle (as he was called) in London on the last day of our great motorcycle adventure. It was a brief and joyous reunion and I've never seen him since.

I had a look for him just now on the Internet and he seems to be still in the Tampa Bay area -- I hope he's still fishing, I hope he's still a Romantic and an Adventurer.

And I wish I could tell him how welcome and heartwarming his note was in the midst of a dreary, tedious task.  I'll put it back so that I may have the joy of being delighted by it all over again.

A Chinese Poem from the Tang Dynasty

                                               Here in the mountain village

                                Evening falls peacefully.

                                Half tipsy, I lounge in the

                                Doorway. The moon shines in the

                                Twilight sky. The breeze is so 

                                Gentle the water is hardly

                                               Ruffled. I have escaped from

                                 Lies and trouble. I no longer

                                 Have any importance. I

                                 Do not miss my horses and

                                 Chariots. Here at home I

                                 Have plenty of pigs and chickens.

The poem is by Lu Yu, the author of  The Classic of Tea. 

The translation is by Kenneth Rexroth whose 100 Poems from the Chinese is one of my favorites. (Also his 100 Poems from the Japanese.)

Surrounded by Bits of Paper

I'm in the midst of a massive cleaning and reorganization of my workroom --  and this involves cleaning out various folders of scribbled notes and sending them to recycling. Lots of these involve those little tidbits I've scribbled down over the years -- at first just because I wanted to remember, later because I thought I might use an incident in a story or a novel. Now now I'm putting some of these tidbits into the computer while I can still decipher my alleged handwriting.

So here's something from one of those bits of paper.

Some years ago a friend of my youth was in Asheville for a convention and she came out for dinner. Back in high school she and her boyfriend had double-dated with John and me and the three of us picked up as if no time at all had passed – we had been in our teens but now we were in our mid-fifties.

This friend was always what is here in the South termed ‘a hoot’ (very funny) and time had not diminished that quality. 

One of the first things we talked about was our children and she told the story of having had to go downtown to bail out one of her kids for possession of marijuana.

“It was just an icky experience – why can't there be a nicer class of bailsmen? I know there'd be a demand. Maybe they could advertise, “As Approved by the Tampa Junior League and Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla.”

Then my friend, a long time divorcee, got onto the subject of dating in mid-life.

“It’s insane – as far as guys my age, well, I can just forget about it. They’re all wearing gold chains and dating women in their thirties, if not younger. At fifty five, I’m lucky if a guy in his seventies asks me out.

"But the problem with guys that old is this – say you want to invite them over for a nice romantic meal. Well, you can’t fix anything rich or spicy because of their heartburn and you can’t turn the lights low because they can’t see, and they don’t like the same music you like, and then they usually have to go home early because they think they’re having a heart attack.”

 

Soul Food from Tampa

Arroz con Pollo, aka Chicken and Yellow Rice, is a standard of Tampa cuisine. It's probably the most often ordered of the many dishes in the Spanish restaurants of Ybor City and it was a popular favorite in my home when I was growing up. 

My mother was an excellent cook (for the Fifties, anyway -- there were a fair amount of Jello salads and Cream of Mushroom soup made its stealthy way into more than one casserole,) but she didn't cook Arroz con Pollo.  My father would  stop by one of the Spanish restaurants on his way home from work and arrive with a container of the wonderful stuff. 

Alas, no such convenience here. But I have a cookbook and here's my best shot at duplicating Tampa soul food.

(Claui took the pictures with her phone -- amazing quality, I think!)

                            Arroz con Pollo (6 servings)

 ( adapted from the Las Novedades recipe as found in Clarita’s Cocina)

1 chicken (cut into pieces – breasts, legs, thighs, wings, backs)

½ cup olive oil

1 onion, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

1 large ripe tomato, chopped (or substitute about a cup of canned tomatoes or chunky salsa)

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 TB. Lemon juice

1 bay leaf

1 TB salt

Hot sauce to taste

2-3 packets Goya Sazon

1 cup hot chicken broth

¼ cup dry white wine

Parsley

2 cups long grain or basmati rice

2 ¼ cups chicken broth

Green peas and pimento strips for garnish

More dry white wine

Sauté chicken in olive oil in a skillet till just golden. Remove to covered casserole (that can be used on the stovetop as well as in the oven.) To the oil in the skillet add the onion and green pepper. Sauté till translucent. Add tomato, garlic, lemon juice, bay leaf, salt and hot sauce and cook till mushy.

Dissolve Sazon in I c. hot chicken broth and combine with ¼ cup wine. Pour into skillet with mushy mixture, add some parsley, and stir well. Pour this mixture over the chicken in the casserole, cover and cook on medium heat till chicken is tender (about 15 minutes.)

Add rice to chicken and stir to distribute thoroughly. Add 2 1/4 cups chicken broth, stir once, bring to a boil, cover and put in preheated 325 oven for 20 minutes. Do not overcook.

Remove from oven. Garnish with peas, pimento strips, and sprigs of parsley. Sprinkle with dry white wine and let stand 15 minutes before serving.

  

Sunday Scrapbook

After the Towers Fell

After the towers fell there was a surge of hope across the land -- a sense of people working together, a sense of pride at the heroic responses of so many to the unspeakable horror that was 9/11.

Then all too quickly it began to unravel. Muslim Americans -- or anyone (Sikhs, for example) who looked like a Muslim to the ignorant were attacked. Our president and his puppet masters, after an excursion into Afghanistan  to attack al Qaeda -- the terrorist organization led by a Saudi -- decided that we should go to war with Iraq --  in spite of the fact that the attack was perpetrated by Saudis, based in Afghanistan. 

Anyone who wasn't with us -- like France -- was reviled. Remember Freedom Fries -- that embarrassing bit of jingoism?

Over 3,000 killed in the Towers and in DC. Almost 5,000 US deaths in Iraq. Plus about 32,000 wounded and another 47, 000 with medical problems of some sort. Not to mention the casualties among our allies.

And the Iraqi civilians -- those guys we were saving from Saddam? Well over 100, 000 died in the Iraqi War. (The numbers are hard to come by -- civilian deaths were notoriously under reported.)

And the ensuing instability has given rise to ISIS/ISIL  . . .

Mission accomplished? Not exactly. Unless the mission was to enrich the Masters of War, the military/industrial complex Eisenhower warned against. Not unless the mission was to keep America in a perpetual state of fear and war so that Halliburton (under whatever name it is flourishing today) and others of its ilk can rake in profits while the veterans wait for care and benefits.

And this same contingent that were so convinced that an invasion of Iraq would be a walk in the park are doing their best to undermine an peaceful agreement with Iran. No, they'd rather go to war again. 

When will we ever learn?

Sunrise Sequence