Bell’s Seasoning II - The Spawning

Introduction

Having been a drone for the better part of two days (as you shall soon learn), I am bound and determined to do something with my brain now. So why not blog? (Don’t answer—rhetorical question.) To get you in the mood for serious literature, I shall start with an epigram:

”They have a saying in Chicago, Mr. Bond. Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time, it’s enemy action.” –Auric Goldfinger (in Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger). 

Do I have an enemy meddling in my affairs? Read on and decide for yourself.

The quest for Bell’s

What is Bell’s seasoning? Well, I’m glad you asked. It is nothing less than the key to Thanksgiving, as documented at length here.  Bell’s goes in the stuffing and is, I believe, instrumental in its apotheosis from dried bread cubes and celery (useless on their own) to stuffing, that supreme Thanksgiving dish. (At this meal, I could probably do without the turkey, and could almost do without gravy —but without stuffing, you might as well forget the whole thing and get takeout Chinese.)

As documented in that first Bell’s post, one of the few ways I contribute to the Thanksgiving feast is to procure this all-important seasoning. That’s a harder task than you might expect. Some stores carry Bell’s, many don’t, and for some reason I can never remember where I got it the previous year. It’s just a blur … like when you have this vivid dream that somehow gets erased within minutes of your waking up. If I were smart I’d have checked out that previous post, though this didn’t occur to me until after my quest.

My strategy

Phoning a store for a stock check is nearly impossible these days. Even if you manage to get past the Interactive Voice Response system and are transferred to a human, they usually shunt you off to some other department and you bounce around until you give up. Or they put you on hold, try to find the item, get distracted, and eventually someone else picks up and you have to start from scratch—or, more often, the line just goes dead. I did phone Andronico’s on Solano Ave because they have legit customer service. It turns out (I only now discovered when rereading my last Bell’s post) that’s where I got the Bell’s last time. Alas, the clerk yesterday advised that they’re out of stock. This answer came swiftly, meaning she’d rather make up an answer on the spot than bother to check, or they’d had a run on Bell’s and I wasn’t the first person to ask.

So forget phoning. I decided to just stop in at this or that store in a gradually increasing radius until I found the Bell’s. Surely somebody would have this and my circle wouldn’t grow to encompass all of northern California … right? I had some time, because I started on Tuesday. (Only an idiot would brave the markets on the day before Thanksgiving, right?)

Store #1 – Berkeley Natural Grocery

This was a no-brainer. I was walking back from the mailbox, several blocks from my home, and Berkeley Natural was right on the way. I dig this store because a) it’s my “corner grocery,” b) they used to give my kids balloons (click here for details), and c) my younger daughter worked there one summer. Alas, though they have lots of bins and an admirable spice section, I did not find Bell’s there. I knew this was a wild card, my “fail-fast” foray, anyway and the effort cost me almost no time.

Store #2 – Magnani Poultry

This is where I went to pick up our turkey. It was supposed to be mobbed—they told us Monday would be a lot better than Tuesday for the pickup—but who wants to store a fresh turkey that long? Early signs were not good—there was no parking anywhere nearby and I had to park in a nearby neighborhood and walk a few blocks—but it wasn’t that crowded in there. I took a number, was served pretty quickly, and was told that the turkey pickup was a separate line, but since I had the guy, I bought a pound of organic local grass-fed beef from cows that are “encouraged to socialize.”

I got my turkey and yikes, it was $115. For that much, I hope it also had been encouraged to socialize. I should have just hit one of our neighborhood’s many stray turkeys with my car … it wouldn’t be hard to do. But then, I’d have had no idea how to pluck it. Plus, what if the impact didn’t kill it? (This is how I rationalize the $115.) I also picked up a quart of frozen turkey stock and—could it be, their extensive spice rack included Bell’s? It did not, alas. All kinds of rubs, sauces, and seasonings, but no Bell’s. There’s the rub.

Store #3 – Monterey Market

I walked over to this place because it’s just across the street from Magnani and has all kinds of cool stuff (beyond their produce which is excellent and cheap; for example, around $0.40 for a bunch of cilantro). They have like ninety kinds of mushroom, fifty kinds of pepper, all manner of salsas and spices and extracts, and … no Bell’s. But hey, it was only like a five-minute detour and I got in some really great people-watching, everyone from restaurant owners to frugal housewives to college professors to tech bros, and a variety of ethnicities including those who actually know the differences among the ninety kinds of mushrooms and fifty kinds of peppers.

Store #4 – Lucky

It was time to stop messing around and actually do some research. The website for Lucky, in the neighboring town of El Cerrito, indicated that this very location did in fact have Bell’s in stock. This is a bit of a schlep so I never go there. In the parking lot an old, run-down guy seemed to need help getting out of his car, and called out for assistance. I was happy to oblige, but when I reached him he said he just needed money to buy a sandwich. This was a bit perplexing. I mean, he had a car, right? How broke could he be? But then, he was sitting sideways on the car’s back seat, legs sticking out, with no driver in sight, so who knows, maybe it wasn’t his car. Maybe he just needed to sit somewhere and found this car unlocked. The smallest bill I had on me was a five. Oh well … happy holidays, dude.

 I made my way through the front door and immediately encountered a large security turnstile, manned by a security guard. I got through that and the next thing I came upon was the “Convenience Section,” an area containing pricier items like cigarettes and booze, all fenced in with a locked door requiring customer service assistance. “Convenience” indeed. The fluorescent lighting at Lucky was that overly intense type that makes you feel like you’re being interrogated. The whole scene was pretty downscale. I made my way over to the spice section and—denied! Here is the gap where the Bell’s should have been:

I headed to the customer service counter, which was oddly situated beyond the checkout lines so I had to squeeze past people. The place was teeming with shoppers. At the service desk I waited behind a woman with a giant clear jar of what looked like granulated ginger, but it was the size of a coffee can, and had been penetrated by moisture so the contents were like cement. She was having a protracted negotiation about a refund or exchange and there was a language barrier, so it took some time. Finally it was my turn. “You mean the spice mix in the yellow box, with the turkey on the front?” the clerk asked. Yes, yes, yes! She said, “Oh yeah, we have that. If it’s all out in Aisle 2, go to our seasonal display.” She pointed toward that area and assured me there’d be more Bell’s there. I headed over and scoured the area. Nothing.

But surely there’d be more in the back, right? I decided to head back toward customer service, but didn’t feel like squeezing through a checkout line again. Seeing some people on their way through the inbound security turnstile (it had two big gates, you could drive a truck through it) I decided to slip through there instead, like piggybacking in reverse. Well, this set off the security alarm, which was exceedingly loud and shrill. The security guard gave me a withering look that said, “Man, you’re a damn fool.”

The next clerk at customer service rang up her boss on the red line. He took forever to answer. “My boss isn’t answering!” she said, bewildered. Finally the boss answered and said I should head way to the back almost by the double-door exit, near the dairy, where there’s yet another holiday display that would have more Bell’s. I found my way there but it was another fool’s errand.

Store #5 – Ranch 99

Ranch 99 is a giant Asian grocery in the Pacific East mall in Richmond. It wasn’t all that far away, since I was already pretty far north. It was a long shot I figured, but then this place is vast and has, like, millions of products. Once in the mall I had a lot of other businesses to navigate, but eventually found Ranch 99. Walking around in there was like a Willy Wonka experience, one tantalizing aroma after another, none of them exactly recognizable but like being at a Chinese restaurant and/or an open-air bazaar. They have half an aisle just for seaweed, and more kinds of cup-o-noodles and ramen than you’ll ever see anywhere. I scanned several hundred wacky spices, but no Bell’s. So I headed over to the seafood department to look at the lobsters. Check this one out:

From this (hastily snapped) photo it’s hard to grasp the scale of this lobster. It was the size of a small dog. Now, unless this critter had been living in this tank for years, which I very much doubt, he (or she) was waaaaay over the size limit on lobsters and should have been thrown back in the ocean (details here). This was basically an illegal lobster.

Not wanting my trip to have been in vain, I searched for something to buy, that I couldn’t get elsewhere. I hit pay dirt with this cookie tin, perfect for a Christmas gift for one of my daughters:

But alas, it too was not meant to be:

Store #6 - Oaktown Spice Shop

Google Maps found me a sneaky way home, which took me on this frontage road and then right up Solano Ave where we have a Safeway. The Safeway app said they were out of stock, but I figured, what the heck, maybe it’s wrong? So I started to head up there and passed right by this giant spice emporium I’ve somehow never noticed before:

This place was huge—I mean, floor-to-ceiling spices—but it’s all this homegrown Oaktown stuff, no third party products like Bell’s. The clerk was very helpful, letting me sniff various products designed to enhance poultry and even stuffing. I’m getting over a cold (don’t worry, I was rocking a COVID mask) so I couldn’t smell all that well, but suffice to say nothing smelled even remotely like Bell’s. So it would be as inappropriate as, say, putting jelly on a hot dog instead of mustard. No way.

Store #7 – Safeway

This is where I normally shop and I found the spice section very quickly, and almost just as quickly ascertained that they were either out of Bell’s, as their app had warned me, or didn’t actually stock it and only made it available online through some partner, like they’re trying to be mini-Amazon or something. But hadn’t I bought Bell’s here before? I decided to check out the discount shelves where they put overstocked and discontinued items. I mean, you never know, right? No Bell’s, but I found this:

Huh? Girl Scout Seasoning? Is this for, like, cannibals? Next I headed over to the “Manager’s Special” shelf, at the other end of the store. I’ve found weird products there before that I liked, and normal products oddly reduced, so I figured what the hell. Alas, no Bell’s, but I did find this:

How about Crushed BS? Is that good in stuffing? Dang. At least when I wandered the shelves for something else to buy, so as not to go home empty-handed, I found a crazy QR-code-driven digital deal that saved me—I kid you not—$18.40 on eight cans of cream-style corn. Since when is this humble product so expensive? At this point I realized my blood sugar was getting precariously low so I headed home, made Southwestern Corn Goo for my visiting daughter, and called it a night.

Store #8 – Berkeley Bowl West

Berkley Bowl is a great supermarket. When I was in college, friends would say to me, “What?! You don’t know about Berkeley Bowl? You of all people would love Berkeley Bowl.” I ignored all their advice because I thought it was a bowling alley. Why, I’d wondered, do all these people thing I’m a bowler? Finally someone clarified that it’s a grocery. So yesterday I checked online and confirmed that their Berkeley Bowl West location (the one nearer me) had Bell’s in stock. At this point my wife had a list of stuff she forget to get for our feast, so it wasn’t a special trip (though it’s a lot farther than I usually go to shop).

Their parking lot was large and cramped and full. I made a hot lap in vain. They even have a parking garage, but I just didn’t feel like it. I took another lap and got lucky. It took ages to walk across that giant parking lot and get a cart. I made my way to the spice section and—denied!

I found a customer service clerk and asked if they had any more in the back. “No,” she sighed. I asked if their other location would have it. “They do carry it, but there is no way I could find out if it’s in stock.” Well heck, if they won’t disclose that proprietary information to their own employee over the phone, I didn’t see any point in calling them myself. I decided I better just head over there.

Now, if you’re starting to think I’m bat-shit crazy to stick with this obviously doomed search (as my wife certainly does), you should know that this will be my first Thanksgiving in at least twenty years without my mother present, either at her place or ours. No, it’s not that I’m some momma’s boy or anything; it’s just that to let my wife to fly solo on the feast without having Bell’s seasoning would be like setting her up to fail. I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on her. If my family isn’t making spontaneous and heartfelt yummy noises over the stuffing, it will be pretty obvious.

Store #9 – Berkeley Bowl

I headed up to the original Berkeley Bowl. Traffic was murder. Every single motorist in the Bay Area was on the road, and many of them were angry, probably hangry, and honking. I so badly wanted to judge them, for being so utterly stupid as to wait until Wednesday before finishing their Thanksgiving shopping, but here I was, one of them. Having to withhold judgment was just insult to injury. I arrived to find another huge parking lot, also cramped, seemingly designed for nothing but Minis and those little Fiats. I totally lucked out and found a spot next to a guy at the end of the row who was so worried about his (albeit humble) car getting dinged, he was at the very far edge of his spot, meaning I had room to squeeze in despite the SUV encroaching on my other side. I headed in past throngs of people going in both directions. It was like a music festival or Burning Man. Oddly, when these masses of people aren’t in cars, I don’t mind them at all.

Now, this is the Berkeley Bowl where my brother M— worked, and I’m going to tell you a fun story about that. M— worked in their excellent seafood department, and was impressed at how well it was run. But he had trouble making friends with the staff, who—being career blue-collar guys—might have assumed he was a fly-by-night college kid or something. One guy in particular, Jose, seemed a bit cold. Well, for various reasons, M— decided to move back to Boulder, and on his very last day working there he waited on a rather snooty old lady who told him something like, “Make it snappy.” She seemed so privileged and self-important, M— just couldn’t bring himself to move very quickly. Gone was his normal verve; he somehow felt like he was underwater and everything was happening in super-slo-mo. Eventually the lady became exasperated and demanded of Jose, “Why is he so slow?” Jose, taken aback, didn’t really know what to say and after an awkward pause, replied, “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?” Flummoxed, she could find no other response to this suggestion than to turn to M— and ask, “Why are you so slow?” M— stared at her and said, “Because I’m stupid. Okay?” He handed her her purchase and she stormed off. Jose looked over at him and said, “M—, you’re okay.”

And so, on to the spice section. Guess what:

No, that’s not a repeat of the first Berkeley Bowl picture. It’s just the same old story. Gobs of the competing products on either side (I got really sick of looking at this fancy Colman’s mustard powder and Old Bay seasoning, whatever those are) but the Bell’s was totally gone. The customer service clerk said, “Gosh, that’s odd, this was just stocked this morning!” There wouldn’t be more in the back, she advised, but they might have more in the boxes atop the shelves. She climbed a stepladder and rooted through at least a couple dozen boxes up there, wheeling the ladder down the entire aisle before finally giving up. But hey, at least she tried.

(By the way, did you notice that the Bell’s at this rather upscale store sells for only $3.79, whereas at the down-market Lucky it was $5.19? I’ve seen this disparity before and I just don’t get it…)

Store #10 – second Andronico’s

I decided to head home via Shattuck Ave, which would take me by another Safeway, this one much more chichi than the one near my place. Along the way I passed an Andronico’s I’d totally forgotten about. Since the first Andronico’s acknowledged that they normally did stock Bell’s, this seemed well worth a shot. The parking lot was completely full, and parking in the surrounding streets was no better. On my second hot lap I got lucky and a SUV was pulling out. This was a weird spot right up against a brick wall, but I had plenty of room. Maybe I was just too tired and frazzled, but my first approach was way too shallow and then I felt like I was committed. It took me a good bit of sawing back-and forth to nestle in there, during which time an old geezer in a motorized wheelchair oozed so gradually across my path it took all my patience to wave nicely at him and put on my best fake smile, and also during which time some other dude, as if to rub it in how far I was from the wall, passed by my car on that side. I finally got ‘er done and headed in to the store.

This had to be the flagship Andronico’s. Fricking giant place. I found the spice section, which was quite large and I counted over twenty different kinds of salt. They had stuff I hadn’t seen anywhere, but—you guessed it—no Bell’s.

Store #11 – second Safeway

The Safeway on Shattuck has the largest parking lot of all, and it was 100% full. They had a garage too, with a digital sign to indicate available spaces, but it was broken. I finally found a very narrow spot in the 15-minute section, between a big concrete median and a battered pickup truck full of all of somebody’s possessions, parked diagonally so it infringed significantly on my target spot. I just couldn’t get in there because my tires kept hitting the median. No wonder nobody had taken the spot. I finally managed to find parking along the street. I headed in, braved another crazy crowd, found the spice section, and I know you’re not gonna believe this, but … they didn’t have Bell’s. I was beginning to feel like the narrator of Poe’s “The Raven” who seems to take a masochistic pleasure in asking the bird question after question because he knows it will only reply, “Nevermore.” He’s basically torturing himself, as was I.

As a last resort, I double-checked the websites for Sprout’s and Whole Foods. Here’s what Whole Foods said:

What a blatant lie. “We can’t seem to find this product” actually means, “We have chosen not to stock this, even though we have an entire aisle for homeopathic remedies, aka snake oil.” I’m not necessarily averse to placebos, but they shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg; Whole Foods is basically stealing from clueless people. They’re dead to me. Sprouts showed me bell peppers, some kind of beer with Bell in the name, and hundreds of unrelated spices, but no love.

Well, that was that. I was done. Nobody could say I didn’t try. In fact, I realized it would be better not to even mention stores 10 and 11 to my wife. She already thought (knew?) I was crazy to be so persistent … why salt the wound?

Store #12 – Rose & Grove Market

As I headed home I realized there was one more store I could try, which had been next door to the bike shop I worked at in college (which is where I met my wife). Oddly, I’d never set foot in this little store, but always grasped it was a Berkeley institution. (Its very name attests to its longevity, since the street it’s on, Martin Luther King Jr. Way, was called Rose Street until 1984.) Rose & Grove is not a big place but hey, you never know. I decided if there happened to be street parking right out front, I would take that as a sign from God that it was worth checking out.

Well, guess what? There was a parking spot right out front—unbelievable! So I headed in. Now, if this story were an “ABC After School Special,” Rose & Grove would have had Bell’s Seasoning and the holiday would be saved. But what I encountered was almost the opposite: they had almost zero inventory. All the shelves were bare except for some booze behind the counter. The clerk informed me that they’d gone under and would have a new owner in a month or so. The end of an era, and the end of my quest.

“Wizard of Oz” ending

Oddly enough, my story has a happy ending, along the lines of “there’s no place like home” in “The Wizard of Oz.” No, I didn’t wake up and realize all this had been a dream. Rather, I arrived home defeated, but had a backup plan: on Monday night, foreseeing possible Bell’s supply issues, I took from the freezer a fresh box of it I’d put away last year. My mom has said it freezes just fine. But when I opened the box on Tuesday, I discovered to my great disappointment that it had almost no smell. Since I’m getting over a cold, I had my daughter smell it to double-check. Instead of saying, “Mmmmmm, that smells like Thanksgiving!” she frowned and said, “It doesn’t smell like anything.” Unlike Han Solo, the Bell’s had not survived the cryogenic freezing operation.

But now, in desperation, I gave it another sniff. Eureka! As it thawed out, it must have regained its potency. Like magic, it now smelled like Mom’s stuffing! I had my daughter sniff it again, and she agreed. It’s not ideal, but we should be fine. What a relief.

Enemy action?

What remains to solve is how so many places could possibly be out of Bell’s at the same time. It couldn’t possibly be coincidence. So I started to wonder if I’ve made any enemies who might want to thwart me in this quest. I’ve certainly seen evidence, when shopping, of a doppelganger at work, who buys up, say, all the Bonne Maman apricot jam (but no other flavor!) when it’s on sale because he has the same taste as I do and is just as much of a cheap bastard. But that has a logical explanation: he’s stocking up, same as I would. But who needs more than one box of Bell’s (or two, if freezing one for later)? What would be the motive?

Maybe it’s that first blog post. Maybe somebody read that, decided he hated me based on my writing style, and is an eccentric millionaire, and so went around buying up all the Bell’s, or (if he’s not local) hired some taskrabbit to do it. That could be. But then, why would somebody hate my blog that much (other than the Velominati, Andrew Tillin, or Margolis and Liebowitz)? This enemy action theory just doesn’t seem very realistic.

But then a much simpler explanation occurred to me. Perhaps my last Bell’s post simply hit the mark, and convinced all my readers that this particular seasoning really is the key to Thanksgiving. Maybe across the country, even across the world, including my own locale, people are buying up the Bell’s in droves. To test my theory, I looked up the stock price for Brady Corporation, which makes Bell’s seasoning. Sure enough, its price began a dizzying climb in late 2015, right around the time of that first post. I appear to be a victim of the very success my blog has brought about!

Yeah. That must be it.

Well, if you’ve made it to the end of this post, especially if this was after your big feast, congratulations. And have a very happy Thanksgiving!

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From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XIII

Introduction

This is the thirteenth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, and Volume XII is here. (The different volumes have nothing to do with one another and can be read in any order, or underwater, or not at all.)

The Bits & Bobs series is the reason I’ve been called “a master of the short, short form” by … nobody! These are excerpts from emails, letters, etc. that I wrote to friends and family before I started this blog and channeled all my literary compulsion into this single endeavor. Read on if it’s bedtime and you’re jittery, or even better, read this aloud from your phone to some rando on the bus.

October 13, 1995

Thanks for offering me the TV, but no thanks, I’m good. I don’t miss having one, and when someone asks something like, “Did you see ‘Friends’ last night?” I kind of enjoy replying, “No, I don’t have a TV.” No matter how offhandedly I deliver this message, I probably come off sounding sanctimonious and superior, which causes my interlocutor to judge and despise me, which of course everyone enjoys doing, so I can feel good about doing someone a favor in giving him that pleasure. Often, I’ll be asked, “No TV?! How do you keep up with the news?” The answer is, I mostly don’t, since we don’t get a newspaper either. I figure if something’s important, I’ll hear about it one way or the other. I get enough news by reading the headline thru the window of the newspaper vending machine while I’m waiting for the bus. What’s the point of being more informed than that? What am I going to do about anything? Is there a cautionary tale in the OJ Simpson murder case? As long as I understand that 1) our country is a vicious planet-plundering machine, and 2) people are dying all over the world and I have it so good, and 3) we won’t know how the Raiders will stack up this season until we see them play Dallas, then I think I’m informed enough.

November 12, 1996

Since I’m not hosting Thanksgiving, I guess it’s really not my call as to whether you invite B—. But since you asked, my personal opinion is ABSOLUTELY NOT. First of all, in the best of scenarios, the guy is a jerk, a pain in the ass to have around, he’s ugly, and he stinks. I know that it’s customary that one’s parent is automatically entitled to bring his or her spouse to a holiday gathering, but with a divorce pending it really seems like we ought to have some wiggle room here. Of additional consideration are the specific facts of the case: B— has zero tact, zero hygiene, and zero sense of humor, and he has shown rising resentment at the fact that we Albert boys are typically kind, tactful, humorous, fun to have around, inoffensive visually, and known either for no odor at all, or for a swarthy, masculine sweat smell that isn’t unpleasant (lacking, as it does, that strange and somehow non-human scent element that makes you want to hurl, that afflicts certain men perhaps at random, or perhaps as a form of punishment). If you said you were considering inviting Charles Manson, I would be more ambivalent; after all, he would at least be interesting company. We could interview him and gain insight into the life of a sociopathic, psychotic killer. But with B—, we’d just have a whining, complaining, jittery, humorless little pot-bellied man lashing out against everything and everyone in his environment, wishing he could be somewhere else—playing bridge, perhaps, accumulating the points necessary to be an All-Time Grand Master Great King and Grand Poobah of that discipline. Finally, I offer you one additional consideration: if B— were to attend (and I don’t know why he’d even accept other than to deliberately be a pain in the ass, in addition to having nowhere else to go), I might be tempted to tell him what I really think of him, without the extraordinary tact and restraint I’ve demonstrated here. But of course, it’s all up to you as you’re the host. So please do feel free to invite him, in which case I will simply cancel my flight and make other arrangements, such as biking over to McDonalds on Thanksgiving, even if I can’t be sure it’ll even be open.

December 12, 1996

Did you hear about this woman who sued DEC for her carpal tunnel syndrome? It’s kind of odd. The reason she won her case is that DEC had done employee training on ergonomics & stress-injuries, but didn’t give the same training to its customers, and didn’t post a carpal tunnel syndrome warning label on the keyboards they manufactured for sale. Flagrant disregard for health and safety! So why didn’t this woman sue her own employer for not giving her ergonomics training? Probably because DEC has deeper pockets. So I’m going to sue UPS (both because I hate them and because I like money). The way I figure it, there’s no way they don’t train their employees to lift heavy objects with bent knees, using the leg muscles and not the back muscles. And yet I’ve received many a heavy box from UPS without a warning label of any kind. I’m also considering a lawsuit against the novelist Danielle Steele because her novels are famously “impossible to put down,” are usually well over an inch thick, and come out a couple of times a year. That’s a lot of reading, and it’s a known fact that too much reading causes myopia (heck, John Milton went blind from it), and yet not one of Ms. Steele’s books (so far as I know) has a warning label about too much reading causing eye strain. Ms. Steele is loaded (her Pacific Heights home is right next to a member of Metallica’s) so she’ll probably settle out of court and I can quickly make some pretty good money.

December 17, 1996

Well, our office holiday party just finished. It was at this place called MacArthur Park, a restaurant with a large lobby area that my company rented. E— wasn’t able to come because she had a city council meeting to go to. Because of my injured foot I spent most of the time sitting down instead of milling about. There were these “crab” cakes that tasted kind of like tuna salad—they were definitely stretched. There were also these ribs that were remarkably bland given that MacArthur Park is famous for its ribs. There were also these sautéed mushroom sandwiches, open-faced, which were startlingly good. Finally, there were these half-baked apples with bacon around them that were okay. You’ve never seen such a sober bunch, not in terms of spirits but . . . boy, it’s hard not to commit double-entendres here. Let’s just say that nobody was even one sheet to the wind. Very non-drunk, and therefore non-rude and non-embarrassing, which I like. Still, it’s not quite as festive as when you have a sit-down dinner and people get up and make sentimental, half-clocked, maudlin speeches like at my old work, where people were desperate to eat as much food and drink as much booze on the company’s dime as possible, out of spite. Anyway, I behaved myself as well; that is, I managed to keep from eating so many mushroom sandwiches that I became gassy or hurled or something. The only problem is that now my best suit smells a bit like cigarette & cigar smoke. But I’m back in the office and it’s not even 7:00 p.m. (And what am I doing in the office? That’s a very good question and I’m afraid I have no answer other than I decided to walk home and it’s on the way.)

Undated, ca. 2004

We are up visiting Mom. When we arrived here, I was surprised by two things. First, she was not here to greet us—turns out she’d been called in to work at the hospital. Second, there was something really wrong with S— [her cat]. His entire body was trembling, and he struggled to stand up. There was a frightening jerkiness to his movements, like early Hollywood animatronics or first-generation CGI. He had a wild, feral look in his eyes and was emitting low, metallic yowls. He was like half cat, half Terminator, and it seemed he could be capable of anything.

E— led the kids to safety while I called Mom at work. She told me S— had been recently diagnosed as diabetic and put on new medication, and given the crisis she’d come right home. In the meantime I called the veterinarian, who determined that the cat’s blood sugar had crashed and that he probably wouldn’t survive the trip to her clinic. She told me to try rubbing corn syrup into the cat’s gums with a Q-tip. It was his only chance, she advised. Corn syrup? Seriously?

Hoo boy. This wasn’t going to be easy because as you know, S— is a bit of a tricky cat to begin with, having that strange tendency to occasionally turn on you. Like, he’ll be contentedly sitting in your lap, relaxed as could be, and then will suddenly try to bite you. And that’s when he’s behaving normally, not when he’s having a life-threatening blood sugar issue. Heck, if my own life were in danger I might try to bite people, too.

I set out the Q-tips, poured corn syrup from the jug into the cap, and steeled myself for the ordeal.

The beast must have known that his life was in danger but without understanding why. His reaction was to mount a strong defense. In other words, he was in full kill mode. As I approached him, he lunged, narrowly missing, his teeth snapping audibly together. “Aren’t you afraid he’ll bite you?” E— asked. Um, yeah. Of course.

I wrestled the poor creature onto my lap, trying to pin down his windmilling hind legs. S— was making good headway on my forearms with his barbed-wire claws. My base impulse was to hurl him away from me, but with great resolve I stayed at it. When I was able to overpower the animal and hold him still, I felt less panicky. A human, I reminded himself, is stronger than a cat.

A long moment passed, S— straining uselessly. Still pinning him down, I inspected the deep scratches he’d made on my arms and considered the etymology of “cat-o’-nine-tails.” Eventually S—, exhausted, went limp and I set about rubbing the corn syrup into his gums with the Q-tip. I worked quickly, carefully pulling back his lips with one hand and working the Q-tip with the other.

Suddenly the stricken creature came back to life, as though hit with a thousand volts, snarling and trying again to bite his tormentor. I got a good grip on his body. I could feel the knobby bones across his back. His front legs were a blur as he flailed, and I jerked myself back to keep my face out of biting range. This attack, too, petered out and he slumped again. I pried his jaws open and rubbed some more syrup in. He still trembled, and periodically he weakly tried to bite, but he was too weak to fight anymore. Eventually, amazingly, as I continued rubbing the syrup into his upper and lower gums, the treatment began to work. S—’s shaking stopped, and in time he seemed to relax. By the time Mom arrived, he seemed stable, and he survived the trip to the animal hospital. They gave him some basic treatment and now he’s sound as a pound. It seems he had developed some kind of fleeting diabetes, and when it went away, the medication he was still on messed up his (now non-diabetic) blood sugar. Wacky!

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Thanksgiving Invitation Template & FAQ

Introduction

I know how it is: you decide to host Thanksgiving, and next thing you know you’re on pins and needles wondering who will actually deign to show up, since nobody RSVPs anymore. (Or is that just my family?) Well, I know this may be a little late, but help is on the way in the form of this handy template for the official Thanksgiving invitation. This is useful even after you’ve issued the verbal offer and the save-the-date, in case your people need a reminder or a little prompting.

Of course you’ll want to tweak this a bit for your particular family situation; for example, if you’re all football fans but backing opposing teams, you can start the trash-talk early. Or, if all of your family get-togethers devolve into ruthless character assassination, you can make light of that. Here are some guiding principles for all invitations, before you proceed to the template:

• Brand it – this is more than a meal, more than a holiday, it’s an event
• Keep it light – for example, don’t make too much fun of the vegans
• Make it sassy – there will be plenty of cloying, sentimental speeches on the day itself so there’s no need to start now
• Make it firm – if you come off as too beseeching, you just look pathetic
• Provide actual information – even if this goes against everything you stand for

Thanksgiving invitation template

Hello all you family people,

I know this is really late in the game (though I don’t know what the game is, exactly) but anyhow, consider this your official invitation to TGV’23 at the Albert Headquarters in Albany! Please print out this email summons and bring it to show at the door. (If you can turn this guest authentication concept into a QR-code-driven thing, so much the better. Get your IT folks together with mine and they’ll set it up.)

As no other organizing principle presents itself I’ll make the rest of this invitation an FAQ.

Shouldn’t it be called TVG’23?

No, that was Uncle B—’s idea. I think he was referring to “TV Guide” though I can’t imagine why he thought that made sense. TGV’23 is not really an acronym, as all acronyms are passé.

What do you hosts need to know from me as you plan for TGV’23?

We need to know who all is coming (including plus-ones) and who is bringing the Bell’s seasoning. So far we think we have [list of invited guests goes here]. If anyone in that list is having second thoughts, dismiss them immediately.

Has the turkey been ordered?

Yes, which means nobody is allowed to flake. We ordered a very special turkey. We reserved it, in fact, before it was born. It was still in the egg. We met its parents. Since then we’ve supervised every step of its lifecycle, from its incubation (the mother and father taking turns), its early life (on a real grassy field, none of this fake plastic green grass like with an Easter basket), to its entirely hormone-free organic-grain-fed upbringing with plenty of opportunity to socialize. It is local, organic, fair-trade, and hopefully large enough.

Is lodging included in this deal?

L— gets dibs on the guest room (which she may still anachronistically refer to as “her” “bedroom”) and its magnificent new king-sized guest bed. If you’re nice she might invite you to a slumber party there. Other guests can fight over the legendary Bed of Sand down in the home office. Beyond that, we have a reasonable amount of floor space and two large sofas for those interested in the college-esque party-‘til-dawn experience, and if there are adventurous souls fancying a campout, we have flat (albeit stone) surfaces in the backyard and a large tent available. We would not be offended if one or more parties were to seek a motel/hotel/AirBNB/VRBO, especially given the relatively small number of bathrooms here (i.e., one).

I heard a rumor that the men are encouraged to pee in the backyard.

Yes, but only in the planting beds and the fountain. And please keep your micturition discreet so as not to scandalize the neighbors.

Does your new guest bed have a name?

Yes, we call it the Pound Cake Bed because the mattress is so much like pound cake, it’s tempting to take a bite.

Is there plenty of free parking?

Yes, we have a remarkable abundance of street parking. If your car is currently dripping oil, please notify us in advance and we will provide carpet swatches.

My car is a beautiful Dodge Charger Super Bee and its exterior paint has been polished, waxed, clear-coated, and festooned with glitter. Can I park it in your garage?

Our garage was designed around a 1927 Model-T Ford and can only accommodate a sub-compact car, and only then if we were to remove eight or nine bicycles. So, no.

Have all the  Albany Alberts been vaccinated?

Triple-vaxxed against COVID, flu-shots up to date, shingles vaccines complete, and screened monthly for cooties. No wonder we’re all practically autistic.

When should we arrive?

Wednesday seems reasonable. If anybody is flying, and the airfares are lower earlier in the week or something, well then come earlier!

When should we leave?

I reckon either on Sunday, or right after you break something but before the breakage is discovered, or earlier if you have to, or later if airfares go down or whatever. Just wing it, there are no wrong answers.

I am kind of new to this family and when you all get together, I can’t understand half the stuff you’re saying. What gives?

Fear not: I have put together this handy glossary of Albert-isms.

Will there be gravy?

Look, there are some things we just don’t joke about, okay?

Do you miss us, and are you super-pumped about this, and will there be lots of baking (e.g., pumpkin pie, apple pandowdy), and should Uncle B— bring his biking gear (cleaks, angry biker costume, and helmet), and will there be long hikes, and can people pursue their own activities as desired, and will there be leftovers?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and maybe.

Will there be dad jokes?

Does the pope wear a funny hat?

Was that a dad joke?

No. That was a cinematic reference. A dad joke would be more along the lines of “Two peanuts were walking down the street and one of them was assaulted.”

I heard you have a cat. Was it genetically modified to be hypoallergenic?

No, Freya was conceived the old fashioned way by a couple of strays. However, she has a subcutaneous RFID transmitter in case she gets lost, and because we added our credit card number to her online profile, we can use her as a mobile wallet. Ask for a demo! (As for anyone with a cat allergy, Benadryl is on us!)

Why do you use so many exclamation points?

Because I’m so doggone excited about TGV’23!!

If I’m honest, half the reason I’m even coming is so I can visit San Francisco with my plus-one. Is it a reasonable drive, and will my car get broken into?

If your car is a Prius, its catalytic converter will be stolen, even if you only park it out front of our house. But you’re in luck because with the local BART train system you can reach San Francisco in just 25 minutes, and the city is totally walk-able. You’ll have a blast!

How soon do you need to know we’re coming?

Oh, we already ordered the turkey, so you’re coming. You’re definitely coming. You better. But we don’t need any official total. It’s not like we have to pull permits or something.

Do you have any glue sticks?

As far as you know, no. We don’t need a repeat of what happened last year.

Will there be any strange, nonstandard dishes that will make me feel uneasy?

You mean like those weird tiny onions in the saliva-like sauce your ex-stepmother served? You bet! (Kidding! I never asked for the recipe, needless to say.) We’re sticking to the classics, mostly, though we’ll roast a couple of chickens (just to be “disruptive”).

Can we plan to burn off all those calories by hitting the malls on Black Friday?

Only if you really love window shopping. You probably wouldn’t enjoy actually buying anything here in Albany because have we some of the highest sales tax in the nation. (But it’s all good … I voted for that tax hike, and countless others.)

Isn’t the name, TGV’23, designed to summon the spirit of Train à Grande Vitesse since you love high-speed rail, France, and so forth?

Aha, you got me!

Well, I guess that pretty much sums it up. Please let us know if you’re coming, etc. and if you have any questions I didn’t think of.

Love,
Evil Uncle Dana

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Family Shibboleths: a Glossary of Albert-isms

Family Shibboleths: a Glossary of Albert-isms

Last week I hosted my mom, two brothers, assorted nieces, and a nephew for Thanksgiving. My niece L— brought this custom-made Bingo card:

(A little explanation: CAlbert means a California Albert; WAlberts are the Washington state Alberts; and the W—s are other relatives from my mother’s side that came for lunch the next day.)

I dig this family Bingo concept. It’s a nice way to celebrate the little idiosyncrasies and oddities that make a family feel close. We didn’t actually compete at family Bingo; that would have required fourteen unique cards and people would have had to carry them around the whole time. Instead we just had the one card, posted to the fridge. As you can see, we fell just short of getting a complete blackout.

I think there’s room to refine this game and make it a tradition. First, we could have a card for each person, up on the fridge, and anyone could mark things off (that’s right—helping one another try to win). Second, we could improve on what goes in the squares. “Cats are unusually mean,” for example, could never apply in this household, because a) we have just one cat, and b) what counts as “unusually” mean, given that all cats are asocial predatory beasts? 

Meanwhile, “NPR plays in the background” could apply to many a Bay Area home, but not mine—I dislike talk radio of any kind and there’d be no way to hear it over the din of this many Alberts anyway. 

(As for the final missing square, “Someone spews their drink,” apparently the only reason this didn’t happen was that my nephew Peter couldn’t come; I’m told he “seems to make it his mission to make a sibling or relative laugh explosively while drinking, hoping that said drink will spew out of said relative’s nose.” Peter stayed home as he was required by his megalomaniac coach to attend basketball practice on Thanksgiving Day, just to kiss the ring and demonstrate that sport comes before family. But I digress.)

The family Bingo game got me thinking about why family gatherings are so enjoyable. For one thing, we get that comforting sense of belonging, of being among our tribe. The quirky, idiosyncratic lingo we tend to throw around helps cement this. (Of course my family isn’t alone in this; Roz Chast recounts here how she polled her friends to learn what term their families use for picking thru the fridge instead of cooking a meal; in her household they call this “fending.”)

I think of such linguistic peculiarities as a family shibboleth. In case you haven’t heard this term, Wikipedia defines it as “any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another.” Of course, I mean shibboleth in a good way; the origin of this word, from the Old Testament, is actually pretty dark: after a battle between the Gileadites and the Ephraimites, any Ephraimite refugees who were intercepted were challenged to pronounce “shibboleth,” because in their dialect it sounded like “sibboleth.” Anyone who pronounced it this way was identified as the enemy and immediately killed.

Clearly this isn’t the point where family gatherings are involved; naturally we want everybody well-versed in our lingo. Generally our members pick it up easily enough. For example, early in the visit when I asked my youngest niece, age nine, if she liked butter, she looked puzzled and said something like “um … sure,” instead of the right answer which is, “yeah …. mmmmmbutter” … but when I asked her again three days later she responded correctly. Notwithstanding her swift adaptation, the family lingo can certainly be bewildering to a newcomer, and my niece Laura, recently engaged, asked me to create a family glossary for her fiancé’s benefit. Any time somebody asks me to write something, especially on the subject of words and wordplay, I find the prospect irresistible (as you can see here and here).

And so, I’ve compiled a glossary of Albert-isms, replete with etymologies. What does this have to do with you, the lay albertnet reader? Well, for one thing, if you’re reading this, you’re probably my mom, or perhaps one of my brothers. And even if you’re not, you ought to find these amusing. Moreover, I’ve witnessed family gatherings where people were too quiet or seemed lacking in family shibboleths, so I hereby give you permission to totally steal these and introduce them into your own family dialogue. (If any of my family members don’t like this, they  can complain in the comments area below, or on their own social platforms).

I’ve grouped these into general categories, starting with food-related terms, since family gatherings tend to center around the kitchen. Next are the cinematic references my family is so fond of. The last section comprises the truly weirdest utterances, many of which celebrate important bits of family history dating back decades.

Culinary Albert-isms

• Jukebox – microwave oven (origin: Kitchen Confidential; until my older daughter went off to college, she had no idea that this term, and the next three, weren’t ubiquitous)
• Microbe – see “microwave oven”
• Nuke – to heat in a microwave oven (e.g., “I don’t feel like cooking, let’s just nuke some leftovers”)
• Radar love – the process of heating via microwave oven (e.g., “this isn’t hot enough, give it a little more radar love”; origin: Kitchen Confidential)
• Bell’s seasoning – the key to Thanksgiving and thus the subject of much discussion
• Tranja (pronounced “TRAHN-ya”) – any tasty beverage, including energy drink; often used in the statement, “Drink—it’s tranja. I hope you relish it as much as I” (origin: Star Trek)
• Pretty yum – delicious (origin: five-star Yelp review of a Dim Sum restaurant in San Francisco, ca. 2015)
• “Do you like butter?” / “Yeah, mmmbutter.” – standard verbal exchange whenever butter is present (origin: my friend Pete’s home-ec teacher back in, like, 1983, responding spontaneously when randomly asked if she liked butter)
• Lekker – see “pretty yum” (origin: from Netherlands Alberts)
• Splaula – spatula, especially a rubber spatula (origin: what my daughters and I thought my wife had written on her shopping list years ago, due to her encryption-like handwriting)

Cinematic Albert-isms

• “You’re not the quarterback here, Mike!” – Say this whenever somebody is overstepping or attempting to have too much influence. Do not substitute your interlocutor’s name for “Mike.” Always say “Mike.” (Origin: Breaking Away)
• “Cutter started it!” – Trot this out whenever you’re chastised for pointlessly bickering. It’s not important who actually started the argument, of course. (Origin: Breaking Away)
• “It’s a crazy world.” / “Someone oughtta sell tickets.” / “Sure, I’d buy one.” – Whenever you encounter an instance of the world being, in fact, crazy, you should say so, and then wait for the correct response, which is the bit about selling tickets. If this response is not received, pause a few beats and then say, “Sure, I’d buy one” anyway, to inspire your interlocutor to do better next time. (Origin: Raising Arizona)
• “Say, that reminds me.” – Use this whenever changing the subject, or even when continuing on the same subject, or whenever harmless verbal garnish is desired (source: Raising Arizona)
• “I’m defecatin’ you negative!” – This is a more family-friendly way of saying, “I shit you not.” It avoids both the profane word and its common synonym, “poop,” which is of course far worse. (Origin: Raising Arizona, with “defecatin’” substituting for “crappin’” which is still too risqué for the youngest Alberts)
• “I guess that’s why they call it a Way Homer.” – Say this whenever one of your jokes bombs. If your interlocutor replies, “Why’s that?” then you say, with much hilarity, “Cause you only get it on the way home!” Ideally, the next response will be, “I’m already home, Glen” (even if your interlocutor is not at home). This will have been a perfect volley. (Origin: Raising Arizona)
• “Does the pope wear a funny hat in the woods?” – This simply means “yes” or perhaps “hell yeah.” (Origin: combination of a quote from Raising Arizona and the expression, “Does a bear shit in the woods?”)
• “Two dollars! Two dollars!” (while walking like a zombie) – This one is a bit tricky. You have to walk slowly with your spine totally erect, your head back, your eyes fixed on a distant point on the ceiling, and arms outstretched (i.e., like a zombie), while chanting “Two dollars!” over and over. Do this when you don’t know what else to do; for example, if somebody is explaining why he or she went gluten-free. (Origin: Better Off Dead, combined with some random zombie-walking which my young Dutch nephew Max first encountered around the same time. He somehow conflated the two, having probably never even seen Better Off Dead, and his father later complained that Max was staggering around like a zombie chanting “two dollars!” pretty much nonstop. Thus this is a tribute to youthful enthusiasm and joie-de-vivre.
• “Good luck … we’re all counting on you.” – Say this whenever anyone is embarking on anything. This is one of those lines that somehow improves with age and repeated usage. (Origin: Airplane)
•  “Vaal is pleased.” – This is shorthand for “I am the eyes and ears of Vaal, and Vaal is pleased.” There’s no perfectly prescribed situation for using this; just exercise your best judgment. (Origin: Star Trek)

Particularly idiosyncratic Albert-isms

• Duh-huh or tuh-huh – just kidding. (Origin: when I first moved to California, I lived and worked with my brother Geoff; we biked to work and back together; we socialized together; in short, we were practically inseparable, and sometimes got a bit tired of one another, which could result in witty verbal exchanges that sometimes became caustic or acerbic. To soften this, we took to formally indicating the jocular nature of a comment by attaching “duh-huh” (which Geoff reckons is spelled “tuh-huh”) at the end. For example, we’d say something like, “Wait, you traveled three hours for this bike race and didn’t bring your UCSF license? Why would you think they’d let you register ... your good looks? Duh-huh!” Astonishingly, almost everyone we knew adopted this usage, including this one kid, Dave E, who couldn’t even say it right so it came out “duhhhht.” More than thirty years later, this is still standard usage among Alberts, across generations.)
• Mmmmmyello – this is how to answer the phone (origin: our friend Davey’s mom back in like 1980)
• Brrrowh – I don’t know (origin: contraction, over time, of “I dunno”)
• “Huh huh … no” – basically either “just kidding” or “scratch that” (origin: uttered by my friend Chris, as we were looking at VHS cassettes at the video store; he had suggested, “Let’s get Blame it on Rio” and then—realizing that his young lust was obviously the only possible motivation for wanting to see such a drippy movie—he got embarrassed and uttered the now immortal phrase, “huh huh … no” to try to retract it)
• “I need to drop some friends off in the toolit” – use this when you’re excusing yourself to go do a, uh, download. (Origin: the euphemism “drop some friends off at the pool,” warped unintentionally by a very young Albert, and spoken with a redneck accent for no clear reason)
• Micturate – urinate (this is certainly not an Albert coinage; it’s unclear how this became the family’s preferred term, given how seldom it’s typically used)
• “Okay, Christmas is canceled” – This is trotted out annually as a (so far empty) threat. (Origin: our mom said this repeatedly during our childhood, out of sheer exasperation at our awful behavior and/or her [and eventually everyone’s] contempt for the rampant commercialism of the holiday)
• Motherfrockle – motherf**er. (Origin: my niece Rachel, when very young, was verbally abused by another kid, and told her father but didn’t want to use the actual word, so he asked her to whisper it in his ear, and she put her mouth to his ear and whispered, “He called me a frockle!”)
• “I don’t wear contacts because I care about my eyes” – Say this whenever somebody mentions contacts, or puts them in, or takes them out, as a way to pass judgment. (Origin: our dad pompously declared this when he first learned I wear contacts; he followed it up with some long diatribe about how some lady friend of his, who had like the first generation hard contact lenses, slept in them and then they were stuck to her eyes; never mind that this was over forty years before and she was an idiot)
• EUx (Evil Uncle Dana, Evil Uncle Max, Evil Uncle Geoff) – All three uncles get the “Evil” moniker, and the standard abbreviation (e.g., EUD, EUM). (Origin: my brother Bryan was the first to have kids, and the last to become an uncle, so the rest of us got this label, mainly due to our actually being pretty much evil or at least a bad influence)
•  “What we need here is a Physics major.” – Say this to insult a sibling. You can substitute whatever college major you need; for example, during an argument about grammar you could say to me, “What we need here is an English major.” (Origin: during a long, complicated scientific discussion, which included possibly all his sons and definitely Bryan, our dad said this, as if to deny the very fact of Bryan’s major, which was indeed Physics.)
• “You are real lucky.” – Say this to any family member who seems even remotely lucky or successful, or who has avoided failure or cataclysm, as a way to deny that his or her good fortune has anything to do with character, pluck, or effort. You can also tell yourself this several times a day, as a way of feeling gratitude. It’s especially useful if, like me, you actually are real lucky. (Origin: our dad said to me, “You are real lucky you didn’t do more damage,” in angry response to [what he evidently perceived as] my utter incompetence, when I did some very minor damage to my car. Details are here.)
• “You’re not very bright, are you.” – Say this to any family member who says or does anything even slightly incorrect or questionable. (Origin: our dad famously, though perhaps apocryphally, said this to me after I rode 130 miles over the highest pass in North America without proper food or even a jacket and got caught in a thunderstorm; details are here.)
• “I’m going out there, don’t try to stop me. / You fool, you’ll be killed!  / I must do this … alone.” – Whenever you leave the house, utter the first statement. Your interlocutor should utter the second, and then you close out the dialogue with the third utterance. If your interlocutor neglects, or refuses, to provide the second statement, pause for a few beats and deliver the closing line anyway to inspire your interlocutor to do better next time.)
• “All over the place spaced-out BLEAAAH!” – This is a nice way to point out that a family member, particularly a teenager, has totally dropped the ball. (Origin: back in the ‘80s, our mom once completely lost her shit and delivered a powerful, thundering harangue including several instances of this very useful expression. The “BLEAAH!” part should be delivered with extreme gusto and high volume, ideally with your eyes practically bugging out. Note: do not deliver this diatribe in a library or museum.)
• “Bundle up Billy!” – Say this to any family member heading out into the cold, especially if you wish to advise and also demean the person (e.g., if you are talking to a teenager who finds the idea of a jacket, not to mention protective parenting, highly offensive). Do not substitute any other name for “Billy”—always use “Billy.” (Origin: actual quote concerning our friend Bill, whose loving mother said this to him and which we all took to saying to him constantly, all winter long, ad infinitum. Interesting aside: Bill now lives in Perm, Russia which isn’t technically Siberia but is halfway there; the average high temperature there in winter is just 18 degrees Fahrenheit. Bundle up, indeed!)
• “Come and get it or I’ll throw it out!” – what you say when the family meal is on the table (origin: one of those Time Life Old West books, probably The Cowboys; I read this sentence aloud to my mom and brothers back in like 1975 and it just stuck)
• Landlo’ – our mom’s second husband (origin: he actually was her landlord, and when he got greedy and said she either needed to buy the apartment or move out, she slipped between the horns of the dilemma by marrying him and thus moving in with him, which was a huge mistake as you can see here)
•  “Bye” – Obviously this word itself isn’t a family shibboleth, but we say it in a very specific way, waving annoyingly by opening and closing a hand, which is held up right next to our face, which wears an expression of utter disgust and dismissal; useful whenever a family member departs but particularly through a car window as the family member drives away. (Origin: this is how one of us, or perhaps all of us at one time or another, were kicked out of Green Scene, a go-kart track, for reckless driving, in the mid-‘80s)
• Slaap lekker – sleep well (origin: literally, “sleep tasty,” this is a standard Dutch expression brought to us by the Netherlands branch of the family)
• Don’t let the hmm-hmmms bite – don’t let the bedbugs bite (origin: this is what our brother Geoff used to say to his son Max because he was very young and the idea of bedbugs terrified him)
•  “You know, I really like [x]. I mean, I know that’s not profound or nothin’ … heck, we all do. But for me, I think  it goes far beyond that.” – This is really useful, every time you encounter something you like. It’s a way of expressing gratitude very formally and passionately. (Source: a “Far Side” cartoon)
• “Outta my way, mother daughter!” – This expression gets nearly constant use: pretty much whenever a wife, mother, or daughter is in your way. I have two daughters, a mom, a wife, and at least eight nieces, and thus say it probably 700 times a year. (Origin: during a violent dispute with my brother Max, then a teenager, my dad fled down the hall, with Max in hot pursuit, ready to beat his ass; our brother Bryan was squarely in the way, either to intervene or as a pawn caught in a deadly game, and Max yelled something similar to this, except that what he said was decidedly more profane, along the lines of “outta my way, motherfrockle!” Granted, this is a pretty dark memory to be dredging up all the time, but perhaps by saying this jovially we’re neutralizing that old trauma, or at least owning it.)

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Travel Tips During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Vlog

This post is available as a vlog as as service to the blind, the illiterate, and the lazy. If you are blind, I hope somebody will start up the video for you so you can listen. (As for not seeing anything, trust me ... you’re not missing much.) If you are illiterate, I hope the Play button is self-explanatory. If you are lazy, congratulations on making it this far. If you are none of these, scroll down for the text version. Or not ... whatever.

Introduction

As if the COVID-19 pandemic weren’t bad enough, we as a nation are also facing a lot of scolds who have sky-is-falling, buzzkill attitudes about getting together with our families over the holidays. I say if we’re going to simply ignore or defy these naysayers, we might as well be responsible about it. This post tells you how.

Planning your trip

Leo Tolstoy wrote, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” What about healthy families? It’s worth taking some time to think about your particular crew and its COVID-19 profile. If your family Thanksgiving dinners inevitably descend into vicious long-winded bouts of character assassination, with everybody yelling at once like protesters at a political rally, maybe it’s best to sit out this holiday season. On the other hand, if the grownups sit with their hands in their laps, staring at their plates and finding themselves once again at a loss for words, while the kids sit isolated in another room, peering into their smartphones, silent and sullen for the entire long weekend, then it’s game on for holiday festivities!

Let’s be realistic about it, though: there is some question as to whether traveling is safe right now. According to the Georgia Departmentof Public Health, “Cases of COVID-19 have been reported in many states, and some areas are experiencing community spread of the disease.” Wow. I did not know that. Thanks, Georgia! (Yes, click the link and see for yourself: they really did say that.)

As it stands, the pandemic is certainly escalating. One of the main risks right now is the colder weather, with everybody gathering indoors. So instead of you and your far-flung siblings rendezvousing in Duluth, Bismarck, or Fargo where your parents live, you should have everybody meet up in a warmer clime. Australia would be ideal, but avoid the big urban centers. Kiwirrkurra, which is 450 miles from the nearest city, would be ideal. Kiwirrkurra’s population is barely over 200, so there can’t be much coronavirus there! Plan your trip carefully though, because it’s probably no tourist mecca … chances are you’ll be camping out. And steer clear of the locals ... you wouldn’t want to wipe out an entire community.

Flying during COVID-19

A new study by the US Department of Defense suggests that aircraft ventilation systems aren’t actually spreading the virus as badly as previously thought. “Planes don’t spread lethal viruses—people do,” snarled retired Lieutenant Colonel Miles Briggs, who knows a guy involved with the study. Unfortunately, when I fact-checked this article I discovered that its conclusion was based on a misunderstanding: the authors were talking about two-seater fighter planes where both travelers have those cool helmets with built-in air supply hoses.

Notwithstanding the DOD’s little goof, it is true that even the CDC has acknowledged the efficacy of ventilation systems on airplanes. Thus, the chances of spreading the virus on the plane aren’t that high … you won’t start infecting people until you reach your destination or have returned home. Obviously the problem isn’t spreading the virus geographically, but contracting it somewhere between points A and B. After all, the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic is … wait. I’m getting a bit confused. Let’s move on.

It turns out the airplane itself may not be the most dangerous part of your trip. There are also the logistical hurdles at either end. Taking a cab or Lyft to the airport would obviously be a bad idea, so you’ll want to drive there and park in the long-term parking, expense be damned. But the shuttle bus from the parking lot to the terminal is also out of the question, so leave an extra hour early and walk.

The security line is of course a Petri dish of coronavirus. Look at this typical line. I don’t think that’s six feet between travelers; that woman’s mask has slipped down below her nose; and the dippy little dog doesn’t even have a mask! (Can a dog transmit COVID? Hello, we had a bat and a pangolin infecting people already … a slobbering, yapping dog is obviously a mobile four-legged superspreader event!)

Conventional wisdom has it that you should skip the long security line by using TSA Precheck or CLEAR, but that actually might be worse than the longer queue. Why? Because you’ll be in line with frequent travelers—the guys who continue to travel on business, all over the country, treating our beleaguered nation like their own personal coronavirus tasting menu. You want to steer clear of those guys, believe me. Instead, just walk from long-term parking right out to the jetway and simply board the plane, without having set foot in the airport! If you act natural, they’ll just wave you through. Note that this means flying only on those tiny commuter planes without the enclosed jetway bridges, so you may have to hopscotch a bit to your final destination, but hey, safety first!

If you can’t take a commuter plane and are forced to brave the airport security line, remember that the most dangerous aspect of air travel is forgetting to remove your toiletry items from their kit and place them in a Ziploc bag. If your toothpaste, deodorant, and shampoo aren’t segregated like this, the virus has already won. Also, if you have any liquid in a container over 3.4 ounces, you can pretty much kiss your whole family goodbye, unless the TSA catches you and saves the day (again). The exception is that they’re now allowing alcohol-based hand cleaner in containers up to 12 ounces, bless their hearts. So you can bring plenty of that, whether it’s to clean your hands with or to squirt on fellow-travelers.

Brace yourself for some unpleasant changes, though. Airports, which were crappy to begin with, have become even worse. For one thing, they aren’t offering the same amenities, like that $9 beer you normally splurge on because your can no longer handle your (spouse, kids, loneliness) without taking the edge off. Tip: bring your own beer, and charge your (spouse, kids, neighbor in security line) $9 a bottle so they can feel a sense of nostalgic normalcy while you make a few bucks. Yes, you’ll have to consume the unsold beers quickly before going through security, but chugging three or four good IPAs in 30 seconds at the threshold of the X-ray (actually, it’s properly called a millimeter-wave full body scanner) is bound to get your flight off to a good start.

As far as the flight itself, the best way to ensure safety is to make sure you’re well-equipped. I’m not just talking about N95 masks—though those are a good start—but also a good sturdy face shield (not just for blocking droplets, but in case you get in a fistfight, which is not unlikely during these trying times) and also some great noise-canceling headphones, so you won’t be unduly stressed out by the sounds of sneezing and coughing all around you, or people barking at you trying to pick a fight. If you can get your hands on one of those cool fighter pilot helmets with the built-in air supply hoses, that would be ideal.

Most planes use HEPA filters, but how will you know in advance about the plane you’re on, since airlines swap out the aircraft at their whim? The answer is, you can’t know: so bring your own HEPA filter if you can. Since these vary dramatically in size and shape from one manufacturer to the next, practice at home first. Ideally, you can bend the filter so it conforms almost exactly to your head.

If you can, get a window seat. Studies show that people in the aisle are there for a reason—usually because they use the disgusting lavatory several times during the flight, pace up and down the aisle constantly, rummage around in the overhead bin touching whosever bag they want, and otherwise act out annoyingly. Having one of these dirtbag extroverts right across the aisle can’t be a good thing. Meanwhile, if you’re sitting in the window seat and things get a little stuffy, you can open the window and get some air.

Keep your eyes open during the flight in case of unsafe behavior around you. For example, the guy next to you might remove his mask for no good reason, or let his nose poke out, or has a big greasy beard with possibly pestilent saliva dripping down it. Or maybe his mask is made out of tissue paper, or a pancake. Give that guy a proper N95, or ask to change seats!

Using an aircraft bathroom is sketchy during the best of times, and especially dangerous now. The number one rule? Keep it quick! But wash your hands for at least twenty seconds. How is that quick? Doesn’t proper hand washing violate the number one rule? Hey—nobody said this pandemic would be easy. One more thing: if you suspect a pangolin has used the coach class lavatory, don’t take the risk of following it in there. Go through the forbidden curtain to the first class restroom, no matter how much the flight attendant and first class passengers yell at you.

Since the most dangerous part of a flight is removing your mask to eat, you don’t want to do that—and yet you still need hydration and sustenance. I recommend you purchase the Self Help Personal I.V. Kit for air travel ($48.99 from amazon.com, though the needle must be purchased in the airport gift shop or newsstand). With the Personal I.V., you can just run a quick intravenous line, and infuse a bag of saline if it’s a short trip, or Gatorade if it’s a long one. Heck, if it’s a full flight you might even consider putting a little bleach in there!

The road trip option

If you decide it’s just not worth the extra bother of flying, taking some extra time to turn your vacation into a road trip is an excellent idea. I fear for Generation Z, with their reluctance toward learning to drive and getting their licenses. Will they miss out entirely on the classic American young-adult road trip experience of blasting along I-70 at 90 miles an hour, sending toilet paper comets flying out the window, eating greasy fast food and blasting Nine Inch Nails at party volume to drown out the roar of air through the open moon roof? Well, maybe the pandemic can be their savior. Of course, it takes months to learn to drive and get your license, so it’s a little late for that now. Once again, the parents will have to drive, which means windows rolled up, AC on, and Maria Carey, Coldplay, or Sting on the stereo. But there are arguably worse things, like dying of COVID.

Once again, staying safe during the trip will require extra precautions. Going to the bathroom, for one thing, is going to be harder. Many service stations are using the pandemic as an excuse to shut down their restrooms, and others are simply understaffed so their restrooms are filthier than ever. The obvious solution—just pulling over to the highway shoulder, walking a ways out into the bramble, and peeing on a rock or tree trunk—isn’t fair to the women or girls in the car. Luckily, there’s a solution: you can now purchase a Foley catheter in their new “Road Warrior” edition (amazon.com, $58.95), designed specifically for consumers who aren’t comfortable with restrooms.

If you will be driving for several days, sleeping accommodations become a necessity. Campgrounds may not be open, and sleeping in random city parks with homeless people might be bad for your family’s morale. Clearly you’ll need a motel, but are they safe? Once again, the conventional wisdom—to find places that have high reviews on Yelp and TripAdvisor—doesn’t apply here. Look, the most dangerous part about lodging is people: so you want to stay where nobody else is willing to go. Look for one-star reviews ranting about how filthy a place is. The gold standard here is a review containing something shocking, like “toadstools growing in the bathtub!” To remain safe, bring a large supply of disposable latex gloves, Tyvek bunny suits, plastic sheeting for the beds, and of course all your own toiletries and bedding.

Is holiday travel ethical?

It has been suggested that getting COVID-19 tests in order to travel more confidently is ethically questionable, when the number of tests—not to mention the personnel to process them—are limited. This can be a problem when we have front-line healthcare staffers to think of, and service-sector and manufacturing workers who don’t have the luxury to earn their living over videoconferences. To them I say hey, this is America. Anyone who can afford a test should just go get it. What’s all this money for, after all, if not to purchase the life we want for ourselves? Read my lips: we are having Thanksgiving with Grandpa, and yes, this means other people may die. You don’t like it, tough titty: this is just how capitalism works. You want you go spend your holidays in Russia? Be my guest. (Well …  theirs. Whatever.)

In closing: ten easy travel tips

Here are ten easy tips to keep in mind when planning or conducting holiday travel during the pandemic:

1. Get tested for COVID-19 before, during, and after the trip.
2. If you plan to visit a family member who has extra risk factors such as type 2 diabetes, kidney disease, heart conditions, cancer, or obesity, make sure these are cured before you visit them.
3. Quarantine for two weeks before beginning travel and again when you arrive at your destination, and require all family members, including your hosts, to do the same—and then quarantine for another two weeks, ideally in a hermitically sealed room, before heading home.
4. Download a COVID-19 app to your smartphone and use it regularly, being sure to rub down your phone frequently with an alcohol wipe.
5. If you’re flying, get tested for COVID-19 before, during, and after the airport security screening, and before, during, and after your flight—ideally, without removing your mask.
6. Demand COVID tests of those around you: at the airport, on the plane, at the florist, at the gift shop, and before hugging any family members.
7. If any take-out food is served at family gatherings, make sure it’s safe by putting it under the broiler for at least 30-40 minutes, and serve it on paper plates, employing gravity rather than utensils to achieve the transfer from pan to plate.
8. Keep your guard up—if somebody around you, whether it’s a family member or a complete stranger, endangers you by not wearing a mask, not keeping six feet away, or speaking too loudly (or worse, singing), take that dude out (but remember to wear disposable latex gloves if you strike him with your fists).
9. Be smart about this: if you’re not that smart, read some books, take a few classes, get educated!
10. Reconsider your actions as the situation changes. For example, if COVID-19 cases should happen to rise during your trip, don’t hesitate to just turn around and head home.

More reading on the pandemic 

• Shelter-in-Place FAQ
• E-Book Options During COVID-19 Lockdown
• Is Cycling Safe During the COVID-19 Pandemic?
• The Toilet Paper Hoarding Conundrum
• More COVID Chronicles – Baking in Place
• When Will the Pandemic End?
• What Are Hospitals Like During the Pandemic?
• How to Talk to Your Cat About COVID-19
• Teleworking During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Why Don’t The Dutch Wear COVID Masks?
• COVID Wristbands

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