Canthook

Regular readers know that I don't leave the house often, and unaccompanied, even less often. Today was one of my rare solo - meaning that my beautiful redhead Marie - was with me, and nobody else.

It started off as a perfectly wonderful day. For the last two weeks, we've been having thunderstorms, and temperatures that have ended up in the 90s. Today, it was in the 70s, and the sky is blue with fluffy white clouds.

I had to move the minivan by 11:30, because today is the day they sweep this side of the street, and I needed to buy bread. Albert & Sam's is a wonderful bread bakery that uses flour, water, yeast, salt, and malt and nothing else, but not because they are health food nuts. They aren't promoting it as healthy bread - only as good bread. And that, it is.

Most of their customers are restaurants, but they sell some product through their storefront. Blondie isn't really pleased with the bread, because you have to slice it, and because it goes stale. I'm willing to slice it, and if I keep it in a ziploc, it will last three days. She likes the hoagie rolls, though. They taste just like you get a class-A philly cheese steak on.

By the time I got my bread, though, I decided to take advantage of the great weather and head to the Tomato Barn in Washington Boro. That's nine miles down the road, and by the time I got halfway there, I decided to check out a farmer's stand. I'm not really thrilled with the Tomato Barn. It's just that I know those tomatoes are locally grown.

Locally-grown tomatoes tend to be ripened on the vine. If you are going to ship tomatoes hundreds of miles, you pick them when the color is just starting to break, so that they are firm, and they ship well. You then gas the tomatoes to ripen them when you're close to the point of sale. The gas puts a nice pink/red color on the tomatoes, but there's nothing like vine-ripening to add flavor and sweetness.

There were three teenaged girls working Steman's stand, and the two inside looked very much alike. Are you sisters, I asked? No, said the one; she's from France.

How did you end up here, I asked. I've attended parties before, and when I arose in the morning, I would be someplace else, but from France to Millersville, Pennsylvania?

It's a program, I was told, and I didn't catch the details, but decided not to get too snoopy. She had been here for a couple of weeks, and would be here another week.

Ah, I said, just long enough to get the guys in a five mile radius interested, and then frustrated. A beautiful, exotic woman from a strange land.... She blushed a little, but not a lot; I gather she's used to frequently getting told that she's beautiful. The other girl agreed with me, as if she was a little jealous of the attention her co-worker was getting. I'm not sure why; they were equally pretty. I wish I'd gotten the name of the local girl; I presume she may be a Miss Steman, but I'm not really sure.

She's French, I said, and you're what? A little Dutchy, I suppose. Miss Stemen, if that's her name, said that she's Scottish in origin.

Is "Dutchy" a term that's widely used? I can't seem to find it in the dictionary. On the surface, if you're a little Dutchy, it means your family includes some German (deutsch) ancestry. If a relative, especially a parent, says you're a little Dutchy, though, it means you're a little clumsy, a little slow-witted, or even outright dopplick, and you're extremely beloved anyhow.

I can relate to Scottish. Back in the early days of our country, a pair of Scotch Presbyterian ministers found themselves on the frontier in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, north of Pittsburg, near the Ohio line. There was always a shortage of women on the frontier, and as the protestant reformation was still pretty young, this pair was still trying to reach a decision as to whether they should marry or not.

They reached a magnificent compromise. They did not marry, but instead took Mohawk squaws, and had families. When their kids grew up, they found that neither white nor indian wanted to marry them - so these first cousins ended up marrying each other. And so, as the family lore tells it, if anyone accuses us of being a incestuous half-breed bastard, we are not to take offense, but simply to remark that we come by it honestly, and walk away from the fight.

If I got it right, Alison Imbert comes from Marseilles, in the south of France. Looking at it on Google Earth, I find that's not far from Monaco, and from Montpellier, France. Ooh, la, la. That's where they have all those nude beaches, isn't it? Boy, am I glad I got away from there when I did. I'm a happily-married man - well, a married man, at least - and I don't need to be associating with dangerous women.

I told Alison that in the US, we spell Allison with two ells, and it's the name of a diesel engine in semis, and that we would pronouce her last name as "I'm Bert" instead of "eem-bear". I suppose I could have told her that there was a nearby community called "Bareville", but things were getting too dangerous for me. As you can see from her picture, it started with a dangerous smile. (No, I'm not sure why Ms. Steman isn't in the picture. It wasn't deliberate. I would have preferred to have had both of them, so you could see how much alike they looked, but she had wandered off, somehow.) I even resisted the impulse to say, "If you're Bert, then I'm Ernie." No, it would have sounded too much like a come-on.

In any case, the mademoiselle from Marseilles might be gone in another week, but what about Ms. Steman, the other woman I thought might be her sister? Dare I risk putting myself in her presence? Life isn't easy if you are a sex symbol, even if you're now old, gimpy, fat, and balding.

I asked Marie if I dared ever return. She pointed out that no matter where I go, beautiful women seem to throw themselves at me, and if I can't defend myself by now, there's no hope. I told her that if any of them attacked me when she was around, she should attack them, and she said, "Yeah, right. Like you're serious about that." Did I ever tell you that Marie is a wonderful dog?

I got lost on the way home. You know the reason why men don't stop for directions, don't you? It's because they know that if someone were to ask them for directions, they'd make something up, rather than admit ignorance - and if that's the kind of help you can expect, why bother asking? I ended up in Conestoga, a half-mile from Safe Harbor, and followed the Conestoga Road, which was being repaved, for a couple of miles.

But I had a half-tank of gas, the weather was wonderful, I had a gorgeous redhead in the back of the van to talk to me, there was nice music on the radio, and beautiful scenery to look at. No need to stress out. I'd eventually find my way home, and if I didn't, I had a fully-charged cellphone with me.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Conestoga - dopplick - dutchy - mademoiselle - Marseilles - Safe Harbor - tomatoes