A Smokin' Hot Deal

Winston Churchill, for my money the greatest leader of the Twentieth Century, loved brandy and cigars.  His capacity for dissipation was legendary.  Once, after a visit to the White House, Eleanor Roosevelt remarked, "It was astonishing to me that anyone could smoke so much and drink so much and keep perfectly well."  Richard Nixon once observed, after providing Churchill with a snifter of brandy, that "it was like a match to dry leaves" with regard to alcohol's ability to inspire Churchill's intellect.  When it came to tobacco, Churchill's love of cigars was legendary.  He was seldom without a stogie stuffed comfortably in the corner of his gaping maw.  His favorite smokes were Royal Derby Longfellows that he ordered in great quantities from a New York cigar stand.  He described them as "both mild and cheap" and that he liked them very much.

A woman named Violet King was an usher at the Coliseum in London's West End in the winter of 1953 when Churchill and his wife, Clementine, attended an event.  At some point during the evening's performance,  Churchill, then in his final years as the Prime Minister of Britain, tossed a cigar he had been puffing on to the ground.  Ms. King snagged the castoff cigar and now, more than a half-century later, the lumpy, dog log looking cheroot is up for auction at Hansons Auctioneers this coming December 11.   The lucky bidder will have to pony up somewhere in the neighborhood of $6,000 to $8,000 according to Hansons.  Not a bad return for 1953 slightly used tobacco.  The cigar comes complete with a small storage box and a letter from Churchill's private secretary vouching for the authenticity of the soggy stogie.

I was thinking about all of this while on my morning walk a couple of days ago and began to wonder if this kind of money was to be found today.  Suddenly, as I rounded a corner downtown, I spied a rather corpulent gentleman discarding a cigar right there in front of me.  He did look a lot like old Winston himself.  Perhaps a distant cousin?  You be the judge.

Winnie

Vinnie

Being entrepreneurial by nature, I followed the wide load into a local saloon and retained a letter of authenticity regarding not only his cigar but his relationship to Churchill.  When I asked if he was perhaps a distant cousin or nephew of the revered British leader he said, "Could be.  Who wants to know?"  Well, that was enough for me!  His obvious obfuscation was, of course, a ploy to discourage and confuse me.  I was on to something.

And now here's your chance to cash in!  I'm willing to let this still puffable beauty go for only $1500. Just think of how you'll impress your friends with this piece of history. Whether you fire it up for the few quality drags left or put it on display in your home, this is guaranteed to be a real conversation piece and a savvy investment.  Hey, we're a capitalist country!  

Remember, it was Churchill who said, "The vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings and the vice of socialism is the equal sharing of the misery."

Help me unequally share in the blessings of this newfound treasure!

Cash, check or money order.  Sorry, no COD!

We'll Call It Spamkin Surprise!

Several months ago in the executive suites of Hormel Foods in Austin, Minnesota a mentally challenged marketing vice president jumped to his feet and exclaimed, "I've got it!  We'll create a pumpkin spice can of Spam just in time for Thanksgiving!"  And, lo, it came to pass that the world's dumbest culinary idea was born, the limited edition Pumpkin Spice Spam.

Now, I like Spam as well as the next guy.  (Well, actually the next guy just told me he can't stand the stuff.)  I've been to the Spam museum in Austin, had my picture taken with Spammy the delightful walking talking can of processed chopped ham and have purchased the t-shirt and mesh cap to prove it.  I can't get enough of that canned pork slurry!  From the jalapeno to the hickory-smoked cans of Spam goodness and even to the low sodium Spam--now only 50% salt--each fits nicely into my meat intensive dietary pyramid.  But, pumpkin-spiced Spam?  I just don't know. 

Available in the Spam souvenir store.  The perfect gift for the woman in your life.

Just in time for Halloween!

The whole pumpkin thing just seems to be a bridge too far.  Mixing sweet pumpkin guts with salty pig offal makes about as much sense as having Pat Boone open for the Rolling Stones, but perhaps I'm missing something.  The limited-edition is selling for as much as $50 per can on the Internet which means at least a few customers are enthusiastic.  Here are a few of the reviews for spiced pumpkin Spam found on Hormel's website:

"This Spam tastes like a sweet Christmas ham.  It goes very well in a sweet potato hash topped with eggs!  I got four cans and I'm saving the last two for Christmas.  You should have made more!"

"To feed my worst enemy!  I wouldn't even give regular Spam to my dog!"

"I bought 6 cans.  Three to give away and three to keep.  I regret not keeping all.  It tastes like a Thanksgiving Day burp!"

"IT IS SOOOOOOOOO  GOOD!!"

"I do taste the pumpkin spices.  Might be okay with french toast...maybe."

I guess it's not a good idea to get too judgmental when it comes to the Midwestern meat treat that America looks to for high blood pressure and excessive water retention.  Maybe pumpkin spice Spam has opened the door to gustatory greatness that embraces new and heretofore untold creative taste treats.

Quick, get the Hormel people on the phone!  I've got two words for them just in time for Christmas:

FRUITCAKE SPAM!  "Tastes like a Christmas Day burp!"
(limited edition, only $50 a can)

I'm My Own Grandpa

This is a re-post from October 2016


The country comedy team of Homer & Jethro recorded a novelty ditty back in the 1960s entitled "I'm My Own Grandpa" that has lately been rattling around in my aging melon.  I'm fairly certain it's because I have recently found myself slipping into codger speak a little more every day.  You know, stuff like: "I remember when Halloween pumpkins were 10, 25, and 50 cents apiece; not EIGHT BUCKS!"  "Damn kids are playing that rap crap again!"  And, of course, my wife's favorite:  "How come they're hiring high school kids as television news anchors?"

Going grocery shopping is excruciating for me.  Working as a carryout boy for Oscar "The Watermelon King" Swanson at Swanson's Super Store during my Iowa high school days in the early 1960's left that era's prices etched forever in my mind.  The other carryout guys and I used to be able to come within a few cents of each customer's final bill at the check stand simply by eyeing their baskets.  A $50 order would fill a standard grocery cart to overflowing and someone spending $100 invariably had at least two carts and required two of us to help lug the bounty to their car.  These days, when forced to hit the supermarket, I glance at what I have to purchase and give it a multiple of at least ten to estimate how bad the hit will be.  Today a $50 order can often be contained in a single bag.  The same formula works for cars too.  A ride that sold for $5000 in the '60s is easily starting at $50k today.  Houses also need at least a ten multiple to make the price leap from the '60s to today.  It ain't pretty.

What speared my pondering of all this was a recent study by an expert on aging, Dr. Jan Vijg of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who says that 115 years of age is just about the maximum limit for human longevity.  Of course, some folks have exceeded that number but Dr. Vijg seems to think that after 115 we're all pretty much competing with cabbages when it comes to being useful.  I tend to agree, although it could be a real challenge to see if my heart could absorb the amount of change and inflation necessary to make it that far.  And, isn't that perhaps why we are supposedly allowed the biblical promise of three score and ten years to figure it all out?  How much change is good for you?  Shouldn't there be some benchmarks that are immune to change?

Mark Twain said, "The two most important days in life are the day you are born and the day you discover the reason why."  Possibly it takes some of us as many as 115 years to come up with the why.

Now, what was I saying??  Oh yeah, "Eight bucks for a pumpkin??!  Now, when I was a lad that pumpkin would have cost 50 cents and the farmer would have given you a ride home!"

You want the pumpkin?  You'll have to speak to our loan officer first.

I'm Sure Siri and Alexa Saw All of This Coming

Have you ever noticed how life's significant events quite often don't unfold just the way you thought they would?  I can still remember wondering what world changing developments would manifest themselves in my life and deciding that I had missed most of the big ones.  My grandfather had witnessed the invention of electricity, the automobile, air travel and space exploration, radio, television and motion pictures.  What was left?  When my oldest daughter returned home from her first semester of college she rhapsodized about something called the Internet and explained that she used it for research and term papers.  "That's nice honey," was my somewhat dismissive reply.  While I wasn't paying attention,  one of the biggest game-changers of most of our lives was lying in wait to forever change how we live.  Most industries, methods of communication, and long dominant business models were rendered nearly obsolete in a few short years and the evolution continues at lightning speed today. 

We spend hours every day on our computers and smartphones and take a certain degree of comfort in the fact that we can find the answer to nearly any question we may have with a quick Internet search. If you don't know who is the third cowboy from the left is on a poster for a John Wayne movie the answer is readily available via a quick smart search.  The net has given us the keys to the kingdom.  Who needs college or the library?  The world is at our fingertips.  Of course, like any open source, there is plenty of junk information floating around in cyberspace and it pays to be careful. For example, no matter how far north you are in the 48 contiguous United States, it usually isn't supposed to snow in September, yet it did last weekend here in the Idaho panhandle.  Thanks to the Internet I was able to find that there have been two other September snows in the last one-hundred years and more may be on the way this weekend. Great...

Green leaves and snow right over THERE!

Of course, not all weather forecasts are that dependable.  While I was looking for snow statistics I ran across a previously classified report on climate change commissioned by U.S. defense department officials.  The report, created in 2004, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020 and that higher sea levels will create major upheaval for millions by the same year.  Uh, maybe there is a reason this report was classified "secret".  Perhaps Al Gore still has space on his ark?

Some things remain fairly constant through all of the technological changes we've seen in our daily lives.  Baseball is still in playoff mode as we head toward another World Series and, even if I can't keep track of all the different channels the games are on, there are three games on tap for this evening.  The Twins, Nationals, and Cardinals will have my undivided attention, as I and other die-hard fans of sub 500 teams stand united in our hatred of pinstripes and Los Angeles. We are prepared to do all in our power to prevent a Yankees-Dodgers World Series.  If that nightmare transpires, may the weather gods of the Internet dump ten feet of snow on both New York and L.A.

Next year, it's Padres/White Sox.  Take it to the bank.