Christmas eve

Happy holidays from New Orleans. As I write this I'm sitting in the courtyard of Creole Gardens Guesthouse on Prytania Street in the lower (less fancy) Garden District. It's a funky, colorful and relaxed place that is dog friendly. For me this get away is all about relaxing, exploring and food. Here's a little snap shot of all three.

On Christmas eve day around noon we caught the St. Charles street car to the French Quarter. New Orleans street cars are dark green ornate restored electric cars that can be driven from either end with polished wooden seats that reverse so passengers are always looking forward. The day was warm. All the windows were open wide as we rumbled down the street. At one corner a well dressed older woman hailed the driver between stops. He let her on. A block further he stopped again, she kissed him on the cheek and got off. “My next door neighbor,” he explained.

We absorbed French Quarter atmosphere by walking down Royal St. past tee shirt, fake voodoo and antique shops. Just past the imposing old Supreme Court building the street is blocked off so street performers can take the stage, one group per block. In front of us was a human statue: a very tall black guy in immaculate red & white striped trousers, brand new sneakers, white shirt and American flag tie, frozen in a six foot stride. He had a tiny toy dog smoking a cigar on the end of a stiff leash that appeared to be towing his giant owner. I noticed we were standing in front of the entrance to The Court of Two Sisters restaurant. Jazz Brunch $28. We went in.

There is no storefront or imposing sign, just a French style iron gate covering a carriage way through the main building to a large courtyard with pergola and ancient wisteria. A jazz trio played a mix of dixieland and jazz carols from the corner. Our waiter described the food in mouthwatering detail. We feasted on an astounding buffet of every New Orleans signature food, hot and cold, all fresh and very well prepared. We sampled shrimp in spicy etouffee, crawfish Louise, creole jambalaya, cajun pasta, glazed sweet potato with andouille sausage, crawfish and spinach pasta and for dessert bread pudding with whiskey sauce and two helpings of heavenly bananas Foster with homemade french vanilla ice cream.

We stumbled into the street bloated and dizzy, and very satisfied.

Not much was open that evening, it being Christmas eve. The host at our B&B called around for us. She hesitantly suggested a neighborhood joint, open 24/7 everyday, the St. Charles Tavern, only two blocks away. “It's sort of a dive,” she warned, “but the food is good.”

We were not that hungry after the feast at lunch. The St. Charles Tavern sure looks like any neighborhood watering hole you've ever seen, except for the “Zagat Rated” sticker on the door. Only a few folks were eating and a few more were at the bar watching Notre Dame crush Hawaii. The bartender was also the waitress. Merry ordered a coke. “RC alright?”

The waitress put her hand on my shoulder, “What you havin' babe?”

I ordered the cajun sampler – gumbo, jambalaya and crawfish etouffee. The food came quickly and was very good. The gumbo had half a small crab floating among the spicy savory broth. A few minutes later the neighborhood cop came in and sat next to us to have a coffee and a snack. He told stories of how his squad policed the French Quarter for three weeks without a break after Katrina. Merry asked him about policing during Mardi Gras. “The drunks are no problem, really, it's just they are easy targets for the bad guys.” His partner came in to buy his lottery tickets and have an iced tea. They all wished us a Merry Christmas as we walked out the door into the humid foggy night.

Story tellers

Hello everyone. Merry and Joli left yesterday to drive to New Orleans where I will join them on Tuesday for Christmas in the Big Easy. For some time we have both wanted to get a look at New Orleans post-Katrina. We plan to explore the city and participate in at least one Revellon dinner, a unique New Orleans holiday tradition. I plan to write about that when we return.

Without fully realizing what I was doing I read two books during the past few weeks that struck me with such force I decided to break with my normal weekly travelogue and spend a little time describing their effect on me. Feel free to skip the convoluted book reviews that follow. You have been warned.

When we moved we decided as a general principle not to bring our library with us. There were some exceptions to this rule. I wanted to bring a few books to inspire me to write. After reflection I decided to bring all the books I own by Italo Calvino (13 thin volumes) as well as by Humberto Costantini (2) and Michael Ondaatje (2). I selected these books because I admire the skill displayed in the story telling by these three otherwise very different authors.

Costantini, a Buenos Aries veterinarian (1924 – 1987), deserves to be better known. I think only two of his novels have been translated into English and both seem to be out of print. If you can find it, I highly recommend his poetic and highly imaginative The Gods, the Little Guys and the Police.

The Sri Lankan - Canadian poet Michael Ondaatje is well known and in my humble opinion is perhaps the most talented living writer. His descriptive power is unmatched. I sometimes wake from a deep sleep thinking about the desert passages from The English Patient or the incredible “painting the Buddha's eyes” scene from Anil's Ghost.

Most of the books I brought for inspiration, however, are by Italo Calvino. Calvino (1923 – 1985) was born in Cuba but lived most of his life in San Remo, Italy. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/calvino.htm.

At the very end of his life Calvino was preparing to give the Charles Eliot Norton lectures on literature at Harvard. He planned six lectures but only finished five – published in English as Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Each lecture focuses on one element of Calvino's writing process. The first lecture on “Lightness” is the key to what makes his writing so unique. He tells us “my working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight.” He wants his writing to escape the heaviness with which descriptions of things is freighted. To achieve this he uses only the most distilled language. The other four lectures “Quickness,” “Exactitude,”Visibility,” and “Multiplicity” contain further details and helpful examples of the struggle to escape language gravity. To my way of thinking Calvino truly achieves his goal in the stories that make up Invisible Cities in which Marco Polo describes unseen the wonders of the world to Kublai Khan, but it's there in all the books. As a consequence of this focus on lightness Calvino's story telling most resembles highly intellectual fantastic fairy tales.

As I was reading the Six Memos, Merry took a trip to the bookstore and brought me Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing. I took it to work to read on my lunch hour. Fortunately it's a quick read. Bradbury is for the most part a terrible, clumsy writer when compared to Calvino. He is full of himself, unquestioning in his praise for his own work and very impressed with the arc of his own life. In short, he's an American. Bradbury was born in 1920 in Waukegan, Il and still lives in LA. http://www.raybradbury.com/about.html

Why did I read his self congratulatory book about how he became the best writer of his generation? Because of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man. These were the best books I had ever read when I was 16. Even now I think of them as some of the most evocative stories I have ever read. I tried to re-read Fahrenheit 451 recently. In literary terms, the writing is pretty clunky, but the story is terrific. How did he do it?

He did it by writing every day for years and years. Pounding a typewriter and churning out what he admits was largely junk at the clip of 1000 to 2000 words a day. He sums up the “Zen” of his work in three words: WORK, RELAXATION and DON'T THINK (yes, he uses capital letters a lot). His point is that skill in story telling is achieved by finding a way to let your subconscious move the writing. To do this you have to be relaxed and not allow your intellect to get in the way of telling the tale. He says the only way to do this is to write and write every day until you can write while totally relaxed and without thinking. Surprisingly, this actually seems to capture one of the key insights of Zen practice.

So...lightness and Zen. What I take from these two books on writing stories is simple. The stories are already there in my subconscious. My job is to relax enough to find them, polish them and help them escape the gravity of everyday things. We'll see.

Bevo

When you come to visit us in St. Louis you will probably ask us to take you on a tour of the Anheuser-Busch brewery, home of the “King of Beers,” Budweiser. So as not to be caught unprepared we toured the place ourselves last Sunday. To my mind there are three things that make the A-B tour stand head and shoulders above all other brewery tours: (1) the eye-popping historic buildings, three of which are national historic landmarks, (2) the Clydesdales in residence, and (3) the mystery of Bevo.

The tour begins with the Clydesdales stables and wanders downhill through the massive factory complex to conclude at the Bevo Bottling Works where the A-B products made in St. Louis are packaged. As you approach this six story brick factory building that fills a city block the most remarkable thing you see is a large gargoyle perched midway up each corner. I initially thought it was a rat dressed in coat and boots playing a flute. Closer inspection revealed “Bevo, the Fox.” The lobby of the building is also beautifully decorated with handmade tiles featuring the same crafty fox.

We were told that the bottling works was built during Prohibition and named for the A-B's then new non-alcoholic “cereal beverage.” Anheuser-Busch started brewing Bevo in 1916 when the US armed forces prohibited use of all alcoholic beverages. That crafty fox Augustus Busch, Sr. knew the tide was running against him and that it would only get worse in the near future. He had backed anti-prohibition candidate Taft in the 1914 election but lost. Then the US went to war with his fatherland, and robber barons like him with close German ties were highly suspect. He worked tirelessly to try to prevent the coming of Prohibition even closing down scores of highly profitable but disreputable A-B owned saloons across the country. By 1916 he must have known his efforts were failing.

He decided to diversify. Not only did A-B start to brew Bevo well before national Prohibition took effect, he also developed a number of products for home brewers like brewers' yeast and malt syrup. He appears to have known Prohibition would not last forever, but he was determined to make the best of it. Production of Bevo rose greatly when Prohibition finally took effect in 1919, and Bevo was by far the most popular of the many "near beers" of the time. At the peak of its popularity in the early 1920s, more than five million cases of Bevo were sold annually. However by the late 1920s bootleg beer and liquor as well as home brew had cut Bevo's market share. With sales flattening to 100,000 cases by 1929, Anheuser-Busch stopped production.

But why did they call it “Bevo?” The only explanation I can find is that the name "Bevo" was coined from the English word "beverage" and the Slavic or Czech word for beer "pivo.” It would seem Busch wanted the name to subliminally suggest that beer was not long gone. The use of the Renard the Fox character to symbolize Bevo also suggest A-B is winking an eye at Prohibition saying, “Here, drink this. I promise that real beer will be back before too long.”

But there are more curious twists. Augustus did not like living at the family mansion on the brewery grounds so he moved out to the suburbs. In 1913 he purchased “Grant's Farm” from the heirs of the former President and civil war general and built a new home, “Baurenhof,” there on the banks of Gravois Creek. It was, however, a long trip home from the brewery. To break up the journey Augustus built himself a private dining room along the Gravois road exactly halfway home. For some reason he commanded that this building be an authentic replica of a Flemish windmill. Of course, he called the place the “Bevo Mill.”

In 1917 the Bevo Mill started serving meals to the general public. It still does. The neighborhood that grew up around the Mill came to be called “Bevo” and still is.

Augustus also loved parades. During the 1920s he started the tradition of putting A-B promotional vehicles into parades all over the country by designing and building “Bevo Boats.” Apparently he build as many as eight of these extravagant precursors to the Clydesdales and Rose Parade floats. The one surviving example of a Bevo Boat was built in 1930 after Bevo had ceased production, and thus was probably called a Budweiser Boat. Mounted on a 1930 Cadillac frame with a boat body finished in red with white stripes, it has a red leather interior. Some of its most unusual features include two large chrome anchors mounted to the bow, a propeller on the transom, Wig-Wag taillights with lanterns that swing from their mount, an Anheuser Busch eagle mounted on the front deck as well as two functional Winchester Arms 10 gauge cannons mounted on the rear fenders.

Augustus Busch did everything he could to assure the word Bevo became part of the popular culture of the time. His efforts paid off in ways he could not control. Irving Berlin included a song "You Can't Stay Up on Bevo", in his 1917 army revue, Yip Yip Yaphank. The popular references were not very complementary. The suggestion is that Bevo is not the real thing. Here's how Irving Berlin put it: “I used to own a vicious looking dog who wouldn't bite, I used to know a dangerous looking man who couldn't fight, My brother trained wild animals but they were really tame, And now I've tasted of a drink that strikes me just the same – [Refrain:] Bevo, oh, oh, oh, Bevo, You're the grandest imitation that we know, You're the only drink that a soldier can pick, You taste like lager but you haven't got the kick, oh!” Thereafter at least for a time “Bevo” became army slang for a young and inexperienced officer.

Decades later, Bevo is mentioned in a list of popular culture items that can corrupt children's morals in the song "Trouble" in The Music Man.

During the same time span the University of Texas football team acquired its mascot, a long-horn steer named “Bevo.” According to the official web site of UT Football, its mascot Is not named for the A-B near beer.

All of this is my way of explaining the thoughts running through my mind as I stared up at Bevo the Fox last Sunday. How does a made up name for a product that no longer exists and almost nobody remembers come to designate a large industrial building and a St. Louis neighborhood?

Riding the bus

Last week we were in Syracuse for Thanksgiving and a belated three way birthday party with my dear friends Harmon Hoff and EveAnn Shwartz at their home, Maple Avenue Farm near Earlville. There was no blog entry last week but here's another glimpse of everyday life in St. Louis for your enjoyment.

During my first week on the job I learned that Social Security buys a bus pass on request for all employees. To my pleasant surprise your government is actually doing something concrete to slow global warming. Any US government employee can ride the bus or light rail for free, but there is no subsidy for those who drive. All the other judges drive to work and park in the building garage at the cost of $130 per month. I live only 2.5 miles from the office, on a bus line. I decided on the bus.

As in most big cities, learning the St. Louis bus routes and schedules was a real challenge at first. Eventually I settled into a fairly efficient pattern: leave the house no later than 6:15 am, walk two blocks to the #10 bus stop on Gravois, wait from 0 – 5 minutes, ride about 15 minutes, walk a block to the office and arrive at 6:35, give or take a few minutes. The homeward trip is about the same but takes about 25 minutes due to more frequent stops to pick up and discharge passengers.

Every day I anticipate the moment when the #10 bus rounds the corner onto Market St., the main drag downtown. Framed in the windshield is the Gateway Arch, the sunrise and the Old Courthouse centered between the gleaming stainless steel legs of the Arch. It's become my weathervane and inspiration.

The bus talks. As the doors open to admit passengers the bus says, in a pleasant female voice, “Good morning, #10 Gravois to downtown.” Every time someone pulls the cord she says, “Stop requested.” At key stops she announces the stop and lists the connecting buses. There is a certain squeaky sweetness in her voice as she chirps, “Market and Tenth Street.”

On winter mornings the passengers huddle wrapped in heavy coats and scarves, hoods up, listening to iPods. In the afternoon they talk. It's quite common for passengers to greet the driver and sincerely thank him or her on exiting the bus, a habit I've adopted. Many of the afternoon bus drivers are big talkers, razzing passers-by and riders. One of the first cool days a short heavy-set black woman climbed on wearing a brand new puffy pure white down coat. She looked like a marshmallow with legs. The driver kidded her, “Hey, woman, you looking way too warm.” She sat near the driver who kept asking her if she were warm enough. She refused to unzip the coat. Everyone else on the bus was in shirtsleeves or a light jacket. Finally he asked her why she didn't buy a matching down hat. “Can't eat no hat,” she shot back.

One warm fall day a guy in coveralls hooked his bike to the front of the bus and got on carrying a clear plastic bag full of clothes. “Man, you sure smell like fish,” the driver commented. “Yea, well, see I work at the fish meal factory on 4^th and can't figure how to get the smell off. I put my work clothes in this here bag, but I still stink like fish guts.” His concern for the noses of his fellow riders sparked a bus wide discussion on how to defeat fish oil with bleach, lemon juice, baking soda, pine soap and more that lasted until he got off and wheeled away into the twilight.

Merry decided to ride the #10 one day but before paying her fare asked the driver if the bus went up GraVOIS with the accent on the second syllable. We did know the “ois” was pronounced “oy”. “What?” She said it again. “Where?” “Where are you going?” Merry was getting exasperated. “Up GRAVois, GRAVois” in a very gravely voice. For the rest of the short ride he occasionally growled, not quite under his breath, “GRAVois.” Merry laughed for days.

I've come to genuinely like the bus commute. Perhaps the best thing about riding the bus is the chance it gives me to observe the working people of St. Louis. They are janitors, factory workers, chambermaids, waitresses, office clerks, high school kids, homeless people and one ALJ. The bus riders are from all races. The vast majority on the #10 are black, but there is a wide variety of other races including hispanic, asian, near eastern and white. We ride together. I know that most commuters are still stuck in their cars, but it does me good to feel a part of the minority who rides the bus.

Gus' Pretzels

It's started to get cold here at last after a long fall. We had our first day where the temperature did not break freezing on Friday. Yesterday we paid a visit to the Soulard Market for the first time. Soulard is an older neighborhood between McKinnley Heights where we live and the Mississippi River. The river bank there is covered by the giant Anheuser Busch brewery. The market is in a large old brick building shaped like the letter “H” with the ends being long open sheds and the smaller center enclosed (and heated). The most of the vendors have permanent locations with signs and tables. Some have elaborate small stores that appear to have been there a very long time. A butcher shop, a pastry shop and, surprisingly, a pet store all appeared to be permanent. At this time of year fresh local produce was scarce – we did see one organic farmer with some nice root vegetables and a wild mushroom vendor with an amazing array of oyster mushrooms and chantrelles. There were several poultry vendors doing a brisk business, even live geese were on offer. We shared a warm flaky croissant and moved on.

St. Louis is rich in coffee shops, many of which roast their own beans. We had tried two nearby, Park Avenue Coffee and Mississippi Mud, the latter our favorite. Yesterday we tried the Benton Park Cafe for breakfast. It's a bit more polished and therefore a bit more sterile, but the coffee and food are very good. Where we sat looking out on Lemp Street, we had a good view of Gus' Pretzels directly opposite.

Now, I personally never have been a big fan of soft pretzels. I worked for two days in a pretzel factory in my home town back in the early 70s and have had an aversion to twisted dough ever since. As we watched, car after car pulled up to Gus'. A steady stream of customers emerged with small brown bags and sometimes a soda. Remember, this is 9:30 on a Saturday morning. Who were these pretzel fanatics? What is it about Gus'?

We had to find out. We finished breakfast and crossed the street.

Gus' is a plain brick rectangle on the corner of Lemp and Arsenal Streets with a black and white pretzel flag flying out front just below old glory. It's about 2 long blocks from the Budweiser plant. Inside there is a line at a counter with a menu board. $1.50 for three “twists or sticks.” Beside the line there are long windows into the pretzel making room. At one end a machine spits out little clumps of dough that are caught by rollers and emerge as raw pretzel sticks. A steaming water bath is bobbing with raw pretzels. There's a guy throwing salt onto trays of wet pretzels before they go into the oven. A giant mixer churns up a new batch of dough. About half a dozen workers tend this process. One guy is even hand rolling a really big speciality pretzel in the form of some letters. Another guy was making “pretzel sandwiches” which turns out to be a hot dog or bratwurst completely encased in pretzel dough.

There are old photographs, too. The original Gus holding a kid in front of the oven with a big pile of pretzels in the foreground is my favorite. Now, if you are a pretzel fan, or if you are of German heritage, do yourself a favor and check out Gus' website at www.guspretzels.com.

If, like me, you don't really like pretzels, just look at the pictures attached.

Wednesday we are heading back to CNY for Thanksgiving. We hope to see quite a few of our good friends then.

Rocket docket

Hello friends. This week I've written a sketch of recent courtroom activities for those of you that are interested in that sort of thing. If the minute details of social security procedure don't rivet you, just skip to the end where you will find a fun picture of the birthday cake made for me as a surprise by my court room hearing monitor (whose other business is cake baking). Otherwise, read on. You have been warned.

Yesterday five of the ten St. Louis Social Security judges conducted what we term a “rocket docket.” The idea was to schedule as many preliminary hearings for unrepresented claimants as possible on one Saturday morning. We would bring them in, advise them of their right to counsel, review their medical evidence briefly and order consultative examinations for those who needed them. Their cases would then be rescheduled in two or three months.

Gary Jewell, our Hearing Office Chief Administrative Law Judge (HOCALJ) is the brains behind our rocket docket. He realized that a significant part of the backlog of cases is created by unrepresented claimants who show up at their first hearing only to announce they now want to hire counsel. By law we must adjourn their case to give them time to find a lawyer. This means we set aside an hour for their hearing, but the hearing only lasts ten minutes. They later get another hour hearing. This may not seem like a big waste of time, but the true waste is behind the scenes. Each ALJ spends at least an hour reviewing medical evidence in preparation for each hearing. When hearings are adjourned or cancelled not only has the judge spent time needlessly preparing but the staff spent hours and hours obtaining medical evidence, preparing the files and sending notices for hearings that never happen.

About 30% of our claimants are unrepresented. An astounding 50% or more of unrepresented claimants simply never show up at their hearings. Of course, we don't know they are not coming, so we soldier on, spending hours preparing for hearings that never happen. The result is that court rooms often sit empty. Courtroom staff sit twiddling their thumbs. We prepare and wait for those who never come. Other claimants who need hearings are delayed while we process claims that never go anywhere. Enter the rocket docket.

Yesterday each of the five rocketeer judges had 20 – 25 unrepresented claimant cases scheduled for the morning from 8:00 – 11:30 at 10 minute intervals. In all 110 cases were scheduled. Since our office completes about 285 cases a month this is a pretty significant docket. Between the time notices went out and yesterday's hearings about 30 of these claimants hired counsel, so we adjourned their cases for a future hearing leaving 80 cases to hear. Of these, only 35 actually showed up so we only averaged 7 hearings apiece. We dismissed the other 45 cases. Of the 7 cases I heard only 1 decided not to hire a lawyer. We gave everybody a handout about how to contact lawyers. We scheduled independent consultative exams for about half of the people we saw. In all a very productive morning, 65 cases moved forward efficiently, 45 dismissed without a lot of wasted effort.

Going in I expected this process to be pretty easy. I imagined I would give a short talk on the right to counsel, glance over the medical records to see who could benefit from an exam, and done. My first case actually followed this pattern. But, as you all know, life has a tendency to be a little more complicated than that. My second hearing involved a claimant who only spoke Arabic. We had no access to a translation service on a Saturday. Fortunately he brought a friend who spoke English to translate. We began. I said a sentence. The friend turned to the claimant and whispered into his ear. “No, say it out loud, so I can hear,” I admonished. Things went pretty well after that until I asked the key question, “So, do you think you want to hire a lawyer?” This provoked an extended conversation in Arabic between the two friends. I stopped them and explained that the conversation had to be between me and the claimant. Many apologies later the claimant decided it would be best to hire a lawyer. Whew.

All the remaining cases were also fairly complicated. I struggled to help these folks understand their rights in Social Security's byzantine system, including a 23 year old woman with developmental disabilities and irritable bowel syndrome and a man with psychosis accompanied by his only somewhat less psychotic brother and sister.

The last case of the day for me involved a 35 year old man. Small and mild mannered he explained that he had hired a lawyer, but that they recently refused to keep representing him. I checked the file and sure enough found a withdrawal from representation. What happened? He didn't know; they didn't tell him. I looked at his records: blind in one eye, deep vein thrombosis in the left leg with chronic pain and anti-coagulant therapy, and HIV+. From the point of view of a claimant's lawyer a pretty good case on the face of it. So why had his lawyers fired him? After a few more questions I discovered that he had returned to work for a few months. Now he was out again. Work had proved too strenuous for him. His only work was as a day care provider. His employer does not know of his diagnosis, and he doesn't want to tell them. In fact, other than his doctor and the Social Security world no one knows of his diagnosis.

I explained his rights. He plans to get a new lawyer. I suggested he get some counseling to help him deal with his situation and directed him to some local HIV/AIDS resources. He thanked me and left.

As I stepped outside into a suddenly blustery day, I could not help but wonder about our so-called social safety net for citizens with disabilities of our county. Are we serving them well? Do we dare call ourselves a civilized country? Just a block down Broadway on the steps of the Old Courthouse where Dred Scott was tried about 300 gay rights activists were demonstrating in the cold.

We're a young and foolish country still, I mused, but the idea of civil rights for all is still warm, deep in our national consciousness. We will grow up some day and grant those rights freely to all. I turned my coat collar up and carried my surprise birthday cake back to my car.

Wild hickory nuts

Today is my sixtieth birthday. This momentous event has put me in mind of the many unique and interesting people with whom I have had the good fortune to have shared some time. Here's a short remembrance sparked by a recent event.

Merry and I made our first expedition into the Ozarks two weekends ago. We spent two sunny warm autumn days exploring and stayed overnight at Rock Eddy Bluff Farm near Dixon, Missouri. Our accommodation was an old-fashioned log cabin complete with luxury outhouse, gravity feed sink, gas stove and solar powered LED lights. The broad porch overlooks a deep hollow leading down to the Gasconade River. Sitting on the porch in the late afternoon sun we were surrounded by a forest of tan leaves of many hues from the various oak trees with a few hickories mixed in.

On our walk to the river I discovered a spot where freshly fallen hickory nuts covered the ground. Merry gathered some to take home. This put me in a mind of how I came to meet Euell Gibbons.

Back in the fall of 1967 I was attending Bucknell University as a sophomore history major. My roommate for that semester was Eric Jones. Where I grew up (Hanover, PA) there was no one like Eric. Eric was a full-fledged Quaker from Philadelphia. He had shaggy hair and wore handmade sandals with socks, all the time, everywhere, in all weather. He talked about the Philadelphia Folk Festival and coffee houses. He introduced me to what he termed “real folk music," in other words, something besides the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul & Mary. He had attended private Quaker schools in Philadelphia and invited me to the local Friends Meeting. I was not particularly interested.

Not interested until he casually mentioned that about once a month after Friends Meeting Euell Gibbons led a hike to gather wild foods followed by a “wild dinner.”

I knew about Euell Gibbons from my Boy Scout days. I had read and re-read his classic, Stalking the Wild Asparagus. I loved his folksy style and the way he expressed his clear affection for the outdoors. I did not know he lived in Central Pennsylvania. I jumped at the chance to meet him.

A few weeks later I went to a Quaker meeting for the first time with Eric. It was not what I expected. After a few minutes sitting quietly one person after the other stood to talk about their favorite Bible verse or their interpretation of their faith. I had thought Quakers just meditated until the spirit moved them These Quakers were downright talky.

I looked around the room but didn't see anyone that looked remotely like what I imagined Euell Gibbons to look like. After the service a tall, gaunt man stood and invited anyone who wanted to go along for a walk to meet him outside. It was a cool sunny late fall day. I remember we walked along a railroad track outside of town. Euell seemed to know the name of every plant. Every few feet he would stop, pick up a plant, explain what it was and how it could be eaten. We gathered what edible plants we could find and put them in buckets. At the end of the walk the buckets were taken back to Euell's farm where we all pitched in to make a big salad, soup and some roasted root vegetables.

I went on several of these walks during that year. I got to know Euell fairly well. It surprised me that he smoked cigarettes and that pizza was his favorite food. At that time he had just recently become a minor celebrity. Until his “Stalking” books became a success he led a pretty hard life. His wild food hobby had started as a real necessity during the dust bowl when his family lived in New Mexico. He claimed to have bummed around the country after leaving home as a hobo for years. He was a long time lefty in the Woody Guthrie vein. He and his wife were steadfast members of the Quakers and of the local peace movement. I remember him as a pretty humble man who never did much to make himself stand out.

A few years after I graduated I was pleasantly surprised to see that Euell had been invited to write a couple of articles for the National Geographic and that he appeared on television on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and on Sonny and Cher. I was a bit surprised to find him pitching Grape Nuts in a TV commercial in 1974 during which he uttered a phrase I never forgot. When describing the taste of Grape Nuts he said in his Will Rogers voice, “Reminds me of wild hickory nuts.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XJMIu18I8Y My friends and I laughed. Some moaned that Euell had “sold out.” Personally I knew he had lived a hard and principled life. I was happy he had achieved some small measure of fame and economic success.

Euell died in 1975 from an aneurysm secondary to his Marfan’s syndrome. Although it's been more than 40 years since I met him, I still hear his voice and feel his influence every time I take a walk in the woods.