Monthly Archives: November 2012

Thanksgiving Day and Turkey Necks

22 Thursday Nov 2012

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As children, Thanksgiving Day began very early for us as we either traveled to Kentucky to visit family, or we celebrated at home. At home, turkey was served around two o’clock in the afternoon, which meant the turkey went into the oven very early in the day. Our turkey was always the iconic Butterball brand from Swift and Company, where Daddy worked. The company awarded their employees a turkey or ham on holidays, so the family was guaranteed a big, fat juicy turkey on this day. Daddy took charge of preparing and roasting the turkey, and making the dressing and giblet gravy. Those dishes were his specialties, and he started around 6 AM to begin his preparations for carefully roasting and basting the turkey throughout the day. The aromas of boiling giblets and melting butter woke us and we joined in the preparations, mixed in with frequent interruptions to watch the floats, the marching bands and the celebrities in the Thanksgiving Day Parade on television.

Mother executed the process of baking the pies, the sweet potatoes and the green beans. As very young children, we usually enjoyed the jellied cranberry sauce that came in a can, but as her culinary tastes changed, she experimented with homemade cranberry relish, which included chopped nuts and oranges, and “a little bit of this and that.”

If we did not stay in Indiana for Thanksgiving, we traveled to Kentucky to visit our aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. Trying to visit both sets of grandparents in one day created a bit of a logistic nightmare for us. Nevertheless, we successfully ended up visiting everyone in one day.  Daddy carefully planned the visits, because we knew we would eat a Thanksgiving meal twice that day; lunch at Mamaw’s, and then later in the evening, we ate dinner at Mama and Poopdeck’s, where we spent the night. The next year, we switched the order of the visits. Two Thanksgiving meals in one day made it overall, quite the caloric laden holiday.

Mother and Daddy instructed us “not to tell” either set of grandparents, that we had already eaten Thanksgiving dinner. I am not sure why we couldn’t just say we had already eaten, but it was extremely important to our parents to ensure that each of their parents, in turn, assumed they were the primary providers of the turkey and its trimmings.

Both of my grandmothers were fantastic cooks; they treated us to real butter and whipped cream, turkey dressing thick with the juices of the organ meats, and sumptuous pumpkin and pecan pies. We didn’t worry about cholesterol and calories in the fifties and the journey through the smorgasboard of holiday foods and the ritual of the family gathering was certainly worth a few pounds more.

When we went to Mama and Poopdeck’s for Thanksgiving, there were always many extra people there. Cousins, great aunts and uncles, neighbors and friends. The adults sat in the dining room and the kids ate at a smaller table in the kitchen. I remember one year in particular when Mother’s sister, Kay, and her family celebrated Thanksgiving with us in Springfield. There were nine kids that year, as the youngest on both sides and the family had not been born yet-no Yordy or John.

My cousin, Nancy Jean and I were in the kitchen sitting on stools watching Mama prepare the organs and extraneous body parts for the giblet gravy-a nasty task. She placed the liver, the heart, the gizzard, the giblets and the neck in a pot of water, salted and peppered the concoction and boiled the parts until they were thoroughly cooked and tender. We smelled the aroma of the steam as it wafted throughout the kitchen and watched her work her magic with the preparation of the food. No one in my family ate the turkey neck. It was the one body part that was discarded or reserved for the current dog of the house. Apparently, when there are six kids in a family, no food is wasted or thrown away so when my cousin, Nancy Jean proudly announced she was going to eat the turkey neck, I stared at her in surprise and retorted “No one eats a turkey neck-that’s for the dog.”

Nancy Jean was older, tall, and skinny, and always portrayed this air of confidence and independence that I admired. I tried to convince her of the indelicacies of eating a turkey neck, but regardless of my advice, when Mama retrieved the neck from the pot,   she eagerly picked up the neck and devoured the tender meat on the bone. All I saw was dark, stringy turkey meat that did not look the least bit appetizing. Nancy Jean threw down the gauntlet and proudly finished off the neck, challenging anyone to try to stop her. I was not going to stop her-she was older and taller than me.

The irony is that she has been a vegetarian for decades and would now never consider eating any part of a turkey, let alone a neck. I suspect that the last turkey neck she ate was in Mama’s kitchen in Springfield, Kentucky in the fifties. The memory of that particular Thanksgiving remains with me and reminds me that this holiday is about family, sharing our blessings in life and celebrating the people we love.

Nancy Jean was named after Mother, who died on Thanksgiving =Day in 1990. John F. Kennedy died on this same date in 1963. Mother loved John F. Kennedy, and I like to imagine that he came down to greet her and guide her through her next journey. On this special day, I hope Nancy Jean enjoys this Thanksgiving day with her family and friends and thinks about her Aunt Jean.   

As for me, I am off to Sissy’s for the day. Her husband is in charge of the turkey, and Sissy and I have the rest of the meal covered.  I am thankful that I only have to eat one Thanksgiving meal, but the cranberry relish will be less than perfect. Mother never wrote down her recipe, and no one has successfully duplicated the exact taste or texture.  I am certain it was “a little bit of this and that” with, as always, she threw in that special Strange touch. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

 In loving memory of our mother

Jean Procter Quirey Strange

4-29-25 to 11-22-90

Nancy Jean-Kentucky Cousin, Namesake and Vegetarian

The Grande Dame-My Other Grandmother

21 Wednesday Nov 2012

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Mama

The dictionary defines a grande dame as a “highly respected elderly or middle-aged woman,” which absolutely describes my other grandmother, Georgia, or as we called her, Mama (with the “a” pronounced as in the word “hat”). Of course, she would deny the elderly part of the description and preferred being considered middle-aged. She always lied about her age anyway, and we never knew how old she really was until she died.  Elderly or middle-aged-it did not matter to us.

She was definitely elegant in that southern way of hers, and beautiful. She was royalty in her own right-if not in her own imagination. She was always dressed exquisitely and with perfectly applied make-up in place. She had beautifully manicured nails on feminine dainty hands and she moved them gracefully as she spoke in a slow, more formal manner. Her silvery tinted hair was always impeccably coiffed and contributed to her stylishness. She loved the color purple and had many outfits in one shade or another of the color. Her hair actually had a tint of purple to it, so the combination of colors from head to toe, suited her perfectly. Jewelry adorned her ear lobes, neck, wrists and fingers. She was rarely without various pieces of jewelry at any given time. She wore a silver bracelet that had a charm for each of her eleven grandchildren, with our names and birth dates inscribed on the charms. Perhaps the inscriptions helped remind her of her grandchildren’s  birthdays, but then again, probably not. She wasn’t exactly Johnny on the Spot when it came to remembering our birthdays, but she had other great attributes.

Besides loving to fish, play bridge, cook and engage in typical grandmotherly activities, Mama loved to smoke and drink. And regardless of its impact on her health, she loved her Kentucky bourbon and had a fondness for vodkas, particularly in a Blood Mary. At one family gathering, I remember her asking me, “Do you think I could have one more of those Bloody Marys?” I readily obliged but reduced the amount of alcohol in that second drink, which was the prudent and responsible action. I was not going to be responsible for a broken hip.

She also loved to go to the horse track, which is probably where we inherited our love for the ponies. The track smelled of horses and the crowd of people fighting to buy that one lucky ticket; in that arena, she was in her element. She could smoke and drink to her heart’s content, and bet on horse after horse in one afternoon. Like Mother, Mama always won a race or two, or three or four, but the trick was to get her to quit betting and go home with her winnings. She chose not to listen to reason and usually stayed to place that next bet, on that next long shot. She just had too much fun at the track, and more often than not, she lost everything she had won and went home empty-handed. Happy, but empty-handed.

As small children, when we visited her in Kentucky for a weekend or holiday, Sissy and I always knew we would have to bathe when we arrived and put on the dresses Mama had bought for us.  This made Mother so mad and she complained about this the entire trip to Kentucky. Mama wanted us to look pretty as she paraded us around the neighborhood visiting friends, and I guess that meant wearing a dress. Apparently, slacks or shorts were unacceptable for such a visit and regardless of what we wore-when we arrived, we would have to change our clothes.

I loved soaking in her bathtub, which was an old-fashioned claw foot tub with a rubber stopper on a chain. For me, bathing in that tub was elegance personified. I also loved getting dressed up and visiting the neighbors who would greet us from their chairs or rockers on the wrap around porches of the day.  The neighbors always knew we were coming so Mama must have prepared them ahead of time, ensuring their rapt attention during our visits. Remember, I am the Leo, the plain brown-haired daughter, so I loved visiting and showing off my new dress. Mother named Sissy after Mama, so I know it was also a treat for my grandmother to introduce her namesake to everyone.

As we grew older and the other two babies arrived, the dress code lessened and we were not required to parade about the neighborhood as much. Mama and Mother were always fussing about something or another, whether it was making us wear dresses or some other issue that caused friction between them. That age-old dynamic between mothers and their daughters was to be expected.  At the end of the day though, I would not be who I am today without my Mother, who would not be who she was without the Grande Dame, my Mama-purple hair and all.

Time to get dressed. I’m having lunch with a friend. A hot bath, a new dress and visiting with a friend. I think I will order a Bloody Mary, too.

Toasts of the Town

17 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by in Gastronomical Delights

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White bread was a staple in every household in the fifties and primarily used to make sandwiches. The bread was sliced thin and sold in a long slender plastic bag with the word Wonder Bread emblazoned on the bag. Fried bologna and mayonnaise, Peanut butter and bananas, cream cheese and olives-whether it was used for sandwiches, toasted or eaten smothered in butter, no Midwest kitchen would be absent the proverbial loaf of Wonder bread. As the main ingredient of a sandwich, it was difficult to be creative with white bread unless cutting off the crusts counted as being creative. We weren’t allowed to cut crusts; it was wasteful and there was absolutely no reason not to eat the crust. Mother told us that the crusts were the most nutritious part of the bread, but I doubt that her statement was true. It was more than likely a ruse to encourage me to eat the crusts. There were no wasted crusts in the Strange house.

Creativity with bread arrived in the form of toast. All different kinds of toast. Orange toast, milk toast, cheese toast, chipped beef on toast, cinnamon toast. These were the Strange versions of creativity with toast and we ate every kind of toast imaginable-true gastronomical delights (except for chipped beef on toast).

Have you ever heard of orange toast? I don’t know anyone who knows what orange toast is except my siblings, my cousins and our kids. No recipe today could match the simple and delicious version of this childhood treat, which is clearly connected to the memory of Saturdays mornings when we were allowed to sleep late and lounge around in our pajamas watching Howdy Doodie.

By the way, orange toast was not made in a toaster. We didn’t own an actual toaster, but we did have an oven, so Mother made all of our versions of toast in the oven, under the broiler. For orange toast, she used nothing more than white bread, butter, sugar and orange juice. It was delicious.

Mother always freshly squeezed the juice with an old-fashioned clear glass juicer, which was a kitchen necessity at that time. Frozen orange juice concentrate did not arrive on the scene until the late 50’s so a juicer was a kitchen necessity at that time. After squeezing the oranges, she separated the seeds from the bottom of the circular juicer and then added 1 teaspoon of sugar to the juice. She placed pieces of the white bread on a cookie sheet and arranged four slices of butter on top of the bread-four squares on one square.

She spooned the sweetened juice onto each slice and popped the cookie sheet into the over under the broiler, leaving the door to the oven cracked so that we could peek in and watch our delicious treat materialize. As the broiler coils turned a bright reddish-orange, we watched the butter melt and the edges of the bread crisped and darkened in color.  The juice bubbled as the liquid heated up and the bread became toast. When the orange toast was done, Mother used a spatula to lift the toast off the cookie sheet; otherwise, the toast fell apart with the softness of the middle portion of the bread-now toast-tearing easily.

From the plate, I chose to eat the delectable crispy edges of the toast first. Or maybe the mouth-watering soggy, sweet middle part of the toast, or maybe I cut the toast in two and ate the crispy edges and the soggy middle together. Regardless, the entire experience only lasted seconds as I enjoyed every scrumptious bite.

Milk toast?  That was a very different experience. I had to be sick to get milk toast and no one wants to be sick. I would venture to say that the words milk toast reminds most people of timidity and little joie de vivre. The comic strip character, Caspar Milquetoast was the reference for this image, so those people would be correct. However, what I think of when I hear the words milk toast is comfort food-Mother’s special treat when we were sick. It probably has medicinal value, but as a child, I felt infinitely better after a batch of her milk toast. After a night of fever or stomach ache, I would smell the aroma of the warming milk from the bedroom without having to even ask. From my bed, I anticipated the arrival of the warm bowl of milk poured over, once again, that iconic piece of white bread-toasted, that is.

Back in the kitchen, Mother sliced butter into the hot liquid and then added salt and pepper to the steaming concoction. The black flecks of pepper floated to the top of the liquid and jumped out from the whiteness of the milk and the melted butter. She allowed the mixture to cook, while she once again broiled her buttered bread in the oven, toasting it quickly so that it would be ready for the steaming hot milk.

When it was ready, Mother carried a tray to my sick-bed, careful to keep from spilling the heated liquid. She placed the bowl in front of me and steam rose over the bowl and into my face as I leaned over to capture the delightful aroma of the mixture. No matter how sick I was, I eagerly placed my spoon into the now softened toast and cut it into small pieces. Soggy, sweet, buttery and salty. When I finished the bread, I scooped cooling liquid into my mouth as my whirling stomach settled and the fever dissipated into oblivion.

Sick or well, I hated chipped beef on toast. And right now, I’m off to the grocery store to buy a loaf of white bread and oranges. It’s going to be cold in the morning and I just might lie around, drink coffee and eat orange toast. I wonder where that juicer is. And, I probably should buy whole wheat instead of white-my cousin reminded me that whole wheat is after all, healthier.

Mamaw’s Big Ben

11 Sunday Nov 2012

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Part of the thrill in going to Kentucky to visit my cousins and other relatives, was to help prepare and sample the delectable homemade biscuits made by Mamaw. This truly was a ritual that took place almost every morning you spent with her. Whether it was during one of our visits to her or one of her visits to us, biscuits were always on the menu.

She was one of those truly grandmotherly types, who wore the plain cotton house dress that buttoned up the front, black orthopedic shoes and elastic bands around the lower part of her thighs, which held up her stockings. Towards the end of the day, the elastic bands appeared around her ankles, as she must have tired of the binding higher up on her legs, but was not yet ready to take off her hosiery.

Her silver peppered hair always looked as if it had just been permed, and the tight curls lay in ringlets against her scalp. She didn’t wear any jewelry that I can remember, but wore lipstick on special occasions. Inevitably when visiting, she always asked me to bobby pin her hair after she washed it.  She sat in the bench in front of her dressing table and I stood behind her, looking at the two of us in the mirror. She kept her bobby pins in one of the two milk glass,  chicken-shaped containers, which graced both sides of the dressing table. To begin the task, I carefully separated her hair into small sections, wrapped the hair around a finger, placed the coil against her scalp and then positioned bobby pins in a criss-cross fashion to hold her hair in place. Mamaw’s job involved handing the bobby pins to me one at a time. We talked the entire time I was fixing her hair, which generally revolved around stories about my father as a child or other people who had died. I often teased her that she knew more dead people than I knew who were living.

Once I had finished pinning her hair, I wrapped her head with a hair net to hold the sections in place. She went to bed secure in the knowledge that in the morning-Voila!-she had a head full of curls. We slept in her full-sized bed and as I dozed off to sleep, I listened for the sound of the trains, which passed her house nightly. The train’s whistle and the clanking of the train’s’wheels against the metal tracks mixed in with the soft snoring of the older woman I loved.

In the morning, the visit’s ritual continued as she adroitly and artistically set about making her batch of biscuits. First, she found the rectangular box of Diamond brand matches that she kept on top of the gas stove. In one quick action, she struck the wooden match against the strip of flint, which was on either side of the box, and the smell of sulphur permeated the air. She lit the over and began gathering her baking ingredients on top of the small kitchen table.  She mixed the flour, baking powder, ice water and lard and the magic of the motion mesmerized me. She never measured her ingredients, but used her watchful eye to determine the appropriate amount of “this and that” as she carefully weighed the texture of the dough with eyes and hands, which were  slightly knotted and gnarled, with closely trimmed and unpolished nails. She worked the dough furiously in the crockery and melded the dryness of the flour with the moisture of the ice water and the smooth, white, greasy lard. No one bakes with lard now, but it was a staple in Mamaw’s kitchen and was the one  ingredient, which gave her biscuits their flaky, rich texture and taste.

Once mixed, she gathered the dough in a ball, sprinkled flour on the table’s top and began the artful kneading of the dough. She punched the dough gracefully, yet forcefully, continually alternating between adding additional flour and rolling the dough around in her hands until it lost its stickiness. When she deemed the dough ready, she pulled her old, wooden rolling-pin out of the cabinet, floured the table and the rolling-pin to keep the dough from sticking and used the force of her hands to roll the dough into a less than perfect circle, which was a half to one inch thick. She used a jelly jar, which had a small opening, dipped in flour, to cut the dough into the pre-cooked circles.

She repeated the reshaping and rolling of the dough until she didn’t have enough dough left over to roll. At that point, she gathered all the scraps into one large biscuit, which was not symmetrical in shape or height. This leftover biscuit was her special biscuit-the biscuit that all her grandchildren wanted to eat-the privileged biscuit.

If Sissy and I, or one of our cousins both at her house, we would have to draw straws or pick a number between 1 and 10 to see which of us earned the honor of having that particular biscuit. That biscuit was called Big Ben.  To Mamaw, Big Ben was the memorial biscuit in honor of my grandfather Benjamin Robert Strange, who we called Papa, and her husband.

Whoever received the honor of eating Big Ben, smeared it with butter and some of her homemade plum jam. She never told us why she named a biscuit after Papa, but I suspect that she made biscuits for him often and he loved her biscuits, and this was how she honored him after he died.

I made biscuits for my own children on occasion and carried on the tradition of Big Ben that was a special part of my childhood; the careful attention to the process of mixing the dough, the rolling and cutting, the gathering of the scraps into one large biscuit, the smell of the gas oven being lit and the taste of the plum jam on my lips.  A sausage biscuit at McDonald’s? Ha! Can’t even come close to my Mamaw’s Big Ben.

 

Kentucky Cousins

06 Tuesday Nov 2012

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The word Kentucky conjures up words like blue grass, bourbon, the Kentucky Derby, basketball, fried chicken and biscuits and gravy. For me, the word Kentucky is deliciously peppered with childhood memories of visiting my Kentucky cousins. There were sixteen of them and they lived just across the Ohio River in Elizabethtown and Louisville, Kentucky. We visited them once or twice a year and it was often difficult to see them all in any one visit, but it was always a memorable adventure.

Seven of my cousins were on Mother’s side of the family, and all of them were my Aunt Kay and Uncle Bill’s children. Daddy had three sisters and a brother and between all of his siblings, there were nine children. Almost Even-Steven on both sides.

We usually traveled to Elizabethtown because that is where most of them lived. On holidays the Louisville cousins, who were on Daddy’s side of the family, traveled our way to join in the event so we were always surrounded by many aunts, uncles and cousins during our visits.

As a family, our vacations generally revolved around weekend or holiday trips to Kentucky. We piled into the car with our suitcases packed in the trunk and began our two hour journey across the winding, two lane roads between Indiana and Kentucky.  As a small child, I hated driving to Kentucky because I would get motion sickness every time we traveled. I sat in the back seat with my siblings and tried every position possible to keep from getting sick. I traveled with my pillow and tried to sleep, but with two or three siblings fighting for the limited geography, it was impossible to get much rest. We weren’t constrained by seat belts or car seats in those days and often I nestled into the space on one side of the middle hump on the floor, and tried to sleep in that limited compartment.

When not sleeping, we played “I Spy” and counted cows on each side of the road. When we passed a cemetery on our side of the road, we lost our cows. When we saw a Brahma bull, we earned twenty-five points. The game lasted until we became bored or when we left the rural countryside of Kentucky and traveled through smaller towns with no cows.

When we arrived at our destination, I happily emerged from the confinements of the car, waiting for my stomach to settle back to normal knowing that delicious food was on the agenda.

Because we had to share our visit with everyone, we often spent much of our time in Kentucky going back and forth between multiple houses. The greatest benefit in the constant movement between the various houses was the food-we never went hungry on those visits. Everyone fixed food for us and we were not allowed to refuse the generosity of our aunts and grandmothers who had spent much time preparing a feast.

While my siblings and I never felt pulled in multiple directions, I am certain there was fierce competition for our time.  My parents never wanted to show favoritism toward one family over another, so inevitably we visited with everyone, even if only for a brief time. While we split our time between the two sides of the family, I  recognized that Mother liked to be at her sister’s house and Daddy liked to be at his sisters’  or his mother’s house. As for the kids, we didn’t really care. Each family welcomed us graciously and made us feel at home and special. We feasted on Aunt Dorothy’s German chocolate cake and played cards at Aunt Kay’s. We watched Uncle Delma, Uncle Charles and Uncle Russell bring in their catch from their squirrel hunting or fishing adventures. We ran around the countryside-playing hide and seek with Janet, Ronnie and Patty. Our parents drank iced tea and visited with their siblings and their spouses.

At Mamaw’s we ate green beans and sweet corn. Biscuits and plum preserves. Sweet pickles and fresh tomatoes. And, when we couldn’t possibly eat one more bite of food,  we traveled another hour and a half to Springfield to visit Mother’s parents, Mama and Poopdeck, where we began the feasting all over again.

Our cousins were older, the same age and younger than us. There were more girls than boys, thank goodness. They visited us in Indiana when they could, and we returned the hospitality the best we could. They grew up just like we did and today they live all across the United States and in Europe. They have spouses, children and families of their own and they have their memories as well. Some of them are fans of the Kentucky Wildcats and others are fans of the Louisville Cardinals. They love their basketball and they love their horseracing. Many of them religiously celebrate the Kentucky Derby, placing their bets and toasting the day with a tumbler of Kentucky bourbon or a mint julep.

Today, we don’t see each other often and when we do, it is more often at a funeral than a celebratory event, but we still hug and kiss and laugh with each other and “Remember when…..”  Our lives are separate, yet joined by the special ties of family and history.  They are forever woven into my past; I hope they will continue to be part of my future.  To my Kentucky cousins-a toast and a smile to all the delicious memories of our family!

In memory of my beloved Bobby

July 18, 1950-November 6, 1968

Wrestling Mania

03 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by in Sporting Adventures

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Indiana’s Most Famous Wrestler-The Bruiser

My parents exposed their child to often unusual and atypical experiences-or at least looking back, it seems so. We went to the racetrack and church, the bowling alley and Bible school. We saw Jerry Lee Lewis and the Lennon Sisters in concert. We learned how to play poker and we mastered the game of hopscotch. These were the most opposite of events and entertainments and some of them perhaps not necessarily considered appropriate for children.

In thinking back to those times, I have to remember that today life is governed by different rules and everything we say and do must be politically correct.  In the fifties, lives were simpler and in some ways-not in all ways-people were less judgmental and more caring. In looking at life through those eyes, I consider one of the most unusual sporting adventures we witnessed as children was wrestling. And, since our parents chose to expose us to the sport, it made perfect sense that we were introduced to one of the most famous wrestlers of all times-none other than the one and only, Richard “Dick the Bruiser” Afflis.

“The Bruiser” was an Indiana native having been born in Delphi, Indiana-I had to Google Delphi to find out exactly where it was located-and grew up in Lafayette, Indiana, where he first played high school football. He continued playing football as a college student for the Boilermakers of Purdue University and then played lineman for the Green Bay Packers in the early fifties, before becoming a professional wrestler.

The interest in wrestling exploded after WWII so it must have been a natural choice for our parents to take us to the Armory to see the famous “Bruiser” when he came to town. Forget the fact that wrestling was and still is one of the most aggressive and brutal sports of all, if not in actuality, violent on some levels. “The Bruiser” became a legend in the world of wrestling and somewhat of a hero in Indiana and particularly in Indianapolis where he lived.

I have only a vague memory of “The Bruiser”, but Sissy reminded me of our excursion to the Armory and helped trigger the memory of this unusual nugget of my childhood. She easily recalled the event and described “The Bruiser” as being barrel-chested with bleached blond hair. His favorite opponent carried an equally frightening moniker of “The Crusher” and sported bleached blond hair as well. It must have been the fashion for wrestlers at the time, which eventually carried over to Hulk Hogan, a more modern-day wrestler.

For me, I remember the shoes-high top lace-ups in bright red. Apparently, I was a shoe aficionado even then. On the other hand, perhaps I just preferred to concentrate on the shoes he was wearing rather than the jeering and heckling of the crowd-strangely gruesome behavior from seemingly normal people, which I have never been able to understand.  The wrestling experience apparently left a much greater impression on Sissy, as she loves her boxing and football contests of today. I consider them two equally aggressive sports, which often make me cringe with the crushing of body against body.

For me, I prefer petticoats and the more gentile sports of tennis and golf. Sorry Bruiser-I do not think I liked watching you wrestle in person, and I certainly do not watch it on TV today. Mickey Rourke gave me enough of a flavor for the sport in the movie “The Wrestler”-barrel-chested, with bleached blond hair, wearing the shoes. Red shoes? Now those are worth thinking about.