Last weekend was a blast. I went to The Polack's house for JZ's high school graduation party. On my way there, I stopped to grab some cigarettes and a card for JZ. Since I was at Walgreens, I also picked up a pack of rubbers. I got there late but was still the first guest to arrive. There were 3 generations of Polacks sitting outside on the patio when I pulled up into the driveway and I hadn't seen any of them in months. It's nice not being just The Polack's friend, but a friend of the family. It was weird seeing JZ again. Eighteen years old and getting ready for college. Mr. Z was doing pretty well. He's 82 now and he moved in with The Polack last fall. Mrs. Z has Alzheimer's and is in a nursing home just outside of Milwaukee so the old man moved in with his son. The Polack had been downsized about a month ago so he was enjoying summer while looking for a job. He lives on Lake Koshkonong and got a new boat recently so life was alright. Last time I was there, he had two dogs but only Pesto, the Airedale, was to be found. I'd been so out of touch that I hadn't heard that Buddy had to be put down. Here he is in better days:
Buddy was 14 and had canine dementia or whatever the clinical term is. I always liked Buddy more. Pesto was now 7 and she had definitely mellowed. I never liked her much because, while she could be friendly, she was just hyper and annoying. She'd constantly stick her snout right between your legs and just be a fucking pest, generally. Buddy was a Black Lab/Dalmatian mix and was always a hoot. He'd do this prancing with his front paws and make this half-yelp/half-bark when he wanted to go outside or wanted to be fed. Buddy was just a loyal and friendly hound. I first got to know The Polack in 1994 or thereabouts so I remember Buddy as just a pup.
And the same goes for Jason. He was taller but still thin as a goddamn rail. Everyone got a kick out of the pack of condoms taped to the card. We sat around on the patio for a while before he went to get his girlfriend, Caila. (Don't quote me on the spelling.)
She was really nice and, like Jason, very thin. She probably weighed about 80 pounds soaking wet. While Jason was going to college, Caila had a year of high school left. That boy's gotta be careful. I brought me a sixer of good beer as well as a bottle of Polish beer for Mr. Z. Here's the old Polack drinking the Polish beer.
It was quite tasty, by the way. A short while later, Sussy showed up which precipitated a look-see at the new golf cart that Mr. Z bought so he could get around the neighborhood.
It had a gas engine and later I took Penny for a spin on it. Speaking of her, here she is with her old man, Dan.
I'd met her only once before 3 years ago while I was in the midst of a marathon bout of housesitting for The Polack. Back then she was Porto's girlfriend but no more. That meeting last all of 10 minutes so it was nice to be able to get to know her a bit. Suss had brought a croquet set over and that was set up and folks played on and off. For my part, I made one really nice shot of about 12 feet but I lost my ass pretty bad anyway. JZ and Caila played quite a few games and didn't let the impending darkness stop them.
The Polack eventually made dinner which gave everyone a nice base for drinking. Mr. Z hit the beer pretty hard so it was unsurprising when a few of us walked inside to find him sitting on the kitchen floor asking for a hand in getting up. He'd fallen on the kitchen floor but, luckily, was unscathed. Conversation flowed freely and topics ranged from our venture in Iraq to pubic hair. As the sun went down, Sussy attempted to light the chiminea but failed due to the wetness of the kindling. I attempted to get a picture of The Polack as he got the firing going with the help of gasoline but I failed. Instead, here he is all lubed-up and proud of his fire-starting abilities.
We sat around the chiminea chatting and drinking deep into the night. Many stories were pulled out of the days when The Polack and I cooked at the Chateau Towers on State Street. The Towers is a private dormitory and we did our best to give those kids their Freshman 25, lemme tell ya. "No calories, no calories – STOP!" was a cry heard often back in those days. Many of the anorexics would order egg white omelets made with no oil. But since the aerosol can of oil indicated 0 calories per serving, we laid down the greaze! (I think a serving was a spray lasting a quarter second or something similarly stupid.) It came from some old game show in which contestants would say "No whammy, no whammy - STOP!" before hitting a button. There was talk of Scarecrow, one of the servers who wanted to jump my bones plus Comrade. Comrade had emigrated here from Russia and he really took to America, especially our ground beef. He just thought ground beef was the best thing since sliced bread. "Meatloaf is dee best deesh," he would say. For a while, Comrade was the mopper at close and, on night when we had meatloaf, I'd wander into the walk-in cooler and find him stuffing his gob with the leftovers. And then there was the infamous Taco Meat incident.
The company that owned The Towers also owned The Regent, another private dorm. During the summer, instead of laying idle, they started housing high school kids who were in town for various camps put on by the university – cheerleading basketball, et al. Somehow they had to be fed. So a makeshift kitchen was setup at The Regent. We'd truck in most of the hot food from The Towers and get everything else all prepped there. One day we were serving tacos and had a few hundred high school boys. Well, they went through the taco meat quicker than a cat trying to cover up shit on a marble slab. I saw what was coming and called back to The Towers and got The Polack on the horn.
Me: "Hey, we're out of taco meat down here."
Polack: "Well, there's no more ground beef in the house..."
Pause.
Polack: "…but you'll get your taco meat."
The way he said it wasn't particularly reassuring – more like a threat than an offer of help. I told one of the servers to hop in the truck and head back to The Towers so they could load it up in the warmers as soon as the stuff was ready to go. Other than the meat, the meal went smoothly. The kids didn't finish off anything else so there was little for me to do except wait for the truck to return. It was like that scene in Aliens when Ripley and company couldn't do much except wait for Bishop to get through the duct. I tried to take it all in stride but when your manager is there and she's all anxious and jabbering, it rubs off on you. I remember being in the kitchen when a couple of the servers came running in the door clutching 4' full hotel pans wrapped in foil. They set them on a counter and a crowd gathered around me as I peeled back the foil on one pan to see just exactly what the hell was in them. It was meat and it smelled vaguely like taco seasoning. But there were other aromas present too. The Polack had taken every bit of leftover meat in the house, run it all through the buffalo chopper, and seasoned the living fuck out of it. There were hot dogs, breakfast sausage, ostrich meat – just everything. But those kids still ate it all.
My stash of beer was long gone and I'd started drinking bourbon. The Polack used to be the regional manager for a company that has food service operations in airports around the country and Lexington was one of his. Being a lover of bourbon, he set up a bourbon bar down there and would return from each successive trip having discovered a new premium bourbon. Last weekend we had Basil Hayden and Blanton's. I was quite familiar with Basil Hayden but had never had Blanton's, The Polack's new favorite. As he opened the bottle, he showed me the design on the top of the cork. There was a horse atop each cork in stride and there was one of the letters of "Blanton's". Different corks had the horse in a different part of its stride and a different letter. The funny thing was how he showed this to me with all the pride of a new father. He explained that the barrels they use are not scorched as much as other brands so it has a unique flavor. I dunno if this is true or just bullshit because the booze itself was a nice deep brown. The Blanton's was good but I still liked Basil Hayden better. Blanton's had a fuller flavor but wasn't as smooth as BH. At some point or another, I crashed.
It was nice the next morning and The Polack made this quiche-like thing. It hit the spot being hungover and all. We sat around reading the paper, bullshitting, and drinking coffee until around 10:30 when I headed home. It had been fun. It was too bad Miss Rosie and Porto couldn't make it but so it goes. The first thing Mr. Z told me the day before was something like "It's been a long time" and it had. I really shouldn't let so much time go between seeing friends. I must make it a point to make trips down to Edgerton and Janesville more often.
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