The last Christmas photo of the year.
Christmas ending
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Merry Christmas Vanillaville
I’ve said this before but, we don’t belong here, not really.
For some reason, I not sure how, we ended up on this street, in this town. A place we sometimes like to call Vanillaville. Sometimes we call it Stepford.
We like to give it those names because really, only white people live here. And they’re all the same age and have the same number of kids and the same Lexus SUV with the little, white, silhouette decals of their family and their pets on their rear windshields.
Most of them have McCain/Palin stickers.
And they all seem to have the same kind of unconscious awareness. They robotically careen their Lexus’ around the wide avenues at high rates of speed, oblivious to anything around them, desperate to fill a prescription before the soccer game ends.
Some have cell phones which have actually merged cellularly with the subcutaneous tissue just under their scalp and will eventually have to be surgically removed, when their plans expire.
Freud would have a field day here.
We call this place Vanillaville and we call it’s residents oblivioids.
But one thing that the oblivioids of Vanillaville do well is Christmas.
The above photo is not the best representation of Vanillaville’s holiday zeal, it’s just one that I like and was taken directly across the street from my house on what could arguably be called Candy Cane Lane.
Driving around this town during Christmastime it’s hard to tell if it’s night or day. You don’t have to turn on your headlights and you may even reach for your sunglasses on some streets.
There are entire neighborhoods that you know, it’s really a competition. It’s a competition to see who can drain the power grid in Los Angeles County the fastest. Sometimes neighbors even join forces creating Christmas light block parties by stringing lights across the street from one house to the other, sharing the electric bill and showing up the Jones’ down the street.
They put huge Christmas trees at the end of the block complete with lights, ornaments and even presents. You actually have to drive over the extension cords to get around them.
It’s all really, quite, beautiful.
People decorate their houses with every imaginable kind of spangle and ornamentation. Most houses have those lights hanging from the rain gutters that are supposed to look like icicles and white, wicker reindeer grazing on the lawn.
But the trend for the past few years in Vanillaville at Christmastime is inflatable snowmen and Santa Clauses.
In addition to icicles and wicker reindeer my neighbor has both inflatable snowmen and an inflatable Santa Claus. One of them, I’m not sure which, actually has a motion detector built into it that plays “White Christmas” sung off key and at a too-slow tempo by what sounds like a wino on his second bottle of Thunderbird, whenever a leaf blows past in the yard.
The singer puts emphasis on the wrong beats so it sounds like, “I’m dREEEEAMMing of a whIIIIIte ChrismAAAASS!”
And as for Linda and I, well we go more for the retro, minimalist look.
We have a single strand of the large, old-style, teardrop shaped lights that accent the roofline of the house.
That’s it. All one color. Red.
We love Christmas too but we really don’t belong here, not really.
‘Where’s the time go?’
One of the holiday traditions Linda and I have, for one reason or another, developed over the past few years is to go to the Saugus Cafe on Christmas Eve morning for breakfast.
There’s nothing particularly festive about the Saugus Cafe. They don’t serve Panettone french toast or hot apple cider with cinnamon sticks and I don’t think you could get an eggnog there if you begged for it.
What they do serve for breakfast, and not just on Christmas Eve, is bacon and eggs, chicken fried steak and biscuits and gravy. Good, old-fashioned, stick-to-your-arteries comfort food, with heaping helpings of trans fat all smothered in cholesterol.
Yes, they serve breakfast, oh, and beer.
The Saugus Cafe is not without its charm and does have a bit of a storied past. They’ve been serving hardtack, jerky and hot coffee to cowboys, train robbers and various other drunkards since 1887.
Located along the Southern Pacific Branch line the building itself looks much like a rail dining car.
Inside, strong light spills onto the tables in booths along one side, diffused by picnic-basket-checkered drapes as 18-wheelers and Harleys roar past on San Fernando Rd.
Sipping burnt coffee from one of these booths you can almost feel the rocking of the rails and imagine the stands of live oaks and hilly, California countryside rolling by outside the window.
Last Christmas eve morning, Linda and I sat in one of those booths, contemplating the mayhem the next two days would bring over the last crust of a rye toast.
As we debated our own Christmas menu and exactly which brie goes best with Lebanese fig spread and candied walnuts, I noticed a rather elderly couple in the booth next to us.
Though not their real names I’m going to refer to them as Glenn and Lillian.
Finished with their breakfast, Glenn and Lillian sat quietly for quite some time except for the occasional tink, tink of Lillian’s spoon in her teacup.
Lillian was small and smartly dressed with her raincoat buttoned all the way up to her floral, silk scarf. Her pure, white, fresh-from-the-beauty parlor hair was neat and tidy with not one curl out of place and her bright, red lipstick was heavily applied without being smeary. There was a faint scent of Aqua Net.
She kept her hands folded and fingers intertwined as she continuously stared a hole into her teacup.
Glenn was large by any comparison and sat straddling the bench, one leg inside the booth, one out in the walkway. He wore a pair of shoddy, denim, carpenter pants stained by paint and steak sauce. His threadbare work boots were loose and untied, the frayed laces tangled in knots.
A holey, white t-shirt made no effort to conceal his bulbous middle.
Just then, a waitress cleared a few dishes and placed a bottle of Budweiser on the table. Glenn picks up the bottle and takes a long swig from it wincing almost as if in pain as he places it back on the table.
A few minutes pass and he exhales loudly as a way to camouflage a belch.
“Joe’s daughter Mary got married last weekend,” he spouts loud enough to be heard in St. Louis.
Lillian’s response is a speechless and muted, tink … tink.
A few more silent minutes go by save for a breathy belch or two.
Then Glenn picks up the Budweiser and takes another long swig this time recoiling as if he’s just swallowed gasoline as he puts the bottle down.
“Ehhhhhhhhhhh … heefffffffffffft.”
Another minute of silence passes before Glenn asks a question. The question is really more an acknowledgment and a protest.
It’s a question to which they both know the answer, but neither know the explanation.
“Where’s the time go?”
Tink, tink, tink.
Days of Future Past
A couple of weeks ago I was rummaging around in my freezer when it became painfully clear that I needed to free up some space.
The time had come when those two, half-used bags of Trader Joe’s chicken breasts covered with freezer burn needed to go. Oh, and the four bags of equally freezer-burned edamame, two containers of chili leftover from last Christmas and … alright, all those yellow boxes.
I’ve acutally been storing these yellow boxes in at least 3-4 different freezers for years. Some of them from as far back as 1994. How many people can say they have stuff in their freezer from 1994?
It occurred to me, finally, that I was never going to open up those yellow boxes and consume the contents of them. Or the two cans that were stacked in there with them. So I took all those yellow boxes out of the freezer, along with the two cans that were stacked in there with them, piled it all up on my workbench out in the garage.
After removing the two bags of frozen chicken breasts, four bags of edamame, two containers of chili leftover from last Christmas and all those yellow boxes from my freezer, I found I had lots more room in there to store some other items which used to fall out on the floor whenever I opened the freezer door.
OK, now take a look at the above photograph and raise your hands if you know what it is. Continue reading
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