The Answer My Friend, is Blowing Out Your End...

Last week, in Dan’s Papers (Bridgehampton, NY) Dan wrote an article called, The Maple Leaf Mini-Cooper People Have All Been Fired. In the article, he wrote, “The East Hampton Town Board met ... to consider what to do about the leaves that fall from the trees in October. .....The leaf pickup program, ... consists of town trucks and highway department employees going around picking up bags of leaves that citizens place by the side of the road. They take them to the dump. The cost of this ... effort in effect would be $700,000. The town could save that money if they canceled the program..... Of course, citizens themselves could take bagged leaves to the dump. ...During the discussion, the new Supervisor pointed out that the elaborate leaf counting program, put into place by his predecessor, had been canceled. For several years, as everybody knows, hundreds of uniformed "leaf counters" with red maple leaf insignias sewn on their shirts, have been going out in special town-owned Mini Coopers with hand held calculators to get the total of all the leaves on all the trees in town.”

Every week Dan puts in one article that is untrue and completely nuts and I’m always stupid enough to get roped in, but not this time buster! There’s just no way that Green-thinking East Hamptonites would resist schlepping their own leaves to the dumps. We have plenty of millionaires on Shelter Island who schlepp their own trash and leaves to the dumps and the East Hampton millionaires aren’t any better than ours, and if they think they are, then send them over here and we will beat them into submission. And East Hampton hired leaf counters, complete with little maple leaf insignia’s and little roller skate cars, driving around to count leaves? This is when I knew this article was bogus. Either that or East Hampton gets the prize for creating the most useless job in America. The runners up would be a job counting clouds shaped like triangles that pass over E.H. Main Street between noon and one on Tuesdays, or how many licks does it take to get to the center of a sugar free, fat free, flavor free, Tootsie Roll Pop.

However, I will agree that having a general idea of a volume of leaves can be helpful at times. On Shelter Island, we estimate leaf volume by eye. I am submitting this information to East Hampton to help them in the future, should they become serious about leaf counting. Remember, there’s no point in counting leaves while they are still on the trees because leaves travel. You get your neighbor’s leaves blown into your yard, and the person on the other side of you gets yours, and we all get some in the end.

One Bag = one tall brown paper biodegradable bag. Fits into the trunk of any car.
One SUV or Van load = six bags and four complaining children.
One small truckload = six lawn bags of leaves, one case of beer to replenish the workers.
One large truckload = ten lawn bags; or six bags, plus two helpers, and a cooler
One G-d damn big load = twenty bags in a yard. Ten will gradually be taken to the dumps, but by then, the other ten will have been rained on and will be slowly pushed back into the mulch corner. Every yard on SI has a mulch corner. You will know it by it’s big piles of wet brown leaves interspersed with fragments of torn brown biodegradable paper and a broken rake laying close by.
S--t Load of Leaves = more than twenty bags. Will take six men, three trucks, two cases of beers, 30 hot dogs and buns with condiments, 20 bags of chips, one burn barrel. It may take a dedicated crew like this all day and half the night to burn all these leaves, but they can do it. So what are the trucks for? Regardless of the amount of planning, someone will forget something and have to make a run to IGA or Fedi’s, the soberest one at the time makes the run. Throughout the evening, several more trucks with bags of leaves will appear. There’s just something about fire, beer, and the freedom to pee outdoors that draws men to a burn barrel like a moth to a flame.

If the East Hampton Leaf Counters feel displaced as workers, I’m sure the town can create a program for them to count grains of sand on the E. H. beaches. It will be important to segregate sand that does have a permit to be there from the grains of sand that do not have permits. Unauthorized sand may have migrated from one of the neighboring Hampton beaches. You don’t know where the Southampton sand has been and the first thing it’ll want to do is form a wet bar and bring it’s decadent Southampton live style with it. Tip: It’s easy to detect Southampton sand, it smells like lime and tequila. So, Sand Counters, put on your little red vests with crab insignias on, and go for it.

Viagra vs. HGTV

“Hi hunny, I got a surprise for you. I redid the bathroom today.”
“Lois, you just did that.”
“No, Brian, that was in the Spring when I decorated it for summer. I redid it today for autumn.”
“Okay, just tell me what I can’t touch, starting with which towels.”
“I made it very easy for you this year. Don’t touch anything with an acorn or oak leaf. The guest towels have the embroidered acorns and oak leaves on them. They’re on top of the new light orange and brown towels that you can use. There’s matching acorn and oak leaf soaps in the soap dish, don’t use them either. You can use the regular soap in the dish in the drawer right next to the sink. There’s also an acorn shaped rug in front of the sink. Don’t stand on it. Stand next to it and lean over if you have to look in the mirror. There’s new potpourri on the back of the toilet, don’t throw used matches in it and set it on fire like last year.”
“Tell me dear, if I built you a second bathroom, could you designate it as a generic, user friendly zone that I could use anytime and use anything in it without fear of breaching that invisible clause in the marriage contract that says “and I swear never to touch guest towels, or anything designed for guests - even though the guests know better than to touch the guest stuff”?
“Are you serious? I’ve been begging for a second bathroom for years, why is it okay now?”
“Well, Lois my sweet, my huggy buggy bear.... I have a surprise for you too. Brace yourself.”
“Let me grab the counter, okay, I’m braced.”
“I had a special talk with the new doc today. We had the “little blue pill talk” and he gave me samples...”
“I didn’t ask you to have the “little blue pill talk” with him, our marriage is good, we don’t need to worry about anything.”
“Maybe for you, but haven’t you .....missed me?”
“Yes, um, sure, absolutely.”
“You don’t sound very happy, Lois, I thought you’d be thrilled.”
“Thrilled, that was the exact word I was looking for, thrilled. Yes, I am thrilled, can’t wait to be more thrilled in fact.”
“And the thrill can last for up to four hours.”
“I’ll kill you.”
“What?”
“I said, will you? I mean, four hours, geez.... that’s like a whole afternoon. A contractor could frame out a new bathroom in an afternoon. So how many pills did you get?”
“Six. I can take them as long as I don’t develop high blood pressure.”
“I see. Well Brian, you call a contractor while I make dinner and later tonight we’ll give those blue pills a test run.”
“Wait a minute, I didn’t say it was definite about a new bathroom.”
“But why wait? Let’s live on the edge for once, and spend some money on something we’ve always wanted, a second bathroom. And I promise never to decorate it. Just you, four walls and a shelf for newspapers. We’ll paint it blue to match the little pill.”
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to get an estimate. What are you making for dinner?”
“Lasagna with extra cheese and extra sausage, asparagus with hollandaise sauce, and cheesecake for dessert.”
“Perfect! Just don’t give me anything that will raise my blood pressure.”
“Of course not. I’ll just record Burn Notice and all my HGTV shows tonight.”
“There you go....sex trumps HGTV any day.”
“I’ll warm you up some fried chicken while you wait for dinner, hunny.”

It’s a Good Thing to Know Jack

http://www.pumpkinnook.com/facts/jack.htm “The Irish brought the tradition of the Jack O'Lantern to America. ...The Jack O'Lantern legend goes back hundreds of years in Irish History. As the story goes, Stingy Jack was a miserable, old drunk who liked to play tricks on everyone: ... even the Devil himself. .... Stingy Jack made the Devil promise him not to take his soul when he died. Once the devil promised not to take his soul, Stingy Jack removed the crosses (that held him in the tree- sic) and let the Devil down.
Many years later, when Jack finally died, ... He was not allowed to enter heaven. ...and ... The Devil ...would not allow him to enter Hell. Now Jack was scared and had nowhere to go but to wander about forever in the darkness between heaven and hell. He asked the Devil how he could leave as there was no light. The Devil tossed him an ember from the flames of Hell to help him light his way. Jack placed the ember in a hollowed out Turnip... For that day onward, Stingy Jack roamed the earth without a resting place, lighting his way as he went with his "Jack O'Lantern".
On all Hallow's eve, the Irish hollowed out Turnips, rutabagas, gourds, potatoes and beets. They placed a light in them to ward off evil spirits and keep Stingy Jack away. These were the original Jack O'Lanterns. In the 1800's a couple of waves of Irish immigrants came to America. The Irish immigrants quickly discovered that Pumpkins were bigger and easier to carve out. So they used pumpkins for Jack O'Lanterns.”

That’s the official story, but I know my tribe, and I just wonder how this jack o’lantern idea really started.

Sometime in the 1800’s, in October, on a cold night in Ireland:

“Wife throwed you out again, Paddy?”
“Aye, she did, Brady. I seed your campfire from the road, you won’t be mindin’ if I stay here tonight will ya?”
“Stay as long as you like. The big pumpkins here are good for sitting. I hollowed out one to keep me pail of beer cold.”
“Where’d you get beer?”
“Seamus Tooley has a shanty half mile that way. He makes home brew. He’ll sell you a pint for a copper.”
“Ach, the night’s as black as coal, I’d never find me way there or back.”
“True, and you can’t carry a torch, Seamus will take you for a thief and club you before you get within twenty feet of his beer.”
“How could I let him know a friendly face approaches, from far off you know, so as not to alarm him?”
“You could call out as you approach, but with the wind blowin’ so, it’s unlikely you’ll be heard.”
“Well now, maybe I could make a friendly face to precede me.... look at this little gourd. I could carve it out, carve a face in the side and maybe scoop out a little basin in the bottom to put in some oil in and he’d see a smiling face from afar. What do you think, Brady?”
“It’ll never work, Paddy. You don’t look anything like that gourd.”
“Well I’m not carvin’ a bust you fool, just a likeness, an image. I just want a pint.”
“Use a small pumpkin instead. It’s rounder and looks more like your ugly mug.”
“It’s a kind hearted man ye are, Brady.”
“Soft in the heart, aye, it’s always been me downfall.”

An hour later...
“I’m off, Brady. Wish me luck.”

An hour after that, Brady peers into the darkness...
“Mother of ....Paddy! Is that you?”
“Tis so! You can see me pumpkin lantern from this far out?”
“Aye! Did ye get yer pint?”
“I did indeed. And look over there.....see? There’s two more pumpkin lanterns heading to Seamus’s. That’s Poreg and Michael. I near scared them to death with me lit pumpkin lookin’ like it’s floating through the air on it’s own as I went past their shack. They’re heading for beer too.”
“Bless me, Paddy, it’s a brilliant man you are. You’ve found a way for a man to travel in the dark without being mistook for a robber.”
“I’m naming me pumpkin helper here, Jack, Jack O’Lantern.”
“It’ll help me too, as long as I see Jack, I’ll know it’s a friend.”
“They say “Necessity is the mother of invention”, but me, Brady, I think it’s beer. Beer is the mother of invention.”

Greenport Maritime Festival

“I’m exhausted, John, but every piece of brass on the boat is shining. The new boat cushions look terrific and the new canvas will be here in time for the Maritime Celebration on the 25th. I love having a classic boat, but geez, the work....what are you wearing? I threw that out in Spring.”
“No, you TRIED to throw it out in Spring, Louise.”
“You pulled that out of the burn barrel! John, please.... you’ve had that shirt since you were 22. You’re 47 now, it pulls everywhere and it’s too short. Your hairy stomach shows.”
“It fits fine! It’s my lucky shirt. I caught my prize bass in this shirt. Remember that competition?”
“No, John, don’t start the bass competition story, please, I have to have time to organize Thanksgiving next month.”
“You had no right to throw out my lucky shirt, or my lucky shorts.”
“No - John- you didn’t fish out those shorts too! You can’t wear those OP short shorts hunny, I mean you really can’t.”
“I can still button them. I just skip the top button and hide it with my shirt.”
“No, my love, you can not wear those short shorts in public anymore, ever.”
“Worried about me? I’m a happily married man, I wouldn’t flirt. You don’t have to worry about somebody making a play for me in these shorts.”
“That’s truer than you know, but not for the reasons you think. John, have you ever seen the pictures of the ballroom in St. Patricks’s Cathedral in New York?”
“Can’t say I have - wait a minute.... there’s no ballroom in St Patrick’s Cathedral!”
“No dear, there isn’t. And that’s what your short shorts have in common with the Cathedral.”
“That’s low, Louise.”
“Many things are these days, John.”
“That bad? Really?”
“Remember when your Uncle George visited? Remember those green polyester shorts he loved because they were comfortable? Aunt Betty couldn’t get rid of them no matter what she did.”
“I remember, he looked like somebody put pants on a goat. Please don’t tell me I look that bad in my shorts.”
“Well, Uncle George’s shorts were at least Bermuda length, so there was no chance of anything escaping. The OP shorts are way too short. I get scarred every time you put them on.”
“I love these shorts. I’ve had them so long. It’s like giving up a friend.”
“We can frame them.”
“No, that’s stupid. We’ll bury them at sea during the festival. It’s the only proper way to dispose of boat shorts that have served so long.”
“And the shirt.”
“Shirt stays. Be happy I’m letting go of my lucky competition shorts.”
“Alright, one out of two ain’t bad. Give them to me, I’ll throw them in the duffel. John, let go of the shorts, c’mon, give them to me now. You look silly clutching them to your chest like I’m taking away a toy.”
“Please, Louise, we just need a moment.”
“Okay. Well, when you’re ready, here’s some new dockers. You’ll look nice in these for the festival.”
“They’re the wrong size. Louise. The waist says 42, I’m 36 waist. My OP’s are 36.”
“They’re made in Malaysia. The waist is 42 centimeters, it’s 36 inches in American sizes.”
“I thought so. I mean, 42 is just five points below my age.”
“And five points above your I.Q..”
“Huh?”
“I said Hy Que. They were made in Hy Que, Malaysia.”
“Yeah, well, they better get their sizes right if they want to sell over here.”