1953/59/64/70/81/87/92/98...‏

'Fmy source is correct, 'Stainless' had eight birthday anniversaries fall on Thanksgiving. So right for such a cook, such a gourmand.
Drinkin' a salute to him!
-brad

The Ceramic Insulator

I have been wanting to share this story for awhile but wanted to wait until the found the item it was about, which I did during my last trip to Eastern Oregon. This story is from a couple portions of email's sent to me from Jenny Gomez, one of Dad's long term girlfriends who he lived with for many years. It is about a ceramic insulator. One of the first entries on this blog mentions the insulators. For those unfamiliar with them, they are ceramic, glass, plastic, etc material that can resist electrical currents check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulator_(electrical). Glass are what I was most familiar with and what Dad mostly collected. Next time you are driving by power lines out in an older area check out the lines - I bet you'll see the multi-colored glass insulators. Growing up they were paper weights on my Dad's desk, or lined up on shelves.

Here is how the email from Jenny goes:

"There is one story of an obscure item that keeps weighing on my mind. I
think your Dad is pushing me to tell it. It's about an insulator.


As you know we went far and wide hunting for antiques. Every weekend or any
time we had a weeks vacation together. Years ago we went camping and our goal
was to hit every ghost town listed on the map (of Oregon). We ended up in the
town of Cornucopia somewhere over near Eastern Oregon. As we were walking around the itty bitty town your Dad looked up into a tree and said something to the effect of "OMG" and began to climb it.

I was pretty dumbfounded. He took a knife out of his pocket and began to dig
into the trunk of the tree. By then I could see what he was after. Somehow
an insulator had been embedded way up into the trunk. It was probably put
there to string the lines at one time. I thought for sure someone was going
to call the cops on him. He finally got it out after a while and came down.
I said something like "run like hell" so we ran back to the car and took
off. After we were done laughing he handed it to me and said "I got this
just for you". And we broke out laughing some more. We used it to prop open
the bedroom door and so we could keep it separate from the others. It still
did until a few years ago."

She explained in that same email that after Dad had moved back to Huntington and
had collected all his various collections from the different places he had them
stored over the years that she had wrapped it up with the others for him and was
unsure if he even knew that she had done so. She added this last bit in another
email when I asked to post this,

"I remember you dad did make the comment after we left there that no one would
have called the cops because it would have taken them 2-3 hours to get there
depending on where they were in the county. There usually is one sheriff per
county out in the middle of nowhere. So the joke was on me!"

I really loved hearing this story since it was a perfect Dad story. I have a vague memory of him telling me about it as well. It really embodied his love of exploring and antiques, his sense of adventure and his constant playfulness. I was so glad when I found it packed up with several other insulators.

Dia de los Muertos

Halloween is my favorite holiday. Every year I host a pumpkin carving party and sometimes and sometimes a costume party as well. Since I was 18 I have always gone as someone who had died in an unusual or corny way. Morbid I know, but that is the kind of sense of humor our family has.

It all started when I was 18 and went as a Dead librarian who had Died of Boredom. It was so well received and also considered so odd that I was hooked and each year planned my costume at length, sometimes taking months to settle on a good idea. Over the years I have been Dorothy Parker after a Suicide Attempt, The Wicked Witch of the East (who gets smooshed by Dorothy's house), A Dead Dominatrix who was Strangled (by one of her clients), A Twisted Sister Groupie Who Overdosed, A Gypsy who wasn't so lucky with Snake Charming, A Flamenco Dancer Who Tripped and Broke Her Neck, Goldie Locks If The Bears got Her, Little Bo Peep Stampeded By Sheep, Little Miss Muffett Bitten By Spiders, and many others. I have won contests and confused and amused people for years.

Last year Dad died five days before Halloween. I canceled my pumpkin carving party because I was basically a zombie. I was functioning, but was in no place to put on a happy hostess face and encourage adult pumpkin carving like I had since 1997 (my first carving party). I was so numb I considered not celebrating Halloween at all but knew that was wrong. I learned after losing my mother at a young age the worst thing you can do after a terrible loss is to stop living, to stop doing the things you love to do. The best way to honor the dead is to live because by living they continue to as well through you. I was a little worried people might think my usual dead theme would be to much or even inappropriate, but I had already planned my costume and even talked to Dad about it (he always got a good laugh out of my bad pun costumes). So I joined my good friend Darnell and his boyfriend and other friends and went to West Hollywood where the big Halloween stuff goes down in Los Angeles (its a hard and fast rule that when in a major city the best Halloween party will always be in what is considered the gay district). I went as a College Student who had Studied Her Brains Out. We ran around the very crowded West Hollywood for several hours and while I can not say I was totally present or completely enjoyed myself, I am glad I went.

From the moment Dad died that week I had become obsessed with getting a tattoo that I had said I would get for him one day. Three years after my mother died my full sister Rhea and I got "mother" in Japanese Kanji tattooed on our left shoulder on Mother's Day. We had wanted to get a sister tattoo but could not agree on what to get, so had settled on the Kanji symbol after much debate. Rhea and I are so different we couldn't figure out anything else we both wanted on our bodies forever linking us as sisters other than our mother. We chose the Kanji because we thought she would have liked that more than the heart with the ribbon through it (though we were both very tempted to get that instead). When we showed Dad the tattoo he had liked it and many times over the years had asked when he'd get his, as in when we'd get "father" in Kanji. I had always said, don't worry, you'll get yours someday. So, the day after Halloween last year, on Dia de los Muertos, I went in and got "father" in Japanese Kanji on my right arm. Later both Rhea and Krista had said I should have waited for them, but I was overwhelmed with the need to get it and to get it on Dia de los Muertos. It is a day that we are suppose to honor and remember the dead, and that is just what I had to do.

This year I continued with my annual traditions and had my pumpkin carving party as well as wen out on Halloween. This year I went as a Dia de los Muertos doll, rather than my usual f/punny deaths that I like. Again, for whatever reason it was the only thing I was drawn to and wanted to be. This time of year will always be bitter sweet for me now, but I hope to what both my parents would have wanted me to do: to keep on living and celebrating life.